Reviews

To anyone with the slightest critical eye, pretty much everything outside The Mandalorian and Rogue One has largely been vapid Disney-stamped Star Wars content™. Simply keeping-up with the sheer amount of crap being pumped-out is a chore. Compared to the usual sterilized corporate stuff made for their crucial baby demographic, Andor's a breath of natural fresh air.

The protagonist isn't just another 'Han shot back' type. And back in general is a strain of grounded Star Wars, not made of every color of plastic at hand. No, this is a thoughtful and somewhat slow series with its tame, tense, and explosive moments paced with narrative purpose. While I'd only call it fairly solid in its own right, this series could rightly be considered amazing next to nearly everything else Star Wars has had on offer for the last decade.

This first episode is pretty solid. I have near nothing to complain about at the least, as it isn't bad. At worst it dwelled on some plot points too much and a few characters felt cheap.

What really hurts it, if anything, are the immediate references to Game of Thrones. If I ever were to point to an example of a show that went from the best to a joke, that would be it. And yet they reference it like ominous threats lie in the future-none in your fictional world, only for the audience!

The penultimate episode, that bombastic but not extravagant second-to-last, was solid in its own right. Westworld, however, does what it does best in its final episode: pretending to answer deep questions as it does little more than take-in a deep breath of its own farts. It's insultingly vague and esoteric to the point where the content is no more substantive than a burst of smoke obscuring a cheap magic trick.

What questions remain amount to a "wut?" more than any engaging speculation for the curious or invested.

Given what Disney's Star Wars has been and continues to be, this series could easily be an irredeemable mess. Knowing almost nothing of its development, I'm assuming McGregor & Christensen were essentially trying to hold a crumbling dam together with duct tape. If they've managed at least that much by the end, that's partly up to you.

Although, either way, it is undeniably messy. They easily could've been more responsible/restrictive with the flashy action scenes but that's Star Wars these days; flashy scenes with a thousands Star Destroyers, armed with Death Star guns, that come outa nowhere.

Less a movie, more a series of fights with Mads Mikkelsen as the badass assassin protagonist. Everything between the fights is just a vehicle to get him to the next. So, if you simply wanna see Mads Mikkelsen be a badass killer then it'll do.

Boba's character development is a bit poorly ordered. At first, who he is simply doesn't make any sense. Eventually things start making more sense as Mando comes into the picture. And if anything, Boba's series kinda just acts as a setup to the next season of the Mandalorian.

If you can stomach the first few meh episodes, the later half gets better.

Easily the best episode of the whole season. Ranging from the best action to the most satisfying character/world development.

Everything about this episode is nothing but agonizingly transparent. Setting-up the protagonists as the 'goodguys' could hardly be more forced, where motivations and the like could have been developed over the span of a season with care. Instead they ham-fisted it in the span of about an hour so they can pump-out easy 'goodguy' episodes.

Wasted potential.

Visually, it is impressive and in general promising beyond looks. Although it seems rushed and excessive bombasity is used to cover for how fundamentally typical it is. The very start is rough and from there on is solid. But around the end it seems to not know what to do outside of the usual black & white 'goodguy vs badguy' stories.

Dragon's Blood reminds me of Castlevania, as it doesn't waste time and constantly adds to the world while naturally carrying the story forward. At no time was I bored, waiting for something to happen, or wondering why this or that decision was made. But it doesn't trip over itself either, in its near-perfect pacing.

Much of this series is spent trodding from one day to the next, slowly laying groundwork with it's minor turns or peculiarities. These last two episodes have finally begun taking the monolith that is Gilead and expose it to the one truth: even in a stale world, the moments of grand change can come out of nowhere or birth from the slightest decisions.

A much needed release midst the misery which defines this series. Hopefully the stakes continue to rise, internationally and world building wise, on a more regular basis.

After the dramafest season 5's been and with the same plot armor that can be found in any other forgettable series covering practically every character throughout it, this isn't a good end but maybe a satisfactory one. The last fifteen or so minutes arguably contained more substance than the whole season. Although compared with the lengthy go-nowhere drama of this season, it felt more like a trailer for the next than part of the episode.

Following two iffy seasons and the most interesting stuff being packed into a glorified trailer in the last minutes at the end of the last episode, I fear this is getting into Game of Thrones territory.

It's almost as if everything that makes the expanse unique is thrown out an airlock this episode. Tons of time is spent on vapid drama, fights are stupidly charitable to main characters, and it generally feels like they're terrified to make the protagonists any shade of grey.

A disappointing trend of filler and empty plot points which exist to singularly push the story along have become only more obvious over these last two seasons.

No convoluted or pointless plot, natural world building, and some good old violence. While Dredd isn't perfect, it is almost so at what it does.

Breaking the 4th wall and getting to the point is fundamental to this excellent series, cutting right to the fun without waddling around in pointless plot when things could be exploding and the story could be going somewhere. It almost reminds me of Rick & Morty in the way reality is made to bend to the need of what's interesting rather than staying glued to established stuff. Making a fun, brutal, and thoughtful series isn't easy but the people behind this managed to bring that all to the table.

Why a show based on 'offensive' content would be so censor-heavy and lacking in irreverence is beyond me. This is one of the the laziest and safest attempts at being risque or edgy I've ever suffered.

An episode in any show that involves amnesia is usually pretty annoying but they managed to do a solid job of it.

Painfully predictable and existing only to give the new leader of SG1 his own episode.

Naturally, compared to SG1, this isn't nearly on par. The problem is that they try to mimic the same team dynamic while injecting a ton of vapid time-wasting drama. Atlantis is not the thoughtful and interesting series it was birthed from, no matter how much it clearly wishes it could be on the surface.

An entire episode of pointless arguing in which nothing important happens.

Where one of the multi-part episodes from the last season failed to add anything but a new enemy toy to the mix, this one does great world building and utilizes characters to their greater potential. The Tok'ra come back into the picture, the Jaffa rebellion plays a preeminent role, and enemies are forced to work together. Reckoning manages to bring complexity, grand-scale conflict, and good old action together in an excellent climactic example of what Stargate has to offer.

Whenever SG1 is attacked by bureaucrats, it tends to go into eye-roll territory. So are plenty of the rehash episodes but this is more substantive, like in "Disclosure" because it actually serves a meaningful narrative purpose. There's a new President and it's somewhat interesting to see an honest actor process the existence of the Stargate program. Plus it almost seems to mock the premise of the protagonists falling victim to these cloak and dagger spooks who have inspired some of the worst episodes.

'Hand-wavey' stuff has its place here or there but that fills whole scenes in these two episodes. Out of character stuff and plot progression that could be best summarized as notes that were half-assedly slapped together and turned into a pair of episodes run rampant. Everything that happens on Earth is silly and the rest seems rushed.

Burke exists singularly to conjure vapid drama, the 'anti-hondurans' are so ill-conceived that they're comedic, and the Anubis side of the story feels more like a side event than a galactic existential threat.

These multi-part episodes are usually good but this ain't it chief. Plot happens but nothing particularly interesting, fun, or even substantial to the narrative beyond a new toy for the badguys. Some of the progression is plain stupid too. It couldn't be more obvious a bunch of stuff is just thrown on screen to reach an end.