Review By Kamal K
I was looking forward to this for so long and it just flopped for me. First, the acting was bland across the board. Second, the story tries to add in too many characters we're supposed to care about, without really building any of these characters. Third, convoluted storylines and tons of plot holes and unanswered questions.
And Fourth
Racial politics are littered throughout the show, often in ways that are at once preachy and puzzling. Before I stopped recapping the show, I wrote about the episode where Bucky takes Sam to meet Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) a Super Soldier the US government used during Vietnam to track down the Winter Soldier. He was badly mistreated by the government following his service and is justifiably unwilling to help.
When they leave, the two start arguing in the street and moments later cops pull up and start harassing Sam (somehow not recognizing the famous Avenger).
It followed the absurd bank scene in the first episode in which Sam is turned down for a loan because he was vanished in the Snappening and has no income record for five years. But Sam is friends with powerful-and rich-people like Tony Stark's widow, Pepper Potts. He's also clearly working on high-level missions that must pay some sort of fee-surely he's not working for the richest, most powerful government in the world for free. (Also banks would be dying to loan money to all these newcomers in need of money. It would be hugely lucrative. And if they weren't, legislation would surely be passed to make it so).
The heavy-handed politics just keep coming, unfortunately. The idea that Sam was passed over for the job of Captain America and it was given to a white dude who is clearly the World's Greatest Monster for taking said job permeates the show. By the end, when Sam just decides to take the mantle of Captain America for himself, it's not just the right man for the job stepping up, it's driven home over and over again that he's black and that this is somehow (because the show tells us, mainly) a Very Big Deal. This despite the numerous black superheroes that nobody has a problem with. If you'd just left the discussion of race out of the equation entirely, nobody would bat an eye. We were already expecting Sam to become Captain America after Endgame, and nobody cared one way or another.
After Sam beats the Flag Smashers and saves the GRC members with his super suit, he lays into the senators and global representatives telling them to check their privilege and "do better."
It's almost a good speech until you think about the particulars. The GRC has been working for six months on an impossible task. Half the world's population disappeared for five years and then suddenly reappeared. In the meantime, people just sort of divided the spoils. The GRC has been tasked with figuring out what to do with all the newly reappeared people, long-term squatters, governments and civil society in complete disarray. It was hard enough to figure out what to do when everyone vanished; piecing the world back together now is a monumental task and not everyone is going to be happy. That's the hard truth of actually governing, actually leading people: You can't make everybody happy. That doesn't mean you coddle violent extremists who blow up innocents
Sam flying in with his fancy new Captain America suit chastising a bunch of people who very nearly died moments earlier to "do better" and shame them for referring to the Flag Smashers as "terrorists" isn't actually that awesome, cheering onlookers notwithstanding. It might feel awesome in a very generic, platitudinous way, but it's not. It's empty.
Sam is a soldier. His job is to stop bad guys. He hasn't spent a day in the shoes of these world leaders, bickering and wheeling and dealing in an often fruitless attempt to figure out how to make the world whole again. The fact that he's touting Karli Morgenthau's politics at this point is just . . . Weird. Karli (Erin Kellyman) is a terrorist and a murderer and her idealism is based on lies.
I was looking forward to this for so long and it just flopped for me. First, the acting was bland across the board. Second, the story tries to add in too many characters we're supposed to care about, without really building any of these characters. Third, convoluted storylines and tons of plot holes and unanswered questions.
And Fourth
Racial politics are littered throughout the show, often in ways that are at once preachy and puzzling. Before I stopped recapping the show, I wrote about the episode where Bucky takes Sam to meet Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) a Super Soldier the US government used during Vietnam to track down the Winter Soldier. He was badly mistreated by the government following his service and is justifiably unwilling to help.
When they leave, the two start arguing in the street and moments later cops pull up and start harassing Sam (somehow not recognizing the famous Avenger).
It followed the absurd bank scene in the first episode in which Sam is turned down for a loan because he was vanished in the Snappening and has no income record for five years. But Sam is friends with powerful-and rich-people like Tony Stark's widow, Pepper Potts. He's also clearly working on high-level missions that must pay some sort of fee-surely he's not working for the richest, most powerful government in the world for free. (Also banks would be dying to loan money to all these newcomers in need of money. It would be hugely lucrative. And if they weren't, legislation would surely be passed to make it so).
The heavy-handed politics just keep coming, unfortunately. The idea that Sam was passed over for the job of Captain America and it was given to a white dude who is clearly the World's Greatest Monster for taking said job permeates the show. By the end, when Sam just decides to take the mantle of Captain America for himself, it's not just the right man for the job stepping up, it's driven home over and over again that he's black and that this is somehow (because the show tells us, mainly) a Very Big Deal. This despite the numerous black superheroes that nobody has a problem with. If you'd just left the discussion of race out of the equation entirely, nobody would bat an eye. We were already expecting Sam to become Captain America after Endgame, and nobody cared one way or another.
After Sam beats the Flag Smashers and saves the GRC members with his super suit, he lays into the senators and global representatives telling them to check their privilege and "do better."
It's almost a good speech until you think about the particulars. The GRC has been working for six months on an impossible task. Half the world's population disappeared for five years and then suddenly reappeared. In the meantime, people just sort of divided the spoils. The GRC has been tasked with figuring out what to do with all the newly reappeared people, long-term squatters, governments and civil society in complete disarray. It was hard enough to figure out what to do when everyone vanished; piecing the world back together now is a monumental task and not everyone is going to be happy. That's the hard truth of actually governing, actually leading people: You can't make everybody happy. That doesn't mean you coddle violent extremists who blow up innocents
Sam flying in with his fancy new Captain America suit chastising a bunch of people who very nearly died moments earlier to "do better" and shame them for referring to the Flag Smashers as "terrorists" isn't actually that awesome, cheering onlookers notwithstanding. It might feel awesome in a very generic, platitudinous way, but it's not. It's empty.
Sam is a soldier. His job is to stop bad guys. He hasn't spent a day in the shoes of these world leaders, bickering and wheeling and dealing in an often fruitless attempt to figure out how to make the world whole again. The fact that he's touting Karli Morgenthau's politics at this point is just . . . Weird. Karli (Erin Kellyman) is a terrorist and a murderer and her idealism is based on lies.