There is a song on the Halo: Combat Evolved OST called "A Walk in the Woods." It is an ironic title, considering the pace of the game's action. "A Walk in the Woods" is one of CE's distinctively soothing synthetic tracks, perfect for blasting aliens in the surreal environs of a long-lost doomsday device. It isn’t actually for walking around in the woods. The walk is a metaphor.
With Episode 4 ("Homecoming") of Halo on Paramount+, it is now clear that the showrunners took the walk in the woods all too literally for their new sci-fi TV series.
In "Homecoming," the Master Chief goes for a walk in the woods. He takes off his helmet and, like a bored cosplayer between takes of a YouTube fan video, wanders among the trees until he happens upon a spade. He then uses this spade to dig a hole. Meanwhile, Kwan and Bokeem Woodbine work hard to rescue Dune rejects from fascist oppression, and the Spartans whose names sound like elves from an R.A. Salvatore novel chill out in a laboratory.
There are no aliens. There is no sci-fi. There is no action, until the very end of Kwan's section.
I'm Done
There is nothing left to say on Halo. I was wrong about last week’s episode. This show is utterly without merit. But this episode is noteworthy, because it’s the first that has bored me to tears. Kwan's plotline has no driving impulse: why do we care about Madrigal? Who is she related to? Why haven't we seen any of these people for three episodes if they're so important to her and the plot? How does this relate to the Covenant? By the way, where are the Covenant?
Back on Reach, Miranda informs us , “You Spartans have spent more time with the Covenant than anyone else.”
This is apparently true. We haven’t seen anyone fight the Covenant at all except Chief in the opening sequence. Nevertheless this seems rather strange, considering the fact that Silver Team hasn’t done anything but sit around in a locker room since the show started. They’re the ones who have fought the Covenant the most? Shouldn’t we have been shown that?
The world we are told about and the world we are shown do not match. But then all we are shown in this episode is the Master Chief digging for buried treasure in the woods with a spade.
I am not making that up.
I Said It
I took two pages of notes on this episode. I was going to perform some kind of analytical takedown. But by the end, I was so bored that I realized I didn’t care. There is nothing interesting about Halo. It is cheap, shitty, and lazy. I was right in week 2: it is a scam. The few glimmers of love for the franchise that appeared early on are absent now, and in their place is only Kwan.
This is where I jump off the gondola.