Not worth your time.

neweraoutlaw

I'm currently watching this show for research, and I have to say....this show is AWFUL, and annoyed me a lot. I don't even understand how it has fans. How, you may ask? Let's delve into the rabbit hole and see how far it goes.

For starters, the pacing is pretty bad. Episode 2 is a good example of this, as it jumps from plot to plot without rhyme or reason, and raises a whole lot of questions that go unanswered. For example, where did the men who raised the mummy from the dead come from all of a sudden? Where did they get the gem that brought him back to life? Why, despite it being established that he's from ancient Egypt, is the mummy a COWBOY? How does he know about fast food? Why does the episode bring zombies into the equation if they never ACT like zombies or enemies? All of this is never explained, and it served to annoy me even further.

The character design choices are another reason this show makes me cringe. The humans are all right, but then you have the magical creatures suddenly appearing, and it immediately throws you off on how goofy they look. They look and act like they're cheap extras from Space Jam. It throws any suspense away because you simply can NOT take them seriously, no matter how dangerous the show says they are. If the show gleaned a little more from various mythologies and put more effort into the magical creature designs than 'generic Sesame Street monsters', it'd be awesome. But they're not, and you almost pity the muppets, especially when all that's beating them down is a hero who does little more than punch and kick bad guys.

The jokes...my GOD they are bad. I have not laughed once at the badly written jokes, partially because they are cliché and predictable. The first few episodes I saw tried way too hard with the self-referential humor, a perfect example of it being the Batman ref in the very first episode. It is not helped by the stock characters the show has for a cast. Juniper is the Hero, Ray Ray is the annoying sibling, Goth Chick is Gothic, blah, blah, blah. There is nothing endearing about any of them, least of all Ray Ray, who is an annoying little troll that adds nothing but shrill annoyance in any scene that he is in. As a matter of fact, characters come in two flavors in this show: Bland and boring or annoying as hell.

Juniper also suffers from Designated Protagonist syndrome - she's supposed to be a bad ass hero with magical powers, but people watching the episodes from the very beginning will be disappointed that all she does is punch and kick, with limited degrees of success despite punching through a concrete wall. In the first episode, she basically CHEATS to win her battle, by using a genie as a Deus Ex Machina. We're not watching this show to see a GENIE win, we're supposed to be cheering for JUNIPER! If you can't get this right from the first episode, what hope do you have? Also, writers, your youthful 'magical' hero shouldn't be acting like a disgruntled cop stopping some kids from jaywalking. What's with this, "Stop right there?!" nonsense? I'm sorry, but she's a very boring hero overall. There is almost nothing that makes her stand out from a typical cop, when she should be demonstrating a wide variety of powers that her lineage indicates that she should have.

I'm sorry, I'm giving this show as much of a chance as I can, but it is painful to watch. The writing is bad, the pacing is atrocious, the characters are unlikeable and can't be related with, and the jokes fall flat on its face. Stay away from this one, it's not worth your time to watch it.

score 2/10

neweraoutlaw 15 August 2014

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3069508/