I enjoy the series and had a good time watching this opener to the final season. But the day after I'm disturbed by the sycophantic (just a couple so far, I encourage some breadth of opinion) reviews posted here.
There were many things wrong with this episode, which I will dwell on, leaving the obvious pluses to others to salivate upon. First, an abundance of straw man characters, notably the mysterious Russian Root turns to for desperate help and new identity papers. He is concisely built up and made interesting, and then suddenly and violently tossed into the garbage heap just as a plot ploy, as some Samaritan flunkies wipe out him and his men so extremely easily. Treating this guy as garbage and so contemptuously made me contemptuous of the scriptwriters at that point.
Similarly, the dilemma and solution in a matter of minutes for our dear cop character Lionel is efficiency from a script point of view but very disappointing and "too easy" for the viewer -again treating the characters with contempt. An internal affairs guy gets overruled by FBI shenanigans but is conveniently written out (killed off screen) just for convenience.
And the thrills of the episode, thrilling as they might be, were closer to an SNL sketch riffing on "MacGyver" than the quality action we expect and deserve - gerrymandering hundreds of video game innards to save the supercomputer which is the basis of the entire series. Really?
So before loyal fans of this show drink any old kool aid being served up by messers Nolan, et al, try to maintain a bit of critical perspective. If I were running things I would have bitten the bullet and brought back post haste not merely Sarah Shahi my favorite player of all (IMDb informs us that she will be returning in Episode 3, thank God) but also pay through the nose and shoot for flashbacks new scenes of Taraji P. Henson. Episode 5.1 was entertaining and had its moments, but great? Fuggedaboutit.
There were many things wrong with this episode, which I will dwell on, leaving the obvious pluses to others to salivate upon. First, an abundance of straw man characters, notably the mysterious Russian Root turns to for desperate help and new identity papers. He is concisely built up and made interesting, and then suddenly and violently tossed into the garbage heap just as a plot ploy, as some Samaritan flunkies wipe out him and his men so extremely easily. Treating this guy as garbage and so contemptuously made me contemptuous of the scriptwriters at that point.
Similarly, the dilemma and solution in a matter of minutes for our dear cop character Lionel is efficiency from a script point of view but very disappointing and "too easy" for the viewer -again treating the characters with contempt. An internal affairs guy gets overruled by FBI shenanigans but is conveniently written out (killed off screen) just for convenience.
And the thrills of the episode, thrilling as they might be, were closer to an SNL sketch riffing on "MacGyver" than the quality action we expect and deserve - gerrymandering hundreds of video game innards to save the supercomputer which is the basis of the entire series. Really?
So before loyal fans of this show drink any old kool aid being served up by messers Nolan, et al, try to maintain a bit of critical perspective. If I were running things I would have bitten the bullet and brought back post haste not merely Sarah Shahi my favorite player of all (IMDb informs us that she will be returning in Episode 3, thank God) but also pay through the nose and shoot for flashbacks new scenes of Taraji P. Henson. Episode 5.1 was entertaining and had its moments, but great? Fuggedaboutit.