Erik Mikkelsen

I thought I posted a review of Citadel before… I’ll try again. I really like some of the actors in this series, and I usually am a big fan of spy-action shows. I went into this series with high hopes, and episode 1 showed some potential, even if it was imperfect. From there, it went downhill fast. This series takes all of the tired spy-action tropes and leans into them heavily. There are usually two ways to make that work: 1) put a new spin on each of the tropes so that they’re familiar but still fresh, or 2) keep the series lighthearted to avoid letting it take itself too seriously. Citadel uses neither of these strategies. The result is a predictable, boring slog through dialogue that is too expository and punctuated too rarely by the better-quality action scenes (like the train scene in episode 1). In the space of only five episodes (the season finale, episode 6, isn’t out yet when I’m writing this), we’ve seen unoriginal takes on: —the amnesiac spy —the passionate but casual romantic relationship between two super-spies, with all the old questions about where it’s going to go (a romantic breakup, a total breakup, marriage, kids, etc.) —the evil organization operating from the shadows and answering to no one —the good guys who refuse to answer to a government so they can better serve all of humanity —the witty man in the chair/tech wizard who works miracles for the spies and other tropes. I really, really wanted to like this series, even after learning how Amazon put the cart before the horse with it. To clarify: a higher-up in Amazon’s streaming video branch started building an extended universe, like the MCU, without getting a story to base it on… then the storytellers they hired couldn’t make it work, so there has been massive personnel turnover at every level of production. The one redeeming feature of this show, the only thing that kept me from giving only one star: Stanley Tucci’s performance as the man in the chair. He shines in a series that seems tailor-made for limiting good actors. Don’t get me wrong: none of the performances are particularly bad. They’re fine. But the story and the dialogue are bad enough that even good performances seem mediocre. Tucci’s performance is the one thing that works really well in this series.