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What I’m Watching: Monarch Legacy of Monsters

Eagerly awaited, because we have a long tradition of great Godzilla TV shows

It alternates between a 1950s origin story, and 2010s post-G-Day. Somewhere in between is Kong Skull Island.

SPOILERS














In 2010s:

“San Francisco was a hoax. I have a podcast.” is the most realistic reaction here. Love the Godzilla evacuation plans & defenses, missile turrets on overpasses. Tokyo’s taking it seriously.

First ep is setup and family drama. Cate (Anna Sawai from Pachinko) is kind of stiff and useless, except when she’s freaking out at her PTSD, flashbacks of Godzilla from the trailer.

Her half-brother Kentaro (Ren Watabe) is a jackass, emotionally closed jerk with no useful skills. May (Kiersey Clemons) the expat haxxor is the only modern character who has their shit together.

Monarch starts to show up, with slightly implausible network access. Why are all the secret files blacked-out redacted? Actual secret files are not blacked out, you only get that in publicly-released versions.

In 1950s:

Leland Shaw (Wyatt & later Kurt Russell) really needs to carry heavier weapons, a pistol does not cut it. Wyatt’s not one of nature’s good actors, but he’s adequate and carries “I am my father but softer”. The black eye he starts with tries to butch him up some, but he’d never be Snake Plissken.

Dr Miura’s (Mari Yamamoto, also from Pachinko) not super plausible, woman doin’ it for herself 20 years early, clearly writer ignoring setting. Weird how two people with completely different maps line up exactly right. What are the odds the scale is the same‽

Bill Randa (Anders Holm, later John Goodman!) as proto-Monarch is sus. Creepy guy in the jungle with impossible backstory. Miura should avoid him but as we know does not. The romance here is incredibly weird, fake, and gross, mainly because Anders is one of the most unfuckable humanoids I’ve ever seen. Shaw looks away like it’s skeeving him out, too, but I think it’s supposed to be romantic tension.

By ep 2 we finally see a new kaiju!

In 2010s:

Cate really needs to learn the first thing you do when a creepy dude stalks you, is stay in a public area and scream for police, not throw away all your stuff and get kidnapped. But Monarch creep Tim & his French ninja assistant Duvall really suck at investigation, interrogation, and extraction.

The hero party find the wise old mentor and join the main quest. At this point in a JRPG the title screen rolls.

Monarch does not come off well in this, they have resources and yet are utterly incompetent.

I like the two monsters we see, even if they’re very bad CGI composed into the scenes like Roger Rabbit. The enclosed space monster attack looks better; less ambitious is better when you’re not skilled. Maybe it’ll ramp up the monster visibility & quality later? I’m OK with it if they lean into bad FX.

I’ve definitely seen worse season starts, but I expected more, since Matt Fraction’s supposedly writing for it. Well, turns out these first 2 eps are by Chris Black (Desperate Housewives), and Matt’s only writing one ep later.

★★★☆☆

What I’m Watching: Renfield

I’m not doing the 31 days of horror thing this year (look at news, I’m no longer in the mood). But a few will be seen, and today’s is Robert Kirkman’s Renfield (2023).

So Robert Montague Renfield (Nicholas Hoult, the shitty young Beast from X-Men) is attending 12-step codependency meetings to get out of his century-long contract with Count Dracula (Nic Cage, not phoning it in for once!). Quincy (“Awkwafina”, no shit, some youstube performer who can’t spell “Aquafina” or her real name) is a young traffic cop who keeps having run-ins with her nemesis, junior gangster, murderer of her father, all around asshole, Teddy Lobo (Ben Schwartz, Parks & Rec), son of Bella Lobo (Shohreh Aghdashloo, aka Avasarala! Finally some talent!).

And this starts off light, then gets some pretty amazing fight scenes; all digital cartoon nonsense, but really fun. Limbs & blood everywhere. Renfield in this is improbably powered up by eating bugs, like a mass-murdering Popeye with yellow eyes.

