Power - Season 1 (Real-Time) Review - PART 1

Episode 1 ''Not Exactly How We Planned''

Five minutes in, it's all over the place, the sound is horrible, these actors are awkward and you can hardly even hear them over the fucking music! Terrible dialogue, terrible character establishment, no chemistry between anyone, it's badly written, poorly filmed and the editing is messy, it all feels completely forced and unoriginal, they're already trying to rip off The Wire!

There's a scene where the main guy's looking in a mirror presumably thinking and I thought to myself, they better not have a fucking flashback of Miguel's death and they didn't, not until the very next scene where there's some awkward sex cut together with flashbacks of Miguel's death, for fuck sake, 20 minutes in and they've already pulled the flashback card!

I don't like any of these characters and their relationships are explained through painstakingly cringe worthy exposition, it's like, hi David who I've known since I was 5 and who now runs my club, how are you? This was fucking terrible, I have to presume a child wrote the script in crayon and someone with Parkinson's disease was holding the camera, get a fucking tripod you pricks!

Are we supposed to care about his relationship with his wife? She's awful, he pretty much asked her if he could stop selling drugs and she refused, he's awful too, stereotypical and completely empty in every way, he's like a picture of nothing, just faint distant whiffs of being a Stringer Bell rip off, fuck him, fuck his empire, fuck his wife, kids, fuck this show and fuck 50 Cent. 

Episode 2 ''Whoever He Is''

Couple minutes in and after some bad acting and forced exposition regarding someone's son who works for them now, the white boy starts cutting up a corpse and as he swings the axe it transitions into Ghost's mum cutting meat, it was the best thing they've done so far and it's completely overdone and unoriginal at this point.

All the women are frivolous whores and all the men are bone head douche bags, which is fine, but the show isn't aware of it, these are just men and women to them. Everything feels predictable so far and none of it feels natural. Whatsherface just called Greg, who I'm assuming is the scumbag we saw in her apartment last episode who has his own set of keys, and there was literally exposition on his answer machine!

They felt the need at the end there to give us two close up shots of the whale keyring just in case the implications were lost on us, seriously though, this relationship, are we supposed to give a fuck in any way, he's awful, she's awful, they cheat on each other, who cares!? Sending severed bodies parts of a person around, ooh, you're dark, you're edgy ain't ya!

What the hell was all the stuff with the woman from Vogue magazine and all of that shit? What the fuck is happening and why should I care, what aspect of this show should I be invested in because watching this just makes me feel empty and alone in the world, and not in a good way! I can imagine the collaborators behind this show calling each other bro a lot, next!

Episode 3 ''This Is Real''

''So, you wanna really party''? Fuck off. All of these characters feel like AI in a video game! Pussy's already been eaten and a white girl's already OD'd on cocaine and Ghost felt the need to threaten to kill her if she didn't say that the reason her friend almost died was because of some bad cocaine, was that necessary? That's what happened mate, why would she have said anything else...

This 'sorry babe, gotta go... business' relationship is wearing thin already, we get it! They just had a scene with the FBI lot and wow, how authentic, really felt like I was watching an FBI meeting there, pretty sure one of them had tattoo tears though. I feel like I'm just watching people trying to act and that I'm not even watching a show, I'm pretending to watch people act.

So, Tommy just wants everyone dead because there has to be some sort of friction right, we're told there's some sort of deep history between Ghost and Tommy but in the previous episode Ghost's wife asked him to get rid of 'that' white boy which would insinuate the opposite. What are everyone's motives here? His wife wants to dominate his time while keeping him active enough in the criminal world to afford her lifestyle and Ghost wants to stand on the balcony at his club looking over the dance floor so we can pan over him!

Oh my God! Ghost's giving the OD girl a drug talk, ''you're not the first person ever to do drugs'', why is this happening? 50 Cent makes his first inevitable appearance as 50 Cent, the father, his son must look like his mother. I laughed when Ghost's kid was choking on the dolphin key-ring, symbolism! Diamonds are a girl's best friend apparently, wow! His wife's just the worst, right? She's an abysmal human being, everyone in this show is, I hate them all.

Episode 4 ''Who Are You'' (a nocturnal creature)

The episode opens with Angie creaming her pants over that fucking diamond necklace Ghost bought her after her shitty little woe is me story about not being able to afford diamonds, these are horrible people! It's like this is the crowning jewel of her life! Ghost's wife is just a piece of shit, she finger fucks herself in front of 50 Cent's son, comes on to him all the time and then starts asking everyone why he's crowding her, potentially putting him at risk!

The red head Tommy was pursuing turns out to be a bit of a psycho, perfect for him I suppose but a little forced character-wise. More 'sorry babe... business' stuff with Ghost and his wife, he actually decides to distance himself from Angie because of that dolphin key-ring kid choking thing. Ghost's wife and Tommy relate to each other in their hatred of Ghost wanting to make money safely and Angie and Greg are having issues, oh no!

When one character has sex in this show they all have sex at the same time, Tasha seduces Sean more so than usual, that's all she has in the way of skill, Tommy's girl licks another mans blood off his knuckles, Ghost fucks Angie finally as she attempts to give sentiment to her blood diamonds. Ghost also decides in this episode to skip out on a meeting with what was built up as more than it was ultimately but still, that meeting was sold as some sort of meeting of the dons, it wasn't, it was just some guys.

There's not much about this show I like, currently it's nothing actually but we're only four episodes in, I have to believe it will get better, I mean it can't really get any worse, narrative, characters, character motivations, cinematography, acting, direction, writing, the soundtrack, these are all issues for me so far, but, I'm watching it all, watch me change my opinion or watch me torture myself, either way, I'll see you for Part 2 of what's probably going to be an eight part thing, sorry about that!