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I caught up on last week's episode finally. Why was Eph so worried about getting video of the infected guy in the shed? I thought they had video of the autopsy they performed on the infected pilot, where his entire body cavity had metamorphosed into the giant worm thing. Also, if Rudy was enough of a bro to help Eph get out of the CDC, why on earth didn't he help back up Eph's story to Shithead Boss? "Yeah boss, that guy attacked us with a giant worm from his mouth, he totally wasn't human. Would have killed me if not for Eph. And hey, this video on Eph's phone is the exact same thing we saw! Ask hottie doctor lady, she saw it too." I mean, I get that you need some stupidity for this thing to get off the ground, but it just doesn't make these characters seem realistic. Still don't understand why they cremated the body, either. Isn't their goal to let people KNOW about this poo poo? It seems like having a weird alien corpse with the face of the pilot would have been a pretty solid smoking gun, even for Shithead Boss.
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Aug 13, 2014 20:48
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Phenotype posted:Also, if Rudy was enough of a bro to help Eph get out of the CDC, why on earth didn't he help back up Eph's story to Shithead Boss? "Yeah boss, that guy attacked us with a giant worm from his mouth, he totally wasn't human. Would have killed me if not for Eph. And hey, this video on Eph's phone is the exact same thing we saw! Ask hottie doctor lady, she saw it too." "Oh, cool, where's the body?" "...well, you know, here's the thing about that..."
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Aug 13, 2014 21:14
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Shouldn't about half of New York be infected by next episode, since vampires are now running amok through the streets and they apparently infect everyone they drain unless they deliberately smash the brain/spinal cord?
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Aug 13, 2014 22:31
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Also, book/TV writers seem slow to cotton on to the fact that they can't write characters as having been around during WWII anymore, unless they were children at the time. They have an excuse with Vampire Nazi guy, but Setrackian or whatever isn't believably in his 90s.
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Aug 13, 2014 22:38
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Sucrose posted:Shouldn't about half of New York be infected by next episode, since vampires are now running amok through the streets and they apparently infect everyone they drain unless they deliberately smash the brain/spinal cord? I'm not sure but I think there are a LOT of people in New York.
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Aug 13, 2014 22:40
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Rurea posted:I'm not sure but I think there are a LOT of people in New York. Well, ok, I was exaggerating, but if the disease spreads as exponentially as we're led to believe, our heroes would seem to be irreversibly hosed in a very short time.
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Aug 13, 2014 22:43
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Sucrose posted:Well, ok, I was exaggerating, but if the disease spreads as exponentially as we're led to believe, our heroes would seem to be irreversibly hosed in a very short time. We saw in the last episode they're mostly hiding out in the sewers. The ones that went to their homes are staying there. Probably a combination of fear and still in transformation and not knowing how to deal with light.
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Aug 13, 2014 23:01
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Avasculous posted:This. Haha, I forgot about all that stuff. The writing is pretty drat terrible but the show overall is entertaining so eh.
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Aug 14, 2014 04:23
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CODChimera posted:Haha, I forgot about all that stuff. It's somewhat funny how the pilot showed how the humans would actually be pretty good at stopping a vampire takeover using things such as modern forensics but then the story had to throw in lots of unlikely trump cards to make the vampire breakout possible like the Feds suddenly not caring about the incident.
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Aug 14, 2014 04:51
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etalian posted:It's somewhat funny how the pilot showed how the humans would actually be pretty good at stopping a vampire takeover using things such as modern forensics but then the story had to throw in lots of unlikely trump cards to make the vampire breakout possible like the Feds suddenly not caring about the incident. It's all okay, a rich white man told us so.
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Aug 14, 2014 04:57
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Why do people keep acting like it's just dumb authorities or not, you know, the monstrous conspiracy lead by the insanely rich dude and an ageless monster?quote:Has everyone on the show just forgotten about the huge, creepy, non-diegetic evil box disappearing mid-investigation? Or the airport official being brutally murdered 50 yards away from the investigation? Or the fact that the CDC discovered a novel pathogen on board a plane with 200 dead people? Like seriously, did you not realize that all of this stuff has been rather overtly covered up in the show, while watching it? The Stoneheart group, the Nazi vampire, how is none of this registering with other people? Say what you will about the pace or whatnot, but pay attention to the drat show if you're going to complain about it. It drives me nuts that people want to complain so much about any new show that isn't immediately perfect right out the gate, usually while only paying half attention.
