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paulm_83
Reviews
Tunn is (2020)
Good start, silly ending
While the series started out with an interesting premise, it also spent a great deal of time getting lost in its own subplots, most of which never go anywhere. It spends half of the series building up at a steady pace, followed by a rapid descent into increasingly implausible scenarios and plot twists all thrown in at the last minute which really let the rest of the series down.
Whoever did their research on NATO should also be fired - while neither Finland or Sweden are NATO members, both have agreements in place to allow member nations to deploy troops in their countries in response to external threats pursuant to Articles 5 and 6. The US is also not in a position to unilaterally veto such action (except perhaps via the UN security council, but this still would not prohibit individual countries from enacting a response). The analogue to the US-Iceland defense agreement is also disingenuous - Iceland has no military and relies entirely on US forces on behalf of NATO to fill this role. A risk considered so low in reality that they don't even have troops stationed there anymore. Neither Finland nor Sweden have such a problem - if they've been capable of taking care of their own interests outside of formal NATO membership, the motivation for an even more restricted defense agreement makes no sense whatsoever.
The entire premise of a Russian attack over being spurned is also preposterous - they did absolutely nothing when they were booted from the G8 over Crimea, which has far wider implications than being booted from a committee negotiating a treaty they had no intention of signing in the first place, especially when it later becomes clear they were erroneously ejected under a false pretense anyways. There might be some ejecting of diplomats and calling each other names, but absolutely no one is going to war over such a non-issue.
If there is to be a second season, I do hope they do a little more research and make the pacing somewhat more uniform.
Away (2020)
Guy who wanted to jump out of the airlock had the right idea
The series had an interesting premise, so I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt. After 5 episodes and no obvious progress, I just can't be bothered caring about what happens to the crew or whether they ever reach their destination. There's slow burning, and then there's just floating around aimlessly in space. That it's an American show is apparent, with awkward religious nonsense and references to the armed forces shoehorned in at random intervals, with no real connection to anything. I feel bad for the actors, who clearly have absolutely nothing to work with here.
Wir sind die Welle (2019)
Highlights the consequences of oversimplification
The show begins on the premise of children being upset over the general current state of affairs and wanting to take gradually more extreme measures to "do something". The challenge, of course, is that most issues aren't as black-and-white as they would like to believe:
1. The rich daughter who suddenly decides she needs to find purpose from the comfort of her multi-million euro home while sipping smoothies determines that, within a few pages of reading an actual book, brands and logos are the root of all evil - this leads to an awkward situation in which she challenges her father about his continued purchase of designer goods, to which he replies that he prefers to purchase higher quality goods that last longer and that the real problem starts earlier on in the supply chain (textile factories in Bangladesh). Armed with this bit of knowledge, said daughter does, unsurprisingly, exactly nothing. Indeed, you will not hear the words "supply chain" mentioned even once in this series - maybe they need to finish high school first.
2. The aggrieved farmer's son that blames a factory owner for poisoning his parents fields, wishes to correct this injustice by throwing a paintball at the owner. One of the other children points out that this is pointless and will accomplish nothing apart from incurring an additional dry cleaning bill, and that "something else" must be done. This "something else" turns out to be putting production run-off in to the owner's SUV (all evildoers drive SUVs in this show), which ultimately gets on his suit when the door is opened. Totally different than the paintbaill scenario in every way.
3. Argumentation that a slaughterhouse is not adhering to regulations suggests that there is room for reasonable action to correct this situation by gathering actual evidence and submitting this to regulators, but instead leads to mass vandalism, the death of the animals they aimed to protect, and the ultimate destruction of jobs for all the workers. Mission accomplished. In the end, the owners, who the kids have the grievance with, has in no way been dissuaded from changing their business practices, and will now simply have the insurance money to start up elsewhere. Kids 1, critical thinking 0.
4. After that, it's having an issue with SUVs - nothing specific like emissions, fuel consumption, weight impact on small village roads, or anything concrete, just SUVs in general. In this case, the target of the chidlren's ire is a small business owner who again, is so far removed from the market development and product positioning strategy of large automotive OEMs that one wonders whether it's really possible for anyone to be this naive (it turns out that the answer is yes, it is). One of the former vandals even brings this point up with the instigator, asking what they think they're accomplishing, or what the small business owner has done wrong, but this is again met with silence. Local business damaged and possible jobs lost - another victory for the muppet brigade.
5. Continuing on the cliche bandwagon, it was only a matter of time before an arms manufacturer would be introduced and targeted. In this case, besides a personal vendetta of the hooligan-in-chief, issues with the arms manufacturer tend to primarily evolve around making sales to countries that the children find objectionable, but which are otherwise supported by the foreign policy of their country.
Fortunately it ends on a high note - the organizers are arrested and carted away, while the rest of the kids go back to their social media channels, and no negative consequences seem to have befallen the factory, which will presumably open up for business as usual on Monday.
In short, if you want to watch a bunch of kids fail to grasp the intricacies of the issues they've just suddenly identified and spend half the series either spraypainting something or removing spraypaint from something, this is the show for you.
That being said, I'm looking forward to the second series - there's so many more industries they can complain about and fail to do anything about, this could go on for several seasons. They didn't even get to climate change or the big bad energy company (the executive of which will be in an SUV, of course), so there's definitely exciting material to come.