Intro: This is the first of my new season-based review format. It will be structured very similar to my typical episode-by-episode reviews, just without a score at the end. For each individual episode I will be typing up much briefer reviews which will all be going up in the next few days.
The Good: Now that I'm at the end of the season, I can comfortably say that the main character is the strongest thing about this show. Ragnar Lothbrok is such a memorable, charismatic and exciting character to watch on screen. Admittedly, I was very off-put by him at first. I didn't ever fully understand his motives or intentions, so the character frustrated me for the first few episodes. But once I got more familiar with him, I realized that I had been expecting the wrong things from Ragnar. What I had thought was his biggest weakness was actually his biggest strength. With each episode, I grew to love Ragnar's wild unpredictability more and more, and I began to be thrilled by Ragnar's various mannerisms and spontaneous decision-making. The more I learned about Ragnar, the better it fit him. He's a character who is incredibly intelligent for his time, but he's also a big believer in fate and lets it guide his way in numerous moments, such as his decision to take on Athelstan as a slave. It makes no sense for him to make these choices, but that's precisely why he makes these decisions; they are a result of a gut feeling. I haven't seen a TV show present its main character as somebody outside of the audience's point of view. The show has never let us in on what Ragnar is thinking, and he consistently feels like an outside perspective to us despite being the character we are supposed to relate to the most. It's a very unconventional approach and it has no right being as fun and enjoyable to watch as it is. This has to be credited to Travis Fimmel's wonderful performance, as he really brings Ragnar's charisma and charm to life in a most engaging way, making every second with him utterly fascinating. Outside of Ragnar, things aren't quite as good but they still work. The side characters have nice variety to them, and the performances are consistent throughout the show. I enjoyed Floki's unhinged performance, which reminded me of the strange, yet oddly mesmerizing mannerisms of Jack Sparrow. Lagertha is another really solid character. I'm pleased to see that she isn't just a generic wife character, instead having a lot of toughness and inner strength which befits the Viking culture that we were introduced to. I also enjoyed other characters like Rollo and Athelstan for the character variety they provided, even though I thought their character arcs weren't very well done. The show wasn't primarily built around characters though. In fact, whenever the show slowed down and was reliant on its characters to provide the drama, it got substantially weaker. Where this show shines brightest is when there's plenty of action. Everyone watching this show knows what they want to see: Vikings doing Viking things like pillage and plunder while getting a unique look at their culture. And when the show is doing that, it's very entertaining. The best parts of the show came whenever the Vikings were off raiding in England, allowing us to see the characters do what they do best, while being portrayed as animalistic demons to the people of Northumbria. It's remarkably entertaining to see the Vikings destroying the English men, and it creates a very unique sense of emotional investment since the Vikings are doing horrible things from a moral perspective, yet they are still the heroes of this story. It ends up being a dissociative experience for the viewer who will find themselves rooting for things that typically aren't what they would believe to be morally correct. The action's unique, it's thrilling and it's memorable. It's what the show does best. As for the rest of the show, several little things are done well. The exploration of Viking culture is pretty accurate from what I can tell, and I really appreciate details like an explanation for how they were able to navigate the open seas to maintain a western course to land in England. I thought the set design, costumes, make-up, and overall presentation of the Vikings was really well done. Despite not actually being set in Scandinavia (the show was shot in Ireland), the setting felt like it belonged in Scandinavia due to some really inspired cinematography and camera work. The show was incredibly well put together and it's clear that there was a lot of effort put into making the show look impressive. The Bad: But the show isn't quite clicking yet. I'm having fun with it, but I'm not properly invested in the characters or the story. There was a distinct lack of an emotional investment in most of the episodes in the show, and the only times I was really engaged in what was happening was during the raids to England, which only happened in 2 episodes. I never got emotionally invested in what was happening on screen, even with Ragnar who I praised so heavily in "The Good". I enjoyed the character only on a very basic level, and the show never threatened to make me truly care about what's going on with him. And outside of Ragnar, the show didn't even come close to making me care about the story or characters. Nobody had that extra depth or likeability about them that made me care about their inner conflict and their fate. After 1 season, I'm still feeling indifferent to every one of these characters and that's a problem. I enjoy seeing them on screen and it passes the time well for me, but I simply don't care about what happens to them. The structure of the episodes did not help the show at all. The pacing of this show is downright terrible most of the time and there were numerous times when the show's surprise time-jumps really took me out of what was happening. The show somehow managed to jump through time at the worst points every time, and it often did not even signal that time had passed, and it was unclear how much time had passed. The only indicator we had was Athelstan's ever-changing hair, which is unreliable at best. There are numerous episodes that I thought were destroyed by having time jumps randomly in the middle. At