NBC's The Endgame is more interested in throwing in as many cool shocks as possible than writing them in a way that makes much sense

Variety

The heist series, created by Nicholas Wootton and starring Morena Baccarin as a Russian criminal mastermind and Ryan Michelle Bathé as her FBI pursuer, would be more interesting if Baccarin's Elena Federova was challenged more," says Caroline Framke, adding: "For as fun as it can be to see adversaries pull off heists without breaking a sweat, Elena’s grip on…well, everything, makes it tougher to feel the thrill of 'how did she do that?!' when she inevitably always succeeds."

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• Morena Baccarin's charisma holds The Endgame together: "Certain TV shows fit a certain purpose," says Roxana Hadadi. "There are cozy-comfort shows and put-on-while-cooking shows; watch-with-your-partner shows and cheat-on-your-partner-by-watching-ahead shows; holiday-family-discussion shows and middle-America shows; meme-able shows and theorizing-on-Reddit shows. Sometimes these categories overlap and you get a unifying breakout like Succession, Ozark, or Euphoria. The alchemic appeal of such a series’s component parts breaks it free of narrow specifications regarding how, when, and with whom to watch it. Perhaps that is the only way to talk about NBC’s conceptually familiar, narratively overambitious, and yet somehow still enjoyable The Endgame, which defies easy dismissal thanks to the uncontainable charisma of Morena Baccarin."
• The Endgame is Blacklist-esque without star power: "The Blacklist, now in its ninth season, is long in the tooth, and NBC is probably hoping The Endgame can serve as a replacement for The Blacklist whenever The Blacklist ends," says Liam Matthews. "But The Endgame lacks the thing that has kept The Blacklist going as long as it has: star power. The Blacklist wouldn't work without James Spader's incredible charisma as crime boss Raymond Reddington. People keep tuning in because they like hanging out with Red Reddington and want to see what he'll do next. Major cast members have come and gone around Spader, and the show has kept going. Morena Baccarin and Ryan Michelle Bathe — longtime supporting players getting starring roles in a large-scale series for the first time — do not feel irreplaceable, and the show's clunky, obvious writing doesn't give them much to work with as they try to win our collective attention."
• The Endgame exemplifies the problems with the network pilot-making process: "The inefficient broadcast pilot process is designed so that when you actually make the pilot and see that none of the attributes that might have caused the pilot to make sense came through in the actual pilot, you’re just supposed to move on," says Daniel Fienberg. "The Endgame pilot is bad and the second episode offers no evidence of course correction to make things better, so I’m prepared to move on, even if NBC wasn’t."
• Unlike The Blacklist and many network crime dramas, The Endgame proceeds on a densely serialized path: "For now, The Endgame makes enough of the right moves to inspire curiosity about where this intricate scheme ultimately leads," says Brian Lowry. "While it doesn't tell you much about its endgame, as this sort of exercise goes, that's a good place to start."
• Morena Baccarin and Ryan Michelle Bathé don't want the fact that they are two leads of color defining the show: “We care, but it feels like the conversation is about just that aspect of it,” says Baccarin. “It’s very late in the game for this to be happening, but we are glad it is; that the story happens in a way that it’s not about just these are two women. I think the best part is that it’s just two really strong characters.” Bathé adds: “I think most women know what we carry, what we bring into the room, the things that we face, the challenges that we face. But most of us turn to each other and we get through it. That’s pretty important for these two characters because everything is happening in real-time and it’s all very much with me.”
• Bathé says working with Baccarin is like "acting class 101": "Morena is truly a master actor," she says. "She’s precise, insightful and surgical, and the dynamics that we are trying to come up with and explore are very much happening in the moment. It’s like an acting class 101, and I think that is where we’re finding what that dynamic is. Because to your point—and we talk about this all the time—it is central to this show. When they are talking to each other and being with each other, that really does anchor us and ground us in the world of the show."
• Baccarin and Bathé agree that the women-led thriller is a "powerful" story to bring to broadcast television: "It is incredibly powerful to have two female leads who seemingly are rivals, but as you slowly peel back the layers, you realize there's much more than meets the eye," says Baccarin. "If this show were about two men, nobody would think it's cool to have two strong male characters going up against each other ... I'm happy that we are the show bringing it to network TV. I do feel like it's way overdue." Adds Bathé: "It's not something I think about often because I feel like if I do, I'll get too emotional or in my head about it, but it means a great deal ... There are two women fronting a show that they want to advertise during the Super Bowl. That's kind of crazy and really great."