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.

Inhumans S01E07 Review: Remember Triton?

Marvel's Inhumans, Season 1, Episode 7: Havoc in the Hidden Land

Oh, man, it's such a shame that it takes the penultimate episode for us to get out of the fucking stupid subplots about fighting randomly murderous drug smugglers or jealous vet ex-girlfriends. God, I completely forgot about the Inhumans TV show for a long, long while, because, shit, there really wasn't much motivation for me to watch it. I guess I kinda gotta finish it up before the year ends, huh? 

And after skimming through the synopses for the past 6 episodes in the 'previously on...' feature, it really boggles my mind how little the Inhumans actually act like, y'know, the Inhumans. I'm not the best Marvel fan ever, and I don't read the comics -- my only exposure with the Inhumans is the Agents of SHIELD TV show and their level in the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance game. They're like 'Space X-Men' in my head, and that's cool. But the Inhumans here? They aren't really cool (Medusa's bald, man.) -- they barely use their powers, their personalities are flat as a brick, and their motivations are muddy. 

But at least this episode the Inhumans sort of get to use their powers. And Triton returns! Remember Triton? The green-fish dude in the prologue of the first episode who everyone keeps reminding us exists? I don't -- not from the show, at least, because he's not even a character we saw in flashbacks. Why would I care about him? Even if you do a show about adapting iconic characters, there's still the need to actually make the audience actually care about them before putting them in compromising situations. Oh, and everyone keeps reminding us that Gorgon is dead, and Karnak is so desperate to bring him back to life. Of course Gorgon's death won't stick. I mean, like, his death scene was pretty poorly done anyway, so why not? 

And apparently Black Bolt gets called out for all the shit he's done, which is well and good. Apparently Triton pretended to be die, and there's a secret room of machineguns or some shit in Atillan... just... because? Lockjaw just teleports everybody everywhere and I'm genuinely puzzled why they didn't just Lockjaw-rescue Black Bolt's allies last episode. Oh well. This episode has Triton show up in Atillan and beat the living hell out of Maximus and his royal guard, and Karnak goes up against Auran and beats the shit out of her. Not gonna lie, at least the action scenes are somewhat decent this time around -- although it really speaks to the show's quality when the most thrilling action scenes involves general martial arts and stunts and not the superpowers that you'd think a show about the Inhumans would be famous for. There's a bit of parlay in Atillan, and Maximus gets Evan Declan back in his clutches, which is... okay, whatever. Maximus has basically degenerated from being angry at the racist schism, and it's so sad to see him degenerate from exploding at Auran for wanting him to be the ideal of "I can be a king even though I am human", emphasizing his inferiority, to just "TERRIGENESIS! I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING! BUT! TERRIGENESIS!" God, it's such a sad degeneration of a character who went from basically a knockoff Loki (which is still entertaining) to a bog-standard villain. 

Karnak also manages to get Auran to help him to revive Gorgon, which... I'll buy? Karnak and Auran are two characters whose writing hasn't been completely horrible and they have some semblance of a character arc, so it's nice that these two at least get some of it dealt with. Gorgon returns as a rampaging monster, though, so resurrection isn't all that good. 

Perhaps one of the attempts to be strong narratively in this episode is having Medusa and Black Bolt argue about whether to kill Maximus, and how the little people will see the royal family after this (we see jack shit about the little people in this show, by the way, because developing Dave the lovesick surfer was so much more important than giving Auran or Bronanja, whose POVs would be a great way to see the Atillan society from). And it's absolutely fucking dumb that no one but Medusa knows how Black Bolt's sign language works, so Medusa has to translate Black Bolt's words for everyone's benefit, and then argue against Black Bolt... it's such an inelegant, stupid way to deliver inelegant, stupid dialogue, and any nuance that these scenes have is already partially ruined by that execution. 

Oh well, at least it's better than, oh, Karnak trying to figure out how to plant weed or Gorgon getting surfers to fight for him. The show's still horrible in execution, plotting, characterization and dialogue, and I've really decided that I don't care at all for Black Bolt or Medusa with their unsympathetic motivations (Medusa's at least defrosting over the course of the season), but at least this time around we get somewhat decent gems in it all. 

Inhumans S01E06 Review: Muddled Motivations

Marvel's Inhumans, Season 1, Episode 6: The Gentleman's Name is Gorgon

I'll get back to you guys with Flash and Gifted and Gotham and other shows that are actually good, but I don't have much time today and Inhumans episode reviews are easier to write. So. 

