The TV Thread redux

Up to Episode 3 of House of Usher.

Presumably Rahul Kohli responsible for the small LFC cameo :grin:

getting close to Nov, started watching Band of Brothers again

I liked it. The source material is a bit thin so he did the thing he did with Midnight Club and fleshed it out with references to Poe’s other work. I think the contemporary framing was interesting as well and will work for a lot of people.

However, especially given my expectations of Flanagan, I felt it missed the mark totally in terms of tone for an adaptation of one of Poe’s grimier stories. If you’re someone who doesn’t care, or wouldn’t even know, that wont matter and there is enough about it to really enjoy. But it felt a little bit disappointing to me for what it wasn’t or what it could have been.

How was the pacing?

Absolutely love this show.

I’ve got all but the first episode recorded. Haven’t seen it on tv in the UK for quite a while though sadly. I might need to buy a dvd player and get the set on dvd. Was also good fun just spotting the cast appear in other shows afterwards.

https://www.bilibili.tv/en/video/2049737131

part of my cable service is CraveTV and they have the entire HBO catalogue. barely watch liveTV anymore.

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One of the few series I have watch more than once.

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with this Israel/Palestine conflict, it’s got me tempted to re-watch the first few seasons of Homeland. Same actor in both series (Damian Lewis), he does an excellent job in Homeland as well. first 3-4 season were excellent then it tapered off.

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Actually while I was typing it I was thinking of one of the episodes near the end where they found an extermination camp (B.O.B).

I liked homeland but still have not finished it.

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yeah I know the one. I still remember the first time watching that. Ep 9 - “Why We Fight”

here’s a link to a virtual tour of one of those camps, it’s horrifying.

Sad Bill Murray GIF by filmeditor

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What do you mean?

Not sure how best to explain it.

Several of Flanagan’s shows have felt inconsistent throughout the whole series - a bit slow or flat in parts - for example in Midnight Mass, that to me seemed to be somewhere in the middle after several good episodes early on and fairly decent last few episodes.

I get what you mean. I don’t think so. Without giving too much away the main thrust of the show is what happened to his family so the fact he has so many kids to talk about keeps the pace going.

Watched the first couple, haven’t minded it, but not overly blown away either just yet.

Is it just me who finds it questionable how pretty much all the kids are sexual oddballs? I don’t find it the least bit offensive, it just seems a bizarre coincidence within a single family, and I wonder whether they’re using it as shorthand for ‘look how horribly decadent these people are, don’t they just deserve death?’, which is actually the opposite of progressive.

Incenstuousness between the siblings was never explicitly stated but was heavily implied in the original story. The perversion of the kids is his throwback to that theme.

And that is how the whole thing plays out…the call backs to the original story are more like easter eggs for people familiar with Poe’s work than then being a source of an adaptation. It’s story that is about something completely different, but one borrows scenes and puts them in a different context. It’s an interesting approach, but what I think contributed to it missing the mark in terms of tone I expected and Id imagine most would have expected…

Do you know how much of Poe’s work related to sex as your post just made me think of the Masque of Red Death which he also wrote?

I dont know. I went on a Poe kick about 20 years ago but didn’t really enjoy it but of what I read nothing else I read was quite as sexual as House of Usher.

I mentioned earlier though that Flanagan pulls from lots of other of Poe’s work to find ways to kill the kids, and that is clearly telegraphed by naming those characters after those in the stories he pulls from. Masque of the Red Death is what he uses to kill off the first kid, Prospero. But it is far more sexual in the show than it was in the original, seemingly in line with his approach of transferring the sexual perversion of the twins in the book to the kids in this adaptation. As I said, some of it feels more like an Easter egg to give fans something to recognize than an actual adaptation.

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I have my own theory but it’s a bit of a massive spoiler for those not familiar with the source material so…

Spoilers

Firstly, sexual oddballs seems a bit much when essentially they’re all just either gay or bi. It’s only one of the hetero couple who have the weird thing with the prostitutes. And I suppose you could include Kate Siegel’s dominant thing, but still just bi really.
Anyway,
The story ends with the ending of the Usher bloodline. Having the characters how they are, provides a number of credible reasons why all but one of the children did not have children of their own and can avoid any extra child deaths in the story which would have needed further death scenes and would probably be narratively redundant.

Additionally, like their characters, Kate Siegel is apparently bi and T’Nia Miller is a lesbian like her character. Perhaps had they not been, their characters might not have been. I don’t know.

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Prospero’s character bonks everything with a pulse, five or six people at a time, up to and including trying it on with his sister in law, and the media one, can’t remember her name, seems to be in some kind of weird sub-dom thruple with both her assistants, and then as you say there’s the one who likes to watch her husband having it off with prostitutes. The one who seems to be in a gay relationship but having a secret affair with a woman is the most down to earth of the lot.

So, no, not having it that they’re simply gay or bi, if they were it wouldn’t even have crossed my mind to mention it and resent the implication.

There was no implication, I just think the term only really applies to two of the family and explained the reasons why it might be included at all.