This show is the biggest disappointment of the season. It sets expectations of a story about a charming campground near a small Canadian town, a sense of community, and a love story that changes the direction of your life and forces you to discover new facets of yourself. All this, seasoned with poignant drama, should've made viewers fall in love with its story and characters, but the only thing you end up doing - is cringing throughout the whole thing.
The characters are unremarkable. They lack depth and are quintessential for any other soap opera. Here, you have a main character - a daughter - with her emotional and legal problems and her brooding dad with money and drinking issues. A stereotypically attractive, 'mysterious' man she falls in love with. An elderly couple who teaches everyone about life. An envious, somewhat insidious enemy the main character clashes with. A jealous big-city boyfriend. It's the never-ending recycling of the same old tropes we've seen a million times before - in Hallmark and Lifetime movies, for instance. Actors have little chemistry, and their weak acting enhances the issue. Chad Michael Murray is just a Chad Michael Murray - a handsome guy with a smoldering gaze and husky voice. Morgan Cohan's acting is stilted, and Maggie has no nuance to become a likable character. Scott Patterson looks bored out of his mind, stumbling around the campground like a lost puppy. Although his character Sully has a few emotional scenes sprinkled here and there, the limited on-screen presence doesn't help him to become a well-developed character. Lauren Hammersley is possibly the worst crier ever - her emotional scenes are unbearable. The actors fail to make characters feel like close friends, acquaintances, or family. Their interactions are stiff and lifeless.
There are many sad songs to emphasize the inner sentiments of the characters and the situations they find themselves in - alas - the result is rather negative - they are distracting and take away from already insufficient acting.
The writing is painfully predictable, and it's easy to guess what happens next. The first season alone has a set of every possible melodramatic clichés imaginable. Storylines are inconsistent and illogical due to the poorly structured narrative. In one of the first episodes, the writers want to make us worried about the characters who find themselves in life-threatening situations but whom we hardly know or care about - instead of giving us time to know them first. Although I'm not sure that it would've helped - no matter what happens to them, the characters here are simply not engaging enough to get attached to. Add bad dialogues to the mix, and there's nothing left to enjoy.
It feels like Sullivan's Crossing has no idea what it wants to be. A medical drama? A criminal drama? A relationship drama? It's a tough job to combine them all. The writers throw in every melodramatic trick without substance, trying to be edgy and keep the audience engaged, only to make the following episodes as dragging as possible. And then, out of the blue, smack you in the face with inane action again.
The pace is unbearably slow, so slow that it makes it hard to focus on storylines, and you find yourself losing interest pretty fast.
Sullivan's Crossing could've been a good story about healing fractured relationships and personal growth. Instead, it serves as a cheap, dull, and underdeveloped melodrama.
1/10.
The characters are unremarkable. They lack depth and are quintessential for any other soap opera. Here, you have a main character - a daughter - with her emotional and legal problems and her brooding dad with money and drinking issues. A stereotypically attractive, 'mysterious' man she falls in love with. An elderly couple who teaches everyone about life. An envious, somewhat insidious enemy the main character clashes with. A jealous big-city boyfriend. It's the never-ending recycling of the same old tropes we've seen a million times before - in Hallmark and Lifetime movies, for instance. Actors have little chemistry, and their weak acting enhances the issue. Chad Michael Murray is just a Chad Michael Murray - a handsome guy with a smoldering gaze and husky voice. Morgan Cohan's acting is stilted, and Maggie has no nuance to become a likable character. Scott Patterson looks bored out of his mind, stumbling around the campground like a lost puppy. Although his character Sully has a few emotional scenes sprinkled here and there, the limited on-screen presence doesn't help him to become a well-developed character. Lauren Hammersley is possibly the worst crier ever - her emotional scenes are unbearable. The actors fail to make characters feel like close friends, acquaintances, or family. Their interactions are stiff and lifeless.
There are many sad songs to emphasize the inner sentiments of the characters and the situations they find themselves in - alas - the result is rather negative - they are distracting and take away from already insufficient acting.
The writing is painfully predictable, and it's easy to guess what happens next. The first season alone has a set of every possible melodramatic clichés imaginable. Storylines are inconsistent and illogical due to the poorly structured narrative. In one of the first episodes, the writers want to make us worried about the characters who find themselves in life-threatening situations but whom we hardly know or care about - instead of giving us time to know them first. Although I'm not sure that it would've helped - no matter what happens to them, the characters here are simply not engaging enough to get attached to. Add bad dialogues to the mix, and there's nothing left to enjoy.
It feels like Sullivan's Crossing has no idea what it wants to be. A medical drama? A criminal drama? A relationship drama? It's a tough job to combine them all. The writers throw in every melodramatic trick without substance, trying to be edgy and keep the audience engaged, only to make the following episodes as dragging as possible. And then, out of the blue, smack you in the face with inane action again.
The pace is unbearably slow, so slow that it makes it hard to focus on storylines, and you find yourself losing interest pretty fast.
Sullivan's Crossing could've been a good story about healing fractured relationships and personal growth. Instead, it serves as a cheap, dull, and underdeveloped melodrama.
1/10.