I like it so far. Good summer TV, but nothing to amazing yet.
I hate “fake tension”, like when Janet had the gun held on Joe. I hate moments where I can predict what is going to happen. How many of you were looking at it and thinking, “She’ll shoot the camera.”?
And then she did.
However, I did like the robotic replacement of the camera in the final shot.
Why didn’t they grab and beat up the hotel attendant when their van “teleported” back to the town?
Is Moira gay? When that blonde chick danced to the camera, it looked like the camera operators(whoever they are) zoomed in to examine Moira’s reaction. She looked interested.
I find it interesting and not a little racist-seeming that they’re all totally ignoring the Chinese restaurant workers. No questioning of them, not even the maitre d’, who does speak passable English, so it’s not the language barrier thing. I mean, it seems obvious that the workers are in the same boat as the group, so why wouldn’t you pool resources and ingenuity and experiences and use that to try to figure out what’s going on?
There was continuity weirdness when they got back after “driving off” in the van; the hotel manager dude didn’t look like he’d been beaten up just a short while before that. I wonder if they “lost some time” when they “drove” through that bright light. You know, like people who think they’ve been abducted by aliens always say they’re missing hours of conscious time.
I’m not sure it’s racist. However, I agree that in the real world, everyone would be getting together, including the Chinese workers. This assumes the Chinese workers aren’t the one’s running the whole operation and are not in on it.
I’m going with the main dude or the soldier. Then again, the website says the soldier is a Muslim, so I don’t think they’ll make him the villain.
Now that things have appeared to gone in a fantasy-science direction (the teleportation back into the town and the night clerk being completely healed from his beating a couple hours later) I find I am less interested.
I’d also prefer that there be absolutely nothing from the outside world, that it be entirely internal to the town. But they’re under no obligation to write the show the way I want.
I’ll give episode three a shot but I’m not feeling the magic.
I’ve seen episode three and I’m rather liking the show. I mean, it’s not great, but I don’t mind the ongoing mystery and they haven’t totally faked us out every episode.
I like that the masks were poison themselves.
What was the stupid revelation at the end though? Something about having a photo of the reporter with Janet?
I think the idea is that the Bad Guys are going to frame the reporter as the missing husband/father and thus the prime suspect in Janet’s abduction.
Now, I have a question about (I think) last week’s episode. Reporter met some guy in a bar(?) and got some info from him. He left the bar and immediately got the info taken from him.
What was that about? Who was the source, what sort of info was it supposed to be about?
I was kind of sleepy that night and I’m afraid I dozed off a time or two. :o
They are trying way too hard to establish this mystery. The best television feels effortless, which is admittedly really difficult to execute well. These guys aren’t even close to getting it right. The writing is too carefully orchestrated, while the pacing is off-puttingly clumsy, and the characters too archetypical and unlikeable.
I’ll stick with it for a while longer, but I don’t have much hope that it will turn out to have a satisfying conclusion.
In Casa de Lightnin’, we totally called that the real gas was going to come from the masks themselves.
It bugged me that all the flammable objects in the town were, in fact, unburnable. It also bugged me that the bad guys have apparently ringed in the town with a metal wall that releases gas if you try to dig your way out. There are so many gotcha yas in this town that it just flat-out doesn’t make sense.
The show has already veered into sci-fi, what with the van being apparently teleported back to town. I’ll really hate it if they try to explain everything away with a mundane conspiracy.
Of course not. He’s the one character who’s never done a single wrong thing in the first three eps. He’s a paragon of virtue. Seems almost like they’re trying to pander to Muslims.
Compare him to Sayid on Lost. He was a Muslim too, but was a much more complex and believable character, not some “hey look Muslims can be good peoplez!” cardboard cutout.
OK, so some significant developments in this episode as well. How will they react now, knowing that Joe is sort of working for “them”?
A lot of the reporter and his girlfriend this week. I’m not sure what the point is with them, but I’m assuming the reporter will eventually be the one to break into the “place” they are being kept.
I hadn’t watched this since the first episode, since I was saving them on my my DVR so my friend and I could watch them together. Saturday afternoon I checked on them, since she was coming over, and they were all marked as “Expiring 7/19”. I called DirecTV, thinking that this was some sort of problem with my DVR, and was told that the producers of the show (not NBC) had tagged the early episodes to be deleted from DVRs.
Sounds to me like they’re trying to antagonize their audiences as much as possible - outside of Pay per view I’ve never heard of DVR’d showed being deleted like that. I watched the second & third shows and decided that I’m not going to watch any more.
On the plus side, DirecTV gave me two free months of Showtime to make up for my inconvenience.
I think it’s all right, but the characters are so unlikeable, and the mystery is frustrating rather than tantalising, so its transparent attempt to emulate Lost (via The Prisoner) has failed.
I’m still watching, but I have less and less hope that there will be a satisfying answer to the mystery.
Because, frankly, a lot of what this Evil Conspiracy is doing seems pretty much impossible. (They managed to fireproof EVERYTHING in the town?)
And worst of all, I don’t see a point to what they are doing in the town. The most obvious guess is that this is some military financed shady psych experiment, which is why the victims are random nobodies – but that doesn’t mesh with Tori being used as a lever against her father OR her being stored away to curry favor with him.
I’ll keep watching (assuming they go ahead and show the entire series) but it’s mainly because there’s very little competition for my tv time right now, and I have a very mild level of curiosity about What Is Going On.
The fate of the characters themselves? I really don’t care about any of them.
