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seanmetzinger
Reviews
The 100 (2014)
It's 90210 in Fallout! It's Dawson's Creek in Space! It's bad writing!
If you hate 90210, you will hate this. Do not fall for it Sci-fi fans. We can suspend our belief for Star Trek, Star Wars, Walking Dead, Terra-Nova,and Doctor Who. No amount of imagining will get past huge plot holes, bad acting, bad writing (examples later), bad choices in details, & bad directing.
I'll use only the first 7 Minutes of the first episode to point out whats wrong because it was so bad we couldn't go any further.
Bad Acting and directing: When the main character, Clarke, is talking to Thelonious about her father I swear her anger was read off of a queue card behind Thelonious, whether that was bad directing or acting I leave that up to you.
Huge Plot hole in one small bad detail choice: Plenty of people have pointed out the big scientific plot holes, a lot of shows have them but this has some huge ones that make it hard to get around but one that gets me because it is purely a vanity choice is the makeup. Every girl has perfect makeup-- even these so called prisoners. Red lips, mascara, perfect skin, perfect white teeth, long luxurious hair. We are talking about a society running out of resources some how has a never ending supply of beauty products. On top of that these are decedents of scientist and military -- beauty is always last on the list and often shunned by those as just useless vanity. For some reason the creators thought more of the vain "look pretty for the camera" mentality instead of immersing the viewer in the world.
======Now the biggest reason not to watch====== Bad writing -- Say you give it a pass for everything else this is where you will turn it off. First off plot points lack weight. The plot point of if you are 18 and commit a crime you die shouldn't be just said but actually witnessed, if the main character actually witnessed her father being taken away, that would be more emotional. The main plot point, the apocalypse isn't just a foot note so don't make it a single throw away line. Finally the dialog... at two points exposition is actually yelled by random people (you don't see who yells it) about one girl, "She is that girl that was found in the air vents" and then "No one has a brother" insinuating that was her crime and the guy that stole the uniform was her brother... lazy writing. Then shortly after this horrible scene was the line that made both me and my wife say turn it off. A good show is made by great lines. You can not take these things for granted. What should be the defining moment of a show the return of humans to earth, the first steps of mankind back on the soil of our home world, such steps that should be defined by word comparable to that of Neil Armstrong... the writers choose... "We're back, B*****s!" ... and with that we turned it off.
Robot Combat League (2013)
I think people were expecting "Real Steel"
Right away 5 stars are taken away because of the contestants. Another 1 star gone because of the cheesy pyro-technics.
The Robot Combat League itself is a good concept. I added 3 back because of the future potential of the series.
First thing you need to know is the robots are standardized. They are all the same frame and hydraulics. They are all built to take 'some' punishment not too much or fights would last forever. The difference is in their armors and weapons. I think the standard sub frame is a good idea but they should let the contestants design the armor and weapons.
I get the cheesy pyro, the annoying contestants, and the camera angles- they are there to keep the audience interested. You can't compare it to Robot Wars because Robot Wars got really one sided with all the robots being low to the floor machines with a high-powered drum spinning in the front. Why do think it got canceled because the robots were boring boxes; all the creative designs were tossed out for what works.
When you boil Robot Combat League down you do get rock-em sock-em robots but that was a fun game for us... then we grew up and moved to Mech- warrior and the internet. Then we grew up again and either built our own bots or went into programming. Robot Combat League needs to grow up a little and given the right rules and people it can.