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FeeCJ's Replies
In 2024 they would be crying and telling reporters that the coach was making threatening micro-expressions.
Good point!
Yes, up there with the greats. Wish there were more Sandbaggers fans around in my world to discuss the show. One thing that American audiences might have missed that made the show more layered was the obvious social class games that were going on, especially with Burnside.
It reminded me a lot of "Jewel in the Crown" in which, if you did not understand Ronald Merrick's character, his background, why he'd have ended up as a colonial police officer, the social class situation between him and Hari Kumar, etc., key motivations for the characters is entirely lost.
I miss the old British shows before international streaming began, when they were made for a British audience, so were imbued with a lot of "inside baseball" social signals for characters that let you understand them without the show having to spell it out in dialogue. Merrick was one of those characters.
IMO, without understanding Burnside's and Merrick's place in the British social pecking order, so much of what they do and the reasons they do it are lost on a viewer and just the plot remains and some interactions seem confusing.
I miss the old IMDB message boards. In the early days, it was an amazing place to trade insights and background information people brought to the table. Dare I say, this early idea of boards was "civilized." Ha.
Mad Men had to be one of the better boards of all time then, an example that quip about the British blood being spilled!
The first MM comments that were a hint about where social media was beginning to take young people, was a threat in which some young female viewers said they would not watch this "disgusting show!" because of the way women were treated by the men and company and why was this even allowed on TV? "This needs to be banned!" (This was the first season time period.
The other classic, entirely predictable "I'm not watching this disgusting show," came from the threads complaining that the show's cast was unacceptably white and not diverse. This might actually be amusing even now, except that of course the modern Georgian-era costume dramas regularly have half of their cast of artistocratic nobles being played by African-American or Afro-Caribbean actors.
So joke's on me.
That was the time when an oldie like me realized for the first time, really, that young people in spite of the internet and accessibility to information, were not being taught nor exposed to any kind of history or social context before "today," so every historic scene has to conform to 21st century standards of behavior and language or it's some kind of unacceptable racist or prejudiced expression.
It kind of shocked me at that time, because that was not the case with previous generations, who seem to realize "things were different in the past" and Mad Men was highlighting that as a purposeful part of the script and story to show how people lived then and interacted--which is what the drama was about! And that the drama is a window on a different time and place.
I despair....ha.
Yes! Only Mad Men could pull off that scene. It's why it was probably so iconic. They just went places time after that time that nobody in TV had ever visited before. And you had the combo of the actual combat veterans in the room (like Don and Freddy, though I don't remember if he was still at the agency then.)
Always remembered one of the best Freddy moments. Don called all the folks into his office in a kind of "look at what ad agencies are producing now!" lesson, and he was holding up a page from the NY Times that was blank, except for the theretofore unknown photo of a little Volkswagen Beetle up in the corner.
Nobody says anything, but Freddy squints up at it and says, "Last time I saw one of those, I was throwing a hand grenade into it."
Yes, it had all the hallmarks of having been made for and shown on a bottom-feeder simplistic network like ABC, rather than the original AMC (when it was a class act channel and not what it became later), when AMC was more high concept and made Mad Men in the same way we hoped Pan Am would be made -- a careful recreation of the time and place that folks could look at and take in, along with great characters and plots that went deeper than a car park puddle....
But ABC? If ABC were a person and not a network, they'd have an IQ of 70.
I had very low expectations and they were met (not the casting or perfect design though, except for the absurd too-young captain with hair so long in the back is stuck out in shards below his cap). Ha.
No pilot in those days had hair that long. It just showed that ABC was more interested in having some of their "stars" look modern to cater to their fan base and it cheapened the whole thing. Imagine Don Draper without the 1960 haircut, haha!
In the espionage category, only The Americans rises to the quality of writing and acting and theme that Rubicon achieved. It's deep, multilayered and intense, and so smart it probably is not going to appeal at all to shallow surface spy thriller fans.
Two sleepers trying to pretend to be Americans for decades -- while doing their ops right under the noses of the DC crowd -- leads to endless amazing personal and professional stories.
And no spoilers....but as a series finale, The Americans comes in Number One of every series I've ever experienced. Gripping does not cover it!!!
Just cannot describe it, because no series finale has ever been quite like it. And it delivers right up to the final few seconds by leaving a "hmmmmmm........" scene that, after everything else is tied up, leaves you wondering.............wow......could it be????
Ha!
No, a woman! We need a female Shaft....hahahaha.
The mission was not only to go in the kill the scientist, it was to eliminate the people who had done the mission to kill the scientist to hide the whole operation with the scientist, so that it had zero loose ends.
The guys who came after Pine to eliminate him and his team were one level removed from the scientist mission, so once Pine's team was gone, there were no living leads back to the scientist, except Kiefer's character who originated it.
Costner encountered more than one time when Bo did not tell the truth, not just the way he avoided answering about the birthday party.
