Weedinator

I was into this series for the first few seasons, when story arcs and character development was the driving force, but when it became the repeating loop of fan service/stupidity later on, I tuned the F out pretty much, and would only watch occasionally just to laugh at how terrible and pathetic it had become. Whether it was the extremely cheesy and melodramatic speeches that characters would blather on and on with, or the completely idiotic choices and actions the characters would take in a poorly contrived advancement of the already-weak plot, it always made me laugh with its endless fumbling ineptitude...

So imagine my surprise when I watched the episode "One More" and found that, holy crap, it wasn't a complete sh!tshow! Sure, there was some of the usual characters-being-stupid-as-hell-to-drive-the-plot stuff, like when they find the boar in the room and don't immediately conclude that someone must have put it there, or clear the building in the first place, as would be standard operating procedure to the 2 supposed veteran apocalypse survivors, but no, they decide to pig out (see what I did there?) and get drunk as hell so they're left unguarded in a building which they aren't even sure is empty and are too stupid to suspect otherwise.

But the speech by Father Milky-Eye had an actual purpose, for once it served to make a meaningful advancement in story in character later on. It made the tense main scene with the Terminator guy play out well, even if Gaybeard guy had to ruin it a bit with his 'we save people, we can help, we're the good guys' babble but overall, with the twist at the end, made for a decent stand-alone episode.

It is unfathomable that the creative team behind this show would make such a 'goof'... from the showrunners all the way down, especially to the actress herself, for this to actually be a 'goof;, they would ALL have to had to miss this in-your-face mistake, a virtual impossibility.

Remember, the episode starts off in split-screen, with Kim and Jimmy facing mirrors. The cast flipping from arm to arm is a subtle play off this, which serves to illustrate the duality of Kim's character, the good-and-bad fighting for control, as was displayed by her actions later on in the episode.

It is the ONLY plausible explanation for the completely bumbling, ridiculous failure it turns out to be, and here's why:

The first episode is masterful. It introduces the characters, and the overall plot almost perfectly. You're instantly drawn in with scenes such as Sam Waterston's Marshall character riding into a destroyed town, his face remains stone-like as he inspects all the examples of horror there, dead bodies burnt to a crisp, blood mayhem, what went on here? It's not until a posse member points out a child hanging from a pole that we see a reaction on his face, and this relays so much of character to us, he's a hard man, but even he is taken back from that. Subtle and intelligent, I was hooked. The dialogue so interesting and well-written as well, I was convinced this was going to be a great series. And for a while it WAS. That's the best part of the joke; I so wanted it to keep being great that I kept forgiving it and suspending my disbelief well past the point where I would normally do, until I finally got to the point where I just shook my head and thought 'WTF???'

I'd been got. I admit it. The cherry on top of this whole farce is that they actually FORESHADOWED the whole thing in the first episode: a train goes off the rails and becomes a smoking wreck. Just like this series in the final episode where the whole stupid shootout just rubs your face in it... ha ha! gotcha sucker! Then you reflect on alllllll the stuff you let slide before, all in a confident belief that it was all going to pull together at the end, and you realize not only how terrible this whole thing was, but how bad you've been played.

A list, in no particular order:

-Buffalo Soldiers, already warned that Griffin's bunch is on the way, fail to post sentries and are taken out easily. Who had the foresight and brains to inform them of this and ask for assistance?

-Whitey, the same guy who had the presence of mind to keep Goode's identity a secret, suddenly becomes a complete idiot and walks blindly into a fire zone and dies with a knife in his chest. After a lot of time was therefore wasted developing the whole story of him and...

-Louise Hobbs, the girl who didn't shed a tear after her entire family and everybody she ever knew was massacred, but does cry after Whitey dies, someone she never really got that close to. Know who else cried?

-Most everybody at Whitey's funeral. How many women died during a half-hour-long gunfight against 30 experienced murderous villains whom had just gotten the drop on and wiped out aforementioned Buffalo Soldiers? None apparently, since the funeral was for Whitey only. What???

• Griffin's gang, who had shown themselves to be more than cunning and dangerous, effecting well thought-out tactics in the past during robberies and such suddenly decide, after having a whole night to formulate a plan in advance, ah screw it, let's just ride into town like the with no recon like the biggest pile of morons on the planet. Best way to start a massive gunfight, right?

• Apparently, the best way for very experienced gunfighters to fight is to either sit on their horses or stand in the wide open street and just blast away at each other. Taking cover, at all, is for losers.

