Rarely have I seen a series that completely insults the viewer's relative intelligence as this one. Alphas has as a premise a team of people with special abilities led by a neurologist who are investigating strange cases for the US DoD. The premise itself (as well as the characters) are bleeding with logical holes that are simply too painful to bear through the first 6 episodes (I stuck through this ordeal trying to see some potential in the subject). - why is an investigative team led by a neurologist? What exactly qualifies a doctor to be an investigator of any sorts? (this is the same hole that plagues CSI series) Moreover the team also acts as a tactical team led by nothing else except "Common sense" as none of them are trained to be tactical leaders - the only thing they have going is their abilities. - the autistic kid (Bell) can intercept any sorts of wireless signal and process the information within "as fast as any computer" (to quote the doctor). Is he? No. Within the pilot he is shown tracking a direct line of communication between two mobile phones. Dude! That's not how mobiles work! The signal from one goes to a tower then to the second phone. At best he would've been able to track the signal to the mobile tower and then get the general location of the second phone (in that case a mere triangulation would've given a much more accurate location). But wait, there's more! The kid can practically decrypt any and all protocols carried over a wireless signal. That includes any kind of video stream, TCP packets, communication over SSL, GSM signals and the list goes on. Any and all encryption algorithms are useless. This kid would be better put to work cracking terrorist communications. Hell, he's the universal decoding machine, in real time! TSL, RSA, AES are useless regardless of cypher strength, which goes way beyond the combined power of all normal human brains added to the total power of all the CPUs in the world. - the "marine" (Hicks) could very well be the equivalent of Bell in abilities. He can't tap communications but he can process just as fast. - the linguist (Pirzad) - initially her ability was described as heightening one sense and lowering the others, but it was changed to "disabling all the others". The problem here is that it's not just the senses that get boosted. Her ability is again the equivalent of Bell, because a sense simply feeds information to the brain. You need absolute knowledge in order to interpret that volume of information. One time she uses a heightened scent to detect complex chemical compounds. But first of all she needs the ability to process that much detail and then to have a comparison term - this kind of knowledge is available only to aging doctors in chemistry with so much experience. Unless her brain has the infinite processing power of Bell, there's no way she could know what she's smelling. And how could she describe the smell to another? It smells like .. aaaa ... potassium permanganate? For that she should know from experience what potassium permanganate is ... and she's a LINGUIST!!
The list goes on, in an annoying and unbearable fashion. I really can't believe that this level of stupidity gets to be compared to Heroes where (granted, 1 great season followed by soapy ones) at least the powers were well defined, strict and well explained.
The acting (on the other hand) is decent and on the par with other series (Warehouse 13), but the terrible and poor universe given to us by the inept writing and senseless characters turns this show into a terrorizing experience for the average intellect.
The list goes on, in an annoying and unbearable fashion. I really can't believe that this level of stupidity gets to be compared to Heroes where (granted, 1 great season followed by soapy ones) at least the powers were well defined, strict and well explained.
The acting (on the other hand) is decent and on the par with other series (Warehouse 13), but the terrible and poor universe given to us by the inept writing and senseless characters turns this show into a terrorizing experience for the average intellect.