Halo’s first season is a Flood of bold bets and tangled plot points

The first season of The Halo TV series was an interesting one. With a full season in the tank, I'm finally able to fully judge the show as a complete entity, but it's complicated.

The series is complicated like a toxic hook-up. Is this person bad for you? Yes. Is the sex good? It's not good. Are you interested enough to keep them interested? Absolutely.

Despite the fact that I don't really feel like watching a good season of television or a good exploration of the halo canon, I'm not ready to watch it on tv.

There were many good, well-executed concepts in slipspace waiting for the right Shaw-Fujikawa engine to get them where they need to be.

He was a good Master Chief. The writers made some weird decisions for him, but he struck the correct tone as John-117. He has the gravitas of a natural leader and a competent soldier. He's not too serious but he's also very calm. He could have used some more one-liners to lighten him up and he might have been a little too staid. The Covenant was given back their bomb in Halo 2. Please more of that.

He was better than almost every female character.

I really liked the performance of Yerin Ha as the orphan human colonist who was fighting to save her world from the UNSC. In the first episode, there was so much promise with her character. If the entire series had been about Master Chief getting in touch with his humanity with help from Kwan while he taught her how to be a better soldier and leader in the wake of her father's murder, this would have been a much better show.

Image: CBS / Paramount Plus

Natascha McElhone's character from the games was a gross, almost cartoonishly evil caricature, but it worked. At the end of Halo 5: Guardians, the showrunners put the motivation of the character into the hands of her human progenitor. It makes sense that she left her canon character. She justified some of the evil things she did by saying it was for the greater good. The ethos was taken to its natural conclusion by the showrunners.

I am really disappointed in the treatment of Makee, the Human Covenant spy, played by Charlie Murphy, not Eddie Murphy. She would have been a great foil for John since she is his sworn enemy. They become so close because of their shared connection to the artifacts that they end up being lovers. The idea of John having a girlfriend is weird, but why not? It's an idea that's never been explored in the canon, and the show already played fast and loose with John's characterization, so why not let him have it? It would have been great to see Makee and John explore and learn the elements of romantic love, an emotion neither of them has experience with, especially a romantic love fraught with the anxieties of two people raised on opposite sides of a war. The enemies write their own fanfiction.

The writers did not want us to have nice things. After the double-cross at the end of episode eight, it was clear that she and John cared for one another and that she would be willing to abandon the Covenant again for his sake. Kai-125 shoots and kills her when he is seconds away from persuading her to join him again.

Makee was wasted. It was like the show didn't know what to do with her beyond her status as a plot device, and they had no better idea than to put a fridge on her head. There is a chance she could come back in the second season.

Miranda Keyes and Kate Kennedy were the best of all the women who acted around Schreiber. They were amazing in every scene they were in, and the one scene they were in together was the most touching and adorable.

They did a great job with Miranda. She had to be an actual person with more motivation and emotion than the video game counterpart, who barely stepped beyond the confines of being an emotionless soldier. I felt for her when she tried to connect with her mother, but also when she wanted nothing to do with her.

Image: CBS / Paramount Plus

And Kai? Kai is the best actor in the show. Period. It would be a perfect show if Kai bench pressed warthogs and geeked out over Covenant language in season two. When Kai followed John's example and removed her emotion suppressant pellet, she came into her humanity much more naturally and believably. She is similar to the Spartans from the books and games. The devil may care about the attitude of Fred-104 and Edward Buck because she has the sniping skills of Linda-058.

Kai is at odds with the rest of her team because she feels they were left behind. The show would have been better if Kai and John had the same treatment. The appeal of Silver Team was so bad that they often tried to be a believable team, but I felt like they didn't understand that the core of Spartan teams is their camaraderie. If the Spartans of Silver Team were more like Blue Team, Noble Team or even Fireteam Osiris, the show would have been better.

The plot of the show was a mess. The subplot quickly became tedious and extraneous. It had to be better integrated into the main plot or thrown out like it was to slow down the more interesting parts of the story. A nine-episode season is supposed to be quick and tight. There are a number of times throughout the season when the camera switched perspectives to first-person. Stop that. It is bad. It is always ugly and jarring. It didn't work in the past, and it doesn't work now. Stop it.

Image: CBS / Paramount Plus

The Covenant was just fine as the villains. It was good that the aliens weren't the main focus of the season, because they looked bad in a low-budget show. The masturbatory celebration of military propaganda that it could have so easily been was one of the things I appreciated the most about the show.

For the most part, the first three games are about soldiers in power armor punching the shit out of aliens. I at least respect the approach of the show's creators to the story of the game. The richness of the universe hasn't yet been explored from new angles. We have never seen the Master Chief tangle with what he is or what he was created to do, and we have definitely never seen him as a man with desires. The writers tried to give us new perspectives that were executed well. They took big risks playing around with one of the most beloved franchises in video game history, and I appreciated their unsuccessful attempt to do something different more than I would have a successful attempt at.

This isn't the end of the game. The show was approved for a second season. There is a good show here that is buried in unnecessary plotlines. I believe the show's producers can deliver a better season two if they find it.