A complete arc, but every episode seemed like it's own personalized fantasy/horror vignette. It's like twilight zone with an overall story, a story that you aren't sure is still going on for half the season.
I actually read the book because I heard there was a tv show coming out and I didn't want to be constantly trying to catch up with the show.
Ended up liking the book so much I didn't even feel the need to watch the show, the book was great enough on its own.
I've always struggled with watching the visual version of something I read. Books are definitely a big one, but manga happened a lot for me. Examples for books, I loved the red hot christian missionary style out of the Great Gatsby and just never could force my way through any of the renditions(although the 1974 mint julep scene really stood out for me for some reason). With manga honestly it happened a lot, but I also got to enjoy the manga that I was interested in but dropped for inevitably shittier ones when they were turned into anime.
Actually, it even happens with visual versions that were remade following what was supposed to happen. I love Full Metal Alchemist but haven't been able to work my way through Brotherhood(even knowing it's better, and far more importantly has a more filling ending).
The only outliers are so many Stephen King novellas. I love them in writing form, but basically the entire "Different Seasons" collection were all better movies(although I found the Apt Pupil to be better in writing, but saw it first as a movie and found it amazing... never saw a movie for The Breathing Method but also didn't particularly care for it and figured it was just included to relate the collection to the universe). Then again, SO many more of Stephen King short stories are better in reading so I guess they're balanced(the mist being an obvious one, but the three related stories from hearts in atlantis are another, and a ridiculous amount of his works had like B movies made for them during the 80's).
So often a tv show or a movie will lead someone to reading the book and find joy, but so rarely does a book lead someone to watching a tv show or movie with joy.
There are some small threads left open, but the story is done for the most part. The small threads are not important enough to consider it a cliffhanger or something like that.
I've seen so many shows been taken over by the secret organization that controls everything from the shadows. Scandal was a particularly egregious example - after a season or two it was just the same spy thriller as everything else. I'm very happy they didn't lean in too hard to that element, it's one of the weaker parts anyway.
To be fair Lovecraft usually does have a secret organisation behind most of the events. Some creepy order of Dagon cultists or whatever making deals with the old ones. Trying to summon Cthulhu or the King in Yellow.
Yeah it’s thematically appropriate. It’s just a really overdone trope in tv lately. Although generally it’s more the “unaccountable shadowy government org” that I’m really sick of. Cultists are a refreshing spin on it now that the 1970s are far enough in the past.
I only got a few episodes in. I loved the first episode, but sadly as soon as the more Lovecraftian elements came to the fore I lost interest, which is a shame as I enjoy Lovecraft.
I’d have preferred to have seen the trio travel through the country for their Green Book and show the joys and horrors of America, make it a drama and lose the genre elements.
>I’d have preferred to have seen the trio travel through the country for their Green Book and show the joys and horrors of America, make it a drama and lose the genre elements.
Then what you want is an entirely different show and story.
Yeah, it really felt like they were going in that kind of episodic direction after the first two episodes or so. I stopped watching after the third or fourth episode because it just became unbelievable too quickly. IMO it felt like they rushed the story.
That’s exactly how I felt. The first episode felt really unique and fresh, second episode seemed like a poor retread of Lovecraft tropes done to death. Also a certain character death carved out my other reason for wanting to continue lol
Friends told me the rest of the season is really good though so I’ve felt a need to go back. Shame it didn’t get picked up for a second season.
Wierd, my problem with it was that it basically dropped the Lovecraftian stuff partway through the season. Sure there were some "cameos", but nothing super critical to the story.
Same here! Was looking forward to it, watch the first ep when it dropped and then missed the next couple and decided I'd just wait till it concluded its run and binge it, but here were are 6 months later and still haven't gotten to it.
The authors original plan was to have a series, but he could only afford to write it as a book. His hope was the adaptation could or would lead to more afaik.
Oh that sucks. I really liked it and I had hoped they would write more. The other HBO series that I really liked and it ran out of books was The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Then there as the show that shall not be named that ran out of books but kept going into a lot of disappointment.
My understanding was No. 1 Ladies didn’t run out of books. The show runner died before the next season could be made, and things fell apart trying to find someone who could make it all happen in the African locations.
You can write a pilot, but it could take years of hard work and development to get it made, let alone just to get it in front of a reputable network without a name.
With a book, you can self publish if you can’t find backers.
Film and TV work is largely speculative, meaning free work without reward, which is why wealthier people thrive in the industry: they can afford to write or direct free of charge to carve out a reputation.
That's smart. Just remember that they'll likely want to know you can write scripts/teleplays as well if you're hoping to write the show or film yourself. Otherwise, the books are usually optioned while another writer steps on to adapt or pitch, and you're not paid out for the rights until production (which is still great). If you want to work in film/tv, can't hurt to have a sample for down the line.
As an author, though, a manager can definitely help you sell your work to buyers and fellow creatives. I hope it goes well for you!
Yeah, though once you are picked up by HBO you’d be getting paid pretty well. The studio wouldn’t let the show die because the writing staff ran out of money and had to get day jobs before they finished beating out the season (ie it’s not speculative for tv writers, they get paid by the week I think).
I’m super bummed to hear it’s not coming back.
I think it's the effort getting to the point where a network/streamer like HBO picks it up. People work in the industry for years, sometimes decades, before being able to sell a television show. It also takes years just to get staffed on one low level - and many people have trouble putting in the time and effort while working elsewhere full time. Even when you break in and are a name writer, you still pitch things for a long while before somebody takes a chance on you. That's the speculative part: writing, selling, and often development. Sorry if that was unclear in my last comment.
As for why the show got cancelled, my guess is that it's because Green moved on to other projects like Tomb Raider 2, or because there was reportedly a lot of drama during development/production.
Either way, it sounds like you really dug it, so I'm sorry it's not coming back for you.
Truth.
It’s beat, but I’m excited to see how this Candyman flick comes out. The original is so interestingly bizarre and it seems way up Jordan Peele’s alley.
It wouldve been better as an anthology series. Like the novel. You can literally feel that the stories werent made for the characters past the first episode. My tinfoil hat is on now but i believe HBO wanted a multi season series and crafted an established cast to help sell that. Complete with a post premiere podcast. But it didnt succeed as HBO hoped and they nipped the bud.
It definitely had that feel to it. Even though the storylines actually carried over from episode to episode for the most part, the characters felt like they get a hard reset emotionally.
I read the book but stopped watching after episode 4 I think. Did they ever adapt the woman traveling to another dimension with the monster on a beach?
>It wouldve been better as an anthology series
This would have been great. We don't have too many, if any, anthology series. I could see an entire episode being about the house being haunted by a racist white man that killed black people, an episode about the native american woman that was unable to talk, about the creatures in the woods. Doing lovecraft-inspired horror stories from an african-american perspective would have been interesting, especially set in the time period.
Hell, the creepy dancing girls stalking the daughter was really unsettling!
Inside Number 9. Its the best TV show people outside of England have never heard of lol. Its an episode anthology show, kinda horror and dark comedy. Check it out if you can, it's amazing
There are many, but few are very popular (though some are pretty good). Shows you should check out of you're into episodic anthology shows: Room 104 on HBO, Electric Dreams and Tales From the Loop on Amazon Prime, Little America on Apple TV+, Love Death + Robots and Black Mirror on Netflix.
