#The “dragons have different moral standards than humans” excuse bothers me the most

[some-pers0n]

You can just say it's a mistake. It's so much worse to try and excuse it

[5thinvictus]

A Fan Review of Stan Lee’s Lucky Man

or ... A Gift That Should Have Never Been Given

I’ve had a ton of fun promoting this terrible show and now that it’s over, I thought I’ve give a quick review on what I thought of it overall. 

So, TL;DR:  Overall Score: D+

Character Consistency: C-

Narrative Strength: F

Acting: B

Re-watchability: Minimal.

For some reason, people think that if a show/movie is based on a comic book, that excuses it from the same scrutiny that other fictional works receive.  Sorry, but this is actually very far from the case.  In fact, comic readers are often used to dramatically higher standards for plot, narrative, character development than most of the subpar movies and TV shows that find their way into production these days.

In Short: Lucky Man, just because you were based on a comic, does not excuse you from the most basic plot holes which abounded within your meagerly meandering narrative.

Click below for my detailed review:

The Good:

Elizabeth Gray (Neve McIntosh):

I enjoyed this actress and her character’s arc.  At first, you’re not sure what to make of her, but she proves that she’s a human being and not just a caricature of a strong female or a beautiful female.  She makes mistakes and then she seeks to correct them.  I liked this character a lot.  She grew and it was consistent and believable.

Samuel Blake (Rupert Penry-Jones):

No, I’m not biased.  Rupert is an exceptional actor, otherwise he wouldn’t be one of my favorites and this role was no different.  Regardless of how terrible the writing was, he was splendid.  Charismatic and likeably sinister.  I started to root for the bad guy at some point mid-season, and no, not just because he’s Rupert (I never rooted for Clive reader ... not even once.  He was such a asshole.)

His sudden reversal in the last episode was more than disappointing though.  They’d set up the villain to be very, very principled.  In fact, that was his most important quality and then, in the final episode, they completely reversed that?  In the end though, Samuel Blake was one of the best things in this season.

The Cinematography:

The angles.  The shots.  The lighting.  The costumes.  They were all lovely.  Consistently so.  I enjoyed how good Lucky Man looked.  The crew is phenomenal.  They should have taken the writers’ salaries and divided it up to the cast & crew.  They deserved ALL of the success of Lucky Man.

The Locations:

They really made London look incredible, but something has been bothering me quite a bit.  Did they really need to fly to Hong Kong to film?  There were very few shots that even gave hints that they were there and honestly, they could have cgi’d in most of that stuff.  Clearly they were more focused on having fun filming than actually making a good show.

The Bad:

Suri Chohan (Amara Karan):

Good lord, this character was a brick.  I felt nothing for her and I usually relate quite a bit to spunky, nerdy little sidekicks.  She was dumb at every corner.  Everyone got the drop on her.  She was hyper emotional.  She tried to sleep with the tall detective ... randomly.

I’m sorry, but she didn’t seem like a real person at all to me.  She was a caricature of some ideal Mary Sue.  Everyone loves Chohan.  Chohan is morally and ethically perfect.  Yeah ... no.  I’ve better things to do than watch a character I cannot relate to in any way, shape, or form.

Harry Clayton (James Nesbitt):

James Nesbitt is an incredible actor, but Harry Clayton was such a miserable character that I didn’t care if he lived or died.  He killed so many people.  He was overly arrogant.  I didn’t care about this character at all.  In the later part of the season, I started to fast forward through most of his scenes.

The Narrative:

This was by far the worst aspect of the show.  Nothing ever really made sense.  Nothing.  It was a strange combination of scenes people wanted to shoot coupled together loosely with vague reasons and meandering dialogue and unbelievable character motivations.

The What-The-Fuck:

Eve Alexandri (Sienna Guillory):

I totally understand being pissed at Harry because he let you die.  I totally get that angle and they could have used that beautifully.  They could have built a narrative around her that reinforced her falling for Blake, but they didn’t.  They didn’t even bother.

She’d been brought up to protect the bracelets and it took Blake less than a day to tear her down?  Absolute bullshit.

Blake kidnaps her, after she said she would listen to him, and throws her off a bridge (which she nearly dies from), and she forgives him and not Harry?  Absolute bullshit.

