Carmine
Old Man with a Hat
I felt like the first two seasons were painfully slow. You'd finish an episode and feel like "did this move the story along at all?"
****MAJOR SPOILER ALERTS****
There were a lot of plot lines in those seasons that went nowhere. The super wimpy artist guy dating Juliana... I wanted to just reach into the iPad and slap him (I watched the whole thing in bed w/my wife, not on a TV). All this character development of Joe Blake the reluctant, then enthusiastic Nazi, only to have him off'd in an alley? What was the point of the dream-trance sequences with Juliana jumping through time when she ends up at the portal in the coal mine anyway? The alternate-world Japanese Trade minister? What was the reason for that?
However....
Some of it was very good. The John Smith character (Rufus Sewell) was great. I thought they did a nice job of fixing the time-travel problem of two "John Smiths" in the same world when the Nazi agent killed the insurance salesman version before the other arrived. It's also fascinating to think of someone who's a super-evil, powerful Nazi in one world and a friendly salesman in another. (BTW, the wheel covers on his '57 Mercury were 20-years too new) And just in case you started to feel sympathetic for his character and his quest to make things right with his son, you realize his plan is just to abduct the USA-world kid and bring him to Nazi-land as a replacement. Then he calls in an airstrike on the whole west coast in case you forgot he was an evil bastard. That was nice work. His wife, Helen Smith (Chelah Horsdal) was great as well. Her line about "we don't deserve children in this world" after describing how they'd F'ed up with all three was perfect because it was empathetic but true.
...I'd write more gang, but the Pentastar calls.
****MAJOR SPOILER ALERTS****
There were a lot of plot lines in those seasons that went nowhere. The super wimpy artist guy dating Juliana... I wanted to just reach into the iPad and slap him (I watched the whole thing in bed w/my wife, not on a TV). All this character development of Joe Blake the reluctant, then enthusiastic Nazi, only to have him off'd in an alley? What was the point of the dream-trance sequences with Juliana jumping through time when she ends up at the portal in the coal mine anyway? The alternate-world Japanese Trade minister? What was the reason for that?
However....
Some of it was very good. The John Smith character (Rufus Sewell) was great. I thought they did a nice job of fixing the time-travel problem of two "John Smiths" in the same world when the Nazi agent killed the insurance salesman version before the other arrived. It's also fascinating to think of someone who's a super-evil, powerful Nazi in one world and a friendly salesman in another. (BTW, the wheel covers on his '57 Mercury were 20-years too new) And just in case you started to feel sympathetic for his character and his quest to make things right with his son, you realize his plan is just to abduct the USA-world kid and bring him to Nazi-land as a replacement. Then he calls in an airstrike on the whole west coast in case you forgot he was an evil bastard. That was nice work. His wife, Helen Smith (Chelah Horsdal) was great as well. Her line about "we don't deserve children in this world" after describing how they'd F'ed up with all three was perfect because it was empathetic but true.
...I'd write more gang, but the Pentastar calls.