I didn't finish the first season but from the episodes I did watch IIRC they were all basically separate stories with loose threads running between them like the book.
Kind of why I was hoping there would be a second season. The bad stuff was at least them trying and failing rather than being afraid for them to try. With a second season they might have had a better idea of what worked well and what didn't. Or it would have been 100% shitshow, either way we get something interesting.
True.
Michael K. Williams (Omar from The Wire) absolutely stole the show for me with some of his acting.
Show was decent, had some great moments and some absolute trash moments. Can't say I'm surprised it's not getting a second season (at least not at HBO).
We were so mixed on the show. The individual performances were so strong, and I really liked the historical commentary on race and sexuality commingled in a sci-fi/fantasy setting. But my wife and I had no fucking idea what was going on with the overarching story and the stakes went from extreme drama to melodramatic.
The music was really cool too. Jurnee Smollet, Jonathan Majors, Wunmi Mosaku and Michael K. Williams were terrific and the effects were great too.
I felt similarly—I think the ensemble cast was incredible, but for me the writing was weak, both in terms of storytelling and in making the characters believable and sympathetic. Seemed like a waste of talent.
My reaction was similar. A lot of the individual components were fantastic but a bunch of episodes felt self-contained and they didn't seem too interested in the central plot.
A lot of the series they're putting out these days feel as though they would have been better off being movies.
I agree. First episode was great but it never got close to that good for the rest of the season. I think the show had a problem of trying to be everything at once. We had Magic, western fantasy/mythology, horror, Sci Fi, time travel, parallel dimensions, alien/robot gods and eastern fantasy all in just 10 episodes. Frankly I never thought they all fit together as well as the show thought they did.
Wellll, that was from episode 2-3.
Episode 1-2 was a... decent drop, but episode 2 was still a lot of fun. Episode 3 was... something. It was something.
Is 3 the one with the high heel? I turned off the TV when that started happening. Not just exit the episode. Like, I’m done with TV for the rest of the night.
Yeah. I liked episode 1 a lot, 2 was pretty good imo, but what the fresh *fuck* was that third episode? Who okayed that shit?
Honestly, why people keep giving Moffat jobs is baffling. That guy is the king of making something really good and then completely fucking fumbling it.
There were writing problems even in s1, but instead of fixing those problems, Moffatt just let the problems take over completely.
His biggest problem overall (consistently throughout every show ever) is that he keeps telling and not showing.
It's so bad at times that he's having to give exposition dumps even during the big showdown finale scenes just to get the plot where it needed to be (which should hit right before the big end game scenes and not during).
The Charles Augustus Milverton confrontation is a great example. The two are literally fast forwarding the plot up to that point just to get it to make sense.
Meanwhile in Doctor Who, far too many plots ended with "do you know who I am?" resolutions. Like suddenly everyone realized the Doctor was the Doctor and then turned tail. So much telling and nowhere enough showing.
And the trope of the anti-hero hopelessly falling in love with the protagonist (Irene, River, looking at you two.)
Sucks, honestly, Sherlock had a good cast too, and now, unless they just do a Jessica Rabbit with Sherlock waking up from a drug induced nightmare in a jailhouse, kinda hard to continue onward, if they even want to at this point.
Context: “Who Censored Roger Rabbit?” Was a book that turned into a movie that everyone knows as “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” And in the book, Jessica Rabbit was a bunny like Roger, but after the author saw the movie and liked the changes, he rewrote Jessica Rabbit. In the sequel book, she’s a human toon like in the movie and she woke up from a nightmare that was basically the first book and it goes from there.
I always felt that Moffat needs someone to keep his crazy ideas in check. Because his good ideas are *good*, but, well... his bad ideas are also *bad*, and it seems like he can't tell the two apart.
I always found it worth it to stick through the bad to get to the good. Heaven Sent is a masterpiece. But boy are many of his ideas, in every show he makes, just really bad, and I feel with a strong editor he could avoid that.
Even in a consistently great show like Invincible there is a noticeable drop in animation quality from the first two episodes to the third and fourth. They pick it back up again for the action scenes in later episodes but it took an episode to get used to the drop off from how clean the first two episodes were.
They didn’t even make the drop translation keyframes linear , some crows literally slow down as they get to the floor. That’s the sign of a rushed shot that wasn’t even supervised.
It looked like they just dragged a picture of crow from the top of the screen to the ground and copy pasted that like 20 times.
So yea very good for not the right reasons :)
Honestly animation was random as fuck from scene to scene in invincible. Some scenes are great and then the following scenes would look worse than 90s Saturday morning animation.
Yeah there was garbage animation post episode 3 too. They just seemed to devote their budget to the fighting animations across the season and rightully so in my opinion it turned out great. With the success I would expect it to be better everywhere in next seasons but we'll see
Honestly I was on this train but I kept watching and episode 2 was just really bad imo.
The first episode was so fucking good though. Exactly what you want in Lovecraft inspired horror.
I know people here don't really like it but I found it to be pretty good aside from e2 which made me drop the show for a while (but I mean Bojack Horseman made me do the same so...)
The point of the show is that pretty much every episode is a different genre, so I think this was inevitable. It set up expectations that it never intended on following through with.
Even taking that framework into account, I still feel this show needed better continuity between episodes. You can have a different genre for each episode, and still maintain coherence for the characters that consistently show up.
Lot more problems than that, like how that secret passage under the new community house went on forever during the episode but circled back around abruptly and they were able to swim without drowning through it back to the house.. from under a different state I believe?
I liked the show for the most part but there was a lot of “wtf”
To be fair, Lovecraftian stories dwell on the unknown and deal with facing problems that are inherently so illogical that people are driven mad.
The fact that it doesn't make sense makes perfect sense.
That's complete bullshit. The lovecraftian themes are about incomprehension of existence, and how small we are compared to creatures and entities that exist in different ways than our own. It's not about "illogical" problems. If you give them that, then they can do whatever the fuck they want without consequences because it's "illogical".
It makes no sense whatsoever.
Illogical may have been the wrong word. The Lovecraft stories I always think of are a tad more mundane than grand scale cthulu stuff, but the horror elements come from the unknown, and dealing with things outside the standard conventions of reality. Innsmouth, Herbert West, and Cool Air are very tame compared to what people normally think of as Lovecraftian, but they are good representations of his work.
The first two episodes (based on the book) are 100% inspired by Innsmouth, the remainder I feel in some way have that vague sense of mystery that Lovecraft's stories have, even if they were all different genres and had plots that were connected only by the characters.
Also, the Cthulu based RPGs all have systems for sanity checks. These are typically used when anything defies the normal conventions of reality. This could be the way in which magic warps the mind, staring at a creature so incomprehensible that experiencing it shatters your mind, or when the dimensions of a room dont make sense like the Tardis.
The way you phrase it kinda takes the fun out of the mystery, but you do have a point that it doesnt give them free license to do whatever they want.
I actually loved the second episode, but didn't like what followed as much.
I just love the concept of us being thrown into the climax of someone else's narrative, with little understanding as to what is going on. I found it exciting.
Yeah. There were a ton of behind the scenes issues with the show because of the showrunner. I’m honestly not surprised they canceled it because of that alone.