Yeah, at this point honestly only Iwan Rheon (Maximus) really manages to rise about the godawful script he's been given and actually make something out of his character that feels believable. Every other actor either doesn't care enough, or is saddled with such a weak script, that I just genuinely cannot bring myself to care about any of these characters. One of the biggest weakest points of this episode is, again, the lack of establishing who the Inhumans are before we cut off their powers and throw them all over Hawaii and force them into identical, poorly-written 'I have befriended a human' plots.

Like Karnak walking up and unsettling Mordis and Auran, because they're all fucking afraid that Karnak is this super-badass uber-warrior who can't possibly walk up confidently without a plan? 90% of what I saw Karnak in this show (and I'm not a particularly great in Inhumans lore) is him struggling with his lack of powers. I didn't even realize he's supposed to be Atillan's best fighter until, well, this episode. It's a badass scene for sure, but it definitely lacks the punch if it had actual buildup behind it and we actually did believe, as the characters on the show do, that Karnak is a threat and not just some dude who can see the trajectory of bullets. And since he's been wasting all his plotlines fucking a drug-dealing lady while going "I don't know what to do without powers, waaaah" there's a huge chunk of narrative payoff that's robbed from that sene.

Crystal, meanwhile, befriending Handsome McStudlyTeenMan, has the idea to use lightning to alert everyone else to her presence, reuniting her with Black Bolt and Medusa. Which is... okay. Medusa and Crystal has a conversation about how painfully obvious their character arcs are: "You've made a human friend! So did we!" and I'm reminded once more at how illogical that Louise has stuck around with Medusa for so long (McStud at least has the obvious motivation of wanting to get into Crystal's pants). They end up going through a bit of a weird subplot where McStud's vet ex tries to call the cops on them, but Louise and McStud comes up with a bullshit story about how the vet ex is a jealous psycho ex-girlfriend, while Lockjaw teleports the Inhumans away. It's kind of dumb, because I don't really give a fuck about McStud's love problems.

Thankfully, the other parts of the cast deliver more decent entertainment as I think this is the first Inhumans episode that actually end up to be somewhat exciting. Gorgon and Karnak are probably the only really likable protagonists in the show, and their little assault against Auran, Mordis and the army of mooks that Maximus recruits from the miners with shit powers. Gorgon and Karnak have to save dr. Declan and Sammy, who, after their rescue, proceeds to bugger out of the plotline... and honestly I wonder if the very uninteresting Louise or Crystal's McStud boyfriend couldn't have been replaced with the far more charismatic and interesting Sammy or Declan. I dunno.

I did like the scene of Karnak trying to unnerve Mordis by telling him how he fought to stop the Council from killing him outright due to his freakishly powerful death-face power, and just as Mordis grows from being a literal plot device gun that Auran points and shoots at anything, as he's starting to be painted as an Inhuman who's imprisoned because the main characters are afraid of his powerful power (Mordis brings up a very excellent point that no one imprisons Black Bolt for his literal whisper-and-a-city-blows-up power) he dies, just like Locus. It's really frustrating that the plot brings up all these absolutely excellent reasons that the Royal Family system is entitled and absolutely shit, but then kills off Locus and Mordis just as they're starting to make their point.

And as Mordis struggles because he refuses to be placed in jail again, Gorgon attacks him, and the two apparently kill each other when Mordis blows up the factory. It seems like an absurdly cheap death, and even if I am not particularly invested in these versions of the Inhumans, it does seem pretty ballsy for them to kill off Gorgon who, despite being a dim hoofed thug in this TV series, is probably as important as Cyclops or Beast is to the X-Men franchise. The death really fails to register on my radar,though. Sure, he's not entirely unlikable, but I've just so little investment in the live-action versions of the Inhumans that I don't particularly care... and the fact that I don't care, when other Marvel material have made me care so much for characters both from the comics and outside the comics is a testament to how absurdly shit the handling of this show has been. 

