Harsh Realm: Reviews

Another classic episode from Harsh Realm, which means utterly boring and not remotely interesting and clearly not satisfying.

DIRECTING
Still, I think Jefery Levy did an awesome job with such a poor script. A sci-fi show like Harsh Realm deserves a comic-book type directing like he is offering.

THE END
Chris Carter wanted to create a hi-tech sci-fi series with a mix of Paths of Glory, Platoon and Blade Runner. It ended up being a mashup between Sniper: Special Ops, USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage and Battlestar Galactica.

VERDICT
I give it 1 out of 5. I'm finally done with watching this series. I'm logging off from Harsh Realm, my Dearest Readers.

VOICE-FREAKING-OVERS
The episode opens with yet another voice-over explaining the goal of Harsh Realm. And then the teaser cut with the opening credits, in which Hobbes explains once more the story. The amount of voice-overs is so annoying it becomes laughable, again and again.

Bad writing, bad acting, bad everything.

I give it 1 out of 5. Please make this stop. I need to leave the Harsh Realm world and go back to my reality, which is far more exciting!

Another boring filler with boring voice-over and no progress whatsoever in the overall story, like Hobbes explains in one of his soporific letters: "The events of these past days have changed little in Harsh Realm." Indeed, my friend. Indeed.

MY DEAREST BOREDOM
Once again, the episode opens on a boring summary of the story. When you watch the episodes back to back, it makes it entirely redundant and even laughable. You could easily auto-generate his letters. How 'bout we try one:
"My Dearest Sophie, as I lay my words onto these pages, I can only reminisce of the days you and I had together in a world that seems now so far away. But if it is fate that brought us together in the first place, then fate will also bring us together back. I will return, Sophie, and believe that my friend Pinocchio holds the key that might open the final door of Harsh Realm. It might seem so far away in the distance that I can only cry. Are these tears a digital dream? Are we bound to relieve the same life over and over again? I put my faith in you as I know you put yours in me, my Dearest Sophie."

FAITH
John Shiban writes a story based on faith, because clearly the series is not boring enough, so we need even more stalling.

YET...
Yet, I must admit that, at least, the episode is focused and clear and easy to follow. It's not a complete mess like most of the previous episodes, with countless boring action scenes. Therefore, as much as I didn't like this episode, I at least enjoyed the slow but focused pace. You don't need to rush things to make them interesting. That second when Pinocchio is alone after being healed was very powerful. That reminds me of some of the best episodes of The X-Files from the very first two seasons, when the characters were sometimes in front of their fate, without any music or dialogue whatsoever. Remember when Mulder was crushed and crying in One Breath? That's power.

MYTHOLOGY
But one of the many problems of the series is that since we don't move at all, we don't get to see the best of the series: no Santiago and no Inga Fossa.

VERDICT
I will give it a 2 because I liked how focused it was. But I cannot give it more.

ANOTHER BAD STORY
I hoped that Frank Spotnitz would be able to write a more interesting episode than the previous ones, but the writer failed exactly like the others did before him. His story is completely boring. There is a couple at a lake, there are digital clones of digital characters. There is water...

STALLING
We are already six episodes into the series and we are nowhere near making progress in the main characters finding an exit from the virtual reality of Harsh Realm.
Going back to LOST, the characters were finding clues throughout the episodes that would ultimately help them leaving the island. Sure, as any long TV series, it had countless back-and-forths and red herrings, but it was exciting to watch and, as an audience, you couldn't wait to see the next part of the story. I vividly remember when John Locke found the mystery hole in the ground. How exhilarating it was!
Here, we are just witnessing fillers. Writers seem to be forced to find unconnected stories that serve no purpose whatsoever in the hero's quest.
It's like if Frodo would start his journey to go to Mordor, but instead of moving forward, would solely spend his time on random quests without making one step forward.
In LOST, you would see one step forward, and yes perhaps two steps back, but things would progress. Here, we are at stall, forever and ever.

THE BEST OF THE WORST
What's even crazier is that Inga Fossa and Santiago, the two most interesting characters of the series, do not even appear for one second. Why would you not fully utilize your best elements, knowing that your show is in a dire situation? It's beyond me.

VERDICT
I give the episode 1 out of 5. I don't see the point of me wasting my time watching this. I would have much more fun watching any A-Team or MacGyver episode than this. I said it.

In this fifth episode of Harsh Realm, Tom Hobbes meet his mother in Harsh Realm. What could have been a very interesting and emotional episode is actually quite bad. Instead of focusing on the emotional side and going fully at it, the show focuses equally on Hobbes and Pinocchio being imprisoned and getting an implant in their body that will kill them if they try to escape.
The series keeps wanting to show guns, fights and action, but it makes it far less interesting and far more immature.

