It would make sense, if you want to keep something valuable safe, not to store it in a safe that can be cracked with a stethoscope when there’s been better alternatives for decades. I’d say.
More to the point, it gives the impression that the writers just don’t know any better and are just following the trope they’ve watched from old movies their whole lives. Which, let’s be honest, it’s more than quite probable what happened here.
It’s like the old thing about there being no noise in space. Sure, you can rationalize that some sci-fi directors knew that and made a different stylistic choice anyway, but let’s face it, it was mostly sheer ignorance.
I’m like you with standards. I don’t have hugely big ones. I found episodes 6 and 7 to be the moment where the show really escalated. They take too long to get the sense8 people interacting. Finally, things get moving and you get a sense of the plot.
Well, the safe couldn’t be cracked with a stethoscope until Wolfgang pulled it off. No doubt the bank won’t be using that safe anymore. If Wolfgang had been a computer hacker safe cracker, he’d be duplicating Nomi’s talent, although they did get past an electronic lock to get into the bank.
Admittedly I skip through approximately 90% of straight sex scenes too. Only a very few seem legitimately interesting to me. Most of the time it’s like “Can we please get back to the plot?!”
You’re wrong. The fact that he “cracked” the safe actually becomes a minor issue later on–as in one of the guys he screwed over doesn’t believe that he cracked an uncrackable safe and he keeps asking how he really did it.
So it doesn’t negate that fact that he did it, but at least it shows that the writers are aware that this kind of safe shouldn’t be able to be cracked. Now, maybe they are still guilty of oversimplifying how this safe works–I don’t know. As for how he did it? I don’t know that either. It wouldn’t be a stretch–within this story–to find out next season that the sensates have some supernaturally-heightened senses or other powers that they aren’t fully aware of yet.
This series spent a LOT of time on character development and “sensual” scenes (fireworks, music, sex, etc.) which show the sensate cluster bonding. It can be frustrating when you want them to just get on with the plot. So I certainly don’t fault anyone who doesn’t like it or doesn’t think it’s worth their time. I enjoyed it. It certainly has its faults, but it was stylistically very different from anything else I’ve seen on television lately and I hope to see more.
It wasn’t clear to me if it’s the government, or some sort of black budget group that almost no one in government knows about. I doubt very many congress critters would sign off on abducting people and performing brain surgery on them. The evil people in this movie remind me of the evil people in the movie Jumper (which I thought would make a good show). I think a big part of it is sensates may represent a genetic advancement and people hate thinking they might be obsolete soon to be replaced. Kill or control or enslave anyone too different. Kinda like mutants in comics.
I keep amusing myself by spotting JMS’s little in-jokes - not sure what to call them, exactly, just little fanservice choices of names and terms and such.
Gorsky’s 1-Adam-12 call sign is the most blatant and silly.
Gorsky… it’s a legitimate name; I have neighbors of that nomen. But sooner or later, sure as shit, someone is going to say…
“Good luck, Mr. Gorsky.”
A more subtle one was the name of the hospital in which the zombified sensate was living (the one turned into an assassin). “Nightingale’s” - I know beyond the shadows where he got that.
These little in-jokies are so prevalent it’s distracting. A few are funny. Too many makes it tiresome.
I read an interview with JMS. He said they took all the actors to each location around the globe and no green screens were used. Even if a scene only lasted a few seconds, the actors were really there. He said it helped bond them and they all became close friends.
It’s not even a sticking point. No other safes come up to pick in any of the remaining episodes. I’m telling you, the scene was just to show Wolfgang’s skills and the type of dangerous situations he lives with. It figures into later storylines, trust me.
Seriously, there are very few fiction series out there that really get anywhere even close to reality in terms of these kinds of details. I’m just curious what you think would be some examples of “good writing” that does.
Plenty, actually. I’m not even talking about Breaking Bad or any critical darling like that. There are fairly mediocre shows that would never have the hospital that doesn’t accept children with bullet wounds because there’s a limit to how unrealistic most writers will go. There are awful sitcoms that wouldn’t.
But, of course, good writing is like good directing, when it’s done well, you don’t notice it.
Although I was skeptical of that too, apparently refusing to admit gunshot wounds is an actual thing on the south side of Chicago specifically, that people have been protesting for years (also found this, albeit from the “Black Youth Project”: Why Some Chicago Hospitals Won’t Treat Victims Of Gun Violence). But the reason is that they claim they’re just not equipped to handle it and usually end up transporting to a trauma center much further away, where they usually die along the way.
They do say that they treat victims 15 and younger, which I guess this kid would fall into, but if he had been even 16-17 it sounds like the scenario would have actually been pretty realistic. They say they wouldn’t turn away a victim “arriving on their own” but they prefer to transport them and since the cops were bringing him in to begin with, they may well have told them to take him elsewhere (or as a poster upthread mentioned, brought him via ambulance but either way, he would have died en route).
Right, it sounded like they didn’t have a proper ER anymore so there’s really not much they can do. It’s a bit like taking the kid into a dentist’s office and expecting them to handle an emergency they don’t have the equipment and personnel to handle.
The show hits a lot of social justice points. I don’t mind.
Note that he doesn’t have to do the safecracking; he sees it as a challenge. And there are psychological reasons why he wants to do it, too, though they are revealed slowly.
Wolfgang hates his father (and that can’t be stressed highly enough). He wants to crack the safe because his father couldn’t. Being able to do it makes him the better man.
It’s actually very good writing, since the safecracking means far more than just cracking a safe.
An observation: The show is not really about telepaths – the 8 are a gestalt, as epitomized in Theodore Sturgeon’s More than Human. Many of the scenes are very reminiscent of “Baby is Three,” part of that fix-up novel.
There are also other elements that parallel Sturgeon.
