This show takes a precipitous dive from a promising beginning to being utterly ridiculous and implausible starting in episode 4. What a disappointment! The acting is uneven; some good, some not. "Brain" never hits the mark; I never buy her as the feared mastermind no one dares to cross that she's supposed to be. "Muscle," "Specialist," and "Officer" do a good job, but the writing and character development take such nosedives that even the best acting can't stave off the show's crash and burn. I feel sorry for the actors, trying to maintain some quality and believability while working with such crappy material. The show begins with a decent script and a somewhat plausible "heist caper" plot in the first three episodes but then falls apart and becomes laughable -- and not in a fun way. The characters do completely uncharacteristic things in order to connect far-fetched, contrived plot points lurching toward some supposedly big reveal at the conclusion. It's not worth continuing to watch but I did, hoping for some redemption, return to quality, or perhaps an unexpected explanation tying everything together at the end. Sadly, none of those things happen. It becomes more ludicrous and nonsensical each successive episode. Toward the end, when the driving motivation behind the whole caper is revealed, it's an eye-rollingly thin personal revenge gig. Not only that, it's delivered as a long, verbal explanation -- very bad form when there have been six prior episodes during which this center around which the plot revolves could have been brought to light via dialogue, plot devices (like the extensively used flashbacks), and character development. Showing is more powerful than telling... especially when it's a "show." The ending feels like a hasty patch job, an attempt to spackle over gaping plot holes and disguise implausible motivations, and it doesn't work.
Review of Culprits
