The royal family — stranded in Hawaii after a military coup — faces internal strife, which they must overcome in order to return home before their way of life is destroyed forever.

After months of bad word of mouth, Marvel’s Inhumans made its television debut introducing us to a new facet of the Marvel live action universe. Going in to it, I was expecting a disaster, and after watching the first two episodes, the show doesn’t feel like one, instead it’s more like a middle grade episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

I could spend articles saying what the show should be, the easiest being something that plays off of the groundwork its sister show has laid out, but instead I’m going to do my best to focus on what it is.

Marvel’s Inhumans sees itself as a familial epic akin to Game of Thrones and you can see that show’s influence but so much is missing. Acting, special fx, pacing, all fall far behind that show. Lets start with acting.

It’s hard to debate if it’s the writing, the actors, the direction, or some combination of it all, but it feels like everyone is stiff and overall the acting and delivery is lifeless. No matter the actor, no matter the role, it all is so boring and not engaging (I seriously can’t think of one actor that stands out right now). This was one of the “silliest” concepts being taken way too seriously and that led to a drab two hours that dragged on. That drag was some of the series’ two episode’s biggest issues. What took an hour felt like it could have been done in a half hour. Up the pacing and that acting wouldn’t have been as much of an issue.

The special fx has been one of the biggest topics of the show and I can imagine on an IMAX screen how every minute detail would look horrible. On a television screen, it looks comparable to its sister show. Not good, not bad, just a bit mixed. It’s clear there were budgetary and time issues when it came to this and I can only think this led to the choice of shaving Medusa’s head.

My final gripe of the series is that the characters are generally unlikable. Beyond his rather rapey overtones, Maximus is actually right in what he says. There’s a caste system and the ruling class seems to have little regard for the lowest caste. Maximus isn’t wrong in his ideas, though similar to Fidel Castro, you know his just revolution against the corrupt/aloof ruling class will only lead to a corrupted vision.

The two hours first two episodes isn’t bad at all, it’s also not all that great. The series feels rushed, not well thought out and misses every opportunity to do things interesting (why ignore S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s Inhuman set up!?). The show is bland and part of that is that we’ve seen everything presented and have seen it done better elsewhere. The biggest thing missing from Jack Kirby’s creations are imagination.

Overall Rating: 6.0