I would not say this is very good television. It's all over the place in terms of quality, plotlines disappear for ages such as
Shawshank suddenly reappearing like 5 episodes later, the town doesn't feel lived in at all and that's an issue with the production or the writers, and there's little explanation given for Henry imprisoning other Henry in the end. Yeah he had a monster face, so I'm just gonna keep him imprisoned for ever? Oh and Ruth dies, and she kills the love of her life and what the fuck ever.
I would not say this is very good television. It's all over the place in terms of quality, plotlines disappear for ages such as
Shawshank suddenly reappearing like 5 episodes later, the town doesn't feel lived in at all and that's an issue with the production or the writers, and there's little explanation given for Henry imprisoning other Henry in the end. Yeah he had a monster face, so I'm just gonna keep him imprisoned for ever? Oh and Ruth dies, and she kills the love of her life and what the fuck ever.
It's "ok". It's not essential.
he had a monster face and caused a bunch of prisoners to brutally murder dozens of people by thinking about it real hard while henry watched, in addition to all of the other insane shit henry saw him cause/do
I would not say this is very good television. It's all over the place in terms of quality, plotlines disappear for ages such as
Shawshank suddenly reappearing like 5 episodes later, the town doesn't feel lived in at all and that's an issue with the production or the writers, and there's little explanation given for Henry imprisoning other Henry in the end. Yeah he had a monster face, so I'm just gonna keep him imprisoned for ever? Oh and Ruth dies, and she kills the love of her life and what the fuck ever.
It's "ok". It's not essential.
The thing is about the ending
is you aren't supposed to get a lot of explanation. You're supposed to doubt, you're supposed to wonder who to side with. The Kid said "You believe me, don't you?" at the end of episode 9. Is he lying? Is Henry right to keep him locked up again? I'm inclined to think he lied about a lot of things. Shawshank didn't need to be a huge plot thing once the Kid was out.
Ruth was old and the love of her life was dead by her hand. Dying a year later of grief isn't unexpected. She seemed to be reliving moments over and over, seeing things in the wrong order.
I think there's a lot of puzzle pieces we haven't fully put together yet, but this show was shot wonderfully, the acting is tremendous, and I'm already dying for more.
It's also the most Dark Tower thing we've gotten and I'm including the Dark Tower movie.
The show had some really strong episodes, but overall I think it fell a little flat for me.
It had some good characters, but none of them really had an arc of any sort. Nobody learned anything or changed in any meaningful way.
And the story didn't really seem to go anywhere, either. It was basically just
"Kid gets out, runs amok for a while, then gets put back in the cage." Maaaaybe all the bad shit that happened was his fault? WoOoOoOo... doubt! Whatever.
Anyway, it was interesting enough that I'll probably check out Season 2.
HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I liked the last episode as well, just one question
The figurine seemed to be treated as important by realHenry and Molly. I didn’t understand that at all. Did they show one previously in the show? Molly mentioned getting one, but then nothing happened to Molly - while the new warden was run over. I don’t get the significance of it.
I liked the last episode as well, just one question
The figurine seemed to be treated as important by realHenry and Molly. I didn’t understand that at all. Did they show one previously in the show? Molly mentioned getting one, but then nothing happened to Molly - while the new warden was run over. I don’t get the significance of it.
Its a threat, but Molly leaves town before anything can happen to her.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I liked the last episode as well, just one question
The figurine seemed to be treated as important by realHenry and Molly. I didn’t understand that at all. Did they show one previously in the show? Molly mentioned getting one, but then nothing happened to Molly - while the new warden was run over. I don’t get the significance of it.
Its a threat, but Molly leaves town before anything can happen to her.
Hmm, that doesn't make a lot of sense though.
I assume Molly got hers when he had stayed the night at her office? That was a long time ago during which she was in town, while the warden seemed to die pretty immediately. Not that supernatural murders have to work consistently, but also Kid needed Molly later. Seems weird if he were to curse her before she had done her part for him.
I liked the last episode as well, just one question
The figurine seemed to be treated as important by realHenry and Molly. I didn’t understand that at all. Did they show one previously in the show? Molly mentioned getting one, but then nothing happened to Molly - while the new warden was run over. I don’t get the significance of it.
Its a threat, but Molly leaves town before anything can happen to her.
Hmm, that doesn't make a lot of sense though.
