Who's the true minority? S2 Haters or S2 Lovers? - Millennium (1996) Discussion

[–] sisterdebmac 15 years ago

I'm in the S2 LOVE column, but I feel like we are the minority. I guess we're divided even on that issue. Pretty funny, really.
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[–] DingusStudley 15 years ago

LOVE season 2.

I understand why some people might dislike some aspects of season 2, but I'm shocked anyone could outright hate it.

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[–] Wolverine37 15 years ago

There are plenty of reasons to HATE season 2. The whole season is so self contained, Wong and Morgan completely disregarded the first season and started writing their own show and it creates some ridiculous issues with pacing. The storylines aren't natural... there is nothing in the first season that remotely suggests the Group are something more than a group of ex-FBI agents working as consultants, it's just thrown in because the new showrunners liked the idea.

I have a feeling that if I found Millennium while looking for The X-Files Jr. like some people seem to have, or if it were entirely self contained, I would have loved S2. But considering what came before it, I just find it impossible to like.

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[–] sisterdebmac 15 years ago

Why do you have to make judgments about WHY people you don't even know love S2? I'm not judging you for NOT liking S2. Is it really necessary to belittle fans of that season simply because you disagree?
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[–] Wolverine37 15 years ago

I wasn't aware I was making judgments. I've noticed a number of people (over years and years of reading these debates all over the internet) who like season 2 more fell that way because it's closer to what they expected from the X-Files creative team. That's not meant as an insult, simply I can see how someone seeking out a show similar to the X-Files would like s2.

I do see the appeal of the season, as I said I probably would have enjoyed it if that was the lone season of the series. I don't begrudge anyone their opinions, either. We're all fans of the same show, for better or for worse. These debates just make it all the more fun. I remember sitting in an X-Files chatroom and being ridiculed for saying I'd watch the show even there were no monsters or aliens and it was just Mulder and Scully investigating insider trading each week... differing opinions make it interesting.

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[–] DingusStudley 15 years ago

"there is nothing in the first season that remotely suggests the Group are something more than a group of ex-FBI agents working as consultants, it's just thrown in because the new showrunners liked the idea."

Frank was ex fbi working as a consultant. I could be wrong but I thought it's revealed at some point that Peter shares a similar background. This really isn't one of the things season 2 changes up.

ALthough I do understand your main beef about it being too different from season 1 and starting it's own, completely new storyline with the group. I still don't see that as reason enough to outright hate the entire season however.

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[–] ravenking81 15 years ago

When I first watched S2 I really didn´t like it much. I was expecting something similar to S1 and was quite dissapointed that the creators took a different path. I expected S2 to become even darker than S1, but instead it became weird and pointless. I was really annoyed by the attempts at humor. I mean it´s one thing to insert some humor into an otherwise serious show, and it´s another one to make it unintentionally silly.
It´s actually funny, if you think about it: I suppose that many of the changes (a stronger supernatural element etc.) had to do with making the show more accessible to a larger audience. Yet for all the things S2 is, it´s definitely not more accessible (the José Chung episode must be the most bizarre piece of TV I´ve ever seen). At times I kept asking myself: What on earth were Wong and Morgan thinking? Who was the intended audience for this season? They managed to alienate some of the fan base from S1 without gaining any new fans. Sometimes it seemed, they were simply throwing ideas out there, without any regard as to whether they made any sense or not.
After a while however I decided to give this season another try. And this time around I found it to be surprisingly entertaining even challenging in many ways. With the disappointment gone I started to appreciate it for what it was. Some of it still didn´t work, but it was always creative and atmospheric. And surprising. This was a show, where really everything could happen.
It didn´t try to appeal to everyone, but that was one of it´s strength. It was surprising, it had humor, horror, satire, drama, it was a genre-bending achievement.
Today it´s my favourite season. It really holds up well after repeated viewings (better than S1 in my opinion).
I know that Lance Henriksen has said, that he didn´t like the direction the show took in S2, and I can completely understand that. It would have been great to see Chris Carter´s original vision. But it´s just the way it is.
I think if you keep an open mind about it, S2 is a unique achievement. I would say, it ´s like a piece of art, curiously uncommercial but endlessly fascinating.
It´s also the best thing Wong and Morgan have ever done. They never managed to fulfil the promise they showed on this show.