Again, Iwan Rheon's Maximus is the only character who is consistently somewhat charismatic, even if he goes through yet another plotline of dealing with his own egomania and those who would stand against him. It's repetitive, but at least Rheon delivers a pretty bombastic and anguished speech about how everyone underestimates him, about how nobody respects him. There's a neat subplot with the prophetic Bronaja about how Bronaja himself is conflicted about Maximus' leadership, and kind of doesn't tell Maximus that the High Councilor is trying to assassinate Maximus, and it kinda-sorta works? There's a bit of a too-obvious parallelism thing going as we get an extended sequence of Maximus being cunning and underhanded when Gorgon and Karnak were training him how to fight, which we see reflected in the present day, but it's still not enough to save the show. I did like how Maximus is equal parts sympathetic and psychotic, making him a villain that I understand the motivations of, but still root against.

Except, y'know, the heroes are kind of far more unlikable than Maximus himself, again, another huge failing of the episode. We never  actually see Black Bolt trying to give those of the lower caste of Inhumans a better life, so he's probably a pretty incompetent king. The show also gives us arguments that Locus and Mordis does about the imprisonment both figurative and literal respectively that the Royal Family has unleashed upon them. Anytime we see Gorgon or Karnak interact with Maximus, it's with derision and blatant classism, and Crystal and Medusa consistently act like arrogant entitled people who hide behind one tragedy while they literally live like princesses. Maximus is clearly a villain, but I find it hard to root for the Royal Family at all if we're not given any reason for them maintaining the caste system, or shown any attempts at them abolishing said system. Again, similar to the 'Karnak is a badass motherfucker' example above,  it's another problem of the show in general where thing are neither shown nor told, while we meander around with bullshit plots of them befriending humans.

So yeah. Still a weak episode, although it's probably the strongest Inhumans episode so far... and, obviously, it's not a particularly high bar to clear. It's about to be over, thankfully. 

Inhumans S01E05 Review: Still Shit

Marvel's Inhumans, Season 1, Episode 5: Something Inhuman This Way Comes

(This week's episodes are delayed. Real life stuff has been... unaccomodating.)

Yeah, this episode still isn't good, if you're hoping that Marvel's Inhumans show suddenly makes a breakthrough and decides to tell a good story. Nope, it's still shit. We're still going around the same old story beats we've been doing for the past four episodes. Crystal is still befriending a human and being surprised that humans are nice, and the human surfer dude is all like groovy, man. (How stupid is it for Cyrstal to run around and swim with hunky surfer dude when her family is quite literally in mortal peril?) Karnak is going through a very strange plotline involving drug dealers and the jealous boyfriend of the lady he saves, and he gets to kung-fu-swing a bamboo because of course. Gorgon gets to slam the ground once, and gets some flashbacks to re-establish 'Karnak smort, Gorgon duuumb'. Because we need to be reminded like five times throughout this episode that Karnak is trying to not overthink things the way Gorgon does. God, it's so inelegant.

Also, is anyone even invested in the Karnak/DrugLady romance? I talked a bit when reviewing Netflix's Death Note that sometimes romance subplots are just inserted for the hell of it, but Inhumans makes Death Note look subtle in comparison. And, by god, it's just a stupid subplot by itself. Where Agents of SHIELD, who aren't even allowed by the studio to play with the big-name Inhumans, manages to tell far more engaging stories with the Inhumans on the island of Afterlife and the government and all that stuff... Inhumans instead decides to tell a poorly told story about pot dealers. It's not even a good pot dealer story! 

Oh, and can I just point out how stupid it is that no one ever actually uses their powers, but wer're forced to stick through a 'our heroes are depowered!' storyline? Dude, I barely remember Karnak's powers half the time, and throughout five episodes I think he's used it maybe twice. Medusa reminds us all of her shaved head once more, and continues to act like a prat. I realize she's actually regal and stuff in the comics, but the show certainly isn't doing us any favours with her portrayal. 

Everyone else other than Crystal ends up being reunited because rather conveniently, the one 'evil' inhuman that Black Bolt, Medusa and Stockholm Woman captures has the ability to track other inhumans. And Stockholm Woman, of course, dares to point out that, hey, she wanted to be a doctor but the Council forced her to become a 'lost-item-finder' because her power involves finding things. Black Bolt and Medusa's reaction? "Sob, sob, husband, why can't they see that we're trying to help them, even though we're saying blatantly classist things such as how-dare-you-question-your-king?" Yeah. The show is being absolutely shit at trying to get the Inhuman Royal Family to actually be likable. You can't just expect to feed us "hey, they feel bad but there's nothing they could do" and have us root for them. Oh, and Locus immediately dies, because who cares about one of the few characters with a sympathetic viewpoint on the Atillan culture? Certainly not the show makers.

