The 59 Things That Annoyed Me In: Halo S01E01 "Contact" 

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That hazard stripe poem was glorious.... But it still only counts as one!

You know it's bad when the scriptwriters fully admit to intentionally NOT playing any of the Halo games before working on the script.

The Halo TV series was a crime against humanity.

We actually have a good Halo themed series. It's called Red vs Blue.

I like how most of the militia doesn’t have any kind sights on their rifles.

I love how they call the Halo TV Shows continuity "The Silver Timeline" so I've started calling the Canon Games continuity, *"The Golden Timeline"*

One point I think you missed was the asphyxiation via the Condor's life support even working on Master Chief in the first place. It was demonstrated in several of the games now that he can go into full vacuum, even yeeting himself out an airlock during a space battle at one point and surviving planetary reentry, and be just fine, indefinitely. Why does he give a shit if the Condor's life support is turned off while he has his armor?

I had forgotten this series existed. I had just totally emptied it out of my mind.

I think the hazard strips in the stargate room are legitimate since they mark off the area that the expanding event horizon could take your head off.

I also liked that the PVC strip curtains only stop above head height and just immediately become useless as soon as we zoom out 🤦‍♂️

I'm pretty sure that Silver Team taking the phantom back to UNSC space is technically illegal under the Cole Protocol.

I think it is worth noting in regards to the sub-sub-unit criticism that in the original timeline Spartans teams *aren't* permanent. They re-use the names Blue, Red, Green, etc, but the exact composition and size of each of those teams varies depending on the mission parameters. The only consistent placement is that Blue Team is usually the designation given to whatever unit John is personally leading.

I never realized it was a space elevator I just thought it was a communication tower or something. WHAT THE HELL IS A SPACE ELEVATOR DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE?!

Hold on, are they extracting heavy WATER in a literal desert? Did the writers thought it was space oil or something?

Im honestly shocked it was *only* 59 things

So, I have to give slight push back on the sub-sub unit but. Special operations teams, especially highly elite ones (Navy SEALs, Green Beret Delta teams, Marsoc ETc) generally operate in small groups called teams which are permanent, typically have names and will normally have symbol/patches etc. Now, most of these teams are considerably bigger than a Spartan team, typically somewhere between 12ish, but since Spartans are literally elite super soldiers I can see them operating in smaller groups. Especially since most we see are roughly Squad sized.

9:47 That's definitely an issue of the costume and prop department. The weapons used by the Spartans are absurdly oversized, even for them. Master Cheeks just couldn't hold it any other way.

The Stargate stripes actually did have a purpose, when the gate is first activated it does that blast thing so the stripes are used to let people know the splash zone.

That hazard stripes poem was a 10 out of 10

This show upset me on a deeply personal level. I usually go to the defense of things people lambast as being horrible and highlight the redeeming qualities of those things, but I literally cannot with this. It felt like someone took a wonderful franchise, stripped off everything that made it interesting, and shoved it through a processing tube to turn it into some generic, shit-colored goop.

30:00 Yeah, even in just normal wet labs food and drink are explicitly NOT allowed.

36:20 Actually, the protocol that the Admiral ordered was full “Soren Protocol” it’s basically a protocol in the event that a Spartan is compromised and maybe going Rogue. Named after the only Spartan at the time that went rogue and AWOL, Soren-066.

17:02 A slight counter point, while reach is a major population center, there is still a lot of hostile wildlife hanging about. Maybe the UNSC just decided to throw concrete at the problem since it would be cheaper in the long run than bullets. When you have entire planets dedicated to quarrying, cant imagine concrete is anything but a labor cost.

What especially annoyed me about the first Halo Episode was how they never extensively explained the Covenants Expansive Logistic Systems. I mean how the hell can they invade One Planet without running out of Logistics? Are they stupid?

Another thing about the first fight is that theres only elites. Which is... really weird because typical covenant strategy is throwing grunts and other lesser species at the enemy. Theres no way they would throw 20 elite at just a bunch of civilians.

Yep you covered a bunch of the problems I had with the show and then some. I’m in the military so a lot of those things in the show did bother me. I also loved the musical number in the middle there

The hazard stripe rant instantly made me want an investigation into the Iron Warriors legion!

