There’s a comic from cartoonist Chris Onstad’s classic webcomic Achewood where a couple of anthropomorphic cats watch “TV” (in reality, just their robot friend Lie-Bot in a cardboard box).
“Okay everyone!” Lie Bot begins. “It’s time to see my ass!”
The cats are not a fan of this proposal. “How do you know a robot’s butt is bad?” asks Lie-Bot.
“IT SHOULD BE,” someone yells off panel.
“FIND OUT WHY”, shouts the other.
Citadel is like that robot’s butt.
It’s not apparent from the first few episodes streaming on Prime Video, nor from their promotion, but Citadel is the first volley in what is to become an international TV mega franchise. Citadel is the flagship show, about super spies Mason Kane (Game of ThronesRichard Madden) and Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas of Bollywood and Quantico fame) team up to save the world from certain doom. There will be other international versions of it in the pipeline Citadel, each with their own cast and plot, but set in the same universe. Again: there is next to no evidence for this in the first three of Citadel‘s six episodes, but it’s very important to know if there’s any hope of understanding what you’re watching.
There is more evidence to be found Citadel‘s troubled production, where unrest behind the scenes caused ballooning costs, battles over creative direction, and eight-hour episodes that were whittled down to six 40-minute episodes, two of which premiere today. The resulting show isn’t disjointed, but it’s haphazard – the story flits back and forth, characters constantly announce who they are to each other, and cliffhangers tease “twists” that were obvious from minute one.
Image: Prime Video
What’s left is a GI Joe-ass superspy story, in a pejorative sense, and the most damning piece of evidence yet. The plot comes across as a game of sole proprietorship in the schoolyard: the heroes work for Citadel, which is not just a spy agency, it is the Ultimate one, better than that of any country, and serve none but justice. The villains are Manticore, an evil counterpart of Citadel who is righteous everywhere. Every complication has a gadget made to solve it, right down to amnesia (unless, oops – we lost it).
It is possible to see a satisfactory version of it Citadel hidden somewhere in the show that is here. The setup is fun: after a mission goes awry, Mason and Nadia are separated by an explosion, presumed dead and with their memories erased by the spy technology in their brains. Eight years later, the two live normal civilian lives in different parts of the world until Citadel tech genius Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci) reactivates them to prevent Manticore from finding a device that will lead them to and erase the last remaining Citadel agents. them out. The problem is that Nadia is the only one who can restore her memories and skills, which means her partner Mason is a bit of a competent dummy.
If you’re reading this, it would be reasonable to assume Citadel was a playful spy thriller; not too serious, light-hearted and even funny. Unfortunately, that version of the show only appears in brief moments, the best of which is in the second episode, where Mason – aware that he is a Citadel agent but still suffering from amnesia – tries to convince a very hostile Nadia that she is also a super spy. It’s the rare moment where the characters feel like people who would be fun to follow, but Citadel refuses to let them breathe. Each plot point evokes a flashback, each flashback even less interesting than today’s minimal plot. Fortunately, each episode is over before you can get a strong feeling about it.
Image: Prime Video
This is not a TV series. I’d like to call it an algorithm, but that’s an insult to algorithms. It’s not even an advertisement for the future Citadel mega franchise, because that franchise doesn’t exist yet, and few people who don’t write about it or report on it know it’s even happening. (And at the time of writing, it happens a lot; according to The Hollywood Reporter Amazon has committed to three seasons of three different Citadel series, the next two set in Italy and India respectively.)
Citadel most like a scam, but a scam, like Avon. It’s hard to tell if someone is real taking advantage of its existence outside of ABGO, the production company headed by The Russo Brothers, who serve as Citadelexecutive producers. Watching the show is like transcribing a writer’s room staffed by 12-year-olds, throwing out lines like “nothing more dangerous to a perverted old man than red lips” and sort of expecting people to get on with it. And like a grown man standing in front of a room full of kids, I’m not sure how mean I can be here without it being tacky.
Nobody has to do this. Do you know how many spy shows have premiered in the last month alone? Go look Rabbit hole, where you can enjoy Kiefer Sutherland as a ruthless corporate spy jerk, accused of murder. Or The Night Agent, which has no star power, but has a killer hook (FBI agent has to keep an eye on a phone that never rings… until it does) and a propulsive pace once it gets going. Checking out The company you maintain if you keep your spies on the sexier side. Or wait a few days and see FUBARwhich may not be good, but it has Arnold Schwarzenegger, and that’s not nothing.
It’s tempting to rate a show as a grade Citadel on a bend. It doesn’t have the literary aspirations of prestige TV and life is tough, you know? Everyone has something to do while they’re folding laundry, why bother about the silly spy show?
Friends, there are so much shows to fold laundry, and many of them don’t rely on the remote being out of reach for viewers to slide into episode two. Citadel as it exists now is hardly entertainment. It’s an invite to a hotel conference room, where people are about to sell you on some other shows coming up.
There’s another season of it Citadel down the road, along with those aforementioned spin-offs, and maybe with the very expensive kinks worked out in this first season, maybe they’ll even be good. But based on this? Don’t know. Why find out?
CitadelThe first two episodes will premiere on Prime Video on Friday, April 28, with new episodes added weekly.