A quick review of the “Magic City” season finale coming up just as soon as I fight a flashbulb with a flashbulb…
I wasn’t particularly fond of “Magic City” after watching the first three episodes, but I stuck it out through the remaining five hours because I liked Jeffrey Dean Morgan, I enjoyed the show’s visual style, and because I hoped Mitch Glazer’s execution would come to match his ambition in time.
Unfortunately, I didn’t see a whole lot of improvement over the course of the season. I did my best to ignore certain things that weren’t working (Steven Strait’s performance as Stevie in particular), but other aspects (the tedious, cliché-riddled murder investigation) were too prominent to completely tune out of. I still liked Morgan and Olga Kurylenko and a few of the other performances, but I never connected to any of these characters, could usually spot plot developments coming a mile away (was there any way Victor’s wife wasn’t going to be gunned down trying to escape Cuba?) and didn’t feel the show was getting either deeper or better executed as it went along.
There’s still a chance Glazer gets into more of a groove after an offseason to contemplate what did and didn’t work, and I’ll check back in as a result. But this felt to me very much like the exact work its creator wanted to make – it was just one that largely left me cold.
The comments in that early April review (from many of you who had also watched the first three episodes, thanks to Starz previewing them on several platforms) were more mixed, and I would guess that the majority of you who watched til the end did so because you enjoyed the show. Still, I’m curious for your reactions. If you liked it at the start, did you still by the end? If you were more lukewarm, did you feel it got better? If anyone stopped watching midway through, when and why?
What did everybody else think?