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Favorite TV series?

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  • redxredx I(x)=2(x)+1 whole numbersRegistered User regular
    I'd say stuff like Doctor Who is pretty sci-fi in terms of a lot of the plots. You take a random civilization, modify it in a couple weird sciency ways, and then force the characters to go out an interact with that weirdness. A lot of the time, the driving force of the story is resolving a conflict created by a typical science fiction theme.

    Now, the science is bullshit and might as well be magic most of the time, so it certainly isn't hard sci-fi or anything, but for doctor who, sci-fi is more than just scenery. The rules are much more rigid(typically) for something like BSG, but they don't matter as much to what is actually going on with the stories.

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  • DissociaterDissociater Registered User regular
    redx wrote: »
    I'd say stuff like Doctor Who is pretty sci-fi in terms of a lot of the plots. You take a random civilization, modify it in a couple weird sciency ways, and then force the characters to go out an interact with that weirdness. A lot of the time, the driving force of the story is resolving a conflict created by a typical science fiction theme.

    Now, the science is bullshit and might as well be magic most of the time, so it certainly isn't hard sci-fi or anything, but for doctor who, sci-fi is more than just scenery. The rules are much more rigid(typically) for something like BSG, but they don't matter as much to what is actually going on with the stories.

    Ya so I can appreciate those stories very much. I actually end up reading the Dr Who plots instead of watching the show haha.

    In any case I appreciate the discussion. It would otherwise convince me to give BSG another chance if the final season didn't receive such overwhelmingly bad press.

  • Loren MichaelLoren Michael Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    The show worked reasonably well on smaller arcs, but the show was pimping a series-long arc that turned out to be mostly incoherent "this looks/sounds cool, let's use it" at the end, which suggests that they were doing that from the start.

    Like Lost, BSG was doing fine as long as they only had to set up mysteries and such. Though BSG did it better in that there's obviously some overall ideas about where it's going, since for the first few seasons, it's pretty darn coherent.

    The problem, or it seems to me, was RDM. From some of his interviews and commentaries he seems big on "I just had this crazy idea, let's work it in to the plot!".

    I'd dispute the notion that there were "overall ideas" with respect to any kind of major arcs. I absolutely agree with you about RDM. I'll never watch anything by him again.

    I thought the endings didn't make any sense. I think the final season did the opposite of pulling together. It spun out of control and relied on cool visuals and dramatic happenings to mask a nonexistent story.

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  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    The show worked reasonably well on smaller arcs, but the show was pimping a series-long arc that turned out to be mostly incoherent "this looks/sounds cool, let's use it" at the end, which suggests that they were doing that from the start.

    Like Lost, BSG was doing fine as long as they only had to set up mysteries and such. Though BSG did it better in that there's obviously some overall ideas about where it's going, since for the first few seasons, it's pretty darn coherent.

    The problem, or it seems to me, was RDM. From some of his interviews and commentaries he seems big on "I just had this crazy idea, let's work it in to the plot!".

    I'd dispute the notion that there were "overall ideas" with respect to any kind of major arcs. I absolutely agree with you about RDM. I'll never watch anything by him again.

    I thought the endings didn't make any sense. I think the final season did the opposite of pulling together. It spun out of control and relied on cool visuals and dramatic happenings to mask a nonexistent story.

    I really gotta disagree with most of that, with the exception of the subplot involving Hera and her parents. That plot got really, really contorted and was the most religiously-tinged element in the whole show, so when the final reveal basically turned out to be nothing of any consequence whatsoever, it felt anticlimactic.

    The ending doesn't really come together fully, but it really tries and wants to. It's more of an issue with the endings not feeling fully earned and fully fleshed-out than it is an issue of them not working.

    And to say the show's story was "nonexistent" is just plain wrong. The show's story is fantastic.

