Between (2015) – Season 1 – Review
Onward!
Between (2015) – Season 1 – Review
Between explores a mysterious virus which kills everyone over the age of 22 in fictional town of Pretty Lake. The government builds a fence around the town and leaves the kids inside to fend for themselves.
This Lord of the Flies meets End of the World and no one gives a shit.
The series features only six episodes. The show had potential, so much unrealised potential. *sadface*
Quick run down of the main characters:
The preacher’s daughter is pregnant, her sister is self-righteous. The jocks play at being the establishment. The ethnically diverse character is the moral compass. The hicks peddling drugs. The awkward social nerd outsider is trying to save everyone and get to the bottom of the mystery.
Jinkies, the characters and plot even plays a little like Scooby Doo.
Kidding aside, the show has other flaws beside the cliché formulaic character dynamics. The pacing is laggy. Plot points made my eye twitch. Frustrating character deaths.
A few of my pet peeves:
- Adam, the nerd on a quest to save the world, mumbles his lines to the point I was forced to turn on the Closed Captioning to catch the dialogue.
- They use MILES instead of Kilometres. Military on both sides of the border uses the metric system. Sure American civilians are raised in the irrational imperial but not the military.
- Americanisms annoyed this Canadian, and I can’t see many Americans being impressed with the stereotypes either. But thankfully everyone and their dog has a shotgun.
- Characters and situations are boring. The show was at war with itself, manic between serious and campy. Example: Escaped Tiger. The show implies a tiger kills a sweet 4-5 year old who was feeding the cat and escapes. “Woot! Edgy.” Next time, the 12-year old is camping it up. “Well, the edginess dulled awful quick.”
- Names! HOLY fudge sticks, I hate them. They scream “I’m a witty, witty writer, so very witty.” Target audience won’t notice though, stupid teenagers.
- Episodes titles are corny, bad, horrible.
- Dialogue – painful. I repeated a few lines of it to double-check I wasn’t crazy. They were boring, dull, unreal. Teenagers don’t speak in monotone.
- Let’s use feminine wiles to secure safety. Let’s show attempted rape as an attempt for character growth and fail. Let’s show every single female character requiring a man to help them in someway or fashion. We almost had good strong female characters – almost.
- Sick of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. Instantly old and sickening; this plot was one of the main plot arcs. Poor vs Rich. Jocks vs Rejects. Stupid vs stupid. NO ONE EVER WINS, not even the poor abused audience.
- I can’t believe the location scout got paid money for this. Filmed in my beloved Southern Ontario – and they use a few of the worse locations imaginable. The prison is Pretenders iconic Centre and in life, R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant in Toronto. Downtown Pretty Lake is charming downtown Hespeler/Cambridge. Ok, I’ll give them kudos for using Hespeler, it hasn’t hit full saturation with the world via the sexy Bitten or historical inaccurate Murdoch Mysteries.
- Slow pacing. Come on already. Soap opera’s move at faster speeds than this!
The show with potential who refused trend in deep waters. It drove under the speed limit, safely brushed past the controversies and right into mediocre blandness.
Why did I watch all 6 episodes?
Watching a train wreck happen in slow motion. I committed myself because the show was just 6 episodes. How bad could it be? Netflix after all! The giver of Orange is the New Black, Sense8, House of Cards, Daredevil, Hemlock Grove (Granted that one was a mind fuck), The Killing.
I would only recommend watching this series if you exhausted watching everything else on Netflix, including the terrifying Asylum movies. And/or you are like me, a pursuer of all things dystopia.
Instead, I will recommend you look up CW’s The 100, better characters, better story, a better end of the world.
Will there be a Season 2?
No. Nope. Not happening. NOPE.
What if you are wrong? What would Season 2 look like?
Fine. I’ll play what-if. Fast-forward to 3-5 years later, Pretty Lake survivors escaped, and the world has gone to shit as Adam’s father warned. Wiley and Adam cemented their “Will they, won’t they” relationship and had a second child together. Adam is in an abandoned lab trying to find a cure before Wiley turns 22. He fails. She dies. He figures out a cure. Plot twist, he destroys the cure, the world is fucked. The End.
Will you watch the 2 Season if it came out?
Yes.
What? Why? You just finished ripping it shreds!
I’m a masochist. I won’t walk out of the theatre if the movie is bad (trust me, I paid and sat through all of Sealth). I’m also hopeful, the trend of second season being better than first continues. The 100 was so much better in the second season. World established, newbie quest complete, onward to better rewards good traveller.
Final Thoughts
- 8 out of 10 for acting from this young cast; it was the story, pacing, editing, low-budget that brought it down so low. Even good actors can’t elevate bad writing (see Star Wars Prequels).
- The promo and summary original had me thinking this was a knock-off prequel of Jeremiah. In fact, I shall spend the rest of the day, watching Jeremiah.