• Griffin's crew has been robbing everything in sight for over a decade at least, and not only do they not have any money, but not a single bounty hunter comes after them. Guess nobody bothered...

• Goode wakes up Granny butchering the elk she just shot. Obviously, he never saw her do it, yet is somehow able to tell Alice all about how she shot it later, after of course...

-They just so happen to arrive in time to stop Whitey from shooting at the black girl's dad. They had already finished hunting, so for what reason were they even there in the first place, let alone at the crucial moment?

-Speaking of showing at just the right time, where was Goode during the big final shootout? He was with Sheriff Magoo, traveling with him, yet showed up long after the Sheriff did. Guess he had drop a deuce or something...

• And what the hell was that flashback with the men going to the mine for the last time all about? You're telling me that every day, like clockwork, every woman in the town walked the men down to the mine, wearing their best clothes, so they could give them a nice big kiss before they go off to work?? Hell, even Whitey was in the group! WTF???

-Of course, much mention was made of the sole survivor, 'John Doe'. Who was he? Where does he live? Do you know? What's he looking for? My guess? Checkov's gun...

-They waste so much time on such pointless and irrelevant characters and backstories, yet when it comes to the actual relevant ones, like Alice's and Roy & Griffin's, it's hurried through and left lacking. What happened to Alice with the natives? How did Granny become so close? What was the 'final straw' that drove Roy away from Griffin? Who knows? Who cares? Let's have Sheriff Magoo talking with ghosts instead!

• And what was the entire point of having the mysticism aspect in the first place? They built up the whole 'I've seen my death and this ain't it' schtick during the whole series, so many times he enables its reality by escaping death so nonchalantly and confident, it almost DEMANDS there be some sort of telling resolution on the matter yet at the end they just whoop! Throw it out the window, and he dies otherwise, making the whole thing completely pointless.

And on and on and on... the more you reflect on the whole thing, after you realize you've been had, the more such holes and stupidities you realize. If you consider all the great acting, dialogue, imagery, individual scenes, cinematography...etc... involved, it's inconceivable to believe that this thing trainwrecked so badly through sheer ineptitude.



It has to be a joke.

Yank those long gnarled sticks out of your collective anal retentive anuses (anii?), smoke a damn joint and climb the hell down off your precious high horses for once in your lives.

Sure this show has some dud sketches. Every such show does. Like a certain wise man once said: "They can't all be f***ing masterpieces!" But there's lots of gold in that ore, such as The Deer Hunting Sketch, Two English Guys Pissing, and Little Hitler just to name a few. I can just see all these self-important 'critics' giving this show an absolute thumbs-down; snooty noses all snorty up in the air with their little dumb monocles only magnifying their permanent pouty, sneering expressions as the world is has been so unfair to these little weepy darlings, and this show only serves to remind them of all the non-stuck-up people who are always annoying them with their incessant laughing and cavorting and having a good time instead of solemnly bowing down before their great yet unappreciated insight and impeccable taste and so they sit in their dark corners, forever doomed to be alone and hated, tears and snot perpetually dripping from their quivering scab-encrusted chins.

Anyway, the show's pretty good, give it a look if you get a chance!

I like gritty street-crime dramas, and while I tried to like 'Snowfall', I felt it just kept coming up short. I'm only 5 episodes in, so maybe there's some great redeeming stuff coming up but as it stands so far, I find too many holes in the narrative that are inexplicable and head-scratching.

The whole part where the Mexicans kill the security guard to cast suspicion on him as per the stolen money isn't even depicted. I mean, if it was just some matter-of-fact occurrence that goes off without a hitch then fine, dialogue after the fact can cover it and bring the viewer up to speed. But as it was, it seemed like it caused a major paradigm shift in the trio's relationship, the 'Bear' was injured...etc... yet we're left with only vague mention of what actually happened.

Same with the plane crash. Why not clarify how it happened instead of thrusting this flash-forward on us when there's nothing of a reveal involved?

Then the editing... my god, how choppy can you get? The rape scene was cut away from so many times that it drained it of most all of its tension. They're interrogating/intimidating the guy for ten seconds, then it's off to some other story thread where nothing happens, then another few seconds, rinse and repeat...

After being annoyed by that scene, I started noticing the same pattern again and again...

Like I said, maybe there is redemption in store but as it stands, the story/editing is high school level at best.