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mrpeters23
Reviews
Manhunt (2024)
It would have taken so little effort to get it right, but...
It is telling when get episode gets a website with 10 fairly major historical accuracy issues or simple scripting errors. Not the whole series. Each episode! It starts with no beard on Stanton, he travels like Sherlock Holmes when in reality he stayed in DC. Mary Lincoln was never on the funeral train, Stanton didn't single handly plan the funeral. I give it stars for creating interest in the subject, but read Walter Stahr's biography of Stanton to get a better picture of the main character. Or the original Manhunt book. Ugh, history more than entertaining when it's done with truth in mind. And it wouldn't have cost any more in the budget.
The Diplomat (2023)
Honestly, it doesn't earn a second season
Can't believe the praise this gets in the user reviews. Really a shallow project by all involved. Not West Wing or the Crown by any means. Rufus Sewell is always worth watching, but the rest of the casting missed by a mile. Start with the lead role, the Ambassador. All good shows have a lead that you can root for or like. This doesn't try for anything that seems real. Start with the plunging necklines no professional would wear, the hair that looks like a bad night and that is just the costuming. Add to that the lack of competence she seems to project when she isn't pushing things around. Nothing subtle about this person. This Ambassador operates like everything has to be at a volume level of 11. The writers can't decide if this is a fish out of water story or a bad marriage story. By the end, you simply can't believe that anyone would think this is vice-presidental material. She operates without any input from DC or State, no one writes memos, asks for direction from HQ or reads directives. They all seem to work on gossip. Not a team player, can't even keep the secret that she was in the room during a major event. If this is how foreign policy is done, we are in a lot of trouble! At the end, this Ambassador seems to simply be angry or upset all the time. That makes for unpleasant viewing without redemption. By the time you finish season one, you wish she was the one in the car. The rest of the cast is pretty much without any emotional pull for the viewer, nothing to make you want to like them or spend more time with them. A lot of mumbling by the Foreign Secretary. We spent the last episode trying to figure out how this could be so far off the intention, be it writing, directing or casting. Finally came down on the writers and the lack of a core united vision of how this was supposed to unfold, maybe packing too many plot lines into a short series. Trying to be up-to-date made for awkward scripts and only underscored how far away from the real world this really was. So it ends up being a waste of time. Wanted it to work, but it really doesn't - unless you make a game of keeping score about how a real state department would work in this situation or at least one with a functioning HR department!
The Flight Attendant (2020)
Slow, plodding and confused. Where is the story editor for this one?
There is a well known rule of thumb for binge watching. The show has to have an emotional hook for the viewer within two or three episodes for the viewer to continue to watch. This one just about didn't make it that far for me and the reason is in the story editing. It's a slow, confused reveal and it really could have had a tighter editing of the story to make it move along faster. I have the feeling that it could be a 6 episode story arc rather than a 9 episode deal - and we wouldn't have missed much in plot development or story with the edit. There are characters that come and disappear and they don't move the story along very well and they tend to blend together. They never make much of an emotional impact. The plot would have done just as well without them. The FBI could have been a great second story, but they are pushed aside for the other characters and that's where the waste of time happens. The other characters feel like filler. And the casting was such was they look alike too! Was that the lawyer or the friend or the person who worked at the company?
So, I wonder if they did enough work on the scripts to plot out where they wanted to be at a certain point. It seems like the story is allowed to meander through the episodes without much purpose or pushing the plot. Cuoco is good enough for the part, which is sightly above the TV "Movie of the Week" sort of production. But even so, how often can she look confused and dazed scene after scene, over the hours of watching this? Apparently she doesn't work with any airline with a schedule either! That disappears from the story after a couple of episodes.