Disclaimer: I’m a blind film critic. This series does have audio description on Peacock.

Dear Chat GBT,

Your membership to the Writers Guild of America has been denied.

the benefit of dropping your show on peacock, on December 27th, is that most outlets have already released their best of and worst of lists. So, unceremoniously dropping all episodes of a new action thriller on a Saturday, caught my attention. This feels like a burn off if there ever was one. But this show has Simu Liu, Melissa Barrera, and Brian D’Arcy James.It can’t be that bad, can it?

Here’s the lesson. When I started mingling with other critics about how many episodes of a series they watch before doing a review, they gave me an answer of like 3-5, if they aren’t finishing the season. But the reality is, and we have totally lost this thanks to streaming, a pilot matters. crafting that first episode is an art form in and of itself. A bad pilot can kill a series. Some shows, before the era of streaming, were yanked after the reception to just the first episode. That is all anyone needed, and they wanted no more.

I want no more of this, and I’m frankly flabbergasted at the positive score this has. this is one of the most inane, stupid, reductive, idiotic first episodes not just of the year, but ever. I’ll counter you, and say not only do I refuse to watch a second episode, I acknowledge that I have watched more than one episode of All’s fair, which I have not reviewed, and most critics believe to be the worst. No, this is.

We get to follow Alexander (Liu) in a flashback for the ages. This flashback will haunt your fucking dreams, not because it is particularly traumatic, but because they show it to you five or six times like I’m being tested for dementia. Like the doctor asked me to remember five words, and I didn’t get any of them right, so I’m relegated to offensively explanatory and repetitive shows. If I went into another episode, and they had the audacity to continue to show me Alexander’s Sophie’s choice, I’d throw my TV out of my home. In my daily recap, after first sitting through this mind numbing catastrophe, my initial recommendation was that if you have a loved one interested in watching this, divorce them. but I forgot to extend that to other situations. if you find yourself in the room, and this show is playing, exit immediately. Don’t bother to locate a door. Kool-Aid man your way out of the room. This is to television what War of the Worlds is to film.

Alexander is an agent who is called and told he has to escape his current operation, and the helicopter coming to rescue him has a spot for only one other person. He is instructed to choose an American. from where? Where is he? Where did all these Americans come from in Belarus for him to choose from? Fuck it, he’s going to wander into the woods, because Americans frequently hang out in the woods in Belarus. He finds a kid, who doesn’t speak English, because he isn’t American. uh oh, spaghetti-O’s. then, out of nowhere, Karen from Cincinnati runs in, “Please! take Me! I’m an American!” Oh shit. She meets the qualifications. What WILL HE DO? Unfortunately, Alexander isn’t decapitated by helicopter blades to quicken the end to this series, and of course he chooses the child. We don’t see how this negatively impacts him, though we are told he has panic attacks from having had to make this choice. Did she die? Or, did she just wait for the next helicopter, which was right there.

So this could be a show about PTSD. it isn’t. We’re going to switch it up, and let people know that when Bush was president, he read Alan Moore’s Watchmen, and wondered who does watch the watchmen? So, he created a super clandestine organization no one has ever heard of because it doesn’t exist, called the orphanage. fuck me. We have the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau Of Investigations, National Security Administration, and… the Orphanage. It doesn’t stand for anything, like the Only real Possibility Humans Actually Need A Gun Equipped, an odd name I agree, but The orphanage is one of those names a writer got after watching John Wick, and thinking every clandestine organization needs some name that sounds like it is connected in some manner to The Table, or whatever. It is name choices like this that make Impossible Mission force less silly.

So Alexander is later working at the Orphanage, and something is amiss. He isn’t sure if what he’s seeing is real. he visits a friend, asking for help. flirts with a bartender. Chats with his parents. All to allow him the opportunity to give heavy exposition. Lots and lots of exposition.

Eventually, he figures out he’s got something in his brain, and he’s being used, which his organization figured out when they noticed he was emitting a WiFi signal. I’m not kidding. You can connect to Alexander, if you have the right WiFi password. Based on the writing for this, I assume the password is.. password. His boss spies on him, and when he returns to the office, he is put in a cage, which blocks the WiFi signal. Here, he learns the plan. they don’t trust him, but they trust him. they will use him to communicate fake crap to whoever installed the WiFi.

And WHAT you might be asking now, actually is the titular Copenhagen test? Well, in his dubious studies, Alexander comes across a mention of a loyalty test. He believes now that the woman/boy choice was a setup, and he failed. He didn’t follow orders. But how does the Copenhagen test factor in to the Orphange, the walking WiFi, and everything else? I think the test is more of a Turing test, and this show failed, because the dialogue is so bad, it could only have been written by AI.

Liu seems bored, Barrera isn’t being challenged, and D’Arcy James doesn’t really have a meaningful contribution.

there are so many things, when you think he’s been hacked, that you wonder where they were paying attention, but most of all, it seems that Alexander is set for a briefing in a cage, in an office he works in, but he’s never been in the cage before. If you’re following his life, wouldn’t it seem strange to you that all of a sudden, he’s in this signal blocking room?

But then, we still have the audio description. it is that one woman who works exclusively with the worst audio description companies, and no one else. I don’t mind her voice, but it never inspires confidence. Here, the audio description track is glitched out and repeats itself. there is a moment where Alexander enters a room, and the same line about this action is read twice in succession. Clearly, very few people care about this show.

I’m sorry, but with real people, you aren’t guaranteed a second episode. Hell, you aren’t guaranteed anyone will finish the first. In linear times, people were more tolerant of watching something mediocre that was a lead out of a popular show, especially if sandwiched between two popular shows. but streaming has decimated that concept, and Peacock can now tell exactly how quickly people leave any film or series.

What you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I’ve ever heard. At no point in your rambling incoherent response was there anything resembling that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Rotten: Final Grade: 1.0/10