Blogger disagreement: The Following

Leeard: This show is fun and I'm still watching it. Kevin Bacon is the best. The show isn't afraid to be violent when needed, and the result is suspenseful. Each episode plays like a movie thriller instead of TV. Sure, I end up predicting a lot of it. But there are so many twists that for every one I do predict, there's another that I don't.

The audience agrees: This show is better than Revolution, a show that recently got slammed by The Following in the ratings. This show has interesting flashbacks as well. Ryan caught Carroll the last time. The female cop was raised by an abusive cult. Ryan has an ex-girlfriend. Emma killed her own mom. It's all good stuff.

The show doesn't write itself into a corner. There are endless possibilities of what to do with the characters and new characters to introduce. Everyone can be either good or evil. There are tons of bad guys following the ultimate bad guy. And hey, if Carroll dies, who's to say the following won't keep going behind the first guy to step up and take his place?

Ern: Every week, I have to force myself to watch this show, and I'm constantly getting behind. When I finally turn on the computer to catch up, five minutes in, I'm already bored. The Following had a great, action-packed pilot, but then it ground to a halt. There are too many periphery baddies that I don't care about. I hardly even care about the main baddie. Getting reeeeal sick of him. He's such a whiner.

How long are they going to drag this out? I think my main problem with this show is that there is nothing going on beneath the surface. You have the shallow teases, the murder, the cops, the crazies...but there could be more than just basic plot trying to distract us from its stupidity by constantly throwing us twists. There could be character development, a romance I can actually give a hoot about, some sort of theme, personalities....

Remember when LOST's Locke and Ben were juxtaposed? Or Locke and Jack? They saw the world so differently and that was the driving point of the conflict. Not, "Oh, no, they kidnapped my woman!" There comes a time when silly isn't fun anymore. It's just boring. And can we get a female character who is not a) one of Carroll's minions, b) a victim, or c) dumb love interest Claire who will just go with bad guys whenever they mention Joey?!!?

It's all getting repetitive too. Crazy followers. Kidnapping. "Blah blah Poe blah nevermore." Claire being an idiot. Ryan messing up. Someone getting killed. Carroll foils them again! But they get a small victory when they stop Carroll's follower from killing 10/10 of the people they are trying to protect (the follower usually gets 4/10). If the show had more of a brain, it could think of a good middle instead of these cycles.

Oblivion

Great visuals and Tom Cruise still has star power.

But that was the stupidest plot ever. Dumb and long. Also, flat characters. Can we get a personality up in here? Is Morgan Freeman hurting for work? Why would he agree to take that flat, brief role? Seeing Jaime Lannister in it just made us laugh every time he was onscreen.

Not recommended.

Movie grade: C

Man of Steel trailer 3

You can already see some philosophical/heartwarming commentary in this movie. One of us doesn't like Superman (he's too powerful), but this movie might actually be good. Don't love Zach Snyder though....

Once Upon a Time- Season 2, Episode 19

Lacey- Finally. Is there anything more annoying than hiatuses during the season?

Netflix's Hemlock Grove: Season 1

This show got generally negative reviews from critics, so we almost didn't check it out. But then we scanned a few of the reviews and found that most of these people only watched three episodes. Which would be fine if this were a regular TV show. But it's not. It's a Netflix show. Netflix releases whole seasons at once and therefore would greenlight a show with slow build, because audiences don't have a week in between slower episodes to forget about the mystery. Watching three and writing a review just isn't fair.

So we watched it all in the last two days.

It took us a long time to decide whether we liked it. We never hated or loved it. We warbled between "this is okay" and "this is pretty good." We almost certainly would have dropped out were it a week-to-week cable program. But it's not. It's a whole season of a horror show.

The premise is that a rich kid, Roman, who doesn't know much about himself or the world meets a drifter, Peter, who has more of a grasp of the supernatural. Both teens are fatherless and live in a small town. Around this time, a girl is brutally murdered in what looks like an animal attack. The murderer must be found and the secrets of the town must be unearthed.

Here are the good things:

• The mysteries keep you coming back for more. We kept watching because we wanted answers. 
• If you like gore, the gore is pretty fantastic. The werewolf scene we mentioned in the last post about this show remains bad ass. Great transformations.
• Interesting characters, interesting creatures, interesting backstories.
• We liked Bill Skarsgard as Roman. 
• We liked the music at the end of the episodes.
• This show feels like True Blood in tone. Campy, a little slow, scary, gross, messed up, and interesting. and is not afraid to go to weird places...or kill some characters
• We like how the show struggled with themes of "the darkness within" and self-loathing. 
• One of the twists genuinely surprised us.
• It respects the lore that came before it. 
• There are two strong female characters, and they are even complex to boot.
• We were able to watch it in two days and not get sick of it, and that says something.
• We appreciated that the show was available in Spanish and had Spanish subtitles. One of us is trying to learn that language and it was less of a waste of time if Spanish words were running at the bottom :-)

There are a few problems (at least to us):

• Famke Janssen should never have attempted a British accent because a) her character isn't from Britain and b) she sucks at British accents.
• Some of the acting was lame (although it really might have been the writing making them look bad; some of the stuff was hard to work with).
• A lot of the dialogue was lame.
• Rape and the way the show handles rape. It's almost exploitative the way the first attack is filmed to look like a rape. The author of the original book strikes us as an obvious douchebag. He once said, "You can pry my rape scene out of my cold, dead hands" or something like that. He wanted this show to be a "hard R," and clearly thinks that this will make it edgier. But smut for smut's sake doesn't automatically make something quality. Just ask Starz. We don't want to spoil anything for you, but one of the rapes was really disappointing for viewers. 
• Most of the violence is against women and there are women getting jealous of other women. Most of the women are portrayed as either Madonnas or whores. 
• It's hard to find a character to like or root for. It's kind of cool that nearly every person on this show could be the murderer and you don't find out for a long time, but if you don't have a main character to hang your hat on, it's hard to get attached. Even after a whole season, we don't love any of the characters (even if a few of them are interesting).
• This story could have been told in ten, 40-minute episodes, rather than dragged out to make 13, 50-minute episodes. There were some slow bits and it came from padding, not an uninteresting story.
• The motivations of a few characters were muddy or unbelievable. One villain was pure, one-dimensional eeeeevil.
• One of the "twists" was so easy to call that Ern called it immediately after the question was raised, and you will too. Ern can usually never predict anything.
• It definitely qualifies as garbage to one of us. It's not gonna enrich your mind or soul or anything like that. You're not gonna feel good after you watch it.

If this show is successful enough for Netflix, there will probably be more to come. The writer of the original book has a sequel ready and a third book outlined. We'll chum on up to our couches and watch the second season when it's one. That's the final proof that we liked this show, overall. But we wouldn't be back if it weren't on Netflix, a whole season ready to stream. It wouldn't be worth following weekly. But we love a binge.

Season Grade: B-