Hello all,
I just finished watching Sweet Tooth's first season, and wondered what other people thought of the series?
Tonally I thought it was great to get a somewhat hopeful post-apocalyptic story. While there was plenty of darkness in some of the personal narratives, it was notable how several of the adult characters had either post-plague lives which were a demonstrable upgrade of what they had before, or at the very least were manageable. It kind of showcased that life is life even if the external circumstances veer into undiscovered territory. The story also had very coherent themes regarding family (though Josh Brolin's explicit narration of these themes was a bit heavy-handed at times) and excellent characterization (other than the main villian, who is way too one dimensional).
I did find some of the worldbuilding of the series a bit underwhelming. On one hand we have several individuals who are basically holed up by themselves for a decade - with no contact with the outside world whatsoever - and manage to do fine for themselves, seemingly never having to worry about food, warmth, machinery breaking down, etc. On the other hand we get glimpses into the post-plague world which just seem too...normal. I can excuse things like access to electricity a bit, since they show solar panels and the like - though how a bunch of teens manage to wire up a VR cafe in an amusement park is beyond me. Worse though is the continued existence of manufactured goods like medical supplies, toilet paper, and candy bars. Even with 90% or more of the world's population dead, pre-plague goods would be used up or wear down/spoil after a decade.
It's also kind of inferred at times that every single child born since the plague is a human/animal hybrid. This makes one of the central conceits of the series - that hybrid children are rare and the Last Men hunt them down to kill/experiment upon - make absolutely no sense. If people continue to screw, there should be plenty of them (proportionate to the older human population) banging around - and human cultures should have come around to accepting them after a decade, since the alternative is extinction.
That said, my biggest issue with the season is how it ends. Without getting deep into spoilers, the series ends on a (hopeful) cliffhanger, but a rather strange one for a season finale of a serialized drama. I say this because it seems more like the penultimate episode of a season than a finale. While I'm sure they have more story yet to tell, the central conflicts set up in the endgame of this season seem like they should be resolved in 1-2 episodes at most, That would be fine if this was an old season cliffhanger from TNG or something, where you resolve the cliffhanger in the first episode and move onto something else for the following season. But given how modern serialization works, I worry the next season (presumably also eight episodes) will have tons of needless wheel-spinning.
I spent a lot of time being critical, but TBH this is still the best original series I've seen on Netflix since The Witcher. Particularly because I've watched a lot of the more "family friendly" content with my kids, and the other YA-ish stuff just doesn't compare to this.
I just finished watching Sweet Tooth's first season, and wondered what other people thought of the series?
Tonally I thought it was great to get a somewhat hopeful post-apocalyptic story. While there was plenty of darkness in some of the personal narratives, it was notable how several of the adult characters had either post-plague lives which were a demonstrable upgrade of what they had before, or at the very least were manageable. It kind of showcased that life is life even if the external circumstances veer into undiscovered territory. The story also had very coherent themes regarding family (though Josh Brolin's explicit narration of these themes was a bit heavy-handed at times) and excellent characterization (other than the main villian, who is way too one dimensional).
I did find some of the worldbuilding of the series a bit underwhelming. On one hand we have several individuals who are basically holed up by themselves for a decade - with no contact with the outside world whatsoever - and manage to do fine for themselves, seemingly never having to worry about food, warmth, machinery breaking down, etc. On the other hand we get glimpses into the post-plague world which just seem too...normal. I can excuse things like access to electricity a bit, since they show solar panels and the like - though how a bunch of teens manage to wire up a VR cafe in an amusement park is beyond me. Worse though is the continued existence of manufactured goods like medical supplies, toilet paper, and candy bars. Even with 90% or more of the world's population dead, pre-plague goods would be used up or wear down/spoil after a decade.
It's also kind of inferred at times that every single child born since the plague is a human/animal hybrid. This makes one of the central conceits of the series - that hybrid children are rare and the Last Men hunt them down to kill/experiment upon - make absolutely no sense. If people continue to screw, there should be plenty of them (proportionate to the older human population) banging around - and human cultures should have come around to accepting them after a decade, since the alternative is extinction.
That said, my biggest issue with the season is how it ends. Without getting deep into spoilers, the series ends on a (hopeful) cliffhanger, but a rather strange one for a season finale of a serialized drama. I say this because it seems more like the penultimate episode of a season than a finale. While I'm sure they have more story yet to tell, the central conflicts set up in the endgame of this season seem like they should be resolved in 1-2 episodes at most, That would be fine if this was an old season cliffhanger from TNG or something, where you resolve the cliffhanger in the first episode and move onto something else for the following season. But given how modern serialization works, I worry the next season (presumably also eight episodes) will have tons of needless wheel-spinning.
I spent a lot of time being critical, but TBH this is still the best original series I've seen on Netflix since The Witcher. Particularly because I've watched a lot of the more "family friendly" content with my kids, and the other YA-ish stuff just doesn't compare to this.
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