Nic Cage plays Dracula right on the edge of camp, but pulls it back to menacing Prince of Wallachia impaling enemies level. No joke, the best Dracula since Klaus Kinski, beats the pants off Gary Oldman or Leslie Nielsen. The “Dracula Powers” are beautifully done. Nobody does the bullshit of “oh it can’t be Dracula, he’s a fictional character” or worse, “what’s a Dracula‽ I’ve never heard of this!”, they live in a world where both the story & history are real.

Every fantasy RPG referee needs to watch this to see how to use Dracula to kick your ass. Watch all the fights again and again to see what a high-Level undead does to low-Level mortals.

Storming of castles, predictable and unpredictable fighting techniques (I laughed out loud at a… disarming… scene), dirty cops & mob straight out of Batman, it’s got it all.

It’s rare to see a vampire movie walk the line of humor, fights, and horror Dracula. Most only manage one, often none. Like, Lost Boys has comedy (Frog Bros), great fights and vampire dark dream, fantastic soundtrack, but the Master is as lame & unthreatening as a high school principal. Nic walks in a room with a top hat, cane, and fur coat, and you know he’s gonna bleed you.

There was no noticeable soundtrack to this, except some incidental music and ska played by victims, and I think part of a My Chemical Romance song.

The film escaped from the “Universal Cinematic Universe” catastrophe, and is the one good thing so far to come out of that.

I slightly dislike the happy ending epilogue, there should be more of a price for heroism or everyone would do it?

★★★★½

Fallout Friday Music

“New” music as in two newish albums†, a bunch of 1990-era remasters. Still sounds like the current collapsing dystopia.

† (there’s an upcoming Ministry album, but only one track has been released)

What I’m Watching: Who Is Erin Carter?

Over on ‘flix, somehow the English were allowed to leave their island and film in sunny Barcelona! Alas, they don’t use a lot of local talent. Two of the actors are Spanish-English, one is actually Spanish, the rest are all very British and in many cases so pasty they can’t have been there more than a few days, the show’s in English for the most part.

The first few episodes are dull but building a bit, Erin (Evin Ahmad) is a substitute schoolteacher who came here with a child, married a nice Spanish nurse Jordi (Sean Teale), wacky divorced cop neighbor Emilio (Pep Ambròs); the latter two are the only ones who can have a convincing conversation en Español. Bitchy rich neighbor Penelope (Charlotte Vega) is the scene-stealer, everything she does is so arch and hilarious. There’s a ongoing tragedy of her life that’s playing in the background scenes, and she should really be the star of her soap opera. Her final scene (she’s fine; minor spoiler but nothing could ever harm or defeat Penelope) is just awesome. Like WTF show are we watching? Who’s this Erin chick?

Back to the buildup, there’s a holdup Erin foils with excessive skills and what passes for an accidental kill. Then a chick knife fight, which isn’t amazing but it’s something. Why does Margot know & hate Erin? Pretty soon one murder leads to a favor and Erin’s… not a schoolteacher.

There’s a strong vibe of A History of Violence, la femme Nikita (or the dozen shitty remake/ripoffs), and by the end a lot of John Woo homage/ripoff/why do mooks always hide behind explosive barrels? Flashbacks give us some context, and the spooky horns person seen in child Harper’s dreams & pictures.

Erin’s skills and toughness start at “buff soccer mom” and rapidly escalate to Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2: Judgement Day + The Killer. Most people around her keep trying to fuck her over and take the kid, and do not have plot immunity. There is one incredibly cool, classy kung fu fight in a dress. Keep watching for that. It is the entire point of the film to make this fight happen. The final big warzone is more John Woo. Hug, “take care of OUR daughter”, BOOM.

The few parts set in England are dark, grim, dirty, and horrible, warehouses and alleys, treachery and distrust and neglect, like just the worst underground dystopian shithole (film what you know). Barcelona is infinitely prettier. It’s a very incidental setting initially, with a honkie-populated suburb and English-speaking school, but they do get better at using it creatively and showing local flavor later. The car chase through tight streets and a lot of empty boxes & water jugs flying around is great fun. Escapes from buildings always involve parkour over pretty rooftops. This is a “come visit Spain!” puff piece, but they should spend time on history of Catalonia if they want to get more Spanish tourism investment funds.

