The whole “The Korean War is pointless” stuff is the one big thing I really can’t forgive MASH for, given that it saved at least half of Korea from becoming the whole-country gulag the North is right now. If you want a real-life version of Hell on Earth, North Korea is in the top five, maybe top three, and has been for decades. We know about multi-generational prison camp sentences because the prison camps have been running that long. Fighting a war to contain that fits anyone’s definition of a just war which has a point to it.
Yes, the South Korean regime immediately post-war was a military dictatorship. I know that. It was removed and replaced with something people could live under, as opposed to something which is a mix of Nineteen Eighty-Four and A Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich.
Vietnam was pointless from a purely geographic perspective, for the same reason you can’t waterproof a house built cheek-by-jowl to a waterfall. The writers of MASH picked up on that, beginning with the movie and sliding pretty smoothly into the TV series. Transposing that attitude to the Korean War is simply wrong, and saying it’s due to principled pacifism is equivalent to saying that principled pacifism means Kim Jong-un gets to control the entire peninsula. Which is the kind of philosophical debate that gets people really, amazingly angry, especially if they believe pacifism is the mature, adult perspective.
Completely agree here. All she does is nag… On a related note, The whole “men are stupid, wife is always right” thing in sitcoms really gets old. Sure it’s the ‘conflict’ that makes it interesting for some, but it gets so tiresome. Same with Doug’s wife on King Of Queens. Its always Nag Nag Nag.
I always agree here with the sentiments about M.A.S.H.
Hawkeye was lovable up until around season six, then he becomes such a dick. Especially if you watch the show without the laugh track, omfg. My vote is for Sherman T Potter as the most genuine nice guy of them all.
But does that really matter in this question? My point is that while More was often good and honest (although he had no compunctions about killing protestants), his belief that Henry VIII should remain married to the now infertile Katharine of Aragon had the strong possibility of plunging England into another disaster civil war. Of course Henry treated Katherine and their daughter Mary very badly…he could have been more gracious as he was to Anne of Cleves (who was smart enough to give in, with some manure spread about sorry she was to lose such a wonderful husband).
Perhaps my post would belong better in a “misleading historical drama” or “maybe the bad guys had a point” thread. But I threw it in to see what people think, and “A Man For All Seasons” is a great film and thankfully they let Paul Scofield in it.
I don’t think the fact that Sherlock says (sarcastically, IMHO) that he’s a high-functioning sociopath makes him one. :dubious: He’s done too many things that show he cares deeply for certain people – a death-defying rush through traffic to pluck Watson out of a bonfire! – to make him an actual honest-to-god sociopath. Which isn’t to say he isn’t a huge jerk.
Dwight Schrute is both. Written to be a jerk. Also written to be virtuous (well, adheres to his own twisted definition of “virtue”), but in an exceptionally jerk-ish way.
You can make the same argument about Henry VIII. That his belief that he shouldn’t have to remain married to the now infertile Katharine of Aragon had the strong possibility of plunging England into another disaster civil war.
The same can be said for Katharine, if she would have been willing to go quietly to a nunnery, England would still be Catholic, and her daughter would be allowed to keep her titles.
Again the same can be said for Anne Boleyn, if she wasn’t power hungry, then she would end-up with some money, a nice title and a inoffensive high ranking husband.
At least Moore and Katharine was acting on their moral beliefs. Henry VIII only bought his stupid worries about the marriage b/c Anne refused to sleep with him. If he wasn’t a horn-dog, or just willing to pick a different woman to have an affair with, then a lot less people would have died.
Well, the arc of the series shows the growth of his character - as Lestrade says, going from just being a great man to being a good one. It’s deliberate.
Yes you could, but you can also say that in an era where people saw the Hand of God in everything and the Bible was the ultimate authority, Henry saw his marriage to his brother’s widow as cursed. The numerous stillbiths and short lived children, except for Mary, “proved” this to a man who might have ended up in the church if Arthur had become King of the Britons. And he had bad timing in asking the pope to annul his predecessor’s decision allowing Henry and Katherine to marry. Katherine’s nephew Charles V made the pope a virtual prisoner. A few years earlier, Henry might have gotten the annulment.
It’s just that when I see this movie, it runs through my mind if Henry listened to More, that England could have been deprived of its greatest ruler: Henry and Anne Boleyn’s daughter Elizabeth. And I think the worries about a civil war if Mary had inherited the throne weren’t made out of thin air. Ultimately they could.
