Ok, so I’m not a writing person. Usually it takes about 8 hours before a deadline until I finally pull my finger out and create something. With this in mind, I am hoping my contributions to Hardly a Review will be of a higher quality than the streaming river of shit that must be flowing from Nosh’s arse after that Chinese food we consumed about two hours ago.
So with a fist full of dictionary, and another fist full of gin, I started to scour the web for a show worthy of my critique. I came across just the show, a low budget sci-fi series produced and set in New Zealand. Perfect, I thought, I should be able to get a few jokes out of that.
The Almighty Johnsons has a fairly standard sci-fi concept, the main character, Axl, comes of age only to find that he is in fact the Viking god Odin, reincarnated in human form... how convenient. In fact his entire family are reincarnated gods who have eked out an existence in various guises ever since they fled Scandinavia to escape Christian persecution, well let’s face it who hasn’t fled Christian persecution at one time or another?
That’s all very well, if not a bit cheese, I hear you say... so what’s the catch? Well since the gods survive by reincarnating themselves as human beings, their powers have diminished over time. Meaning the all the god of winter can do is chill your drink and all the god of poetry can do is continually chat women into his bed... yeah, that’s pretty much all these two characters do. However, to restore their powers the newly reborn Odin, as king of the gods, must complete a quest. He must find the reincarnation of Odin’s wife Frigg (yeah, I know) and... well... basically shag her.
This sets out the premise for the show, which is essentially one big sex mission in order to find Frigg so they can all live merrily ever after with newly regrown beards and ever flowing tankards of ale. It seems fairly simple, and yes that’s because it is, and that’s where the show falls down, no overarching plot, no drama or suspense, no deep character development and an extremely predictable story. I felt that I already knew all there was to know about the characters by the end of the second episode, and as the story went on I felt more and more certain in that assumption. It’s got all your favourite bargain bin characters, such as “the proud one” who will stick to his principals even when it lands him in a hole full of shit; “the insecure one” who is often troubled by his powers and questions his self worth till it makes you puke in your popcorn, and of course there’s the “92 year old stoner hippy... … ...one”.
A regular episode usually centers around the main characters hunt to find Frigg. Pulling up a lead, which although it could technically be anyone, is usually always a fairly attractive white chick of a similar age to the main character. Then there’s a race between the protagonists and the antagonists to one-up each other before the final gripping conclusion that it actually isn’t Frigg, and the search begins afresh. I can honestly say that I haven’t seen a plot so repetitive since I last watched Pokémon. I had money on it being his plain looking flat mate all along, but she actually ends up being one of the very few women he get’s past second base with, so I lost my money.
You may think that despite it’s flaws I didn’t like the show. You’d be wrong there, or else I wouldn’t have watched all 10 episodes of the series and bother to write and half coherent review of the bloody thing. Nope, despite all it’s flaws, there was something that kept me coming back... oh yeah, the boobs... and even there were in fairly short supply. If I’m honest, my problem with the show isn’t that there’s necessary anything wrong with it, it’s just that everything it tries to be has already been done, and done a lot better. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the whole god thing... but couldn’t they have picked a more exciting religion? I mean I for the longest time I was trying to work out if Ullr was a main character or if the guy just has a fish bone lodged deep in his brain stem.
I’m not going to say it’s not worth your time, but I’m not going to say you need to see it either; but if it’s a summers day, and all your shows have ended, and you’ve already watched the 32 hour directors cut of Harry Potter with Daniel Radcliffe’s pimpled face in 3D, then I guess you could do a lot worse than this... in fact, screw Harry Potter, Harry Potters lame, just watch this instead.
TL;DR: If an infinite amount of monkeys, sitting at an infinite amount of typewriters were given a very strict deadline... they’d probably turn in this.
Right that's your lot! Jamie out!
Hardly A Review - "Watching shit so you don't have to"
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