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anlau613
Reviews
Spotless (2015)
Great Drama
This show has excellent plotting, acting, and strong themes. It's suspenseful and entertaining. It's also filmed beautifully. Other reviewers mentioned Dexter--there is a similarity with the crime scenes, but I think this show handles that element with more artistry than Dexter did, and also handles the main character's exploration of the darkness people are capable of with more elegance and certainly more complexity.
Most of all, it's an incredibly astute and surprising character study, not just of the main characters, but of an entire cast of weird and wonderful people. Not one character is stock. I can't remember the last time I deeply cared about each and every character on a show. Some of them I hated (one, in particular, is one of the most flawed and frightening I can ever recall on TV), but I cared what happened to them all and could relate in some way to even the most disturbing of them.
A great show. I can't believe I'd never heard of it before I saw it on Netflix and for some reason decided to try it.
The Last Man on Earth (2015)
Wasted potential
Reviewers who see this show as brilliant like to say that people who don't like it just have no sense of humor, or don't get the fact that we're supposed to hate Phil. The humor derives from how despicable he is and how cringe-worthy his actions are. I get that. And I've suffered through many episodes (8, but it feels like more) so I'm not judging it on the first episode or something.
I just can't believe, out of all the human issues and problems they could highlight in this microcosm of society, the only one they're bothering with is: my wife isn't that pretty.
I mean, it's not like he actually likes any of the prettier women he keeps trying to sleeze into bed with--he gets along best with his wife even though he finds her annoying. But she's not as pretty as the other women, so...angst! Is that really all they could come up with? Really? Even MacGruber and the Falconer were more deep than this. I can't believe Will Forte would sink this low.
Are they just waiting for season 2 to get as interesting and intellectual as I know Forte can be? Because I for one will not be watching that long.
I keep on waiting for someone as morally despicable as Phil to just decide to kill his wife, and then they have to cast him out or bring him to justice and we have the beginnings of some kind of new society mythology of evil developing, but no, he's just a loser and nothing happens and people call him a jerk sometimes, roll their eyes and put up with him.
I do kind of like the fact that the apocalypse hasn't somehow made people automatically heroic and cool or life more interesting, but one good idea is not interesting enough to make me suffer through this.