Sep 23, 2023
I wasn't sure what to expect of this show. Arnold Schwarzenegger movies have a certain quality and his TV shows I expected would be much the same, and it didn't disappoint. This was a typical Schwarzenegger bit of fun, and for that it was great. It added the complexity of a daughter who hated him and an ex-wife who didn't like him because he was a spy, all with a degree of importance given to their handlers, which was good. But it wasn't quite how the CIA actually operates, as actual CIA operatives aren't allowed to have families, at least not in that way, as it's far too dangerous. CIA operatives have to stay single, with flings allowed but nothing long-term, unless it's with another CIA operative, but even then it has to be limited in case one of them is a double-agent. So the whole idea of him having a family made no sense and it really highlighted why the CIA doesn't allow operatives to have families. Nonetheless, I enjoyed that the first episode ended on a cliffhanger, and even that it was resolved in the second episode, only to have another cliffhanger that had to be resolved. As it progressed, I started to get excited that that was the formula - much like the 1960's version of the Batman TV show, which always ended on a cliffhanger and called on watchers to catch them next time on the "same bat time, same bat channel" as Batman was about to die, only to sort it all out almost immediately in the next episode. But then, half-way through the series, they changed their mind about it, and it became rather boring, losing a lot of its early charm. They also seemed to have just one bad guy for the entire series, which was also a bit boring. However, the ending was quite good and lifted it up almost to the quality it was at mid-series before they stopped doing cliffhangers every episode (hint: bring the end-of-episode cliffhangers back! They might be tropes but they are fun tropes and these were done really well! It made me nostalgic for the 1960's Batman TV show!)
So how do I rate it? Well, I really enjoyed the first few episodes and would have had it at about 6/10 or 7/10 for the fun element combined with the fun cliffhangers after every episode, which were good tropes that I really enjoyed - though it was let down by being unrealistic in terms of the family of the CIA thing because that's not how the CIA works. I know that they do that with American Dad too, but American Dad actually does it in a more realistic way (I know, with the talking goldfish and the alien) because the family all know he is in the CIA so that makes it more believable and if they know then it might be possible to hide it.
But then the series in the second half was much worse, and it was struggling to be 3/10 or at most 4/10, but I am not sure if it averages out to 3.5 or closer to 3.
But then the last episode, especially the ending, was a lot better, and was perhaps a solid 7/10. I'm tempted to say 8, but it's probably not that high, so let's say 7.5.
So if I average it out to 7, 7, 6.5, 6, 6, 3, 3.5, 7.5 then what's my total? So that's 46.5 in 8 episodes so the average is just under 6.
It has merit and I would be interested in seeing what it can do in the second season. It has the potential to improve, but if it gets worse then I might just dump it.
I gave it overall an average of 6/10.
Verified