Reviews

A deaf, Native American amputee anti-hero. How Marvel has managed to squander such a rich potential vein of character creation, conflict, and stylistic choices is truly remarkable. We have no idea what motivates her other than revenge, vaguely, kind of. Given the revenge was already achieved in Hawkeye everything after that, the quest for power at the expense of her home community is unearned as a motivation at best, nonsensical at worst. Her community bends over backwards for her despite her putting them in danger to do so, with no clear negative consequences of Fisk's contrived hold over her remote hometown halfway across the country to offer them motivation apart from this woman that they haven't seen or heard from in years (but somehow are largely aware of her goings ons in NY?). Her powers are as poorly written as they come, with the flashbacks providing absolutely zero parallel to Echo's present self other than her race and gender, which apparently for Disney is enough to say they explored and included an under represented group. She faces no real consequences for her questionable actions, she faces no real challenges at all. Just another dilute mess, like the remains of a good meal in a drain trap.

I mean... it would take longer than the season 1 run time to describe what a monumental piece of nonsense this is. However, it is wildly unintentionally funny peak "boomer" nonsense. Stallone is hilarious for all the wrong reasons, there are no actual characters in the sense that they have motivations and arcs and behave in a way consistent with a human being. The plot is contrived at its best and nonsensical garbage at its worst, but if you want to hear Stallone deliver cliché dialogue just like your drunk uncle that claims he's 1/8th Italian and "knows connected people" then boy are you going to get a kick out of this.

Season one was amazing. The characters were well written, the tension properly built up, the internal politics were thoughtful, the conflicts were complex and felt real, the fight choreography was tremendous, the twists were earned.

Season two is a completely different show. Characters are tossed around like fight scene stunt doubles, there to hit story beats rather than being internally consistent, the plot and 'twists' are completely contrived and make little sense if you think about it for more than three seconds. The fight choreography is replaced with B movie gore. A let down of epic proportions.

Season 1 - 9 stars Season 2 - 2 stars (one star just for Sope's continued fantastic performance)

And yes, that includes the prequels. Because the prequels were the ego-driven garbage of a single, deficient man. This episode was created by a literal media empire, but one that apparently thinks Star Wars fans are so devoid of basic dignity and critical thought that a dozen cameos, atrocious faked dialogue, uncanny valley animation, and a hundred ham fisted fan service candies is enough to distract people from the fact that this show is a complete train wreck with no coherent narrative, no character motivations, and shows no more respect to the franchise or its fans than anything Lucas puked out.

But then again having seen the reviews, I guess Disney was right. Either that or I'm genetically predisposed to resist Stockholm Syndrome.

I don't know what more you need. The cinematography, the story, the (proper) use of dialogue, the wonderful little scenes that give the world color... I mean how they thought this episode wasn't going to be humiliating for the rest of the show is beyond me.

This is getting beyond predictable and trite... and on top of it the directing and cinematography is falling completely flat. Rushing introduction (forget any actual story or development) to new "characters", zero transition scenes, no sense of space in any of the sets, CGI that looks straight out of Lucas's arsenal. I don't understand how this show passed its final edit (where it almost certainly was set back even further from whatever it was meant to be).

We are three episodes in and we have no idea who Fennec is. A bounty hunter turned crime lord that seems to have zero motivation to fill his role other than "well this is mine and I'm in charge" and has done literally nothing but appear in random set locations for people to talk at him while he buffs his karma points and makes no decisions that could eliminate a potential plot thread.

I could write a novel on this but I'm too frustrated. This reeks of corporate meddling. How a production team looked at this and said "yeah, this should follow Mandalorian" is beyond me.

... it may have been excusable. Instead what we got was an amazing premise, MC'ed by the Roast Master himself, from a platform that doesn't seem short of cash to throw around, that somehow managed to deliver the most flaccid jokes I've ever seen on a major platform (believe me, it's not the "vaudeville" format that turns me off). On top of rarely landing an actual joke, the show is frequently punctuated by shoehorned political soapboxing that even when I agree with the sentiment, is not what I watch a roast for (Et tu, Ross?). The only way I can accurately describe the low effort performances and lazy cliches is by the show's embarrassing resemblance to the minion memes your aunts share on each other's Facebook walls.