Feel like the only TV that has ever factored the notion that space is actually pretty big into its writing is The Expanse (with an honourable mention to Firefly)

Not only is deuterium not at all uncommon, you can make it from hydrogen; *literally the most common element in the universe*, pretty trivially.

The hazard stripes are only correctly placed in one location in the whole of the collective human sci-fi universes: in the shoulder of an Iron Warrior. If you see it, you're in danger

Well this is a long episode. Ironically the most intriguing part was to learn that misplaced hazard lines are such a deep sore spot for Marc. Generally though, I agree with most of these annoyances pointed. Given the open-ended way Season 1 ended, there is a *small* possibility that Season 2 could be salvage via in-universe soft-retconning. An interesting start to this pilot week.

I find it very telling about the "silver timeline" UNSC that their adherence to any sort of protocol, operational procedure, and internal secrecy and security seem like an absolute joke compared to my workplace, and I'm working in tech support for industrial appliances...

Only 59? I would've guessed on triple digits.

Your hazard stripe limericks were truly enlightening.

When he's firing the gatling gun at 10:57 the ammo belt isn't feeding. Its completely stationary just dragging behind chief.

I’m gonna need a poem for every extreme gripe about a specific cliche in fiction going forward if “Things That Annoy Me In…” gets greenlit as the ongoing series. XD

23:10 Not to mention the only reason a Condon can have a slipspace drive is due to the integration of forerunner tech post war. But as we see later in this horrid show, Silver timeline UNSC slipspace drives are the size of subcompact car engines.

ok but those Stargate hazard stripes during the poem actually all make sense. Stand in that box when the gate turns on? Get your head chopped off. And the only other ones are on a very heavy sliding door which would also happily chop you up if it was closing (given that its goal is to secure the facility from potential enemy incursions, I don't think that it would open back up if it sensed it was being blocked like an elevator door)

Starting it off with the HalOOF series, this is gonna be good

Loved the casual cinemasins roast

The Hazard Stripe Poem is great

To address your comment on Master Chief talking directly to Halsey in the original timeline, it did happen quite a bit. Halsey was the head of the Spartan Program, but the number of people directly interacting with the Spartans throught their raising and training was very limited. Halsey fell into a quasi-maternal role for the kids, and it was established she was one of the very few people the Spartans could speak to more candidly, see George in Halo Reach.

Marc's Passive-aggressive attitude is on full display here and i love it

I think he said he needs his helmet because that’s where his neural interface, in the back of his skull, connects to his suit. When he takes the helmet off the suit can’t move, so he has to move all 1,000 pounds of it by himself.

Denis Velnuve was the only one who could have captured the scale, theme, and writing of the Halo games. Big missed opportunity.

I love during your hazard stripe rant you show the SGC gate room, the one place where those hazard stripes can be justified: One set is located under heavy blast doors that you really want to stay clear off. And the other is located in a area where rovers, drones and other equipment are staged, occasionally has missiles fired from it, is a likely location to be hit by gun fire, and is also right below the giant cloud of instant vaporization from a stabilizing wormhole.

Only 59 things?

The SGC warning markings make a bit of sense, since they mark out roughly where the "Kawoosh" happens, and it's bad times if someone is standing in that area when the gate turns on.

I think the preface that basically says not all criticism and things that annoy one are worth more than a passing thought. This seems like it could be a good, casual series.

Things that annoyed me in Halo Season 1: Everything

I've developed PTSD of this series

I was not expecting the rap about cautions signs, but I definitely won’t place them in the wrong place in any of my sci-fi now. That was a pleasant surprise lol

24:10 holy shoot, but that on Spotify now

12:07 Technically SPARTAN-II teams were temporary and changed composition based on mission needs, while there were still more than a handful of SPARTAN-IIs, team names were just used to signify which group of Spartans were on which objective (eg: Blue Team would be the primary force, Red Team would be the secondary one and when requiring enough Spartans, Green Team would be the tertiary one). The only exceptions were special ops based Spartans like Grey and Black teams or washouts that couldn't be deployed alongside the general Spartan population like Red or (presumably) Omega teams from Halo Wars.

Family run small business was exactly what the UNSC felt like to me as well lol (albeit a disfunctional one); thanks for putting it into words.

17:30 to be fair to the show. the covenant has shown in the past it dosnt mind flying dropship swarms down on cities to take them. orbital bombardment aside those walls make it do you have to move troops in through designated choke points or perform air assaults both can be made very costly on the attacker if the defender is prepared for them

I like the idea of this series, but talking about something as universally panned as the Halo TV Series seems like going after low hanging fruit.

