Its such a pain to follow because none of the characters feel like their having a smooth, continuous journey and progression (which is funny considering there's only really like 15 notable characters). Things just happen, and characters will forget or remember integral parts of their character/ things that happened in the past that seem like they'd be really important. People who were MAJOR VILLAINS in the first season are just forgiven on a fucking dime?? all because the show couldn't be bothered to deal with writing how these characters would interact with nuanced personal dynamics. Instead we're given really surface level mellow dramas, a lot of which seem easily avoidable/ come out of nowhere.
I wish we got to see the society that would develop on the train, seeing as its such a small group of people. But no, we never hear of any characters outside the main 15 or so, every background character is just that, and so it means that we don't really feel as if this is actually a proper functioning fictional world. Theres only a couple thousand people left on EARTH and theyre all on this stupid train and youre telling me everyone doesn't already know everybody else? How is that even possible??? How can characters meet other characters for the first time??? ITS A TRAIN!! ITS PRACTICALLY ONE LONG HALLWAY?!?
The characters are seriously written like they're all just having twitter interactions. They'll go from hating to loving each other on a dime, and there's practically no consistency in between. Also god DAMN while almost all the sets look really good, they'll reuse it to hell and back. I'm pretty sure there's only really like 6 or 7 train car sets, but they keep redressing them and filming from weird angles trying to hide it, but it really isn't fooling me. In season 2 there was a real stinker of a set too, but they dont really linger on it. Its supposed to be a "carnival car" and they build up to it for half the fucking season but when its unveiled its just like 4 carnival booth props and 2 of those merry go rounds you find at the mall.
THAT BEING SAID THO. Holy FUCK anything to do with the train itself is like WOW WOAH WOW WOAH. Very cool action sequences, and the worldbuilding and mechanics behind the train seem very well thought out and well written. Each time they have to fix something or have some issue with the engineering, they use a lot of "treknobabble", but it comes across really well. That, and the battle sequences. My god the train looks so good in any action sequence for tv show cgi. I'm usually a big heckler for bad cgi, but while the cgi is mostly just passable in terms of realism, it just looks so darn pretty.
In particular, this scene is considered one of the best from sesason 1 (they build up to it all season):
Also this ones pretty pretty:
edit: Ok honestly these are just all the high quality clips of the train i could find:
