{"id":12510,"date":"2025-06-25T03:51:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T03:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/12510\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T03:51:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T03:51:09","slug":"countdown-review-amazons-urgency-free-l-a-set-thriller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/12510\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Countdown’ Review: Amazon’s Urgency-Free L.A.-Set Thriller"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe 10th and last episode of Countdown<\/a> that Amazon<\/a> sent to critics is head-scratchingly bad \u2014 a cavalcade of anticlimaxes and improbable choices so tone-deaf on every level that I was convinced the show was about to unleash a doozy of a twist as part of what I assumed to be its season finale.<\/p>\n

\n\tWere the characters in this mediocre 24 knockoff that might have run on TNT circa 2007 actually going to turn out to be ghosts? Or aliens? Or poorly programmed artificial intelligence navigating a politically denuded simulacrum of 21st-century Los Angeles? Would the twist be that this race-against-the-clock drama without any clocks to race against was taking place in the mind of a small child with no nuanced understanding of human behavior? Or perhaps in the mind of a large manatee with no understanding of human behavior?<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCountdown\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tPrepare to count down from “entertainingly dumb” to “just dumb” in record time.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAirdate: <\/strong>Wednesday, June 25 (Amazon)
Cast: <\/strong>Jensen Ackles, Jessica Camacho, Eric Dane, Violett Beane, Uli Latukefu, Elliot Knight
Creator: <\/strong>Derek Haas\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tAlas, no.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe twist of the 10th episode of Countdown turned out to be that this was not, in fact, the finale of the first season of Countdown. There are, in fact, three additional episodes that weren\u2019t sent to critics, at least one of which could still utilize one of my predicted twists. I\u2019ll never know.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe truth is that if Amazon had only given critics up until the eighth Countdown episode, which ends on a cliffhanger that the ninth episode resolves fairly stupidly, my review would have been tepid but probably not negative. Until that point, Countdown was generic and blandly reactionary, but not flagrantly so. And, although it made me appreciate the taut proficiency of even third-tier 24 anew, I was never bored and I was willing to give the show credit for its effective use of varied L.A. neighborhoods. I couldn\u2019t ignore, though, how dumb the ninth episode was and how much worse and more peculiar the 10th episode turned out to be.<\/p>\n

\n\tSome viewers will absolutely be able to. In addition to capitalizing on the ample fandom for several of the show\u2019s stars \u2014 Jensen Ackles<\/a>, mostly \u2014 Countdown could practically be retitled \u201cThing to Watch on Amazon Before New Seasons of Reacher, Alex Cross, Terminal List and the Next Bosch Spinoff Premiere.\u201d After all, as I already said, it isn\u2019t like there\u2019s any actual counting down going on in Countdown.<\/p>\n

\n\tCreated and written in its entirety by One Chicago mastermind Derek Haas<\/a>, Countdown begins entertainingly with a recognizable television favorite discovering something at the Port of Los Angeles. Soon, a race through Downtown L.A. ensues. The character, who works for the Department of Homeland Security, doesn\u2019t last long, raising the dual questions: Who killed this short-lived character and what did he learn that necessitated having him killed?<\/p>\n

\n\tThese questions must be answered by Nathan Blythe (Eric Dane<\/a>), a law enforcement and task force veteran who has pulled together, for very specific reasons, this team: Meachum (Ackles) is LAPD, coming off of nine months undercover at a prison in Palmdale and harboring a secret. Oliveras (Jessica Camacho<\/a>) is DEA, coming off of several undercover stints with various cartels and maybe harboring a secret. Bell (Elliot Knight) is an FBI counterterrorism expert, while Shepherd (Violett Beane) is an FBI cyber-investigations expert, but neither has a secret. Finau (Uli Latukefu) has been working gangs and narcotics for the LAPD for 18 years, and while it\u2019s initially suggested he has some history of involvement in police violence, it\u2019s never mentioned again. There\u2019s also Drew (Jonathan Togo), from Homeland Security, who has one character detail and no secrets.<\/p>\n

\n\tWithin the confines of the pilot, we learn that the season-opening murder was related to some quantity of nuclear material transported through the docks, an arsenal that could turn L.A. into Hiroshima or Chernobyl (a comparison made by one character, even though those two circumstances are not actually analogous).<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the start of the second episode, we learn that the man behind the conspiracy is Boris (Bogdan Yasinski), a wannabe Belarusian oligarch with the most nebulous all-purpose grudge ever devised for television. Shows like 24 and Homeland have proudly boasted about the research that allowed them to create villains who gave the impression that the series had their finger on the geopolitical pulse. Boris appears to have been created to remain as far away from any sort of geopolitical pulse as possible. At no point did I find him scary or intriguing or well-played.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor nearly eight hours, Blythe and his task force go around L.A. following up on leads, almost always a name that Shepherd is able to find in some database. They go to almost every neighborhood in Los Angeles County and the surrounding environs, generally preceded by a gigantic chyron telling us that we\u2019re in Inglewood or Culver City or Pacoima or High Desert. <\/p>\n

