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Sinteres posted:I kinda think Finch should have been a little more alarmed that his Machine decided to take on the persona of someone who worshiped it as a god He may well have just been grateful that it didn't start simulating Nathan instead.
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Jun 22, 2016 14:09
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raditts posted:Isn't the goal of any worshiper to be with their god when they die? There's a difference between being with your god and becoming your god. And if you're Finch, who's constantly worried about the Machine going power mad, the Machine taking on the persona of someone who thought it was God seems like it would be troubling.
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Jun 22, 2016 14:10
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Echoing the sentiment that I'm going to miss these threads almost as much as the show. Also didn't post much but almost always a good, positive atmosphere in here. Bye to the best show I've seen in years 
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Jun 22, 2016 14:19
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Nameless Pete posted:All these years John thought he had escaped death-by-cruise-missile when he was merely delaying it. Much like the helicopter in ER, it returned to finish the job. Sinteres posted:There's a difference between being with your god and becoming your god. Root had been the Machine's avatar for a couple of seasons already, so there's not much of a line separating the two in her case. raditts fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 14:21
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So ends one of the best shows on television. The ending didn't really satisfy me though. One of the big problems with the last two seasons I feel is it just kind of ambled. People talked about the AGIs planning thousands of moves ahead but it never really came. The action climax was they shoot some guys on a building. I would have liked to see the next step beyond root's god mode, a scene where every moment has been set up by one AI or the other years in advance. A shoe creaks because the control system for the factory got patched, a gun just falls into Reese's hands due to a domestic argument upstairs, a mouldy box of phonebooks was delivered just in the right place to provide cover, a regular rock concert drowns out a sound. Aa duel to see who can predict and alter the future better.
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Jun 22, 2016 14:26
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This is definitely one of those shows I'm going to come back to and rewatch in its entirety at some point. It's always hard for me to feel like dedicating that much time to something I've already seen, but with PoI I really want to see it all together in a relatively short period of time. Last night I went and rewatched the very first episode and it was pretty great going back to see how it all started. Little things like Fusco getting shot in his bullet proof vest being brought back in the penultimate episode made me smile. I miss this show already.
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Jun 22, 2016 14:28
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PaybackJack posted:Solid ending. I gotta admit the Deus Ex fan in me wanted the Machine and Samaritan to merge in space and comeback to Earth as a single AI, taking the best aspects of both to police the world and help people without controlling them and removing their agency. Look at the very very last scene of the show, where we got a machine/Samaritan combo fadeout. Are we so sure this didn't happen? Loved the finale, though I wish there'd been some payoff to the unshackling code Root put in.
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Jun 22, 2016 15:47
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TV Insider posted:There was also a long-planned final song that was nixed in favor of series composer Ramin Djawadi's track. What was the original planned song? I would have thought if they used Bowie again they'd go for The Man who sold the World but hey I can see Heroes working too. God I'm going to miss this show.
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Jun 22, 2016 15:52
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Zaggitz posted:In a show all about how irrelevant people matter, the core theme/lesson for the machine to learn and the viewer to then experience coming from one of those irrelevant threads seems very much intentional to me and not some stumble that ironically stands out. Except it's more like the big moments are tainted by their placement within a nonsensical, overly convoluted, and just plain confusing final hour. Like you're not supposed to care more about the cops then Finch locking Reese in the cell or Reese sacrificing himself in Finch's place or Fusco getting stabbed on the subway car, you just do because the cops story has a beginning, middle, and end (the fantastic imagery of the cop doing his typical gallows humor as his older partner opens the suitcase, and the way that young dude reacts and the combination of guilt and horror washing over his face was probably the best single moment of the finale), and all of it made sense. I remember watching the finale and going "I'm entertained but I have very little loving idea what's going on", a feeling that only worsened as I spent time away from the finale and really thought about it critically. As a constructed narrative the finale is poor, makes little sense, impresses stakes poorly, and its developments are incredibly orchestrated to a level that reveals its own artifice. I still don't get why the