Red Mosquito

I skipped forward to a couple of episodes that featured Kingpin, because I wanted to see how they'd D'Onofrio would play him. He was, by far, the most engaging part of those episodes.

I'll just copy-paste the comment I left on a friend's post on FB:

Spoiler: show

i like Wilson Fisk a lot. he is portrayed as a much more interesting, troubled and menacing character than I've ever seen him-- especially in the comics, where he's always sort of been treated as simply "Fat Lex Luthor". also the fight scenes are suitably brutal, and yeah, surprisingly violent for a show that's (i think) PG-13.

i kind of hate everything else... ?

i'm not sure what i was expecting, but this is yet another TV entry to the Marvel Cinematic Universe that feels a lot 'TV' and not very 'cinematic'. in terms of the construction, it feels remarkably flat to me, with a lot of very dull wide & mid shots, almost no dynamics, almost no flair or style. for a character so steeped in noir and 70s NYC crime film tropes, the straightforwardness of it feels jarring to me. this suffers from "network tv syndrome": characters standing around reciting expositional dialogue (dialogue which, to me, sounds horribly stilted and awkward for the most part). just like the horrifically mediocre Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter, but gloomier. every episode has the budget of a small feature-- why is everything so flat and boring to look at? why did the filmmakers decide to go for such conventional, straightforward and characterless storytelling? this is after Hannibal and True Detective showed audiences that TV shows can be visually BEAUTIFUL, gripping, tense, artful, original, with bold filmmaking choices, why does this look like a TV commercial? Or worse-- Gotham? (to be fair, this show is quite a bit better than Gotham, because everything about Gotham is bad.)

and those are NETWORK shows. this is a fucking TV series on the internet. it's supposed to be unencumbered by the constraints of television-- act breaks for commercials, episode lengths. why didn't they take advantage of that? why does this feel so... ordinary?

i don't know why i haven't liked a single Marvel TV show yet, but I always watch them with an open mind and hoping for the best, because I really like their films. for a supposed "golden age of television" with shows that take a true cinematic approach to serialized storytelling... we still have a lot of stuff that seems plucked right out of 90s television. i don't know. i'll probably finish the show at some point, maybe. but mostly I'll be thinking about the many ways in which this could have been an outstanding show, instead of a merely serviceable one.

theplatypus wrote:i don't know why i haven't liked a single Marvel TV show yet, but I always watch them with an open mind and hoping for the best

I feel that this quote is probably a lie.

You're wrong, sorry.

I can speculate on the quality of a movie or TV show based on the marketing, but I've been proven wrong about that many times. I never watch something expecting to hate it.

Foggy is awful but otherwise im enjoying this.

There's nothing about this I strongly dislike. In fact, it's better than just about any Marvel movie. About half way through the season. Foggy is fine.

The most obvious cliche that I notice is

(1) hero gets knocked down
(2) hero has flashback
(3) hero finds the strength to win fight

It doesn't ruin the show for me. If it did, I'd have to stop watching all television and movies. That's a big one in this show, Arrow, True Blood, Dexter, Buffy, and probably a million other things I'm forgetting. It's really time for this one to be retired.

theplatypus wrote:You're wrong, sorry.

I can speculate on the quality of a movie or TV show based on the marketing, but I've been proven wrong about that many times. I never watch something expecting to hate it.

Just because it's a lie you tell yourself, doesn't make it any less a lie.

Sure, okay.

i think Foggy is fine.

KIngpin on the other hand is a whiney little bitch.

I watched the first two episodes last night. Foggy is a bit much sometimes but he won me over with his bar hopping in episode 2. The guy they have playing daredevil is very good, and I have enjoyed the fight choreography and darker tone, which is brutal and gritty without really drawing attention to how brutal and gritty it is. . I'm enjoying the backstory sequences too.

Overall I've enjoyed it a lot so far. I had to force myself to sit through the first 2/3rds of agents of shield. I'm looking forward to watching more of this tonight.

If you're not sure on Foggy, the Nelson vs. Murdoch episode will help.

The dialogue gets a little wonky sometimes, but the good far outweighs the bad, so far. This show kicks ass, and it's getting better.

Kingpin is excellent. I'm really loving this show

two eps in, could take it or leave it

first chapter was pretty nice. Im not expecting more than this, but i liked it.

I loved it. I couldn't wait to put the girls to bed to get back to it. The ending felt slightly rushed - but that's my only complaint

Spoiler: show

they really needed a fight before kingpin to make the body armor seem useful. Another ninja or somethin

Renewed for season 2, with new showrunners. Hopefully they can build on the potential of the show and tone down the cheesiness

Which parts were cheesy to you?

All the dialogue by bad guys not named Wilson Fisk. The ninja fight in episode 9 was laugh-out-loud hilarious. The red costume was pretty bad. I already talked about how visually disapponting this show is at the top of the page.

Amp up the character drama, hire new cinematographers, give me more sense of menace and urgency. Don't be afraid to step out of the formula. Put me in Matt's head. I know the budget is a concern; maybe do 10 really good episodes instead of 13 with padding. And for God's sake, I know this is nitpicky, but stop talking about Hell's Kitchen like it's the entire city and not just a few blocks in Manhattan.

Also, more Fisk. He was the only part of this show I genuinely loved. I hope we get to see him grow into the Kingpin persona in prison.

Hell's Kitchen? Still? They probably should've updated that. I mean, I don't know. I haven't watched it yet.