PONIES (Peacock)

It was a really charming show! I also thought Vic Michaelis (Cheryl) was utilized perfectly. Not sure how much more steam it had after that barn-burner of a finale, since it seemed like a lot of loose ends were tied up already, but I’m open to another season.

The plotting was a bit of a mess, but I enjoyed the cast and especially the two delightful leads. Good mix of drama and comedy. It was a fun show, and I'd love some more seasons.

Yes, I enjoyed it. Also very happy to see my girl Vic Michaelis in a popular-ish show.

Yes it was so excellent and refreshing!!!

Went in hopeful, finished it just to make sure all the good things people were talking about weren’t happening in the last episode… wasn’t the case. It’s ok for a ‘turn off your brain and watch’, but if it was supposed to be a complex and twisty spy thriller that made any amount of sense they really needed better writing. Americans speaking loudly in English in public supposedly being covert spies, the plot always being moved forward in public by CIA agents after they specifically said not to speak outside of that one special room, sending your nana into a covert operation straight from the US… The cast had potential, the writing killed it for me.

I really enjoyed it too, and hope they get picked up for another season.

It needs a season 2. Maybe that decision has been made but is not yet announced. Maybe there's a team already on the ground trying to book locations, given how many productions now shoot in Budapest. Maybe the Peacock execs are still navel gazing and writing a new chapter in the ongoing "how to mismanage a tv show" chronicles. I dunno. I thought season 1 did a pretty good job of juggling the drama and comedy, although as the season developed, the comedy/parody element came to the fore, even as the stakes steadily increased. Bea and Twila are in over their heads from the start. As they cannonball into one scrape after another, each more deadly than the last, they escape repeatedly through a combination of luck, pluck, and the timely intervention of \[pick 'em: Dane, Ray, Ivanna, the Marine extraction team ...\]. The show is walking a very fine line here. Luck, pluck, and the miraculous appearance of outside help -- a classic deus ex machina solution; J.R.R. Tolkien used the giant eagles repeatedly when he wrote characters into a corner and there are innumerable other expedients -- will get old fast if it's overdone. Going forward, a lot depends on how much time the showrunners think they will have. Bea and Twila were written as a comic odd couple, pushed to extremes. Bea is a normie, a highly educated, kind and sensitive young woman shattered by a tragedy; Twila is the tough kid from the wrong side of the tracks who has developed a hard, cynical shell as a matter of self-protection. Twila is much the trickier of the two to write going forward because the show wants to be broadly comic, and Twila carries most of the comic load. She is written as a caricature pushed to the point of being obnoxious and unlikeable. Bea will toughen up; that's relatively easy. But where do clowns go? If they remain clowns, they become one-dimensional and boring. But if the mask comes off and we see what the mask is hiding, the clown is exposed. Beneath the mask, the clown may be sad, dangerous, evil, scheming, ominous, pathetic or whatever, but they're no longer nearly as funny and the show loses that edge. Twila starts getting revealed early in episode 1 in the conversation with Tom about going to the Christmas Party; we see the hurting young woman who is trying to mask pain that we have not yet been shown. By the end of season 1, Twila is a vulnerable and sympathetic character. She has gone from being rather unlikeable to someone we would want to help. (I.e., she has found the side of herself that Dane told her to find in the "we're not sending you home" conversation early in s1. That part of her training is completed.) So where is the comedy going to come from now? I don't see any other character on the show who can step into the comic role, and if Bea and Twila reach an equilibrium on the vulnerability scale, they are no longer a mismatched odd couple. One option -- a natural for an ensemble show with a very strong cast -- is for the supporting characters to step up. Bea and Twila would remain the narrative core, but that doesn't mean that other subplots can't expand and take some of the episode by episode narrative burden off the Big Two. My best guesses: Andrei >!has to be flipped. He's too valuable to be killed, unless Artjom Gilz signs for some other big project and is suddenly unavailable. Bea and Twila's cover is blown and they are useless in Moscow unless Andrei keeps their secret, and that requires a classic spy drama double agent blackmail dance!<. Chris >!has to be sorted out; everything Bea-related demands that. Andrei tells B&T that Chris was the mole. But that doesn't make it true. It's hard to see why Andrei would lie at that point, but Dane has said that Chris was only pretending to work for the Soviets at his request; it could be that Andrei had been taken in by the deception. In addition, however, it never made sense that Tom and Chris would both be shot as they got off the plane, which is what Vera says she saw. Why would the Soviets kill their mole? That story could go in many directions.!< Dane, Emile and Ivanna >!are wildcards. Who is the "our friend in the village" that Emile refers to in e8?!< Ray and Cheryl: >!Their marriage is going to explode. Does this happen in s2, 3, or 4 ... so how much time do the showrunners have, because they have to know how fast to pace the reveals. And since Ray is the show's Dudley Do-Right, where does he go? There is a perfect ending for Ray and someone else sitting in plain view, but it may be too happy a solution for the showrunners.!< Characters who are "good guys" and who will remain good guys, whatever banana peels they may slip on along the way: >!Bea, Twila, and Ray.!< Characters who may be playing a double game, or end up doing so before the end: >!everyone else.!< Where do the showrunners want Bea and Twila to end up? I have a preference. YMMV. But I'll postpone that speculation other than to say that they presented at the beginning as multi-dimensional characters, albeit pushed to extremes in the mismatched odd couple pairing. I would prefer to see them grow, not shrink, over the course of the show. That is too long a story to get into here, except to say that in the end, they should not return to the U.S. and become happy homemakers like a 1950's sitcom. Nor should they become stone cold CIA operatives who have given their entire lives over to the life of shadows. That would narrow their trajectories considerably. The longer any show goes, the more important it becomes for other members of the ensemble to step up and share the spotlight with the original main characters. Background actors grow into major supporting roles. Supporting actors become virtually co-leads. New characters are introduced and in a season or two or three become mainstays. The show has to grow or it becomes stale. So what path will the showrunners take?

There’s still no news about season 2?

It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. I wasn’t a fan of HLR in this show. Maybe it’s just me but I thought her acting was particularly bad and over the top, making her performance annoying. Emilia Clarke however nailed the role and carried the show in my opinion. I wish they did more with the characters. They started off with a decent premise, but kind of lost the plot halfway thru trying to introduce action to keep the audience from falling asleep.

Couldn’t make it through the first episode and I wanted to like it. Really rough acting and writing. Felt like a bad translation of The Americans.

I was really hoping for Cheryl to get involved after she got nosey. I wanted her to be a third wheel spy basically. It's the perfect role for Vic to be having fun but clearly not desired or welcome. Maybe Cheryl would have an arc herself where she becomes one of the gals. The last episode decisions kind of eliminate that hope.

I had some problems with the way character motivations intertwined with the romance they seem they wanted to build up but besides that and other small issues, it was pretty fun yeah! Hope we get a season 2.

I haven't finished it yet. I'm watching it pretty much only because the two leads are so likable, but the actual show is very hard for me to get immersed in because it doesn't take itself seriously. And I don't mean because of the funny/lighthearted moments, I mean because nothing makes sense and characters seem way too dumb to operate under the rules of the world they established early on. And not just the girls who are supposed to be inexperienced, but the guys at the CIA.

I enjoyed it as a bit of fluff. It was much more comedic than I was expecting and Adrian Lester and Emilia Clarke were fantastic. HLR though I’m afraid to say I thought was terrible. Overacting ‘quirky’ every time she was on screen.

I thought it was just ok. I struggled to get thru some episodes and found HLR very annoying at times.