Mike Morales – Google

What was the point of this messy production? The entire project is uncomfortable from beginning to end. So who is worse, the mother or the stereotypically portrayed son? Yes, the lead actress was evil but the first son was cast as worse than Ted Bundy or Wayne Gacy. Who greenlit this and who put money into it? Honestly this was as bad as a movie can be. Finally, I feel for the young actor portraying the 'stray' son. He was cast to be an ugly human acting in a way very few humans would act in real life. I hope the kid gets another shot in a role he can hang his hat on.

Possible spoiler -- The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House may be the most wholesome project I've ever looked at. A story about lifelong friends from a rural region coming of age during one year in Kyoto. The writers and directors kept the story moving. The one year timeline had a believable flow. One glaring mistake; In the first or second scene the girls are walked to the bus by grandma and a family friend just after breakfast. In the next scene they are boarding a bus in the dark with hugs from grandma. Mysteriously the younger house 'Mother' is shown to be forgetful - to an almost clinical degree- and that plants a seed she is entering early dementia. She's not but I kept waiting for that ball to drop. This should be seen by all Western women of high school age. It is most impressive how wholesome the project is. It's cleaner than Doc Martin. No cursing, sex, crime, nudity or unnecessary demographic balancing. It would be nice to see a couple of follow up seasons that include the young ladies visiting home.

I offer a 2 star rating because the sets, direction, score, wardrobe and even the acting was superb. The plot is becoming a worn theme. The white - Oxford - politician-male is a terrible person apparently, all of them. This line of tripe is hot in Western entertainment currently. Strangely and I can't understand why it is but the smirk by Michelle Dockerty in the closing scene turned me off the Downton Abbey ecosystem. I'll come down from this but the evil of the character extended beyond the production. Revenge is one thing, breaking the law to do it is another.

This is a messy production. The production teams came in with a preconceived idea about life in North America. The first scene was appalling and not contextualized until way later and even then not fully explained. Second episode season 1 Stephen Walters (Johnny) and Oliver Coppersmith (Whitey) were scripted horribly as ruffians in the wild west theme. 'Johnny' was thrown out of the window of a saloon as if this were a John Wayne western from 50 years ago. I had to turn it off. It became insulting. It hit the mark on the woke-0-meter for those interested in that sort of thing. Characters cast that are not found in the depicted region and the oil company profiled represented evil in every way. I wanted it to work. They had the setting but couldn't match that with good writing or decent direction.