that above seems a case of what hitchcock called moronic logic. a denial of the suspension of disbelief due in fiction on the basis of some logical flaw. sorta like saying "superman can't fly therefore i refuse to accept this story." if you're into a superman story you have to accept that our yellow sun gives him the superpower of flying and get on with things.

then again, when things are *too absurd* it's really impossible to get into anything.

i'm willing to take at face value that poppy could be grown in 'merica at the same time that i'd understand that the show it's not a documentary about alternative agriculture. then again if i knew too much about poppy fields i might just be unable to believe any premise here at all and we'd end up with an episode of frontline.

===


anyway taking advantage of my minor flu plus the holidays i've been watching some unknown season of the great british bake-off (netflix season numbers don't match the original).

it's nice to watch and relaxing fun except for the 2 presenters (not judges) who very annoyingly try to be "clever" every fucking time, and all they accomplish is to sound stupidly forced and unfunny. someone please shoot them. otherwise great show.

No you're a moron.

Bahaaahaha... just fucking.
Good point though. To be fair I don't think ilduclo said anything about the flaw ruining the show for him. Certainly didn't ruin it for me.

But again, all I know about poppies is that they make opium, are used to make heroin, we fought a few wars for them, and they were a cheap but labor intensive way to get lit back when I got lit. That's really it. If I was an agriculture dude or a drug lord the whole thing might be way too much for me. I'm nothing close to either.

And the poppy angle was a minor part of the story. Will play in more if they have another season, but very much secondary and trivial.

Good show.

A few other discrepancies. No way to launder that amount of cash thru Tiny Town. Distro by boat? In bibles? Mexican gangs sending 1 guy to guard 50$ million? Dang, suspension of disbelief is required. Just poor writing.

And just about anyone would have gotten rid of Ma & Pa Kettle like right off.

Btw, tried a couple of episodes of "Marco Polio", will skip any more. High dollar production, but too much wail-ey vocals and throat singing for me. Jim Black did the soundtrack, I guess he's drinking again? And the naked girl kung fu?

Too much!!

not enough! :D

i haven't seen it so i'm not really disputing your claims, it's just that for me bad writing would me more about a poorly constructed character or terrible dialogue (one of the worst lines i've seen is when in lord of the rings aragorn talks about sending an army to the gates of mordor and mr. legolas the obvious say "a diversion"-- yeah duhhhhh, thanks for the definition).

anyway, your criticisms have more to do with plausibility, which is more of a journalism approach to the thing--if you were the editor of this magazine, you'd send an army of fact checkers. which is a good thing!

i don't mind the occasional absurd story as long as it has some entertainment appeal. for example the first season or two of "weeds" were preposterous but also hilarious and engrossing. it was only later as characters turned into caricatures (e.g. celia) that i lost interest in that shit.

same thing with that show i was talking here some weeks ago-- the royals. apparently 3 dudes are enough to guard the royal family, ha ha ha. who knew! it's absurd and preposterous and all kinds of implausible but i keep watching because it makes me laugh- and i think the writers want me to laugh with them-- i think they're very conscious of their kitsch mass product for the celebrity channel and don't mind wearing their underpants on the outside. i applaud that. talk-back tv is a thing in itself.

that was a terrible reply even as a joke because it further confuses

hitchcock called it that way and didn't mean that anybody was a moron

what he meant by it was that stories are driven by emotion, and that logic could destroy a good story

imagine if we had been given a scientific explanation for the events in "the birds"-- just pure ruin

but he did recognize that the public often needed that-- which is why we get that cop explaining shit at the end of "psycho". i fucking hate that ending!

Hey, goddammit... I thought you liked the show! You said it was good! Don't bitch out on me. Yeah, the premise of middle drug guy "testing" main guy and sending him off with that much money out of "curiosity" and "too see if he can pull it off" was... yeah. That was dumb. But without it? No show.

All in all, the effect of the show was, in my opinion, greater overall than that of the sum of any discrepancies. You gotta "believe" Superman can fly, or there's no point... right?

ALSO... I'm not a drug dealer. Don't know shit about money laundering. But I do know a bit about accounting, statistics, risk management, etc. and I think from that angle, the show was pretty goddamn well written and believable. Seriously, if they didn't do their homework on agriculture they certainly did it on the actuarial side of things. The main characters were the real pull... all great. The tone of the show was a pull. Good, ominous, realistic.

The hardest part for me was listening to that godawful accent affected (overly so) by "Pa Whatshisass. What the fuck was that exactly? Little bit of Appalachian, little bit of Texas twang, little bit of Lenny from "Of Mice and Men" mixed with a little bit of halting weirdo borderline-foreign (like, Australian trying not to sound Australian or something) all mixed together in a big mess of accent chili that would win NO cookoffs, not even in the Ozarks.

Honestly, I watched the show because it had a Kanye song in the trailer and because Jason Bateman has never really let me down. I was surprised at how by-the-balls it had me by the end of the first episode.

I actually thought it was a pretty funny reply, buddy. I laughed a bit when I typed it actually. So... yeah.

But I get what you're saying. I'm pretty sure we've talked about this before... "we" as in, I don't know, whoever was in the movie thread and had nothing to do at the time. The end of Psycho being necessary and whatnot. We all hate the ending of Psycho.

i now really wanna watch ozark, just so i can say

I know the "diversion" line and it drives me crazy too!
I think it's somewhat famously stupid even. At least among nerdier circles. I'm not actually that big of a nerd (I know it seems that way, but trust me, by comparison, I'm like a 3.5 out of 10, tops), but I'm pretty sure I've seen it in meme-form.

Ilduclo, do you work for a magazine?

Do it! We'll have to shut the fuck up about it so as not to spoil the damn thing for you.

One thing I can promise is that it is at least compelling. And addictive. Even if I'm wrong and the holes do kill the story, it's not to feel like a waste of time.

no! ilducio is a geologist by training (science!) who works/worked in construction projects (facts are important or the building crumbles!)

i said "that magazine" because the other day i was watching the new yorker show on amazon and they showed the fact-checkers at work. i meant it as an image of journalism at work, not to imply that ilducio was a journalist, because i was saying this wasn't a documentary etc.

anyway, he reads a lot of nonfiction too. me i prefer the fantastic genre in general. i hate reality, but it's the only place where i can get a good steak.

--

since i just finished marco polo (nude kungfu rules all), it would be good timing to get into another "serious" show. looking more for epic/war shit right now so i have shaka zulu lined up right now but maybe i could skip for a test.

I actually did sorta enjoy it, mostly due to stellar acting by Mike Bluth and Linney. Their daughter character was pretty good, too. I probably wouldn't have watched it all the way thru if Ms Ild didn't like it so much...I really do hate crime stories that get major shit wrong, though...maybe that's just me?

Ah, so you agree that Batman and Linney were excellent? Cool. That's really what I was looking for.

Gotcha gotcha.

Ozark is super serious though. Almost weird to see Bateman in something that is so completely not funny. I think that's why it was gripping for me. You keep kind of thinking he's going to snark off, and make you giggle, but when he does get snarky it's deadly serious, or surrounded by deadly serious shit. Maybe that's a cheap trick from the writing angle, I dunno. But it worked.

Edam! Looks like my persona is defined! Hey, if you want reality, that French WW 1 drama, Ceux de 14 is really good.

I do not want reality. In any sense. Hah.

Watching 3rd season of Narcos. I like how they use actual footage of the arrests and public shit that happened. Keeps it grounded!

During the hurricane I put seasons 4-7 of Seinfeld on a memory stick and the wife and I binged as Houston drowned. fucking awesome as always.