At no point did the writing, dialogue, or cinematography match the intent. This is pretty much exactly the kind of awesome schlock the great Godfrey Ho made, but now they (writer is Jack Lothian?, revolving room of directors) are using impoverished British “talent” in reasonably-priced exotic locales, for overseas streaming sales.

Budget would ruin this. Skill would ruin this. There’s at least two plot holes never resolved (both money related). The pacing was slow to start, then ZOOM. No time for bleeding! Can they make more of these? Same girl or anything else of similar design. One hundred schoolteacher ninja movies, I’m there for it.

★★★★½

What I’m Watching: Rings of Power

So… I’ve been reading a lot of RoleMaster Unified and Shadow World books, which is of course very Tolkieny, “Iron Crown”, after all. I finished a Good Omens ep (will review when I’m done, I’m taking my time), and Rings of Power is suggested to me. Well, why not, just one Tolkien fanfic show. As I’ve previously noted, I dislike the man, and his more overtly racist parts, but I liked The Hobbit book and I’m still up for some Human-Dwarf-Elf cliché fantasy, esp if they go off-book, non-canon, which they’ve had to.

Spoiler spoiler spoilers, as if it matters. On fediverse I didn’t even bother to CW my thoughts.





















First ep, 2 minutes in, whiny Elf claims a wood (really paper in this case) boat floats because it has secrets. No, unscientific, pointy-eared moron!, it floats by water displacement. It’s this shit that loses you your immortal magic home.

Sauron and the Orcs look much cooler, I like their style. Unfortunately they only show up momentarily until late 3rd ep.

Elfs are too dumb to understand a fork symbol, and the eventual revelation of what it means doesn’t make a lot of sense for non-literate savages the Orcs are portrayed as. “Nobody’s seen an Orc in years”, what? That’s ridiculous, they rule half the planet. “Land”, I guess since it’s flat Earth.

The Elfs carrying 2-handed swords on their backs can’t possibly unsheathe for battle. Body armor is preposterously bad. Elf armor is overly carved & decorative. Human armor is leather fake-scale, terminates above the belly button, doesn’t cover the arms either. All but useless. Generally the fight choreography is very dance troupe, not much in the way of practical fighting.

Cliché cave troll attack. Galadriel for some reason is a super high level fighter, does no magic. Repeatedly we see the Elfs flying into the air on jump boards or wire fu.

Elfs congratulating themselves on delusional political bullshit. Elrond’s a boring, pretentious twat for 2000+ years. Superhero Galadriel is kinda cool, just totally implausible and non-canon (not that I care). Arondir’s OK, overarmed knife-ear bastard Human-fucker cop. There’s an RPG Elf! There’s a lot of racism against the Humans, all Morgoth-worshippers, but that seems typical for Elfs.

Too much time spent with the fucking goddamned ‘obbits, or “Harfoots” as they call themselves in this. Filthy barefoot little cannibal shits running around (OK, that’s a Dark Sun ref, but I don’t doubt that book full of people they consult is a cookbook). They have a stultifying, dead-end culture of nomads who every year mark the 10%+ of their population who died, in some hilarious ways. “Stay on the trails, never walk alone!” That actually kinda works for pre-civilization ‘obbits, like in 2000 years they could have settled down but still be cowards.

2nd ep has the ‘obbits find a flaming man from the sky: Gandalf‽ I love that guy, even if he’s a shitty angel/4th-Level Magic-User. He’s just a hairy slob right now tho.

So Galadriel’s shipped off West for being inconvenient. Boat to the Undying Lands (North America is heaven) has a real Logan’s Run Carousel tone. Stupid Elfs going into the light are just gonna get zapped by lasers. Then Galadriel just swims back across the Atlantic? Sure, why not.

