Not.
I’d say I was…peeved…by it. Likely my displeasure would have been a lot more intense except I never got to the point of really liking the show/characters.
I found the ending satisfying.
The Ship of Lost Souls at the end said it all for me. These people were indeed lost. The Program would either find them useful and eventually employ them or they would end up in a bodybag or a cage. There was no escape. If they made it back home the Program was still there waiting for them, totally in control, with more seeming power and reach than the State itself. Who ran the Program? What were its motives? I think it was irrelevant to the show, which to me was Kafkaesque, showing ordinary people in the grip of anonymous and powerful forces.
On the whole I thought it a good show which ended at the right time. (Right from the beginning NBC had announced it as a miniseries).
Pretty good ending in that I was actually interested in seeing “the next part”, but not enough to really make me think the payoff would be worth another season. Wish I’d realized that lesson with Lost.
For anyone looking for similar entertainment, you might enjoy:
The Prisoner (1967 TV series, though the 2009 mini-series may satisfy some)
The Killing Room (2009 movie)
I just felt so betrayed by the lie NBC perpetrated all season that “all will be revealed”. Nothing was revealed. sigh
Was “all will be revealed” in their ads?
I was okay with the current batch moving on to another step, and a new batch starting in the town. What really annoyed me was the complete lack of information about the purpose of this exercise and the company in general.
All that totally awkward dialog between Joe and Liam and the previous guy about how the intent was super good and thus the end justifying the means… Nobody talks in generalities that way, without throwing in a line or two about ‘but it’ll be worth it because it will end religious wars’ or ‘prevent starvation’ or fix whatever other major problem.
And explain WHY they had to kidnap and psychologically torture these people. “It’s the only way to find the ones with high levels of midichlorians.” Something.
And how about an explanation for people being dead and then alive? Dead enough that you don’t bleed when someone clips off your thumb is pretty damn dead. Blood not flowing dead. Irreversible brain death in less than five minutes dead.
C’mon. Toss us a bone.
Yep. All season long. I they were trying to hook people who were really disappointed in LOST. I hung in there because I wanted to find out the WHY! I didn’t get the WHY! Or the who, where or how for that matter.
Bad Writing - bad acting - bad ending.
That wasn’t a twist at the end, that was a sphincter pucker.
I can’t believe I wasted time on this program. All of the characters were so superficial that I didn’t care about them, I just wanted to understand the reasons behind “The Program”.
Worst Leading Man and Leading Woman EVER. The reporters were the only sympathetic characters and even they seemed to make illogical decisions.
I think that you could assemble a typical group of 9th graders and come up with a better storyline than that.
We finally caught up on the show last night over On Demand. We were really curious as to whether “all” would be revealed- and, not surprisingly, it wasn’t. There were far too many things which had to be explained by science fiction- the pain barrier, the way they apparently got teleported back the town when they were driving off, the way everyone seemed to heal within days after being damn near (or completely) killed.
It just didn’t make sense, and I want my time back.
Well, the pain barrier was a television-style fantasy adaptation of existing tech. They mentioned something about a microwave field in the show. And the healing stuff I thought would be a clue to what’s really going on; that the subjects were often unconscious much longer than they thought. Like instead of sleeping overnight, they would be knocked out for a full extra day for repairs to the town or other preparations. There also did seem to be a lot of extra time, weeks, that they were in town that we didn’t see. Even the teleporting could have been explained as either an identical town or maybe they were knocked out and pointed back at town. I was really kind of assuming that the subjects had some sort of implant to induce unconsciousness.
But all of that is given the show a lot of credit which it doesn’t really seem to deserve. They explained pretty much nothing, so the simpler answer would seem to be they were just making it up.
Finally saw the last two episodes On Demand. Can’t believe I wasted 13 hours watching that bullshit. “All will be revealed,” my ass.
Exactly. Didn’t like the lack of any real explanation. I did like that most of them made it on to “level 2”, which looked cool.
I wouldn’t mind seeing it come back, though I know it won’t.
I like their brilliant plan after they all got out of their bodybags in the van. So, there are what, 5 or 6 of them in the van and ONE bad guy driver. They are heading down the road at a decent rate of speed. Their plan? No, it wasn’t to calmly tell the driver, “So, you’re outnumbered here. Kindly pull off to the side of the road and we’ll let you out unharmed, else we’ll kill you.” Oh no. No, they surprise attack him by putting a blanket or something over his head causing their only means of transportation to wreck, and causing possible physical injury to themselves.
Another thing, the main bad guy chick was the least threatening bad guy I can remember in a long time. Every time she was on screen all I could think was that she looked like a Jim Henson creation. In fact, I now see it was a Gorg from Fraggle Rock she reminded me of: http://s3.amazonaws.com/bzzagent-bzzscapes-prod/fraggle-rock---gorg-lrg.png
Anyone feel like giving a quick synopsis of the last show or two?
There’s a good enough summary at Wikipedia.
The love triangle turns into a love square (rectangle) when the new night manager (Nigel?) falls in love with gotta-get-back-to-my-daughter lady. Evil lady boss sees everything is FUBAR and the town is marked for termination. The residents are deprived of food and are supposed to turn on each other, the last person to survive goes on in the program, like Joe did apparently. The residents apparently do start cracking under pressure and killing each other, but it’s a trick. They allow themselves to be “killed” by each other and are loaded into body bags in a van and taken away from the town. They come out of the bags and inexplicably attack the driver while he’s driving down a rural road at 60 MPH. Van crashes, residents all wind up/wake up in various places. Lady gets to see her daughter. Crazy hair reporter guy and his gf trace The Program and make a scene in the lobby of their building. He (and she?) get put in cages in a concentration camp, along with the senator guy. At the end, everyone wakes up in a town again. Joe and reporter guy are in a town with new people. The rest of the residents are in another town, I guess they’re at level 2. Senator daughter blonde girl that was apparently dead then alive is now a night manager.
The end. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it was entertaining anyway.
Well, they start in another hotel, but when they exit the hotel, it isn’t another town. It’s a ship in the middle of the ocean.
And yes, the reporter’s girlfriend ends up in a cage with the father of the blonde chick from the beginning of the show.
This show would have been good if it made a damned bit of sense.
But nothing made any sense at all. Set ups didn’t go anywhere, the pacing sucked, and the characters were all horrible and unlikeable.
Not acceptable.
Thanks. I thought about wiki, but thought I might want to ask questions on the summary. I’m also in the group who’d like to know why this was marketed as something where all the answers would be given at the end, when they knew this wasn’t the case.
I can only assume that this is another instance of the standard case. The people involved in marketing the show (network people) have little connection to the people who make the show (production team) and don’t really know or care about presenting the show accurately to its audience; they just want to make sure as many people will watch as they can get and will thus say anything.