Flarpington Reviews

NOS4A2 (2019–2020)

I want to like this show...

[6/10 · 8 July 2020]

I desperately want to like this show, but it's a struggle to do so. The concept is fantastic, you have all the right elements that should come together well. The special effects while sparse are passable at least, and the soundtrack does a good job of helping to set the tone.

Unfortunately the things letting the show down aren't so easy to fix. The writing and the cast are a mixed bag, the worst parts of both culminating in the chief protagonist of the show played by Ashleigh Cummings. She simply isn't believable as an 18 year old teenager, she isn't particularly great as a 26 year old mother in the second season either. It isn't simple a case of the character being unlikable, or being played poorly, she's flat out terribly written -- although I'm really not sure how much can be blamed on the actress given what she has to work with.

Vic makes a string of incredibly poor decisions throughout the show, she never actually seems to grow as a character unless you count a growing single minded obsession that ultimately puts a lot of other people at risk in multiple ways. From risking her father going to prison by forging his tax returns as an acceptable alternative to telling the truth and having herself declared independent, to handing a stranger a gun rather than using against her nemesis only to instead set a car on fire with two hostages inside of it. The teen angst gets old fast, even with incredibly poor parents it's impossible to like her let alone excuse her actions. She actually brings said actions up in the premier for season two, referencing how everyone with powers had a price they had to pay. Is her price one which causes her to act irrationally? Should that be true it comes across as a poor excuse for a terribly realised character.

Watching the second episode of season two cemented much of the above for me. It focuses on Manx and Bing while Vic isn't in it at all, and it's by far the most enjoyable episode I've seen of the show by a large margin. I find both characters compelling, they're interesting, I want to know more about them. When Vic is around I just want the scene to shift away from her.

Gordon Ramsay's 24 Hours to Hell and Back (2018–2020)

Not as good as previous shows of a similar format.

[4/10 · 12 December 2019]

I very much enjoyed Kitchen Nightmares back when it launched in the UK, the US version wasn't quite as good but still an enjoyable albeit heavily Americanized watch. I also enjoyed Hotel Hell, it took the format that step further by adding more depth thanks to its larger focus, stepping outside of the kitchen.

24 Hours to Hell and Back is a step back from the earlier shows, the focus is more on a gimmick rather than actually taking the time to explore a business and its owners and help resolve the issues they're having. By comparison it feels very scripted, and frankly a little soulless.

I watched through the first 5 episodes in hope things would get better, or to see if I was perhaps biased against the new show format. Unfortunately my opinion didn't change, if anything it became more steadfast.

Scream: The TV Series (2015–2019)

Season 3 butchers what little the show had going for it.

[2/10 · 11 July 2019]

I never felt that the Scream TV series was award worthy, but at the least it was entertaining enough to sit through on a weekly basis if you had nothing else to fill your time. I'd probably have given the show 6/10 up until the 2019 return, which has plummeted to a 2/10.

Gone is the sleepy little town we'd grown used too, replaced by a bunch of kids in the big city. The only straight white men in the series so far have been portrayed as awful 'bigots' and the rest of the cast is built around politically correct cherry-picking. You have your dashing black male lead, the female black love interest, the hyper woke black female activist screaming about the evils of Donald Trump, and her BFF the overly sensitive gay guy. There is a white goth chick with all the angst involved in such a character. Hilariously, early in the show one of the evil white males compares them to the Breakfast Club, to which there's immediate disquiet from the cast that they've just been compared to a "bunch of straight white people" to paraphrase. I often wonder if the people behind shows like this realize that their portrayal of these left leaning stereotypes is exactly the sort of thing they claim to fight against, although pointing out hypocrisy to people who have a total lack of self awareness is a fruitless endeavour.

As for the plot? The lead character is all of a sudden being stalked by someone who seems to know about his past, I wont go into it much but lets just say it involves a horribly uninspired killer who hunts children with a hook. You'll see him very early into the show and it's just so ridiculous, bordering on fantastical, that even if you can stomach the political correctness you'll probably be put off by the plot.

I got through one episode of season 3 and I wont be watching anymore. This show shouldn't have been revived, the first two seasons set certain expectations and while it wasn't the best show it was at least decent. Season 3 has turned into yet another overly woke spectacle of far left ideology driven political correctness, and I for one am sick and tired of it infecting the media I consume.

In Search of Monsters (2019– )

Hilariously Bad

[1/10 · 9 May 2019]

I caught an episode of this the other day, to be specific the Mothman episode. I don't normally watch this sort of thing, but I've always found the Mothman to be an interesting character and enjoyed the movie based around the myth, so I figured I'd give this a watch.

The show as a whole is overly dramatic, they pump things up to the point of ridiculousness. At one point there's a couple on the show who claim to be 'haunted' by the Mothman after visiting the area and recording some audio of him speaking, supposedly he followed them all the way home and during the documentary they return to the place of the recording to ask him why, and to make him stop. The recording is clearly the husband putting on a voice, words cannot describe how laughably bad it is. Furthermore, if the Mothman followed them home why couldn't they just speak to him there? Why travel hundreds of miles back to the original site? Pure attention seeking, I can't begin to imagine what must be lacking in a persons life to go to the lengths of this couple.

Of course there are other people interviewed, there's a lot of supposition and attempts to connect things, the team behind the show really go to great lengths to try and promote things that just aren't there.

I feel the show would have done better to take an approach from outside of the Myth, relate the facts and find more credible people to interview. Instead it over dramatizes everything and collects interviews from people who are clearly out of their minds or simply flat out scamming people for attention or financial gain.

If you watch as an unintentional comedy you might get some mileage out of the show, otherwise stay well clear.