I thought the same first time around, but after re-watching the whole thing recently it has a lot of faults that probably lost a lot of viewers.
It has way too many stories going on at the same time. This might have worked if the main story was progressing properly, but it wasn't.
The main story went down too many dead ends. I get it that we are supposed to struggle with the narrative same as the investigators, but the story really was choppy. Even if it hadn't been cancelled, it is hard to believe it was headed anywhere that would provide a satisfactory payoff. It went from one villain to the next and kept introducing ever more characters to the point of being absurd.
The soap opera stuff really doesn't work. It's just another added set of complications to confuse an already incoherent story. It feels like an attempt to add another demographic to the usual SF audience.
Some of the acting is really poor.
The SFX aren't much good either. Even for the noughties.
Not even a suggestion of a motivation for what is happening. We are talking 15 plus hours of TV here, not the 100 minutes or so given over to a movie, plenty of time to at least seed an idea, even if cancellation meant it was never revealed.
People behave like total dicks. Fair enough a global catastrophe occurs with implications for how people live their lives afterwards, but people don't travel across the world or leave their husbands because of something they effectively saw in a dream. And why, for example does a lawyer quit her job to be an FBI agent? That's bonkers. And then the same person goes into such deep undercover that she is prepared to kill her friends. Ummm... why? There is so much character craziness going on in this show I'd be here for hours recounting it all.
Plot holes you could drop a truck into. Why for example are Dylan and Charlie such firms friends after knowing each other for exactly 2 minutes and 17 seconds? And Dylan is autistic ffs. And why does Al jump off a building rather than just leave the state?
Don't get me wrong. The idea is interesting and I still managed to enjoy it second time around. But there's a sloppiness to this show, particularly in how the story arc was developed, that probably lost everyone but the most invested in the story along the way.
Over ten years ago, We must hope that folks are moving on by now
While you are right, I still get annoyed about Lost. :-)
The OP alluded to a phenomenon that was happening in the noughties where a slew of SF mysteries got cancelled without resolution. Surface was another, but there were more of them.
It is said that one of the reasons this happened is that these programs were made in the days before official online streaming platforms but people were able to pirate them easily online. And the SF nerd demographic was quick onto this practice, so the shows lost ad revenue over time. Hence cancellation.
Even so, the SF Mystery, altho not new as a genre, really became a thing about 20 years ago. Balancing the elements that go into that seems to be difficult for writers even now. Back then they really struggled to get it right.
It was also a period of transition for drama generally. Historically you could watch a show episodically and even out of order. It doesn't matter for example what order you watch any of the old Star Trek shows, even if they have a general story arc. You can't do that with Star Trek: Discovery. Miss an episode and you won't have a clue what is happening. In the noughties it was a little of both: episodes were stand alone in many senses but required continuity in others. The net effect of that is a jerky progression of the story arc and an often confused assembly of individual stories that go nowhere.
תגובה מאת YouShouldKnow
ב-אוקטובר 5, 2018 ב-6:06אחרי חצות יום
Heroes was absolute trash halfway through seaon 2 and after. They should've put us all out of our misery after the second season.
תגובה מאת Jacinto Cupboard
ב-מאי 11, 2021 ב-9:50לפני חצות יום
I thought the same first time around, but after re-watching the whole thing recently it has a lot of faults that probably lost a lot of viewers.
Don't get me wrong. The idea is interesting and I still managed to enjoy it second time around. But there's a sloppiness to this show, particularly in how the story arc was developed, that probably lost everyone but the most invested in the story along the way.
תגובה מאת Jacinto Cupboard
ב-מאי 11, 2021 ב-9:40אחרי חצות יום
While you are right, I still get annoyed about Lost. :-)
The OP alluded to a phenomenon that was happening in the noughties where a slew of SF mysteries got cancelled without resolution. Surface was another, but there were more of them.
It is said that one of the reasons this happened is that these programs were made in the days before official online streaming platforms but people were able to pirate them easily online. And the SF nerd demographic was quick onto this practice, so the shows lost ad revenue over time. Hence cancellation.
Even so, the SF Mystery, altho not new as a genre, really became a thing about 20 years ago. Balancing the elements that go into that seems to be difficult for writers even now. Back then they really struggled to get it right.
It was also a period of transition for drama generally. Historically you could watch a show episodically and even out of order. It doesn't matter for example what order you watch any of the old Star Trek shows, even if they have a general story arc. You can't do that with Star Trek: Discovery. Miss an episode and you won't have a clue what is happening. In the noughties it was a little of both: episodes were stand alone in many senses but required continuity in others. The net effect of that is a jerky progression of the story arc and an often confused assembly of individual stories that go nowhere.
TLDNR: Flashforward wasn't as good as we thought.