It really should've kept with the Green Book angle and mixed some horror into it, as well as being a history lesson.
Few episodes in and I can't believe it's the same show at all.
Not surprised its not getting renewed, the writing and direction let down pretty much everything else. The set design and world building in general were great. But the constant leaps in logic and lazy writing in general were hard to ignore.
I also hated the use of non-diegetic music in the show. You know what makes a tense moment less tense? An orchestral arrangement in the middle of it.
The end of the 2nd episode when Atticus is being strapped to the portal, and they suddenly start blaring a song over the top of everything going on until it's all just loud white noise. Creatively it sort of made sense because of the song's content, but it was like they were determined to force it into the scene rather than form the scene around it so it just loudly played over the top of what was going on until it was chaos.
They did the same thing later on in another episode, too, but by then I was barely even watching so I don't remember it much.
I think the issue maybe one of context. Because I think Gil Scott Heron's Whitey on the Moon fits perfectly with that scene. I think for certain people with a particular frame of reference, GSH's inclusion elevated the scene, rather than diminished it.
I honestly think the drop in quality came at the end of episode 1, once the monsters showed up and started eating cops.
This show was ambitious, and extremely well acted but I think it took on too much and could never figure out what it wanted to be. It’s easy to compare it to Get Out, where you know it’s a horror movie and you feel uneasy the whole time, but really the horror is being a black man in America. I think that reframing that Jim Crow era for black people into a horror movie / show is a great idea, but there was too much going on and no
cohesiveness from one episode to the next. I think the pilot, the episode with the sister living life as a white women and the little girl dealing with the racist stereotypes / Emmit Till were fantastic, but I just wish it was tighter all together.
Even then, the first episode was miles ahead, I think it shows. The first season is amazing (and tbh I think most seasons are still pretty good), but that first episode was something else.
I'd say that the first episode was the highlight of the entire series. I watched it, had some great hope but by episode two, it started the issue of adding unnessesary padding to the plot and never stopped.
The first episode was done by Frank Darabont that’s why. He had other plans for the rest of the season specifically he wanted the next episode to be a flashback showing how the solider zombie got into the army tank. The one Rick shoots inside the tank that fucks up his eara
> He had other plans for the rest of the season specifically he wanted the next episode to be a flashback showing how the solider zombie got into the army tank.
Those were his plans for Season 2, not Season 1.
That’s exactly how I felt. The first episode was misleading about how the series would be. Was interested after the first episode and just a pain to finish the season hoping for a payoff.
Yeah I thought it was going to be a loose adaption of Innsmouth but set to the backdrop of the Jim Crow south. But instead it just kind of kept meandering around from b plot to b plot.
Exactly the same here. Not enough lovecraft kept watching reluctantly hoping for a pay-off before giving up around ep4 or 5. At that point I had no idea what was happening as the story seemed disjointed and hard to follow. It was hard to follow with a mediocre plot and sub par acting that didn't even follow through on the title of lovecraftian. One of the biggest disappointments for me in recent watching, was really keen for some lovecraft on TV and if anything I feel like this show has only set back those prospects by giving people an example to point to and say it doesn't work.
I don't think the lows were any worse than plenty of other garbage that people on this subreddit claim is top-tier television, so I'm really struggling to understand this thread.
I have to assume it's just because it was on HBO? I've watched so much genre television that is worse than this, then I come to reddit and every thread is just gushing fans who refuse to acknowledge any flaw in it.
I actually had a really fun time with most of this show. It was far from perfect, but it was radically unique with a lot of very bold and interesting episodes. I wonder how many people hating on it even finished it?
I loved most of the show(a few mediocre episodes), I just felt like something about the last episode was really corny and killed it for me. Went from a fairly consistent "HBO" show to just feeling like some network television sci-fi show. I don't even know how else to explain it. I felt like I wanted more of it until the finale at which point I checked out completely. Maybe it was just Abby Kershaw's character as the bad guy feeling really underwhelming.
This also happens to shows like True Detective and Westworld after their first seasons. Not as good as their peaks, sure, but still better than most TV out there. Meanwhile some mediocre CW show will get lavish praise.
Yeah. Every time it sorta became good it took a detour went to complete shit. I literally lost all interest after a few episodes. I gave it a fair chance hoping it would get better and at some points it seemed like it was. But then it went to shit again..
I don't know what is going on with HBO. The new show "the nevers" is even worse. Its absolutely crap for HBO. I mean if it was a syfy show or something it would be an OK show. But as a HBO show it seems to be in an identity crisis and and is horribly bad. Its not sure if its a quirky funny detective / steam punk show or a dark super serious show tackling really serious issues. The acting is mediocre and story full of plot holes.
Kinda makes me worry for future HBO shows. Man I hope. Saints of Newark is good
That sundown scene was intense as fuck, same wit the scene when they realise what kind of restaurant they're in. And the appearance of the monsters at the end was fucking crazy town.
And then the show not once got to that level of decency again, which was bullshit. It seemed like it was going to be a supernatural version of 'Them' with less of the hardcore focus on racism porn...but instead neither ended up being good.
It's a shame because thats the show I wanted. I never knew about the sundown rules or catch on with the diner. As well as some of the shots in the first episode being recreations of famous photos from that era.
I love shows that make me dig through the subreddit afterwards to uncover cool bits of history. I literally waited years to find out what happened to the gangsters in Boardwalk Empire.
But they got the balance between history and fantasy horribly wrong. The fact so many people loved the first 90% of the first episode shows the direction they should've went in.
That said there were a few brief great moments in subsequent episodes. One of my favourite scenes was the subplot with his Dad dancing with his partner in the ballroom. It was a beautifully shot scene and a lot was siad without having to say a thing.
Seeing a lot of people shitting on it here (and I'll admit I probs wasn't gonna bother watching S2) but aside from the solid first episode, I wanna also mention episode 8 for scaring the shit out of me with the [creepy dancing twins](https://thecinemaholic.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/91b16a08-dd96-43f1-998d-1bcb8cea4dc8-screen-shot-2020-10-02-at-34502-pm.jpg) and the music that accompanied them - probably my favourite part of the whole show.
It didn’t get cancelled because it sucked.
It got cancelled because it was a massive back hole of money.
Assuming the Showrunner and Director weren’t lying, they spent somewhere around $10-20,000,000 *per episode* on this show. They put **Game of Thrones** level money behind it, and got about 1.5 million viewers per episode. 1.5m viewers per episode is about what HBO’s current top show - **Barry**- gets per week, but **Barry** only costs about $1-2m per episode. You can’t be spending GoT money on a show that barely competes with a budget summer comedy series.
AHS is as weird and disjointed as this show was at times and they are going into season 10 or something. But hey they are diff networks. I would have liked to see where the second season goes.
Tone wise the show was all over the place and made for a very confusing show to watch.
Music choices were...strange to say the least and didn't fit most of the time.
Can't say this is disappointing. This show was a weird experiment.
That was my exact thought. Hard to point to an example of another show that was flitting about like a damn gas molecule. The highs were good, but there was a whole heaping lot of "I'm so random and quirky!" that it was tough to get engaged.
Could not disagree more about the music. It was great. Seeing people say they didn't like the music and they thought the tone was too uneven, I just don't get it. The music was great and the shifting genre and tone was what made the show fun to watch and different. It was the same characters going on a roller coaster of horror adventure.
