Monday night is probably my favorite night of the week as far as television programing goes. Why? Because that's the night House and Two and a Half Men comes on! But this week, I opted to skip Two and a Half Men in favor for the two hour premier of the new show, Terra Nova that aired on Fox yesterday.
It blew.....
Yea, I don't think I've ever seen a show with such an appealing concept be such a letdown. Granted there are a few things that are appealing but for the most part, it just didn't work. So just why is it that this show was such a letdown? Well, let’s get into it.
The show takes place in the future where the Earth has become an over polluted dystopian society. To escape this hell hole, groups of people go through a kind of worm hole that goes back 80 million years into the past in a parallel dimension where a colony of people hope to rebuild civilization on this new world in this new time. However, not all is as at seems on Terra Nova, for another colony exists in this place with violent intentions and constantly threaten the colony.
And that's the best part of the show because just about everything else is just crap. For starters, you have the acting and by god is it awful! I mean, Jesus! It was bad. I honestly don't think works can describe just how bad it was from most of the cast members. I mean, I think I've seen middle school plays that had better acting then what some of what these actors were giving. The only actor who does a half way decent job is Stephen Lang, who has a role suspiciously similar to his role in Avatar, (make of that what you will).
Now, with that aside, throughout the first half of premier, it wasn't that bad. The lines were decent, the action scenes were suspenseful, the set designs were decent enough, the intro to the other colony on the planet wasn't half bad, and the dinosaurs, despite being terrible CGI compared to films, were actually very appealing.
That all changed with the second half and my God was it crap. Most of it focused around this subplot, involving a group of teenager who get attacked by a group of velociraptor knockoffs called packers or something, (I honestly have no idea what they were called). Everything about this half of the show was B-A-D! The acting was terrible, the special effects sucked and the way they drew out the suspense was horrible, (in a bad way) and throughout the entire half of the episode I found myself hoping that one of these dinosaurs would tear all these kids limb by limb. Long story short, just about everything involving any teenager subplot of the series brings it down faster than the stock market on Black Tuesday
There really isn't much more to say on this. Granted, the first half is tolerable because the setup is actually pretty good and Stephen Lang's performance kind of lifts everything but the second half just kills it for it's horrible acting, bad set ups, and horrible and inconstant special effects. The show does have some potential and seems salvageable but won't be unless they make some drastic changes. Maybe it'll get better as time goes on but watching the second half of this one was not worth missing Two and a Half Men over. Until next time, this is The Illusive One signing off.
