It came in well-reviewed and pedigreed (some connection to 12 Years a Slave). My wife is hooked, so I’m in for the long haul – but with clenched teeth and eyes rolling so far I can see my brain.
My two major complaints:
Directorial/editing – it is chock full of artsy choices. If two characters are talking, we don’t get the boring 2-shot – we get the back of one character blocking half the screen, and a peek view of the other, regardless of who’s speaking. And deliberately un-synching the dialog – so we see the face of the character who’s speaking, but their mouth is no longer moving. So affected and off-putting.
The writers apparently had a check list of every social ill, and they’re determined to cram them in before the end. We have immigration (legal and illegal), racism, reverse racism, addiction, an indictment of the juvenile justice system, guns. Hands up/don’t shoot and a completely gratuitous death (of a character we’ve never seen before) in a police choke hold.
I watched the first 6 episodes and while I haven’t given up on it, I haven’t been clamoring to get the rest yet.
I do kinda see where they’re going with it. Everyone has their own story, nothing is ever that cut-and-dried. But then sometimes the level of secret-keeping and lack of communication gets to be too much. Just explain yourself, dude, and people will stop going to jail!
Incredibly sad and depressing. IMHO, the entire show can be summed up by saying that after a serious crime is committed in America, everyone involved gets put through the ringer and there is no way that anyone involved gets any kind of justice or redemption. The only people who come out of it with any amount of satisfaction are the police, the lawyers and the judges for whom it can be some kind of payday - whether just as the normal part of their jobs or as a way the corrupt can illegally line their pockets. The last part about “lining their pockets” may well just be my own jaded opinion and may not at all be conveyed by the show.
We watched a whopping 1 episode and gave up on it. TVbytheNumbers had it at 0% chance of renewal. And sure enough, yesterday it was renewed??? ABC also renewed several other shows that were generally thought of as dead meat. Things are changing in network TV.
I usually don’t watch this kind of T.V. - series? Serial? The weekly regular shows, whatever. But this one, my daughter set to record so I’ve watched all episodes so far. The first episode was interesting but after that it’s just been meh.
Episode 8, I think, when Felicity’s character goes to the gun store, had a deadly serious safety mistake for gun handling when the gun clerk handed her a semi pistol and said that since the magazine was removed the gun was safe and she could try pulling the trigger to see how it feels. We do not see him clearing and checking the weapon, we only hear what he says.
BIG mistake there, because one round could still be chambered. As a firearms instructor, that angered me.
The finale was a disappointment. Spoilers Ahead*
Apart from the sad ending, as far as I can tell it didn’t reveal who committed the murders. Maybe that will be addressed when the season renews.
Also the murdered guy’s father’s actions make no sense given the character development so far. He seemed to have placed his erratic past behind him. His family had already been ripped apart, and despite his unsuccessful attempts to reunite it, he was still no worse off than he was at the beginning.
Plus, he refurbished the house and had a sense of pride in doing that. Go get a job at a home improvement store or working in construction and buy the house. I just didn’t get a sense that his life at that point was so bad that he felt the need to go apeshit, shoot the main suspect, and then kill himself. How in the hell did he find him anyways?
I have watched the whole thing and am bugged by the self-conscious artsy camera work as mentioned, and the fact that you get about 1:37 minutes of show before the next commercial break.
I wonder what they will do with next season, with most of the threads wrapped up? A whole new crime?
It’s one of the affectations of the show that laying out the facts is of secondary importance. Note that the only courtroom scene (Hector’s testimony) is abruptly truncated; we only hear about what he said, after the fact. It’s only about the impact of crime, not the crime itself.
I think Carter did it – that’s what he whispered to his sister. Although Aubrey was certainly involved.
Maybe it’ll be like American Horror Story (and perhaps the similarity in title is no coincidence) – a completely different story line next season.
I watched most of it but I hated it so the only reason I even watched it is that my tv stations are limited and the other options were worse. I actually ended up tuning it out and playing on the computer for most of it. I still got the gist of it.
No characters were like-able, except for Timothy Hutton’s but I just love the actor so I may have been a little biased. But when the only likeable character acts out of character and then does horrible things it pretty much ruins the whole thing and I will make sure not to get sucked into another season. I also HATED the camera work, it actually made me queasy at times.
I agree that Carter must have confessed to his sister that he did commit the crime or at least committed it with Aubrey. Aubrey seemed to know enough of events to convince the authorities that she was guilty, why they never considered that both we involved, I have no idea. I almost got the feeling that Carter was suicidal at the point where he whispered to his sister but Hutton’s character’s eventual act was so telegraphed* I was not really surprised when it happened, just disappointed. As for how he found Carter, I figured he must have followed him from the church meeting and just waited for an opportunity to get him alone and away from others. I knew who it would be when I saw the figure walking up to him in the background. I expected that he would confront him first and say something so when he didn’t, that was the only surprise.
*Aside from the fact that previews showed an obvious black male body covered in blood in the hospital, there was also the bits with the change in attitude of Hoffman’s and Hutton’s characters. It was almost like someone just changed the character’s names on the scripts.