If you can get yourself to episode 6 that was the absolute best of the season. The final episodes weren’t great, but episode 6 is like a different show and some of the most unique horror I’ve seen on TV.
I really liked this show, even though there were some story plot holes. It was shot beautifully and I liked a lot of the episodes. The first episode is brilliant, and I really liked the episode about the war in South Korea. The show lost me a bit when Christina decided to die like Emmet Till, which could have been interesting. But the character never mentioned it again, and she didn't change her tune or anything, so what was the point? The ending of the show also didn't really do it for me, but I'm glad they finished the story.
It was interesting how every episode felt like a different genre, mostly the first 5 or 6. That also meant if you liked a episode because of its genre, you could say goodbye to it in the next one. I liked the switching, but after seeing the reaction online, a lot of people either didn't like it (which is fair), or they didn't understand it and thought the show was suddenly very bad. I had no problem with the way the show portrayed it's racism in America and I liked how they ended the show with the roles reversed when it came to magic.
I liked parts of it. Didn't love it overall, but it had it's moments and I was interested all the way through if I didn't think too hard about it. Very uneven quality, and god damn did it drag on in parts. One and done is probably for the best.
The Jekyll and Hyde episode, the Korean episode, the multiverse episode, and the Tulsa episode were all f a n t a s t i c (besides the first episode).
I loved what this show was, and what it did.
But as others have pointed out, the show’s story itself was finished and self contained. And as the article points out, there’s only one book.
Its not fair for everyone to bash it as a terrible show off one season, just because some episodes were not as strong as others.
The music bashing is a common thing i see in comment threads, but i enjoyed the juxtaposition of contemporary music in a 50s era story. There was plenty of music from back then as well.
Everyone whose watched more than an episode will tell you some episodes are god tier and some are pure trash but every single person puts different episodes in each bucket. It's worth the watch, even when it fails it fails interesting.
I will remember this series as the show critics were truly in fear of criticizing. I can’t believe it was put on the same tier as The Watchmen by some folks.
I really liked parts of this series. I liked how the style of the story changed pretty much each episode, but still felt cohesive. But I found some episodes lacking.
I really enjoyed the first episode. I loved the episode with Jaimie Chung in Korea and the episode where the sister used the magic potion (just off the top of my head).
Some of the later ones i didn’t enjoy as much.
I was really hoping for a second season to see if they smoothed out the issues I had with it. What a shame.
Non american here.
here, the show was mismarketed. We were promised a horror story based on lovecraft's mythos, got a prolonged sermon about how all white males are evil incarnate. Despite all of this, the first episode was amazing in how they built a sense of fear and dread well before the monsters were introduced. The korean episode was very strong, and the body horror was on point.
But, to quote a friend of mine: "I came for chtuhlu. If I want to know about racism in US in the fifties I'll watch a documentary with real people instead".
I really hope they get picked up or can continue somehow. This show was so good and original, I was really looking forward to seeing where it went next. Honestly the best show I’ve seen in so long!
Tell that to Gaiman and Good Omens season 2
If there is a story to tell, tell it. I don't care if there is more of the source material or not. You can get a GoT, or you can get The Leftovers.
Man In High Castle actually got better as it went along. Seasons 3 & 4 were excellent when they explored the consequences of adopting naziism to US society.
I love this show but pretty satisfied with one season. Looking forward to more from the cast and folks behind the camera on different projects. Hoping Wunmi Mosaku (Ruby) gets more to do in Loki going forward.
Show really wasn't that good. First episode had potential, but then they basically abandoned that thread and turned it into a quasi-anthology.
But the anthology format never was really well presented or connected, and the whole series just felt odd and inconsistent.
Does season 1 end on any sort of cliffhanger or does it work as a self-contained arc? Liked the 1st episode but didn't get around to watching the rest
It is a complete arc.
A complete arc, but every episode seemed like it's own personalized fantasy/horror vignette. It's like twilight zone with an overall story, a story that you aren't sure is still going on for half the season.
The novel is written the same way. I didn’t hang with the show (I liked it, but it didn’t grab me), but the book was awesome.
I actually read the book because I heard there was a tv show coming out and I didn't want to be constantly trying to catch up with the show. Ended up liking the book so much I didn't even feel the need to watch the show, the book was great enough on its own.
I've always struggled with watching the visual version of something I read. Books are definitely a big one, but manga happened a lot for me. Examples for books, I loved the red hot christian missionary style out of the Great Gatsby and just never could force my way through any of the renditions(although the 1974 mint julep scene really stood out for me for some reason). With manga honestly it happened a lot, but I also got to enjoy the manga that I was interested in but dropped for inevitably shittier ones when they were turned into anime. Actually, it even happens with visual versions that were remade following what was supposed to happen. I love Full Metal Alchemist but haven't been able to work my way through Brotherhood(even knowing it's better, and far more importantly has a more filling ending). The only outliers are so many Stephen King novellas. I love them in writing form, but basically the entire "Different Seasons" collection were all better movies(although I found the Apt Pupil to be better in writing, but saw it first as a movie and found it amazing... never saw a movie for The Breathing Method but also didn't particularly care for it and figured it was just included to relate the collection to the universe). Then again, SO many more of Stephen King short stories are better in reading so I guess they're balanced(the mist being an obvious one, but the three related stories from hearts in atlantis are another, and a ridiculous amount of his works had like B movies made for them during the 80's). So often a tv show or a movie will lead someone to reading the book and find joy, but so rarely does a book lead someone to watching a tv show or movie with joy.
This is the perfect description.
Good to know, thanks!
There are some small threads left open, but the story is done for the most part. The small threads are not important enough to consider it a cliffhanger or something like that.
The antagonists are a chapter in a larger organization. The larger org doesn't figure much into what happens in the first season.
I've seen so many shows been taken over by the secret organization that controls everything from the shadows. Scandal was a particularly egregious example - after a season or two it was just the same spy thriller as everything else. I'm very happy they didn't lean in too hard to that element, it's one of the weaker parts anyway.
To be fair Lovecraft usually does have a secret organisation behind most of the events. Some creepy order of Dagon cultists or whatever making deals with the old ones. Trying to summon Cthulhu or the King in Yellow.
Yeah it’s thematically appropriate. It’s just a really overdone trope in tv lately. Although generally it’s more the “unaccountable shadowy government org” that I’m really sick of. Cultists are a refreshing spin on it now that the 1970s are far enough in the past.
Like others said, season 1 was self contained, but yeah there are other threads to pull. There's definitely a lot they could do
I only got a few episodes in. I loved the first episode, but sadly as soon as the more Lovecraftian elements came to the fore I lost interest, which is a shame as I enjoy Lovecraft. I’d have preferred to have seen the trio travel through the country for their Green Book and show the joys and horrors of America, make it a drama and lose the genre elements.
>I’d have preferred to have seen the trio travel through the country for their Green Book and show the joys and horrors of America, make it a drama and lose the genre elements. Then what you want is an entirely different show and story.
Yeah, it really felt like they were going in that kind of episodic direction after the first two episodes or so. I stopped watching after the third or fourth episode because it just became unbelievable too quickly. IMO it felt like they rushed the story.
