Umbrella Academy
So a friend and I finished the 10 part season 1 yesterday. Season 2 starts Friday.
I really liked the characters, especially Klaus and #5. (If you're reading because you're curious, their adopted father calls all seven siblings by their numbers instead of their names, but somewhere along the way, six of them take to using their names. Except #5, who leaps ahead in time and gets trapped, unable to return, so never has that 'reclaiming his name' growth.)
And wondering if anyone who doesn't know the show is reading this (because I read people's comments sometimes, when I'm curious but not settled on watching a show) and trying to explain how just the names, does bring up the main thing about UA... I really liked the characters. I liked their depths and roundedness and interactions. I loved the humor and snark. I'm a little 'eh' on significant parts of the plot.
It feels like that's been true for a number of shows lately.
So 42 children are born on one day. Correction, conceived magically, gestated, and born within minutes to 42 women all over the world. And that's never explained how, or even tried to address. It simply is. You know...I like SF. I like comic book movies. I'm pretty accustomed to accepting a premise and moving on. This one strains me a bit.
Seven of those kids are adopted by an eccentric wealthy guy. They all develop unique powers. Wealthy guy combines six into a crime fighting force that becomes famous. (And suppresses the powers of the seventh, because she's simply too powerful.) Do the other 36 kids have powers? Do they do anything with them? We never know. It's like this really interesting world-building...with big gaps.
Dad's a douche and emotionally cold, and Mom is a robot. And interestingly, the main 'bad guy' has an abusive father and his mom dies when he's young. This is a tale of asshole fathers and missing mothers.
Anyway, the kids grew up with emotional issues (surprise, surprise) and eventually all abandon Dad, except one. Dad's death brings them back together. Dad's death, which is a suicide masqueraded as a health attack, because he knows that their suppressed sister will bring the apocalypse in a few days and they are needed to defeat it. How he knows about the apocalypse, we don't know. I still have trouble believing anyone that cold would consider suicide as a viable option. He seemed too controlling.
There's a flashback scene where Dad builds his fortune and the house that the kids grew up in. It looks like the late 1800s, so it appears Dad is semi-immortal. That's not explained.
Dad bioengineers a monkey to talk and be intelligent to look after the kids'. We don't know how he has the skills to do this. He also builds a robot to be their mom. Again, we don't know anything about how he has the skills to do this, though we do at least get the backstory of why a robot and not another living creature.
But anyway...the kids! Who are adults in their 20s now and think that they're just getting back together to scatter Dad's ashes, until #5 manages to return from the future, still looking like he's 13. He doesn't actually warn his super-powered siblings about the approaching apocalypse, (this family is not good at communicating), just starts trying to figure out how to stop it. I really liked all the kids, and how they interacted, and how their shared past is revealed in flashbacks, and the angst of trying to grow beyond their troubled history of a screwed up parent, being raised by a monkey and a robot, being suddenly famous, one of the siblings dying, one disappearing, etc. I frequently laughed, I felt sorry for what the characters had gone through, I got frustrated when they insisted on being themselves (which generally meant running off to handle something alone).
All these things I complain about because we don't know, they're extraneous to the bulk of the story. #5 being an old man in a teenager's body, his fear and determination to stop the apocalypse, Klaus' abuse of drugs to keep the ghosts at bay, Luther and Alison being secretly in love, Vanya's angst as the only non-special one...even the sidekick 'bad guys' being frustrated by their job and one of them falling in love, the character relationships, these are the story. That was all great.
And then there was a timey wimey episode 'The Day That Wasn't' where everything that happened and all the personal growth was wiped out by a time jump and they started the day over again. I found that annoying, as there were developments I liked. And then the ending pretty much involves them all leaping back into time, into their 13-year-old selves and essentially, the entire show has no longer happened, and the future will be different and the apocalypse has been averted.
I'm getting a little ambivalent about time travel. I'm not even quite sure what show triggered it, but there's been a couple where the time jumps and restarts mean the show that I've just watched...hasn't actually happened to the characters. The characters who I would want to fanfic no longer exist, because they've now got a different backstory. This is beginning to make me feel cheated in a weird way. In UA, it has essentially still happened, in that the characters will remember it (I think) but the time line has changed for the rest of the world. All this big ending to avert the apocalypse, I'm just...eh.
Or really intrigued, in that how do all these characters cope with suddenly being so much younger and having to go through everything again? And wondering if there's any chance at all that season 2 will deal with it as much as I would like.
Oh, and there's a time travel agency that wants to make sure the apocalypse happens. We don't know who formed them or when or how or even really why anyone would *want* an apocalypse to happen. It just is, it's a fixed point. They're not Time Lords! Who wants an apocalypse? Since it appears the kids have successfully averted it, what's the consequence of the apocalypse not happening?
And this is a tiny thing, but come on, a rich guy dies, leaving a huge mansion, and no one brings up the will? Someone should have asked who inherited. That's a stupid grumble, but I swear, every death I've known, someone has fought over something, no matter how ridiculous it has seemed to me. This big old house filled with stuff and no one cares? That wasn't natural. (She complains, in a show filled with robot moms and time travel.)
Anyway, I will watch season 2. My fingers are crossed that it picks up well from the ending of season 1, but I'm going to enjoy the characters no matter what. This entry was originally posted at https://elayna.dreamwidth.org/262308.html. Comment wherever you prefer.
