‘The River’ has already settled into its formula, which is more or less ‘X-Files: The Jungle’, and I’ve found the good will I felt for the show’s premiere already waning.
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We’ve quickly established that in each episode, the makeshift crew of the Magus will explore another new jungle mystery. These usually have to do with ancient relics, troubling prophecies or creepy blood-sucking supernatural ghosts. Basically, this rag-tag rescue group is bound to run across something weird every week and then find a way to deal with it through Emmet’s old tapes and notes.<\/p>\n
This week, they have an encounter with the local Morcegos, a ghostly tribal group who inflict blindness on all those deemed unworthy to pass through the jungle. Our resident mythologist, Jahel Valenzuela, explains a convoluted old wives’ tale about an ancient tribe that passes judgment over mankind. If you’re unworthy, you lose your sight and then they hunt you down, or something like that. All you need to know is: crazy tribal men and blindness. Got it? Good.<\/p>\n
After hiking to a remote cave that the team thinks Emmet may have visited more than a few times, they encounter weirdness at every turn. The creepy music gets cranked up as the team sleeps and the cameras catch ghostly figures moving through the underbrush toward the tents. Even the scares are becoming formulaic. You know that once everyone is asleep, something eerie is going to happen. And since you know, when it inevitably does happen, it doesn’t hold very much suspense at all.<\/p>\n
The crew wakes up to chalk art encircling each of their tents. Some of them begin to get itchy eyes \u2013 an itch that soon turns into full-on blindness. Now that they’ve encountered something that seems otherworldly, one of them comes up with the bright idea to check Emmet’s tapes and notes to find out how to cure whatever is happening. Maybe they should study up about the places they go before ever setting foot off the boat. Just a suggestion.<\/p>\n
One by one, the crew goes blind and the hilarity increases exponentially. I never felt the least bit scared during the scenes where the newly visionless crew feel their way around the ship because I knew that it’d all work out somehow. They realize that they need a bulb from a special tree in the jungle. What is this, a fairy tale? It might as well be. It’s just as silly as one.<\/p>\n
Still able to see, Lena, Kurt, and A.J. head off on a boat to find the magical bulbs that will fix everyone’s sight. How they get to where they need to be in the middle of the jungle, I really never understood. When in doubt, everything is in the journals and tapes. Everything. However, the crew chooses to use this knowledge only periodically, as the script calls for it.<\/p>\n
The bulb-finding crew soon comes into contact with a hunting party of Morcegos. I found it funny when Kurt, the guy with the giant machine gun, jumps into a bush in order to hide from a jungle native with a loin cloth and a long knife.<\/p>\n
A.J. has to deal with his fear of caves, which is a funny subplot to the whole episode. Apparently, after being caught in a cave-in, he never wants to come near a cave ever again \u2013 until the end of the episode, where he must crawl under the special tree to retrieve the bulbs that would most likely revolutionize the world of optometry.<\/p>\n
Everything finally turns out fine, but only after Clark gives one of the most unintentionally funny monologues while trying to sacrifice himself to the half-naked hunters. Everyone regains their sight, Lincoln learns a little more about his mom and dad’s relationship, and the crew is on to the next oh-so-scary jungle mystery.<\/p>\n
By the way, did anyone else think of ‘A Night at the Roxbury’ when everyone in the camp yelled, “Emilio! Emilio!”<\/em> because they couldn’t find the ship’s mechanic for a few minutes? Maybe that was just me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ‘The River’ has already settled into its formula, which is more or less ‘X-Files: The Jungle’, and I’ve found the good will I felt for the show’s premiere already waning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[369],"tags":[28,168,4613],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30125"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30125"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30170,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30125\/revisions\/30170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}