I just finished watching Lupin on Netflix. It’s a French-import cop/criminal/heist show, with quite a bit of race/class consciousness. (The protagonist is a black son of a poor immigrant, all of which factor in quite a bit).
It was released in two five-episode chunks, but is now complete (no idea if there will be a season 2). Not super-obvious why they divided it up, but having watched it all now, I thought there was a HUGE difference in quality between the two halves. The first half was fun and energetic and inventive and original. The second half, just felt like they ran out of ideas, rehashed the things that they’d already done, and piled implausibility on top of implausbility.
First 5 episodes: B/B+
Second 5 episodes: D
Specific, spoilery comments: The idea that they could fool the rich guy into trusting a fake investment advisor is just ridiculous. He’s way too rich and smart not to hire someone to do a thorough background check on someone who he’s going to let that far into his inner circle. And the showdown at the theater was just ludicrous. What was Ben doing striding around up and down stairs? And why did Arsenne need to go there at all? A much bigger twist would have been that he was infiltrating baddie’s house the entire time, or something, while everyone (including the audience) thought he was sneaking into the theater. And really, once you’ve (implausibly) got a man on the inside as his financial guy, then you can easily get all the evidence you need to take him down for financial crimes once and for all. That should have been the end game. And then his ex suddenly loved him again at the end, and there was a whole stupid action sequence fight in an abandoned house, yada yada yada. Really, it was all kind of tedious, and I couldn’t help thinking about the Rick and Morty episode making fun of heists the whole time.
I think I tried to watch it but could not get through the first episode or two. Was this the one where Lupin is a super genius who manipulates mob guys, pretends he’s a blue collar working stiff, then ends up bidding on some absurdly expensive necklace at an auction at the Louvre. Which he then steals. And isn’t there a Ferrari that ends up going through the glass pyramid of the museum?
I have not seen the show but this sounds like a rejected pitch the The A-Team writers room. Actually, I’m pretty sure that ‘room’ was just Stephen J. Cannell, and old Ad Libs tablet, and a stenographer to capture the dialogue.
Seconded. I love these kinds of shows/stories (Ocean’s 11, The Thomas Crown Affair, Hu$tle, etc.), and my disbelief is generally pretty easily suspended. Also French is the language I studied in school, so I enjoyed listening to the original audio (while relying on English subtitles!). I though it was a well-done heist story, and I look forward to watching more — if there will be any.
You’re not the only person to have said this, so when I watched it recently I was expecting that there would be a noticeable difference. But there isn’t. It is all ludicrously implausible from the first episode and remains so throughout. Being aware that none of it stands up to the slightest scrutiny is part of the fun.
I largely enjoyed it, and particularly the back and forth between his childhood and the present. There are some elements that are deeply implausible but then that’s a feature of every single heist-themed show or film and this isn’t an outlier for the genre. Plus Omar Sy is always fascinating to watch.
I would definitely recommend watching it in French with subtitles though - the English dubbing is grating as hell.
Episode two starts off with a blatant rip off of the museum scene in The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), in which the main character hires look-alikes to confuse the police who are trying to catch him in the act. Except in Lupin, he’s a food delivery guy on a bicycle in a park. They even add a classic song track to the scene like in the movie. This isn’t even an homage. It’s a blatant scene lift. They should have been sued for it.
Just no. No more chances. Lupin is a badly done show with poor camera work and lousy editing to boot.
I enjoyed it. I like heist/con man type stuff. They can have a lot of tropes in them. You can expect the hero to be in a no win situation, only to find out via a flashback he already planned for it. And Lupin is no exception.
For the cost of a Netflix subscription and no ads, I enjoyed this. I enjoy the implausibilities because at least they are clever. It’s entertainment, not a documentary.
If you do not accept implausibility in entertainment I can think of very few movies or TV shows you would enjoy. Maybe none.
For me, it wasn’t the implausibilities that made Lupin unwatchable. It was the derivative nature of them. Like I noted, some scenes were unapologetically lifted straight from earlier, just as implausible, but arguably better films.
It’s a question of amount and scale, I guess, although it’s obviously very difficult to really nail down precisely where there’s a line, and why some things get a pass and others don’t. I’m not sayin that the very best scripted shows (Breaking Bad, for instance) have zero plot holes or implausibilities. But certainly none of them feel like as much of an easy-way-out as “we’ll hire a guy to masquerade as a financial adviser and get hired by the rich evil dude who puts him in charge of his rich evil finances”. This is doubly irritating in that it (a) depends on the previously very smart bad guy being incredibly stupid, and (b) basically renders everything else that ever happened moot. If they could do this, they could have just done it back in episode 1, had their mole gather a bunch of evidence, and then boom, bad guy arrested, series over. It was not only an implausibility, but one that cheapened everything else around it.
Plenty of shows (and movies, and books) tell engaging tales without quite such an excessive gimmick.
I love these kinds of shows/stories (Ocean’s 11, The Thomas Crown Affair, Hu$tle, etc.), and my disbelief is generally pretty easily suspended. Also French is the language I studied in school, so I enjoyed listening to the original audio (while relying on English subtitles!). I though it was a well-done heist story, and I look forward to watching more — if there will be any.