Dwarf kingdom looks really good. Super cool. But the Dwarf costume/appearance are kinda sus, bad stereotypes. Tolkien was racist as fuck, maybe don’t perpetuate it in the show? The casting is semi-random racially, which is a nice change, but it’s only 50% less. There’s been a lot of whining from Internet racist trolls like the owner of “x dot com”, and fuck all those people. I must say, I’m disappointed Durin’s wife shaves her beard off to conform to Human beauty standards; she should embrace Dwarf hairy-faced tradition.

The naming of things is still kinda shitty, “The Southlands”, etc. At least put it in an old language, Torpenow Hill style. If you say it’s Mordor or Gondor, that kind of gives things away, but it is those.

First peasant vs Orc fight is fun, mostly. 0th-Level character funnel. The Healer delivering evidence to the town headman is funny, very much what D&D characters do to motivate the militia. Stupid peasants, who we are AGAIN told sided with Morgoth and therefore their line is tainted with evil forever after, really deserve a good hard kicking while they’re down. Just coat them with mud, maybe a corpse cart-man singing “bring out your dead!” I do keep seeing Monty Python and the Holy Grail in this.

Galadriel keeps failing upwards, floating in the sea to a raft of hostiles, raft of a friendly dude with suspiciously Viggo Mortensen-looking face and pendant, to ship of Numenor. It’s amazing how after days of falling in and out of sea water, starvation & dehydration, she has perfect makeup, slightly mussed & dark roots in her bleach blonde hair. Elfs really are magic.

The Numenoreans say several times, “The sea is always right”, I correct STARBOARD! every time. Galadriel, having again failed upwards from prisoner to fairy queen, gets to ride a horse along the beach in romantic slo-mo! And it’s clearly the most ecstatic thing she’s ever had between her thighs. This scene goes on way too long, it’s clearly the director’s dirty fetish, someone should’ve had veto in the editing suite.

I don’t understand how the Orcs ever captured all the Elf soldiers off-camera. Arondir fucked up, but most of the centuries-old soldiers must be at their 4th-Level Fighter cap by OD&D rules, so how can a bunch of juvenile 1-1 HD lesser Orcs who literally burn in sunlight fight and shoot on par with them? They do have a Warhammer-spiky-punk-rock hyena/worg special figure, with sub-Roger Rabbit-quality CGI.

1st ep was boring as hell after the cave troll, all premise and exposition. Then it got kind of good, I’m 3 eps in and despite a LOT of problems, it has some good fantasyland style, tone, & fight material worth stealing for your FRPG of choice. It mostly looks magnificent, they really did the “drone flying thru New Zealand and some CGI shots” well, the extras are usually well costumed, armor aside. The scenes in Numenor especially remind me a lot of HBO’s Rome. CGI sets are a little iffy, but they don’t linger too much on fake buildings.

I’ll be finishing this up tomorrow, and then supposedly ‘zon has paid for 5 seasons already!

★★★½☆ Definition of mediocre but fun enough to watch.

Part 2

What I’m Watching: Deadloch

Over on ‘zon. Bodies start piling up in a little mostly-lesbian resort town in Tasmania, currently having a “Winter Feastival”. The local cop, Dulcie (Kate Box) used to be a detective in Sydney, which passes for civilization, so she investigates. Soon a bizarrely drunk, stupid, unwashed, hairy, probably-Human (much like Nobby Nobs from Discworld) detective Eddie (Madeleine Sami) shows up to “help”. More bodies pile up, with ritualistic patterns.

The show mostly exists to skewer new-agey bullshit, pretentious people, stupid people, racists, sexist men, women, and really anything. The serial killings and bodies are just an excuse. The, uh, surprise intermission at the 4-hour-long art film is perfect.

Eddie goes from a horrible caricature muppet to someone not too bright (cop, obvs) working far above her abilities, dealing alone with trauma and about to get some more. Dulcie’s ridiculously calm and stoic despite a really insane world she’s forced to put up with; her wife in particular is a different kind of self-centered chaos muppet no normal person could deal with.