  • ThirithThirith Registered User regular
    I think that at least some of the crap Battlestar Galactica got was a case of "Waiter, there's some God in my soup!" Granted, when it came to the religious issues the series dropped the ball, but I felt that a lot of the animosity would've been there as much if there'd been more to the God issue. It seemed like any and every notion of the metaphysical in a sci-fi series, of all things! got a lot of people riled.

    I absolutely agree that in terms of the overarching plot BSG didn't really know how to tie up all the threads it had started, but in terms of the character arcs it stayed strong until the end IMO (with some iffy detours). Starbuck's final scene with Apollo, Adama and Roslyn, Baltar's "I know about farming..." - all of these worked for me.

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  • DeadfallDeadfall I don't think you realize just how rich he is. In fact, I should put on a monocle.Registered User regular
    Ahahaha there was literally a commercial for Hyundai in the middle of this Burn Notice episode.

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  • Johnny ChopsockyJohnny Chopsocky Scootaloo! We have to cook! Grillin' HaysenburgersRegistered User regular
    Henroid wrote: »
    Just finished season 4 of Breaking Bad. Ending spoilers, well, sorta:
    I'm glad it ended in a way that doesn't leave me needing to see season 5 due to a cliff hanger, like how season 3 ended.

    I gotta know your opinion on this. (season 4)
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  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    Thirith wrote: »
    I think that at least some of the crap Battlestar Galactica got was a case of "Waiter, there's some God in my soup!" Granted, when it came to the religious issues the series dropped the ball, but I felt that a lot of the animosity would've been there as much if there'd been more to the God issue. It seemed like any and every notion of the metaphysical in a sci-fi series, of all things! got a lot of people riled.

    I absolutely agree that in terms of the overarching plot BSG didn't really know how to tie up all the threads it had started, but in terms of the character arcs it stayed strong until the end IMO (with some iffy detours). Starbuck's final scene with Apollo, Adama and Roslyn, Baltar's "I know about farming..." - all of these worked for me.

    Yeah, I don't cry at hardly anything, but Baltar reflecting on his future as a farmer? Hit me right in the feels.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    edited February 2013
    shryke wrote: »
    Look, you keep saying it's about the sci-fi part, but the only thing coming through clear here is you apparently didn't like the characters or the plots.
    .

    See, I feel like you have a thing you want me to be saying, so you're just arguing it and not bothering to actually read what I AM saying. I said many times that I don't like the characters or the plots. Straight out and specifically so I don't know why you bring it up.

    Because it's becoming to me increasingly obvious that you just didn't like the plot and that it's not about this strange complaint about the "sci-fi-ness" of the story at all. Maybe you've got some other hangup here too with your silly definitions of sci-fi, but ultimately you seem disinterested in everything about the show, so the rest just seems like a silly nitpick.
    To take a simple example, pick any episode from the first season, let's take episode three, and remove the sci-fi/technobabble references or replace them with mundane things. If the plot still makes sense without sci-fi elements it's not a science fiction story, it's a story in a science fiction setting.

    Irrelevant distinction. This is your whole problem. Alot of the best of Star Trek is just like this. It doesn't fucking matter.


    But anyway, let's look at this:
    From the Wiki summary:
    After a source of water is located on a nearby moon island, Apollo suggests the use of the 1,000 prisoners aboard the Astral Queen to extract it, but President Roslin does not want to institute slave labor, and instead believes that the prisoners should have the choice to work in exchange for "points" towards early freedom. She assembles a delegation consisting of Apollo, her personal aide Billy Keikeya, Petty Officer Anastasia Dualla, and Specialist Cally.

    Commander Adama is opposed to the idea of granting early freedom to prisoners, especially since he is at odds with Apollo's newly appointed role as Roslin's "special advisor", which he sees as a conflict of interest. Regardless, the delegation heads to the Astral Queen and Apollo presents the proposal. The prisoners, acting in solidarity as a union, decline to respond. The prisoners' de facto leader Tom Zarek, a political radical and terrorist from Sagittaron, steps forward to discuss the matter with Apollo.