times when the show should have been exploring the fall-out of key story moments, it instead opted to jump months into the future, leaving a bunch of interesting story beats unexplored and underdeveloped. I'll be addressing more specific examples of this in my episode-by-episode reviews. As I hinted at before, I thought that some of the side character storylines were very sloppily executed. One of the biggest flops of the season was the arc of Athelstan. There wasn't a single episode where I bought into the character's inner change because I never got to see it happen. The show would hint at these developments, but the character would end up growing off screen. As a result, I never bought into his transformation and whenever the show tried to center the drama around Athelstan, I could not bring myself to care about it. I felt disconnected with the character's journey because I didn't get to see any of it. Rollo was another poorly handled character. He had the most repetitive arc in the show, where every episode seemed to have Rollo reach a crossroads where he could stay by Ragnar's side or pursue his own future. And the conflict was the exact same every time, and in most cases the situations were almost exactly the same too. It became so dull to see the character make the same choice time and time again. The kicker came at the end of the season when Rollo finally chooses to turn on Ragnar. The problem is that there is nothing at all that convinces Rollo to make a different decision. There's no special build-up, no extra depth to the character being explored that highlights why Rollo chose differently. There's no drama to be had, no exploration of the character, no fascination regarding what has changed in his relationship with Ragnar to make Rollo want to turn against him. It's indicative of the fact that Rollo should have turned against Ragnar ages ago, and that it made no sense for the character to stay in Ragnar's shadow. There is nothing that Borg tells Rollo that he doesn't already know, so I found myself confused by why Rollo decided to abandon Ragnar now rather than before. It's not good storytelling. Haraldson's story was another disappointing one. The character was acted well and on paper it's a good story about a proud character whose flaws bring about his downfall. But in execution it is remarkably flat. It feels obvious that Ragnar will ultimately defeat Haraldson to take his position as Earl, so it's easy to dismiss Haraldson as a dead man as early as episode 2. As a result, it's hard to invest in the character knowing that he will likely die soon, and the ensuing conflict between him and Ragnar is about as predictable and uninspired as it gets. The character of Haraldson unfortunately isn't executed well either. The character's motivations are never expressed until the episode where he dies, making it difficult to invest in him and his plight. Furthermore, the way we learn more about him is so sloppy and uninspired: it's a simple monologue featuring clunky dialogue in a very basic attempt to make us feel for the character before he dies. The character of Haraldson never connected with me and I found his entire arc to be a pretty big waste of time in a season that could have used more time spent on the characters that would be surviving through to the end. Lastly, I thought that this show had a ton of missed potential in its individual storylines. There are plenty of episode's that had really promising stories on paper, but flopped spectacularly due to various reasons. Be it uninspired writing (Haraldson's death episode), wonky pacing (Ragnar becoming the Earl, time jumps in the middle of episodes early in the season), or poor execution of character arcs (Athelstan, Rollo), it felt like there were always several big problems that would ruin the story that the episode was trying to tell. The Unknown: I have a few questions going into season 2. Will Ragnar actually leave Lagertha? How will Bjorn react to this? Will there be strife between Lagertha and Aslaug? Where will this Ragnar vs Rollo conflict go? Will Ragnar remain loyal to King Horik? Who is going to win the conflict between Horik and Borg? How will Ragnar react to Rollo's betrayal? Will there be any fighting before Ragnar's party leaves Borg's encampment? Best Episodes: E02 The Wrath of the Northmen: This episode makes it because of the fantastic sequence of the Vikings murdering the monks remorselessly. It's a shocking sequence that makes you question if the people you are watching are worthy of being the good guys in this story. E07 A King's Ransom: This episode was excellent. It was action-packed and kickstarted a thrilling conflict between Ragnar and King Aelle. A really memorable and fun episode overall. Worst Episodes: E04 Trial: This episode embodied all of the frustrating character arcs of the show, including Haraldson's predictability, Rollo's repetitiveness and Athelstan's disjointedness. At least the episode had some good action. E06 Burial of the Dead: Another frustrating episode with countless time jumps that provided the predictable (and thus completely unsatisfying) conclusion of Haraldson's arc. Character of the Season: Ragnar. Conclusion: I came into this show with low expectations. I just wanted to see Vikings be Vikings. And for the most part, that's all I got. The show had some pleasant surprises like the uniqueness of Ragnar, but for the most part it was what I expected. Flat character drama surrounding some pretty cool action sequences. I did enjoy a few parts of the show and I thought it was visually impressive, but the show failed in executing a lot of the character drama it attempted and that really hurt its quality. This first season was an okay start to the show. It was watchable, but very flawed and never got me really excited to watch more. I will hope that season 2 corrects some of these flaws, but I don't think that "Vikings" is a show that can ever be truly great. The potential just isn't there unfortunately. But for what it's worth, this is fine enough junk food television.
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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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