Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan ( Amazon Prime tv show )
So I'm watching Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Season 1, not yet finished - it's ok, hasn't gripped me yet - I shouldn't judge until I'm done with it, but here goes - I'll update if the ending is strong. It's not as good as it could be. It's at once too fast paced and too slow. The writing is overly character focused, so the plot suffers - too simplistic, no nuance - action over drama, so there's no authentic tension, having to rely on directing mechanics to make the story better than it is, a story that could be fascinating, but is just plain. And we're not learning anything interesting about spy-craft, it's really about the lead navigating his way through some tough situations while maintaining his identity. Simply put, it's not as good as it could/should be. Anyways, there's this one hilarious scene early on. A drone operator is starting to lose his cookies over all the people he's killed ( apparently, the operators give each other a buck for each kill ). He's at his house, has over $100 in dollar bills on the wall representing all of his kills and he takes them all and goes to a casino and let's it ride - long story short, he wins big trying to lose all of the money and he's freaked out. There's this couple next to him hootin' and hollerin' ( they say they're husband and wife - maybe they are ) and they get him drinking and get him back to his room. Now we, the viewer, are thinking they're going to rob him of his 20 grand in winnings - but no, LMAO! The "wife" has sex with him while the husband watches and the operator is all messed up about it, stammering and apologizing to the husband ( while the wife is having sex with him ). When she's done ( quickly ), she gets dressed and the husband beats him with a belt. I'm dying at this point, it's so fricken funny - freaks, they keep life alive. Anyways, he offers the money to the husband as they're leaving and he's like, "no, that's your money, you earned that" - this is like the one cool slightly complex scene so far in the whole thing, as he "earned" it in several ways: won it at the tables, risked it with the husband/wife sick role-playing team, earned it by killing people with drones.
Well, it's a descent show so far, I guess as I'm sticking with it, so some enjoyment with the thing. I'll follow this up when I'm done watching it.
EDIT: I finished watching this. It's gets an "eh" from me - it's ok, but not great. It's not leveraging cable freedom and is formulaic with some cable freak stuff in it, but it should be better given the budget and actors in the thing. So this falls in that jello land of not bad, but not good enough to recommend.