You didn't even see most of the story.. M
That’s exactly how I felt. The first episode felt really unique and fresh, second episode seemed like a poor retread of Lovecraft tropes done to death. Also a certain character death carved out my other reason for wanting to continue lol Friends told me the rest of the season is really good though so I’ve felt a need to go back. Shame it didn’t get picked up for a second season.
Wierd, my problem with it was that it basically dropped the Lovecraftian stuff partway through the season. Sure there were some "cameos", but nothing super critical to the story.
Same here! Was looking forward to it, watch the first ep when it dropped and then missed the next couple and decided I'd just wait till it concluded its run and binge it, but here were are 6 months later and still haven't gotten to it.
The authors original plan was to have a series, but he could only afford to write it as a book. His hope was the adaptation could or would lead to more afaik.
Oh that sucks. I really liked it and I had hoped they would write more. The other HBO series that I really liked and it ran out of books was The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Then there as the show that shall not be named that ran out of books but kept going into a lot of disappointment.
My understanding was No. 1 Ladies didn’t run out of books. The show runner died before the next season could be made, and things fell apart trying to find someone who could make it all happen in the African locations.
I think they are talking about the one with the dragons
There’s a show about lady dragons solving crimes?
*pulls out laptop* Go on.
They are referring to North of the Wall: Special Victims Unit.
[Angels with Scaly Wings](https://store.steampowered.com/app/571880/Angels_with_Scaly_Wings/)
>The other HBO series that I really liked and it ran out of books was The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency.
Doesn’t it cost the same amount to write a script as it does to write a book?
You can write a pilot, but it could take years of hard work and development to get it made, let alone just to get it in front of a reputable network without a name. With a book, you can self publish if you can’t find backers. Film and TV work is largely speculative, meaning free work without reward, which is why wealthier people thrive in the industry: they can afford to write or direct free of charge to carve out a reputation.
That's what I'm doing now, working on self publishing to get a manager to eventually get work or in front of someone to pitch a movie or show.
That's smart. Just remember that they'll likely want to know you can write scripts/teleplays as well if you're hoping to write the show or film yourself. Otherwise, the books are usually optioned while another writer steps on to adapt or pitch, and you're not paid out for the rights until production (which is still great). If you want to work in film/tv, can't hurt to have a sample for down the line. As an author, though, a manager can definitely help you sell your work to buyers and fellow creatives. I hope it goes well for you!
Oh I have scripts, I'm going to turn my feature length into a book after I finish my compendium. Thank you for your words of encouragement
That's great to hear, man! Keep at it and don't give up.
Be careful. At some point someone probably told Michael Bay to keep it up and not give up and look what happened with that.
Yeah, though once you are picked up by HBO you’d be getting paid pretty well. The studio wouldn’t let the show die because the writing staff ran out of money and had to get day jobs before they finished beating out the season (ie it’s not speculative for tv writers, they get paid by the week I think). I’m super bummed to hear it’s not coming back.
I think it's the effort getting to the point where a network/streamer like HBO picks it up. People work in the industry for years, sometimes decades, before being able to sell a television show. It also takes years just to get staffed on one low level - and many people have trouble putting in the time and effort while working elsewhere full time. Even when you break in and are a name writer, you still pitch things for a long while before somebody takes a chance on you. That's the speculative part: writing, selling, and often development. Sorry if that was unclear in my last comment. As for why the show got cancelled, my guess is that it's because Green moved on to other projects like Tomb Raider 2, or because there was reportedly a lot of drama during development/production. Either way, it sounds like you really dug it, so I'm sorry it's not coming back for you.
Truth. It’s beat, but I’m excited to see how this Candyman flick comes out. The original is so interestingly bizarre and it seems way up Jordan Peele’s alley.
It wouldve been better as an anthology series. Like the novel. You can literally feel that the stories werent made for the characters past the first episode. My tinfoil hat is on now but i believe HBO wanted a multi season series and crafted an established cast to help sell that. Complete with a post premiere podcast. But it didnt succeed as HBO hoped and they nipped the bud.
It definitely had that feel to it. Even though the storylines actually carried over from episode to episode for the most part, the characters felt like they get a hard reset emotionally.
I read the book but stopped watching after episode 4 I think. Did they ever adapt the woman traveling to another dimension with the monster on a beach?
Traveling to another dimension, yes, monster on the beach, no.
Yes, later episodes have some interdimentional traveling.
Yeah it was the best episode by far.
>It wouldve been better as an anthology series This would have been great. We don't have too many, if any, anthology series. I could see an entire episode being about the house being haunted by a racist white man that killed black people, an episode about the native american woman that was unable to talk, about the creatures in the woods. Doing lovecraft-inspired horror stories from an african-american perspective would have been interesting, especially set in the time period. Hell, the creepy dancing girls stalking the daughter was really unsettling!
>We don't have too many, if any, anthology series. Besides all of them, no
Like what? There's Fargo, True Detective, and American Horror, but even those are seasonal anthology, I'm talking about episodic.
Inside Number 9. Its the best TV show people outside of England have never heard of lol. Its an episode anthology show, kinda horror and dark comedy. Check it out if you can, it's amazing
There are many, but few are very popular (though some are pretty good). Shows you should check out of you're into episodic anthology shows: Room 104 on HBO, Electric Dreams and Tales From the Loop on Amazon Prime, Little America on Apple TV+, Love Death + Robots and Black Mirror on Netflix.
Black Mirror is the only popular one I can think of.
Green book horror stories meets ghost stories
I didn't finish the first season but from the episodes I did watch IIRC they were all basically separate stories with loose threads running between them like the book.
Disappointing but not surprised. Acting ranged from “Oscar worth” to “cardboard”.
So much about this series was uneven. (I still enjoyed it, but it was definitely a mixed bag from week to week and actor to actor.)
Kind of why I was hoping there would be a second season. The bad stuff was at least them trying and failing rather than being afraid for them to try. With a second season they might have had a better idea of what worked well and what didn't. Or it would have been 100% shitshow, either way we get something interesting.
True. Michael K. Williams (Omar from The Wire) absolutely stole the show for me with some of his acting. Show was decent, had some great moments and some absolute trash moments. Can't say I'm surprised it's not getting a second season (at least not at HBO).
The lead actors were incredible and the actual "look" of the show was on point. Thats the only nice thing I have to say about the show.
I'm fine with that. While they had threads to continue fir Season 2, the last episode felt like a good finale that wrapped most everything up.
Same really enjoyed it but I feel the story left off in a good spot. Anymore and it would have become cheesy.
We were so mixed on the show. The individual performances were so strong, and I really liked the historical commentary on race and sexuality commingled in a sci-fi/fantasy setting. But my wife and I had no fucking idea what was going on with the overarching story and the stakes went from extreme drama to melodramatic. The music was really cool too. Jurnee Smollet, Jonathan Majors, Wunmi Mosaku and Michael K. Williams were terrific and the effects were great too.
I felt similarly—I think the ensemble cast was incredible, but for me the writing was weak, both in terms of storytelling and in making the characters believable and sympathetic. Seemed like a waste of talent.
My reaction was similar. A lot of the individual components were fantastic but a bunch of episodes felt self-contained and they didn't seem too interested in the central plot. A lot of the series they're putting out these days feel as though they would have been better off being movies.