I really liked the characters, especially Klaus and #5. (If you're reading because you're curious, their adopted father calls all seven siblings by their numbers instead of their names, but somewhere along the way, six of them take to using their names. Except #5, who leaps ahead in time and gets trapped, unable to return, so never has that 'reclaiming his name' growth.)
And wondering if anyone who doesn't know the show is reading this (because I read people's comments sometimes, when I'm curious but not settled on watching a show) and trying to explain how just the names, does bring up the main thing about UA... I really liked the characters. I liked their depths and roundedness and interactions. I loved the humor and snark. I'm a little 'eh' on significant parts of the plot.
It feels like that's been true for a number of shows lately.
So 42 children are born on one day. Correction, conceived magically, gestated, and born within minutes to 42 women all over the world. And that's never explained how, or even tried to address. It simply is. You know...I like SF. I like comic book movies. I'm pretty accustomed to accepting a premise and moving on. This one strains me a bit.
Seven of those kids are adopted by an eccentric wealthy guy. They all develop unique powers. Wealthy guy combines six into a crime fighting force that becomes famous. (And suppresses the powers of the seventh, because she's simply too powerful.) Do the other 36 kids have powers? Do they do anything with them? We never know. It's like this really interesting world-building...with big gaps.
Dad's a douche and emotionally cold, and Mom is a robot. And interestingly, the main 'bad guy' has an abusive father and his mom dies when he's young. This is a tale of asshole fathers and missing mothers.
Anyway, the kids grew up with emotional issues (surprise, surprise) and eventually all abandon Dad, except one. Dad's death brings them back together. Dad's death, which is a suicide masqueraded as a health attack, because he knows that their suppressed sister will bring the apocalypse in a few days and they are needed to defeat it. How he knows about the apocalypse, we don't know. I still have trouble believing anyone that cold would consider suicide as a viable option. He seemed too controlling.
There's a flashback scene where Dad builds his fortune and the house that the kids grew up in. It looks like the late 1800s, so it appears Dad is semi-immortal. That's not explained.
Dad bioengineers a monkey to talk and be intelligent to look after the kids'. We don't know how he has the skills to do this. He also builds a robot to be their mom. Again, we don't know anything about how he has the skills to do this, though we do at least get the backstory of why a robot and not another living creature.
But anyway...the kids! Who are adults in their 20s now and think that they're just getting back together to scatter Dad's ashes, until #5 manages to return from the future, still looking like he's 13. He doesn't actually warn his super-powered siblings about the approaching apocalypse, (this family is not good at communicating), just starts trying to figure out how to stop it. I really liked all the kids, and how they interacted, and how their shared past is revealed in flashbacks, and the angst of trying to grow beyond their troubled history of a screwed up parent, being raised by a monkey and a robot, being suddenly famous, one of the siblings dying, one disappearing, etc. I frequently laughed, I felt sorry for what the characters had gone through, I got frustrated when they insisted on being themselves (which generally meant running off to handle something alone).
All these things I complain about because we don't know, they're extraneous to the bulk of the story. #5 being an old man in a teenager's body, his fear and determination to stop the apocalypse, Klaus' abuse of drugs to keep the ghosts at bay, Luther and Alison being secretly in love, Vanya's angst as the only non-special one...even the sidekick 'bad guys' being frustrated by their job and one of them falling in love, the character relationships, these are the story. That was all great.
And then there was a timey wimey episode 'The Day That Wasn't' where everything that happened and all the personal growth was wiped out by a time jump and they started the day over again. I found that annoying, as there were developments I liked. And then the ending pretty much involves them all leaping back into time, into their 13-year-old selves and essentially, the entire show has no longer happened, and the future will be different and the apocalypse has been averted.
I'm getting a little ambivalent about time travel. I'm not even quite sure what show triggered it, but there's been a couple where the time jumps and restarts mean the show that I've just watched...hasn't actually happened to the characters. The characters who I would want to fanfic no longer exist, because they've now got a different backstory. This is beginning to make me feel cheated in a weird way. In UA, it has essentially still happened, in that the characters will remember it (I think) but the time line has changed for the rest of the world. All this big ending to avert the apocalypse, I'm just...eh.
Or really intrigued, in that how do all these characters cope with suddenly being so much younger and having to go through everything again? And wondering if there's any chance at all that season 2 will deal with it as much as I would like.
Oh, and there's a time travel agency that wants to make sure the apocalypse happens. We don't know who formed them or when or how or even really why anyone would *want* an apocalypse to happen. It just is, it's a fixed point. They're not Time Lords! Who wants an apocalypse? Since it appears the kids have successfully averted it, what's the consequence of the apocalypse not happening?
And this is a tiny thing, but come on, a rich guy dies, leaving a huge mansion, and no one brings up the will? Someone should have asked who inherited. That's a stupid grumble, but I swear, every death I've known, someone has fought over something, no matter how ridiculous it has seemed to me. This big old house filled with stuff and no one cares? That wasn't natural. (She complains, in a show filled with robot moms and time travel.)
Anyway, I will watch season 2. My fingers are crossed that it picks up well from the ending of season 1, but I'm going to enjoy the characters no matter what. This entry was originally posted at https://elayna.dreamwidth.org/262308.html. Comment wherever you prefer.