I’ve watched the first episode and part of the second. Most of my annoyances have already been noted, but I have a couple of my own:
Excessive flashbacks. Someone mentioned that it was difficult to tell the difference between a flashback and a real event, and that was probably because there is a flashback every couple of minutes.
Excessive use of the jump scare. It happens quite often, but the most obvious is when Hardy is in Emma’s house. Hardy looks at all of the Poe masks, sees nothing. When Hardy turns his back, one of the Poe masks attacks him.
I’m baffled how anyone can be confused by the flashbacks, unless they are paying zero attention. It shows the year in big letters, then takes on a slightly washed out, sepia toned look with warm lighting. The real time show uses harsh, cold lights. Not to mention the subject matter differs remarkably, like Carrol not being in prison and all.
Second episode was better. They spent more time fleshing out how he was able to charm his followers. It’s much more plausible that he indoctrinated a bunch of followers before he went to jail, and he’s using them to spread the word, and maybe having them bring new initiates to prison to visit him, than mind control via internet chat. I mean, still implausible, but vastly less so.
Part of the problem, I expect, is that it’s just plain hard to portray a cultured, well-read character in a way that doesn’t risk putting off the audience. (Or that producers don’t fear will put off the audience). A genuinely well-read guy will probably have read some Poe, sure, but he’ll also have read a lot of the great Western canon, contemporary authors of note, and so on - and he’ll talk about them, when it’s either appropriate or he’s showing off. He won’t show off by talking about Poe, because everyone read Poe in high school. The difficulty is that if you have your well-read, scholarly character talking about the works such a character would likely be talking about - well, you’ll leave much of the audience behind. And that may turn them off.
Whereas, if you have your Cultured Villain spouting Poe (and little else), the not-especially-well-read audience can be counted upon to follow along (and perhaps think this means they’re cultured as well) because they all read Poe in high school.
I guess I’m unfairly comparing this show against my other favorites that are on cable. It seemed like the show was trying to hard to shock the viewers, and it doing so it suffered.
The thing that really bugged me in episode 2 was the guy with the mask who attacked him. We “rewound” it on the DVR and it shows the whole shelf with 4 masks on it. Then you see 4 masks in the mirror but one of them has a body attached. Where did the guy come from? What am I missing?
I had to rewind it too but having done so don’t really have a problem with it. As already mentioned, that was another mask that appeared next to all of them on the shelf.
I do have a major problem with the scene right after the head-whacking and the commercial break. They are searching the room with no explanation at all of how the guy got away and no lingering affect of Kevin Bacon getting hit hard enough to let him get away without any kind of scuffle.
I’m done. I’m curious if every episode is going to end with Kevin Bacon somehow finding himself alone, unarmed, with a killer and getting away with it. But I’m not watch a whole episode again to find out.
I sort of get what you are saying - but somewhere I read that this story is kind of a rip off of “24”, in that every episode is going to be throwing [del]Jack[/del] Kevin Bacon into more trouble and deeper into the story. So, you sort of buy into that premise or you don’t.
I wonder if the show would be more enjoyable if we just chalk up all of Ryan Hardy’s stupid decisions on the booze.
Come to think of it, many works seem to use alcohol abuse as an “informed attribute” that just makes a character more generically flawed and/or gritty. A character whose problem drinking turns him into a genuine fuckup is almost novel.