Extremely disappointed to have been hooked by the pilot last Feb, hear the pilot was greenlighted to become a series in March, check every 3-4 weeks to see if the new episodes were added yet, and then read today on Variety that the series was dropped! Why did you wait almost a year, Amazon?! I could have moved on instead of anticipating more of The After with every login to my Prime account. It was a long 10 months of waiting. I'm over the whole idea of Pilot Season on Amazon if that's what is going to happen with getting amped and excited about an Amazon original and then getting dumped on far down the road. My first world problems may be miniscule in the scheme of things, but I can't help being ridiculously disappointed right now :(

I'm losing my patience. I keep periodically checking to see if more episodes were added. No such luck. I remember when you put this pilot out, along with about five other possible series pilots. I believe I watched them all. You were looking for feedback/ratings. Excellent way to connect with the audience. Other pilots that ran at that time became full series, except "The After," probably the best within the group, was rejected??? Let's get back on track and give the audience what we're looking for. I'm currently watching a Russian series with English subtitles. It's really good but I'm not much for subtitles. It's become difficult to find something of my liking.

Loved the show --- hate that it went nowhere... even worse, it ended on a cliffhanger... Shame on Amazon. You've ended up being just like the television networks, and I had such high hopes that this would not be the case. These two episodes were just like starting to watch a good television series only to have the network pull it off the air after two shows --- but the final insult was that you had to wait almost a year to find out that there were no more episodes to come. I would have hoped that the "streaming networks" wouldn't go down the same rabbit hole.

What makes this laughable (for me) is that yesterday my dad asked me about streaming from Amazon (he's recently become hooked on Netflix). I cautioned him about this kind of thing...

Oh, where to start when people worked so hard on something and, while it's interesting, it just didn't deliver the wished-for punch? I shall go through it and perhaps at least it will be a learning experience?

1. Pacing: it started far too slow. I almost wandered off, and had I had anything better to do on a Sunday morning, I probably would have. Okay ... she flopped an audition where she had a fake gun ... and she wanted to get home. Why so long to build that premise? Too much time building the other characters in the elevator and then escaping, and then a second time under the wire in the parking garage. One prolonged escape would have been plenty.

2. Language. The Irish tough guy was a stereotype, and his language was far too foul. A swear here and there would have done the trick. Nobody talks like that, and if they do, they wouldn't have been in the parking garage of a swanky hotel to begin with.

3. WTF with the ending? Everything in this pilot points to a terrorist attack, and then all of a sudden we are thrown a demon in the last minute as a curve ball. You've got to build that post-apocalyptic Revelations stuff from the get-go, even if the demon still doesn't show until the end. A hooker in a swimming pool 45 minutes into it doesn't cut it.

4. Characters - too egregiously stereotypical. The main heroine, the cop and the escaped convict were okay, but everybody else ranged from meh to awful. It felt like somebody cut-and-paste the characters from Lost into this script, but then didn't put the pacing or good acting in to make them likeable.

5. Situations - Why didn't the cop break the windshield and get the second jack sooner? Why did the Irish guy run out carrying an entire case of liquor when a bottle would have done? Why is the rich lady so dippy, even after she realizes her house is being broken into? Why did the escaped convict go back for the woman's cell phone (that doesn't work) during a home invasion? All of these stereotypes kicked me out of the show.

Amazon obviously poured a lot of money into these sets and scenes as they looked acceptable from my (non-professional) eye, but even though the entire premises (either as a post-apocalyptic show, a terrorist attack show, a sci-fi show, or a fantasy show) is interesting, I cannot say I'd come back to watch it again without a serious rewrite. Sorry :-(

Cliched characters and a flawed script combined with a potentially intriguing story line.

I can't rate it a five star, because there were too many moments where I had to shake my head and wonder, "What was he thinking when he wrote that?" For example: When the prostitute, on the run for her life in the middle of world ending catastrophe, just HAS to strip down nude and take a late night swim and THEN decides to quote Revelations to a drunk, and THEN she suddenly grows an ounce of modesty getting out of the pool by covering up her boobs. There was absolutely ZERO point to this scene, other than to entice sex-starved males into watching. And how does a woman get trampled by a mob and not come out of it with serious internal hemorrhaging; with no more than a scrape on her forehead? Scenes like that made me almost turn it off.