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[–] DingusStudley 15 years ago

" (the José Chung episode must be the most bizarre piece of TV I´ve ever seen)."

They took a chance doing something different and creative, and I think it paid off 100%. This is one of the best episodes in the entire show, it has a weird brilliance about it. I don't have a problem with a show going off path and doin something odd as long as it's a rare occurence and it still manages to capture the atmosphere/greatness of the rest of the show(which I think Jose Chung does, which is very strange and amazing given the plot/premise).

I definitely can understand all the complaints about season 2. But the reason I never was phased in the least by any changes is cuz it still had that same dark atmosphere and still delivered plenty of disturbing, horrific episodes. The crime element was intact, they just started building up a larger storyline arc around it.

The best episodes of course still were the ones where Frank is investigatin a killer, show still at its best when it had the "monster of the week" element(I feel the same way about X-Files actually, although I've heard lots of fans voicing the exact opposite opinion, they wish X-files focused more on the larger storyline arc with the conspiracies and whatnot).

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[–] charismaseasons 11 years ago

What a joke

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[–] remnantsaflame-1 15 years ago

Wolverine37 wrote:

there is nothing in the first season that remotely suggests the Group are something more than a group of ex-FBI agents working as consultants

What about in the pilot, when Bletcher asks Frank about working with the Group, and probes, "You believe in that stuff? Nostradamus? Revelations?" (That's not a verbatim quote, but a close approximation.)

Again, that was in the pilot. The pilot. It's pretty clear to me that they were setting something up ... something that Morgan and Wong finally expounded and delivered on. I spent most of the first season if they were going to ever do something with all that end of the world stuff.

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[–] Wolverine37 15 years ago

You're certainly right, that was in the pilot and it was clear something was being set up. And Wong and Morgan certainly took hold of that foreshadowing and ran with it.

The problem is that, by the end of season 1, we already knew what Bletcher was talking about. The FBI agents in Paper Dove ask Frank about some members of the Group who feel that "there's a deeper evil out there" (paraphrased)... the week before that, Frank chased the Antichrist around Brooklyn. Two weeks before that, we saw an angel kill a demon. Carter clearly had the religious/apocalyptic ideas in his mind when he created the series.

However, it's not an obvious leap that the Millennium Group is a 2,000 year old secret religious society. That is where it starts taking ridiculous jumps.

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[–] alcibiades-3 15 years ago

Wolverine said:

However, it's not an obvious leap that the Millennium Group is a 2,000 year old secret religious society. That is where it starts taking ridiculous jumps.

And that's my view, as well. Can I just say that I loathe "Hand of St Sebastian" with a vengeance. For me, it just exemplifies everything wrong about Millennium.

I know it shouldn't be part of canon to include commentaries/interviews, but it's pretty clear from those that there were two particular threads to the initial concept of the show, both mentioned on the season 1 DVD. Chris Carter said:

I wanted it to be a murder mystery each week, but I wanted it to have some kind of cohesive idea. Something that I think was in the air, which was a foreboding for the end of the millennium, that something was going to happen and everyone felt it. I thought I could capitalise on it and do a murder mystery with a millennial feel.

Plus a comment from Frank Spotnitz:

I think Chris had the idea that evil as a concept had been degraded in our society by secularism, by science, and he still believed in evil as a real force. So he wanted to make the scariest possible show he could, and that was what Millennium was.

So, although I could buy the concept that "evil" could be caused by something external (cf. leaded petrol and damage to developing brains, and how crime rates decreased when leaded petrol was phased out) I couldn't manage to go one step further and accept the MM Group as seeking out so-called religious artefacts, and then having a ritualistic induction into the group.

