Just started watching Terra Nova

I watched the first two episodes last night.

Considering a lot of the opinions I've heard about the show--many of which said it's just not all that good--I went into the show with fairly low expectations. But I ended up being pleasantly surprised.

It's an interesting concept and as I was watching I found myself remaining engaged most of the way through. I always put movies and TV shows to a test: How often do I check my watch or reach for my phone? In the case of these two eps, I didn't feel compelled to do that too much.

I feel like most of the cast is doing a pretty good job, with Stephen Lang the standout performer.

One thing I took particular note of was the look of the show. I understand that Terra Nova was considered to be very expensive--the most expensive network show of all time in 2011--so I wanted to see the money on the screen. And for the most part, I DO think the show looks very good. However, there were two things that stood out as not really living up to the show's huge budget: 1) In the pilot, before they go back in time, there are some CGI cityscape shots that look totally digital, as if they didn't even want to try to make it look real. And 2) The dinos mostly look like shit. They look like exactly what they are--cartoons--and it's very distracting. Every time they appeared on screen it took me out of the show. They really should've worked harder on that.

Something I will point out is that most of the shows I'm watching now or watched recently--Ozark, The Sinner, The Mist, The Handmaid's Tale, Top of the Lake, GoT--fall into that trend of "dark and gritty" cable shows that are all the rage these days. What I noticed while watching Terra Nova was that it kind of felt good to take a break from that and watch something that was a bit lighter in tone and more family-friendly in nature.

I feel hopeful going forward and think I'm going to stick with this one. It's only 13 eps, though apparently Netflix is removing the show on the 11th of next month so I'm going to have to roll through it at a more brisk pace than I otherwise would. Hopefully it will maintain a consistent level of quality throughout.