Also, the device crawling into the prisoners' neck is quite a rip-off from The X-Files masterpiece Ice from season 1. A couple of shots are almost identical.

There were interesting ideas though: what happens when a digital character dies, Sophie seeing Tom through the eyes of his mother. But that's too thin to make the episode remotely interesting.

I give it 1 out of 5.

As much as The Animatrix had proven that you could write various exciting scripts taking place inside the Matrix, the episodes of Harsh Realm are proving that if you are not entirely focused, creating a virtual reality is so beyond difficult that it becomes very bad very quickly.
This is the case here. The episode is another mess. The characters are in a type of WW2 simulation. Nothing makes sense and it is highly difficult to care about characters wandering randomly in a virtual reality.
There could have been so many great concepts, such as the lead character falling for a virtual character. But here, the show is yet another episode where the characters run from one place to another without any purpose at all. Their initial goal was to kill Santiago. Instead of planning it, they simply run towards mundane tasks that are as unimportant as uninteresting.

At least the previous episode had Inga Fossa, which was an interesting and enigmatic character. Here, there is just nothing.

I know that in fandoms, fans usually spit on the studios and always think that the studio only care about money and only provide bad feedback. Well, I think FOX was totally right to cancel this series after three episodes. It just doesn't work. And you can go and go at it, the concept is simply not working. Therefore, the only right thing to do was to pull the plug.
This episode (4) is the first one that did not air on Fox, but aired on FX, six months after the previous episode.

VERDICT
I give this episode 1 out of 5. I am only four episodes into the series and I am overly bored to death. Please, can anyone stop the game?

INTERESTING TEASER
I enjoyed the teaser, which is probably more classic but at least extremely simple to follow and focused. Also, I find the character of Inga Fossa intriguing although quite classic in the television spectre of the late 90's and early 2000's.

A MESS... AGAIN
Then, the episode goes again into too many directions. There are too many characters doing too many mundane things. There is a wrestling fight of small digital fighters, half-naked women dancing, many extras, random portals going to random places, lots of noise, some fancy quotes from Santiago, people looking at others taking a leak, but... where is this going? Clearly Chris Carter doesn't seem to know.

CASTING
When I compare with the initial episodes of LOST, we have also a big cast, but we know who is who. We remember the characters' names. We identify them quite clearly. Here, the characters are all empty shells. There is a lady which keeps looking angry and fighting people. Pinocchio is not charismatic at all. And the lead barely holds his own scenes but is clearly not able to lead the show. As per Santiago, he appears so little that he cannot as well help.

DIRECTING
The director also doesn't know what to do with this mess. The camera keeps moving all the time, everywhere, and makes the story even less structured.

SEXUALITY
One important aspect to note in this episode is the sexualization of the female character of Inga Fossa. It seems that Chris Carter is now not restraining himself in this series. The problem is that Chris Carter's writing on sexuality has always been entirely and completely immature. The rare gay characters in The X-Files were all completely cliché: the gay couple from X-Cops, the evil gays from I Want to Believe movie and the gay in the bar which cannot wait to blow Mulder in the restrooms in Founder's Mutation (season 10).

VOICE-OVERS
Lastly, the voice-overs are somehow interesting, but they keep repeating the same story and basically complaining that they know nothing and can do nothing but won't give up. This feels quite boring and nowhere near as interesting as when Mulder and Scully would voice-over their field report at the end of a solid X-Files episode.

PATHS OF BORING
Chris Carter explained that he conceived the series as a hi-tech version of his favorite films, Paths of Glory, Platoon and Blade Runner. As a big fan of these three films myself, I completely fail to see the connection between these films and this series.

VERDICT
Again, this episode is a joyful mess. Without The X-Files success, this series would have not even gone past the pilot episode. Nobody in their right mind could ever summarize this episode.
I give the episode 2 out of 5. Weak.

OPENING TITLES
After a somehow interesting yet odd teaser, the episode shows its first opening credits sequence – since this is the first episode after the pilot.
I must say that the credits from The X-Files and MillenniuM were far more inspired than this sequence, which feels too close to the average TV series you'd stumble upon.

