Tim McD
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Posts posted by Tim McD
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On 1/24/2019 at 5:05 PM, millennium said:
More disquieting though is the sharp decline in story quality and production values that followed in Season 6. The show has a much different feel and not merely because Richard Thomas is absent. The stories seem painfully contrived as the Walton home is no longer the scene of family drama as much as a venue for other people's drama -- and often at the expense of credibility. Yesterday I watched one of the most preposterous stories thus far: an elderly Indian and his grandson arrive to lay claim to an old Indian burial ground beneath the Walton's barn.
The show definitely went into decline after the triple whammy of Richard Thomas leaving, Ellen Corby's stroke (which pretty much took her off the show) and Will Geer's death. The focus of most of the storylines were switched over to the siblings, which was unfortunate because those actors weren't very good or charismatic. Several episodes were absolute disasters, such as the one mentioned above or "The Changeling," otherwise known as the infamous Waltons poltergeist episode. Having said all that, the first 5 seasons, especially seasons 1 and 2, was some of the best drama on 1970s TV.
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Has Alton always been this dickish? How awful. He's trying to pull off a Letterman-type thing but it ain't working, he's just making himself look like an ass. Appropriately, Maneet and Marcus were giving off major negative vibes around him. They didn't seem very chummy with him like they are with the other judges, and who can blame them?
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Great show and phenomenal actors but I roll my eyes at how omnipotent the villians are in this series. They can do anything they want, and it's never explained how they did it. For instance they:
- Acquired hydrogen chloride gas.
- Knew how to pump the gas into the truck.
- Knew how to pump the gas into the truck at a rate where it wouldn't kill everyone right away.
- Knew how to build a collar bomb.
- Knew how to set up a dedicated web cam which could only be seen on a specific laptop.
- Broke into the flat to set up the web cam without getting caught.
- Despite Anton being of slight build they managed to overpower and kidnap 11 people and force them into the truck.
- Snuck into a house during the night while the adults slept, deposited several kids there, then drugged and removed the kids that lived there without waking anyone.
And that's just season 3!
Note: I see that krankydoodle addressed some of these points in the post above mine, apologies.
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Did Macmillan actually attend a performance of Beyond the Fringe, and did the cast really mock him from the stage? I've been unable to find anything definite on that.
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Hagoo? Really?
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Accents were all over the place. The German chancellor sounded vaguely French/German/generic-European and the Greek minister sounded Russian.
POTUS' son is a junkie and he looks like that? Where can I score some horse?
I like how the show is evolving and how the SoS staff has become a part-time comedy troupe; maybe not realistic but entertaining. Speaking of which what happened to John Pankow? I thought he was romancing Bebe. I love that guy!
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I'm in the minority I guess. I loved this show and hated to see it end. There is one thing we can all agree on though; Richie's art show photographs were terrible.
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It's weird to see the opening credits of the later episodes and the first credit says "Starring Jon Walmsley." To paraphrase MST3K, can anything really be starring Jon Walmsley?
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I keep wanting Lady Edith to pop into Selfridge's for some clothes for Marigold while she's in London.
Downton Abbey left off in 1924 and Mr. Selfridge is currently set in 1918 which was where DA was in their second season. It would be more accurate (and highly weird) if not-dead-yet Sybil strolled into the store.
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That Corabeth could be one hot tamale. Remember when she wanted to get all sexed up with Reverend Donny Osmond? Ugh, season 6 is awful.
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Why was Hector texting a picture of a duck in a hard hat to Connie? Must be code for something.
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Frank has got to be the world's most virile stud. Here he is, utterly defeated, in a state of complete emotional collapse, weeping on the floor, and Claire walks in and in the space of no more than 20 seconds he manages to get horny, achieve an erection and have intercourse. Either that or he was blubbering on the floor with a raging hard-on all ready to go.
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I liked it. There I said it. A great cast and while the characters' behavior is awful at first, there seems to be a promise of redemption (I haven't seen the Aussie original). I think the idea of a singular action setting off a chain-reaction of events is interesting. I really like Thomas Sadoski, I hope his story gets a lot of attention.
