What An Idiot: Stupid TV Moments

[Zella]

On 3/18/2024 at 11:13 AM, Notabug said:

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers was way too short to play the 6'2" or better king. 

Yes and I've never been able to get over one of the most famously redheaded persons in history being a brunette. They didn't even try. LOL

5 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

I couldn't make it through the first episode when they had Henry VIII's uncle killed

I have occasionally thought about watching it, but because of my complaints about the Henry casting, I never can bring myself to start it. 

[AgathaC]

Back when I reviewed TV shows for work, I had to watch this one. But as a history nerd, it made me ultra-twitchy. I can’t turn off that history major side of my brain.

Reminds me of how, in college, we watched Disney’s Pocahontas and analyzed the differences between the movie and reality. Next time I went home, I subjected my then-7-year-old sister to a lecture on its various and egregious inaccuracies. When my parents took her to Disney World some time later, she refused to go to the live Pocahontas show, loudly proclaiming “It’s not historically accurate!” My dad thought the Disney police would show up to arrest them. I was so proud.

Anyway, I can understand needing to make adjustments for the screen. But when they don’t bother to try, or change things that don’t need to be altered, it pisses me off.

Edited March 21 by AgathaC

[proserpina65]

On 3/20/2024 at 5:57 AM, andromeda331 said:

I couldn't make it through the first episode when they had Henry VIII's uncle killed. What uncle? His only uncles were the princes in the Tower.

Especially since since the fictional uncle was more dynamic in his five minutes of screen time than Jonathan Rhys Meyers' lackluster Henry was in the entire first season.  Which is when I stopped watching; I only stayed that long for Maria Doyle Kennedy's magnificent Catherine of Aragon anyway.  Well, her and Jeremy Northam.

Yeah, basically Jonathan Rhys Meyers was horribly miscast and I gave up after the first season because of him.

[ABay]

It did have a good opening theme and credits, I thought. The rest was terrible, especially the miscasting of the lead. I was only there for Jeremy Northam and left when he did.

[Zella]

3 hours ago, proserpina65 said:

I only stayed that long for Maria Doyle Kennedy's magnificent Catherine of Aragon anyway. 

That's what really bums me out. I really do like her and some of the other cast members, and I probably would enjoy them if I watched. But not at the cost of JRM's Henry!

[Haleth]

On 3/20/2024 at 11:31 AM, Zella said:

have occasionally thought about watching it, but because of my complaints about the Henry casting, I never can bring myself to start it. 

You and me both. I love historical drama and can handwave some um, dramatic misinformation, but the terrible casting of a small, skinny, dark actor as the strong, athletic, tall, and yes, red headed Henry was too far fetched. 

[Zella]

33 minutes ago, Haleth said:

You and me both. I love historical drama and can handwave some um, dramatic misinformation, but the terrible casting of a small, skinny, dark actor as the strong, athletic, tall, and yes, red headed Henry was too far fetched. 

Wolf Hall won me over immediately with Damien Lewis as Henry for that reason. LOL 

[Haleth]

I loved Wolf Hall. Did you know they are filming the third book?

[Zella]

2 hours ago, Haleth said:

I loved Wolf Hall. Did you know they are filming the third book?

Yes! I am so excited to finally see the next season and glad they're able to bring both Rylance and Lewis back! 

[Blergh]

Here's one from Little House on the Prairie:

After Nellie permanently departs for NYC with her husband Percival Dalton/Isaac Cohen and their baby twins, Harriet Oleson gets a major depression to the point of taking to her bed for two weeks straight.

Everyone is worried about her so what does Charles do? He gets the 'brilliant' idea to try to cheer her up by reminding her how his life was made better after he adopted Cassandra [really?] and urged her to see about adopting another child to cheer her up!

In no time flat, Harriet and Nels are at an  orphanage interviewing 'replacement' daughters but none of the well-behaved and docile residents spark her interest.  That is until she gets wind of the orphanage bully Nancy who constantly wreaks havoc on all the other residents and even the caregivers. Harriet at once insists that THIS would be the perfect Nellie-replacement! And the die is cast!