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Aug 14, 2014 05:19
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BlackJosh posted:Like seriously, did you not realize that all of this stuff has been rather overtly covered up in the show, while watching it? The Stoneheart group, the Nazi vampire, how is none of this registering with other people? Say what you will about the pace or whatnot, but pay attention to the drat show if you're going to complain about it. It drives me nuts that people want to complain so much about any new show that isn't immediately perfect right out the gate, usually while only paying half attention. Complaining about shows has been taking on a life of its own lately. I don't see the value of criticizing characters' actions. People forget things like (1) characters don't have all the information the viewers do, (2) people in real life often don't act logically, (3) smart people who are good at their jobs still make mistakes, (4) two smart, logical people can have different responses to the same circumstance, (5) there's little precedent for judging how people in the real world would act in a vampire outbreak situation, and so on. Would I instantly kill a little girl who attacked me with a 4-foot monster tongue? Or would I feel compassion? I don't know the answer to that and I'll probably never find out. There's also the fact that competent enough police or CDC work shutting down the threat wouldn't leave much of a show. There are a lot of procedural shows with successful investigate work tying up cases each week but I don't watch any of them because I'm more interested in stories that take time to play out.
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Aug 14, 2014 05:42
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Questionable choice to defend the shows character decisions. It's basically the laziest version of this the writers could come up with:A A 2 3 5 8 K posted:There's also the fact that competent enough police or CDC work shutting down the threat wouldn't leave much of a show.
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Aug 14, 2014 07:53
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A A 2 3 5 8 K posted:People forget things like (1) characters don't have all the information the viewers do, (2) people in real life often don't act logically, (3) smart people who are good at their jobs still make mistakes, (4) two smart, logical people can have different responses to the same circumstance, (5) there's little precedent for judging how people in the real world would act in a vampire outbreak situation, and so on. Would I instantly kill a little girl who attacked me with a 4-foot monster tongue? Or would I feel compassion? I don't know the answer to that and I'll probably never find out. Yeah I agree, and I didn't complain at all about how the characters acted towards vampires. I knew I wasn't in for a realistic procedural show when the CDC investigators opened the outbreak box and pawed through it with their bare hands in a ventilated warehouse. BlackJosh posted:Like seriously, did you not realize that all of this stuff has been rather overtly covered up in the show, while watching it? Feel free to cite the specific scenes where any of the things I described were "overtly covered up." The bad guys leaked the CO2 fault document, staged the manufacturer's suicide, and asked the health services lady nicely if she would drop the case because it was just US military black ops gone horrifically awry, no big deal. We're just left to assume (the opposite of overt) that that line also worked on the CDC, DHS, FBI, FAA, TSA, NYPD, and the dozen or so other agencies that would be elbowing each other out of the way to investigate this for the next ten years. As I said in my post, I'm fine with that for the sake of making the plot go as long as the show stays entertaining. What I'm less fine with that doesn't make any sense is the fact that Ephraim, hot sidekick, and dirty Patton Oswalt were all party to the things I listed and seemingly totally forgot about them by episode 2 in order to hunt for evidence. Unless it just turns out that everyone except Abraham is actually in on the conspiracy, that's like, Heroes-level of lazy writing.
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Aug 15, 2014 00:20
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Avasculous posted:The bad guys leaked the CO2 fault document, staged the manufacturer's suicide, and asked the health services lady nicely if she would drop the case because it was just US military black ops gone horrifically awry, no big deal. We're just left to assume (the opposite of overt) that that line also worked on the CDC, DHS, FBI, FAA, TSA, NYPD, and the dozen or so other agencies that would be elbowing each other out of the way to investigate this for the next ten years. Well yeah, duh? Like it makes me sometimes understand why shows like Dexter have these super obvious scenes to spell out poo poo because yes, that's how eldritch terrible super rich guy conspiracies work. I guess if you can't buy the whole idea that a super rich guy could orchestrate a whole bunch of stuff to make this happen than I guess you probably just shouldn't watch a show like this. I mean, I guess they don't literally show us every single maneuver and piece of the conspiracy and every single agency and which contacts had to be reached out to (remember Eph's assistant was already in the Stoneheart pocket before anything even happened and I guess unless you assume some lackey in the CDC is literally the only person they've pulled this stuff on I imagine they had a whole lot of similar connections in the places they needed them). I guess overt is too strong of a word for you since it requires intimating a bare minimum of information. But seriously, I think you're grasping for straws when the show has very clearly telegraphed that it is not incompetence that is causing the problems and miscommunications and whatnots in response to this, but active interference. This show isn't the best ever, but I'm just tired of the lazy criticisms that just are everywhere for any sort of thing that isn't perfection around here.
