We're up to episode 11 and I had to come here to say this just to get it out.
If I weren't so sure this wreck of a show is written by committee (aka, he worst possible way), I'd be convinced it was written by a consortium of robots using a Random Action and Dialogue Generator that was programmed by emotionless aliens who, after developing the ability to talk to the cows they've abducted, spent six months talking with them about humans, and they now think they understand what humans are about, how they feel and emote, and how they talk and interact with parents, children, friends, lovers, and coworkers, but, in actuality, they have no idea because, you know, they're aliens who learned everything they know second-hand. FROM COWS.
Not a single one of those aliens have studied even one iota of screenwriting or film production, either, unfortunately.
Seriously though, God help us all, this show is so, SO poorly written. I ain't kidding when I say every single thing the characters do is a contrivance to make some other completely unbelievable, unrealistic, and ridiculous thing happen, rinse and repeat, ad nauseam. It's like a soap opera, only less well-written and less realistic, presenting to us the absolute bottom of the bottom-of-the-barrel serialized format writing, and boring, by-the-numbers production.
The actions and reactions of the characters are so absurd as to make one wonder if they're actually being pranked. There's zero actual logic or realism. None.
I'm just going to try to brass tack the rest:
The score is an obnoxious, constant-stream of intrusive, mindless, garbage. They may do this to try to distract from how bad the rest of it is, but it only makes things worse.
The plots are disjointed and random. Plot points rise nonsensically, and then are discarded for a while, only to half-hazardously be picked up again and discarded again before their details can be examined or pay off in any satisfying way.
There's no effort to develop characters or relationships past the very surface, it's all perfunctory and unnatural dialogue, action and reaction. There's zero quiet contemplation, no smart, satisfying moments of connection, no natural building of relationships, no beautiful connection, no intimacy between characters, and no other form or depth and delve of any aspect of any character or relationship. There's no quite beats in the script, and no build and payoff. It's all frenetic movement and spastic, contrived, shallow conflict that elicits no emotional reaction from the viewer (or often even from the characters), even during moments that, if written well, would be extremely gripping or moving in one way or another.
95% of it has been filmed in the laziest, basic, standard-coverage way possible. I cannot stress enough how boring it is to watch, in how little the camera/cinematography and editing helps to make the characters and scenes seem realistic or interesting.
The sets are likewise boring and not interesting to visually explore. They do not inform the characters nor their personalities, and nothing feels warm, real, or lived in, even the family ranch house and the bar. In well-produced shows locations are kind of like characters unto themselves, but aside from a few random outdoor locations, not a single production-built set location in this show is one you want to settle down in, hang out in, or get to know. It all just blends together as one long brownish-tan blur, and it's all just space built for the characters to go through their motions and hit their marks in.
Which takes us to the actors.
The acting is, in general, kinda awful (although sometimes that's a writing/dialogue issue, there's only so much actors can do).
Mitch Pellegi somehow manages to give his character some weight despite not having much to work with, and the woman who plays his character's wife almost feels like a real person here or there.
The Hoyt actor was memorable and his actor hit his stride right before they offed him, and the kid who plays Trevor occasionally also rises above the mess that is the script he was handed, the plots he's supposed to move through, the other actors he has to build a world with, and the absurd actions he has to sell...but I haven't yet figured out how or why he pulls that off, as he, like 50% of the rest of the secondary characters doesn't seem highly trained or extensively experienced; He may just be a natural whose charisma somehow surpasses the material he's working with.
Jared Padalecki as Walker is 110% phoning it in here (as he did for the last five seasons of the last show he was in), and the only times I believe him at all is the few times he's shown interacting with his dead wife (and on that note, it's a shame that character is dead, as she may have been THE linchpin character that, given writers who can write, would have successfully held this entire disjointed mess of characters together). But I digress.
The woman who is, I presume, playing the character who is going to be Walker's love interest (now that they have conveniently killed off her boyfriend), the guy who plays his brother, the teenagers who play his unlikely offspring, and the guy who plays Ramirez' boyfriend, and all feel like they walked straight out of a local theatre group that isn't terrible (for local theatre), but here are in way, way over their heads. They are the kind of actors who would seem satisfactory in a well-produced, well-written, creatively shot and edited show, but in a show lacking those elements come off as being even worse than they are.
None of the immediate above, including Padalecki (but perhaps excluding his wife), were cut out to make this mess better than it is, and, aside from the Padaleckis I cannot imagine why these particular actors were hired. It boggles the mind that out of the literally hundreds of intelligent, trained, natural actors out there who they could have cast, ones who may have had a shot at lifting this mess high enough out of its own maddening mediocrity to make it at least not supremely irritating to watch, these are the ones they went with. I just don't get it.
Also, although she isn't much more memorable than most of the rest of the cast, the actress who plays Ramirez has potential, but she doesn't have the ability to rewrite her lines or her character's actions so she's just as screwed as the rest of this disjointed ensemble.
So, to recap, all in all, this show stinks (and I say that with legit disappointment, as I love having a Thursday night show on the CW to look forward to).
I almost never think a change in showrunners helps a show, but in this case a new one might actually be in order, if the network is willing to allow them to improve things, but I am not holding out hope, as the show as is has already somehow been renewed.
Doesn't help, I'm sure, that despite its shortcomings we have watched it through at least episode 11, and that, in lacking anything better, we will probably watch the rest of the first season, if for no other reason than we developed an unhealthy attachment to torturing ourselves while yelling at the screen "what the hell are they doing/thinking?!", over and over again during Supernatural's last six seasons, and we transitioned that directly into this show after that one ended...come to think of it, that may very well explain most of this show's viewership, to be honest.
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