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[–] DingusStudley 15 years ago

"the week before that, Frank chased the Antichrist around Brooklyn. Two weeks before that, we saw an angel kill a demon. Carter clearly had the religious/apocalyptic ideas in his mind when he created the series.

However, it's not an obvious leap that the Millennium Group is a 2,000 year old secret religious society. That is where it starts taking ridiculous jumps. "

I don't think the stuff in season 2 about the group's origins/history is more ridiculous(if that's the word you wanna use, I don't necessarily see it as being ridiculous, just uh "out there" haha) then what we see in season 1. It's all supernatural, religious type of stuff. It all relates to the end of the world.

The difference I see is that Carter kept this stuff largely in the background. Even in the episodes you mention, it has this surreal feeling to it. You could make the argument for pretty much all the supernatural stuff in season 1 that it is all in Frank's mind, or that we are just seeing his own personal perception of what evil is. For example, when Frank has one of his visions and sees a killer as a demon, is that real, like is that the killer's true form, or is that simply how Frank views such a vile individual in his mind? The same goes for the early Lucy Butler episodes, is she truly shapeshifting or are the people seeing her as someone else simply perceiving her as how they view an evil person SHOULD look? It's not established FOR A FACT that the russian dude in that very cool antichrist episode truly was the antichrist. Everything suggests it, but in the end every viewer has to make up their own mind.

It's a bit harder to argue a natural explanation for the angel episode haha, but still, for the most part the supernatural elements have a certain understated quality to em.

For someone who disliked the angel and shapeshifting, I could see how season 2 could further alienate them, as it took all the religious stuff Carter uses in largely subtle(or at least less major) ways and creates an entire larger story arc around it.

Season 1 is the best season of the show, by far. The mystery/monster of the week is what makes/made the show incredible, and the end of the world, religious/evil elements being a major aspect of the show without being TOO heavyhanded or taking over was best. The underlying evil/religious element in this otherwise straight forward serial killer show was what made it so brilliant. But as much as I love the first season, I saw season 2 as a fairly natural progression of season 1's ideas, it's nothing that as I was watching it I went, "wait, what the hell, this clashes completely with what I was used to before!!!". They sorta just brought the underlying evil/religious elements into the forefront, for better or worse.

Season 3 seems the most "un-Millennium" like to me. You largely lost all the religious stuff, while still keeping bizarre and outlandish(and from what most fans say, largely unwanted) Group conspiracy story-arcs, while at the same time never regaining that same mystery/monster of the week format that made the show so brilliant and awesome in the first place. It became an X-Files clone in a LOT of ways.

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[–] remnantsaflame-1 15 years ago

Wolverine37 wrote:

You're certainly right, that was in the pilot and it was clear something was being set up. And Wong and Morgan certainly took hold of that foreshadowing and ran with it.

The problem is that, by the end of season 1, we already knew what Bletcher was talking about. The FBI agents in Paper Dove ask Frank about some members of the Group who feel that "there's a deeper evil out there" (paraphrased)... the week before that, Frank chased the Antichrist around Brooklyn. Two weeks before that, we saw an angel kill a demon.

Fair enough points. I see these things as further glimpses of and hints at "the big picture", though ... not full-on exposition and fully-realized execution. What Morgan and Wong did with S2 I see as truly taking the next step that these things were calling for, and only a logical evolution of what had been laid out in S1.

However, it's not an obvious leap that the Millennium Group is a 2,000 year old secret religious society. That is where it starts taking ridiculous jumps.

The Millennium Group already was mysterious, and it had already been alluded that the "deeper evil out there" that they were concerned with had something to do with the impending End Times, and considering all the show's Biblical references, that didn't seem a leap to me. But, you draw the line there, and have well thought-out, well-informed reasons for it, and I respect your position.

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[–] alcibiades-3 15 years ago

What about in the pilot, when Bletcher asks Frank about working with the Group, and probes, "You believe in that stuff? Nostradamus? Revelations?" (That's not a verbatim quote, but a close approximation.)

It is a close approximation, but here's that segment of the conversation:

BLETCHER: This Millennium Group. They really believe all that stuff? Nostradamus and Revelations? The destruction of the world?