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Aug 15, 2014 02:36
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Sucrose posted:Shouldn't about half of New York be infected by next episode, since vampires are now running amok through the streets and they apparently infect everyone they drain unless they deliberately smash the brain/spinal cord? I raised some concerns in this thread early on about the pacing the show was setting in relation to the books and based on some of the criticisms I see here I may have been right. At this point in the story of the book I think only 2 days have passed, and half of New York will be infected really soon. Everything we see in the show also happens in the book, but it's packed into such a short period of time a lot of the dumb decisions and non-responsiveness of the authorities makes more sense. The show hasn't portrayed this well and should have been into the widespread outbreak 2-3 episodes ago. We saw the attack in the hospital this week so I am hoping things are going to change with next weeks episode.
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Aug 15, 2014 06:38
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D-Pad posted:Spoilers. Thanks for the spoiler warning, dickhead!
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Aug 15, 2014 12:41
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Dragonshirt posted:Thanks for the spoiler warning, dickhead! Where exactly was the spoiler?
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Aug 15, 2014 15:12
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Drifter posted:Where exactly was the spoiler? there's vampires 
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Aug 15, 2014 16:55
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Grin and Tonic posted:there's vampires Spoil that poo poo! C'mon, man!
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Aug 15, 2014 17:15
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I'm not saying this isn't still a failing of the writing on the show, but a lot of the complaints I'm seeing are fully explained, or should be very shortly. In the book its really very clear that Palmer and the Stoneheart Group basically have unlimited resources and they have VERY specific plans for how this outbreak is going to proceed. It may seem like the CDC is dumb but they are corrupt and those that aren't are working with bad information fed to them by those that are. If there are hundreds of vampires in the sewers why isn't half the city infected by now? Well by the time Setrakian fully explains everything he knows about the Master, its clear that the little worms carrying the infection create a kind-of hive-mind. The Master has everything meticulously planned, so he knows how many infected he needs to overwhelm the city. He wont give the order for the horde to let loose until all preparations are in place.
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Aug 15, 2014 17:29
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Drifter posted:Where exactly was the spoiler? Everything after the first sentence? I can see how that slipped by you!
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Aug 15, 2014 19:09
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Just like a lot of you I was hoping this would be a "smart" play on the vampire mythos. Boy howdy was I wrong. The leaps in logic that the show's characters make are just loving retarded. 1. So Eph wants to get evidence that this is some sort of virus to show his boss. Best way to do it, film him and Abraham ch0p off two dudes heads off. Uh huh. 2. So the wife of the dude who locked himself in the shed after seeing him for all of 10 seconds was all like "Oh, he wants to eat me, I'll just direct this dickheaded neighbor in there". What? Who in the world thinks that instead of "What the gently caress is wrong with my husband!" Also, isn't Abraham (whatever Filch from Harry Potter's name in this is) supposedly like 20+ or so in 1944? So wouldn't that make him 90? He's old but not that old WTF. He's pretty spry for a 90+ year old. Still I'm enjoying it on about the same level as Falling Skies. Pretty terrible but knowing that it can be fun. Plus Goonies never say die.
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Aug 15, 2014 19:41
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Is there any legal way to watch this show from the beginning? I have U-Verse and they have Eps 2-the current up, but not episode 1, which is pretty loving stupid.
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Aug 15, 2014 19:48
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Well, the first episode is that, that's for sure.
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Aug 15, 2014 21:17
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"This plane. This is a dead plane."
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Aug 15, 2014 21:22
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Drifter posted:"This plane. This is a dead plane." I didn't really understand the hate for that line. I took it to mean everything the guy knows as an air traffic controller is telling him that everyone on the plane is dead. It pulled into the runway and just sat there, the pilots not responding to calls. I dunno, maybe the guy's thought process is explained better in the book but he knows that nobody has tried to get off the plane, no cell phone calls have come from inside it, and the pilots are not responding, hence its a "dead plane".
