A few quick thoughts on tonight’s “The River” coming up just as soon as I find a nice eco-hotel…
I was, to be frank, very surprised by the reaction around here to “The River” after last week’s episodes. There have been times where I haven’t liked things that the majority of you have, and vice versa, but usually I can sense in advance that I’m going to be out on an island on something. This, though, was, and is a show I thought would have a relatively broad appeal for those who actually watched it, given the timeslot, but apparently that was not the case. A few of you liked it, but most of you were very vocal in your dislike, and given that the ratings for the two-hour premiere went down after each half hour, it seems you are not alone in that opinion.
I had planned to cover this show regularly for its brief 7-week season, but it may not be worth the trouble, given that. We’ll see after reaction to tonight’s episode, though I don’t expect “Los Ciegos” to change a lot of minds.
It was probably the weakest of the 5 I’ve seen, in that the resolution seemed to come much too easily (that was really all that Clark needed to do for the locals to judge the crew worthy?), and in that this was the first hour where I was genuinely annoyed with the found-footage gimmick in spots. When A.J. and Kurt started running from danger and all we could see was A.J.’s incredibly shaky camerawork as he ran, I felt that this was a moment where the POV was more trouble than it was worth. (On the other hand, the jump cuts of A.J. barking out various obscenities as he started crawling into the cave was quite funny.)
Still, I like the tension and atmosphere, and Lincoln was at least 20% less annoying once Lena gave him that haircut.
What did everybody else think? Who’s even still watching at this point?