sonofwoody
Joined Sep 2021
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sonofwoody's rating
From the previews of Race to Survive Alaska, I saw that it was much like the three seasons of the excellent (even if sometimes staged) Ultimate Survival Alaska, even having some of the same wild and demanding locales and a promise of "elite athletes". RSA largely succeeds in the scenic filming, but fails in both its casting and editing.
"Elite athletes" is an exaggeration for most of the cast; even the best of them would not match the caliber of those in Ultimate Survival Alaska and many other similar shows. Worse, most of the cast are insufferable, with the editing playing up bickering and hurt feelings and speechifying. And since RSA is under the NBC banner, it is edited to be quite wõkë, with the expected tribal "representing" of the perpetual victim groups. Here, unbelievably, Max (who has a white mother), when he finds that he is the last "black" person left, says he is the last "person of color"; the Inupiaq Oliver and Wilson might disagree.
In a good survival show, I can root for one or more persons or teams; here, every pair was either off-putting or so-so, so I did not really care who won. And one final note: I'm quite tired of actors and especially narrators with affected frontal pronunciations, i.e. Lisps.
"Elite athletes" is an exaggeration for most of the cast; even the best of them would not match the caliber of those in Ultimate Survival Alaska and many other similar shows. Worse, most of the cast are insufferable, with the editing playing up bickering and hurt feelings and speechifying. And since RSA is under the NBC banner, it is edited to be quite wõkë, with the expected tribal "representing" of the perpetual victim groups. Here, unbelievably, Max (who has a white mother), when he finds that he is the last "black" person left, says he is the last "person of color"; the Inupiaq Oliver and Wilson might disagree.
In a good survival show, I can root for one or more persons or teams; here, every pair was either off-putting or so-so, so I did not really care who won. And one final note: I'm quite tired of actors and especially narrators with affected frontal pronunciations, i.e. Lisps.
Having seen how CW ravaged Walker, I watched Walker: Independence only because of Matt Barr. In Blood and Treasure, he plays a strong, masculine lead teamed up with a strong, feminine lead, and the acting is pretty good throughout. B&T has diverse supporting characters who are all appropriate to their settings without "representing." The location shooting is excellent, the dialog is okay to crisp, and the plotting is a very good kind of pastiche of adventure shows.
In W:I Barr is a rogue, kind of an older Johnsey Hatfield (Hatfields & McCoys), teamed up with another strong woman, who is unfortunately somewhat of a Karen. The three leads are the strength of the show, each a pretty good actor with an interesting role. However, the dialog/delivery is almost bizarre in places, like this is the filming of a first run through. The diversity smacks more than a little of "representing", as Justin Johnson Cortez (Calian) stresses in his interviews (even though he is a Yaqui-Hispanic playing an Apache). The location shooting is a poor cliche: desert and scrub, even though the area of the real Independence, Texas, did and does not look like New Mexico, where this series is filmed. And finally, there is the music. Late 1800s Americana is rich in music; this series is penurious. The first episode imposes recent music on the audience, to the effect that the western ambience is absolutely shattered. (The spiritual The Wayfaring Stranger is given the singular worst rendition in history.)
W:I shows some promise: it has Matt Barr, and I'm intrigued enough to see what happens next. I can turn the sound down when the opposite-of-music comes on. But it already has that CW malaise, where something decent is like drawing to an inside straight. [ 4 stars which could increase.
In W:I Barr is a rogue, kind of an older Johnsey Hatfield (Hatfields & McCoys), teamed up with another strong woman, who is unfortunately somewhat of a Karen. The three leads are the strength of the show, each a pretty good actor with an interesting role. However, the dialog/delivery is almost bizarre in places, like this is the filming of a first run through. The diversity smacks more than a little of "representing", as Justin Johnson Cortez (Calian) stresses in his interviews (even though he is a Yaqui-Hispanic playing an Apache). The location shooting is a poor cliche: desert and scrub, even though the area of the real Independence, Texas, did and does not look like New Mexico, where this series is filmed. And finally, there is the music. Late 1800s Americana is rich in music; this series is penurious. The first episode imposes recent music on the audience, to the effect that the western ambience is absolutely shattered. (The spiritual The Wayfaring Stranger is given the singular worst rendition in history.)
W:I shows some promise: it has Matt Barr, and I'm intrigued enough to see what happens next. I can turn the sound down when the opposite-of-music comes on. But it already has that CW malaise, where something decent is like drawing to an inside straight. [ 4 stars which could increase.