November 21st. Hulu exclusive.
Josh Schwartz (Gossip Girl, Chuck) and Stephanie Savage (Gossip Girl, The O.C.) showrunners.
I’m kind of looking forward to this!
This started! Three episodes up at the moment. I think new ones are added on Tuesdays.
Am I the only one watching? I’m actually really digging it.
Just watched the pilot, seems decent. Doesn’t have the pulp comic feel of the CW DC shows. More teen drama than superpower drama, though of course that looks to be coming.
I watched a couple of episodes. Felt very slow. First ep is the kids, second ep is the parents. I get it’s an intro but they all seemed boring so far. All I want to know is that big mystery and I am getting the feeling they are gonna string you along the whole season just to find out what’s going on. I don’t care for any of the characters, except maybe hulk girl.
I think you’re right, after watching two episodes. So I’m gonna stop now, and whenever they’ve completed the run and I have Hulu access again, I’ll check out the rest.
They’re definitely taking their time with this story, which I don’t mind.
Well, that’s very true to the books, the first run at least.
I’ve seen four episodes so far, and I’m not feeling it.
I don’t know anything about the comic other than that it’s supposed to be good. I didn’t know anything about the show, but the pre-air review at the AV Club piqued my interest.
But so far the show just feels like drawn out cheap suspense. Oh no, someone almost caught someone else doing something sneaky! Do they know? Do they know they know about <whatever>? Repeat at least twice per episode. The adults all seem like pretty thin characters that I assume the show thinks will be interesting when they throw more flashbacks at us, but ugh. They need to be interesting human beings on their own first. The kids are better, though there are some flat performances holding them back too.
I’ll probably keep watching it, it’s not terrible, but it doesn’t feel like anything special. I’d much rather watch any CW show or The Gifted. I regret allowing to briefly let that A.V. Club review get me excited.
I tried watching season 3 of Agents of Shield - what struck me was how they used most of the same gimmicks as “days of our lives” and other like shows, with zooming into faces, reversals of fortunes, people who work against each other suddenly becomes buddies, and vice versa - Only with super powers.
I bring this up, because according to a few danish reviews of this show I’ve read, this is more of an exploration of teenage years, the loneliness, the angst and so on in a rather interesting way…with superpowers, and I think I’d much rather watch that, than Days of our lives…with superpowers.
I think that same thing is one of the reasons why the comic books were reviewed so well. It’s not really about superheroes or superpowers – it’s about children growing up and realizing their parents aren’t the paragons of virtue they thought they were, which is a poignant theme.
I think it comes across a little clumsily in the show. There are some good moments in the first couple of episodes that deal with “being a teenager,” but it takes a backseat after that because they put more focus on the mystery at hand. I don’t know that I consider the suspense cheap – it’s just poorly executed. Mutual and complicated secret-keeping makes for good TV if done well.
I’m hoping we see some good moments as the parents start to realize what the children know and how they respond to that.
I should’ve waited until the fifth episode to post, then I could’ve complained about the clumsy “action” too. The moment when they all sort of come together and use their powers was so silly and awkward I was cringing the whole time. A complete anti-climax. And let’s not get into how corny and forced the “gangster” dialog is. Everyone’s still lying to everyone else, and amongst the adults it definitely feels like just more cheap, meaningless conflict.
Many, many lines in this would also be delightful selections for Tom’s good writing/bad writing quiz.
How about “Show us Los Angeles of the future!”
Or “My son, they used to say there’d never be a self-driving car, until I made one! I could beat this thing, I know it!” he says through tears, explaining his resolve against cancer.
I think once I started writing out my complaints I realized I’m not as ambivalent as I thought, I think I actively dislike this. I may still stick around out of curiosity if it’s a short season, I guess I should check to see how many episodes there are.
Hmmmm. I’m starting to sour on this a little bit. I don’t hate it, it’s just boring. And clumsy. And poorly written. Moments that should have some heavy impact just… don’t.
Like, the one mom finally has her smoking gun that the kids know about them! How? Because the one girl just awkwardly stammered it out. Riveting television.
I want this to be good, but I’m faced with the creeping suspicion that it doesn’t know what it’s doing. I contend that it had a strong start, but it just feels like it’s floundering aimlessly. I’ll try to finish it out.
The first scene where they all show up and use their powers together was pretty terrible. Feels like they’re dragging out the “do we really think our parents are evil” stuff far too long. From what I remember in the comics they see their parents up to evil and they all RUNAWAY. Trying to balance all this family drama long term is just unsustainable.
Season 1 done and yeah,… no. The entire season managed to scrounge up about 80% of the energy, content and impact of the first issue of the paper comic. I don’t mind an adaptation adding background or spending time setting the stage, etc., as long as it pays off and adds to the overall entertainment. And all of TV Runaway’s Annoying CW Teen Filler was just… meh.
It wasn’t a horrible show, but given the strength of the source script and ideas, man, what a wasted opportunity.
Sigh.
Was that the end of the season? It felt like a mid-season finale.
This is exactly how I feel. I think it started fine, sunk in the middle, and started to pick up a little toward the end, but it just wasn’t enough. Every time I thought they were doing something interesting, it turned out to just be so poorly executed that I would lose interest.
Like the episode with the parents all stuck in the workshop, debating who should go into the machine? What a great base for a script – you can have the parents riffing off each other, you can deepen the characterization and the relationships, and you can have some really good reveals. But no, instead you get the same awkward writing and these weird Spartacus moments that don’t have any impact.
Finished up the 10 episode season 1 last night. It was…ok. I like most of the cast, and the various interpersonal relationship aspects seem fairly well executed. A bit over-the-top on sexual tension, but that’s par for the course these days.
However…I think they have about 1 season’s worth of material that is being stretched to multiple seasons, and so it feels to me like it takes forever for interesting tidbits about the big mystery to be doled out. Also, whoever wrote/directed the fight with Jonah has zero clue about action sequences, it was terrible.
If you haven’t started watching yet, I’d recommend waiting until they finish the whole series. This first season may look better if the next does a good job of progressing the story and (hopefully) wrapping it up. Or if not, the show may not be worth bothering with at all.
There are something like 100+ issues of the actual comic, of which this show has currently covered…like…six? Kinda?Then again, they’re taking a very different tack. The show has invented characters (Molly’s cousin, Nico’s sister, Jonah, etc), changed or done away with others (Frank Dean is very much part of the Pride in the comics, everyone in it is a no-fooling supervillain with some sort of powers, and there’s no reluctance to murder people - with a knife, not a magic box; Molly’s parents are still alive in the comic and evil mind-controlling mutants, at that; Chase is a dumb jock and steals, rather than inventing, the Fistagons), and the whole Church of the Gibborim thing…well, the Gibborim are part of the story in the comic but that’s a huge departure.
I dunno, I like it. My biggest concern is that by downplaying the parents’ role in things (yes, they’ve done terrible things, but they’re clearly reluctant and you learn things about why that make them seem much less responsible) they’re let off the hook to a degree that’s maybe not great for the premise. Though it does make the conflict between them and the kids more emotionally fraught.
I understand why they would want to take a more sympathetic route with the parents. But like you said, it hurts the premise. It’s like they thought it would be really cool to do lots of expansion on the source material. “What if the parents were actually good?” “What if we did all this other stuff with the Gibborim?” But none of it really goes anywhere, and it just winds up muddling the plot.
I wish they would have seriously tightened up the plot such that the parents were either dead, imprisoned, or redeemed by the end of the season, with future seasons set up for the kids to deal with the fallout.
I mean I wouldn’t call the show version of the parents good, but they’re not out and out, knowingly, and willingly villainous like the comic version.