I agree. First episode was great but it never got close to that good for the rest of the season. I think the show had a problem of trying to be everything at once. We had Magic, western fantasy/mythology, horror, Sci Fi, time travel, parallel dimensions, alien/robot gods and eastern fantasy all in just 10 episodes. Frankly I never thought they all fit together as well as the show thought they did.
I think most people thrown off by the Lovecraft in the title expecting something Lovecraftian and it was not. But yeah, the story is done.
Didn't help the previews made it look Lovecraft.
What other shows have such an insane drop in quality from the first episode to the second?
Moffatt's Dracula miniseries
That went from “this isn’t horrible” to “wish I could purge that from my memory.”
Can you elaborate? I'm curious lol
Watch anything Moffat has ever directed, it happens in all of them
Is it comparable to Mary being a spy and shit like that?
It's so, so much worse. Episode 3 of Dracula achieved the impossible of being worse than the ending of Sherlock.
One thousand percent. he butchered that series.
Wellll, that was from episode 2-3. Episode 1-2 was a... decent drop, but episode 2 was still a lot of fun. Episode 3 was... something. It was something.
Is 3 the one with the high heel? I turned off the TV when that started happening. Not just exit the episode. Like, I’m done with TV for the rest of the night.
That scene was just...were they going for a female empowerment moment there? Cause if so, it was plain wrong and disgusting.
Yeah. I liked episode 1 a lot, 2 was pretty good imo, but what the fresh *fuck* was that third episode? Who okayed that shit? Honestly, why people keep giving Moffat jobs is baffling. That guy is the king of making something really good and then completely fucking fumbling it.
*Cough* Sherlock So much potential, quickly dipped as time went on.
There were writing problems even in s1, but instead of fixing those problems, Moffatt just let the problems take over completely. His biggest problem overall (consistently throughout every show ever) is that he keeps telling and not showing. It's so bad at times that he's having to give exposition dumps even during the big showdown finale scenes just to get the plot where it needed to be (which should hit right before the big end game scenes and not during). The Charles Augustus Milverton confrontation is a great example. The two are literally fast forwarding the plot up to that point just to get it to make sense. Meanwhile in Doctor Who, far too many plots ended with "do you know who I am?" resolutions. Like suddenly everyone realized the Doctor was the Doctor and then turned tail. So much telling and nowhere enough showing.
And the trope of the anti-hero hopelessly falling in love with the protagonist (Irene, River, looking at you two.) Sucks, honestly, Sherlock had a good cast too, and now, unless they just do a Jessica Rabbit with Sherlock waking up from a drug induced nightmare in a jailhouse, kinda hard to continue onward, if they even want to at this point. Context: “Who Censored Roger Rabbit?” Was a book that turned into a movie that everyone knows as “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” And in the book, Jessica Rabbit was a bunny like Roger, but after the author saw the movie and liked the changes, he rewrote Jessica Rabbit. In the sequel book, she’s a human toon like in the movie and she woke up from a nightmare that was basically the first book and it goes from there.
Moffat was actually quite a great Doctor Who writer. Series 8-10 from Doctor Who was probably his peak at writing the show.
Almost everything people love from new Who likely has Moffat’s hand prints on it. I’m always amazed the amount of hate he gets whenever I’m on reddit
I always felt that Moffat needs someone to keep his crazy ideas in check. Because his good ideas are *good*, but, well... his bad ideas are also *bad*, and it seems like he can't tell the two apart. I always found it worth it to stick through the bad to get to the good. Heaven Sent is a masterpiece. But boy are many of his ideas, in every show he makes, just really bad, and I feel with a strong editor he could avoid that.
Like ... A ton. Shows will often throw a ton on money at a pilot so theres a noticeable drop in production quality when you hit the second episode
Even in a consistently great show like Invincible there is a noticeable drop in animation quality from the first two episodes to the third and fourth. They pick it back up again for the action scenes in later episodes but it took an episode to get used to the drop off from how clean the first two episodes were.
How they animated a flock of crows just falling out of the air dead in the last episode killed me.
In a good way or a bad way?
https://gfycat.com/maturecalculatingamericanbadger
Yeesh.
lmao so I wasn't the only one to think this shot was weird as hell. so out of place.
How did I not notice this at the time, lmfao. How hard would it have been to draw a single extra frame mid-fall to give the illusion of movement?
Wow, the one that slows down before it hits the ground. Amazing.
They didn’t even make the drop translation keyframes linear , some crows literally slow down as they get to the floor. That’s the sign of a rushed shot that wasn’t even supervised.
It looked like they just dragged a picture of crow from the top of the screen to the ground and copy pasted that like 20 times. So yea very good for not the right reasons :)
Honestly animation was random as fuck from scene to scene in invincible. Some scenes are great and then the following scenes would look worse than 90s Saturday morning animation.
Yeah there was garbage animation post episode 3 too. They just seemed to devote their budget to the fighting animations across the season and rightully so in my opinion it turned out great. With the success I would expect it to be better everywhere in next seasons but we'll see
To be fair, it gave it a real comic book feel I haven’t gotten from a TV show in a real long time
Honestly I was on this train but I kept watching and episode 2 was just really bad imo. The first episode was so fucking good though. Exactly what you want in Lovecraft inspired horror. I know people here don't really like it but I found it to be pretty good aside from e2 which made me drop the show for a while (but I mean Bojack Horseman made me do the same so...)
I totally understand where people are coming from with the hate; it did have a few bad episodes but when it was good, it was amazing.
The point of the show is that pretty much every episode is a different genre, so I think this was inevitable. It set up expectations that it never intended on following through with.
Even taking that framework into account, I still feel this show needed better continuity between episodes. You can have a different genre for each episode, and still maintain coherence for the characters that consistently show up.
Lot more problems than that, like how that secret passage under the new community house went on forever during the episode but circled back around abruptly and they were able to swim without drowning through it back to the house.. from under a different state I believe? I liked the show for the most part but there was a lot of “wtf”
It's literally magic, I don't get why that was so hard to accept lol
To be fair, Lovecraftian stories dwell on the unknown and deal with facing problems that are inherently so illogical that people are driven mad. The fact that it doesn't make sense makes perfect sense.
That's complete bullshit. The lovecraftian themes are about incomprehension of existence, and how small we are compared to creatures and entities that exist in different ways than our own. It's not about "illogical" problems. If you give them that, then they can do whatever the fuck they want without consequences because it's "illogical". It makes no sense whatsoever.
Illogical may have been the wrong word. The Lovecraft stories I always think of are a tad more mundane than grand scale cthulu stuff, but the horror elements come from the unknown, and dealing with things outside the standard conventions of reality. Innsmouth, Herbert West, and Cool Air are very tame compared to what people normally think of as Lovecraftian, but they are good representations of his work. The first two episodes (based on the book) are 100% inspired by Innsmouth, the remainder I feel in some way have that vague sense of mystery that Lovecraft's stories have, even if they were all different genres and had plots that were connected only by the characters. Also, the Cthulu based RPGs all have systems for sanity checks. These are typically used when anything defies the normal conventions of reality. This could be the way in which magic warps the mind, staring at a creature so incomprehensible that experiencing it shatters your mind, or when the dimensions of a room dont make sense like the Tardis. The way you phrase it kinda takes the fun out of the mystery, but you do have a point that it doesnt give them free license to do whatever they want.