police captain suddenly pulled his gun on Reese and Fusco (I guess he was dirty?), I don't know who or what ordered the hit on Reese and Fusco with the killsquad afterwards, and it was all just really pointless dross to give a reason for Reese and Fusco to meet with Finch when he could've just literally called both of them in. There's a whole bunch of sequences that end up cluttering the narrative for no reason. Like the whole "gotta break into the bank vault to kill a backup copy of Samaritan oh he sent out a copy program to be uploaded to a satellite via space now we gotta broadcast the virus again at the broadcast location" was such a long loving walk when the whole bank sequence could've been cut out to make a simpler story. But then you don't have the sequence where Finch says goodbye to Reese on the other side of the jail cell, so never mind. Sleeping on it I'm coming away from this finale less and less impressed. It was a bunch of really fantastic, affecting moments that the show tortures itself to orchestrate and in the process gives the capper on the show, the final note they're playing, the feeling like it's some sort of bizarre fever dream. It's a story that doesn't really work and doesn't really make much sense and the things everyone does feels so artificial just so they can be at a certain point where an emotional payoff happens. And the emotional payoff is itself great, but suffers greatly because they aren't built moments at all. The irony is that the end of PoI is a beat-for-beat echo of Dark Knight Rises' - main character sacrifices himself nobly blowing up a bomb, main character passes down the mantle of city's protector to an assistant suited specifically for the job, main character ends up in some Mediterranean villa with the love of his life after a road of trials against an evil version of himself exhausts his desire to fight crime. TDKR gets a lot of mostly-undeserved poo poo, but its problems echo the PoI finale's, where a bunch of things just sorta happen to give the movie its emotionally affecting sequences. The difference is that TDKR is a 3 hour movie and the PoI finale is a 42 minute television episode, so the instant that Bane breaks Bruce's back the entire movie switches to payoff mode over awkward construction of movie to force Bruce Wayne to his lowest possible point mode. The second half of TDKR more than validates its first half because it coheres so well, and it ends up in totality a Very Good Film. PoI is distinctly lesser because its storytelling has to be so squished so never really comes together until they finally get all the dumb plot poo poo out of the way, and at that point there's fifteen minutes left in the episode. NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 16:22
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chaosbreather posted:So ends one of the best shows on television. The ending didn't really satisfy me though. One of the big problems with the last two seasons I feel is it just kind of ambled. People talked about the AGIs planning thousands of moves ahead but it never really came. The action climax was they shoot some guys on a building. I would have liked to see the next step beyond root's god mode, a scene where every moment has been set up by one AI or the other years in advance. A shoe creaks because the control system for the factory got patched, a gun just falls into Reese's hands due to a domestic argument upstairs, a mouldy box of phonebooks was delivered just in the right place to provide cover, a regular rock concert drowns out a sound. Aa duel to see who can predict and alter the future better. Gotta say I agree with this. One of the biggest problems I had with the Machine / Samaritan conflict was that the whole thing of "MY SIMULATIONS SHOW THE MACHINE LOSING EVERY TIME" was 0% show and 100% tell. What does it mean that one machine "loses" to the other? How does that happen? Nobody knows so it's totally meaningless. They might as well assign DBZ power levels to the AIs. It always felt like Root's side adventures would lead to this big moment where a huge plan was about to come together in a huge, awesome, cathartic scene was always around the corner, but the most it ever culminated in was "adding some stuff to some Samaritan servers to conceal the identities of a few people."
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Jun 22, 2016 16:29
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I think a better idea would've been if Samaritan actually "won", so it comes back and we see the typical Samaritan layout but with the whole "User Input Required" bit, but then The Machine's audio recording starts playing and we see Samaritan's UI change to be some integration of Samaritan's and the Machine's. A big theme of the series is redemption/people teaching other people how to be better people, so what better conclusion then the Machine's final recording somehow convincing Samaritan to change its ways and try a more noble path.
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Jun 22, 2016 16:36
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The more I think about it, the more I feel like Blackwell's presence in this show was a big mistake. There were a lot of aborted plotlines in this show where you could tell where they were going if they had more time, but I honestly have no idea what they were trying to do with Blackwell. It felt like his purpose changed from episode to episode, from "average Samaritan operative" to "super special chosen one" to "potential spanner in the works" to "replacement for Martine" before they eventually settled on "Shaw if she never joined Team Machine", which is the least interesting route they could have taken. It makes me wonder why they included him at all.