FRANK: They believe we can't just sit back and hope for a happy ending.

Wolverine has raised an interesting point. There's nothing I can see in the pilot (going from the transcript) that indicates how/why Bletcher thinks the Millennium Group believes in Nostradamus and Revelations. There's no previous reference to Nostradamus; and the only reference to Revelations is Frank's exposition to Bletcher and the other detectives as to where the killer's quotes come from.

It's interesting that Frank neither confirms nor denies Bletcher's assertion about Nostradamus/Revelations, so it's not clear (at least to me) whether Bletcher's view of the MM Group was realistic.

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[–] DingusStudley 15 years ago

^^^
I don't think Bletcher's comments are to be taken literally. It can be assumed based on comments others make throughout the series that the Group is kown about in the world of law enforcement. There's several times when a detective or FBI agent makes a comment or inquiry about the group and what they're about. They know it has SOMETHING to do with the end of the world and all that. Bletcher said "nostradamus and Revelations" in a sarcastic/joking way. "All that STUFF" is the key phrase here. He's just listing the most well known/popular examples of the "stuff" he was guessing Millennium believes in.

It doesn't mean he seriously believes or has heard that the Group believes in Nostradamus or even Revelations, just that it seems to be apparent to most that the Group believes in some end of the world scenario and is out to stop it.

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[–] Wolverine37 15 years ago

Yes, it would appear that in season 1 the group's beliefs are somewhat known... but the implication is still a group of ex-FBI agents consulting with an apocalyptic bent.

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[–] remnantsaflame-1 15 years ago

alcibiades-3 wrote:

Wolverine has raised an interesting point. There's nothing I can see in the pilot (going from the transcript) that indicates how/why Bletcher thinks the Millennium Group believes in Nostradamus and Revelations. There's no previous reference to Nostradamus; and the only reference to Revelations is Frank's exposition to Bletcher and the other detectives as to where the killer's quotes come from.

It's interesting that Frank neither confirms nor denies Bletcher's assertion about Nostradamus/Revelations, so it's not clear (at least to me) whether Bletcher's view of the MM Group was realistic.

You're right - at that point in the game, it was open-ended. Like DingusStudley was getting at, Carter could've just meant that a "regular" law enforcement guy like Bletcher regarded the eurudite, specialized Millennium Group warily and skeptically.

But, I do think it was clear in the pilot that the Millenial theme was meant to be a significant part of the series (I mean, look at the show - and the Group's - title), and the way M&W later developed the Group's mythology was in check.

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[–] mwhite182 15 years ago

Season 1 was the best hands-down. Season 2 would have been much better if they had left the bleakness of the first season intact. If they had kept the mood, I wouldn't mind all the crazy mythology. But the addition of humor from the new supporting cast and a couple of really stupid episodes (Somehow Satan Got Behind Me, Beware of the Dog) just make season 2 nowhere near as good as season 1.

I demand episode 201 of South Park be uncensored.

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[–] therealboozysmurf 11 years ago

For me, it seemed a natural evolution that the group would become evil.

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[–] matthewtrustno1 14 years ago

Love Season 2

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[–] macktan894 13 years ago

I can see why Wong/Morgan made the decision to beef up the Millennium Group and veer away from the "profiled murder of the week" formula; that part I liked (although it did get quite bizarre, cultishly speaking, with Owls and Roosters).

What I didn't like was the comedy and childhood flashbacks. To me, they lost the idea of Frank Black as a driven profiler whose gift had at one time driven him over the edge into insanity. They tampered with his character.

The best episode of Season 2 is The Mikado, which is also in keeping with the style and character of S1. My second favorite is The Beginning and the End, the first episode of S2.

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[–] AvidWatcher101 11 years ago

I just finished season 2. Loved the first season, not a fan of the second one. I wouldn't get into any big thing about what is better written, or structured, etc. For me it boils down to simple taste. I don't care for all the religious based themes - the cross, demons, angels, face of Mary in the bullet, and on and on. There are people who loved the episode with the demons in the diner. I sped through it in 2 minutes. I completely respect that there are fans who loved that episode, even if I don't. I started watching Sleepy Hollow, and had been looking forward to it. Then it went all religious and lost me after the first two episodes. So, that's my two cents - different strokes.

