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great first episode, I thought it went a little too big too soon (them being slowly chased by the sheriff is infinitely more menacing than them getting into a literal car chase gunfight with a redneck death squad so tonally it just felt a little weird) but then again the first twenty pages of Mountains of Madness is Lovecraft dryly reciting the travel logistics so maybe they wanted to assure the audience that things are actually gonna happen on this show banned from Starbucks posted:The cop that chased them to the train tracks was one of the ones in the woods/cabin? I thought he stopped at the tracks? Did he radio the other cops ahead and then join them? Was kinda confusing how they edited that part. Is that how he knew his name? my girlfriend was annoyed that this was played as a tense getaway when obviously the cop was going to arrest or try to murder them regardless of if he could legally do so, and then was pleasantly surprised when that's exactly what happens a minute later
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Aug 19, 2020 18:56
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Wolfsheim posted:then again the first twenty pages of Mountains of Madness is Lovecraft dryly reciting the travel logistics so maybe they wanted to assure the audience that things are actually gonna happen on this show I for one am disappointed we didn't get to hear about the strange Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich
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Aug 19, 2020 19:05
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That Italian Guy posted:^^^ They look very similar. Letitia's brother mentioned a "witch" was killed for fornicating with the devil who appeared to her a negro man. This is a reference to his mother's family. He wasn't the devil. Some notes: Lovecraft and Kafka share a lot of DNA in that they were products of their times, germ theory was real but antibiotics were not, so sanitary education was serve. The bar dude getting a bj out back was a reference to James Baldwin right? That speech was good, shame about the audience.
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Aug 19, 2020 19:05
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Collateral posted:The bar dude getting a bj out back was a reference to James Baldwin right? That speech was good, shame about the audience. Props to that dude for quickest recovery from Fellatio Interrupto I've ever seen on TV I mean
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Aug 19, 2020 19:33
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I've been noticing a lot of shows I watch have strong civil rights plots, to the point where I already knew what was going to happen for the first 40 minutes of the episode. Black people get glared at, it escalates to threats against them, then violence, then racist cop interactions, seen it all before in media... or so I thought. Because of this show I learned what "Sundown Towns" were. There's always more to learn about racism and it's always worse.
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Aug 19, 2020 19:46
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In hindsight the monsters showing up and eating all the cops was pretty cathartic since in real life they, you know, rarely face any serious consequences for their horrible racist actions. It's neat that that statement could apply to cops back then right up to cops of today.
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Aug 19, 2020 20:07
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Ceramic Shot posted:I've seen similar comments about Robert E. Howard floating around, but would just like to add that he was a lot worse than I think a lot of people seem to realize too, at least if his correspondence with Lovecraft is anything to go by. I've been reading A Means to Freedom, the collection of Howard/Lovecraft correspondence, and holy poo poo is it (unsurprisingly) a sty of vileness at times. As prejudiced as those times were, I can't help but put Howard into the category of "racist even for his generation." Spoilered for some of the most ugly bare-faced racism you'll hopefully read for a while. All of the following quotes are from Robert E. Howard, from around the year 1931: Clipperton posted:OTOH, while a prodigious letter writer, Lovecraft never once used his correspondence to groom teens Wolfsheim posted:great first episode, I thought it went a little too big too soon (them being slowly chased by the sheriff is infinitely more menacing than them getting into a literal car chase gunfight with a redneck death squad so tonally it just felt a little weird) but then again the first twenty pages of Mountains of Madness is Lovecraft dryly reciting the travel logistics so maybe they wanted to assure the audience that things are actually gonna happen on this show Love the name. I was just listening to "Upstairs" not more than 5 minutes ago. To me the diner was also beautifully tense until the hillbilly chase. If someone made a realistic horror show just based on being not white in 50s america I would be so down. Like a horror version of the real life Green Book.
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Aug 19, 2020 20:30
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HBO has put the first episode up on YouTube for free (I expect that it is region-locked): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvVmlDyJ6BA
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Aug 19, 2020 22:08
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Alehkhs posted:HBO has put the first episode up on YouTube for free (I expect that it is region-locked): this is the new water-cooler show at work for me, so this makes sense. people who only talked about tv ever during Game of Thrones are watching this one and talking about it now
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Aug 19, 2020 22:15
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Collateral posted:The bar dude getting a bj out back was a reference to James Baldwin right? That speech was good, shame about the audience. The audience for that speech decided in Baldwin's favor, incidentally. Standing ovation and everything. It's hosed up though (or at least it's always looked this way to me), because if you watch it there's a split-second when Baldwin is sitting down and everyone else is rising to their feet at once, and he's loving terrified of what these white people are about to do. Anyway, although I have not read the book, I kinda feel like the ending of the pin-drop speech will turn out to be a pretty heavy bit of foreshadowing: James Baldwin posted:It is a terrible thing for an entire people to surrender to the notion that one-ninth of its population is beneath them. And until that moment, until the moment comes when we, the Americans, we, the American people, are able to accept the fact, that I have to accept, for example, that my ancestors are both white and Black. That on that continent we are trying to forge a new identity for which we need each other and that I am not a ward of America. I am not an object of missionary charity. I am one of the people who built the country–until this moment there is scarcely any hope for the American dream, because the people who are denied participation in it, by their very presence, will wreck it.
