Rate 'The Falcon and the Winter Soldier'

I gave it a five despite the fact that I agreed with everything you said.

The last episode failed as far as I’m concerned. It became a morally bankrupt manifesto for radical politics and terrorist sympathising.

Why convoluted?

I’m rewatching it. 5/10 isn’t fair. I like it better than that. Just the last episode was disappointing.

What's rather surprising is how little impact these series seem to be having on the MCU at large. 2 years ago I was worried their streaming series would become their crutch, to get more money out of us in lieu of trying with more blockbuster tent pole releases.

The good news seems to be MCU movies will be back on the agenda in just as big a way. I might've been done with the MCU had they veered too far into streamed mini-series.

7/10. The finale was underwhelming for sure, but overall it was a solid story. I feel like there was some mixed messaging with the politics on the show, but ultimately its heart was in the right place. Looking forward to everything this show sets up; Cap 4, the Dark Avengers/Thunderbolts, even Young Avengers. I will say the Sharon Carter turn makes absolutely no sense; even if she's a skrull (which is the only explanation I'm willing to accept), it still doesn't explain why she would lead Sam, Buck and Zemo directly to her serum supplier. You're sacrificing the story's internal logic to fool the audience, that's just bad writing.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was "political" without being "politicized." It's tough to be offended by politics that are so vague and elementary as to be equivalent to those in a YA science fiction novel series. I do not understand all of the unrest over it, but people have to be upset about something, I guess. The show is about as "political" as an installment of the Hunger Games. The problem with that aspect of the show, for me, is not that it's offensive so much as it was on the nose at times.

I didn't mind Sharon's heel turn, but I did think it was way too abrupt. They needed to show (and not just tell) some of what causes her to go from respected SHIELD agent to Madripoor's top crime boss. The transition is so abrupt; it leads me to believe that she might be a member of a certain alien species known for shape-changing.

The suit is not the best work to come out of Wakanda for sure, but it is strikingly comic-book accurate. That I can respect. I'm not sweating it too much as it's practically a tradition for Captain America to have a lousy suit by now. I'll be pissed if it makes it to the big screen even for a second but, for TV, it was fine. It held up in the action scenes a lot better than I thought it would.

Outside of Karli, I didn't feel anything for any other Flagsmasher in the group. When evil Alferd dispenses with them, it barely registered. Some semi-attractive people with superpowers died in a van — the end.

It's kind of cool that Zemo wins --- again. He accomplished the mission he set out to complete. I hope to see him at the head of the table for a Dark Avengers or Thunderbolts outing.

Outside of a few other minor nits, I thought the series was entertaining and, at times, even thrilling.

I didn't have a problem with the political message they wanted to impart, my problem was that they sacrificed good storytelling in order to focus on the political message. Here's a few examples of what I mean:

1. They put so much effort into trying to paint Karli's cause in a sympathetic light that they failed to develop Karli as a character. They were so concerned about focusing on what the Flag Smasher's were saying that they failed to focus on the Flag Smasher's themselves. 

2. MCU writing is usually fairly smart, at least in comparison to other superhero shows. Sometimes audiences might even feel that they're having trouble catching up with the discussion in MCU shows, because the shows don't slow down their lines for the audience. But when it came to the political messaging of this show, they kept repeating it multiple times throughout the show, usually in very verbose expositions in order to get the point across. It's like they didn't trust that their audience was smart enough to get the message the first time around, so they repeated it 10 more times. This resulted in some very clunky and dumbed-down dialogue, the best example of which was that final speech Falcon gave to the senators which, for lack of a better word, was some pretty on-the-nose preaching. 

3. So much time and effort went into focusing on Sam's transition into Captain America that they let other storylines and character development fall to the side. Almost the entirety of episodes 5 and 6 were focused on Sam, and when your show only has 6 episodes, well, 2 episodes is a lot. Just a few examples of stuff they neglected:
   a. Walker went from being a murdering psychopath to tag-team partners with Bucky. We had almost zero transition or character development for Walker after he got kicked out of being Captain America. Now he's apparently back to being a hero, although diminished.
   b. Sharon Carter's heel turn was something we all expected but it was still way too abrupt and violent at the end. They could have taken a bit more time to flesh this side of her out. 
   c. Karli's backstory of working for the power broker was never explored. It was something that was mentioned and then forgotten. 
   d. Bucky's PTSD issues have been completely ignored in the last few episodes. The resolution he gets by talking to that old Asian man is completely rushed and glossed over. We get very little closure for Bucky. In fact, Bucky is given very little to do in the final episode. He talks to Karli on the phone, fights some random flag smashers, saves one truck of people... and that's about it. In comparison, Sam saves not just one but two helicopters in very climactic fashion, has a showdown with Batroc, has a showdown with Karli, saves a truckload of people again in climactic fashion, then gives his big speech in the end. I know they were focusing more on him than on Bucky, but would it really have killed them to take one of those big scenes from Sam and give it to Bucky instead and allow Bucky a bit of time to shine in the final episode of a show he supposedly co-titles in?

There are others but I think I already wrote a paragraph as it is. Bottom line, the show felt a bit unbalanced for me because good storytelling was sacrificed in order to focus more on message telling. 

 

What I did like about the speech is that Sam acknowledged there are no easy answers.  That aspect of the story is too complex to wrap up with some dialog, it's an issue that this world will be dealing with for a while.  

As you said earlier about the Carter turn, it needed more time to be fleshed out.  I don't buy it without seeing how she got there.  (But she's totally skrull.  I don't think the MCU wants to ruin the Carter family reputation in the long run.)  

You know what would make a great Zemo story?  Him leading a team of evil (or at least morally compromised) superhumans, turning on them (or getting them to turn on each other) and making his escape.  That could be fun, and very much in character.  

I'll take his wrap-around goggles over the US Agent's helmet.