When most of the internets most mediocre people are all spouting the same opinion, I usually don't pay it any mind. So I never took the criticism of The Acolyte I was peripherally aware of seriously. But I also haven't been truly excited about any Star Wars in between KOTOR and Andor (and I was a little late to the Andor party) so I never watched the show. But recently I heard The Acolyte was going thru a bit of resurgence and decided to see what's up. This is the frank unpolished review of someone who doesn't hate women, minorities, harp about Woke all day, etc and really isn't familiar with previous criticism of the show (apart from how vitriolic it is)
Spoilers ahead.
Star Wars Reloaded: starting the episode with Carrie-Ann Moss doing Matrix- style kung-fu didn't feel like an easter egg or fan service (for better or worse), it just felt like an out of place distraction. And it wasn't even very entertaining. Then they ended it by nerfing the Jedi Master to give her a wholly unsatisfying death. Deflect the throwing knife thrown at the bar tender and sense danger in time to defend yourself is what most Writers would have done in the moment, then find a better way to kill the Jedi.
I can't tell if the Green Jedi Master is acting badly or just struggling with bad writing. Maybe some mix of both.
A Jedi Master is killed in battle and the order sends a Knight and a Padawan to bring the suspect in. Couldn't someone capable of killing a master do the same with a knight and a padawan?
The Jedi have prisoners on a ship and seemingly take no precautions against their escape like disabling the cyborgs' ability to hack droids and having walls rather than bars to isolate the prisoners from guards and each other. Also, an alien having a massive incredibly strong tentacle that can hide in it's body before springing forth and growing many times in size has more of a Men In Black vibe than a Star Wars vibe. Anyway, the prisoners escape in pods with seemingly no plan for step two. Predictably they are all recaptured. But incredibly quickly and brought almost instantaneously to Coruscant. Which brings me to my last criticism: the pacing was way off. This may just be a byproduct of them trying to fit too much in the first episode but they could have benefited by adding another plot thread or stretching out the ones they had.
It wasn't all bad though. Visually, it mostly looked good. And I liked Amandla Stenberg in the starring roles. I saw some potential moving forward. It felt like a foul ball rather than a swing and a miss.