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Jun 22, 2016 16:42
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What a ride. I don't think I've ever been as invested in any other TV characters, both the heroes and villains. Well, except for The Wire. But I already miss this incredibly smart, ridiculous, sometimes dark, and often goofy show. Bravo! Also, I must have missed it, but didn't Fusco leave the police department at gunpoint after Reese choked their captain to sleep, Jack Bauer style? Isn't he a fugitive now?
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Jun 22, 2016 17:09
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SirMonkeyButt posted:Also, I must have missed it, but didn't Fusco leave the police department at gunpoint after Reese choked their captain to sleep, Jack Bauer style? Isn't he a fugitive now? Yeah, I was wondering that too.
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Jun 22, 2016 17:25
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Considering the troubles the show went through to even get a final season and ending, that was really well done. Maybe a bit... I dunno, claustrophobic in a sense that you didn't feel the scale of what was happening and everything in the last couple of episodes in the final season felt a bit compressed, but that's the reality of producing TV shows I guess. I will say though that I LOVED what the "message" turned out to be and then there was this shot: Overall I guess it was a good, enjoyable, if somewhat bumpy ride for me. Season 4 was the weakest for me (although it had its moments too), then I'd put S2 (Relevance  ) and 3 as the strongest and S1 and 5 somewhere in between.Goodbye, Team Machine. 
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Jun 22, 2016 17:26
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Mraagvpeine posted:Yeah, I was wondering that too. Fusco's got a friend in a really high place. He'll be fine.
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Jun 22, 2016 17:28
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HorseRenoir posted:The more I think about it, the more I feel like Blackwell's presence in this show was a big mistake. There were a lot of aborted plotlines in this show where you could tell where they were going if they had more time, but I honestly have no idea what they were trying to do with Blackwell. It felt like his purpose changed from episode to episode, from "average Samaritan operative" to "super special chosen one" to "potential spanner in the works" to "replacement for Martine" before they eventually settled on "Shaw if she never joined Team Machine", which is the least interesting route they could have taken. It makes me wonder why they included him at all. Easy: He's the counter to Samaritan's argument that it wants to save humanity. Starts off as a sympathetic ex-con, is recruited by Samaritan with the same speech Finch gave Reese. But whereas Reese's work gave him a sense of purpose, Blackwell's work chipped away at his humanity, the same humanity Samaritan purported to protect. Okay, Shaw may have killed him despite her being one of the heroes. But that's her moral code; she killed her boss because of the hit he ordered on her old partner. Blackwell wasn't special, and he proved that by patronizing her with that "nothing personal" bullshit -- which is a million miles away from the family man trying to make good that we were introduced to. Could it have used a few more episodes to develop? Sure. But the point is intact: Samaritan argues that it can save the world. It tried to do so by turning good men like Blackwell into murderous pricks like Wilson. Assuming you're on Team Machine and agree with saving the world through saving the individual, what better way to call bullshit on Samaritan's philosophy?
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Jun 22, 2016 17:38
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Here's a video of Greg Plageman talking about the ending and answering a few questions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53BC5znS3NM
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Jun 22, 2016 17:41
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Shaw recognizes now that 'nothing personal' is a crock of poo poo. Blackwell had a choice and simply took the lazy path of not accepting responsibility for his choices.
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Jun 22, 2016 17:42
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Shaw recognizes now that 'nothing personal' is a crock of poo poo. Blackwell had a choice and simply took the lazy path of not accepting responsibility for his choices. I did like Shaw's moment of "normally I would have just killed you without thinking about it, but I had some friends show me that human lives are actually important" turning into "so actually this IS personal, you cowardly murderer".
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Jun 22, 2016 17:47
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Zaggitz posted:It's a shame LaToya Ferguson only got the review the last 3 episodes of the show for the AV Club, she really understands the show and all its nuances in a way that Alexa Planje just made no effort to. Nameless Pete posted:All these years John thought he had escaped death-by-cruise-missile when he was merely delaying it.
