Naomi Season 1 Review

Overview

I’m jumping straight out of the gate here, Naomi, simply put, was not a good show. This was a series that wasn’t needed nor wanted. The fact a Wonder Girl and Painkiller series was scrapped and this was green-lit is something as a viewer I could never comprehend.

Naomi did start off showing potential for a show. Naomi’s comic run isn’t popular either but the show had a huge opportunity to thrust the character into the limelight. But, despite all of that potential it just failed to deliver.

The show would continuously go off course with filler episodes which shouldn’t happen in a 13-episode season. I can understand it when The CW ran 23-episode seasons that filler episodes are going to be needed. This really didn’t need to happen.

Adding on top of that when a superhero show has next to no action, it’s always destined to fail. There are very few superhero shows that can pull off episodes with little to no action, WandaVision being one of them. The difference with WandaVision is they are established heroes whereas I’ve never heard a single person say they remotely even care about Naomi.

The show further amplified that uncaring attitude as well which is something you don’t want. You want to connect with the star character and walk away from each episode loving them just that little bit more. I’m sorry, despite how great Kaci Walfall is an actress, her character was unappealing, boring, and just not interesting whatsoever.

For me personally, one of the biggest mistakes the showrunners made was NOT including the show within their already established Arrowverse. Why they keep doing this is ridiculous. The Arrowverse is incredibly popular and still is. If this show was included within that universe it would have been much better. They didn’t need to run down a “is Superman real?” story when they have a fantastic superman already there in Tyler Hoechlin. A dumb decision that deflated my interest in the show before the first episode even aired. Naomi could have still been its “own” thing in that universe, something Superman and Lois has proved can be done.

Then there’s the villain. Let me just show you a gif of my thoughts on the villain.

What an absolute waste Brutus was. Showing up for the best part of 5 minutes in the final episode is perhaps the stupidest decision a superhero show has ever made. They always mentioned him in the background but he never showed up. How are we expected even to care? Brutus was the most underwhelming superhero villain of all time. Pure trash. Not intimidating, had zero impact, looked ridiculous, had terrible powers, and added nothing to the story, the villain actually just pisses me off. The showrunners should be embarrassed.

Was anybody surprised the show was canceled when we look at all the above points? I thought the show would scrape a season 2 purely out of being a pilot season but the live viewers proved the show was horrible. It constantly dropped in rating week in and week out. If you look at TV Series Finale you can see how much viewership they lost. If you don’t wish to click on the link, the opening episode began with a massive 802k live views, and the finale ended on 428k, losing almost 50% of its viewership within a single season. Yikes.

And finally, before I move on, the vast majority of the side characters were beyond annoying. A lot of them did not need to be there and added nothing to the story of Naomi’s development. Annabelle and Nathan were alright but the rest just weren’t it, babe.

Zumbado, Jen, Greg, and Dee were more interesting than Naomi herself which speaks volumes about the Star character of the show. We saw Zumbado use his powers more than Naomi did in the show because, oh yeah, we never actually saw Naomi use her powers properly in the entire season. All the training, meditation, and guidance, she still couldn’t handle it. The CW is known for its quickness in the hero becoming established. We look at Arrow and The Flash, they got to the point very quickly and it worked. Naomi didn’t. It didn’t work. You don’t need to make a show slow to keep people engaged. Get to the point quickly then slow down the pace. That’s the key ingredient.

Favourite Episode

I Am Not A Used Car Salesman was superior. This is what the show should have been like from the beginning. We learn the true identity of Zumbado, that he’s not a bad guy and in fact, he’s actually been protecting Naomi for many years. This episode showcased the true potential the show had and was only one of two episodes that truly showed the show had more in its locker than what we got overall.

Worst Episode

By far the worst episode was Rocky Ridge. The episode completely went off track when they went camping. The episode still even now the series has ended and served absolutely zero purpose to the show. It’s joint with Legends of Tomorrow as the lowest-rated episode we have ever reviewed on the website.

Episodes & Their Ratings

Episode 1: Don’t Believe Everything You Think – 7.2/10
Episode 2: Unidentified Flying Object – 6/10
Episode 3: Zero to Sixty – 5.4/10
Episode 4: Enigma – 8.5/10
Episode 5: Rocky Ridge – 1.4/10
Episode 6: Homecoming – 8.6/10
Episode 7: I Am Not a Used Car Salesman – 10/10
Episode 8: Fellowship of the Disc – 4.6/10
Episode 9: Keep Your Friends Close – 7.3/10
Episode 10: Fallout – 7.2/10
Episode: 11: Worst Prom Ever – 6.2/10
Episode: 12 & 13: Ready or Not & Who Am I? (Double episode review) – 3.8/10

Average rating – 6.4/10

Our Overall Rating 1.7/10

We rate the show by the story, action, characters, entertainment, and quality. Whilst some episodes did have some decent elements to them, on the whole, it was not great at all hence the huge drop in our actual overall rating.

Does It Deserve Another Season?

Absolutely not. The show has been canceled now and I’m happy that this show will fade off into the background and barely be mentioned again. Even at the show’s end, it left a small cliffhanger and I still honestly could not care less if I tried.

Availability

Naomi is available to watch on The CW Network. Stupidly unavailable in the majority of countries as per usual.

Season Trailer