Oh, Master Cheeks, we barely knew ye. The Halo TV show has been cancelled by Paramount after two seasons (although I’ve seen articles saying that the studio intends to shop the show around to other networks).

I know that I and pretty much everybody else on the internet were lining up to take steaming dumps on this thing every episode, but I’m not going to dance on the careers that got impacted by the cancellation. Part of me hopes the show gets picked up by another network, because it was showing signs of genuine improvement in Season 2. That’s not to say it was great, but it was better. Also, it’d give me something easy to write reviews about.

Cursory research shows that viewers (at least, the ones represented on Rotten Tomatoes) tend to agree that the show was on an upward trend: Season 1’s 52% audience rating improved to a nice 69% in Season 2.

Let’s take a moment to remember the good times:

There were a few fun action scenes spread across the two seasons – here’s a refresher:

They’re not perfect, but they’re fun, you know?

On top of that, the acting wasn’t bad, per se – it was more that characters acted out of, well, character. When Master Chief acted like Master Chief, it worked pretty well! Pablo Schreiber’s voice acting in this scene is really quite good:

I wish the show had trusted him to be able to sell the role without facial acting (which he’s not bad at – but seeing Chief’s face more than you see his helmet feels weird). Schreiber wasn’t the only actor who turned in a good performance: there were some genuinely engaging scenes involving side characters (Ackerson and his father’s interactions in Season 2 come to mind) that popped up every now and then. Special mention goes to Kate Kennedy and Cristina Rodlo, who played Kai and Perez, respectively – and the special-est of mentions goes to Bokeem Woodbine, for his delightful portrayal of Soren.

I can’t really think of that many other positives off the top of my head, but there must have been some.

…they didn’t outweigh the negatives, though.

Remember Kwan Ha and her stupid-ass haircut? I wish I didn’t.

How about that sex scene between Chief and a Covenant POW? We never needed to see Chief’s cheeks!

Or how Chief’s AI buddy Cortana watched the aforementioned sex scene?

Or how the show unsuccessfully tried to draw equivalencies between the UNSC (a human military organization with occasionally-questionable morals) and the Covenant (a warmongering, genocidal religious cult with permanently-questionable morals)?

That’s not to mention how the Flood infection got started because a professional scientist didn’t wear gloves or a mask when handling an unidentified alien artifact.

Fuck’s sake. I could keep going, but you get the idea.

OK, fine, a couple more:

Remember how the Halo show didn’t get to the fucking Halo until the finale of the second season?

Or how the games’ legendary Sgt. Johnson just wasn’t a character?

Or the dumb-ass shit with certain humans being able to control Forerunner technology just, well, because?

Now I’m done – I could trot out a bunch more stupid plot points or misuse more beloved characters, but I don’t think anybody wants to see it.

Just like the Halo show.

Here’s links to those Rotten Tomatoes scores I mentioned, for you sick fucks out there who want to check my citations:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/halo/s01

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/halo/s02