• Meanwhile, Dr. Declan ends up getting taken hostage by Auran, who regenerates in front of him, and regroups with Mordis who has been spending the entire episode walking around in circles. Or some shit. And Maximus goes through basically the same plotline he did last episode. So yeah. The episode's still shit, and I don't really have much hope that the rest of the series can get any better. I just pity the actors, and hope that if this series gets a second season (which I highly doubt) the actors will actually get to act out a proper script instead of this horrid abomination.

Inhumans S01E04 Review: Medusa's an Asshole

Marvel's Inhumans, Season 1, Episode 4: Make Way For... Medusa

When the dust from episode 3's action-fueled Inhuman-vs-Inhuman fights have settled down and these characters have to actually, y'know, function as characters, things fall sideways again. And in no small part due to how repetitive everything is, how generally unlikable half of the Inhuman royal family is, and how oddly written the human characters are -- honestly, half of the 'human friends' feel like plot devices to help our characters to get where they need, and there's literally no in-story reason for NASA girl to keep helping Medusa so much that she would break so many laws. Medusa has been nothing but queenly and nasty to her up until like the last two minutes of the episode, her whole backstory rant is exposition that doesn't have any bearing on her motivations to help Medusa, and her personality is easily summed up as "long-suffering sidekick". Ditto for Medusa's random flashback and her rant about how "dreams are stupid, ideals are stupid, all we need to survive". It's something that makes me understand the character more, but all it led is to the conclusion that "damn, lady, you're a bitch!"

What else happened in this episode? Gorgon's storyline in trying to convince and now to prevent the Hawaiian natives from helping him to fight Maximus's assassins for the flimsiest of all flimsy reason is still stupid as all get-out, but at least we don't get to see a lot of that, and what little we do see had Gorgon acknowledging how much he fucked up. Maximus himself goes through another repetitive political "kill the Genetic Council" subplot... except didn't we already kill the Genetic Council last episode? Eh. Black Bolt, happy fat Earth-born Inhuman and dr. Evan Declan are fun enough, but they're also mostly just expository to the fact that they'll be able to use Black Bolt's perfect Inhuman DNA to cure the world of all diseases. Also that Declan is actually in league with Maximus without knowing that Maximus is evil or some shit. Black Bolt escapes Declan when he realizes he exchanged one prison for another, fought Mordis, and is reunited with Medusa. Progress!

Medusa, Karnak and Crystal get the brunt of the screentime, and I've already ranted about Medusa. The Crystal scene isn't horrible, but it's still pretty bland and repetitive. She asks some random human to help, apparently the human just knows a vet, and does a lot to help Crystal out, and Crystal now realizes humans aren't evil. It's told in such a dry manner that I cannot give a shit, and the side characters are so wooden that, fuck, I'm supposed to care that the vet and the random dude used to date the vet? Did we need two minutes to exposit that, really? 

Karnak was the worst, though. Sure, I get that he's insecure and shit after apparently having his powers broken, but he spends the entire episode mucking around on the beach with his new marijuana-growing girlfriend, with brain-searingly bad dialogue like "I do it because I want to." Is there any real reason for them to be romantically involved? Was there even any chemistry between the two of them? Do I care that the marijuana girl's boyfriend is jealous and the big cliffhanger is that marijuana girl's boyfriend has killed their other friend? 

So yeah. Other than Black Bolt and Maximus , I honestly find the entire main cast either flat-out unlikable or "why are we doing this scene with these dry characters?" Honestly, I'll be surprised if Inhumans ever got greenlit for a second season. Like, Agents of SHIELD wasn't the most consistently written series, but we lost that for this bullshit? 

The Inhumans S01E03 Review: Disjointed

The Inhumans, Season 1, Episode 2: Divide and Conquer

Episode three [two, because apparently the first two episodes are counted as a single pilot movie] of Marvel's the Inhumans really got to be more and more boring as the scenes ended up feeling like absolutely disjointed material that jump erratically from one character to the next. Half the cast feel like they're just milling around waiting until other characters does something else, and splitting the cast apart into the world really doesn't do much when the show repeats the same old "oh no strangers from another world in our world, and they don't understand!" spiel over and over again, and it's absolutely uninteresting having every single character befriend a different human over and over.

