Prime Video’s Citadel is a multilevel marketing scheme disguised as a show
polygon.comThere’s a strip from cartoonist Chris Onstad’s classic webcomic Achewood where a couple of anthropomorphic cats are watching “TV” (in reality, just their robot pal Lie-Bot in a cardboard box).
“Alright everybody!” Lie-Bot begins. “It’s time to see my ass!”
The cats are not fans of this proposal. “How do you know that a robot’s ass is bad?” Lie-Bot asks.
“IT MUST BE,” one shouts, off-panel.
“WHY FIND OUT,” yells the other.
Citadel is like that robot’s ass.
It’s not apparent from the first couple of episodes streaming on Prime Video, nor in their promotion, but Citadel is the first volley in what’s meant to be an international TV mega-franchise. Citadel is the flagship show, about super spies Mason Kane (Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden) and Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas of Bollywood and Quantico fame) teaming up to save the world from certain doom. Down the pipeline there will be other international versions of Citadel, each with their own cast and plot, but set in the same universe. Again: There’s just about no evidence for this in the first three of Citadel’s six episodes, but it’s very important to know if there’s any hope to understand what you’re watching.
More evidence can be found for Citadel’s troubled production, where behind-the-scenes turmoil caused costs to balloon, fights over creative direction, and eight hour-long episodes to be trimmed down to six 40-minute ones, two of which premiere today. The resulting show isn’t incoherent, but it is haphazard — the narrative flashes backward and forward, characters constantly announce to each other who they are, and cliffhangers tease “twists” that were obvious from minute one.
What’s left is a G.I. Joe-ass superspy story, in the pejorative sense, and the most
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