\n\tIt is my highest praise for the city that, for the most part, Countdown gives the impression of shooting in every neighborhood that they name-check, occasionally even capturing hints of the personality of those neighborhoods. There are times that those neighborhood references and acknowledgements of local freeways turn Countdown into the action-thriller equivalent of the SNL sketch \u201cThe Californians,\u201d which would have made more sense as a title than Countdown.<\/p>\n

\n\tSomebody in Los Angeles has the makings of a nuclear weapon that could obliterate the city. That\u2019s established immediately. But the \u201cwhere\u201d doesn\u2019t become clear until the ninth episode and the \u201cwhen\u201d is never a part of the equation, which means that you have a show called Countdown that even includes the sound effect of a ticking clock without the necessary urgency of a specifically upcoming attack. Haas and the team of veteran directors just assume that because they\u2019ve said something bad is possible, that\u2019s as concrete as viewers will require to experience building tension.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s not! At no point in the episodes I\u2019ve seen do any of the characters seem to experience urgency themselves. They\u2019re just puttering around Los Angeles like heavily armed Uber drivers, or like they\u2019re playing a game of Where in L.A. Is Carmen Sandiego. But I can\u2019t tell you how much time passes in the first season. Nor can I explain why there\u2019s a whole episode in which, with a pending threat of nuclear attack, two characters have an ongoing debate about whether to get a third character cake or cupcakes for a surprise birthday. Nor why, when one character is seriously wounded, every member of the task force goes to sit in a hospital waiting room looking glum, rather than continuing the job of SAVING LOS ANGELES FROM A NUCLEAR ATTACK.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn line with the series\u2019 lackadaisical approach, every piece of information has to be repeated multiple times for the benefit of distracted viewers \u2014 a response to second-screen viewing that is infiltrating television in general, but Amazon shows especially egregiously. Fully half of Blythe\u2019s dialogue is sending different permutations of characters to these different locations, so that the rhythm of the show goes like: \u201cI think Boris might be in Azusa!\u201d \u201cOliveras, you and Meachum go to Azusa!\u201d \u201cTITLE CARD: AZUSA.\u201d \u201cSo this is Azusa?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNone of the characters is all that interesting, though the cast is up to the general task. Dane conveys gruff, admirable authority with every barked command. Ackles, who spent 300+ episodes making glib smartassery likable on Supernatural, is impressively able to win affection for a character who, if you stop and think about it for even a second, is closer to dangerously narcissistic than rascally heroic. Ackles and Camacho have a combustible chemistry that the show steers into to the detriment of every other member of the ensemble, rendering Beane, Latukefu and Knight decidedly secondary pieces of the cast. They\u2019re all still better than Merrick McCartha\u2019s smarmy Los Angeles DA Valwell, who shows up every episode to make trouble for our team as a one-dimensional adversary.<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, at least for some of the time, there\u2019s a muscularity to the series\u2019 direction, which pairs one chase after another with punk or metal needle-drops. I\u2019m not so emotionally callused that I can\u2019t enjoy a pursuit set to Mot\u00f6rhead\u2019s \u201cAce of Spades.\u201d There\u2019s nothing to the aesthetic that you haven\u2019t seen in dozens of broadcast police\/SWAT\/alphabet agency procedurals (and that shows like Southland didn\u2019t do better), but it\u2019s mostly taut and occasionally breathless.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe last two episodes I\u2019ve seen are, unfortunately, neither taut nor breathless. They\u2019re dumb and illogical, and while I\u2019m sure a twist could have spackled over the abrupt unraveling, I\u2019m doubtful it would have made Countdown good. Where things concluded after the tenth episode was not a place I\u2019m interested in going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 10th and last episode of Countdown that Amazon sent to critics is head-scratchingly bad \u2014 a cavalcade…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[2431,1582,276,7312,13134,13135,12978,9666,2961,224,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-12510","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-amazon","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-countdown","12":"tag-derek-haas","13":"tag-eric-dane","14":"tag-jensen-ackles","15":"tag-jessica-camacho","16":"tag-la","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114741974644089513","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}