    Meanwhile, on Caprica, Helo and Caprica-Boomer continue their trek through a ruined city as they are observed and analysed from a rooftop by a pair of human Cylon models; Number Six, and Number Five. The two of them comment approvingly on the acting skill of the human-cylonSpy Boomer.

    On the Galactica, Commander Adama asks Dr. Baltar for a progress report on the development of the Cylonlie Detector. In his head, Number Sixa halucination intimidates Baltar into asking for a nuclear warheadmcguffin, claiming he needs materials from it to build the detector. While speaking, Baltar realises that this is in fact a valid route to building a detector. Adama reluctantly allows it.

    Back on the Astral Queen, Zarek refuses Apollo's offer. Instead, he and his men manage to escape confinement and capture the delegation as hostages. He then demands Roslin's immediate resignation as President, believing that her government does not represent the people. He calls for free elections among the human survivors and limited autonomy for the prisoners.

    Refusing to give in to Zarek's demands, Adama sends Starbuck to lead a squad of marines to infiltrate the Astral Queen and kill Zarek if he doesn't release the hostages. Apollo realizes that this is exactly what Zarek wants: a bloodbath that will lead to the collapse of Roslin's government. However, Apollo stops the assault and forces a compromise with Zarek. He proposes to hold elections within a year in return for the prisoners' cooperation in retrieving the water. Roslin and Adama object to the decision until Apollo points out that Roslin is just serving out the last few months of President Adar's term which will be up within a year anyway. Commander Adama expresses discontent with his son's decision, as well as the allegiance it declares, but Roslin takes Apollo into her inner circle by informing him of her cancer.

    None of this makes any sense though. Why is there a flotilla of ships looking for water? Why is there a crew of prisoners? What do they need a detector for? Who is hunting them?

    None of this works outside a spec-fic setting. Shit, the lie detector alone is sci-fi faffery.

    In my view there are three scenarios where Sci-Fi works the best: Where it's necessary to tell the story, where it's better for the story, and where it's just more fun and exciting. A good example of the first is Gattaca, this was about both playing god and showing that human willpower and determination can beat science and genetic perfection, that there's still something to be said for the human element. It doesn't work in the mundane setting. An example of the second is Stranger in a Strange Land, some themes are about culture shock, holding up prejudice to the spotlight and also that a human is the product of his upbringing not of his racial or ethnic heritage, this could work in the mundane world but a science fiction setting jacks up the contrast. An example of the final one is star wars, where it's just a story about a farmer who gets a sword, becomes a knight and saves the world. It's just more fun with lasers, explosions, lightsabers, etc. Episode three of BSG spoilered above doesn't fit any of these three headings. It didn't need to be in sci-fi or work best in sci-fi. It certainly wasn't more exciting to be in sci-fi. If you were to just sit down, without watching any other episode of BSG and watch that episode, you wouldn't know it was science fiction if they didn't show space shots or a moon.

    It fits all three. It certainly fits the last two incredibly well. The setting jacks up the tension and the fact that it's spaceships and killer robots certainly qualify for "better for the story" and "more exciting" respectively. It also, imo, easily qualifies for the first since a flotilla on a years long voyage with no end in sight, pursued by a fleet of enemies doesn't really make much sense on water on earth.

    You seem to have this really narrow definiton of sci-fi that you are only applying to this property. And this is why I come back to my first point above: because your arguments don't really make much sense so the impression I get is this is mostly that you just didn't like the show and the rest is excuses. It doesn't help that you keep mentioning the original BSG and linked that article from a guy who's argument is basically a lot of shitty arguments used to disguise that his main issues seems to be that it's a reboot and it's not campy like the original.


