Shangri-la is a very peculiar show for me. I wanted to like it. I tried to like it. I gave it chance after chance and said time and again things like “they could recover from this”, or “they could still bring it back” or “that’ll make sense if…” only to be, in some sense, disappointed every time. This isn’t a show where every thing is bad, but it is one where critical flaws ultimately produce something of a frustrating experience.
In some ways, I think Shangri-la is best studied in a master class on how to not write speculative fiction. It is so particularly, precisely bad that we really do have to sit down and dissect its failures in order to understand and learn from them. In others, I have to wonder: is there anything worth saving? Well, there’s not much point dawdling, so let’s take a look. Fair warning, this is going to be a long one.
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