EXPLAINING, AGAIN AND AGAIN
Not only the opening titles contains the main character summarizing the series, we end up having the character once more describing the series in an opening monologue.
For a 45-minute show, that's a lot of explanation. Quantum Leap had the details explained in the title sequence, so that the audience could simply join the episode without having to be told again what was happening. Here, it feels that the creators are so not confident about their concept that they keep repeating over and over again the story to the audience, fearing they might change the channel, instead of doing what is by far the most important thing: entertain the audience.

NOT CLICKING
Overall, the story seems to move forward but things are so unclear and so not focused that the episode is very difficult to enjoy. That song from Moby keeps playing, we get to see various characters – even a dog – without any clear conflict.

TWO TIMELINES
Not only that, but the series is so ambitious that we actually are witnessing two separate timelines: the one in Harsh Realm and the reality, in which Hobbes' fiancee is told that he passed away.

PIXELATED
Also, the pixelized transitions between scenes felt really out of place and look clearly outdated today.

SPREADING TOO THIN
It is evidently clear to me that in the late 90's, Chris Carter spread himself way too thin, by taking on too much work.

VERDICT
I give the episode 2 out of 5. The show has barely started and it is already very weak. To me, the series is too ambitious and not focused enough. Once again, I appreciate the honesty of Ten Thirteen in trying to create a new universe but it just doesn't really work.

Sarajevo, 1994.

Harsh Realm opens on a scene of guerrilla warfare, focusing on a pair of American soldiers getting attacked by armed children. The scene is well produced and is interesting, but the scene closely ends and we don't really understand what was the point of it, as it seems disconnected with the episode's story.

Soon after, the character is introduced by some military officers to a virtual reality game called Harsh Realm. Without fully agreeing to anything, Hobbes is taken into this world in a way that is either interesting or boring, I'm not exactly sure. Whilst Gillian Anderson narrates the story of the game, she suddenly gets interrupted, and Hobbes realized that he is inside the game.

The mission? Finding Santiago.

This is quite a stark contrast with the pilot from The X-Files, which is a classic – yet set with a paranormal bouquet – detective investigation. When Hobbes jumps into the virtual reality game, Mulder and Scully, eleven into their own pilot, had already established their relationship and were arriving in Belleflower, Oregon, to investigate.

Meanwhile, in Harsh Realm, no relationships have been established, apart from Hobbes being apparently the hero of the series and having a good looking fiance.

We understand that Hobbes is stuck in his alternate reality and seems to have no way to get out. This looks very familiar to Quantum Leap, in which Sam Beckett was stuck in another reality, even though his was real in a sense that it was in the past. But when the missions from Samuel Beckett were very simple and emotional, Hobbes mission is immersed in a mythology that is just starting.

AMBITIOUS
Clearly, Chris Carter was extremely ambitious with this series. He aimed to set a complete new world, which means creating sets and props that look different. And creating a Mad Max episode every week is no fair task.
When you, once more, compare it to The X-Files pilot, it is night and day. Harsh Realm has, in just his pilot alone, helicopters flying around, military jeeps rushing on the street, scenes taking place in the middle of the city and more. Harsh Realm would not be a cheap series.

COMPLEX YET SIMPLE
The story of the pilot episode is both complex and very simple. The episode can be summarized in one line, but since the audience is kept in the dark in order to slowly reveal the mythology of the game, we feel lost most of the time, having no clue where we are going. This feels both refreshing and odd at the same time. I believe that The Matrix was able to convey the matrix world in a much cleaner and more exciting way.

MAGIC
Yet, there is a particular moment in the pilot episode where things click. Mark Snow suddenly takes the lead and offers an atypical partition, which simultaneously connects with the introduction of Santiago, portrayed by the one and only... Terry O'Quinn! Before the entire world fell in love with the actor in his magically and outstanding portrayal of the character John Locke in LOST, Terry O'Quinn was a favorite from Chris Carter, who used him twice in The X-Files series, once in the first X-Files movie and in a semi-recurring role in MillenniuM. Clearly, Terry O'Quinn is a magnificent actor. He's a true rock star. He has something terrifying and yet friendly in his eyes. I absolutely love him and I was really pleased to see him appear in the pilot episode of Harsh Realm.

And a few words on the outstanding final shot of the episode. I believe that if the first half of the script had been more worked on, this could have been a brilliant pilot.

VERDICT
So, overall, what note will I give the pilot? As always, Chris Carter's productions were made with integrity and respect for the art and for the work. Even though the pilot is far from being perfect and doesn't always really works, it is a very solid and very enjoyable episode, especially the second half. I am sure I want to give it either 3 or 4. I will give it a low 4 because it feels fresh and I respect the journey and the end result. Let's deep dive in the next eight episodes now, my dearest ones, shall we?