Pilot The New World

SPOILER WARNING

If you have not seen the first episodes of Sinbad or Primeval: New World, please leave the blog and come back after you've seen them. My reviews usually contain spoilers.

However, if you'd like to skip the reviews and jump down to my Altador Cup Update and Housekeeping sections, please feel free to do so. Happy Reading!

Sinbad - "Pilot" - Review

Sinbad is essentially the tale of a kid who got himself into trouble with a high-ranking official of some sort and his own overly harsh grandmother. It's also another one-season show that SyFy is airing and sort of attempting to pass off as one of their shows... at least, that's the gist of what I gleaned from the commercials. I didn't know that Sinbad wasn't a SyFy show until I checked its Wiki Page and found out that it wasn't. This summer's Saturday evening schedule is essentially made up of a pair of shows that have already been cancelled by the people who originally made them... gah!

But I just digressed down a rabbit hole so... back on track here...

I wasn't overly impressed by the "Pilot" episode of Sinbad. It was a lot of setup and not a lot of actual goings on. I'm not overly fond of or really connected to any of the characters, most of whom end up discarded halfway through the episode. It's really important to me to be able to connect with the characters because if they care about things that are going on, I will. But... this didn't happen. I'm not even sure who half the characters are, at this point.

But yeah... plot point, plot points... Lord Akbari is cruel and insane. Sinbad's grandmother is crazy and overly harsh. Akbari's witch friend is... obviously up to something but hasn't really given her motivations. The crew of the ship Sinbad ends up on are apparently mostly dead... or something... and I'm not surprised at this point that Sinbad got cancelled.

The "Pilot" takes too much time getting Sinbad to where he ends up at the end of the episode. I feel like this episode could have been better done as flashbacks. That said, the effects realizing the "sea demon" were stellar. I'm not sure why it was blind, but... meh. I'm gonna keep watching and see if Sinbad gets better.

Primeval: New World - "The New World" - Review

Before I get into reviewing "The New World" I thought I'd give a little background on my history with Primeval. I pretty much marathon-ed Seasons 1-3 on DVD while I was living in Iowa. I fell almost instantly in love with Connor, Abby, Claudia, and Rex. They're what drew me into the show and kept me watching. Well, that and the premise was interesting. I sort of forgot about Primeval for a whole until I found it again on OnDemand. I then marathon-ed Seasons 4 and 5 before re-watching the entire series with my little sister. I had no idea Primeval: New World existed until I was catching up on Defiance two weeks ago. I saw the trailer, saw Connor was at least making a cameo, and decided to watch Primeval: New World as it's airing on SyFy.

And now for the blanket SPOILER WARNING. Because I'm a big fan of Primeval, I will be making references to it. If you read through my Initial Reactions last night, you'll have seen some of those. I'll also probably be comparing the two a bit. I'll try to keep that to a minimum, though. Now, on to my review.

I thought "The New World" was... a pilot. There were elements from the original show I recognized, but a cast I largely didn't. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about Primeval: New World yet. I'll keep watching and let you know as I go along.

As of right now, I feel next to no connection to any of the characters. I know I'm not really fond of Angelika. I have no feelings towards Mac or Toby. I thought Lieutenant Leeds was a Connor/Mulder type character down in his little office. I honestly didn't recognize Sara Canning as Dylan until my sister pointed out that she played Jenna in The Vampire Diaries. I kind of like her, but she seriously reminds me of Claudia Brown/Jenny Lewis from Primeval looks-wise. Evan Cross was a tad more relatable, but then, I was really fond of Zane Donovan, the character Niall Matter played on Eureka. So... that's where I stand with the PNW characters.

The plot was your standard "Oh there's this weird thing that spits out monsters that we must find before the monsters eat everybody" kind of plot. I think Primeval did it better. It was less cohesive in PNW and had some less than believable characters so... there's that.

So, about Connor. As I stated before, Connor Temple was one of the characters that sucked me into Primeval. I felt like, the Connor we're getting in PNW either had something really, really bad happen to him between Primeval and PNW or else the writers haven't really written for him before and aren't sure how to write him effectively. He was a lot more serious and mysterious than he manages to come off anywhere in Primeval. The only time we get a glimpse of Primeval Connor is when he's trying to convince Angelika that he's there to "fix the internet from being slow." Hopefully, as the trailer showed Connor again, we'll get more backstory on what happened to get him to Canada.

So yeah, that's pretty much what I thought about "The New World." Not exactly sure where the series is gonna go from here. It'd doubtful they'll become another ARC. It's also unclear was to who the frozen person is that Evan's got hidden. I kind of want to know about that. Again, I'll keep watching and let you know.

Altador Cup Update

At some point last week there was a bracket shake up and so pretty much everyone's in a different bracket now. Shenkuu is now in the Alabriss Bracket. We're currently ranked fifth and are doing kind of horribly overall. We've been managing to grab some wins with the mini-games, but when if comes to Yooyuball, we're sucking gigantically.

Also, the Staff Tournament has started up so go pick your teams for that. That's all you have to do: pick your team.

Housekeeping

Tomorrow is Warehouse 13 and Defiance day! I'll be putting up my Initial Reactions for Warehouse 13 tomorrow evening and will most likely have reviews up Tuesday. Gonna hold off on posting my Fringe, Season 3 review until later in the week, though.

Love ya, Jessie.