Television The Umbrella Academy

I really like this cast. In terms of putting together an ensemble that has different strengths and so on, with a bunch of new faces, it's top of the heap. David Castañeda (Diego), Robert Sheehan (Klaus), Aidan Gallagher (Five), Colm Feore (Reginald), Ritu Arya (Lila Pitts) = I didn't know any of these actors before and I think they're incredible.

Season 2 was awful. Season 3 brought it back. Hoping for a good conclusion.
 
I really like this cast. In terms of putting together an ensemble that has different strengths and so on, with a bunch of new faces, it's top of the heap. David Castañeda (Diego), Robert Sheehan (Klaus), Aidan Gallagher (Five), Colm Feore (Reginald), Ritu Arya (Lila Pitts) = I didn't know any of these actors before and I think they're incredible.

Season 2 was awful. Season 3 brought it back. Hoping for a good conclusion.
Which I guess means you’ve not seen Misfits? He was great in first season of that
 
Which I guess means you’ve not seen Misfits? He was great in first season of that
Great in the second season of it too.

Great actor and real stand up guy. Recently saw him in the Withnail and I production in Birmingham and it was pure quality. Looking at heading over to Dublin for a limited run production he’s doing there in October.

Colm Feore is a legendary actor too but my background probably lends itself to why I know him and others wouldn’t.
 
Great in the second season of it too.

Great actor and real stand up guy. Recently saw him in the Withnail and I production in Birmingham and it was pure quality. Looking at heading over to Dublin for a limited run production he’s doing there in October.

Colm Feore is a legendary actor too but my background probably lends itself to why I know him and others wouldn’t.
So long since I’ve seen it, I couldn’t remember when he left and Rudy (actor more recently in Brassic, who’s very good too) came in.

There’s a sequence when he’s talking to Simon (about his mum, cheese, sex) which always makes me laugh and it’s Sheehans delivery that makes it…
 
Not reading this to avoid spoilers, does anyone else get Ten Hag vibes from Hargreaves? :lol:
 
Watched the last season over the weekend.

Without spoiling anything, I'll just say as someone who has enjoyed the series in the past I thought season 4 was terrible.

The stuff with Lila and Five was... let's go with weird?

They forgot Klaus used to hang out with dead Ben for years and we're supposed to believe somehow it never came up that it was their dear old that shot him in the head?

Allison and Luther were kind of just there with no real plot arcs for either of them.

What was with the siblings constantly bodyshaming Diego whose actor is not even remotely fat? :lol:

Also wasn't there literally few dozen 'marigold infused' superpowered babies born on the same days as the Umbrella kids? Why weren't any of them needed to bring upon 'The Cleanse' or did they just forget they existed in the first place?

The ending just made everything that happened in all 4 seasons irrelevant. Like the show's timeline, I'm just going to pretend Season 4 does not exist and the show ended with season 3.
 
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Watched the last season over the weekend.

Without spoiling anything, I'll just say as someone who has enjoyed the series in the past I thought season 4 was terrible.

The stuff with Lila and Five was... let's go with weird?

They forgot Klaus used to hang out with dead Ben for years and we're supposed to believe somehow it never came up that it was their dear old that shot him in the head?

Allison and Luther were kind of just there with no real plot arcs for either of them.

What was with the siblings constantly bodyshaming Diego whose actor is not even remotely fat? :lol:

Also wasn't there literally few dozen 'marigold infused' superpowered babies born on the same days as the Umbrella kids? Why weren't any of them needed to bring upon 'The Cleanse' or did they just forget they existed in the first place?

The ending just made everything that happened in all 4 seasons irrelevant. Like the show's timeline, I'm just going to pretend Season 4 does not exist and the show ended with season 3.
Just finished it and I agree I thought it was awful. Maybe a blessing it was only 6 episodes.
 
Watched the last season over the weekend.

Without spoiling anything, I'll just say as someone who has enjoyed the series in the past I thought season 4 was terrible.

The stuff with Lila and Five was... let's go with weird?

They forgot Klaus used to hang out with dead Ben for years and we're supposed to believe somehow it never came up that it was their dear old that shot him in the head?

Allison and Luther were kind of just there with no real plot arcs for either of them.

What was with the siblings constantly bodyshaming Diego whose actor is not even remotely fat? :lol:

Also wasn't there literally few dozen 'marigold infused' superpowered babies born on the same days as the Umbrella kids? Why weren't any of them needed to bring upon 'The Cleanse' or did they just forget they existed in the first place?

