Warning: Review contains spoilers
I wanted to like it. The premise was interesting. The acting was mostly good, even Kali Reis. The cinematography is excellent. But a couple of things made it, by the end, an unpleasant viewing experience.
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The woke elements are too distracting. I'm fairly tolerant of woke, but it's too thick here. Literally every Caucasian white male is bad, except the youngster who has no agency and only does what women in his life tell him. The show teased a redemption arc for one of the Evil White Males, but didn't follow through (in the end he's just an evil dude who gets his head blown off). And there's a recurring theme of women taking their rage out against abusive men, which may be cathartic if your target audience is angry women, but it didn't serve the plot and made the characters off-putting (the lead characters literally torture a dude in the last episode for no good reason other than their rage).The show also seems to preach that women killing men for revenge is justified. The lead characters are bonded together because they murdered an abusive husband who killed his wife, then disguised it as a murder-suicide. The lead characters then murder another white male during the story (this time in self defense), but also end up disguising it and making the case disappear. Finally, the central mystery is revealed to have been the doing of a group of women taking revenge on a group of white male scientists... the lead detectives let these women get away with it. I didn't appreciate this message at all, and I didn't sympathize with any of the vengeful characters in the show.
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The main characters are flawed, which is fine, but there's no development. Kai Reis's character is shown to have anger issues but she never really grows out of it or faces any real consequences for it. Jodi Foster's character is shown to be manipulative and abusive in her relationships, but she too doesn't grow or change.
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The writing falls apart near the end.The premise of the show was that a bunch of scientists in a lab go missing. The initial scenes show the detectives investigating and searching the lab. Later, we discover that the piece that unravels the whole mystery is a secret underground basement accessible from a giant hatch in the lab--but somehow they never discovered this enormous hatch in the initial search. When the lead characters discover this, they just say "Shit how did we miss this!" It was too idiotic to be believable. I was already feeling pretty negative about the show by this episode, and this plot hole made me turn off the TV and stop watching for a bit.This was the most egregious of the plot holes but there are others. The writing starts off strong but they really failed to land the plane.
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The supernatural elements take away from the detective work. One thing I liked about the first season was how the eery supernatural elements and the detective work complemented each other. In this season, too many plot points progress because of visions and other supernatural elements. I didn't like that.
Like I said, I wanted to like it and I gave it a fair shake. I was intrigued by the first few episodes, but my interest level dropped halfway through the season. By the end, I was forcing myself to finish just to say that I finished. The final payoff was actually offensive to me (letting people get away with a murder of revenge). Ultimately, the season left me with a feeling of more than just disappointment, it left me with a feeling of disgust.