Kaka

And that's where we are at with the twists, which are downright pulled out of thin air. Not exactly the best way to succeed. And yet the main villain, Lazarra, is superbly portrayed.

A fresh and entertaining episode that I didn't even expect, but the first shot of Chuck on the tractor gives a signal that something unusual is going to happen, and indeed it is the case throughout the beginning of the sixth season. There's a funny mini-battle with an aristocratic nobleman and his cannons, and a surprising maneuver by the new head janitor Prince that hardly anyone would have expected. If it continues on this relaxed, relatively unpredictable and entertaining note, this season has quite a bit of potential even without the main character from the last few episodes and, in fact, the driving force of the entire series.

A generic fantasy colouring book that benefits from the dark undertones of The Dark Knight and The Return of the King. The inspiration of those masterpieces is blatant in places and at times it seems that the viewer will finally find their own way in all that copy-pasted and uninventive darkness (where is the childlike playfulness and originality of the first and second films?), but the finale is a flabby, artless affair. I can understand that just as the Harry Potter books and films age and evolve, so do their audiences, but keeping they’ve been far from successful at quality bar at all frequencies.

The fifth season is losing pace and it’s recycling the same components over and over again. There are characters we like and shake our heads at, but working with the same narratives and twists for the fifth time is getting a bit hokey . The middle is one looping merry-go-round of chatter and uninteresting meetings. Admittedly, the ending speeds things up a bit and makes this wild game of cat and mouse a little more attractive, but some of the character motivations are questionable to say the least and some of the twists are in the dream category. It probably has the desired effect, but it's pretty sci-fi in places.

A finale that is surprisingly sober, emotional and at the same time a preparation for the next season. There was too much pulling of strings, but the final denouement is for the audience, or rather die-hard fans.

The only episode of six so far that had a twist, a realistic framing of our world, and a great plot.

Good character psychology. Finally, in the jumble of dialogue fluff and questionable motivations, the characters start to emerge in a way that would be believable in a real world full of real people. However, the five minute cooking scene was either totally bonkers and some guilty pleasure of the creators, or it was so sophisticatedly otherworldly that I missed something.

It would have been more than enough if those 55 minutes had been condensed into the final five, where everything important happens.  The endless monotonous chatter is really tiring at times.

The long pause was very noticeable. Paul Giamatti has aged about five years in one year and it is extremely visible. He's gone from a burly, chubby bureaucrat to a grey old man with good in his eyes. I really the allusion to the famous Heat , otherwise the twists are knitted with a hot needle without any deeper continuity and consistency.

An absolutely uninspiring, jaded conversational piece. This episode is indistinguishable from pretty much any middle episode in this series. And the characters that can give it verve are either very few or don’t have much to work with.