I'm also intrigued by the kid with the camera. Did he snap an image of Hector and the babysitter making goo-goo eyes at each other under the stairs? And was he flirting with Hector when he told him he had a nice smile?
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What happened to Curt's parents? No mention of them when John Curtis was born or when Curt was supposedly killed at Pearl Harbor.
They reside inside the walls in the 4th dimension, along with Olivia's family and Chuck Cunningham.
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Him and Ike got drunk at the Doo-Drop and fell into Drucilla's pond on the way home too..
I kind of like the idea of The Waltons evolving into a recipe-soaked Depression era version of Absolutely Fabulous, only with John and Ike replacing Eddie and Patsy.
If the show was rebooted for today, the Baldwin sisters would be oblivious purveyors of weed, thinking it was some kind of herbal tobacco hybrid.
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Yesterday, I saw one where Cora Beth was drinking too much...
Doesn't John admit to a past drinking problem in that one or am I confusing it with a Little House episode? Kind of weird when you remember that he spent an evening sloshing champagne with his loser World War I buddy AND he came home tipsy that one time when he went to the Dew Drop Inn with Merle Haggard.
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I love that the SoS is often seen snoozing in her office, which totally makes sense due to all the jet lag. Nice detail!
The Ira Buchman/Lilith Sternen-Crane romance can't happen fast enough.
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I know what you mean in regards to TCC being contrived but so many Waltons episodes were when involving a character who wasn't from "the mountain". A famous actress gets stranded while motoring by, carnival people conveniently stranded nearby, etc.
Some contrivances are worse than others. You're right about The Actress, how the hell does someone set out from Atlanta to NYC and end up in the Blue Ridge Mountains? And the less said about The Gypsies the better. But some work out pretty well, like The Five Foot Shelf with the traveling encyclopedia salesman or The Literary Man.
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The prison break was preposterous, as is the idea of a right-wing militia even having a chopper. You can't just fly into Mexico without raising alarms on both sides of the border.
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Michelle Dockery and Jim Carter had good supporting roles in the superb miniseries Cranford.
Kevin Doyle (Molesley) played a doomed, gambling-addicted math teacher in an episode of Foyle's War.
Harriet Walter (Lady Shackleton) was not at all nice in Emma Thompson's Sense & Sensibility.
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The Children's Carol is way too contrived for me. Reminds me of the episode The Seashore; Earl Hamner just stone cold throwing random British war orphans around to get WWII story lines into the show. And while it's totally likely the Walton kids could assemble a crystal radio kit from spare parts, please don't try to sell me Jim-Bob building a fully functional ham radio in the same fashion AND locating the kids' mother in London during the Blitz. NO.
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I'm probably in the minority but I can't bring myself to care about the siblings that much; it doesn't help that the actors playing them were not very good and had zero charisma. The exit of Richard Thomas + Ellen Corby's stroke + death of Will Geer effectively killed the show.
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At the end of The Fightin' Reverend we see him limping after the beating he took during the match. Do boxers often hurt their legs during bouts?
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Patricia Neal was pretty bad but even more bizarre was Andrew Duggan as John Walton, complete with hideous red fright-wig.
The Homecoming was meant as a stand alone. It was so popular that the series was conceived.
This is interesting from Wikipedia's entry on the networks' "rural purge" of the early 70s:
Several members of Congress expressed displeasure at some of the replacement shows, many of which (especially the more socially conscious shows such as All in the Family) were not particularly family-friendly. The backlash from the purge prompted CBS to commission, perhaps somewhat facetiously, a rural family drama for its fall 1972 schedule, but the network scheduled it in what it thought would be a death slot against popular series The Flip Wilson Show and The Mod Squad, allegedly hoping the show would underperform and head to a quick cancellation. Instead, The Waltons went on to run for nine seasons, reaching as high as second in the Nielsens and finishing in the top thirty shows for seven of its nine years on air.
Downton Abbey - General Discussion
in Downton Abbey
· Edited by Tim McD
typo
When Rose is cavorting with the married guy at the Blue Dragon jazz club in episode 8 of season 3, I noticed a number of the men in the club were clearly wearing eye makeup. Was this the fashion in London in the 1920s? I've poked around online and can't find any definite info.