(Spoiler alert) Started watching #TheUmbrellaAcademy , recently finished episode 4. Reminds me of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - the show, not the book - in that it's a mystery set in the real world with a bunch of fantastical elements and a ton of moving pieces.

I like it so far, it's creative and knows how to reveal enough to keep me on my toes, and the characters are interesting. I want them to survive.

The fact that there are essentially no rules to the universe makes the mystery harder to solve, but it's also funnier, so I don't mind it too much.

(I've seen the episodes only once, so correct me if I get something wrong)

I still don't know what it's got to do with umbrellas, but I'm certain it'll be thematically relevant. It's probably a metaphor for how they're supposed to shield the world from harm like umbrellas do, but I wonder if "it's a metaphor" is the diegetic explanation.

I've heard it said that writers mistreat characters they like. If that's true, the writers' favorite is Klaus. By a long shot.

Which, fair. He's my favorite too. The Disaster Gay™ representation we deserve.

I really like him and want him to get better, but so far the issue is that he's all character flaws, meaning that a character arc in which he sorts out his issues would leave him with no personality.

Ok, that's not true, he does have plenty of personality besides selfish and self-destructive, it's just that so many scenes play him as just that for comic relief it feels like that's all there is to him.

Watching episode 4 and hearing him say essentially "You kidnapped the wrong guy, no-one will miss me when I'm gone," I thought "A-ha! Classic irrational depression thought! The others are will rescue him and disprove it," but no! They really forgot about him! That's messed up!!!

Every time Luther and Diego talked about their missing brother I kept saying "BrotherS! Klaus is missing too!"

Maybe I imagined it, but they sounded almost exasperated when they remembered he was missing as if they were thinking "Ugh, now we have to go save him."

If they did go looking for him earlier, he wouldn't have told Hazel and Cha-Cha about the eye, they wouldn't have burned down the factory, Patch wouldn't have died, they wouldn't have escaped, and he wouldn't have vanished mysteriously with the briefcase

What I'm saying is, most bad things that happen from now on can probably be blamed on people not loving Klaus enough

Most bad things in this series so far can be blamed on the characters not being loved enough, frankly

I knew Patch died going into the series and that she was supposed to be Diego's love interest, but they spent so little of their on-screen time actually getting along her death doesn't hurt as much as it could've.

She also never really felt much like a character outside of her relationship with Diego. The episode where she dies is the one where she has the most screentime without Diego, which helps establish her a bit, but it's not a lot.

"Come back with a warrant" Hahahaha! Those pesky rights that cops have to respect! Wouldn't it be so much better if they could just do whatever they want?!

:|
:/

I wish that we'd seen what Diego and Patch were like together because I'm really curious as to how Diego ended up dating a cop

It's interesting. Vanya and Diego both get partners that are initially underdeveloped because there's a twist to them in episode 4, but Eudora dies and Leonard is secretly evil.

Well, I don't know that. Maybe he's flushing his girlfriend's medication down the sink behind her back for completely innocent reasons, who knows.

We still don't know what the medication was for, which is... weird? Since Vanya is going to realize that it's missing the next episode, you'd think they'd want to establish the consequences of not using it to build tension.

The last two episodes' cliffhangers were both some variation of "Klaus is in trouble." Poor Klaus.

Alright, episode 5! Klaus gets put through the wringer, again. It's impressive, they managed to put him through the Vietnam war despite being born after it. Bending time and space just to make Klaus suffer.

My parents' theory is that the apocalypse is going to be caused by Vanya because she wasn't loved enough, and if they're right, it's going to prove my theory that everything bad in this show happens because the characters weren't loved enough.

I just watched it, so I don't have as many thoughts right now. I'll probably form some later.

I'm really curious as to how Klaus ended up in the army. He doesn't really strike me as the type of guy willing to die for his country

No-one in this series talks to each other, which makes sense, because it's about a family fractured by an abusive father, but it also means that a bunch of time is spent by characters rehashing what the audience already knows to each other

It's also hard to keep track of what characters do and do not know. It's hard enough to remember the plot, but now I also have to remember the seven different versions of the plot each character knows

Maybe it's just me who has a hard time with this kind of stuff. I often have difficulty following the plot of books and movies. Probably shouldn't be watching mystery stories then

Something that could've been communicated better is Klaus's time travel. He vanishes in one episode and that's the cliffhanger, then at the start of the next one he reappears and Hazel and Cha-Cha get a message telling them about an unauthorized trip to 1968, so I thought that we

were seeing him in 1968. Granted, he was wearing different clothes and had a new tattoo, but I watched episodes 4 and 5 a few days apart and didn't realize it.

Maybe that's the problem? It's a Netflix original and so binge-watching is the assumed way to consume it. If you do so it's probably easier to follow the plot and to remember what each character knows

Binge-watching has fundamentally changed shows' fandoms. There's a lot less speculation in-between episodes, which was a big and fun part of fandoms, and since hiatuses are longer fandoms die out due to the lack of new content. It's a bit sad

This thread has been very critical, and I want to be very clear: I really like the Umbrella Academy. I like shows with big casts of characters and they all have a unique and interesting relationship with each other and their dead father

They're all flawed enough that they come across as human and even tragic, but not so much that they're unlikable. Five especially could be easily hateable, but he spent decades alone in the apocalypse and he looks 13

"I don't think I'm better than you, Number One, I know I am" sounds funnier and less annoying coming from a child