YMMV / FBI

• Complete Monster: See here.
• Special Effect Failure: Despite the earnest effort the actors put into their work, extras tend to often fall into the "immediate extras react to a gunfight, everyone else seems to be oblivious" problem, and in an episode like Season 5's "Breakdown", it becomes damn obvious that Maggie is superimposed in crawling on a raised space by having a flat, low-resolution photo background behind her instead of a real backdrop — one they keep cutting to emphasizing, which utterly falls apart on high-definition displays.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Karim and Rhami from season 2’s premiere “Little Egypt”. OA does his level best to paint them (or just Karim, at least) as two misguided kids who were taken advantage of and radicalized by the FBI. By the end of the episode, both were present in Central Park for an attempted bombing of a kids’ baseball game, and Rhami even makes the call that kicks off the bomb’s timer. While Karim did run away because he was scared, he still went far enough that he was present for the act, all for money and women. Despite his remorse, it’s difficult to feel bad for him when he’s sent to prison at the end.
  • Isobel tends to gain this reaction as a result of her more cutthroat decisions. She's supposed to be seen as someone who is forced to make the tough decisions in the name of protecting the general public, but her willingness to repeatedly use informants under threat of imprisonment if they don't cooperate, even after already promising them it was just one last thing they needed, doesn't exactly endear her to viewers since it makes it look like she's willing to make others suffer in the name of results. "The Lies We Tell" in particular is a sore point, where she tricks a professor into thinking his wife, who was taken hostage which forced him to aid a terrorist in the name of saving her, was still alive after he was convinced she'd only be safe if he kept quiet, even going as far as to have a deepfake of her made before they could find her, which of course resulted in them finding her corpse soon after using it. While she does demonstrate remorse, it's only after the fact upon which she proceeds to drown her sorrows, and she doesn't demonstrate any regret for doing it, making it look like she's just feeling sorry for herself over being made a liar.
  • That said, the doctor himself isn't much better. His "aid" to the terrorist consisted of stealing a genetically modified, enhanced version of Covid-19 that, by his own admission, would be able to kill millions of people if it were released. As Isobel states, the terrorist had the wife killed the second he got the virus, so their options were limited to 1) Lie to the doctor to secure his cooperation, or 2) tell the truth and potentially allow the terrorist to get away, armed with a virus that could have killed countless people.
  • Disgruntled former Army Ranger sniper Cole Cooper from Season 1's "Crossfire" comes off as this, big time. Later in the episode, the show tries to portray Cole as a broken man lashing out at those who wronged him after the death of his wife from cancer. Unfortunately, Cole's way of "lashing out" involves using his sniper skills to murder the lawyer who helped evict him, an innocent clerk and security guard at said lawyer's office, nine people living at the apartment Cole was evicted from, a police officer who pulled Cole over, and then attempting to take up a sniper's perch in a church to shoot people passing by. Why the church? It's where he prayed while his wife was sick, and when she died anyway, he thought God had failed him. Maggie ordering the SRT sniper to take Cole out is framed as a tragic moment despite the fact that he was readying his rifle to shoot another person just for walking by. With 13 innocent lives taken by Cole, only one of which was even tangentially related to his current situation, it's extremely difficult to feel any sympathy when the FBI ends his rampage.
  • “Studio Gangster” has Jubal feeling guilty about sentencing a woman in the past on a drug charge because she refused to confess and implicate her boyfriend, thus causing her to miss years of her daughter’s life. When History Repeats with another woman with an even younger child she also refuses to confess despite her boyfriend being a drug dealer who murdered a young woman for perceived ingratitude. Come the end of the episode her boyfriend is caught without her help and she starts crying and claiming that she didn’t know about the drugs so Jubal decides to give her a break. It’s framed as Jubal choosing to be merciful and rectify an old mistake, but it really comes across more like the woman is a Karma Houdini who Jubal avoids giving punishment to out of misplaced guilt. Especially since she was willing to risk imprisonment and losing her daughter until she had no leverage.

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