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[–] charismaseasons 11 years ago

Chris Carter states in the making of section of the DVD that he wanted Millennium to be a TV version of the movie Se7en. A dark brooding intense serial killer series. That's all I wanted. The rest is BS. The worst episodes in S1 are when they strayed from that concept like in The Well Worn-Lock and Walkabout.

Season two just took a huge stinking dump on that entire concept.

I don't get why people wanted it to be another X Files. If you're so starved of X Files buy the DVD's and rewatch them. Expecting Millennium to be the X Files defeats the purpose of the show. It's like saying "I love E.R but it's all about doctors and hospitals and I'd like it more if it were about mountain climbers"

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[–] Ashok18 11 years ago

Season two just took a huge stinking dump on that entire concept.

Except it didn't. S2 was excellent. S3 was where things went South.

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[–] charismaseasons 11 years ago

Season two was excellent if had been season two of some other show. For a season of Millennium, a show about a group of ex law enforcement men helping to solve complex crimes it's a huge stinking pile of sheet.

Season three tried to restore it to it's former glory but it was too late. Still better than season two though.

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[–] Ashok18 11 years ago

Season two was excellent if had been season two of some other show.

Okay? So I guess we can agree the episodes themselves were enjoyable?

For a season of Millennium, a show about a group of ex law enforcement men helping to solve complex crimes

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this, but why did MM S2 have to be about law enforcement men helping solve crimes? I really LIKED the fact it shifted gears and integrated more mythology like The X-Files and had a more supernatural vibe to it.

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[–] charismaseasons 11 years ago

why did MM S2 have to be about law enforcement men helping solve crimes?

ummm because that was what the show was supposed to be about.

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[–] DingusStudley 11 years ago

Season 2 still had a good deal of fantastic dark, serial killer episodes though. It has the feel of season 1 in a LOT of eps.

Season 3 is def where the show takes the biggest nosedive and feels the most unlike its original self. An ep that captures that dark, grim, creepy magic of the first season is a rarity here. And you mention the show becoming like X-Files, well season 3 is when this is at its worst. The whole thing feels like an awful X-Files story arc that was deemed too poor to make it to the screen. From the opening 2 parter episode on season 3 is full of bizarre, over the top shadowy conspiracy bullcrap, farrrrrrrrrrrr more in your face and in the forefront then the religious conspiracy aspects of season 2. I still don't even understand what that opener was about with all those blond kids. Total trash.

I fail to see how it in any way was trying to restore things to how they were(outside of the excellent ending which does conclude the show on a very positive, awesome note). It merely replaced the wacky religious stuff season 2 started to get too heavy into with a VASTLY wackier and nonsensical storyline of its own, and then failed to deliver standalone serial killer/monster of the week eps that stood up to the previous seasons efforts. And let's not forget season 3 had its fair share of supernatural mumbo jumbo as well, which like everything else, is far more absurd and out of left field then anything that came before.

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[–] charismaseasons 11 years ago

Well that was the trouble. They had steered the show so far off track in season two that it was almost impossible to bring it back to where it needed to be. I think it would have been better to just bring the series to an end after S2 and just make one off 90 minute movies but I'm sure the producers wouldn't have gone along with that.

It's all history now. At least I have the first season to watch and rewatch.

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[–] 11 years ago

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[–] therealboozysmurf 11 years ago

I loved season 1 and season 2. It felt like a natural progression and the only way they could go if the show was to grow beyond killer-of-the-week (which it had to).

Season 3 was an abomination.

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[–] charismaseasons 11 years ago

"to grow beyond killer-of-the-week (which it had to)"

why? that was what the show was about so why did it need to go beyond that.

That's like saying E.R needs to go beyond Doctors and nurses helping people in a hospital.

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