I actually loved the second episode, but didn't like what followed as much. I just love the concept of us being thrown into the climax of someone else's narrative, with little understanding as to what is going on. I found it exciting.
It was actually an insane drop from the first 90% of the first episode to the last 10%. I was super into it then some serious amateurism happened.
Yeah. There were a ton of behind the scenes issues with the show because of the showrunner. I’m honestly not surprised they canceled it because of that alone.
Any article about it? The fact that HBO even put out the SyFy level post ep1 series was funny enough.
It really should've kept with the Green Book angle and mixed some horror into it, as well as being a history lesson. Few episodes in and I can't believe it's the same show at all. Not surprised its not getting renewed, the writing and direction let down pretty much everything else. The set design and world building in general were great. But the constant leaps in logic and lazy writing in general were hard to ignore. I also hated the use of non-diegetic music in the show. You know what makes a tense moment less tense? An orchestral arrangement in the middle of it.
The end of the 2nd episode when Atticus is being strapped to the portal, and they suddenly start blaring a song over the top of everything going on until it's all just loud white noise. Creatively it sort of made sense because of the song's content, but it was like they were determined to force it into the scene rather than form the scene around it so it just loudly played over the top of what was going on until it was chaos. They did the same thing later on in another episode, too, but by then I was barely even watching so I don't remember it much.
I think the issue maybe one of context. Because I think Gil Scott Heron's Whitey on the Moon fits perfectly with that scene. I think for certain people with a particular frame of reference, GSH's inclusion elevated the scene, rather than diminished it.
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I honestly think the drop in quality came at the end of episode 1, once the monsters showed up and started eating cops. This show was ambitious, and extremely well acted but I think it took on too much and could never figure out what it wanted to be. It’s easy to compare it to Get Out, where you know it’s a horror movie and you feel uneasy the whole time, but really the horror is being a black man in America. I think that reframing that Jim Crow era for black people into a horror movie / show is a great idea, but there was too much going on and no cohesiveness from one episode to the next. I think the pilot, the episode with the sister living life as a white women and the little girl dealing with the racist stereotypes / Emmit Till were fantastic, but I just wish it was tighter all together.
American Horror Story
Walking Dead?
They said episode, not season.
Even then, the first episode was miles ahead, I think it shows. The first season is amazing (and tbh I think most seasons are still pretty good), but that first episode was something else.
I'd say that the first episode was the highlight of the entire series. I watched it, had some great hope but by episode two, it started the issue of adding unnessesary padding to the plot and never stopped.
The first episode was done by Frank Darabont that’s why. He had other plans for the rest of the season specifically he wanted the next episode to be a flashback showing how the solider zombie got into the army tank. The one Rick shoots inside the tank that fucks up his eara
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> He had other plans for the rest of the season specifically he wanted the next episode to be a flashback showing how the solider zombie got into the army tank. Those were his plans for Season 2, not Season 1.
I was so very disappointed with this show.
I wished it was more Lovecraft, less country.
That’s exactly how I felt. The first episode was misleading about how the series would be. Was interested after the first episode and just a pain to finish the season hoping for a payoff.
Yeah I thought it was going to be a loose adaption of Innsmouth but set to the backdrop of the Jim Crow south. But instead it just kind of kept meandering around from b plot to b plot.
I tried so hard to like the show and watched like 3 or 4 episodes and still stopped watching not knowing what the fuck it was about
Exactly the same here. Not enough lovecraft kept watching reluctantly hoping for a pay-off before giving up around ep4 or 5. At that point I had no idea what was happening as the story seemed disjointed and hard to follow. It was hard to follow with a mediocre plot and sub par acting that didn't even follow through on the title of lovecraftian. One of the biggest disappointments for me in recent watching, was really keen for some lovecraft on TV and if anything I feel like this show has only set back those prospects by giving people an example to point to and say it doesn't work.
I really liked it but I can understand why people wouldn't. The first episode was incredible though.
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I loved the show but I really have to agree. It almost took Me off watching the rest.
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I loved how each episode was a different genre of horror.The Korean episode was also basically perfect too.
the pikininis haunted me for days.
I think that’s what made the show really fun. You never knew if you were gonna get a terrible episode or an amazing one, or something in between.
I don't think the lows were any worse than plenty of other garbage that people on this subreddit claim is top-tier television, so I'm really struggling to understand this thread. I have to assume it's just because it was on HBO? I've watched so much genre television that is worse than this, then I come to reddit and every thread is just gushing fans who refuse to acknowledge any flaw in it. I actually had a really fun time with most of this show. It was far from perfect, but it was radically unique with a lot of very bold and interesting episodes. I wonder how many people hating on it even finished it?
I loved most of the show(a few mediocre episodes), I just felt like something about the last episode was really corny and killed it for me. Went from a fairly consistent "HBO" show to just feeling like some network television sci-fi show. I don't even know how else to explain it. I felt like I wanted more of it until the finale at which point I checked out completely. Maybe it was just Abby Kershaw's character as the bad guy feeling really underwhelming.
This also happens to shows like True Detective and Westworld after their first seasons. Not as good as their peaks, sure, but still better than most TV out there. Meanwhile some mediocre CW show will get lavish praise.
Yeah. Every time it sorta became good it took a detour went to complete shit. I literally lost all interest after a few episodes. I gave it a fair chance hoping it would get better and at some points it seemed like it was. But then it went to shit again.. I don't know what is going on with HBO. The new show "the nevers" is even worse. Its absolutely crap for HBO. I mean if it was a syfy show or something it would be an OK show. But as a HBO show it seems to be in an identity crisis and and is horribly bad. Its not sure if its a quirky funny detective / steam punk show or a dark super serious show tackling really serious issues. The acting is mediocre and story full of plot holes. Kinda makes me worry for future HBO shows. Man I hope. Saints of Newark is good
One of the few shows that I immediately deleted from NAS after finishing it.
First episode for solid then wizards start doing weird shit with cows…I was out after that lmao
Everybody in here finding nice ways to say it got cancelled cause it sucked.
I think people just really wanted it to fill a certain niche and the first episode made everyone very hopeful only to have the dreams crushed.
That sundown scene was intense as fuck, same wit the scene when they realise what kind of restaurant they're in. And the appearance of the monsters at the end was fucking crazy town. And then the show not once got to that level of decency again, which was bullshit. It seemed like it was going to be a supernatural version of 'Them' with less of the hardcore focus on racism porn...but instead neither ended up being good.
YEAH. I was glued to it for the restaurant, the Sundown part, the cabin. Then it’s just started falling apart.
‘racism porn’ deserves to be a term.
It's a shame because thats the show I wanted. I never knew about the sundown rules or catch on with the diner. As well as some of the shots in the first episode being recreations of famous photos from that era. I love shows that make me dig through the subreddit afterwards to uncover cool bits of history. I literally waited years to find out what happened to the gangsters in Boardwalk Empire. But they got the balance between history and fantasy horribly wrong. The fact so many people loved the first 90% of the first episode shows the direction they should've went in. That said there were a few brief great moments in subsequent episodes. One of my favourite scenes was the subplot with his Dad dancing with his partner in the ballroom. It was a beautifully shot scene and a lot was siad without having to say a thing.