The weakest part of it all has to be Gorgon, who is a character whose personality boils down to 'rawr me fight!' Add that to the horrid lines that the script gives him, and the absolutely what-the-fuck-ery of Gorgon's surfer buddies randomly deciding to fight for Gorgon's king because they... are ex-military? And also used to serve a king? That sounds absolutely half-baked as an excuse. God, Gorgon and the surfers are a horrifyingly bad scene that genuinely hurts me when I watched it. They are assaulted by Auran, who gets sent a bunch of new reinforcements of random Inhuman troops, including Flora (whose powers involve opening a pathway through a jungle that's honestly not even that dense) and Mortus, who's supposed to be this scary death dealing steel monster with glowy eyes, but looks like a cheaply-costumed Kamen Rider enemy, whose powers is basically that of Cyclops. (This won't be the only time I'll compare Inhumans to other better-written superheroes).

Thankfully, the subsequent fight scenes between Gorgon's army of surfer soldiers and Auran's army of Inhumans are a bit more colourful, bringing a bit of excitement to the episode. 

The rest of the other Earth-bound Inhumans are honestly just kind of crap, though. Ken Leung tries his best to portray Karnak as this conflicted person whose powers of planning-ahead ends up not working after his head injury. I think it's supposed to be a tender moment when he confesses to the marijuana lady about how he's made mistakes and he's unsure, but honestly that's not particularly impressive or really makes me care about the character, especially since I don't get the train of thought that leads him to want to stay with the weed dudes who tied him up and were discussing to kill him. Medusa spends the entire episode wandering around confused, ordering ATMs to give her money (which is just pathetic rather than funny -- if Thor and Wonder Woman has taught me anything, you need to have the bombast and hamminess to back up the absurdity of doing something like this), breaks into a house to steal their stuff, and then follows a newspaper to where Black Bolt.

Black Bolt, at least, this time around, doesn't look constipated all the time (that moment with the chess piece is the type of voiceless acting that the actor needs to do more), but he meets Sammy the Inhuman, who, very, very coincidentally for him, is in the same prison as him and is working with one doctor Evan Declan (Henry Ian Cusick, another Lost alumnus) who is apparently a friend to the Inhumans. For some reason. We get to see Black Bolt beat the crap out of some jackass policemen in a prison, and Sammy playing alongside Black Bolt makes him have someone to interact with, and that's a lot better for the character.

There's the plotline with the police officer wanting to throw Black Bolt into gen pop to get people to beat him up and get him to talk, because apparently these policemen have never heard of mute people before.

In Atillan, the royalty plot is absolutely bland and uninteresting. The show genuinely has some good setup with Maximus wanting to abolish the caste system but going through some evil shit to ensure it, while giving us the backstory of how Maximus is basically discarded because he's a human, while the destructive Black Bolt gets the love of their parents because he's an Inhuman... but then proceeds to do nothing with it, continuing to portray Maximus as a card-carrying megalomaniacal tyrant. Crystal also ends up being a generic rebel lady (who, thanks to the dialogue she's given, feels so much like a little brat instead of the independent young woman she's supposed to be), who escapes... and Maximus paints Crystal as someone running from her problems despite, y'know, the lady being in obvious distress. Crystal manages to escape to Earth with Lockjaw, and some dickwad proceeds to run over the big dog, leading to -sigh- yet another inevitable Inhuman-befriends-human moment. God damn, I've seen 80's cartoons with more predictable plot points than this.

Oh, yeah. Mysterious Evan Declan doctor. And the lady that Medusa meets, who's around since the pilot... Louise, I think? She's a generic investigator lady, and I do mean generic in all sense of the world.

It's definitely a better episode than the first two, but that's not much of an achievement. The show is still hurt by haphazard pacing, unlikable protagonists (Medusa and Karnak are easily the worst of the bunch at this point), and a very, very repetitive plot. We did get a whole lot of new characters introduced who then proceeds to be generic humans or faceless grunts. At least we got the Gorgon/Auran fight, and the backstory flashback. That was decent. Overall, still pretty blah of a show. 

