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thetaconinjamaster
Reviews
Mind Over Murder (2022)
Mediocre.
I see that quite a few of the reviews here praised this series from the mountaintops like it's the best thing ever. To each their own, I suppose. To me the series was mediocre. What I watched was nothing special and nothing I haven't already seen before, nor did it present to me anything new that I'm not aware of that happens in this despicable thing we call the 'justice' system. I watch true crime documentaries ALL the time and while I've definitely watched a lot worse shows/series, I've also watched a lot of better ones too so this show was just simply okay at best.
Though I always appreciate when directors try to put a new spin on something, sometimes it just doesn't work and as a result does more harm than good. In the case of this series, always having to watch a bunch of members of the Beatrice community act out the parts of all the actual individuals involved in the Beatrice 6 case at the town's local theater was, simply put, fk'ing STUPID and served no purpose other than to stuff the series with filler crap to pad the runtime length. This not only killed the momentum of the show for me as it added nothing whatsoever to the overall experience but it also made me start to lose interest in the entirety of the series. This 'act-out-the-case' nonsense was NOT needed and to be honest it shouldn't have been included at all because it was extremely inappropriate and insensitive on the series director and theater director's part not only to the victim and the loved ones left behind but to anyone else as well that was traumatically scarred by this cruel, heinous crime. I mean, I understand what the Beatrice theater director's actual intention behind it was but that still doesn't make it okay to do.
If you're so inclined to watch this show anyway I'd say maybe watch the first 4 episodes then Google the rest if you care to know what happened afterwards because by the 4rth episode the series kind of starts to just drag on and on. This series bored me more than anything so I really don't get what all the hype was about from some of the reviews I've seen here. If you haven't seen Making a Murder (Netflix special) go watch that instead because Making a Murder was a damn good series, addicting, perfectly directed, narrated and delivered and just a crazy story all around. To be brutally honest I wouldn't waste your time on watching Mind Over Murder unless you have nothing else to watch.
American Monster (2016)
Stale And Repetitive
I wanted to like this show but as the title of my review states it's just very stale and repetitive. I'm 5 seasons in (of, I believe, 10 seasons overall) and so far each episode's structure has been the exact same with nothing different to break up the monotony. Each episode is approximately 42 minutes long. I'd say about roughly 30 minutes of that is spent always going over the backstory and then FINALLY getting into the crime aspect of it for the next 12 minutes. I'm sorry but the balance here is way off and as a result you just get to the point where you want to fastforward through the backstory to get to the reason WHY you wanted to watch the show in the first place: the crime!
Listen, I get it, everything needs context, a backstory so that it all comes together in the end to form a clear and understandable story. But goodness lord o' mighty WHY do you drag it on for soooo long?! Ugh! Instead of spending all that time on the backstory why not split it up between the story, the crime and the aftermath (court proceedings, sentencing, etc)? Show some courtroom proceedings, mix it up, make it entertaining for the viewer to watch instead of repeating the same dull, boring formula episode after episode!
And for the love of GOD please, do not EVER hire that narrator to do any future projects! The cringe is real here, folks. Seriously man I'm talking hardcore cringe to the point where you're going to want to stab your eardrums out then listen to another word out of this narrator's mouth. This show had potential but for all the reasons I've stated they went and blew it. What you're left with is basically the same episode over and over again just with different people and murders committed in different ways.
Serial Killer: Devil Unchained (2019)
Total Snoozefest
I have no clue why these other "reviewers" gave this three-part series such high reviews. Did we watch the same show because the one I watched was soooo boring, repetitive, uninteresting and annoyingly narrated. I stopped watching and removed it from my list on 4 different occasions. Eventually I did muster the mental fortitude needed to power through but good grief, Charlie Brown, what an utter snoozefest it was! Only watch this series if you plan on filming and directing a documentary yourself and seek tips on how NOT to make one suck so much.
If you plan on watching it anyway just be prepared going in for almost 4 hours of your life wasted that you can't get back.
Declassified: Untold Stories of American Spies (2016)
Misleading Title
The reason that I say "misleading title" is because I watched all 3 seasons and it barely had anything to do with actual spies and spying. There were SO MANY actual spy cases they could've included but chose not to for some reason. Throughout all 3 seasons (24 episodes in total I believe) it only contained maybe 5 or 6 actual spy cases. Overall I was extremely disappointed in this series.
If you're going to title a show "declassified: Untold Stories of American Spies" MAKE IT ABOUT AMERICAN SPIES instead of filling the series with episodes that have nothing to do with spying. No idea why people gave this show a 10/10?