A senior CIA agent on the verge of retirement must take on one final mission: to save his own daughter whose cover in a dangerous country just blew up.

We’ll get to more detail on that setup in a moment and start with the positive instead.

Spoilers ahead, mostly regarding the show structure rather than plot details not obvious from the beginning.

There’s lots of good stuff in season 1. The high-octane action plot races ahead and gives us great production values. The cast gamely works with what they have and seems to have a blast. Each one makes their character appealing and engaging in their own way, including—with regard to engaging, anyway—the bad guys. They never water down their performances or leave the viewer in any doubt of their evilness, but do so with charisma and even some charm at times. One can understand and empathize with them without liking them or agreeing with them.

Initially, the good guys fare worse due to the setup. The bosses send Schwarzenegger’s character to rescue his daughter, but don’t reveal her identity to him ahead of time. Their reasoning: they don’t want him to worry or lose focus going into the mission.

To extract his daughter.

From a murderous weapons dealer’s heavily armed based of operations.

But no, the bosses don’t give him that vital piece of intel.

Inexplicably, they prefer him to be totally shocked and taken wholly off guard in the heart of the enemy camp when he first spots her. Epic fail on that logic. Bad enough they allegedly can’t warn the daughter ahead of time. This way, both will be completely unprepared. Clearly the situation is intended as humor. Epic fail.

A good bit of the ‘humor’ fails, as it takes place during bloody gun battles which simply never strike me as funny. There is also a major ICK—but, credit due, eminently logical—moment where father and daughter pretend to have slept together. Also ick and annoying: the tired and tiresome trope of the overprotective and possessive father. His shock at a twenty-eight-year-old no longer being a virgin, and his snapping at her not to swear—all while people try to kill them—don’t qualify as amusing in either concept or execution.  Humor that doesn’t fail:  ice cream cake, and the ship.

One quibble about staging and directing: sometimes the characters go to great lengths not to blow their covers. At other times, they have rather loud conversations where any number of people can overhear them. Also intended as funny: fighting in the middle of critical points of the mission. It looks really bad instead.

As the eight-episode-season progresses, the characters—especially the supporting characters—gain welcome depth and nuance. Each episode ends on a cliffhanger which is only mildly irritating since the whole season dropped at once, and also due to the nature of the show that makes it pretty clear our good guys will survive.

Verdict: Two ratings, with the deviation due to allowances of preference compared to quality.  For me: 6/10 due to my own sensibilities.  Otherwise, because so many have different quite reasonable views and the show overall is otherwise well done: 8/10.

Rigel Ailur

http://www.BluetrixBooks.com