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Aug 19, 2020 23:04
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I'm going to be so pissed if anything happens to George. He's so set up for tragedy but please show please.
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Aug 19, 2020 23:32
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AtraMorS posted:I mean, Baldwin was gay. I'm not sure how you get from there to back-alley blowjobs but I guess he could be? He didn't look anything like him though. They look the similar, that's all.
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Aug 20, 2020 01:17
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SunshineDanceParty posted:I'm going to be so pissed if anything happens to George. He's so set up for tragedy but please show please. MAJOR spoiler from the book: nothing happens to him, or to anyone else. Ruff kind of wrote himself into a corner there - when you're trying to subvert the "black guy dies first" cliche, and your whole cast are black, you can't actually kill anyone and the stakes drop to zero 
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Aug 20, 2020 02:12
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Collateral posted:They look the similar, that's all. 
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Aug 20, 2020 02:16
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hamsystem posted:In hindsight the monsters showing up and eating all the cops was pretty cathartic since in real life they, you know, rarely face any serious consequences for their horrible racist actions. It's neat that that statement could apply to cops back then right up to cops of today. Them getting pulled out to the woods for a lynching after fleeing from another lynching was scary as gently caress. The monster rescue made you cheer for the monsters and feel less danger when they showed up.
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Aug 20, 2020 05:32
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Doltos posted:Them getting pulled out to the woods for a lynching after fleeing from another lynching was scary as gently caress. The monster rescue made you cheer for the monsters and feel less danger when they showed up. Yeah, I did relax when the chomping started.
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Aug 20, 2020 10:01
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I was worried about uncle George and his bad knees for a little bit. When transforming cop ate other cops face I did audibly laugh though.
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Aug 20, 2020 15:05
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hamsystem posted:I was worried about uncle George and his bad knees for a little bit. When transforming cop ate other cops face I did audibly laugh though.
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Aug 20, 2020 15:41
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Liked that first episode alright, definitely sticking around to how this progresses. I won’t pretend like I know much about this, and honestly I usually don’t even notice it, but for some reason the score of the first episode felt real off to me, just kinda corny, idk. Enjoyed pretty much everything else, though Collateral posted:They look the similar, that's all. lol that actor looks nothing like James Baldwin
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Aug 20, 2020 16:13
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Yeah, on reflection, that was dumb.
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Aug 20, 2020 16:48
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DogsInSpace! posted:Bloody sad as I still love some of the old stuff like Flashman, Conan, Solomon Kane and the like. . The Solomon Kane stories are entertaining stories, but holy poo poo are they racist as gently caress when he describes African people. I was listening to the podcast HBO put out, they pointed out another recreation of a famous photo (the people waiting in line being the other) that I hadn't noticed. Someone posted it on Reddit already. 
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Aug 20, 2020 18:23
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double negative posted:I won’t pretend like I know much about this, and honestly I usually don’t even notice it, but for some reason the score of the first episode felt real off to me, just kinda corny, idk. Enjoyed pretty much everything else, though The dialogue is really punched up and quippy and not in a pulp way but in like a Marvel movie way or a CBS drama way. I think the most egregious was the uncle rattling off Dracula quotes a second after narrowly escaping death but almost every exchange has some reference or joke or burn and it not only feels really artificial but also makes it hard for any one character to really have a distinctive voice. It also makes for some really bad exposition, like Atticus making a shoggoth joke for no reason other than so the show can have him explain what one is to the audience right before they actually show up. Atticus in general kind of annoys me, making him a huge nerd who just happens to be swole and badass thanks to being in the military feels too transparently like an attempt to make a traditional leading man that wouldn't be too threatening or hard to relate to for the book readers out there and it's already lead to way too much of him explaining Lovecraft references for the sake of the audience and generally making sure that everyone Gets It. I'm sold enough on the show to watch this season unless there's some major missteps so I'm interested in seeing how it all shakes out. One thing I really appreciated about the show was that it didn't do the usual TV thing of adding a white character to a story about black Americans to avoid alienating white viewers so I'm really hoping they stick the landing with the white lady who saved them during the car chase.