I assume Molly got hers when he had stayed the night at her office? That was a long time ago during which she was in town, while the warden seemed to die pretty immediately. Not that supernatural murders have to work consistently, but also Kid needed Molly later. Seems weird if he were to curse her before she had done her part for him.
My guess is that the Kid picked up something when he went todash 27 years ago so at times he's in control and at times it is, but its in control more and more as he's free.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
edited September 2018
You’re all crazy, or I am. This show was terrible, and also not at all the kind of story Stephen King would write. King just doesn’t do this—mystery box narratives about amnesiac characters featuring complete moral and informational ambiguity and zero narrative momentum or sense.
This is some JJ Abrams bullshit, and I know it because he tricked me into rewatching
season 1 of Fringe
, which I didn’t like the first time around for much the same reasons.
In Stephen King books you know exactly what is happening, if not always why—you have a leg to stand on. “Give me what I want and I’ll go away.” “The terror began...” He drops casual foreshadowing and ironic winks so you know pretty soon, oh, these are vampires. Got it. He puts ordinary people in extraordinary situations: here’s a little town in Maine and one day there’s a dome. Here’s a little town in Maine and one day the Devil opens up a store. Do you know what Cycle of the Werewolf is about? It’s not a goddamn mystery.
But clearly these people deliberately set out to write a show whose meaning is ambiguous, whose characters lack motivation, whose episodes lack incident, whose season lacks structure and which isn’t even freaking scary. Very Stephen King!
The Stephen King of it all feels like easter eggs slapped onto a pretty crappy, pretty generic “spooky small town.” Does it mean anything to the story that one of the characters is named Alan Pangborn, a Stephen King character defined by gentle decency and that one time he faced down the Devil? No, here he’s a bitter old man, irascible and with barely a whiff of past experience with the supernatural. Why call him Alan Pangborn? Why call this place Castle Rock, if you’re not going to do anything with the ideas or the history?
It’s as if they took inspiration from King plot elements—an odd prisoner, a psychic, drug addiction, coming back to your hometown, an abusive husband—but didn’t know how to express them dramatically, or do anything useful with them.
Take the abusive husband. How do we know he’s abusive? The show compares him directly to Jack Torrance from The Shining, who by the same point in the narrative had tried very hard to kill his wife with an axe. The father in this show, everybody’s scared of him but he doesn’t actually do anything on screen that’s bad, certainly not bad enough to warrant the violence directed at him from multiple people. King has written a lot of abusive parents and husbands, from the brute in Rose Madder to Torrance (who we know from early on broke his son’s arm) to the men in Dolores Claiborne and Gerald’s Game, Beverly’s father in It, etc (and for that matter, Carrie’s mother). Each is fully realized and the damage they inflict is right there on the page where we can see it for ourselves. I’m not saying Henry’s father’s not who they say he is. I’m saying it’s an egregious case of “show, don’t tell”.
Add to the abuser who doesn’t abuse anybody, the weird prisoner who doesn’t talk or do much of anything, the psychic who is nothing but a plot device that has, so far as i can tell, no arc and no effect on anything in the plot, and a poignant but completely irrelevant story about a woman with Alzheimer’s who may or may not be experiencing the supernatural.
King works in part because he always gives us clearly defined characters and situations. The alcoholic, self-destructive poet in The Tommyknockers. The painter in Duma Key who’s putting himself back together. A woman handcuffed to a bed with a corpse. A dog has gone rabid. A writer is kidnapped by his biggest fan. None of this “who am I and what are you” nonsense.
I liked the performances in this show, and some of the direction, and the nods to the things I love as a fan. That the show is well made and not the trash that was, say, Under the Dome, or The Mist show, makes it all the more frustrating to watch. King has often said that if a work is like a car, the story is the engine. Here we have a nice looking car where the engine revved, sputtered, and died before it could get anywhere.
I blame nobody for this more than Abrams, who is in love with enticing beginnings and now has an anthology show, where every season can hide its story or lack thereof behind bullshit mysteries it never really bothers to solve. In Fringe, the pointless obfuscation of season one eventually gave way to characters with defintion and history and purpose, who had to start moving forward and telling their story. I have no hope for Castle Rock season two, because there will never be a Castle Rock season two. Just an endless row of season ones that never have to deliver either on their own empty promises or the real potential of a show that’s actually written the way Stephen King would have. Because this just isn’t that, and probably never will be.
Posts
It's "ok". It's not essential.
The thing is about the ending
Ruth was old and the love of her life was dead by her hand. Dying a year later of grief isn't unexpected. She seemed to be reliving moments over and over, seeing things in the wrong order.
