There are a few series that exist out there that I think overstayed their welcome. Snowpiercer is one of those shows. I'm all about stories about apocalyptic times and how humanity's last remnants deal with such a thing, but Snowpiercer just kind of seemed a bit "out there" even for a sci-fi show or whatever we are calling this.
We need to keep in mind that this series was likely never meant to go on as long as it has gone on and it is based on a 2013 film which was based on French graphic novel. Neither of which were ever intended to be 40 hours of screen time material. These kinds of series always remind me of the show LOST, which went from being one of my favorite shows to be an absolute disgrace as the writers struggled to keep up with the vigorous prospective release dates... and it showed. Even though Snowpiercer took 2 years off instead of one between the 3rd and this, the final season, the series seems like it is grasping at straws in an attempt to wrap things up.
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I'll catch you up on what this story is all about. The year is just a few years from the real world year of 2024, and the remaining people on the planet are all on a 1001 car train, that is in perpetual motion around the planet. It goes around the entire planet nearly 3 times in one year. The environment outside of the train is unlivable, as the temperature has been reduced to freezing because of CO2 emission or something. I don't remember. It doesn't matter really because basically you just have to accept that all of humanity leftovers are on this train and oceans be damned I guess because somehow the train tracks go all the way around the world despite there being nobody outside to maintain them. Just believe!
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that's not the lead singer from Counting Crows
The show started out strong when it debuted in in 2020 after a year or so of filming and a lot of people were quite pleased to see Jennifer Connely doing some work. This is a big part of the reason, no doubt, that people tuned in by the millions for nearly the entire first season. However, like a lot of shows of this sort, a great deal of their viewers tuned out after the first few episodes starting with over 3 million and ending the season with 2.4 million. Things would get a lot worse for them in season 2 when they rarely managed to get even 1 million viewers and in season 3 they never got even one million viewers.
A lot of people attribute this drop off to obvious things such as there being a very limited amount of scenarios that can possibly emerge when the entire location is on a single train and how freakishly long that train is doesn't really seem to matter after a while. It just isn't conceivable that there would be ongoing issues that constantly emerge when the setting never changes. Other suggested that the show had a social agenda that revolved around there being a "class system" on the train and as you would expect, the usual "white people bad!' agenda was frequently part of what they were focusing on even though they didn't come right out and say it.
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I try to not focus on that too much if I can help it because it just seems as though showrunners are simply going to do this, even if it means people tune out. I think the industry will right itself once enough billions of dollars are lost.
To me, the main reason why I had a difficult time staying invested in this series is because quite frankly, there are too many characters in the cast. Combine this with the improbability that there would always be some sort of dramatic problem to solve on a damn train, that there are only so many times I can see someone sneakily crawl through an air duct before I am just like "oh FFS, this again?"
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it's pretty ominous the first 112 times you see it
What really went on here was I think that AMC was gauging how many people were still watching this and waited until that number got low enough before they started writing the end, which is what is happening this year. This is the final season. I don't think that they would have ended it if people were still watching. This is exactly what happened with "LOST" and that's a big part of why I had a falling out with what was at one point my favorite drama series of all time. They just keep writing more and more and more and more until everyone gives up on watching it at all.
We are only 2 episodes into the 4th and final season and in the 1st episode, almost nothing happens until the final 15 minutes. They also keep going back and forth in time which is going to make it very confusing to anyone that is attempting to "jump on the train" for the final season. The fact of the matter here is that there isn't enough of the original audience left for them to really even try with this and it kind of shows in the production. They started going off the train regularly in this season and I guess that was necessary to break up the monotony.
Should I watch it?
Honestly, I think that you should give this a hard pass because they took a popular graphic novel and a popular film that strangely didn't make any money and then developed it in a 40 hour mess that really could have and probably should have, been wrapped up in a single season. If the topic matter interests you at all I recommend that you instead watch the 2013 film with Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton, amongst others.
If you believe I am incorrect about this one and want to check it out you can find all of the seasons on AMC packages including their Apple TV channel. TNT used to carry it but I believe they stopped doing so.