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I hope the show goes all out on the parallel timeline plots -- if only so we can have the Nazi's punch a hole into a universe where Rome never fell, and we can finally have the two biggest clichés of alternate universe stories duke it out on screen. Actually, I'm really excited for this, even though it's absolutely not going to do that. It's got a great setting, a good cast... I'm glad to see Joel de la Fuente's still acting, even though he's unrecognisable from his Space: Above and Beyond days. And I don't think I've seen Alexa Davalos in anything (good) since The Mist.
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Oct 28, 2015 16:11
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Only two episodes in, but it's pretty great. The pace seems a lot tighter this year, and they've definitely got a bigger budget (not that last year's was small or anything).
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Dec 16, 2016 12:50
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Only four episodes in, but I unironically love how they've swapped each lead character into another lead's plots, and still don't have any of them meet up. Frank's working with the resistance, Julianna's living with the Smiths, and Joe is hanging out in Germany. It's good stuff. Edit: Episode Five Is the entire resistance made of cylons? Edit 2: Haha what the gently caress. Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Dec 18, 2016 |
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Dec 18, 2016 03:47
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right to bear karma posted:It hasn't been that long since I watched the first season, but I already forgot a ton of stuff, too. Except for how much the universe loves to poo poo on Frank Frink. Only 3 eps into the new season, I'm excited to see if life continues to torment poor Frank. He's much more of a dick this year. If anything, the universe seems to be making GBS threads on Ed. Did we ever reach goon consensus on Ed having a massive crush on Frank? I'm still seeing some evidence of that this season, though it's nowhere near actual proof. And tbh, it'd be weird to have the show completely ignore the issue of homosexuality under the Reich (and the 'Pons).
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Dec 18, 2016 10:29
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Astonishing improvement on season 1. There's a couple of clearly dropped plotlines, casualties of the change in showrunner midseason I suppose, but that change seems to have been for the better. It just ratchets up the tension around Episode Seven and doesn't let up. loving great. If anyone's seen Carnivale, it's a similar shift in tone and tension -- though Carnivale's first season was a lot stronger than High Castle's first -- but the way both series took their mythology and amped it up in terms of action and tension is very similar. I assume they're writing near the entire SF cast out now, barring the Japanese characters. I'd love the show to move to Berlin full time, though I think it'd be great to see Tokyo too (otherwise the show risks only showing one side of the conflict). If we do get a dimension hopping faction or two, I hope that Frank's not one of them. I image that they might want the Japanese side to gain access to the power, just so that they're actually more even with the Germans. Then it can really turn into alterna-Fringe.
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Dec 18, 2016 18:40
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I found that review to be very confusing. (Full season spoilers) Nearly all the resistance characters are total jerks who actively lie and mislead the show's nominal heroes, and whose myopic machinations would have explicitly led to the destruction of San Fransico, and probably a lot more. Joe has brief second-thoughts about being a Nazi, but ends up settling for being a half-arsed moderate sitting in the lap of luxury. Frank, who's completely unlikable and kill happy, blows himself up in an explosion that kills nearly everyone in his subplot except Kido, who's still a dyed in the wool kempeitai. Juliana spends a great deal of time sympathizing with the Nazi wives and being morally compromised, continuing her ambiguous loyalties from last season. Like Joe, she's sucked into admiring the Nazi lifestyle and they both have a couple of whistful "Oh, what progress we could lose!" type moments. And Smith, though he saves the day, makes no bones about the fact that he's a Nazi. And then the son decides to live up to his father's legacy and hands himself over to be executed, his mother left holding a receipt. quote:The Man in the High Castle is less interested in the darker sides we all carry with us and more interested in the simple-minded idea of good and evil. Umm.... nope? Even Togomi, the single nicest character in the series had an alternate, xenophobic, baby threatening version of himself out there, who existed in our "better" reality -- and Togomi prefers his version of reality to our one, to boot, even though he suggests he'll give up that universe because he loves his family more. Like, honestly, I felt like the show could have been a bit more subtle about some of that. Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Dec 19, 2016 |
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Dec 19, 2016 20:31
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Holyshoot posted:So it seems like some people have figured out how to go in between the universes. And you have some people staying in the opposite one and then you have other people taking film from our universe to the nazi one trying to change the nazi one to be more like ours. Is that pretty much whats going on here? I imagine that's some of it. But you've also got the various films from the future, which seems a little more complicated. (Not a spoiler, we see the first one back in the first season).