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Aug 20, 2020 19:57
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I agree with your points about the dialogue. I did appreciate the moment when Atticus doesn't get smart when the cop humiliates him for being allowed a U-turn. It was really painful, but it would've been easy to have him either twist it around on the cop, action hero style, or deliver it super angrily.
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Aug 20, 2020 20:12
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I'm really enjoying this. Campy/pulpy/scary/fun. I feel bad a lot while watching it, but I can't help but love the characters. I think the super scary middle (car chase) and awkwardly triumphant end (cop cabin) was great. But I didn't come here for that. I'm really curious about scene where Atticus goes to Uncle George's shop. At the end when Uncle George says he's going to look into Atticus' dad's theories of a secret legacy, there's a woman who laughs and then says "I'm serious don't delete that". What does that mean? The time stamp is ~14:40.
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Aug 20, 2020 20:32
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anothergod posted:
It's part of the song that plays TheAardvark posted:One thing I was surprised by was the decision to play blatantly out-of-era music on the soundtrack, specifically: (It confused me at first as well)
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Aug 20, 2020 20:51
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First episode was great. I’m assuming someone from the mansion controlled the monsters. Interested to see where this goes, but hope they keep a lot of the focus on the racism of that period. So many people seem to gloss over exactly how terrible that time period was for black people. Is this supposed to be a long running show, or just one and done?
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Aug 23, 2020 17:49
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https://twitter.com/MishaGreen/status/1297594967402020866
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Aug 23, 2020 19:39
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Watched ep. 1 last night, I howled at the cop keeping his gun trained on Tic and Leti while the sheriff next to turns into a literal monster, who then murders him. That’s a serious commitment to racism. I’m less stoked that, like almost every other drat genre franchise, the main characters are only relevant because of their parentage.
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Aug 23, 2020 21:34
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The way Courtney B Vance tells the one cop that he might want to shoot the other may just be my favorite line reading this year.
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Aug 23, 2020 22:07
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qirex posted:I’m less stoked that, like almost every other drat genre franchise, the main characters are only relevant because of their parentage. Yeah hero stories are trite with the predestination plot lines. Star Wars went both ways with it and pissed off all their fans so go figure.
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Aug 24, 2020 01:44
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When the heck do the episodes go up anyway? e: apparently now (well, probably at 6 Pacific) Oh good, some sort of wicker person/may day thing. That always works out well for everyone a kitten fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Aug 24, 2020 |
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Aug 24, 2020 02:14
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Well, uh, that was quite the second episode.
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Aug 24, 2020 03:03
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A lot happened!
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Aug 24, 2020 03:26
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I don't know how expected the show to go, but that certainly wasn't it.
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Aug 24, 2020 03:26
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I lost track of the time and though we were at the ending more times than Return of the King.
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Aug 24, 2020 03:28
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Episode two spoilers so did Uncle actually die? I'm almost certain the spoiler reel thing at the end of episode one had scenes with him in them that weren't in this episode, but since we already had a "dream/doppelganger" thing happen, uhh? Biting my nails here.
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Aug 24, 2020 03:50
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Gonna get a lot of mileage out of this image.
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Aug 24, 2020 03:51
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Rappaport posted:Episode two spoilers so did Uncle actually die? I'm almost certain the spoiler reel thing at the end of episode one had scenes with him in them that weren't in this episode, but since we already had a "dream/doppelganger" thing happen, uhh? Biting my nails here. Episode 2 I feel like they foreshadowed his death so hard last episode that I was surprised he didn’t die then. So I think he’s gone which is too bad because the actor was great. Show seems pretty heavy on visions/dream sequences so he might show up again at some point though.
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Aug 24, 2020 03:58
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Episode 2 realization about Episode 1: Oh poo poo George thought the note Atticus got wasn't "hosed off to Ardham" but was "I'm not your real dad, George is", that's why he reacted with concern and alarm on account of Montrose being gone for a while.
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Aug 24, 2020 04:03
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I mean LOL at the Jeffersons theme but it's another distracting instance of non-period music (he types, over=concerned about immersion in this show about wizards and monsters). I'm interested to see The Dag from Fury Road in something else, but I'm not sure why they went with the [WARNING--BOOK ISSUES:] gender swap for Braithewhite the younger when it added one more complication.
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Aug 24, 2020 04:46
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