pratt fall

Chris Pratt seemingly taunts “woke” critics of his crappy TV show and the responses are brutal

Photo Credit: Amazon Studios

A month ago, we noticed an awful lot of folks were up in arms about a television show that we hadn’t even heard about until, well, a month ago.

It’s called The Terminal List, and it’s a series so poorly reviewed (it stands at 40% on RottenTomatoes) that right-wingers decided it must be great. After all, why would the perceived liberal media elite trash something unless it went against their woke values?

As a refresher: The Terminal List is an Amazon Prime Video original series based on a novel of the same name from former Navy SEAL sniper Jack Carr. Making a clear play at Tom Clancy’s bread-and-butter, the series follows a SEAL down a conspiracy rabbit hole as he attempts to figure out who was behind a deadly ambush on his platoon. In other words, it’s a “military vanity project,” as Variety puts it.

Top-lining the series is Chris “The Internet’s Least Favorite Chris” Pratt. Despite his ties to an anti-LGBTQ Christian church and highly questionable social media follows, Pratt is undoubtedly an A-list star, so perhaps it’s not too surprising to hear that the series has brought in big viewership numbers for its streaming home.

In fact, some are calling it “the new Yellowstone“—a.k.a. a show that’s apparently a ratings bonanza even if no one you know watches it. Per a report from Amazon, The Terminal List accrued 1.6 billion minutes of streaming in its first week, which sure does sound like a big number.

Over the weekend, Pratt shared a screenshot of a Daily Mail article touting the stat to his Instagram Story. In it, the notoriously conservative propaganda rag says The Terminal List‘s success “defies woke critics scathing reviews,” so it’s seems pretty clear where Pratt lands in all of this. It’s not just about the success of the show in spite of negative reviews—it’s about the success of the show in spite of what progressive voices have to say about it.

In a following post, he doubled down, employing a two-decade old Austin Powers quote to riff on the streaming numbers: “One point six BILLLLLLLION minutes.”

Screenshot: Instagram, @prattprattpratt

Look, we don’t begrudge Pratt for touting his show’s success or for referencing Dr. Evil (the Austin Powers movies are still funny!), but we are weary of his embrace of The Terminal List as some sort of idealogical victory for “real America”—or “those in the arena,” as writer Jack Carr put it.

In classically hyperbolic fashion, The New York Post wrote up the whole ordeal, and their intentionally sensational choice of words (“Chris Pratt ripped into trolls…” Did he?) has spurred further quibbling about the series that we find terminally boring.

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