Mundie Moms

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Shadowhunters Season 2 Premiere: This Guilty Blood / Review #Shadowhunters @ShadowhuntersTV


Happy Shadowunter Sunday! Tomorrow night the 2nd episode of the winter premiere of Shadowhunters airs. I think it's safe to say we're all anxious to see what's in-store. Before we talk about tomorrow night's episode, here are some of our thoughts on last week's premiere.

SOPHIE'S THOUGHTS


Overall, the episode showed way more promise script-wise than any on season 1. We had these great character bonding moments between sets of characters: Malec, Clace and Sizzy. Even the moments between Clary and Isabelle when Isabelle is teaching Clary to fight were pretty true to character. 

The most true-to-book characters moments came from Clary and Simon. Simon (Alberto Rosende) is sweet, still a little awkward and so quick with snarky remarks that I swear some of his zingers were directly lifted from the books. When he sees Clary's frustration and says something about that there should be a Shadowhunters for Dummies, he is perfectly Simon in that moment.

But, then there are other moments. Moments when the bad writing of season 1 had to be explained in quick, hurried asides. Valentine telling Jace that he has demon blood in him, which is why he still desires Clary (remember, they still think they are siblings) -- that moment was weird, rushed and felt out of place. 

The episode had these quick explanations (maybe to catch up the audience with plot points of season 1?), and then it would move on to more character building moments. This made the episode have a hurry-up-and-wait rhythm. Something felt off. 

I know they have a lot to tackle in a short amount of time. Perhaps that's the issue. I swear this episode had more commercial breaks than an American Idol finale.  I wanted to time it, but my gut says we had about 25 minutes of show and 35 minutes of commercials. Most of those were for a Freeform show called Beyond, which followed Shadowhunters. I get the anxiousness of wanting a lead into the next show, but enough already. By the fifth Beyond commercial, I was tired of the show.  For the record, I lasted 20 minutes into the premiere and shut it off because of uneven plot pacing. My teen daughter was staring at her phone, completely uninterested, too.  Hint to the powers-that-be: when fans tune into a show, we want the show, not ad after ad for another show on the network. 

You can't give us a decent plot in that short amount of time, but you can give us PASTA! If you're going to have Valentine defend his fathering skills to Jace by declaring, "I made you spaghetti!". Then by the Angel, please, give us the spaghetti bath moment. Such a huge, easy nod to the fans of the book.

The screen capture of Jace's reaction from the epi:


I want to rename this the "Excuse me, I ordered the pasta" episode.


EMM'S THOUGHTS

I can see they are trying to make this season better. The script was definitely better and the production seemed more polished.  There was better seraph blades & the fighting scenes were better shot and and had much better graphics.

The main new focus of this episode was the Jace & Valentine interaction. The acting has improved and we got to see their love hate relationship explained in more detail. We got the introduction of the demon blood theory which we know Jace grapples with throughout the book series.

I still don't like the technology in the institute. It makes the institute seem more like a CIA headquarters and not a home & meeting place for Shadowhunters of all ages.

I'm also not keen on how Clary is portrayed. She just looks too made up for me. But happy to finally see her wearing book Clary clothes in the training scene. She would wear that blue tshirt on a regular day.

Alberto is perfect in the role of Simon and I love his character in this. We can see he is going to become more and more important in the plot. It was cool to see him discover his speedy strong vampire powers. 

There was also some good interactions between the characters. We got some Clary Izzy bonding, Magnus & Alec getting to know each other better, and Simon clearly in love with Clary. 

There is so much to fix from season 1 that I don't expect it to be fixed in one episode, but overall I can see promise here.

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Did you watch last week's explode? If so, what did you think of last week's premiere? If you're like me, and didn't get to watch it, you'll be catching up on it tonight, before watching episode 2 tomorrow night. 

Check out ShadowhuntersTV.com's Season 2, Episode 2, sneak peak, here
See if you caught these 10 Things from last week's episode.

IF you didn't get to catch last week's episode, watch it HERE

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