Just finished bingeing it. Liked it a lot.
Pluses:
-I for one was caught completely flat footed by the Cipher twist, which I loved. Not quite end-of-season-1-of-The-Good-Place, but up there
-And speaking of Cipher, he was a great villain
-Overall good production values. And just generally a fun show. Never boring. Well acted. Reasonable enough dialog. Fun and imaginative effects.
Minuses:
-Sure it’s part of the story that this should happen given that they were being manipulated all along, but good lord did our heroes just always do precisely the most obvious thing as fast and as recklessly as possible
-I also really REALLY hate the cliche (similar to monologuing but not quite) where there is a villain who significantly outclasses all of you, and there’s a very brief moment when they’re totally helpless, and they’re also incredibly evil, and…. you don’t kill him. Come on. You’re clearly willing to fight him to the death. He’s just been tied up with pubes (fairly lame… had she never until meeting our heroes ever thought that ropey entangley powers are useful regardless of their source) and then his powers have been stolen and he’s being puppeted. SMASH HIS HEAD IN FOR GOD’S SAKE. And this is clearly not a show like, say, Avatar: The Last Airbender where our heroes are too nice to do so
-A fair number of other plot points that just seemed like “ok, and now this happens, because it will be neat”. Jordan fighting Marie, for instance. First of all, since when is that a thing? Secondly, they’re both experienced fighters who have done lots of hand to hand combat. What’s so hard about agreeing “ok, we spar fairly hard for 2 rounds, then Marie cuts her hand, ties up Jordan, starts to joke them just a bit, and they tap out”? Similarly, Polarity has gone to confront Cipher, and looks like he will beat him up (although we later know that that wasn’t the “real” Cipher”). Then a bunch of our heroes, who know that he can puppet them, show up to help. Morons!
-And some stuff left very unclear. How were Godolkin’s injuries incurable for 60 years? Are there no supe healers (either healers-of-supes or healers-who-are-supes)? Was Godolkin serious about the culling business (vs just pretending to get an excuse to fight lots of students to power himself up)? Because he seemed happy enough to choke that one guy…. but then he was doing something incredibly stupid which was testing purely by trial of combat… there are plenty of very powerful very useful supes whose are just going to be killed dead because hand to hand combat is in no way related to their skill set. Unclear what really motivated him.
So, overall, enjoyed, would watch another season, psyched for final season of The Boys, but overall grade in the B- range.