The Inhumans S01E01-02 Review: Rotten Tomatoes

Marvel's the Inhumans, Season 1, Episode 1: Behold the Inhumans; Episode 2: Those Who Would Destroy Us

Marvel's Inhumans has had a pretty troubled journey. From the debut of the Inhuman race in their first TV show, Agents of SHIELD, the producers of that show aren't allowed to use any of the actual Inhuman characters or the moon-city of Atillan, because they're going to be important for an Inhumans movie down the line. So Agents of SHIELD had this weird thing going on where they had to tell an Inhuman story over the course of multiple seasons, but have to make up their own Inhumans as they go. Obviously that's because the real Inhumans movie is going to be super-spectacular, right? It turns out... no, not really. Marvel has been flip-flopping on whether the Inhumans are going to be a movie or a TV show like several times and the end result is both (a TV show whose first two episodes are shown in IMAX cinemas) and that sounds like a pretty momentous occasion... except it's a bit of a dud. Well, not a bit of a dud. It's fucking bad is what it is. 

Marvel Studios hasn't really produced anything that's flat-out bad other than maybe Iron Fist. Even messes like Age of Ultron or some parts of Agents of SHIELD always carried them either great action scenes or neat comedic beats. But the first two episodes of Inhumans carried neither. 

The concept of the Inhumans is that they are a secret society of super-powered beings descended from alien experimentation that live on a secret city in a moon, with a royal family and everything. Considering everything in superhero comic books, the premise is weird but weird premises and wacky characters can make for good stories nonetheless. Just look at Guardians of the Galaxy and X-Men for other Marvel groups of wacky characters that ended up being amazing. So, no, it's not the premise that makes the premiere of Marvel's Inhumans kinda bad, it's the execution.

Now I'm going to be charitable and try and judge Inhumans as its own thing. Judging it as being an installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going to be too hard. Nevermind that the Inhumans have actually been featured before in Agents of SHIELD and is subsequently ignored beyond a handwave-y "oh, those other impure dudes our ancestors left on earth?" Nevermind that no one seems to care that they live in a world where superheroes show up every other month (the Netflix shows, despite being far more down-to-earth, are great at showing civilians acknowledging they live in a superhero world). 

But the Inhumans is just filled with poor pacing and absolutely crummy dialogue, and all the characters feel like cardboard cutouts with not much of a personality. We go from a generic government-chase-powered-people prologue as one of the agents of the Inhumans, Triton, is seemingly killed, and then we just go breakneck and introduce all the main characters -- Black Bolt, Medusa, Maximus the Mad, Gorgon, Karnak, Crystal and Lockjaw. And, Lockjaw aside (being a big CGI adorable dog and easily the best part of the two episodes) everyone doesn't look good at all. Apparently it's even worse in the IMAX version where some of the CGI is unfinished, but considering how much better even the early seasons of Agents of SHIELD looks... yeah. Medusa's cheap-looking purple dress and her horrifyingly bad CGI hair is the biggest offender here, but a lot of the other guys don't look like superheroes or an alien culture, they just look like they shop at a particularly weird hipster clothes shop. Like, I watched some old low-budget sci-fi shows in my time. I played through some N64 games. Bad graphics doesn't essentially kill a piece of fiction, if it delivers in every other aspect. But here? The minimal-effort costumes is just another symptom of a pretty dire show.

And they just move from scene to scene pretty lifelessly. Oh, here's a ceremony of the terrigenesis. Oh, here's the slums. Oh, here is Maximus being shifty. Oh, here is Maximus telling Medusa outright that he loves her like a lovesick puppy. Oh, here is Maximus pulling a coup. Oh, here is Lockjaw depositing the royal family on different parts of Hawaii for no real reason. There's a significant lack of wit or logic to it all, no subtlety at all, and it's particularly frustrating because I know that the actors involved are pretty talented. Game of Thrones's Iwan Rheon and Lost's Ken Leung, playing Maximus and Karnak respectively, are given so little material to work with, saddled with paper-thin characters acting out crappy scenes. The two of them, as well as the lady who plays Crystal, are the only decent actors in the whole thing, and even then they're not quite enough to save the show.

Like, I'm going to try to get through the main characters and plotlines, but there's just so few to unpack. The setup of Atillan is pretty shit, we're just told that, hey, there's this city on the moon! Filled with powered people! And they have a very shitty racist attitude and segregate those who don't get powers into basically slave labour! The king's brother, Maximus, a powerless Inhuman himself, makes no real attempts to hide how this is bullshit and basically wants to move the Inhuman population to Earth, but no one gives a shit about him. He stages a takeover, is creepily obsessed romantically with his brother's wife, and is creepy to his sister-in-law who he takes hostage. Being played by Iwan Rheon makes him creepy enough at times, but it's really not enough to make him interesting. They really could've made the society and kingship stuff be intriguing, but when compared to Thor, it's just so devoid of any nuance to it. There's a random prophetic Inhuman kid that Maximus befriends, he kills some of the high council... and it's very bland all the while he's doing it.

