Hi there,
Cat here. I've had a bunch of notes cooling in drafts for different shows and it's time to speed through them. We might as well start with Red Band Society since it's been cancelled. Spoilers for the pilot ahead.
The first strike against RBS was the voiceover. I eventually got used to it on Blackish, Selfie, Manhattan Love Story, and A to Z but enough already. And now it's on Fresh Off the Boat. Who came up with this infuriating trend for this TV season? Red Band Society is without a doubt the worst offender though since the narrator here is the kid in a coma. It also stretches believability to have him as the narrator because even with him overhearing things in his room and the other characters talking to him, he would not know this much about everything happening in the hospital.
There's a level of ridiculousness here but it's less Glee and more Juno and I don't mean that as a compliment in spite of how you might feel about those respective properties. The dialogue is terrible and I don't know where this hospital is that has a giant school room with all of these students who I guess are at relatively the same learning level. The characters are ridiculous and not in an appealing way.
Overall, I didn't find the pilot funny at all and none of the characters (except for Octavia Spencer's nurse character) made me want to watch another episode.
And now for a list of times RBS seemed to want me to hate it.
Cat here. I've had a bunch of notes cooling in drafts for different shows and it's time to speed through them. We might as well start with Red Band Society since it's been cancelled. Spoilers for the pilot ahead.
The first strike against RBS was the voiceover. I eventually got used to it on Blackish, Selfie, Manhattan Love Story, and A to Z but enough already. And now it's on Fresh Off the Boat. Who came up with this infuriating trend for this TV season? Red Band Society is without a doubt the worst offender though since the narrator here is the kid in a coma. It also stretches believability to have him as the narrator because even with him overhearing things in his room and the other characters talking to him, he would not know this much about everything happening in the hospital.
There's a level of ridiculousness here but it's less Glee and more Juno and I don't mean that as a compliment in spite of how you might feel about those respective properties. The dialogue is terrible and I don't know where this hospital is that has a giant school room with all of these students who I guess are at relatively the same learning level. The characters are ridiculous and not in an appealing way.
Overall, I didn't find the pilot funny at all and none of the characters (except for Octavia Spencer's nurse character) made me want to watch another episode.
And now for a list of times RBS seemed to want me to hate it.
- "Shouldn't we call 911?" "Not til I post this on Instagram."
- when the cheerleader visited the coma kid in the "in between" world
- the mindbogglingly terrible metaphor of the cheerleader having an enlarged heart and needing a heart transplant
- the textbook characterization of the girl with the eating disorder
- the time the cheerleader said "cray cray" unironically
- the probable love square