So, she will forgive an hot stranger from trying to kill her, but she won’t forgive her best friend who did so to save another life?  Absolute bullshit.

And then, in a matter of days (or weeks?), Blake has turned her into a ruthless killer and she convinces him to kill his entire family in front of her?  Yeah, what?

She has no principles.  No loyalties.  No ethics.  She has a poorly fabricated fight with Harry and then runs to Blake.  After one fight.  One.  She can be turned away from her entire life’s goal because Blake winks at her?  And then, in the end, Blake says ONE mean thing to her and she tries to kill him.  And then, in the end, she turns on Blake suddenly.  “OH NO!  NOT THAT MUCH INNOCENT BLOOD!”

Absolute bullshit.

What a miserable and unbelievable character.

A scantly clad Samuel Blake:

Ok ok ok.  Yeah, this is absolutely a “what-the-fuck” topic.  As much as I enjoyed seeing him shirtless (and pants-less) ... over and over and over again, it was absolutely pointless and shouldn’t have been in the show.  EVEN THOUGH I FUCKING LOVED IT: That whole ... “I’m gonna walk through the morgue naked.” scene was unnecessary and it really did detract from the story.  Why didn’t he just take the doctor’s clothes?  Seriously.  He was heading out to meet Eve and he just happens across some pants ... he would have taken the Pathologist’s pants.  Anyone who argues otherwise is an idiot.

This was such blatant fan baiting / fan service.

A side rant here: As a fan of RPJ, this nudity really should have been fun, but the hardest part of it was the fact that there’s a small but very vocal minority of Rupert’s fan base which consider themselves his Morality Police.  It’s really just a handful of people using multiple accounts to fabricate dialogue, in an attempt to shame him (mind you, by directly tagging him on Twitter), on an almost daily basis, over his body.  They also shame fans for appreciating his body and no one better find him sexually attractive or you will be targeted.

Plot Holes:

I’m just gonna go over the holes in 3x08.  There are holes in EVERY episode, but I’ll focus on the last one because I want to push everything about this show out of my mind now.

Wasn’t Blake a drug addict?

At some point, I’m convinced the writers changed and they completely forgot about the most fundamental flaw that we’ve been given about Samuel.

In the last two episodes, that was just gone.  Since it was such an important aspect that they were setting up in the beginning, you’d think that it would come into play at some point in the finale.  Withdraw or making him entirely numb again (Like in Sam and Harry’s first fight).  It should have come full circle.  It should have played SOME part in his demise, but it didn’t.  In fact, there was no point to it at all.

It didn’t make him more or less evil.  It didn’t make him more or less relatable.  They didn’t use it in a way to explain anything.  Not his actions or his motivations.  It was complexity that was added as a superficial trait and then not used in the narrative at all.

Shameful writing.

ಠ_ಠ

Wasn’t Blake the head of a massive Chinese mafia?

At some point, they completely forgot about the Wu Chi.  His prison fight was fabricated ahead of time and the Snake Hands carried out his instructions, and then ... just vanished.  He is supposed to be the head of a massive Chinese mafia and yet, they all just vanished.

Any Wu Chi guards at his factory?  Nope.  Of course not, otherwise how would Harry just sneak in at the end.  Any Wu Chi guards helping him infiltrate Madame Cheng’s stronghold?  Nope.  I ... guess ... not?  Did they run out of money for asian extras?

Couldn’t they have scrubbed the unnecessary trip to Hong Kong to pay for more extras?

So, what was the point of him being a Dragon Head again? 

In the end, there was no point.

ಠ_ಠ

Blake was all about planning ahead and he didn’t steal the Uranium BEFORE he got himself purposefully arrested?

Don’t even get me started on the plot from 3x06.  Blake’s plan was to get arrested, fake his death, and break out?  Even the whole “waking up in the morgue” thing didn’t make sense.  Why didn’t Eve get his body out?  Why was she just waiting outside for him?!  Ugh, I digress ... focus on 3x08, focus on just 3x08 ...

So Blake’s been setting up this fission chamber for a while, right?  He brags about buying that factory years earlier in preparation.  In fact, he’s even got a handful of handy scientists to get it all up for him.  How clever, I guess?  But, he never bothered getting the Uranium before he purposefully got himself arrested?  His entire plan hinged on being able to get his hands on MOTHER FUCKING URANIUM ... and he didn’t plan ahead for that ... at all?  His entirely plan was to wait until his access was revoked and then find someone to torture the information out of?

