Sinbad: The Siren – Dork Review

In previous weeks, I’ve referred to Sinbad as “bad” or synonyms of such, and I’m a little concerned I might have lessened the impact of negative language by leaping in with this so soon. Because this week’s episode of Sinbad could be the worst yet.

I know I normally use this space to outline what it was about, but sucking was its primary feature, to be honest.

Sinbad: So Awesome He Can Repress His Evil Curse?

This week: our hero encounters a mysterious woman who feeds on good memories, he immediately falls under her spell and his friends try to rescue him. Elsewhere, and more interestingly, his pursuer kills his own brother in the name of pursuing his vendetta against Sinbad, but it is covered up by his evil Priestess. Somehow.

The idea of Sinbad choosing to embrace his bad memories is a fair enough moral, I can see what they’re going for, but it only rams its way into the episode five minutes before the end. Until then, Sinbad is enslaved by mind control, reliving the same scene again and again. The show successfully persuades us that his decisions aren’t his own, so… why do we care? And his curse can be removed by… forgetting it exists? That’s terrible.

The crewmates searching for Sinbad sections flow logically, at least, but much like the Basra sequences, they’re kept fairly brief. The meat of the episode is clearly meant to be the Sinbad/siren parts. Which are awful.

“Let’s All Talk About Our Feelings Some More!”

We see an interesting insight into Rina’s character towards the end, which underlines how little we’ve learned about Sinbad this week, despite his getting multiple flashbacks whilst Rina has only one. Whoops. Never mind.

Yes, it’s nice to see an emotional arc rather than pointless running/shouting, but unfortunately they’ve hit the opposite end of the low quality spectrum: boring waffle for the sake of it. Cook doesn’t even get any good scenes.

The cliffhanger, with Sinbad being tricked into returning home, at least promises some more meaningful action next week. But after this, I’m trying not to get my hopes up.

More Sinbad on Dork Adore | Sinbad: Episode 5 – Dork Review

Nick Bryan

Nick learned to read and write at an early age. This has developed into an unhealthy need to either write stories or consume them for later dissection. He reviews film and TV on Dork Adore and The Digital Fix, lives in London and enjoys a nice white beer.

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