Abby (Nina Oyama) plays the one reasonable person, a long-suffering assistant, fiancée to the shittiest man since Lucy’s other boyfriend in Twin Peaks. I love every scene with Abby (“Big Eyes” to Eddie, who is incapable of learning names).

There’s a little Scooby-Doo/indigenous people subplot with three teenagers, black, native, and gay, and the rich bitch who owns the local sacred island and won’t allow anyone on it, but offers scholarships to get them assimilated. Hm, real estate or something else?

The straight men & women of the town range from feeble-minded working-class thugs to long-suffering with tarts or crazy women, with one or two suspicious exceptions.

I pegged the instigator (who later confesses) in the first episode, but the actual killer baffles me, there’s no setup and clues to their involvement except one, which is withheld from Dulcie as well until late. The final showdown and possibly-obscure death escape in the dark, turns into a very trite solution, chance punishes the guilty. I dislike the trivial last 30 minutes or so of an otherwise extremely fun gag.

Other than being doled out an ep a week, and maybe needing a 25-50% editing pass like all streaming shows, this was a nice watch. If your sense of humor’s laughing at corpses, this is for you.

★★★★½

Dungeons & Falling

As noted in Review: Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised, there’s no rules for falling damage. Never have been. Referees just rely on folklore and other games to figure it out.

Researching OD&D sources is frustrating, but if I’ve read all this, you should too!

It never clearly says in OD&D (books 1-3, supp 1-4, nor Holmes). In Book III, there’s a Chainmail example of 1 die save on 5 or 6 per level (10′?) fallen.

AD&D Player’s Handbook (1978, but non-canon to me), it’s 1d6 for each 10′, and the commentary makes it clear that’s the meaning intended. You wouldn’t say “this is not realistic” if falling was super dangerous.

FALLING DAMAGE
Falling into pits, from ledges, down shafts, and so forth will certainly cause damage unless the fall is broken. While such falls could break limbs and other bones, it is probable that your referee will simply use a hit points damage computation based on 1d6 for each 10′ of distance fallen to a maximum of 20d6, plus or minus adjustments for the surface fallen upon, This treatment gives characters a better survival chance, although it is not as “realistic” as systems to determine breaks, sprains, dislocations, internal organ damage, etc.

Basic Dungeons & Dragons (1981), same. Interesting note that climbing is per 100′!

Climb Steep Surfaces, when failed, will result in a fall. The thief will take 1-6 (1d6) points of damage for each 10 feet fallen. This roll should only be made once per 100′ of climb attempted. If failed, the fall will be from halfway up the surface.

Suddenly in Dragon # 69 (Jan 1983), in a sidebox in the Thief-Acrobat class, Gygax claims that it was cumulative ALL ALONG.

Falling damage
The correct procedure for determining falling damage in the AD&D game system is to roll 1d6 per 10′ fallen, cumulative. Since a falling body accelerates quickly, the damage mounts geometrically: 2d6 for the second 10 feet fallen, 3d6 for the third 10 feet, etc. The maximum of 20d6 is therefore reached after a fall of approximately 60 feet for most characters. A thief-acrobat can often fall further distances, but the same 20d6 maximum should be applied. The rationale behind this system will discussed in the next issue (# 70) of DRAGON Magazine.

Note you would also not use 20d6 as a limit if you were counting 1d6, 3d6, 6d6, 10d6, 15d6, 21d6 all along.

Next issue (Feb 1983), he makes Frank Mentzer carry his water and blames some editor (Mike Carr?).

Gary has always used a geometrically increasing system for falling damage in AD&D games; the trouble arose because that system simply never made it into the rule books. When the AD&D Players Handbook was being assembled, a brief section on falling damage was included: a mere 7 1⁄2 lines that offers more advice on broken bones and sprains than on falling damage. As we now understand the event, the section was not included in the first draft, and the editors requested a brief insert on this frequently referred-to topic. So Gary hastily wrote a sentence describing damage as “1d6 per 10’ for each 10’ fallen.” Someone removed the “per 10’” as being (so it was thought) redundant, and off we went. That section was later quoted in passing in the Aerial Adventures section of the Dungeon Masters Guide, thereby becoming further entrenched in our game procedures.

