After The Last Kingdom I was really looking forward to this and it really suffers in comparison. It’s hard to make action/adventure slow and murky and hard to follow but here we are. As someone said, it seems like they lifted the names of characters from legend and the books, and that’s about it. Arthur has no skill or regard for the hearts and minds aspect of being a leader and three episodes in there’s nothing to like about him. He’s a corporate CEO who has no compassion and little to no persuasive ability, and makes no effort to explain himself to anybody (except to the warlord who just slaughtered the majority of his people literally hours ago). This is supposed to come across as edgy and brilliant but it comes across as reptilian and pitiless. It’s not just him, there’s not much complexity or depth to any of the characters as they are being potrayed, they’re one dimensional. I find myself seriously disliking and not feeling any sympathy for Nimue despite what she’s been through. I’m even more disappointed in the showrunners’ sloppy and careless effort at period representation, they just phoned it in and it shows. Corn on the cob did not come to the old world until 1500, why are they eating bread with no meat, metal was precious in the dark ages and would not be used to make water carrying cans, all liquid was stored in barrels, etc. This is Xena level bad, without the camp. I’ll probably give it one more epi and then go do a Vikings rewatch.

slow slow slow. i like the premise, but disappointed in three episodes of backstory. I’ll stick with it.

What I’m noticing is the complete lack of bodacious loquacious articulatin’ in the dialogue, in this spinoff from the original Justified. We tend to think of Boyd Crowder as the grandiloquent one but the quality was so high and consistent: everyone in that show had colorful dialogue (notably Eva). Those scripts were at their best in Justified when Boyd and Raylan were sparring verbally, and Raylan gave as well as he got - but everybody down all tiers of the cast and second and third sub-plots had dialogue that sang. Same group, same show runners: all the witty repartee seems to have been lost in the decade in between. Those kinds of comments in this series are few and far between, and they fall like a thud compared to the previous outing. Raylan still has that fire in the belly (and the eyes) but seemingly no sense of humor, probably sucked out of him by the less-than-2-dimensional daughter.

I agree with the consensus on here - she’s not an actor - but more importantly, they’ve given her nothing to work with except “sniveling brat.” I’m convinced by the character and I see why “sniveling brat” could have been a good choice here, it’s sadly very realistic for a situation like this where one parent phones it in out of guilt. I know several kids that are as screwed up, uncooperative and self-destructive as Willa. But they’ve given her a repetitive 100-word vocabulary of snivel, and her delivery lacks the urgency of really feeling even the most insipid of childish emotions (maybe because, as someone noted, she’s 20 and not 15, and the dialogue is more suited for a 7 year old). It’s as if Beavis and Butthead were dredged out of Cartoonville to write lines for a girl they hated from class. Adding to that mismatch, as a character she’s nowhere near smart enough to be his daughter. Her father is in law enforcement, and she really sees danger nowhere? She doesn’t have any of his flip language or sass? Even the most talented actress would have nothing to work with here.

When you give Timothy Olyphant good lines to sling (see Deadwood) he will deliver and then some. I feel sorry for Elmore Leonard (‘s estate). Here’s hoping she actually stays on the plane (PLEASE) and if this has enough legs to carry it to a second season, she is nothing other than a device to deliver occasional offside plot complications from Florida.

Some of the supporting characters are well-drawn, but lots of cartooning here (the Albanian, c’mon please) including the main baddie who I’m sorry is just B-L-A-H.

The twists in this season are so good!

I would have to rank this as the strangest episode in any AMC show I have ever watched, I’m not sure what they were trying to achieve in terms of “the madness of George Washington” - maybe there’s a historical back story I’m not aware of - coming out the other side, you end up being less impressed with every character in the show. A minor glitch in what is otherwise one of the most enjoyable historical dramas ever made.