J H

Don’t read more if you don’t want spoilers. The show is entertaining, but has the most contrived, twisted, and ridiculous story plot possible. Would have been much better if the writers didn’t try to twist the story plot at the end to surprise you with Anya/Jenny apparently using the most elaborate plot known on earth, along with putting her daughter in danger, to ultimately become a double agent embedded into the CIA. And in fact, some of the story doesn’t make sense once you realize at the very end that Anya/Jenny schemed the entire thing. For example, she didn’t need to destroy the computers or pretend that she didn’t know the eye inserts were recording everything. If she wanted them out, she could have just requested they be removed. When movies/shows have bad acting (which this doesn’t) or unbelievable story plots (which this does), your mind is moved from full immersion (i.e., you think it’s really happening) to zero immersion (i.e., you realize it’s just a bunch of actors in front of a camera), and that degrades your experience. For me, the ending ruined everything, and left me questioning whether the 8 hours was worth my time. In my opinion, the writers ruined the series by trying to flip everything on its head at the very last seconds without actually attempting to make everything that came before in time consistent with the final ending reveal. I give it 5 stars for being entertaining, and -2 stars for the writers failing to inject logic and reasoning to provide consistency with the final twist.

I didn’t read the critic reviews, but I’m not surprised they didn’t like the series. In my opinion, the character lines and story plot often don’t seem to fit with what would be normal based on having even an average emotional intelligence, especially in the beginning of the series. And that will certainly leave you frustrated at the beginning. The writing sucks to be honest, and the actors Fin Jones (Danny Rand) and Alice Eve (Joy Meachum) really needed to improvise to improve the verbal communication so that the communication and storyline worked better. I sense that Jones and Eve were constrained and just acted out and recited the given lines without changing them to fit the scenes better. Regarding the acting, I found myself frustrated with Jones’s acting - seemed lackluster and unconvincing. I personally feel he was probably the biggest reason why the series was a failure. And regarding the writing, the mansplaining by Danny to Colleen will make you wonder what the hell were the writers thinking. In any case, while I’m not a fan at all of the series, it is at least partially entertaining, and I think that is why audience scores are higher than the critic scores. There are some bright spots, as I feel David Wenham (Harold Meachum) and Jessica Henwick (Colleen Wing) were great in the series, and really gave the story some depth. I’m just 7 episodes into the series, and I personally won’t be watching any more of them.

Was too slow, and parts of it defied normal human behavior (e.g., sister fight scene, where there was no reason for the younger sister to distrust the black widow). Also, it seemed to lack scenes to explain motivations, or even outcomes (e.g., at the end when the black widow waited for the convoy of trucks). I’d rate this movie as below average.