My bullshit meter goes off the scale at this sudden Invention of Lying level retcon. But is it a better rule?

AD&D 2nd Edition (1989, again non-canon to me) has this lengthy rebuttal:

Player characters have a marvelous (and, to the DM, vastly amusing) tendency to fall off things. generally from great heights and almost always onto hard surfaces. While the falling is harmless, the abrupt stop at the end tends to cause damage.
When a character falls. he suffers 1d6 points of damage for every 10 feet fallen, to a maximum of 20d6 (which for game purposes can be considered terminal velocity).
This method is simple and it provides all the realism necessary in the game. It is not a scientific calculation of the rate of acceleration, exact terminal velocity, mass, impact energy, etc. of the falling body.
The fact of the matter is that physical laws may describe the exact motion of a body as it falls through space, but relatively little is known about the effects of impact. The distance fallen is not the only determining factor in how badly a person is hurt. Other factors may include elasticity of the falling body and the ground, angle of impact, shock wave through the falling body, dumb luck, and more.
People have actually fallen from great heights and survived, albeit very rarely. The current record-holder, Vesna Vulovic, survived a fall from a height of 31,33O feet in 1972, although she was severely injured. Flight Sergeant Nicholas S. Alkemade actually fell 18,000 feet—almost 3.5 miles—without a parachute and landed uninjured!
The point of all this is roll the dice, as described above, and don’t worry too much about science.

The 3.0 SRD is typically boring, legalistic, but continues this standard:

FALLING
Falling Damage: The basic rule is simple: 1d6 points of damage per 10 feet fallen, to a maximum of 20d6.
If a character deliberately jumps instead of merely slipping or falling, the damage is the same but the first 1d6 is nonlethal damage. A DC 15 Jump check or DC 15 Tumble check allows the character to avoid any damage from the first 10 feet fallen and converts any damage from the second 10 feet to nonlethal damage. Thus, a character who slips from a ledge 30 feet up takes 3d6 damage. If the same character deliberately jumped, he takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage and 2d6 points of lethal damage. And if the character leaps down with a successful Jump or Tumble check, he takes only 1d6 points of nonlethal damage and 1d6 points of lethal damage from the plunge.
Falls onto yielding surfaces (soft ground, mud) also convert the first 1d6 of damage to nonlethal damage. This reduction is cumulative with reduced damage due to deliberate jumps and the Jump skill.
Falling into Water: Falls into water are handled somewhat differently. If the water is at least 10 feet deep, the first 20 feet of falling do no damage. The next 20 feet do nonlethal damage (1d3 per 10-foot increment). Beyond that, falling damage is lethal damage (1d6 per additional 10-foot increment).
Characters who deliberately dive into water take no damage on a successful DC 15 Swim check or DC 15 Tumble check, so long as the water is at least 10 feet deep for every 30 feet fallen. However, the DC of the check increases by 5 for every 50 feet of the dive.

Arduin Grimoire has a complex table, RCH = Random Critical Hit (Arduin crits are murder), others are Broken, Crushed, Dislocated, bruisE, Fracture, Multi, No damage, Sprain. I would never use this, but it’s on par with linear damage until far up.

Conclusion

I’m certainly going to stick with 1d6 per 10′ linear, but it should increase some chance of injury or death. At low Levels the HP damage is going to be the deadly factor, so it doesn’t matter if there’s also injury. At higher Levels, falling damage equivalent to your Level should be highly risky, and even moderate falls should have some risk.

