Meh.
Possibly the most anonymous season since S4. Certainly haven't bothered with DVDs in years.
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Diverting briefly on the run of seasons, as others have:
For me, S1 is still on it's own plane. It's very nearly a different show altogether
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S2 had some really good eps, and some that produced immense distaste. It was also the start of the Slick n' Shiny factor, and there was a veneer of polish that sometimes kept me from getting as involved. S3 similarly had it's good and bad, as every season does, but I also thought it was one that mebbe challenged the characters a little more; conversely, I think S2 was probably more consistent in the quality of it's cases. I've no real favorite between them.
I recall damn little of individual eps from S4, not without some prompting and reference. S5 was memorable in that it was the first one that outright pissed me off and pushed me beyond my former casual and indulgent indifference :lol:. S5 seemed also to have more extremes, a smattering of very good eps within a larger body of mediocre ones. S6 has had fewer pleasant surprises mixed into it's status quo.
I guess I split the run, I have much preferred the first three seasons to the last three, but still think there have been some entertaining eps throughout.
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...S6? While there were some things that were a bit different that I appreciated, and a few moments here and there that continue to feed my well-sheltered internal nugget of hope for the show, it gets a collective sigh, shrug and shake of the head. Feels like what's "average" for NY has continued to slip a bit.
Some eps continued to have shining moments of humor, some had really striking visuals, some had intense and fun action sequences, some just had a real spirit of fun about them. The strength of the show continues to be the characters, who yet increasingly feel misused, and the cases generally continue to suffer as the weaker element of the show. For all the moments of good, there still is the feeling it's losing ground. Even the preceeding two seasons which I wasn't so keen on got C realm grades, but I'm tempted to grade this one lower to reflect the new version of par.
I liked that Sheldon got some overdue attention, both on a personal level and on an elbow-deep-in-action-outside-the-lab front. I liked how Flack's multi-ep arc was handled, and how the others were generally woven into it. I liked seeing Reed and Nelly again. I liked Aubrey, and Peyton's return far exceeded my admittedly low expectations for the ep; I thought the moments written for both circumstances were quite concise and well done.
I still (and will always) hope to see more Sid. I would like to see more Adam, he's simply a unique character, in himself and in how he can interact with the rest of the ensemble and bring out aspects of each character in ways that no one else seems to provide. Absolutely unique. It's hard to articulate what I mean there.
DL DL DL. Wtf is there to say about DL. That they make me understand the impetus to want to leap off the side of a lighthouse :lol:. After having mostly restrained themselves from returning to the saturation levels of S5, the show overloaded on them in the finale in a hugely unpleasant fashion.
The phrase "Curvatures Of Lettuce" will continue to amuse me absurdly, beyond all rationale. Possibly one of the best things to have come out of the season :lol:. Haylen, not so much. As a character she was sadly not integrated well and I wasn't sorry to see her fade away sooner rather than later.
In retrospect, there was actually more good than I'd thought with regards to character material, but there was also a vast array of bad that smothered most of those gains. Straitjacketed formulaic usage of them, thwarted hopes for a peek further inside them where there seemed opportunity to spend thirty seconds on. They often feel less like individuals that I'm watching go about their business, and more like cardboard functionaries servicing plots that aren't demanding of viewers and aren't pushing the characters. They often feel like they've been stuffed into situational boxes (break glass and use only when). It's maddening to feel that the show is somehow essentially eroding itself, when characters and plots should augment one another. How they are used, the functions they serve within any given episode, and the material, stances, and dialogue given, feel formulaic & predictable. They are in danger of becoming mallets. I'd love for them to be far more complicated than that.
The multi-ep arcs didn't fare so well. Danny's injury was, bar none, among the most ridiculously wasted opportunities the show could have bothered to set up for themselves. I also have to say that the Compass Killer trilogy as a whole didn't hold my attention the way I'd hoped it would, and in a year in which so many episodic procedurals seemed to be producing similar multi-ep nemesis events, NY's was not an exemplary achievement. That seems odd, given I thought Cuckoo's Nest was among the season's best episodes, but the other two in the trilogy didn't engage me in the same way.
Same goes for the return of Shane Casey, coasting on past uniqueness without advancing it further. What a waste.
There seemed an awful lot of fluff and filler in eps this year, a reliance upon franchise CSI format and flash, and not so much on content. They have to make me care about what the hell they are processing, and who they are talking about with regards to the case they are investigating. Especially where the puzzles themselves are not so cleverly composed and unravelled. And while there were some great production moments within individual episodes, it does feel like its stylistic signatures need a bit of a makeover. That too is increasingly & noticeably formulaic, and not always in the best way.
I think the season had a lower standard of "average fare," and gets a D for that reason. Some good moments. Overall, Disappointing.
S7. Time for new staff teeshirts and a refill in my glass half-full.