I think there's a lot of puzzle pieces we haven't fully put together yet, but this show was shot wonderfully, the acting is tremendous, and I'm already dying for more.
It's also the most Dark Tower thing we've gotten and I'm including the Dark Tower movie.
It had some good characters, but none of them really had an arc of any sort. Nobody learned anything or changed in any meaningful way.
And the story didn't really seem to go anywhere, either. It was basically just
Maaaaybe all the bad shit that happened was his fault? WoOoOoOo... doubt! Whatever.
Anyway, it was interesting enough that I'll probably check out Season 2.
*shudders*
But,that one is a long shot.
Pennywise was feeding back when Derry was founded
Hmm, that doesn't make a lot of sense though.
This is some JJ Abrams bullshit, and I know it because he tricked me into rewatching
In Stephen King books you know exactly what is happening, if not always why—you have a leg to stand on. “Give me what I want and I’ll go away.” “The terror began...” He drops casual foreshadowing and ironic winks so you know pretty soon, oh, these are vampires. Got it. He puts ordinary people in extraordinary situations: here’s a little town in Maine and one day there’s a dome. Here’s a little town in Maine and one day the Devil opens up a store. Do you know what Cycle of the Werewolf is about? It’s not a goddamn mystery.
But clearly these people deliberately set out to write a show whose meaning is ambiguous, whose characters lack motivation, whose episodes lack incident, whose season lacks structure and which isn’t even freaking scary. Very Stephen King!
The Stephen King of it all feels like easter eggs slapped onto a pretty crappy, pretty generic “spooky small town.” Does it mean anything to the story that one of the characters is named Alan Pangborn, a Stephen King character defined by gentle decency and that one time he faced down the Devil? No, here he’s a bitter old man, irascible and with barely a whiff of past experience with the supernatural. Why call him Alan Pangborn? Why call this place Castle Rock, if you’re not going to do anything with the ideas or the history?
It’s as if they took inspiration from King plot elements—an odd prisoner, a psychic, drug addiction, coming back to your hometown, an abusive husband—but didn’t know how to express them dramatically, or do anything useful with them.
Take the abusive husband. How do we know he’s abusive? The show compares him directly to Jack Torrance from The Shining, who by the same point in the narrative had tried very hard to kill his wife with an axe. The father in this show, everybody’s scared of him but he doesn’t actually do anything on screen that’s bad, certainly not bad enough to warrant the violence directed at him from multiple people. King has written a lot of abusive parents and husbands, from the brute in Rose Madder to Torrance (who we know from early on broke his son’s arm) to the men in Dolores Claiborne and Gerald’s Game, Beverly’s father in It, etc (and for that matter, Carrie’s mother). Each is fully realized and the damage they inflict is right there on the page where we can see it for ourselves. I’m not saying Henry’s father’s not who they say he is. I’m saying it’s an egregious case of “show, don’t tell”.
Add to the abuser who doesn’t abuse anybody, the weird prisoner who doesn’t talk or do much of anything, the psychic who is nothing but a plot device that has, so far as i can tell, no arc and no effect on anything in the plot, and a poignant but completely irrelevant story about a woman with Alzheimer’s who may or may not be experiencing the supernatural.
King works in part because he always gives us clearly defined characters and situations. The alcoholic, self-destructive poet in The Tommyknockers. The painter in Duma Key who’s putting himself back together. A woman handcuffed to a bed with a corpse. A dog has gone rabid. A writer is kidnapped by his biggest fan. None of this “who am I and what are you” nonsense.
I liked the performances in this show, and some of the direction, and the nods to the things I love as a fan. That the show is well made and not the trash that was, say, Under the Dome, or The Mist show, makes it all the more frustrating to watch. King has often said that if a work is like a car, the story is the engine. Here we have a nice looking car where the engine revved, sputtered, and died before it could get anywhere.
I blame nobody for this more than Abrams, who is in love with enticing beginnings and now has an anthology show, where every season can hide its story or lack thereof behind bullshit mysteries it never really bothers to solve. In Fringe, the pointless obfuscation of season one eventually gave way to characters with defintion and history and purpose, who had to start moving forward and telling their story. I have no hope for Castle Rock season two, because there will never be a Castle Rock season two. Just an endless row of season ones that never have to deliver either on their own empty promises or the real potential of a show that’s actually written the way Stephen King would have. Because this just isn’t that, and probably never will be.