And another regarding the $100 bill when he lied, again. Costner told his guys it was a matter of character he was concerned with in recruiting. And as a leader, Costner thought that counts, especially in the long run. When you are so disregarded by your own team mates that you they won't attend your 21st birthday party, that's a pretty bad "character reference" and it's a red flag.
It was put into context much earlier than Costner relayed the amazing story of what leadership in the QB is all about. With an anecdote about Joe Montana. When they were in the huddle in an absolutely critical moment, Joe kind of lightened the moment by saying hey is that John Candy in the stands? The guys relaxed a bit with the slight distraction. It broke the tension and they went on to make the key play. Montana managed a tough moment.
So, Costner nailed his standards to the mast with that story, that you can't be an ass as a person and be the kind of quarterback he wants for his team. And also his first pick Vonte gave the ball to his dying sister, even though it got him kicked out of the game after multiple sacks of Bo. He only did that after he'd sacked Bo so many times he was severely shaken the rest of the game.
Character.
SPOILERS
It made me wonder if in the true Hollywood tradition, the actress's agent began demanding a lot more money for the next season now that her role was upgraded, so they said, fine, we'll make it so you may....or may not...be written out. haha
Been done before, if memory serves.
Yes, other than the key characters like J Edgar and Billets etc., the biggest loss for me was Jimmy. His twisted smile irony always was one step ahead of Bosch's intensity. He was just not having it, ha.
Yes, Lt. Grace Billets. She was a great boss for Harry. Knew how to handle his troublesome side. Amy Aquino played her wonderfully.
Which is why I so disliked Season 7, because the show runners just could not stop themselves from reducing the amazing L.T. into a really single dimensional character by having a plot that dealt 100% with only her sexuality, so that they could run a police-are-bad lecture using an incel angle.
She seemed an entirely different character from the previous 6 seasons.
Yes, Luther's character is probably Afro-Caribbean. Not sure though, because I cannot recall whether or not Luther ever mentions his parents or his ancestors' nationalities.
If you like amazing detective shows, "Luther" is really something else! Loved it way back years ago when it came on the scene.
But as for casting, <spoiler> I'm in the minority probably that without Alice...there is NO Luther. ha It's just not the same show without the whole Alice dynamic! Frick and Frack of crims. Love 'em. /<spoiler>
Interesting...have not yet seen the new 2022 version of Lincoln Lawyer. But if he's not <spoiler> white is he still Harry's half brother? Not that he can't be mixed race, since they only share a father, but just wondering how the casting is working in the new version./<spoiler>
Does AdblockPlus work to get rid of them? I've noticed You Tube has sometimes managed to stop AdblockPlus working, so surely the wizards at AP can too, ha. Though uBlock Origin often works. Hopefully one of those might work on AP.
I'll have to try it, otherwise Bosch--or any show at any time--with adverts is a no-go.
Once i got my first DVR sometime during the Reagan Administration I believe, my goal became never to see another commercial for the rest of my life.
SO true about the final season. Compared to the 1st season, (and the next few that were brilliant amalgams of the books), when I was incredibly excited and relieved as a Bosch books fan that they had done such a brilliant job adapting the books to TV, final last season was unspeakable for a Bosch universe show.
Off duty cops in U.S. are expected in a lot of jurisdictions to carry discreetly, which I've seen them do in covered holsters. The reason used to be (i don't know if it's still true) that as a sworn officer you are never off duty. So, you are expected to respond if there is a criminal incident, especially with shots fired, etc.
Today they'd reverse it.
The coach would be crying over something, since he was a troubled guy when the story began.
Then one of the tough women would tell him, "There's NO crying in base...ball!"
On another note, they might as well take the line out, because can we imagine anybody on earth delivering that line like Hanks did--all whine, annoyance and surprise at the same time with that uptick in tone at the end?
Nobody could possibly do that justice, haha. So yes, leave it out.
Indeed. Back then when Penny was on tv promoting the film, I recall that she would sometimes get a question about being a woman director, but we just saw her as an actress, who made the change into being a director, after starring in Laverne and Shirley, ha.
She was such a character anyway, a foo-foo question about "Women Directors" like that would have been dismissed by her with a roll of the eyes anyway, probably.
When asked how she came to direct after acting, in her usual Penny style of mumbling and that accent, and waving her hands around she told a self-deprecating story about being on set with her brother Garry when he was directing one of his usual hits and she was bored, so Garry said "OK then go get a camera crew and go shoot some second unit stuff..."
So she did. And that was her becoming a director in her words (which we know was completely modest as her brother would not have trusted her with second unit if he did not already know she had the skill.)
There used to be a time when someone's consummate skill at what they were doing was what made them admired. Not their gender first--and "oh by the way they directed a film and the most important thing about the film is that she's a woman who directed it and of course nobody in the history of the world as a woman ever got a chance to direct anything until now..." etc.