The rant on the hazard stripes was....just....beautiful!

I feel like most of this is explained by "we have found the incompetent timeline".

This video has helped me figure out a key underlying problem with this show. A setting designed for a grand scale space war epic governed by the institutional logic of a 20+ episode weekly TV show about a small business or local police station.

24:04 That hazard stripe rhyme was absolutely hilarious and great!

I loved the song and I loved the interjections from slightly less past Mark

I recall in a comic from around when Halo 3 was released where it was shown that the populace was aware of the Covenant but where kept in dark how dire the war was for humanity. I remember even back then thinkin that was BS because by the time that comic took place the UNSC lost Reach and most of its other major colonies kind of hard to hide that.

The UNSC in this "show" is one of the most incompetent fictional militaries I have ever seen

One of the most egregious things about this show is its total and complete contempt for the Covenant. I get that in the Silver timeline, the human-covenant war is more of a secondary border skirmish than total war of genocidal annihilation (at least as presented) but they show goes out of its way to trivialize, nerf, and strip away all of the interesting things about the covenant, and it's really quite jarring to see how different they are portrayed especially in fight scenes. In even the games, elites are almost always your biggest threat. They'll hijack vehicles and turn their weapons on you, flank and use cover, deploy active camouflage, rush you with energy swords when you reload, and will kill the player very quickly in close range. In novels, this is further backed up. In the show, even though they steamroll the innies initially...nothing about them is right. They're hulking brutes instead of sleek and taught-muscled. They use no tactics and grunt like animals instead of speaking more recognizable sangheli, and their armor is muted and matte compared to the glossy, iconic look in game. Yes, just because it's different doesn't mean its worse, but in this case, it really seems like they went over the elites and changed everything to be as generic and uninspired as possible. They turned the elites from a vicious and intelligent foe to generic alien bad guys that would not be out of place in any generic sci fi movie or TV show who are just there to get gunned down by our heroes. This is also a massive thematic diversion as the elites were the central cause of the covenant schism, and their culture and story was so prevalent in the original games. Just a massive downgrade across the board.

Well thankfully one can just watch Forward Unto Dawn again, and dream

THat poem was GLORIOUS!!! :'D

While I clicked on this video thinking it would mainly be about plot holes & pointless character drama, I gotta admit, the explanations on things like squad communications & military command structures & administrative jurisdiction were Fascinating! The focus on the nitty-gritty details that help day-to-day military operations function efficiently made this a perfect complement to your broader-scope/strategic-level explanations for interstellar militaries, and now I want to see you apply this kind of analysis to a show/film that does things correctly! 🤩

I only just got around to playing the Bungie era games last summer but have been a massive lore nerd and fan of the Halo universe for 8 - 10 years ish. From the few clips I saw when the series released it seemed obvious to me that if I went and watched it I would still be let down even without personal experience from playing the games. If a season 2 ever comes I genuinely hope there is something worthy enough to usher in a new wave of Halo based entertainment in every form of media. Kind of like what The Mandalorian did for SW after much of the fanbase where disappointed with the newest trilogy and such

38:25 as far as images of Johns face go thats approximately consistent with the shot of his eyes in Halo 4 albeit in that scene he was much paler because of all the time he'd spent without sunlight. Thematically I can certainly see his taking off his helmet as to display his humanity to an enemy in order to deescalate a situation, displaying his surprisingly diplomatic nature. Indeed this is a running theme with his character in much of the halo expanded universe, that his spartan brainwashing and all the other cruelty he's been subjected to to make him a killing machine and tool of oppression for the outer colonies is frequently in conflict with his more merciful and protective disposition. However if this is just the first episode I would prefer they had left such a momentous occasion till a later point since that would build a bit of curiosity as to what he looked like in the first time viewer as well as the long time halo fan.

"I'm a man of passion, after all. With..." Gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth? "... strong emotions and strong opinion..." Ah.

