Corey Powell

Beautifully shot, well acted, but a vacant bummer of a movie. If you enjoy British cringe with a dose of forced humor, this might be your cup of tea. Personally, I found it depressing without being profound, and sluggish without being atmospheric. In the end, it didn't amount to much, and I was two hours older.

It's a passably entertaining addition to the enormous genre of post-apocalyptic TV shows. As a fairy tale, it's a bit lacking in magic; as a dystopian survival drama, it lacks the intelligent intensity of the first couple seasons of The 100. And the show's vision of what happens during a pandemic would maybe be more compelling if we weren't in the middle of a pandemic (hint: a virus doesn't cause cars to crash and burn, and if you're at a party with an infected person you can't protect yourself by burning that person). There are also way too many scenes in which you can predict the next line before it's spoken. I started fast-forwarding after the first episode.

I really wanted to like this show. I enjoyed the original John Walker/Battlestar story arc in Captain America back in the day. But again and again the show lurches along with clumsy dialogue, thin character development, and poorly staged scenes that make *no logical sense*. A room full of people becomes inexplicably empty the moment the show needs an empty space for a fight scene ... over and over, lazy construction. Above all, I just find the show just sluggish and boring. I keep checking my watch to see how much more of this I have to slog through -- the exact opposite of what you want from a Marvel corker.

An insult to Star Trek fans (or really, any fans of smart science fiction). On the surface there's lots to like: Fabulous visuals, a return to the classic Star Trek era, lots of action, Spock lurking in the background. But--the plotting is childish and illogical, the characters are badly drawn, and the acting is stilted and *dramatic* in the bad way (a classic sign of bad direction). The sheer level of stupid is overwhelming: Discovery travels the universe on a network of magic mushrooms, and that is FAR from the dumbest thing about the show. Docked an extra point for creating a back story that contradicts the Trek universe it allegedly inhabits.

What did I just watch? TWITHATSFTGITW is billed as a dark comedy, but there's very little about it that rises to the level of parody or satire. It's stuffed with allusions to other mystery thrillers, sure, but they are mostly delivered so straight and so inertly that they just come across as...allusions. The tone of the show is all over the place--sometimes goofy, sometimes earnest, sometimes seeming to forget entirely that it's supposed to be a parody. The weirdest part: The only aspect of the plot that is played for all-out comedy is...the death of the protagonist's child (watch for the ever-changing ridiculous epitaphs on her tombstone). THAT is where you want to mine your laughs? It's a shame. I love Kristen Bell, I'm a fan of these kinds of deadpan parodies, and the show is well produced and obviously crafted with a lot of love. I wanted TWITHATSFTGITW to be like a horror version of the fabulous American Vandal. Instead it just zigzags along, never quite figuring out what kind of show it is, or even why it exists. And that ending...not to give anything away, but I kept waiting for the twist or the punchline that never came.