Our supposed protagonists, with the exception of the gigantic adorable teleporting dog Lockjaw, are all even less interesting. There's Black Bolt, our supposed main character, who's supposed to be mute because a single whisper from him can shatter cities and shit, but all this ends up doing is make him look super-constipated. And considering how much Thor (again) and Wonder Woman milked the 'fish-out-of-water' trope for funsies, Black Bolt's time in human society just makes him look like a total moron, with absolutely bad-looking acting that makes him look either bored or a dumbass. 

Medusa... gets shaved. She's Black Bolt's love interest. Maximus also wants to bang her. There's some weird backstory where Black Bolt's parents killed her parents or some shit? She's a bit screechy and doesn't really have much to her. And her costume looks cheap. And because the animators apparently don't want to animate her hair, after some blah hair-whip scenes, Maximus's people shaves her head bald, which... kinda makes sense, but it makes her kind of look silly and loses her iconic look from the comics. Her declaration of love to Black Bolt and vowing to find him should probably be a huge touching moment, but the scene's just bad.

Her sister Crystal's costume is a bit better, but she, too, doesn't have much to her. Maximus confronts her with how she really should side with him, since she should understand the injustices the royal family commits, but it's just a series of "join me" "no!" "okay then" scenes that's just so dry. But at least Crystal's decent, not flat-out bad like Medusa or Gorgon. 

The other members, Karnak and Gorgon, are respectively 'snarky dude' and 'rawr me smash dude' respectively. Gorgon stomps the ground and hangs out with surfers, and delivers some cringe-worthy moments. Karnak can like calculate the fighting moves or some shit, I dunno. Leung's Karnak at least manages to offer some genuinely funny lines.

There's Lockjaw, too, who's cute but doesn't do much. There's Auran, Maximus's main enforcer, who suffices well as a scary fighter lady. There's a dude that's literally a speaking door. There's also Triton, who does jack-all but get blown up.

The thing is... we don't actually know any of these characters. Throughout two episodes of the Inhumans, some 70+ minutes, we don't really know these guys as characters. There are some historical backstory thrown around, some very poorly-presented monologues and some bad dialogue, but really, I struggle to think of anything to say about Black Bolt beyond "mute dude", or Medusa beyond "hair lady". Honestly, even with its spotty quality and making up random dudes for their version of Inhumans, I'd watch a show with Agents of SHIELD's Inhumans any day. It's like they took Thor's whole 'jealous little brother prince takes over the crown' plot, slapped it to a generic X-Men plot, and sucked out all the joy out of it.

That's not to mention all the horrid editing and nonsensical plotlines. Why did Lockjaw bring everyone to different places? Why did the police officers allow Black Bolt to listen to Medusa yammer on his weird alien phone for like ten minutes? Why did Crystal send everyone to Earth even though the whole point of the Royal Family's decree is to not go to Earth? Why would you give your king, who can't talk, a phone that doesn't have a texting function built into it?

Also, why are we rooting for Black Bolt's royal family, anyway? They enforce a rule that segregates anyone who doesn't show an impressive power to slave labour, and even the supposedly innocent-and-likable-young-girl Crystal goes all "you're a human, ewww" and Karnak and Gorgon all make fun of how Maximus isn't a real Inhuman. Hell, Maximus himself admits that only his status as the king's brother makes him exempt from being a slave. Honestly, if the show didn't make Maximus so murder-happy (for no real reason) I'm high-pressed to root against him.

It's honestly pretty disastrous, the costumes look like barely-serviceable cosplay and the dialogue look like they're made for a particularly stilted 80's cartoon. It's very easily worse than Iron Fist, a show I already dislike (and with Finn Jones's far superior performance in Defenders, it's clear that it's not the actor's problem but the writers and filmmaker) and easily the weakest part of the MCU by a huge, huge margin. Apparently the guy directing Inhumans is the same guy that directed Iron Fist, which... why? Just why? Marvel kind of wants to use the Inhumans as a counter to X-Men, who they don't have the film rights to, but honestly Inhumans is so, so bad in writing, pacing, dialogue, action and visuals that I genuinely find it hard to really find anything positive about this.