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Aug 15, 2014 21:29
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Basebf555 posted:I didn't really understand the hate for that line. I took it to mean everything the guy knows as an air traffic controller is telling him that everyone on the plane is dead. It pulled into the runway and just sat there, the pilots not responding to calls. I dunno, maybe the guy's thought process is explained better in the book but he knows that nobody has tried to get off the plane, no cell phone calls have come from inside it, and the pilots are not responding, hence its a "dead plane". It was the words and also them rubbing it that made it funny. The delivery of those words just made it stupid. In my opinion.
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Aug 15, 2014 21:46
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Croatoan posted:2. So the wife of the dude who locked himself in the shed after seeing him for all of 10 seconds was all like "Oh, he wants to eat me, I'll just direct this dickheaded neighbor in there". What? Who in the world thinks that instead of "What the gently caress is wrong with my husband!" Like seriously. SHE WAS A BROKEN PERSON, SHE WAS INSANELY CLINGY AND loving HUNG HERSELF LITERALLY AN EPISODE LATER. But yeah, what dumb plot hole, a human being not responding 100% logically to a situation. Now the dialogue in the first episode, and the incredibly ham-handed exposition of some of the characters is totally legit. But jesus people actually pay attention if you're going to complain about this poo poo. Stop trying to show how much smarter you are than a fake person on TV. "Tactical realism" and "What I would do!" nerds are ruining any sort of interesting discussion on any show.
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Aug 15, 2014 23:11
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ruddiger posted:Is there any legal way to watch this show from the beginning? I have U-Verse and they have Eps 2-the current up, but not episode 1, which is pretty loving stupid. You can buy the whole season on Amazon streaming.
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Aug 16, 2014 00:42
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BlackJosh posted:Like seriously. SHE WAS A BROKEN PERSON, SHE WAS INSANELY CLINGY AND loving HUNG HERSELF LITERALLY AN EPISODE LATER. But yeah, what dumb plot hole, a human being not responding 100% logically to a situation. Hahaha. Hahahahaha.
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Aug 16, 2014 00:43
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BlackJosh posted:Well yeah, duh? Like it makes me sometimes understand why shows like Dexter have these super obvious scenes to spell out poo poo because yes, that's how eldritch terrible super rich guy conspiracies work. I guess if you can't buy the whole idea that a super rich guy could orchestrate a whole bunch of stuff to make this happen than I guess you probably just shouldn't watch a show like this. In the very next line from my post that you quoted, I explained (for the second time) that whether or not the omnipotent conspiracy that controls several government agencies but hires street toughs to steal Master-containing vans is a stretch to the point of silliness (it is) isn't a big deal to me and more or less what I expect for the genre. When I said "characters on the show forgetting," I'm talking about our intrepid heroes. Ephraim and gang spent much of the last four episodes hunting for any evidence to convince their stubborn bosses that something more than a CO2 leak happened on that plane, apparently completely forgetting that they already found a still-warm, brutally murdered corpse 50 yards from the investigation, a tape of key physical evidence (giant scary box) being removed minutes later, and a novel loving pathogen on the plane with 200 corpses. Maybe we are supposed to assume that the conspiracy made all of those major plot points disappear offscreen without mention. The scenes where that was happening sound a lot more interesting than family sideplot #56 though. Avasculous fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Aug 16, 2014 |
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Aug 16, 2014 03:04
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Avasculous posted:When I said "characters on the show forgetting," I'm talking about our intrepid heroes. Ephraim and gang spent much of the last four episodes hunting for any evidence to convince their stubborn bosses that something more than a CO2 leak happened on that plane, apparently completely forgetting that they already found a still-warm, brutally murdered corpse 50 yards from the investigation, a tape of key physical evidence (giant scary box) being removed minutes later, and a novel loving pathogen on the plane with 200 corpses. What evidence besides the video of the box for a little do they even have of the box? How is that hard evidence? How is a dead dude that happened before anyone, including eph, knew what was going on, evidence of anything besides a dude being dead? How have they not been totally trying to tell people about the pathogen, only to have their CDC boss slam the door in their face, so totally convincingly like he's totally not evil and involved? You sound like a guy looking for things to complain about.
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Aug 16, 2014 06:45
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BlackJosh posted:What evidence besides the video of the box for a little do they even have of the box? How is that hard evidence? How is a dead dude that happened before anyone, including eph, knew what was going on, evidence of anything besides a dude being dead? How have they not been totally trying to tell people about the pathogen, only to have their CDC boss slam the door in their face, so totally convincingly like he's totally not evil and involved? You sound like a guy looking for things to complain about. I think you REALLY liked the books and are pretending that the show is adequately and effectively explaining all those things in some fashion.