The ending just made everything that happened in all 4 seasons irrelevant. Like the show's timeline, I'm just going to pretend Season 4 does not exist and the show ended with season 3.
What made me laugh was..
when Ben struggled to get out of the hole in the cladding of the barn, when 5 minutes before he tore up half a town of people.
 
Needed to be 10 episodes in my view. 6 felt too rushed, with very little character development and some plot holes being left unresolved. Still enjoyed it generally but also not a fan of the ending.
 
Shock horror. Netflix cut the budget for the final season by 40%. So many things that the show runners wanted to do but couldn't.

Oh well, I guess Netflix have to save money for their poor shareholders, so to hell with creative expression and all that.
 
Shock horror. Netflix cut the budget for the final season by 40%. So many things that the show runners wanted to do but couldn't.

Oh well, I guess Netflix have to save money for their poor shareholders, so to hell with creative expression and all that.

Seems odd. You’d think if a decision is made to commission a final season then you’d put the effort into it, build on the popularity and the fact it’s the final season, get new people watching the earlier series etc. Get some great publicity around the series.
 
Shock horror. Netflix cut the budget for the final season by 40%. So many things that the show runners wanted to do but couldn't.

Oh well, I guess Netflix have to save money for their poor shareholders, so to hell with creative expression and all that.
Was just gonna post about how Netflix must've told them to finish it up quick and on the cheap after seeing the CG at the end of Episode 3 (or 4?) with Tentacle Man. It looked awful, like something out of Sharknado.
 
Watching season 4 with the family, watched episode 4 last night.

I think the reason this show works (when it does) is that it has a cool look and aesthetic, and there are a bunch of cool shots. Things like the goldfish bowl character, Hazel and Chacha with the masks in season 1, 5 jumping through time, etc. They are cool images, but then the story struggles to weave around those images. It's almost like a spitballing session where a bunch of cool ideas are thrown out, and then they demand those get shoehorned into the show, with or without explanation.

Exactly like what "Lost" did.

That is, "we're not explaining shit, but here, let us show you a smoke monster" type of plotting.

Real problem with the writing in this season, which makes the writing in previous seasons stand out more. The characters they introduced last season (the Sparrows Sloane, Jayne, Christopher) are inherently more interesting and better actors than the core group (Ben, Klaus, Lila, and Five notwithstanding). By season 4 ep. 4, those Sparrows do not make an appearance. I would have gladly swapped out Luther and Allison and Viktor for those.

As for the Vanya ---> Viktor change, I think the show did what they did as a way of trying to get people used to the idea. It has nothing to do with the story or that character per se, and is everything to do with the real actor and people who are going through the same thing. It was just an opportunity to try and inoculate people so they wouldn't freak out anymore. I'm fine with it. Vanya was the least interesting character, and somehow this change helps explain why the acting was so bad.

Two episodes left. I'm seeing elsewhere that everyone is unhappy with the ending, so I'm guessing they don't figure shit out suddenly and wrap it up neatly. To me the whole problem with the show is it has never been able to figure out what it wants to be: superhero, deconstruction of the superhero genre, sci-fi, supernatural, comedy, action, aliens, time travel, alternate timelines, human animal hybrids --- just fecking stick to one or two of those. Is Reginald an alien, or a heartless monster, how/why is Pogo a chimp who can fly jets and has an English accent.

And it's really standing out how stupid Luther is now, especially when they were showing what happened to Ben, and Luther is a gung-ho leader. Now he's an absolute moron, and the show wants to play cutesy with banter about g-strings. So dumb.

Two episodes to go, wish me luck.
 
Great in the second season of it too.

Great actor and real stand up guy. Recently saw him in the Withnail and I production in Birmingham and it was pure quality. Looking at heading over to Dublin for a limited run production he’s doing there in October.

Colm Feore is a legendary actor too but my background probably lends itself to why I know him and others wouldn’t.
Curious, what’s your background? Theater person?
 
Episode 5 up now. Has a show tailed off this hard before? Has a show held such promise only to squander it so cheaply?

Clearly Lost shit the bed even harder, but are there other examples?
 
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Gene and Jean can get absolutely fecked. What show do these two cnuts think they’re in? Nick Offerman can separately go feck himself. These two are like they’re in a SNL skit. WTF were the show runners thinking?
 