A part of the use of small Spartan teams is due to the fact they aren’t just a frontline battle force, they work where needed in recon, assassination, sabotage, and naval situations. These varying roles would benefit greatly from a group with deep knowledge and experience with each other, making keeping them together effective, and the small size allows for an appropriate use of force without large consolidation, in most situations 3-6 Spartans will be enough for their objectives, and if they need more it’s easier to bring another small fireteam in than pull a large group that is needed elsewhere to you just for that amount of soldiers

While Dr. Halsey had a strong motherly connection to all the Spartan II's, to the best of my knowledge she never actually was able to talk to them very much, if at all after they entered active service. In the books there's some mentions of her from what I remember where she hears bits and pieces of classified information from people she knows personally but is never shown talking to them to the degree shown in the show.

The trump biden and minecraft combo was hilarious.

What I hate about the chief removing his helmet is that he does it in the very first episode, and he just looks like a regular handsome gun mcshooty guy instead of the pale, bald guy who wears armor all the time like how the books describe him. Its literally just a different character. But I guess instead of showing the effects the war and his armor has on him they needed to make him conventionally attractive so he could have a sex scene with the female arbiter.

That bit about hazard stripes killed me. 😂 Rewatched it a couple of times.

The makers of she show openly admitted they never played the games, never read any of the books, and didnt intend to. They knew nothing about it and thought they were "reinventing" it when they had no grasp of what they were supposedly "reinventing"

That whole TV series was just painful to watch as a Halo fan. I was honestly happy to live forgetting it existed and now I have to relive the first episode again haha. Still your commentary makes it worth it. And there's so much in this show that doesn't make logical sense, and it's worse because even if you know NOTHING about Halo, there's even more than is plain unbelievable without considering the abuse of the source material.

Lol the hazard stripe rant is something I never considered. In hindsight I liked that about Gundam model kits, they would be decals in higher grade kits and their placement made sense because it'd be near exhaust ports where a small squishy human wouldn't want to be if a rocket engine was about to emit fire.

I agree with the bit about Chief feeling naked without his helmet. The Blind skull in the games removes your Radar, and just that is enough to throw you off. I’d imagine Chief has more than just his radar and ammo counter on the screen, too, but we don’t see it in the games for whatever reason.

That hazard stripe rant was some good poetry.

Love your content and yeah the halo show did a lot wrong lol.

Yeah, I'm going to need a standalone release of your hazard stripe rant. It was awesome!

At 32:22 You raise a really interesting point. I imagine its similar to how modern day people often struggle to live without constant stimulation from their phone or devices. After experience life in the helmet, it could be just as simple as Spartans finding the "real world" too dull or unengaging.

You don't want to call any annoyances with the show a sin... we'll see if you still feel that way by the end of the season.

The hazard poetry was just *CHEF'S KISS*

Everyone: Dunking on the Halo series and paramount. Me: Is no one gonna talk about how M.A.R.C. is doomed to suffer to a fate of being constantly annoyed by the inevitable flaws found in si-fi media, never able to truly enjoy something? 1:28, if anyone's wondering.

Please do the video on GOC the global occult coalition from the SCP foundation franchise

To my knowledge, Condors do have slip space drives. The one Noble 5 detonates is bigger than a Pelican but it isn't massively bigger and is able to fit on the back of it. Condors are bigger than Pelicans so its feasible that one could fit. Plus the pilot in Halo Infinite says he wants to scavenge Condors for slip space drives.

22:50 I might be wrong but I believe that the condor does have a slip space drive or a variant of it does, however your point still stands

Man, I wish this show was good.

Дуже круто! Темплін, продовжуйте, зробіть усе щоб він робив продовження! Та робив подібній контент.

Gotta agree with damn near everything you said. It might be possible that the AK rifles the insurrectionists were using are super, super cheap/easy to get. But still pretty much agree with you there. And on a side note: during your awesome rant on hazard stripes, I argue that they make sense in the gate room. They caution you stay clear of gate lest you be vaporized when it actives.

Loved this video. Should be required material for anyone writing a scifi show/film

Should have called it the bronze timeline at best

When you're so mad you break into rhymes 😂

It's probably too late to get my input heard but this video is incredible. I'd love to get more of these. There's so much film/media criticism out there from the perspective of "arts critique" so it's actually very fun to get this kind of analysis that's focused on world building and providing actual research about the topics in the show

I'm glad the producers were accurate to the original games as not a single character uses a weapon sight (if they even have one)

The only way you would have known about military units and speech. Is that you served or did your research!! I love it when someone puts extra effort in there work!