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Blind Rasputin
Nov 25, 2002

Farewell, good Hunter. May you find your worth in the waking world.

I actually thought for a while that this show was the city and the city adaptation, but done so in a way that wasn’t so weird and impossible to wrap your head around. Come to find out, no, they got a show full of b-rate special effects coming out to cover that one.

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joe football
Dec 22, 2012
Seeing the number of senior staff that just ended up gunned down this season, I think Management has the right idea even if they're just a bunch of random civil servants

Shageletic
Jul 25, 2007

Party Plane Jones posted:

Management is the original group of scientists who hosed up and so they're not doubled like everybody else.

I thought it was because they didn't want to be identified so that they can be safe from some reality replacing them.

I liked that ending! Howard Prime turning into Howard at the end is a nice note for what I especially like this show for, its focus on character study.

ozmunkeh
Feb 28, 2008

hey guys what is happening in this thread
The show started to go off the rails around the reveal of Quayle's wife. I'm still very much on for another season but that finale was very much a case of them rolling the dice to find out who gets killed - it was all a bit hollow. Also mad that Aldrich's number came up because that character was very enjoyable.

Chadzok
Apr 25, 2002

Counterpoint: managing to get Quayle and wife's marriage apparently back on track was an interesting character study (somewhat reliant on quayle being pathetic). Next season obviously has him find out at some point that she brutally murdered his actual fiance so there's plenty more of what you disliked about the show yet to come.

Joust
Dec 7, 2007

No Ledges.

ozmunkeh posted:

The show started to go off the rails around the reveal of Quayle's wife. I'm still very much on for another season but that finale was very much a case of them rolling the dice to find out who gets killed - it was all a bit hollow. Also mad that Aldrich's number came up because that character was very enjoyable.

I guess the show leaves open the chance of seeing his broken other.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

I thought it was a pretty good season finale, obviously we were never getting everything resolved here and now. I'm not really too bothered by minor possible plot holes that may or may not be properly explained later. Really bummed out they took out Aldrich and all of his squad. I thought he understood that Howard wasn't the actual problem so it felt a bit strange they went after him like that.

E:
Also if anyone hasn't seen it, Arstechnica did a behind the scenes on how they did the scenes with both counterparts. Obviously this isn't a new thing and you can trivially do this by stitching two two takes together but that's only easy to do for static shots.

They used a bunch of robots to repeat the camera motions exactly for as many takes as necessary: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/03/heres-the-slick-tech-making-counterparts-multi-dimensional-s1-possible/
It doesn't actually show the robots but here's a great video highlighting how they work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIwdCN4dV6w

mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 09:48 on Apr 4, 2018

upgunned shitpost
Jan 21, 2015

kinda sad that management wasn't just a brain in a jar, but other than that, fun season

joe football
Dec 22, 2012

jfood posted:

kinda sad that management wasn't just a brain in a jar, but other than that, fun season

There was a nyt interview with Justin Marks where he says season 2 will in large part be about the nature of management, so don't give up hope yet

Accretionist
Nov 7, 2012
I BELIEVE IN STUPID CONSPIRACY THEORIES
I like the 'original group of scientists' theory.

The conference's set-up very strongly hinted 'one group.' Maybe the reference to Social Darwinism is a hint, too? They flipped a coin and WMD'd one side to stoke conflict to drive competition or something. Radical anti-communist Ayn Rand type.

mcbexx
Jul 4, 2004

British dentistry is
not on trial here!



Oh wait, will the twist be that what we perceive as "our" universe is actually the one that has been created by the incident?

Does the copied universe have a sense of history?

Tiggum
Oct 24, 2007

Your life and your quest end here.


mcbexx posted:

Oh wait, will the twist be that what we perceive as "our" universe is actually the one that has been created by the incident?

Does the copied universe have a sense of history?