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Aug 16, 2014 06:53
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ruddiger posted:Is there any legal way to watch this show from the beginning? I have U-Verse and they have Eps 2-the current up, but not episode 1, which is pretty loving stupid.
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Aug 16, 2014 07:44
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BlackJosh posted:Like seriously. SHE WAS A BROKEN PERSON, SHE WAS INSANELY CLINGY AND loving HUNG HERSELF LITERALLY AN EPISODE LATER. But yeah, what dumb plot hole, a human being not responding 100% logically to a situation. Agreedo. Sadly, now that the sheen of gross vampires (aka True Vampires, no matter what hacks like Stephanie Meyer and Bram Stoker tell you) has worn off the gross zombie turbonerds are coming out in full force to complain about the tactical realism of a zompire outbreak.
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Aug 16, 2014 09:14
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After the first few episodes, I read through the books cause I was curious. I sortof like both the series and the books, but for me it feels like they both don't manage to hit the right spots to actually be great. Especially the pacing is glacially bad, and to be honest it doesn't really improve from book to book. I thought I'd be treated to more gory vampire action, but instead it goes on and on about Eph's family, Eph's problems, Eph's tragedies, Eldrith Palmer, the four survivor's and their families, and generally just stuff that isn't about murdering Nazi vampires as gruesomely and efficiently as possible. Whether the handling of vampirism by the CDC and other organizations is believable or not, with or without conspiracy, doesn't really matter to me - what matters is whether it's entertaining to watch, which it isn't, it's plain frustrating. Just like having characters mill on about 'this can't be real! I can't kill people!'. That's boring rubbish. Other shows do this far better. Take Sleepy Hollow. It knows what it is and where it needs to go to be entertaining, which is shotgun wielding headless horrors fighting time travelling revolutionists. Suspense, action and story, not drama. And where The Strain needed to go to be entertaining is to cut all the family drama, AA, most Eldrith Palmer scenes, and basically just most scenes involving people talking, and move on to show Setrakian, Fet and Eph murder vampires, wielding nailguns akimbo, silver bullets a-Rambo, and silver swords at-arms.
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Aug 16, 2014 11:34
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BlackJosh posted:What evidence besides the video of the box for a little do they even have of the box? How is that hard evidence? Ignoring for a second how many red flags a huge, unlisted piece of cargo on an international flight filled with corpses would set off, they found the same soil in the box and in the cargo hold with the worms. Ephraim said it was evidence and it was wrapped in evidence tape when it got stolen on video. I think most people would consider that evidence. quote:How is a dead dude that happened before anyone, including eph, knew what was going on, evidence of anything besides a dude being dead? Are you being serious with this? A head official at the airport gets violently killed 90 minutes into the investigation he's assisting, surrounded by forensic evidence connecting his corpse to the deaths on the plane (the ammonia), and you don't think people would count that as evidence that something fishy is going on? You don't think Ephraim would just need to point to that, or at least try before the omnipotent conspiracy made it disappear, to refute the CO2 story? quote:How have they not been totally trying to tell people about the pathogen, only to have their CDC boss slam the door in their face, so totally convincingly like he's totally not evil and involved? Maybe I am misremembering, but has Ephraim and gang told literally anyone except their boss about finding the worm? Has it been brought up at all after Ephraim fed blood to it? quote:You sound like a guy looking for things to complain about. Sorry, I guess. I don't think "What happened to these major leads/pieces of evidence and why have the main characters totally forgotten about them?" is nitpicking, but whatever. Avasculous fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Aug 16, 2014 |
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Aug 16, 2014 21:17
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Similarly, I found it odd the main guy ran from the FBI. I would have been running to them. Sure your crazy vampire stories will get some laughs at first but sooner or later someone is going to want answers. They already played that scenario with the old guy.
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Aug 16, 2014 21:45
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BlackJosh posted:Like seriously. SHE WAS A BROKEN PERSON, SHE WAS INSANELY CLINGY AND loving HUNG HERSELF LITERALLY AN EPISODE LATER. But yeah, what dumb plot hole, a human being not responding 100% logically to a situation. I'm sorry to hear about your aspergers.
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Aug 16, 2014 21:56
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