    PS - 'Nugget' is actual airforce slang

    shryke on
  • DissociaterDissociater Registered User regular
    We're just going to have to agree to disagree. The final two uses for Sci-fi in that last paragraph, don't fit. The episode isn't better because it was in a sci-fi setting, or more fun or exciting. If it was I wouldn't have found it boring, but these last two are purely subjective so you can disagree there, but for my money it simply wasn't, and that's a problem with budget I'm sure. As for the first, being necessary, I disagree because the identity of their pursuers in the episodes I watched, didn't at all affect the motivations (to survive), their goal (to find water), or how they went about doing it. You can say all you want that these were character building episodes, but they could have ALSO built character with great science fiction stories rather than episodes about things such as searching for water or training new pilots. I still feel like you're looking at it from a high level season wide view, when I'm still trying to describe individual episodes as simply not telling good science fiction stories (or even compelling non-sci-fi stories which is what turned me off).

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    We're just going to have to agree to disagree. The final two uses for Sci-fi in that last paragraph, don't fit. The episode isn't better because it was in a sci-fi setting, or more fun or exciting. If it was I wouldn't have found it boring, but these last two are purely subjective so you can disagree there, but for my money it simply wasn't, and that's a problem with budget I'm sure. As for the first, being necessary, I disagree because the identity of their pursuers in the episodes I watched, didn't at all affect the motivations (to survive), their goal (to find water), or how they went about doing it. You can say all you want that these were character building episodes, but they could have ALSO built character with great science fiction stories rather than episodes about things such as searching for water or training new pilots. I still feel like you're looking at it from a high level season wide view, when I'm still trying to describe individual episodes as simply not telling good science fiction stories (or even compelling non-sci-fi stories which is what turned me off).

    Right, this comes back to a ridiculously narrow view of "sci-fi" that excludes tons of other sci-fi series and episodes.

    I mean, you've gotten to the point where you are saying "sure, the context of this episode is sci-fi, but if you completely ignore it's context as part of a TV series and look at it as an isolated 42 minutes of television, it could totally work as non-sci-fi". I guess it's a statement. It's certainly not a complaint that makes any sense.

  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    If you take away all the ewoks and sarlaccs, Return of the Jedi is basically just a remake of The Guns of Navarone. It's not really sci-fi at all.

  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    Uh, anyone telling you that a sci fi story can't be able to be transposed into another genre is a terrible writing teacher...

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  • SarcasmoBlasterSarcasmoBlaster Austin, TXRegistered User regular
    BSG's main problem in the later seasons (particularly the last), was that, for me anyway, they focused way too much on Cyclon religion and politics. The Cylon political games were just really dull, particularly when compared to the human machinations we'd been watching for the majority of the show.

    I think they pulled things together pretty well, but it felt like everything happened too quick. Sort of like Rome's last few episodes. It just had a feeling of "Holy shit! We gotta wrap this up and fast!"

  • JuliusJulius Captain of Serenity on my shipRegistered User regular
    The episode isn't better because it was in a sci-fi setting, or more fun or exciting. If it was I wouldn't have found it boring,

    That's not actually a logical train of thought. You finding it boring does not mean the story wasn't better or more fun for being sci-fi. You're completely ignoring the fact that something can be completely justified being set in sci-fi and still suck.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    BSG's main problem in the later seasons (particularly the last), was that, for me anyway, they focused way too much on Cyclon religion and politics. The Cylon political games were just really dull, particularly when compared to the human machinations we'd been watching for the majority of the show.

    I think it all could have worked had they been consistent and intelligent with building the Cylon society. But it's so obvious that S3 and onwards, they were just throwing shit at the screen. I think S1 and S2 have vague but consistent ideas about what Cylons are about.

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  • CycloneRangerCycloneRanger Registered User regular
    Uh, anyone telling you that a sci fi story can't be able to be transposed into another genre is a terrible writing teacher...
    I'd love to see someone transpose, say, Nightfall (by Asimov), into another genre while maintaining the essential themes of the story and also creating something that isn't sci-fi.

    Some themes are science fiction at their core.

