More thoughts since I'm still thinking *g* -- I think a big part of the problem I'm having with the show so far is that its basic desire for "shiny pretty fun" is in danger of colliding in a head-on trainwreck with the serious themes that it's trying to address. And I'm totally enjoying the shiny-pretty! A:TLA has always been a sort of superhero show, where everyone has their own unique powers, and they use them to fight bad guys. It's bright sparkly fun, and it really is fun!

But in order for that to work, everyone has to have powers, and there have to be bad guys to fight, and this is fitting very awkwardly with the darker, more morally ambiguous, more real-world-oriented storyline that the new series is trying to tell, if that makes any sense ...