Regarding the daughter; just before she went off with those sketchy guys, she was standing outside that diner next to a missing person poster. Was that supposed to be significant somehow? Was the missing person someone at the compound they brought her to? The camera seemed to linger on the poster.
That was the guy from the gas station that was locked up in the first episode after being taken in the boot of Neird’s car.
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I’d call it a sub-plot. Or, as I did upthread, a running joke. The series got from “You’re the head of a brand new branch of the military!” to the moon in 10 half-hour episodes. Compare that to, oh, Marvel’s The Defenders, that took 8 hour-long episodes to get from “a bunch of heroes from their own individual series team up to take on the Hand” to “a bunch of heroes from their own individual series team up to take on the Hand.”
Actually, I was just making a bit of a joke at my own expense, i.e. who I’d want to play me in the movie. The show isn’t remotely accurate; for one, a four-star would would have a large staff of colonels or majors as mission managers for each launch and a bunch of flag officers in command of the various groups within the force, and he’d only get a distilled final readiness review package (scrubbed for the terminology that “The General” doesn’t like) if everything were already low risk. I think it would actually be more amusing to see all of the bureaucracy hamstringing and insulating him him, although Noah Emmerich as his foil and notional superior is a good choice. Since I’ve only watched the first episode I can’t speak to the entire series but the performances do seem uneven and lacking in a definitive tone but hopefully that will improve. I’m glad to see Fred Willard in one final role although I still think his ‘color commentary’ announcer in Best In Show is the best thing he’s done.
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I’m liking it enough to persist, and it is settling into a better balanced product than the first few episodes indicated.
A new-shows reviewer I listened to today said it had been conceived well before the creation of Trump’s Space Force, and that key similarities with real life were lucky accidents. The dates certainly fit - Netflix ordered the first series in Jan 2019, while the real Space Force was established almost a year later in December.
The daughter is a wasted trope, and the actor who plays her is unbelievably bad; bad enough to make me think she’s related to someone putting money into the production.
Googling, Trump first mentioned the idea of creating the Space Force in March 2018, so before Netflix ordered the show.
I thought it was ok… but there were a few glaring issues that I can’t quite get around- launching rockets from rural Colorado?
That, and I thought they missed the opportunity to play it entirely straight with Gen. Naird- have him be what a military officer would be like, but surrounded by all these weirdos and goofballs. Kind of a long-suffering boss who’s the only sane one. Had they taken that tack, the whole daughter drama and imprisoned wife stuff would both be more hard hitting AND more surreal at the same time. Instead, we’re left being unsure if the neglect is dramatic or for laughs, and the angst about the whole open relationship seems a bit out of place considering all the other weirdness and odd stuff he’s had to deal with.
Oh, and his aide Brad should be a Major or Captain or something… not a one-star general.
5:35 into the above clip Carell talks about how Space Force was conceived essentially immediately after Netflix heard the name of the President’s new program. Netflix basically heard the name Space Force and said “Hey, we gotta make this into a show!” and called Carell who said “this has got to be a show!” and called Greg Daniels. So, it’s sort of the ultimate high concept. They heard the name and wrote the show around that.
So, my guess is that the reviewer was making stuff up.
I watched the first and part of the second episode. I think it’s terrible. The satire is too obvious – it’s like Ayn Rand’s version of satire, although from a liberal standpoint. It reminds of when right wingers try to satirize left wing positions.
On top of that, the science is terrible. You don’t launch over Colorado, you can’t just send something into the sun accidentally. Ha! The chimp is going to burn up! Hilarious!
I love every one of the headline actors, and that only makes it worse. The only character I actually liked was John Malkovich’s, and maybe Lisa Kudrow’s. The only scene that I thought was LOL funny was when they heads of all the various services were meeting.
Partway through the second episode, my wife turns to me and says, this isn’t very good. I agreed and we turned it off. We have very different viewing tastes.
I just don’t see what you’re seeing. The actor - Diana Silvers - is fine. She doesn’t appear to be related to anyone important.
The show just doesn’t have enough jokes. It’s okay when they tell jokes, but the joke-per-minute ratio is really low. The actors are excellent, the production values are very high, the concept is fresh. The failure of this show is 100% on the writers; they simply aren’t funny enough.
The mugging for the camera for no apparent reason is just downright annoying.
You know, I thought it was just Ben Schwartz’s character Jean-Ralphio in Parks & Recreation that I didn’t like. After this show, I’ve realized I just don’t like him as an actor.
This is what the Red Letter Media guys would describe as “funny things, instead of actual jokes.”
Thanks, that’s good to know. Its the sort of small but completely wrong factoid I’d probably keep repeating until someone repeated it back to me, and I’d feel that it was independently verified.
I tend to agree with whoever upthread said it just lacked gags per minute. The ones in there are fine, but you are conscious of the gaps in between.
This show is amusing, but would be a lot better if they took the science at all seriously. Suddenly they have three days or some similarly absurdly short period of time to select a lunar crew? Bwah? If lunar missions were this casually easy to throw together, there’d already be strip malls and Starbucks franchises on the Riviera of Tranquility.
This is one of the few shows that I think would have been improved with more oversight from the network. The people involved are all very talented, but the end product is just mundane. I think if someone was saying it needs more rework or had some focus groups give their feedback, they would have worked through a few more iterations and ended up with a better show.
I started watching this yesterday with my SO and we both love it. We’re four episodes in and can’t stop laughing. Part of the fun is picking up on the parodies before you get enough data to confirm it - for example, I recognized “the Mooch” immediately although it was (I think) another episode or so before they gave his full name as some twisted variant on Scaramucci. And the AOC character is uncannily similar to the real person. The show will not age well as people become less familiar with these characters and so some of the jokes are lost, but for now it’s a lot of fun.
The female characters get a large share of the snappy lines, which I like (“Refer to my gender again and I will fuck you in the ass”), but Malkovich is sublime. It seems like a perfect role for him.
We watched the first 4 episodes last night. So far we are loving it. I like the fact that it isn’t “joke-a-minute.”
Up to episode 5 now and I’m already missing the baby-eating chimp.