Falling

Characters who fall more than 5′ take d6 damage per 10′ to a maximum of 20d6. If fallen 20′ or more, make a Save vs Paralysis, + DEX bonus, –1 per 10′ past the first, on failure roll d6 to see what you landed on:

  1. Head. Instant death. You needed that, roll a new character.
  2. Left arm. Broken, cannot hold shield or 2-handed weapon, or cast spells.
  3. Right arm. Broken, cannot hold weapon, or cast spells.
  4. Torso. Broken ribs, half STR, CON.
  5. Left leg. Broken, cannot move.
  6. Right leg. Broken, cannot move.

Cure Serious Wounds or Restoration will repair all but the head, otherwise takes 2d4 weeks recovery.

(note I don’t have Clerics, but there are items or rituals which can produce these effects)

I made a table to better understand the odds here (assuming Save 15 at 1st-Level, +1 bonus for Paralysis), and I think I’m good with this. A 3rd-Level Thief with DEX 15 has a 50% chance to drop 50′ with nothing broken, a 1st-Level Magic-User has 20%. HP damage is much more likely to kill them.

Distance Level: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
20′ 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6
30′ 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7
40′ 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8
50′ 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9
60′ 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10
70′ 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
80′ 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
90′ 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
100′ 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14

What I’m Watching: Last Thing He Told Me

Trying to extract further value from TV+, and the closest thing to a crime drama is The Last Thing He Told Me. I need dark and complex to keep my brain even slightly paying attention to most things, and Apple’s not mature enough to run anything like Deadwind. I went into this pretty cold, just knew it was based on a popular novel.

Jennifer Garner looks really good. And she does fine here as a slightly confused artist wife Hannah, with new-ish husband Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and very annoying teenage stepdaughter Bailey (Angourie Rice). And a relatively big cast of friends and lawyers and various FBI & Marshals.

Owen, who seems more like a lumberjack or mechanic, is supposedly CTO of a company just called “The Shop” (is Stephen King not going to sue?), apparently writing SSL code in C++:

And yet this “wasn’t operational” and they ran a scam for $1B IPO. That makes no real sense, it’s easy to extract VC money with a working shitty demo. If you’re gonna make Silicon Valley computer crimes a key plot, talk to someone in the field.

He vanishes after bad things go down at work, and then clues get pieced together to figure out who he used to be.

The daughter’s maybe the most annoying, whiny, horrible creature I’ve ever seen on screen, like Gollum with pink hair dye, probably a very realistic teenager, but still needs to be slapped at least once every 10 minutes. Jen really has to carry this show.

Nobody seems to worry about money; there’s three expensive lawyers, and a bag full of cash, and just never comes up that this would change anyone’s life. Hannah lives on a houseboat and makes crafts out of wood, which I don’t think really shows up in expensive galleries but more creepy bait, tackle, & gas stands in the middle of nowhere before a serial killer cabin in the woods, and flea markets. Even for “TV shows have aspirational wealth to drive the American consumer market”, this show is excessive.

SPOILERS

















There’s a lot of dangling plot threads, sitcom hijinks, and just bad tell-don’t-show:

  1. We never see grandpa Nicholas’ associates, or anything about them, except word of mouth.
  2. As soon as Hannah & Bailey make contact with Owen’s family, suddenly we’re pulled out of that by the Marshall’s Service and the plot is mansplained to Hannah. They could’ve done that episodes before.
  3. The Deputy Marshall pitches a very biased explanation, and we never see anything supporting that story. Nicholas seems contradictory to it.
  4. Bailey drives plot by just running off, or charging in where she shouldn’t, never explains anything, never contributes any useful information.
  5. Owen’s plan here is to just foist off his kid, the only thing he cares about, on his new wife and criminal family, hope nobody tortures them for information. This is not thought out.
  6. How is there a safe in a woodworked vase?
  7. Avett seems to know about Owen’s past, and sends a goon around. How? What does he know? This is entirely dropped with no further explanation.

As with most modern TV, it’s clearly padded to reach 7 episodes. It could’ve been 3 eps and told a much tighter story. A little work and cut down below 2 hours, and it would’ve been a good thriller.

★★★☆☆