There is no "original" and "copy"; one universe split into two. It's not the case that one branched off from the other, they both diverged from a particular point. Which one's the original is a matter of perspective - to any given person, the original universe is the one they're from.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

The original universe got destroyed and what we've been watching is a simulation. Management is admins/god.

Caufman
May 7, 2007
Next season, the Howards must encounter a third, even more bizarre parallel universe where they come face to face with... JK Simmons.

TheOmegaWalrus
Feb 3, 2007

by Hand Knit
You're very clever young man, very clever. But it's JK Simmons' all the way down!

fadam
Apr 23, 2008

I just finished, and really loved this first season. Really strong performance from JK obviously (that conversation in the interface room at the end of episode 6? 7? I forget, anyway it was incredible), but I thought the supporting cast was pretty good too. I'm always partial to this type of character, but I thought the guy who played Quayle really selled frustrated, beleaguered, and underqualified. The teacher from Rushmore was good too.

If I have one complaint, I thought the Nadia plotline and everything attached to it was mostly lovely and felt like NeoGAF/ResetERA bait.

Thwomp
Apr 10, 2003

BA-DUHHH

Grimey Drawer

fadam posted:

If I have one complaint, I thought the Nadia plotline and everything attached to it was mostly lovely and felt like NeoGAF/ResetERA bait.

I just heard her character was originally meant to be killed off shortly after the season started but that decision was changed a bit later.

It sorta shows as her character meanders around in the Alpha world a bit without much to do for a while.

I actually like her as this severely damaged person who is slowly being affected by this other world, shifting her attitude/outlook.


Anyway, just finished the season after starting it last week and just loved it.

priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.
I watched The City & The City miniseries over the weekend, and while I liked it Counterpart is a lot better.

Fiending for second season, when??

Elias_Maluco
Aug 23, 2007
I need to sleep
Im on episode 8 and liking it a lot so far, but please someone explain to me: why the ancient computers in the office?? I get that other world is a little behind on tech, but the office in normal world is also packed with PCs that seems straight from the 80s.

Ive been waiting for an explanation for this and it doenst seems to be coming and it annoys me more than it should

Craptacular
Jul 11, 2004

Elias_Maluco posted:

but the office in normal world is also packed with PCs that seems straight from the 80s.

Government IT is often woefully out of date.

Really though, it's probably just a stylistic choice by the director/set designer/whoever.

Elias_Maluco
Aug 23, 2007
I need to sleep
I though it might be, but that's kinda stupid in a story that makes a plot point of outdated cellphones and stuff like that

I mean, monochromatic CRT monitors. Is almost like having they moving around in chariots without any explanation

Elias_Maluco fucked around with this message at 16:01 on May 9, 2018

DarkCrawler
Apr 6, 2009

by vyelkin
The other world is not behind on all tech, I thought. Maybe it's to make them more hacker proof?

WrightOfWay
Jul 24, 2010


Little known fact but no technology invented before 1992 is allowed in buildings in Berlin.

Elias_Maluco
Aug 23, 2007
I need to sleep
I know is a petty thing to be so annoyed about, but in a TV show where the use of outdated cellphones have an explanation, is not so absurd to expect that an office 100% equipped with even more outdated tech would have one too

Elias_Maluco fucked around with this message at 16:56 on May 9, 2018

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

Didn't that Quayle guy drive a brand new Audi Q5/7 which is full of computer stuff? It's kind of weird.

Thwomp
Apr 10, 2003

BA-DUHHH

Grimey Drawer
I thought it was just in case someone from one world, moving legally to the other, didn't get a glimpse of our current tech.

At least, that's be best my head could come up with.

Chubby Henparty
Aug 13, 2007


Maybe the setup of both buildings is basically stagnant at the direction of Them Upstairs, a bunch of old (possibly extradimensional) codgers who were around at the start and understand that payroll is done through Brazil-esque paper shuffling and none of this pocket calculator nonsense.

