Shorts Review: Red vs. Blue Season 11 Episode 18

 

 Spoilers Below

I’m not a fan of action sequences. Visual effects do not impress me. Avatar sucked, the Fast and the Furious movies infuriate me, and anything involving Michael Bay or a superhero not named Batman or Iron Man, is not suitable for viewers of any kind. Granted, I don’t automatically dislike all action movies and TV shows, and there are even some I like or love, but during the fight scenes, explosions, and car chases my eyes glaze over and my ADD kicks in. Enough already! Just get to the point! However, if the movie or show can offer something else – great acting, interesting characters, entertaining dialogue, a creative story – in addition to the action scenes (or better yet: in them) then I’m all for it. That being said, Red vs. Blue episode 18 is action-packed and epic.

I hesitate to throw spoilers into this review, so to spare the fragile feelings of our slacker readers, I’ll put it another way. This episode was like The Departed. No, it wasn’t an all-star cast acting out an involving story with a brilliant script whilst being masterfully directed by arguably the best filmmaker in the history of the big screen, but c’mon, just bear with me for a second.

Like The Departed, this Red vs. Blue episode (jeez, I’m already regretting this analogy, and I only just typed the thing) has action right out the gate, numerous peppered-in hilarious one-liners, and just when you’re getting to the climax of the episode, the bad guys are falling, and everything looks like it’s going to wrap up…everyone you care about gets shot. And then when you think you see where it’s going, even more people get shot, and you wonder what they’ll do after they’ve already ripped your heart out and porked you with it. Only in this case, instead of Marky Mark showing up to end the Rat Damon infestation (hey, I never said there wouldn’t be Departed spoilers) you get a fade to black after another Red/Blue soldier gets capped.

So you hooked me yet again, Miles Scorsese (Did you nerds see what I did there?) I will be eagerly awaiting next week’s episode like an obedient lap dog. As for this one, I’m not going to say I loved it, because I’ll now be lighter in the pocket by a week’s worth of therapy money due to the stress it caused me, but I cannot deny that this installment packed a wallop, and it really did have some funny moments too.

Same time next week?