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I never made it past the end of season 2, but both the first two seasons followed a similar pattern.

I.e. Started off really good but then the closer they got to the end and the story having to come together/make sense, the more it started to tail off.

Will get around to season 3 eventually. Probably
 
I never made it past the end of season 2, but both the first two seasons followed a similar pattern.

I.e. Started off really good but then the closer they got to the end and the story having to come together/make sense, the more it started to tail off.

Will get around to season 3 eventually. Probably
Quit while you're ahead.
 
Thought it was a brilliant show, but the final season is just an insult to the fans, it was so so bad. It was basically only made with limited episodes to provide some closure. They’d already decided to axe it because of costs, and so just rounded it off with half a season of perfunctory episodes. Even the actors were upset. Prior to that it was great.
 
Finished the series. Really makes you wonder what the writers were thinking, having 6 episodes to wrap this thing up and then spending so much screen time on Jean and Gene, Five & Lila’s alternate timeline, and the rest.

Still have no idea what Reginald ‘s deal is. I gather he’s an alien, his world was dying, so he something something rockets, wife died, marigold, blah blah blah.

What even was Luther’s power before he had his head grafted onto a moon gorilla body? How did Pogo come into being?

To sum this show up, just roll with the zany images and plot twists, don’t invest too much energy in any of it making sense. Some great characters, a whole shit ton left unresolved. Final season was stupid .
 
Episode 5 up now. Has a show tailed off this hard before? Has a show held such promise only to squander it so cheaply?

Finished the series. Really makes you wonder what the writers were thinking, having 6 episodes to wrap this thing up and then spending so much screen time on Jean and Gene, Five & Lila’s alternate timeline, and the rest.

Still have no idea what Reginald ‘s deal is. I gather he’s an alien, his world was dying, so he something something rockets, wife died, marigold, blah blah blah.

What even was Luther’s power before he had his head grafted onto a moon gorilla body? How did Pogo come into being?

To sum this show up, just roll with the zany images and plot twists, don’t invest too much energy in any of it making sense. Some great characters, a whole shit ton left unresolved. Final season was stupid .
Honestly, what a terrible ending, and they did 5 dirty!
 
Curious, what’s your background? Theater person?
Ahh no I meant personal background in this case, we are both Irish Canadians with the same name so I just naturally took notice of his work where others wouldn’t. He was also in a cult movie in Canada when I was a kid that I don’t think is very well known outside of Canada.

I do work in the arts now but on the financial side rather than creative.
 
Honestly, what a terrible ending, and they did 5 dirty!
I think at the end the writers just had to give each of the main characters a "moment" and so shoehorned them into various events, without regards to which characters were interesting or important to the story. The fact that Viktor rides around with Hargreaves and has magic power that shoots from his hands like he's Gandalf, is just... depressing. Like, after all this time, that's all you can come up with? It is not helped by Page being really bad at acting.

Did they ever even explain why the multiple timelines are bad? I get it that there are apocalypses that keep happening, but Lila's kids and Allison's daughter are a direct result of alternate timelines, so when everything snaps back to the original timeline, they are all erased from existence, despite them all being trapped in the same subway system that it took Five almost 7 years to figure out.

Just a dumb ending to a mediocre show.
 
I enjoyed watching the series as a whole, the first season was brilliant I thought but it tailed off quickly afterwards. Too many unexplained twists and curve balls, and all that plot debt just mounted up as it went on. It was always going to be an unsatisfying ending, especially just the budget cuts.
 
I enjoyed watching the series as a whole, the first season was brilliant I thought but it tailed off quickly afterwards. Too many unexplained twists and curve balls, and all that plot debt just mounted up as it went on. It was always going to be an unsatisfying ending, especially just the budget cuts.
It's a weird decision to make though, if you're the show creators: do you go out shitting the bed, or do you retool and maybe wait for the budget to be restored and then provide a satisfying ending? They had to have known that this truncated last season was never going to work. And that's before they decided to fritter away half of it on these goddamn fecking stupid asshole Gene and Jean characters.

From examples like Battlestar Galactica to Game Of Thrones, it's obvious that a bad finale can really sour people on the entire franchise forever. Why risk it? And if those writers couldn't tell a coherent story, with an emotional and intellectual conclusion in nearly 6 hours of screen time, they all need(ed) to be fired and driven into the wilderness with dogs at their heels.