ALEX RIDER season one, ep 6

ALEX RIDER season one   ep 6

 

When you read a book, it’s like seeing and hearing a movie in your head. When you read a series it’s a like a series of movies or TV shows in your head. Even more so with the ALEX RIDER audios (NOT the US ones, the UK ones read by different narrator than the US one, one that does the voices).

 

Thus, I feel I’ve already seen the visuals of POINT BLANC, which means this show…was doomed from the start. They blow several things here. Having Kyra able to hide in the place ruins that fact that ALEX HAD TO GET OUT because there was no place to hide. It’s stupid.

 

They also blow how Alex’s cover is messed up. Here, if Tom Harris wasn’t stupid enough in the past five episodes, he’s reached the apex of stupid. Not only does he ditch school to go to a huge corporation alone without telling anyone where he was going but he also has thumb recognition on his cell phone and the ALEX RIDER IS A SPY video on his cell phone. Didn’t anyone ever teach  him about stranger danger? Or “tell a friend”? In any case, this makes me angry. Tom Harris, while not school smart, was certainly one of Alex’s smartest friends in the books and would NEVER fall for this nonsense. Nor was this necessary for the plot. It was fine the way it was.

 

And…Greif and Eva don’t know about Ian?

 

Why is Yassen following Parker’s man? Grief orders Parker to capture Tom to find out more about Alex, ENDANGERING his well placed kid---Parker---who is there for bigger plans than murdering a high school boy. Why would he do that? Why not hire Yassen to find out more about Alex via Tom? In that case, why not hire Yassen to find and bring Kyra back?

 

If all of that’s not bad enough, they really blow the snow boarding scene. Just as it’s picking up, it ends. Anthony Horowitz once said that an action movie can have too much action. Uhm, no, Anthony, you’re totally wrong. And this is puzzling coming from the man that wrote the best action scenes in the history of novels.

 

What makes this appallingly disappointing is that this snowboarding bit is one of the most iconic Alex Rider moments in the entire series AND you can see the bare bones of a GREAT series that this TV show could have been if they just went by the book, so to speak. The snow boarding sequence is just getting exciting and then it ends and instead of having him stopped by a train he hits, Alex stands in the street while a snow plough runs into him. I wish I were kidding. I’m not.

 

I can’t hate this series. I can’t love it either. I don’t know how I feel about it besides disappointed. The premise is so good, the individual villains and their out there plots are great, the idea of a 14 year old spy on his own is beyond exciting and different…if played straight. This is played straight but not straight from the book. Having Kyra loose ruins things. Having the snow boarding scene cut short and ending the way it does ruins things. Having Tom be such a stupid idiot ruins things. HE compromises Alex in three major blunders. He never thought it strange that a big company has him coming to them in the middle of a school day after what he and Alex went through earlier in the story? He’s a dope. If I were Alex I’d dump THIS Tom as a friend and try to find the Tom Harris of the novels.

 

Still, the beauty of the snow and the mountains and the pulse pounding of the beginnings of the chase make this ALMOST worth while.

 

Another disappointing episode, I’m afraid. WHY couldn’t they just stick to the book instead of almost sticking to it? It’s totally ruined.