Upon seeing John Wick in 2014, I never could have imagined how skillfully they would craft the world he inhabits. I saw it as nothing more than an affectation to an old-school action flick. It’s become so much more than that, and I have to commend the team for delivering a world that maintains its internal logic so well and yet is so full of totally ludicrous, lovable ideas.

The Continental, then, is a gamble of all the franchise has created. They risk delivering far more details than anyone wants and dampening the allure that fans hold. But it doesn’t do that, and for that alone the series is a success. The Continental demonstrates a resilience in the world of John Wick. We now know the world of John Wick is resilient because it’s withstood The Continental and The Continental is an all-around failure.

If treated as a film (that is, subtracting the duplicate titles and credits) the series is 4:17 long. That’s pretty short for a miniseries and pretty long for a film. It’s not a format the writers are comfortable with. They approach the project very much from the standpoint of a television series by creating a litany of characters and storylines. But all of these developments are truncated. There are a million things going on at once and you don’t know which is going to matter and which isn’t. It’s the opposite of the tunnel-visioned focus of the film series on a single goal. This needs a trimming.

The backstory of the fire set by Winston and Frankie in their youth is tortuously unneeded. Not only because it’s more stuff to juggle in your head, but also because that backstory introduces KD, who sucks away time and attention, and the inclusion of KD introduces her boyfriend, Mayhew, who sucks away time and attention, and eventually the inclusion of Mayhew even introduces his family.

It’s a cascading effect, and that’s just the most glaring example. They should have also cut at least one of Frankie’s associates as well—probably Yen, and thereby his wife, as a lot of time is spent on her backstory, which is disconnected from the events of Continental. Though I personally did like to see Vietnamese being spoken in a mainstream American series. The implementation of which was a bit hokey, but the accents of the non-natives were cute, at least.

Because of how obviously disposable these storylines are, it’s an obvious candidate for a fan edit, but I won’t bother just because even if we stripped away all the noise, we’re still left with something totally mediocre. The storyline, dialogue, and direction are all like something out of a straight-to-video heist thriller. It’s damn near a jukebox musical when it comes to the score, and worst of all: the action just gets monotonous. It’s hardly bad, but it ain’t good either, and the inevitable comparisons to the film series won’t do it any favors.

In spite of all this, I’m left feeling positive about the potential to continue piling on to the world of John Wick—they just need to do it well, is all.