I found this show on Amazon Prime and decided to give it a watch because I have a huge crush on Kristen Bell. Yeah, I know. Sue me. Anyway, I binged all 5 seasons in about a week, so I'm reviewing the entire show, pilot to finale. All my commentary will remain general, so no spoilers ahead.
Overall, I have to say I don't think the show is worth watching, even if you're a big fan of one of the actors or some other specific element that went into it.
The show does occasionally have its moments. Once in a while, but generally not more than once a season, there is something to really get excited about, something that will stir some emotion if you're invested in the characters and story. Sadly, none of those moments are quite grand enough to make it worth the grind of reaching them. And it is a grind.
For starters, it's hard to really root for any of the characters. I've seen plenty of shows/movies where you're "rooting for the bad guy," which is sort of the premise this show was going with- a bunch of management consultants whose job it is to trick corporations into paying them ridiculous amounts of money. Okay, no problem there. Except that they're not just bad guys in business. They're constantly backstabbing, back-biting, and generally treating everyone around them (including each other) terribly. And if we weren't supposed to like the characters, that MIGHT be okay. But then we're given all these subplots and interactions that are clearly designed to make us feel for and relate to the characters. And just when you're getting to like them, they turn around and do something horrible again. It's a bit like a very unpleasant roller coaster.
Part of that, the very worst part, are the 'false growth' moments. The show will give you some sequence of events that seems to lead one of the characters to grow and change, and then a couple episodes later (if it even lasts that long) they revert right back to who they were in the pilot. After a while it gets hard to watch the same characters doing the same things without ever growing, learning, or changing.
This is especially pronounced with the "sidekick" characters played by Ben Schwartz and Josh Lawson. They're more caricatures than characters, and every time they seem to start turning into real people, the show pulls a 180 and they're right back where they started.
I'm not going to say much about the acting except that I didn't think anyone spoiled it with their performance, but likewise the only one that really impressed me was Glynn Turman, who plays Don Cheadle's character's father and pops up pretty regularly throughout the show without being one of its leads. He steals virtually every scene he's in, but part of that may be that he's the only truly likable character in the show.
House of Lies rarely lacks for unpredictable twists and surprises, but by the end even that starts to become predictable. Once you get a good feel for the show you can actually predict when the next twist will pop off, and what sort of character it will have (blow to personal life, blow to the business, etc.) without having any clue what form it will take.
Even if you don't know the first thing about corporate America, the show requires a ridiculous amount of suspension of disbelief. The team deals almost exclusively with powerful CEOs, Board Members, and other titans of industry who are, one and all, half-wit fools and cowards. They are all just bumbling around, doing obviously stupid things, waiting for the team to arrive and trick them with the most childishly obvious ploys and strategies imaginable, treating each one as if its an act of sheer brilliance. I'm sure the writers like to imagine that everyone who goes into business is an idiot because it fits with Hollywood's preferred narrative about capitalism, corporations, 'rich white men', etc. but it's really quite ridiculous, especially given how big a part of the show it encompasses.
And speaking of narratives, strap in for some seriously preachy story lines, because you're going to get force-fed a lot of the usual Progressive talking points in the process of watching this show, and House of Lies doesn't do subtle. So you'll see Don Cheadle deal with over-the-top racism, and Kristen Bell with over-the-top sexism. Then you'll see the obvious knock-offs of real people the show wants to mock by presenting them as caricatures with slightly altered names. And if anyone brings up religion, you don't even have to think about it, because they're all fools, hypocrites, and bigots. Cap it all off with a portrayal of the brutal dictatorship in Cuba as some kind of paradise on Earth and... well, you get the idea.
My final note will touch on the series finale, but without any spoilers. The entire final season feels like it's building to a logical ending business-wise, as if they were planning to end the show at the end of season 5. But for some reason they don't take any steps at all to set the characters' personal lives on a matching trajectory, so we roll into the final episode with nothing close to resolved for anyone, and then suddenly the characters just turn themselves inside out to give the ending we've all been waiting for, which I found completely unsatisfying.