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Dec 19, 2016 21:07
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The show recognizes that Smith is a hypocrite even if no one ever says so to his face. There's a character who specifically says as much in the final episode. That and everything he worked for in the final episode was rendered largely moot by his son choosing to commit voluntary euthanasia, directly as a result of Smith's public persona and his son's honest belief in his father's apparent values. I don't know.... the fact that the show doesn't have to explicitly have a character walk up to Smith and explain why he's a bad person isn't a weakness in my mind. It's implicitly there, and baked into the central conceptions of the character. If he were to run around committing acts of black larceny it'd diminish the critique, because then the character would represent a mythologized version of fascist evil, rather than the compromised, understandably human person who is still horrifically evil. The only moment that rang false to me was Smith's decision to not enact reprisals on the people of Savannah. I don't understand why he'd spare those people.
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Dec 20, 2016 14:56
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Bulgogi Hoagie posted:also, i seem to have missed this. when did smith capture heydrich? I think he had him arrested at the end of last season, though Heydrich may have actually been captured off-screen.
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Dec 21, 2016 10:23
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zoux posted:I guess it is true that if you don't explicitly tell viewers what things are evil you get a whole bunch of people thinking Walter White is a cool as hell person to be, but to me, the permanent surveillance state, the conversations about racial hygiene and the season long subplot about how you have to murder your children if they get sick made me think that life under the Nazis might have a few negative points, as well. I'm reading through the AV Club comments as they review the second series, and it seems even more extreme than that. I've been seeing the argument that creating three-dimensional, even sympathetically motivated, Nazi characters is a step too far for the show. Which is, frankly, insane. That you can be otherwise reasonable, but still a fascist isn't a defense of fascism. It's a criticism of people who think that they can get away with what they're doing because they have sympathetic motivations. It's a criticism of how easily American white picket fence values can gel with Nazism.
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Jan 5, 2017 07:08
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Der Luftwaffle posted:I don't know what it is about this show that makes it so relaxing to watch. Was worried that'd change with season 2, but nope the unidentifiable something is still there. Soft camera focus? Shot composition? Music? Anyone get the same vibe? The music is absolutely incredible. Some really powerful tracks in both seasons, particularly that piece that plays when Frank tries to assassinate the Japanese prince. quote:Also hoping that S3 focuses entirely on the continuing adventures of Ed and Childan and how they end up ruling the planet. I wondered if they weren't written out of the show, honestly.
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Jan 5, 2017 16:36
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mA posted:Because the idea that a white liberal Nazi with the heart of gold can undermine and reform the Nazi regime from the inside out is a preposterous premise, which isn't "complex" or "nuanced" at all. Rather it's quite cliched and banal. I suspect it's going in the opposite direction though? He didn't reform anything, he just got high, spouted platitudes, and got thrown in prison. I read Joe's arc as a critique of armchair liberalism and soft left positions in times of dire crisis. He can afford to softly criticise government policy because he's one of the powerful designer generation who are literally revered by his housekeepers and staff. He's not actually changing anything, despite what he or his girlfriend tell each other. The moment he winds up in a position of power, his girlfriend is turned the gently caress on -- they don't want to gently caress with the Nazi's, they're in love with them. Also, I think a key point of Joe's characterisation is that he's a two-timing poo poo with weak moral values. He has flashes of conscience, like when he returned to his defacto parter at the start of the second season, and was talking about getting an honest job and being more present in his kid's life. By the end of the season, he's completely forgotten about all of that. He's a wishy-washy complicit poo poo, utterly uninterested in change or the struggle that comes with taking a stand beyond defence of the status quo.
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Mar 23, 2017 05:57
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ufarn posted:First season is so-so, second season is excellent, although it's less concerned with the premised and more focused on just telling a story. That, and the second season has some pretty killer set-pieces. The sequence depicting the bombing of the Kempeitai Building is the kind of thriller set piece that television constantly tries to pull off, but rarely ever manages to do successfully. Everything works really well, and it balances the conflicting tension between wanting to see the characters succeed and fail better than any tv climax I've seen since Homeland Season 1. the music is loving stellar too. There's a lot of slow stuff for a long time through, but the back half of the second season is a pretty classic example of a show getting its act together and working out how to make all its plotlines compelling. I'm legit excited for the new season.
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Sep 3, 2017 14:04
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