I did some keyword searches, and it appears that the absolute gold standard for this hasn’t been mentioned: Nick van Owen, played by Vince Vaughn, in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. He’s the archetype of the “designated hero”: the movie wants us to be on his side, but he’s a horrible, horrible person.
Some of the things Nick does in the course of the movie:
[ul][li]Sneaks into the camp of the people who are trapping the dinosaurs and sets them loose. The dinosaurs, like wild animals do, start to destroy the camp, attack people, and cause massive mayhem. As a result, everyone is stranded on the island. In my book, that makes Nick directly responsible for all the deaths that happen for the rest of the time they are on the island. Many people die.[/li][li]Argues with the “evil capitalist” leader of the mercenary band that he has no right to exploit these animals. Capitalist has a mighty strong argument that, yes, he can, because they were created by his company. This argument is dismissed because reasons.[/li]Messes with and sabotages Roland’s, the head mercenary’s, rifle. This means that later, when the T-Rex attacks, Roland will be unable to kill it. Once again, many people die.[/ul]
If Henry hadn’t split with the Church in order to get a divorce from Catherine, would Mary’s ascension have necessarily led to Civil War? She was a good Catholic. Unless she had insisted on marrying Philip of Spain, which would have had problems, Catholic or not.
Don’t get me wrong, I love his character. But while he IS virtuous, his pride/sense of humor and narrowmindedness make him a very simplistic character. In a world where every character is morally grey, Ned Stark being a paragon of virtue almost makes him seem two dimensional, and thus out of place. In any other fantasy universe, he would be the clear cut, admirable, fairy tale hero, but in GoT he comes off as kind of a bullheaded dope.
To be fair, Bond isn’t written to be a hero. He’s supposed to be a charming sociopath. I mean, when you break Bond down, even in the movies, he’s not much better than many of the people he kills. He tells himself he is, wrapping himself in the British flag, tells himself that he does what he does “for King and country”, but without that restraint he’d probably be little better than someone like Scaramanga… Hell, in The Man with the Golden Gun, this is even pointed out by Scaramanga. Bond may be saving the world, but how many men does he have to kill, how many women does he need to seduce, in order to get it down? He’s a hitman with a flag. No more, no less. He drinks and sleeps away that truth.
The entire Jedi Order come off pretty inhuman. They’re basically a cult that takes kids in their infancy and brainwashes them into believing a narrow-minded, dogmatic, arrogant view of the Galaxy and of morality. The Jedi are the ultimate manipulators, liars, and users. They don’t give a shit about helping the Galaxy, or take into consideration the complexities of an issue - they simply are blind instruments of the Chancellor’s will. For example, the Jedi, if they so chose, could send a bunch of their Knights, kill the Hutts, end slavery on Tattoine and integrate that world into the Republic. They don’t, because they really don’t care.
Even if you take the prequels out of the equation, Obi-Wan and Yoda lie to Luke for almost his entire life in an attempt to get him to kill his own father for them. Think about how fucked up that is. If Vader hadn’t told Luke, Luke would’ve murdered his own father under the false belief that Vader murdered his father. They’re twisting the truth and misleading this boy and just attempting to use him as the instrument to further their own agenda. While the Sith are more brutal, the Jedi aren’t really much better. Both lie and use others for their own means.
Uhhh … Mary I **did **ascend to the throne, and she **did **marry Philip. No civil war ensued, though she **did **have a thing for burning Protestants.
In some incarnations, yes. But Holmes in the stories shows a BIT more humanity and occasional genuine kindness.
One of my favorite examples comes at the end of the story “The Yellow Face,” in which Holmes discovers that his whole theory was absurdly wrong and that the yellow face belonged to a little mulatto girl. Holmes kisses the little girl tenderly, and later tells Watson, “I am not a good man, but I am not as bad as you suppose me to be.”
Actually, I think that was the little girl’s stepfather who says that line (to her mother, who thought he would abandon her if he found out she had a black child).
But Holmes was touched by the case, and tells Watson to remind him of it if he ever gets too arrogant.
I have to agree that Hawkeye, as the show progresses, is presented more as a moral center. His flaws are there, but considered unimportant. The self-righteousness you cite is presented as accurate. I even remember that episode about them going after racism.
To put it another way, his self-righteousness is (usually) presented as something he earned, not as a flaw.