Anyway, I hope this review helps. I really wanted to enjoy the show, and you can't say I didn't give it a fair shake, but they just didn't make something worth the time.
Overall, I have to say I don't think the show is worth watching, even if you're a big fan of one of the actors or some other specific element that went into it.
The show does occasionally have its moments. Once in a while, but generally not more than once a season, there is something to really get excited about, something that will stir some emotion if you're invested in the characters and story. Sadly, none of those moments are quite grand enough to make it worth the grind of reaching them. And it is a grind.
For starters, it's hard to really root for any of the characters. I've seen plenty of shows/movies where you're "rooting for the bad guy," which is sort of the premise this show was going with- a bunch of management consultants whose job it is to trick corporations into paying them ridiculous amounts of money. Okay, no problem there. Except that they're not just bad guys in business. They're constantly backstabbing, back-biting, and generally treating everyone around them (including each other) terribly. And if we weren't supposed to like the characters, that MIGHT be okay. But then we're given all these subplots and interactions that are clearly designed to make us feel for and relate to the characters. And just when you're getting to like them, they turn around and do something horrible again. It's a bit like a very unpleasant roller coaster.
Part of that, the very worst part, are the 'false growth' moments. The show will give you some sequence of events that seems to lead one of the characters to grow and change, and then a couple episodes later (if it even lasts that long) they revert right back to who they were in the pilot. After a while it gets hard to watch the same characters doing the same things without ever growing, learning, or changing.
This is especially pronounced with the "sidekick" characters played by Ben Schwartz and Josh Lawson. They're more caricatures than characters, and every time they seem to start turning into real people, the show pulls a 180 and they're right back where they started.
I'm not going to say much about the acting except that I didn't think anyone spoiled it with their performance, but likewise the only one that really impressed me was Glynn Turman, who plays Don Cheadle's character's father and pops up pretty regularly throughout the show without being one of its leads. He steals virtually every scene he's in, but part of that may be that he's the only truly likable character in the show.
House of Lies rarely lacks for unpredictable twists and surprises, but by the end even that starts to become predictable. Once you get a good feel for the show you can actually predict when the next twist will pop off, and what sort of character it will have (blow to personal life, blow to the business, etc.) without having any clue what form it will take.
Even if you don't know the first thing about corporate America, the show requires a ridiculous amount of suspension of disbelief. The team deals almost exclusively with powerful CEOs, Board Members, and other titans of industry who are, one and all, half-wit fools and cowards. They are all just bumbling around, doing obviously stupid things, waiting for the team to arrive and trick them with the most childishly obvious ploys and strategies imaginable, treating each one as if its an act of sheer brilliance. I'm sure the writers like to imagine that everyone who goes into business is an idiot because it fits with Hollywood's preferred narrative about capitalism, corporations, 'rich white men', etc. but it's really quite ridiculous, especially given how big a part of the show it encompasses.
And speaking of narratives, strap in for some seriously preachy story lines, because you're going to get force-fed a lot of the usual Progressive talking points in the process of watching this show, and House of Lies doesn't do subtle. So you'll see Don Cheadle deal with over-the-top racism, and Kristen Bell with over-the-top sexism. Then you'll see the obvious knock-offs of real people the show wants to mock by presenting them as caricatures with slightly altered names. And if anyone brings up religion, you don't even have to think about it, because they're all fools, hypocrites, and bigots. Cap it all off with a portrayal of the brutal dictatorship in Cuba as some kind of paradise on Earth and... well, you get the idea.
My final note will touch on the series finale, but without any spoilers. The entire final season feels like it's building to a logical ending business-wise, as if they were planning to end the show at the end of season 5. But for some reason they don't take any steps at all to set the characters' personal lives on a matching trajectory, so we roll into the final episode with nothing close to resolved for anyone, and then suddenly the characters just turn themselves inside out to give the ending we've all been waiting for, which I found completely unsatisfying.
Anyway, I hope this review helps. I really wanted to enjoy the show, and you can't say I didn't give it a fair shake, but they just didn't make something worth the time.