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  • Kipling217Kipling217 Registered User regular
    edited February 2013
    No story needs a specific setting, the basics of human nature are constant: Love, Ambition, power, family and so on never truly change.

    However BSG managed to make the story fit the scifi setting in a way that could not have been done with contemporary setting. It took people with a semi-modern sensibility and confront them with the existential drama of trying to preserve those sensibilities in the face of utter annihilation. In this way its not that different from any other post-apocalyptic series. However by ditching the world that we know(planet Earth), they could tell a story unencumbered by preconceived ideas.

    Like Tom Zarek. In the real world the mere fact that he is in prison would color our ideas of him. The idea of a legitimate leader of political opposition coming from a prison population would be a hard sell. He would have been a thug and treated as such. Instead we got a self-proclaimed political idealist and this claim was treated with some legitimacy.

    Or Religion. Having a debate about god that does not turn into a scripture quoting contest from the bible, but a real debate about why he allows bad things to happen. When people talk about the Cylon god, they never mention the Trinity for instance. They do debate the nature of a god that lets millions of people be slaughtered.

    All of this because we abandoned Contemporary Earth for a setting in a completely new world. Since we don't have complete knowledge of the world we are forced to accept what the series told us. We cannot use our knowledge of the real world to avoid the story.

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  • DissociaterDissociater Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    We're just going to have to agree to disagree. The final two uses for Sci-fi in that last paragraph, don't fit. The episode isn't better because it was in a sci-fi setting, or more fun or exciting. If it was I wouldn't have found it boring, but these last two are purely subjective so you can disagree there, but for my money it simply wasn't, and that's a problem with budget I'm sure. As for the first, being necessary, I disagree because the identity of their pursuers in the episodes I watched, didn't at all affect the motivations (to survive), their goal (to find water), or how they went about doing it. You can say all you want that these were character building episodes, but they could have ALSO built character with great science fiction stories rather than episodes about things such as searching for water or training new pilots. I still feel like you're looking at it from a high level season wide view, when I'm still trying to describe individual episodes as simply not telling good science fiction stories (or even compelling non-sci-fi stories which is what turned me off).

    Right, this comes back to a ridiculously narrow view of "sci-fi" that excludes tons of other sci-fi series and episodes.

    I mean, you've gotten to the point where you are saying "sure, the context of this episode is sci-fi, but if you completely ignore it's context as part of a TV series and look at it as an isolated 42 minutes of television, it could totally work as non-sci-fi". I guess it's a statement. It's certainly not a complaint that makes any sense.

    Cool, go with that if it makes you feel good.

    Julius wrote: »
    The episode isn't better because it was in a sci-fi setting, or more fun or exciting. If it was I wouldn't have found it boring,

    That's not actually a logical train of thought. You finding it boring does not mean the story wasn't better or more fun for being sci-fi. You're completely ignoring the fact that something can be completely justified being set in sci-fi and still suck.

    No I don't ignore that at all, in fact that's more or less what I'm saying happened in BSG. My finding it boring means it wasn't more fun for being sci-fi in setting to ME. Purely subjective. It was justified being in the setting, I never disputed that. I even said I liked the setting and premise. I only said: "I just didn't think the stories it was telling were really any good" (emphasis on the plurality of story). One PART (and not nearly the only part) of why I didn't think the stories were any good was because the stories they were telling were more drama, or character, or military, or suspense, or thriller in nature, and the science fiction was more just the setting and not the focus of the episodes that I saw before giving up. To flip it around, if you were to take a show like The Wire and put it 100 years in the future with laser guns and high tech gadgets, hunting spacedrug dealers of their own creation, the setting would certainly be science fiction. But simply using these sci-fi tools to perform a stake-out and an arrest of a spacedrugs dealer is still just an episode about cops at the heart, but it could still be an awesome episode despite that if it happens to be an awesome episode about cops. I never said BSG wasn't science fiction. I just said the stories it was telling week to week were light on the sci-fi and heavy on the everything else. But what it was heavy on simply didn't do it for me for completely separate reasons. To me that's a missed opportunity. And as I've already conceded, maybe it gets a lot better with those themes later on. But I never gave it the chance.

  • AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    edited February 2013
    Uh, anyone telling you that a sci fi story can't be able to be transposed into another genre is a terrible writing teacher...
    I'd love to see someone transpose, say, Nightfall (by Asimov), into another genre while maintaining the essential themes of the story and also creating something that isn't sci-fi.

    Some themes are science fiction at their core.

    This does not run in conflict with anything I have said and is true, but still.

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  • JuliusJulius Captain of Serenity on my shipRegistered User regular
    Uh, anyone telling you that a sci fi story can't be able to be transposed into another genre is a terrible writing teacher...
    I'd love to see someone transpose, say, Nightfall (by Asimov), into another genre while maintaining the essential themes of the story and also creating something that isn't sci-fi.

    Some themes are science fiction at their core.

    Is that the one with Will Smith?

  • Mike DangerMike Danger "Diane..." a place both wonderful and strangeRegistered User regular
    Deadfall wrote: »
    Ahahaha there was literally a commercial for Hyundai in the middle of this Burn Notice episode.

    Fringe had some really egregious Sprint/Ford placements, but the best part was
    in one of the episodes set in the alternate universe, they're using some kind of sci-fi device in the car dash to call the office or something, and it's all shot and acted the same way as the awkward real-life product placements

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  • Loren MichaelLoren Michael Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    The show worked reasonably well on smaller arcs, but the show was pimping a series-long arc that turned out to be mostly incoherent "this looks/sounds cool, let's use it" at the end, which suggests that they were doing that from the start.

    Like Lost, BSG was doing fine as long as they only had to set up mysteries and such. Though BSG did it better in that there's obviously some overall ideas about where it's going, since for the first few seasons, it's pretty darn coherent.

    The problem, or it seems to me, was RDM. From some of his interviews and commentaries he seems big on "I just had this crazy idea, let's work it in to the plot!".

    I'd dispute the notion that there were "overall ideas" with respect to any kind of major arcs. I absolutely agree with you about RDM. I'll never watch anything by him again.

    I thought the endings didn't make any sense. I think the final season did the opposite of pulling together. It spun out of control and relied on cool visuals and dramatic happenings to mask a nonexistent story.

    I really gotta disagree with most of that, with the exception of the subplot involving Hera and her parents. That plot got really, really contorted and was the most religiously-tinged element in the whole show, so when the final reveal basically turned out to be nothing of any consequence whatsoever, it felt anticlimactic.

    The ending doesn't really come together fully, but it really tries and wants to. It's more of an issue with the endings not feeling fully earned and fully fleshed-out than it is an issue of them not working.

    And to say the show's story was "nonexistent" is just plain wrong. The show's story is fantastic.

    I don't understand how an ending "tries and wants to" come together. I'm pretty sure the majority of the people wanted things to work out. It didn't. They wanted to hit that target, but they didn't. Is that what you mean? That they didn't is what I take issue with, but it's compounded by all the various plot arcs converging on something over the course of the series, with the big Shyamalan-style reveal being that the writers had no idea where they were going and they weren't David Lynch enough to make a clusterfuck seem like art.

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  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    edited February 2013
    Henroid wrote: »
    Just finished season 4 of Breaking Bad. Ending spoilers, well, sorta:
    I'm glad it ended in a way that doesn't leave me needing to see season 5 due to a cliff hanger, like how season 3 ended.

    I gotta know your opinion on this. (season 4)
    Crawl Space ending: best ending or bestest ending?

    Oh man.
    Usually hysterical laughter like that makes me eyeroll. But holy shit was that whole ending intense. The shit just hit the fan - not unexpectedly or out of nowhere, it just did it and was so good about how it happened.

