Summary: Steven works at a gift shop and is gunning for a promotion that he doesn't get. He starts having black-outs and ends up in possession of a scarab. A man he encountered, Harrow, is after the scarab. Steven learns he is sharing a body with Marc who has a wife Layla. He also has special powers as the avatar of Khonshu. Steven gives the scarab to Layla and is captured by Harrow's men. Harrow reveals that he wants to the scarab to revive Ammit. Layla comes to save him but Harrow gets the scarab. Steven and Layla track Harrow to Egypt and they find the tomb, but Khonshu gets sealed away. In the tomb, Marc is shot by Harrow who gets Ammit. Marc dies and traverses the Egyptian afterlife, but he finds a way to come back. Harrow resurrects Ammit and Layla revives Khonshu. Khonshu returns to Marc and Layla becomes Taweret's avatar. Layla and Marc fight Harrow and defeat him. Ammit gets sealed away again. Marc and Steven reject Khonshu, but Khonshu remains with them in their third personality, Jake.
The Good: Oscar Isaac's performance is the best thing about this show. What makes this more impressive is that this is not an easy role to play, but Oscar Isaac nailed it consistently in every difficult scene. He's playing three completely different characters and he shifts between them all seamlessly when he needs to. It's remarkable that just through his facial expressions alone, we can tell which character he is playing. Steven and Marc are brought to life by such a compelling performance and I thoroughly enjoyed these characters. The mystery of who Steven is builds up nicely in the early episodes. It was engaging to learn about Marc, and Steven's confusion and fear upon learning about his other half was terrific. Again, I have to give full credit to Oscar Isaac for portraying this so well. The early episodes were good because of the performance and my genuine interest in uncovering the mystery of what's going on. Things were less interesting once the questions were answered (see: The Bad), but these opening episodes were engaging and fun. Steven and Marc became interesting characters to learn about, and they carried the emotional core of the series, with the best work on these characters coming out in the terrific fifth episode "Asylum". "Asylum" felt like a gamechanging episode. While that did not quite pan out, it remains a gripping experience. Steven has been so likeable with his innocent hopefulness, sense of humour, and nervous body language. But Marc was boring because of his simplistic cold, hard exterior. This episode pulled back the curtain on Marc and reveals to us why this character is so cold and emotionally distant, allowing us to connect more with him. His hidden trauma was beautifully realized and surprisingly deep-rooted. It's easy to feel sympathy for him and understand him as we see the extent of his struggles. This episode was again elevated by Oscar Isaac who had the tough ask of showing the reactions of both Marc and Steven to Marc's traumatic past. Both characters react wildly differently, and Oscar Isaac captured this range tremendously while still maintaining the different ticks of each character. The episode also featured a curious storyline that took place in a psych ward, offering up an interesting alternate reality that made us question what reality even was. This made for an engaging out-of-body experience that was the creative highlight of this series. Another thing that helps this show is how well directed it is. Every episode has great shots, transitions, and editing. There is real creativity in how the show looks and that helps make it much more watchable and interesting. There are some dynamic shots in every episode, and I loved the clever ways that the show illustrated Steven talking to Marc. I also loved the original musical score and the song choices. They fit the style of the show very well and the music always complimented and bettered the story. The Bad: Much of my praise is centered around Oscar Isaac, which means that the natural consequence of that is underdeveloped side characters. Layla has cool moments and May Calamawy does well, but the character is uninteresting and nothing can save that. Her relationship with Marc was never developed and the show did not do anything of substance with her. All she was given was a bunch of half-baked story ideas that were never utilized to the fullest. The story with her father, the weird love triangle with Steven and Marc, and becoming Taweret's avatar were all half-baked ideas that never got the time they needed to stick. The show sloppily hashed these ideas together, and the result is a character that does not have much merit to her. Harrow fares even worse. Harrow is every bit as boring as I had feared. Again, the show touches on unique ideas like Harrow's devotion to Ammit's belief of the scales, and his relationship with Khonshu. But none of these ideas go