TV critic pans new series, realises he watched it in the wrong order

A critic for the New York Times gave new series Goliath a kicking for being "needlessly complicated", then he realised he'd watched the first two episodes in the wrong order.

Mike Hale, writing about the new Amazon Prime drama starring Billy Bob Thornton panned the show in his review published on 13 October.

Hale said the legal drama was 'promising', but he also criticized the 'opening episode' (episode two) for leaving "so much unanswered".

The paragraphs were deleted by the New York Times when it was realised Hale had watched episodes one and two in the wrong order, but not before NewsDiffsharvested the edits for all to see.

Hale, talking about the disparity between two plot lines went on to make these (not deleted) points:

That’s one miscalculation. Another is the needlessly complicated structure of the initial episodes.

Hale referred to the "slow burn" style of revealing details (which unbeknownst to him had been revealed in episode one).

The nature of the case McBride has taken on (involving a suspicious suicide) is revealed slowly and cryptically, a bit of writerly delayed gratification that keeps your attention but isn’t particularly rewarding.

Then, presumably because the first episode leaves so much unanswered, the next jumps back in time to fill in the history of the case — and when the second episode ends, the story hasn’t even caught up to where it started.

The narrative juggling has the feel of stretching — of starting with a story suited for an episode of traditional TV or maybe a feature film and extending it to more than nine hours. Final judgment on that will have to wait until all 10 episodes are available.

The last edit to the page was on 17 October, when the New York Times added this series.

An earlier version of this review included an inaccurate discussion of the show’s plot structure. The critic mistakenly watched the first two episodes out of order.

To be fair, Hale sounds like everyone's dad when it comes to using a DVD player.

The trailer for Goliath can be seen here:

HT: The Guardian

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