My only complaint is the music during the viking funeral scene. That musical backdrop would be appropriate if it were a real live human baby, possibly someone she was babysitting or even a baby sister. For a fucking doll, it was over-the-top embarrassing.
There sure are a lot of dongs in this show. Will we ever get boobies?
I bailed halfway through the last episode, and I think I’m unfortunately out. If it gets some buzz as a show that built and got better I’ll come back, but I’m not enjoying it as much as I’d hoped.
It should be pretty clear to anybody that this isn’t the biblical rapture given that the same %age of disappeared seems to prevail across religious lines and presumably atheist/agnostics as well.
Maybe the takings also only happened to people who weren’t being directly observed. Even JLo has to go to the can.
They are trying to figure it out. They showed a scene a couple of episodes ago where one woman was interviewing an elderly couple about their missing relative. She was asking a long series of questions. I am sure that the best number crunchers in the world are trying to find any connection other than random chance.
I finally watched the first episode. I was thinking of waiting until the end of the season and see if it was another anti-climactic waste of time, but, it looked too interesting.
Now, I’m not reading this thread past the first few comments to avoid spoilers, so forgive me if there’s been talk about the subject already: what I saw was a mystery show. The point wasn’t the characters developing, or their relations or anything else, what the show was saying is “Hey, here’s a series of weird plot points. If you want to know the answers, tune in next week”.
This is important. I’m not tuning in next week to see whether the main character will work things out with his family. Or to know if the town’s next statue unveiling will be a success. Or for the star-crossed romance between the son and the asian girl. I’m tuning in for answers.
There’s a bunch of people who have decided to abandon their lives and start smoking like chimneys and quit talking. If I’m going to keep watching, it will be to understand why eventually. What do they know the rest of the world doesn’t? What sort of weird entity is forcing them to do so?
If there is no answer, or it’s a cop out answer like “A wizard did it for unfathomable reasons”, well, then the whole show is a con and I’m not interested in wasting my time with it. So, is there?
Yeah, I know. That’s my problem. So is there a reasonable explanation behind the two cults and their belief systems, or it’s all just empty random concepts designed to hook naive viewers like me into thinking there’s a mystery unravelling?
After watching the most recent episode, “Gladys”, I vote for the latter.
I’ll put some specific complaints in spoiler boxes just in case you don’t really want to know, but I’m done with the show and very surprised the book was so popular after reading the book’s plot synopsis on Wikipedia.
[spoiler]The apparent reason the GR act that way is to show life is meaningless. To me, it makes no sense because they are working so hard to convince others of the same thing. If life is meaningless, what’s the point or reason to try and convince everyone else? They won’t be satisfied unless everyone kills themselves? Why does it matter either way since life is meaningless? Wouldn’t talking be a better way to convince people? In my opinion, not only does it make it impossible to suspend disbelief, it also makes no sense, the way they act is contrived to make us think there is some deep meaning, or to make us think there is at least an explanation, when in fact it is as you said and it’s mostly empty random concepts.
The other cult (which is so important that it has apparently disappeared from the show the past couple episodes) at least seems believable because it features a prophet figure with delusions of self-importance leading a flock of religious-type followers. It’s something we see in the real world even without a rapture-like event.
I never watched Lost and now I’m glad, though you can’t blame it completely on the people involved with both. For this show, the blame must be largely placed on the author of the book since all the “mysteries” were apparently also part of the book. I have to hope the book did a better job.
Maybe someone that read the book could correct me if I’m way off.[/spoiler]
I think in the most recent episode, one of the GR said, “They [meaning everyone else] wants to forget [meaning those who disappeared]. We’re here to make sure they’re not forgotten.” So if that’s the case, why did they remove the photos from people’s homes?
BTW, I did some quick math. The two percent of the population that disappeared is about how many people die in any given week. That seemed slightly significant, somehow.
To me, Under the Dome has the “made for TV Stephen King movie” feel to it. Like IT or The Stand. Sort of like “I imagined that being a lot worse when I pictured it in my head.”
The Leftovers, everything is much worse than I imagined. There’s no “Stu Redman” cool guy voice of reason who acts as the stand-in for the audience. Everyone is just different degrees of emotionally damaged.
That said, I don’t know if I find it entertaining. Yeah, the did a great job of creating a mood of a town that’s on the verge of exploding. But they haven’t made me care if it explodes or not.
Also, I can’t get past Chris Eccleston’s “American” accent. It’s one thing to find out that the actor who plays Jason Stackhouse or Apollo from Battlestar Galactica is Brittish. It’s quite another to see Doctor Who speaking in a sort of weird New Englandy / Upstate New Yorky accent.
I was wrong. What I calculated is in what period do two percent of the people who die each year, die. Your calculation of 2.5 years is what I was trying to reach.
Hmn, and in the story, the people disappeared 3 years ago. Not 2.5…but close.
So during the course of about 2 and a half years, 2% of the world’s population “vanishes” (dies). In the story, that many people vanished in an instant (instead of over 2.5 years).
If that’s supposed to be a pointed allegory…well, it’s not very pointed.
None of what we see in the show makes sense given the situation that for the first time in history, something clearly supernatural (or extra-terrestrial, I suppose) has happened: millions of people disappeared right in front of other people’s eyes. (As far as I know, both book and series emphasize that many did vanish in plain sight.)
What we’re seeing is nothing like what would plausibly happen if a clearly-supernatural event of that magnitude occurred.
The GR is posited as the major response–and as has been discussed, the GR make not one lick of sense. (Their message may be “life is meaningless” or it may be “sentiment is meaningless,” but either way, being white-clad mute thieving smoking confrontational assholes does precisely nothing towards effective communication.)