Inhumans S01E08 Review: Disappointment

Inhumans, Season 1, Episode 8: And Finally... Black Bolt

Well, I'm not a huge fan of how the season ended, and honestly I'm so disillusioned with these bunch of characters that I don't think I'll ever watch Inhumans's second season unless someone assures me that it's actually interesting and features characters that are likable. So much of the problem with Inhumans for me is the fact that I just cannot bring myself to like the actual main characters, who feel more like caricatures than actual characters themselves. Yes, the final three episodes end up being somewhat more enjoyable than the dreadful excuse of a series premiere, but even for my relatively low bar of superhero-TV enjoyment... Inhumans is just the absolute lowest rung. I didn't believe any MCU show could be worse than Iron Fist, and Iron Fist at least felt throughout its run like it was actually telling a story about the titular superhero. Inhumans? It's just... there. It's particularly damning that the huge foreshadowing and buildup throughout Agents of SHIELD ended up being multiple orders of magnitude more interesting than the actual Inhumans show. 

So... some of my biggest problems? Turning Maximus into a whiny, generic evil card-carrying villain in the end instead of the tragic extremist he was built up as. Seeing Maximus just go 'nyeh, everyone can die if I'm not king!' is a lot different than the more complex character he was initially built up with. Bald Medusa? That's another huge misstep. Brain-damaged Karnak? Stupid make-friends-with-Earthlings plot? Sticking Black Bolt in a random suit instead of his costume? Black Bolt, in particular, actually has a decent costume compared to the rest of the Inhumans, but he's also the only one that doesn't wear it for the majority of the show. 

Speaking of shitty visual decisions, the climax of this battle between colourful characters (well, dour TV characters based on colourful comic-book characters) ends up taking place with Black Bolt and Maximus pushing each other around in a fucking bunker. I mean, at least we did get the pretty epic scene of Black Bolt's only two spoken words in the series: "Farewell, Brother", as he destroys Maximus's bunker and traps him underneath it, is pretty cool. I'll give them that. 

Except it all ends up having a sour taste in my mouth with the absolute disservice that Maximus's character got. He can't actually be a jealous brother, but he actually sort of engineered the fucking death of his own parents by faking a document to have Black Bolt be thrown into despair and accidentally vaporize their parents... which is honestly just dumb. Again, it reduces Maximus from a character with sympathetic motivations but methods we can't sympathize with into just... a run-of-the-mill psychopath. 

What was the point of Dr. Declan? Like, Henry Ian Cusick is an amazing actor (just watch Lost) and they wasted him by having him deliver shitty dialogue and not at all contribute.

And honestly, considering how well-received adaptations of Marvel properties in the small screen like Daredevil, Punisher, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Agent Carter and Agents of SHIELD are, it's honestly a bit sad that this show ended up being pretty shit. It's just the Black Bolt and Maximus show, with Maximus being ker-aaaazy, Medusa somehow managing to convince everyone that the royal family is looking out for the little people when at best they are the lesser evil. There's a silly game of terrigen crystal hot potato, and Maximus walking around all over the setting and screeching that he needs the Terrigenesis. Oh, and dr. Declan dies thanks to a rampaging Gorgon. 

Karnak manages to get Gorgon back to relative sanity, although he clearly still struggles with being returned from the dead. I think like four characters ask Karnak "WHAT DID YOU DO!" and Karnak has to explain it like four or five times. It's pretty damn dumb. Did Karnak and Gorgon actually matter in the actual climax, though? Not really, beyond getting Gorgon back. Neither Crystal or Triton did jack shit either, or Auran, really matter in the end? 

Oh, and Medusa spends half of the episode arguing with Louise about bringing her to the moon, and failing that, putting her father's pin or whatever the shit on the moon while I was rolling my eyes because their world is fucking ending around them... but eh. I mean, she's kind of helpless because the show kinda fucked her over, so I guess she has nothing much to contribute but to shout at the faceless Atillan sheeple and bury mementos on the moon? Medusa's easily one of the most problematic characters in the show, both in her pretty inconsistent writing, her half-baked story arc and the lack of superpowers. Again, it's one thing to explore a story where a hero is depowered, but if Superman lost his superpowers due to kryptonite before we even know who the fuck Superman is, would I really care? Even movies like Thor where Thor spends the second act depowered set up the extent of Thor's powers by having the first act with him gallivanting and swinging Mjollnir around. 

And the Royal Family's huge, huge problem raised by Auran, Locus and Mordis is never really addressed beyond a shrug and a 'eh, we'll try better, we're the rightful rulers, right?' and we never actually see the point of view of Bronaja or the little people, making all the huge speeches that Medusa and Black Bolt makes ring absolutely fucking hollow since, y'know, we don't actually see that they're actually going to abolish the caste system or whatever. It's definitely a great concept on paper, that our supposed heroes are actually reigning in a near-despotic way. But here? It's mentioned to give credence that some people would support Maximus, but we're not shown the evidence otherwise that Black Bolt's rule isn't actually tyrannical. And considering how dismissive the dude can be at times, I honestly ended up with the feeling that TV!Black Bolt is perhaps as much of a problem to his own society as his crazy brother is, with the only caveat being that he doesn't decide that they should be punished with death on a whim. No, he just enforces a caste system that forces everyone to be chained to their powers and roles.

Oh, and the Inhumans end up teleporting to Earth, and Atillan is destroyed. Do I really care? Not really. Even Atillan's destruction feels hollow due to how little charm the place had -- we saw Asgard in the Thor movies maybe like five, six times over the course of three movies, but I had so much more emotion when it blew up during Thor: Ragnarok, whereas here they had the time to make Atillan memorable, and they didn't. I dunno. The whole show is a huge, piping mess, and unlike most superhero huge-piping-messes, it didn't come with quotable lines or awesome action scenes or well-acted-characters in shit movies the way DCEU movies are. The plotlines are messy, the characterization is messy and it's just so poorly done. It's just a hot turd of badness. If there's going to be one superhero material I tell people to avoid like the plague, it's this show.