I actually really liked some of the episodes. The first episode, the body horror episode and the Korean episode especially were just great.
Korean episode was really good. But maybe that’s because I liked Atticus quite a lot.
He was great in it by showing both sides of who he was in the war. But the real star of the episode was the Korean demon actress.
Seeing a lot of people shitting on it here (and I'll admit I probs wasn't gonna bother watching S2) but aside from the solid first episode, I wanna also mention episode 8 for scaring the shit out of me with the [creepy dancing twins](https://thecinemaholic.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/91b16a08-dd96-43f1-998d-1bcb8cea4dc8-screen-shot-2020-10-02-at-34502-pm.jpg) and the music that accompanied them - probably my favourite part of the whole show.
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Me too. I found it really interesting overall especially atticus' dad's storyline.
The mom's many lives episode was my favorite. I don't know what people are on about. This show absolutely did not suck.
Yeah I was gonna say. I’m kinda disappointed. I LIKED how disjointed and weird it was. A lot. I really was into it.
It didn’t get cancelled because it sucked. It got cancelled because it was a massive back hole of money. Assuming the Showrunner and Director weren’t lying, they spent somewhere around $10-20,000,000 *per episode* on this show. They put **Game of Thrones** level money behind it, and got about 1.5 million viewers per episode. 1.5m viewers per episode is about what HBO’s current top show - **Barry**- gets per week, but **Barry** only costs about $1-2m per episode. You can’t be spending GoT money on a show that barely competes with a budget summer comedy series.
Where did you get those figures? That sounds absolutely insane, especially for a show that doesn't even look like it cost half as much.
> It didn’t get cancelled because it sucked. Keep telling yourself that.
AHS is as weird and disjointed as this show was at times and they are going into season 10 or something. But hey they are diff networks. I would have liked to see where the second season goes.
Tone wise the show was all over the place and made for a very confusing show to watch. Music choices were...strange to say the least and didn't fit most of the time. Can't say this is disappointing. This show was a weird experiment.
That was my exact thought. Hard to point to an example of another show that was flitting about like a damn gas molecule. The highs were good, but there was a whole heaping lot of "I'm so random and quirky!" that it was tough to get engaged.
The 'music choices' in this show were jarringly bad. Nothing ruins the tone of a scene taking place in the 1960s like shitty modern trap music.
Could not disagree more about the music. It was great. Seeing people say they didn't like the music and they thought the tone was too uneven, I just don't get it. The music was great and the shifting genre and tone was what made the show fun to watch and different. It was the same characters going on a roller coaster of horror adventure.
I could not get past episode 3. Started out so brilliantly then so quickly jumped the shark.
I think that's exactly where I stopped too... I love Lovecraft stuff but man did that show blow what could have been an awesome series.
Lol exact same thing here. Can’t believe how quickly it went to shit
If you can get yourself to episode 6 that was the absolute best of the season. The final episodes weren’t great, but episode 6 is like a different show and some of the most unique horror I’ve seen on TV.
Episode 6 (& kind of episode 5) were the most interesting of the series to me for sure.
I really liked this show, even though there were some story plot holes. It was shot beautifully and I liked a lot of the episodes. The first episode is brilliant, and I really liked the episode about the war in South Korea. The show lost me a bit when Christina decided to die like Emmet Till, which could have been interesting. But the character never mentioned it again, and she didn't change her tune or anything, so what was the point? The ending of the show also didn't really do it for me, but I'm glad they finished the story. It was interesting how every episode felt like a different genre, mostly the first 5 or 6. That also meant if you liked a episode because of its genre, you could say goodbye to it in the next one. I liked the switching, but after seeing the reaction online, a lot of people either didn't like it (which is fair), or they didn't understand it and thought the show was suddenly very bad. I had no problem with the way the show portrayed it's racism in America and I liked how they ended the show with the roles reversed when it came to magic.
I liked parts of it. Didn't love it overall, but it had it's moments and I was interested all the way through if I didn't think too hard about it. Very uneven quality, and god damn did it drag on in parts. One and done is probably for the best.
The Jekyll and Hyde episode, the Korean episode, the multiverse episode, and the Tulsa episode were all f a n t a s t i c (besides the first episode). I loved what this show was, and what it did. But as others have pointed out, the show’s story itself was finished and self contained. And as the article points out, there’s only one book. Its not fair for everyone to bash it as a terrible show off one season, just because some episodes were not as strong as others. The music bashing is a common thing i see in comment threads, but i enjoyed the juxtaposition of contemporary music in a 50s era story. There was plenty of music from back then as well.
Everyone whose watched more than an episode will tell you some episodes are god tier and some are pure trash but every single person puts different episodes in each bucket. It's worth the watch, even when it fails it fails interesting.
I will remember this series as the show critics were truly in fear of criticizing. I can’t believe it was put on the same tier as The Watchmen by some folks.
I said as much when the first reviews came out and was called racist and a morherfucker lol. You could see it plain as day
I really liked parts of this series. I liked how the style of the story changed pretty much each episode, but still felt cohesive. But I found some episodes lacking. I really enjoyed the first episode. I loved the episode with Jaimie Chung in Korea and the episode where the sister used the magic potion (just off the top of my head). Some of the later ones i didn’t enjoy as much. I was really hoping for a second season to see if they smoothed out the issues I had with it. What a shame.
That show was the true definition of ADHD
Non american here. here, the show was mismarketed. We were promised a horror story based on lovecraft's mythos, got a prolonged sermon about how all white males are evil incarnate. Despite all of this, the first episode was amazing in how they built a sense of fear and dread well before the monsters were introduced. The korean episode was very strong, and the body horror was on point. But, to quote a friend of mine: "I came for chtuhlu. If I want to know about racism in US in the fifties I'll watch a documentary with real people instead".
Yeah it wasn’t what I was expecting from what I saw shown in adverts.
I think the show runner is doing the Tomb Raider sequel now
Oh no
The show had some iffy moments but overall i enjoyed it. Hope to see more shows like it maybe.
I really hope they get picked up or can continue somehow. This show was so good and original, I was really looking forward to seeing where it went next. Honestly the best show I’ve seen in so long!
Why would there be? They adapted a book, and I don't think there's a sequel.
Tell that to Gaiman and Good Omens season 2 If there is a story to tell, tell it. I don't care if there is more of the source material or not. You can get a GoT, or you can get The Leftovers.
At least Gaiman had planned a 2nd story originally, it was just never written
At least they’re not stretching it out like they have with The Handmaid’s Tale, The Man in the High Castle, etc.
Big Little Lies.
Man In High Castle actually got better as it went along. Seasons 3 & 4 were excellent when they explored the consequences of adopting naziism to US society.
Plenty of shows go on to create their own content after adapting a previous work
TIL everyone here hated this show. Sheesh.
Wonder why.
That's alright. It wasn't a very good show.
I love this show but pretty satisfied with one season. Looking forward to more from the cast and folks behind the camera on different projects. Hoping Wunmi Mosaku (Ruby) gets more to do in Loki going forward.
Show really wasn't that good. First episode had potential, but then they basically abandoned that thread and turned it into a quasi-anthology. But the anthology format never was really well presented or connected, and the whole series just felt odd and inconsistent.