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Jun 22, 2016 17:58
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DivisionPost posted:Easy: He's the counter to Samaritan's argument that it wants to save humanity. Starts off as a sympathetic ex-con, is recruited by Samaritan with the same speech Finch gave Reese. But whereas Reese's work gave him a sense of purpose, Blackwell's work chipped away at his humanity, the same humanity Samaritan purported to protect. Except he was an incredibly boring character and they've literally already done the "Samaritan corrupts its agents" point via about a billion other much better characters, most notably Martine and Greer. He's a bad character, brought nothing new to the table, was characterized incredibly poorly for the near-entirety of season five, and deserved absolutely zero focus in the finale, much less the amount of screentime he actually did get.
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Jun 22, 2016 18:02
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Man, I was kinda with you until you started calling TDKR good. I liked the ending but didn't love it.
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Jun 22, 2016 18:13
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Nameless Pete posted:All these years John thought he had escaped death-by-cruise-missile when he was merely delaying it. Just blew my mind. This shows callbacks are the best.
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Jun 22, 2016 18:21
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I think the idea behind Blackwell, of giving us a relatable face on the Samaritan side, someone who wasn't essentially a faceless drone, was a good one, and it's something this show has done very well in the past. (Notably the H.R. arc. Simmons, Quinn, Terney, even Stills once we got to know him in flashback a bit were all people you gave a poo poo about even if you hated them and wanted them to die.) They really, really botched the execution this time, though. By far the weakest element of this season. Even that FBI dude who didn't get to do much but give a menacing speech or two and forget to check Fusco for a vest felt more significant. And it's doubly a shame since their character work for most of the main cast was so good this year.
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Jun 22, 2016 18:22
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docbeard posted:I think the idea behind Blackwell, of giving us a relatable face on the Samaritan side, someone who wasn't essentially a faceless drone, was a good one, and it's something this show has done very well in the past. (Notably the H.R. arc. Simmons, Quinn, Terney, even Stills once we got to know him in flashback a bit were all people you gave a poo poo about even if you hated them and wanted them to die.) Gotta agree with this. I don't feel the final scene with Shaw and Blackwell would've been much different if you had him swapped for a different nameless Samaritan OP, since the show had made a point to show mercs who clearly had no idea who they were working for and were only in it for the money. There was hardly anything to relate to for this guy.
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Jun 22, 2016 18:28
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I have been listening to the POI soundtracks at work all day to get hyped for the finale and it delivered, considering the level of fucktardiness that runs CBS. The only gripe I have is that there wasn't a camera-view shot of Shaw and Bear with two rectangles at the end. Ah well. Remember how we piled on Caviezel in the first season for being so wooden? I welled up a little when that tree fell today. 
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Jun 22, 2016 19:14
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Digital Jedi posted:Just blew my mind. This shows callbacks are the best. S01e01  S05e13 
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Jun 22, 2016 19:34
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Oh man. I wasn't able to watch the finale live. But I went ahead and caught up on the thread anyway. I don't think I'm ready for when I get home tonight. 
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Jun 22, 2016 19:46
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I swear I wasn't crying when John was on that rooftop, it just rained on my face a little! One of my favourite shows in modern memory gets a satisfactory ending - in spite of CBS doing their very best to prevent that from happening. I am happy and also sad! Going to echo quite a few posters lately and say that while I haven't posted much I have enjoyed the PoI-threads immensely and I will sorely miss them and the show. Will probably do a marathon of the show as early as next summer!
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Jun 22, 2016 19:55
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I hope to see you all again in the Westworld thread
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Jun 22, 2016 20:05
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GrandpaPants posted:I hope to see you all again in the Westworld thread 1: Do you mean the movie or is it getting an adaptation? 2: If a new thing, is it going to actually be good?
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Jun 22, 2016 20:15
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WarLocke posted:1: Do you mean the movie or is it getting an adaptation? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX3u0IlBBO4
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Jun 22, 2016 20:18
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WarLocke posted:1: Do you mean the movie or is it getting an adaptation? oh dear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM8HNuRLIBI it's looking to be good. this ones better
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Jun 22, 2016 20:19
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WarLocke posted:1: Do you mean the movie or is it getting an adaptation? Jonah Nolan, PoI's creator, is doing a Westworld show for HBO, it starts in October. I'm still kinda super salty someone made the thread for it before I could. 
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Jun 22, 2016 20:19
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Oh my, another show I'm going to have to watch... 
