Jun 19, 2019
The concept was great. Maybe some part of it was a bit over the top (I personally thought could've done better without the supernatural element -- but maybe it would gain importance in coming seasons), but I think the concept of the show was great. And like many other shows with a good concept, Promised Neverland ruins it all with awful execution.
There are things that Promise Neverland executes quite well -- the premise, concept, environment, characters are all laid down in the first two episodes, and this is what it builds on throughout the series. And all the aforementioned elements are quite interesting; no new
...
elements are ever introduced in the show.
And that is where the praise ends, unfortunately, because the execution that the show does with those elements is just awful. Until the tenth episode, we never really get to the meat of the plot, "the plan" except for a few minutes in a couple of episodes. For all these episodes the series meanders around the main plot, with sub-plot, in-group drama and other such trivialities.
The show pulls off many parlour tricks that really cheapen its quality. The tricks sometime get so awful -- characters are put into dangerous places, and the next scene shows them running away. How did they escape? That's a question you're not supposed to ask. The door is opening...who could it be? Oh, never mind, just a little guy playing hide-n-seek. She's standing outside the door with a knife...is she going to kill someone? Never mind, the knife is just to open a letter. Such cheap tricks are littered throughout the show that made me go "Gee, stop it, I'm not impressed, and get to the effin' point!"
The last two episodes are the ones that are utterly abysmal. Deus Ex Machina galore, character inconsistencies to propel the plot, and awful plot "twists". What infuriated me the most about the plot was the story managed to make the situation of the characters worse and worse, more difficult to overcome as it progressed. While usually I admire this, when in the end you use Deus Ex Machina to make them overcome the impossibly difficult situation you've put them in, the viewers feel betrayed. Throughout, the show meanders around the main crux of the story, and at the end it's revealed all of them had an elaborate plan that they were hiding from the viewer just for fun! And at the end when they succeed with this plan, just when you think it can't get any worse...it does. We are now blessed with a backstory of the Mom. This might surprise you, but not all characters need to have a backstory -- this was a case where she clearly did not. Not only that, we also get a twist that just doesn't match with any of previous character interactions.
Foreshadowing is something that this show apparently isn't aware exists. I wouldn't really mind so much if they had at least dropped some hints about this huge elaborate plan before -- if they wanted to keep it from the viewers for the "big reveal". But none of the "twists" in the series were ever foreshadowed by anything. That is precisely the mark of bad plot twists.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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