Chubby Henparty fucked around with this message at 22:28 on May 9, 2018

Junkenstein
Oct 22, 2003

Yeah, could well be something to do with Management. Their only appearance had them using weird retro sci-fi tech after all.

It's very clearly a conscious choice and there's no reason to assume we won't get an explanation at some point.

Junkenstein fucked around with this message at 21:11 on May 9, 2018

Niwrad
Jul 1, 2008

ozmunkeh posted:

The show started to go off the rails around the reveal of Quayle's wife. I'm still very much on for another season but that finale was very much a case of them rolling the dice to find out who gets killed - it was all a bit hollow. Also mad that Aldrich's number came up because that character was very enjoyable.

The episode after the reveal was incredible I thought. But after that I thought it got messy. The Nadia character was terrible at the end and the season didn't have much payoff at the end. I mean their big decades long plan was to perform a mass shooting to kill 11?

One gripe I had was with the cell phone technology. These sides smuggle in stuff from what I can tell. We see booze and that red tea brought over. They smuggle weapons at the end. And they pass messages relatively easy it seems. But no one could get a smartphone over to the other side to be reverse engineered? Heck even some schematics or information? These are worlds that diverged 30 years ago, not 200. With a little information they should be able to copy that technology.

Just felt like they changed how hard it was to move people and stuff from one side to the next depending on the episode. One episode they'd make it seem impossible to bring any kind of contraband over. The next he's got a bottle of booze as a gift for his friend. One episode it's a huge deal to be able to go to the other side. The next 3 people are casually coming over for diplomatic stuff and end up hanging out waiting for their dopplegangers to be killed. Just doesn't seem like our side would just let 3 unknown people head over and live in the city. Isn't this supposed to be a huge secret?

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Thwomp
Apr 10, 2003

BA-DUHHH

Grimey Drawer

Niwrad posted:

One gripe I had was with the cell phone technology. These sides smuggle in stuff from what I can tell. We see booze and that red tea brought over. They smuggle weapons at the end. And they pass messages relatively easy it seems. But no one could get a smartphone over to the other side to be reverse engineered? Heck even some schematics or information? These are worlds that diverged 30 years ago, not 200. With a little information they should be able to copy that technology.

Just felt like they changed how hard it was to move people and stuff from one side to the next depending on the episode. One episode they'd make it seem impossible to bring any kind of contraband over. The next he's got a bottle of booze as a gift for his friend. One episode it's a huge deal to be able to go to the other side. The next 3 people are casually coming over for diplomatic stuff and end up hanging out waiting for their dopplegangers to be killed. Just doesn't seem like our side would just let 3 unknown people head over and live in the city. Isn't this supposed to be a huge secret?

I think you've gotta take their in-universe explanation (can't reverse engineer) and their world's history (1/7th of the world's population bought it) and extrapolate from there.

It's actually surprisingly easy with your smartphone hangup. Think about how long it was revealed that Apple was working on the iPhone (2004 versus the 2007 product reveal) and that only really happened because Apple acquired the team at Fingerworks that developed the multi-touch display by then (they'd actually been working on it since 1999). Once they had that, then development of the iPhone was actually greenlit by Jobs.

Imagine if the same team was assembled to work on multi-touch but was missing a crucial engineer or several. Or maybe not even a crucial engineer but just a guy who asked a question that led down the path towards success? Or a guy in the Fingerworks management that kept the company going during a lean year in 2001 or something. Or maybe the pandemic kills Jobs so he couldn't make his second coming at Apple/push as hard as he did regarding the development of multi-touch smartphones?

Could our current smartphone age even exist at all without the marketing push/innovation by Apple? Would've Ericsson or RIM developed a product as revolutionary in the same time?

If you've lost that many people from your population, how many of those could've been innovators? Not Jobs level people but making small improvements here or there that others could take a monumental leap with? The lost potential of Earth Prime is unimaginably enormous.

Thwomp fucked around with this message at 20:17 on May 14, 2018

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