Anyway, I couldn't give it one star either because I was sincerely interested in the characters' connection and the ending made me sit up and say, "Now you're talking!"

There just might be hope for this series IF Carter could write better, less cliched and predictable characters, and IF he could compel himself to write a script with less nonsense and more substance. Women like science fiction too, Chris, or do you plan -- in some future episode -- to write a skinny dipping scene with a really good-looking male? Please don't. I like my sci-fi edge-of-your seat intriguing with a dash of scary. I don't need sex to spice it up, unless it's truly pertinent to the story; nor do I need to hear foul language every other word.

There's hope, but not if it continues along this same vein.

***SPOILER ALERT***

This pilot had a very suspenseful start, and did an excellent job of building tension. Some of the characters were rather flat stereotypes, but I think over time they have the potential to become more three-dimensional. I liked the idea that they were possibly dealing with some sort of massive terrorist attack, and thought that's the direction we were heading in. So I was surprised when the story suddenly went in a paranormal direction in the last five minutes. It seemed to come out of nowhere, and I didn't find the alien/spiderman creature all that scary. It immediately made me think I was looking at "Lost - the LA Edition," and not in a good way. Even though I frequently enjoy stories with a paranormal angle, because that element came so out of left field in this story, I found it kind of annoying. I would have preferred a focus on the possible terrorist attack and the character relationships.

I also had some problems with the characters exhibiting a lot of "TSTL" behavior (too stupid to live): the French actress obsessing over her cell phone when there's no service, no one in the garage thinking to hot-wire a car and ram the gate, the blonde girl deciding to skinny-dip when she's surrounded by strangers that include an armed man with a criminal record. And last but not least, the entire crew abandoning that huge house with all its supplies to run around like maniacs in the woods at night instead of trying to fight back.

It held my attention, and I would probably give it a few more episodes before making up my mind, but I hope the characters would behave a little more intelligently in subsequent episodes.

The After pilot is a kind of post apocalyptic nightmare, where our heroine--who has dropped into Los Angeles to audition for an acting role--is now trapped in a chaotic Los Angeles where something happened. Exactly what happened is not all that clear. However, life as we know it has ceased to be. Her only hope of survival lies in sticking together with the rag-tag group of people she just happened to be with in the hotel elevator when the power went out.

The pilot episode didn't quite get into a groove until about half way through and was bogged down by a slow start and a meandering plot. However, once all the gears were set in motion the last 20 minutes had elements of action, horror, and suspense that was so riveting I was really intrigued.

Is the pilot must see TV? No. I couldn't say that. However, the intrigue of unraveling the mystery of what happened and the explosive and chilling ending bodes well for a series. If the series continues in the vein of the last 20 minutes the pilot, this will be a roller coaster ride for fans of shows like Lost and the X-Files.

Wowser, I am not a Sci-fi fan, but this hooked me from the get go. I have not seen a pilot as excellent as this one. Characters are superb, throughout the pilot I kept thinking who is that older woman I know her, it turned out to be Sharon Lawerence. Superb acting by all. The lead bad guy, Aldis Hodge has just the right personna, and has the look of a man on the edge.

Each character was specifically chosen to be a member of this group, we find out in the pilot what the connection is, but not why. The escape from the city is pretty dramatic and well done. Lots of moral lessons in this pilot. Lots of bad guys, but the members of this select group balance it all out.

Chris Carter from X-Files wrote and directed this pilot, so we know the writing was not a one time piece of perfection. This type of series will grab you and keep you on the edge of your seat. This one has A+ written all over it. This pilot has enough material to run with for a year or more. The ending of the pilot keeps us wanting more. Amazon has a superb group of pilots in this year's batch.

Highly Recommended. prisrob 02-08-14