    Edit - Wrong word of choice in there.

    Henroid on
  • Page-Page- Registered User regular
    Did anyone else think the season 2 series finale of Breaking Bad was the dumbest thing ever? I seriously almost quit the show after that ridiculous bait and switch and over the top metaphysical nonsense.

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  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    Page- wrote: »
    Did anyone else think the season 2 series finale of Breaking Bad was the dumbest thing ever? I seriously almost quit the show after that ridiculous bait and switch and over the top metaphysical nonsense.

    It was the last time they used that style so strongly though. It was weird, but it wasn't like, "Gawd fuhck this show uuuuuggggghhhh."

  • Page-Page- Registered User regular
    I eventually returned, but I remember reading an interview with the shows creator where he was talking about all this explicit religious imagery and allegory that he was shoving into that season. I probably wouldn't even have been bothered that much if it wasn't for the really lame shaggy dog story that kept getting teased and turned out to have nothing to do with anything.

    Thankfully, yes, they haven't gone in that direction since. If they'd done it again I really would have given up.

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  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    Page- wrote: »
    I eventually returned, but I remember reading an interview with the shows creator where he was talking about all this explicit religious imagery and allegory that he was shoving into that season. I probably wouldn't even have been bothered that much if it wasn't for the really lame shaggy dog story that kept getting teased and turned out to have nothing to do with anything.

    Thankfully, yes, they haven't gone in that direction since. If they'd done it again I really would have given up.

    As a former student of media it's actually really interesting seeing the production / writing differences between the seasons of Breaking Bad. 3 and 4 line up more in each way. But seasons 1 and 2 are so goddamn different from each other and the rest of the show.

    I still need to poke at the first half of season 5 to be truly caught up. I hope it retained the style from season 3 and 4.

  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    The show worked reasonably well on smaller arcs, but the show was pimping a series-long arc that turned out to be mostly incoherent "this looks/sounds cool, let's use it" at the end, which suggests that they were doing that from the start.

    Like Lost, BSG was doing fine as long as they only had to set up mysteries and such. Though BSG did it better in that there's obviously some overall ideas about where it's going, since for the first few seasons, it's pretty darn coherent.

    The problem, or it seems to me, was RDM. From some of his interviews and commentaries he seems big on "I just had this crazy idea, let's work it in to the plot!".

    I'd dispute the notion that there were "overall ideas" with respect to any kind of major arcs. I absolutely agree with you about RDM. I'll never watch anything by him again.

    I thought the endings didn't make any sense. I think the final season did the opposite of pulling together. It spun out of control and relied on cool visuals and dramatic happenings to mask a nonexistent story.

    I really gotta disagree with most of that, with the exception of the subplot involving Hera and her parents. That plot got really, really contorted and was the most religiously-tinged element in the whole show, so when the final reveal basically turned out to be nothing of any consequence whatsoever, it felt anticlimactic.

    The ending doesn't really come together fully, but it really tries and wants to. It's more of an issue with the endings not feeling fully earned and fully fleshed-out than it is an issue of them not working.

    And to say the show's story was "nonexistent" is just plain wrong. The show's story is fantastic.

    I don't understand how an ending "tries and wants to" come together. I'm pretty sure the majority of the people wanted things to work out. It didn't. They wanted to hit that target, but they didn't. Is that what you mean? That they didn't is what I take issue with, but it's compounded by all the various plot arcs converging on something over the course of the series, with the big Shyamalan-style reveal being that the writers had no idea where they were going and they weren't David Lynch enough to make a clusterfuck seem like art.

    I can understand the disappointment over the muddled resolution of the arc involving the hybrid baby, considering how much weight that plot was given throughout most of the show, but they kind of wrote themselves into a corner with that one early onwards and there wasn't much they could do to course-correct as the show went on. They did resolve the plot, it just ended up feeling kind of anticlimactic.

    As for everything else, I felt that it all pretty well resolved satisfactorily.

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