Shelter is such a hot, incoherent mess it's difficult to understand why it was ever made. The series seems to have had trouble deciding what it wanted to be, either a wearisomely predictable teen high school rom com and angst fest or a suspense thriller. And if a thriller, was it supposed to be Scooby-Do or something more dark and sinister? The whole series and its characters are cartoonish and artificial.
The series devolves into long stretches filler, more or less unconnected to advancing the plot, such as the incredibly long and pointless basketball game sequence in Ep. 8, as well as the equally pointless party sequence in that same episode. The aunt's romance scenes are another waste of time with little or no connection to the suspense thriller part of the series. The list could go on. It's in fact a 3 episode series padded out into 8 weary episodes.
We're also asked to believe in any number of absurd premises. For instance, Mickey's aunt takes him in, apparently leaving a successful legal career in Seattle to raise him in her parents' home, which they've vacated so that she move in. What's the aunt supposed to be living on, having left her practice behind? Yes, there are video court appearances these days, but she's not seen seen working at all, rather the opposite, she apparently has nothing but spare time.
Why not have the aunt raise him in Seattle? Well of course it's because the action has to take place in the old hometown even if it makes no sense.
Another improbability: Mickey's dad tells him nothing of his child rescue work, but takes him along on a rescue mission which goes wrong forcing them to flee abruptly in the middle of the night. Why does Brad risk his son's life? What son doesn't ask why they have to flee with only the clothes on their backs? Why are dad's hands covered in blood? No one is asking?
Bat Lady has been a town myth since the dad and aunt were kids, yet her house isn't vandalized and falling down decades later. Not only that, it has a labyrinth of tunnels below it that no one knows of despite the huge volume of earth which had to be dug out to create them. Really, in this nosy little town?
Ema is supposed to have an incredibly famous pop star mother, actress or singer is not clear, and lives with her in a vast monument to money spent lavishly without taste, allowed to drive mummy's $500K+ Lamborghini SUV. Yet, in this hermetically sealed small town in which everyone knows everything about everyone else, Ema has kept this all a secret, yet her friends discover it merely by tailing her to her home.
One can only imagine that there must have been many teams of writers, each working in complete ignorance of the others and of the overall story, whose work was stitched together like Frankenstein's monster for the final product. Let's hope these folks all go permanently on strike.
On the plus side, and it's a pretty weak plus, the production values are very polished and even lavish. It's reasonable eye candy. If you're willing to completely and unconditionally suspend disbelief, the series could be an ok way to pass a few hours.
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