Tyler Barton

The first season wasn't too bad. I know they deviated significantly from the source material, but I've never read it so I didn't care. From what I heard, the TV versions have a lot more depth is some ways anyhow. My main complaint was how slow the plot moved from episode to episode (the show is called "Runaways" but it took until the last 30 seconds of Season 1 for them to actually run away). I thought, "Hey, it's the 1st season. Need a little time to get to know everybody. There seems to be a compelling plot simmering in the background. I'm sure it will pick up." The problem is, it never really does. We got a little action at the end of the season. I hoped that would carry over to Season 2, but I bailed 2 episodes in when I realized the breaks had been put on again. Here's the show's main problem: it spends too much time trying to make a point (or a dozen different points) to actually tell a story (a potentially compelling story no less). From the beginning, the show brands itself as modern and progressive. They brag about the diversity of the cast. But at the end of the day, you also have to tell a good story to keep people interested. They dedicate so much time to touching on every hot button social issue they can think of that they constantly leave us hanging on the really interesting stuff that we actually want to see. This isn't a super hero show that periodically throws real world issues into the plot to make you think. It's a preachy, angsty liberal soapbox that occasionally slows down enough to say "here's a teenage girl lifting something heavy." It's far less about superheroes and way more about feminism, teenagers exploring their sexuality, and racial/cultural issues (here's a black kid that grew up in Brentwood; here's an Asian girl whose mom has unreasonably high expectations and an inability to show genuine affection; here's a Hispanic girl raised by lily white hippies since she was 3 but can still speak fluent Spanish for some reason). If you're into that, then you may love it. But I'm done.