Animus Publish time 22-11-2020 13:04:03

Horrible writing and poor acting = CRAP

OK i just watched the pilot for FLASH GORDON. Oy. This was bad TV. Problems.... SPOILERS AHEAD not that I think anyone will care...

OK so now Flash is Stephen Gordon aka "Flash" because he runs marathons and wins medals for it. Medals he hangs on his fathers grave, medals which are still there 2 years later (it was the 3rd annual marathon he won in a row)... Dumb on 2 counts, obviously the leaving the medals and having them stay there for years is dumb but it shows that even 13 years after his father died, Flash has yet to move on. Don't get me wrong its good to honor the memory of lost parents and all, but I think our hero needs some counseling.

So then we get dimension rips or wormholes or whatever and out steps a heavily armored cyborg who is hunting the for something. He's able to understand our postal address system well enough to find the Gordon house using papa Gordon's drivers license and goes hunting for this Imex thing (which i kept thinking god why does it sound like I-Max). Hes got the ability to mind control Flash's mom but loses the fight to a reporter with a power cord and a big meat fork. At this point I figured out the missing thingamabob is in dad's old watch the one Flash has worn since his dad died, so much for secrecy.

Our reporter turns out to be smart enough to use power cords to create a dandy electrocution kit without causing massive damage to the house electrical system but doesn't understand the simple premise of a tracking device that beeps when pointed the right direction. GAH.

So now we track down goofy science guy living in the micro-Winnebago by looking up his college yearbook online..... WHAT? They just happened to have the address where he parks his van (down by the river?) and it's available online....

OK so now creepy science guy explains that ripping holes in the fabric of space-time is bad... But makes to effort to stop Flash and Dale from doing just that.

Boom! Hi there welcome to Mongo. A planet that should be a hotbed of tectonic activity with not just 2 moons but a whole other planet right next door in orbit. Mongo is a great place if you are the Emperor... You are the hero with the only source of clean water on the planet. Everyone else is just there to be serfs I guess.

Ming is no longer a deviant Chinese man who destroys whole worlds for fun, now hes a Tyrant who worries about public opinion and has trouble tracking down a missing watch on another planet despite the fact that he has the address of where it is located.

Cut to torture time with Flash, now they were going to map his brain to learn everything he knows.... But wait just then a woman bursts in and saves flash by shooting his torturer. Great she's obviously just a simple palace slave who wants to escape. A simple well dressed slave with excellent skin tone and makeup, forget that she has access to the torture room... oh and a gun... oh and she knows the layout and guard patrols.. oh and she knows all about the water purification area under the castle (which for something so massively important to planetary survival has no security or guards)... She also knows how the patrol craft operate and how to use a dimension ripper. FLASH YOU IDIOT!

So back home, yay! Lets rip some more holes... Bounty hunter time, another rip and look the bounty hunter is a hottie too.. no armor... one gun... ummm yeah, oh and she can drive stick, she can also find people with her vast psychic powers too i guess.. the same psychic powers that let the princess find her way from Dale's place to Flash's mother's home on pure instinct. I mean bad enough everyone speaks perfect English but they can also find one house out of a city without a map or a learner's permit.

Hey Flash the princess is here, shes got a gun and can recognize the I-mex immediately, even though its disguised and she doesn't know what a TV remote is or what the I-mex looks like. I mean she should have at least taken his cellphone too just in case IT was the I-mex.

You know if I had lost the sum of all knowledge in the universe I wouldn't wait 13 years to reclaim it. I also wouldn't send 1 guy with dubious combat skills. But thats just me.

Hey time to rip even MORE holes.. this was a bad thing right? Anyway the evil princess gets fooled into thinking the I-mex is destroyed, although your average street magician could have been more convincing, and we find out daddy is alive (DUH) and is hooked up to some computer... maybe the one that maps your brain and would have told the bad guys not only where to locate it but also which pizza places would have delivered to the house while you were there...

You know some shows have plot holes, some have major ones (Professor stop making radios out of coconuts and fix the 2 foot hole in the boat) and some just say "We didn't actually care enough to hire writers, we just strung together a series of scenes and called it a pilot, we figure sci-fi viewer are dumb enough to watch anything"

Sigh. I had hoped it would be good.

score 3/10

Animus 13 August 2007

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1711511/14285
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