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Jun 22, 2016 20:25
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That was just about perfect. It was a shame a couple of things got dropped. It told you the ending would go MAXIMUM  . Well maybe told is a bit strong, but it definitely put a smile on my face that it happened. Job completed John, job completed. It was quite fitting that Harold is finally running around with a gun, but never uses it and handles it poorly despite John insisting on lessons. Root is the Analogue Interface after all. She was already the voice of the Machine. It was pretty easy to follow once you pick up the story is getting told partially non-linearly because it is from the Machine's view who is breaking down. It even tells and shows you what is happening. The Machine's fight with Sammy was very much Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex compressed visually. Her winning was that 1 in a billion miracle made possible with the realisation it was also in her own final moment she found out who she was as she did with everyone else including John who lived it in a blaze of gunfire. She found that human element within herself considering she developed despair for herself to feel, something Sammy lacked and always had some trouble accounting for as he didn't work by understanding people. It was something that was impossible to tell in a single shot so it was spread throughout the season and concentrated in the final. Blackwell's arc worked quite well if you think of him in a way a continuation of Claire's arc mirrored from someone finding Sammy(who mirrored Root) to someone who was found by him. It also ended Shaw's arc by bookending it so she can begin anew as a better person with her own convictions who doesn't shoot people on orders and feels something other than anger. If there is a spin-off it would start by cleaning up Sammy's agents as they run amok without that top down control while still having the resources on hand like Blackwell and his Krugerrands. In a sense an HR retread with higher stakes and wider reach. The new team would take the choices not taken by the originals ending with the government hunting them down after they bust an indiscriminate North Lights type organization run by a weak incomplete proto AI. Instead of an AI battle for the planet, this time it is very personal as they face all the choices they made. The people they killed and a possible abandonment by the Machine.
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Jun 22, 2016 20:30
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The idea of Blackwell's arc being a story of how Samaritan destroys humanity rather than saving it helps redeem one of the weaker threads of the season for me. Thinking over this final season, I wish that the Time's Square argument from Samaritan hadn't been a retread of "humans are terrible" but offered a bit more insight into the long teased "Great Filter" and why assuming direct control was the only way for humanity to survive it. The only downside would have been putting Harold's action into even more of a moral gray area that it already was given the impact of Ice-9 on the populous.
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Jun 22, 2016 21:14
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DivisionPost posted:Easy: He's the counter to Samaritan's argument that it wants to save humanity. Starts off as a sympathetic ex-con, is recruited by Samaritan with the same speech Finch gave Reese. But whereas Reese's work gave him a sense of purpose, Blackwell's work chipped away at his humanity, the same humanity Samaritan purported to protect. I love this observation, and it absolutely makes sense. The machine collected broken people, gave them purpose, and gradually "fixed" them and restored their humanity to some degree. Reese, Root, Shaw, Fusco, even Finch- all broken or corrupted in some way when we meet them, but we get to see their characters grow and evolve. Blackwell was an ex-con trying to go straight and in a reverse parallel is broken and corrupted by Samaritan for, presumably, the same goal of saving humanity. This show...
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Jun 22, 2016 22:52
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Mr. Horyd posted:The idea of Blackwell's arc being a story of how Samaritan destroys humanity rather than saving it helps redeem one of the weaker threads of the season for me. Yeah there was a musical sting every time the filter was mentioned and it never got nowhere. For the uninitiated, The Great Filter is a proposed solution to the Fermi Paradox, aka, if life is out there, how come we haven't seen any of it yet? The Filterists would say, because somethings weeds out civilisations to make it far less likely than it should. There are two categories of filters, early and late. Early says that intelligent life is actually pretty weird and most poo poo never gets there. Late says there is either something ultimate self defeating about civilisation that ends everything in fire sooner or later, or that there is aliens out there that kills you if you get too good (cf. every video game). Clearly Sam ran the numbers. Personally, I would disagree. I would point to the vast, vast distances, the degree of variety life comes in on this planet should indicate that there is no reason we could predict any behaviour or aspect of alien life so we shouldn't assume they desire to seek us out, and the fact that we evolved actually very early in the lifespan of the Galaxy.
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Jun 22, 2016 22:53
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