anywhere, and Harrow gradually devolves as the series goes on, ultimately becoming another uninspired, two-dimensional villain who exists specifically so that Marc and Layla have someone to fight at the end. Action itself is not interesting. We need emotional investment to make the action interesting, and Harrow's boring character never accomplished that emotional investment. On the topic of having too many ideas, the whole show is trying to balance too many ideas and ends up fumbling most of it. The main focus of this show is to be an MCU show (which brings about a host of problems I'll discuss later), but it also tries to parody tomb raider movies, incorporate Egyptian mythology, tell a story about a character with DID, and explore themes of justice, among many other things. This is far too much, and that results in these ideas being half-bakes and uninteresting. The Egyptian mythology especially suffers and can't help but feel tacked on. None of the Egyptian ideas are explored enough to feel meaningful and memorable. It may be cool to see a show with Egyptian themes, but if you take them away, the show won't suffer any loss in quality because of how extraneous these ideas are. The gods are bland, especially Khonshu and Ammit who are significant characters in this story. And yet I felt nothing for them, and the themes of justice that they represented were never explored in meaningful ways. The gods were another flat inclusion into a show that did not need them. It's sad to say that the gods are not necessary in this story because they feel like they should be. But the truth is that they play zero role in the emotional story of the season and are not necessary. I feel the same way about many ideas in this show. There is so much going on here, none of it feels important, and the show fails to establish an identity for itself by failing to manage its ideas properly. Episode 3, "The Friendly Type" is the one that suffered the most from the show not having its own identity figured out. By this point the show was promising to be a mature action thriller with a compelling main character dealing with DID. But this third episode completely screwed that up by introducing too many ideas. It tried to be a fast paced adventure film out of nowhere, and left behind the interesting ideas that had been brought up in the previous episodes. Instead it focused on a silly love triangle story, an adventure movie plot, and played up its campiness rather than the maturity that it was promising. Add in more of those half-baked Egyptian themes and the episode was an uninteresting mess of ideas that went nowhere. This episode encapsulated all of my biggest issues with the show: it was boring, uninteresting, rushed, and packed with far too many half-baked ideas. I feel like a broken record by this point, but another MCU show has fallen victim to the usual trappings. You can read my previous reviews of "WandaVision", "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier", and "Hawkeye" if you don't know what I'm talking about by now, but the same problems persisted in this show. Tonal issues, shallow exploration of themes, over-emphasis of bland action scenes, and a terrible final act all happened again in this show. It's frustrating to watch so many shows that have these exact same issues, and it's like Disney is not even trying to do anything creative or new to improve the boring formulaic nature in these TV shows. I am growing weary of it, and it's frustrating to devote 6 weeks of my time to watching a show that doesn't offer anything that I couldn't have gotten in a 2-3 hour movie. Best Episodes: E04 The Tomb: A fun tomb raider inspired experience with an excellent twist ending. E05 Asylum: This was a unique experience, as we follow Marc and Steven through their confused reality as the show dove deep and found a compelling narrative in Steven learning about Marc's traumatic childhood. This was by far the best content in the show. Worst Episodes: E03 The Friendly Type: This episode felt like a waste of time. It was driven by an extremely bland and generic plot, and offered nothing of substance. E06 Gods and Monsters: A typical, boring MCU finale that failed to satisfy me. We need to have better finales to these shows. Character of the Season: Steven. He's so much fun. Conclusion: This was certainly another Marvel show. Familiar problems and squeezing in too many ideas in too short of a time hurt this show badly and made it nothing special. But there is stuff to enjoy here, particularly Oscar Isaac's outstanding lead performance as Marc and Steven. I had some fun in this show, as is expected of the MCU, but this show doesn't succeed enough at what it tries to do to stand out and be something special like "Loki" was. This is a fine show, and nothing more.
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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