That’s ... uh ... really, really weak.  This entire fission / nuclear thing seemed like an afterthought in the writing room when they realized they’d written themselves into a corner.

Writer 1:  Ah shit.  How is Blake even gonna destroy them?  It doesn’t make sense that the Torches would bring the forging weapons to London.  They had to have hidden them, right?

Writer 2: *having just watched The Strain*  I KNOW!  Let’s have him NUKE THEM!

ಠ_ಠ

Seriously, Harry basically killed that poor scientist.

This wasn’t a plot hole, but it seriously bothered me.  You know that man.  The one he strangely head butted.  The one messing with the fission machine.  Was the man even evil?  Did he know what he was hired to do?  Did he know that the controlled fission reaction was to destroy magical braclets and the chain reaction would melt down and likely kill him and thousands of people?  Doesn’t matter, he wasn’t useful to the plot, so Harry just ... killed him.

How did Harry know how to remove the Uranium?

He just walks over, reaching in to the machine, turns it and pulls it out.  He didn’t even know what it looked like.  I guess he was just ... lucky?  Pfffttt.  Whatever.  It’s just a little thing, but it’s still fucking lazy.

Why wasn’t Blake armed?  What the fuck was he doing?

There’s simply no way that Blake would have been walking around the factory without his gun.  He would have just shot Harry from above.  And before anyone says: He wouldn’t risk the fission machine!  He was wearing the bracelet.

This was so fabricated.  Was he pooping or something and that’s why he set his gun down on the desk?

And again, why didn’t he have Wu Chi guards ... or even a surveillance system set up?  There’s NO WAY that place didn’t have security if he had a fission machine INSTALLED in it.  And he already said he’d owned it from several years.

Seriously?  WTF Lucky Man.

ಠ_ಠ

Why didn’t Blake notice Eve had escaped?

She was tied to the fission machine and he didn’t even notice she was gone.  Ok then ... maybe it was because he was high?!  They didn’t even bother to address it at all.  Not to mention the fact that ... wasn’t it unlucky to Blake for Eve to have escaped?  Wasn’t he wearing the bracelet?

Also, wasn’t it unlucky for Eve to have put the other one on him?  Shouldn’t she have tripped or something?  Shouldn’t he have been able to stop her BECAUSE of the bracelet he was already wearing?!

Writers: Create the rules for your world and then stick to them.  Don’t change things because you want a scene to play out a specific way.  You make the rules, so stick to them.

ಠ_ಠ

Harry’s hiding in his brother’s flat.

The entire country is on the lookout for Harry and Blake.  He’s considered a domestic terrorist at this point and he’s hiding ... in his brother’s flat.

Where the fuck is Mi5?!  Seriously, no.  This is SO dumb.  FFS.

No one’s tracking his brother or his brother’s phone.  No one’s bothering with anything.  Harry keeps walking out into public.  He approaches the Security Guards in the URANIUM shipment (armed guards), and even tells them HIS NAME.  I find it unlikely that security professionals wouldn’t have been even MORE briefed on him than the general public (which already was).

ಠ_ಠ

Eve was pregnant.

I guess this was a poor attempt to explain away her sudden motivational shift, but it was so contrived.

So what?  Samuel forgot to wrap it?  Fucking unlikely, don’t you think?  Was he super, super high one night or something?  Because, you’ve shown us he’s incredibly pedantic and he plans everything TO A TEE.

I guess Eve forgot she wasn’t on birth control either?  Maybe she was super high too, I guess?

Maybe the condom broke and it just slipped Blake’s mind?  Given, unplanned pregnancies obviously occur, but I find it unbelievable that it would happen between these two characters as you’ve presented them to us.

Also, how long were they even together?  Was it days or was it weeks?

In the end, she was the character I felt should have gotten her just deserts MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE and yet, she lived.  She was inconsistent, without loyalty or morals or ethics, and she gets to live.  Thanks Lucky Man.

ಠ_ಠ

So ... To Summarize:

Lucky Man wasn’t a good show, but it was a hell of a guilty pleasure and I’m actually gutted it’s over, because I loved watching Rupert work again and hot damn, did Mr. Penry-Jones look smashing in it (as always).

Cheers.