Considering ALL the trouble Charles, Laura and the REST of the Ingalls family had had to endure from the premarital Nellie, did Charles truly imagine that Harriet would want a well-behaved child and/or not try to seek out ANOTHER bully who'd wreak havoc on the Ingallses?

Yeah, Charles not only shot himself in the foot sticking his nose into Harriet's business  and setting the stage for the Nancy trainwreck but also wound up hobbling virtually everyone else in Walnut Grove via that ill-fated shot! D'uh!

[Spartan Girl]

11 hours ago, Blergh said:

In no time flat, Harriet and Nels are at an  orphanage interviewing 'replacement' daughters but none of the well-behaved and docile residents spark her interest.  That is until she gets wind of the orphanage bully Nancy who constantly wreaks havoc on all the other residents and even the caregivers. Harriet at once insists that THIS would be the perfect Nellie-replacement! And the die is cast!

Considering ALL the trouble Charles, Laura and the REST of the Ingalls family had had to endure from the premarital Nellie, did Charles truly imagine that Harriet would want a well-behaved child and/or not try to seek out ANOTHER bully who'd wreak havoc on the Ingallses?

Jesus Christ, I don’t know who was more stupid: Charles for meddling and Harriet for deliberately picking the orphanage bully. Whether it was the “I can fix her” mentality or just the warped need to replace Nellie just to make herself feel better, this was clearly a woman that shouldn’t have kids!

[Blergh]

18 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

Jesus Christ, I don’t know who was more stupid: Charles for meddling and Harriet for deliberately picking the orphanage bully. Whether it was the “I can fix her” mentality or just the warped need to replace Nellie just to make herself feel better, this was clearly a woman that shouldn’t have kids!

It was definitely the latter! I mean, Harriet even fessed up to Nancy first thing that she KNEW that the reason Nellie was disliked was because she [Harriet] had raised her to be spoiled and mean yet Harriet ALSO wanted to raise Nancy the SAME way despite knowing how friendless her own daughter had wound up before her marriage! As soon as they brought Nancy home Harriet put her in Nellie's frocks (and the producers went so far as to put the young performer in Alison Arngrim's own specially made wig) then eagerly rubbed everyone's face re her 'new Nellie'!  The only problem Harriet has with Nancy is when she found out that Nancy lied about her bio mom having abused her since the poor woman had died giving birth to her and so Harriet dunked Nancy in a dunk tank [Laura's idea] for having lied about her background. ..somehow that was a mortal sin. Yet Nancy had tricked another girl into  getting locked in an ice house [because she loathed others paying attention to this other girl] and only because someone checked the ice house and found her in time before she succumbed to exposure that the other girl hadn't gotten murdered!  Yet NO ONE so much as mentioned that much less attempted to punish Nancy for it- just having lied about having been abused by her mother who'd died in childbirth.

All-in-all, they should have just gotten Harriet a mannequin dress-up doll . .

And, just in case, even the dimmest viewers missed Harriet's (and the show's) MO, Nancy's intro episode was entitled 'The Reincarnation of Nellie'- yep, even though Nellie had just moved to NYC instead of getting her reward!

Edited March 30 by Blergh

[Spartan Girl]

If I may go back to The Tudors and the Katherine Howard storyline, but Henry’s shock that Katherine wasn’t his virginal rose makes him out to be a huge idiot. Dude, on the first night you met, you watched her put on that big show of rubbing his ring against her naked leg and under her skirt…you seriously thought a girl like “innocent in the ways of men?!

But once again, that was the fault on the writers. Because most other versions had Katherine at least act demurely instead of a medieval hooker.

[Blergh]

Of course, it needs to be mentioned that Henry VIII himself was no 'rose' himself but a 50-something gout-hobbled grossly overweight man whose leg wounds could be smelt three rooms away [in a time and place of irregular bathing,etc.] . I've often thought he was so enthralled with the idea of getting to wed this teenaged girl that he didn't check the sheets,etc. too carefully to see if she'd been chaste beforehand.

On a tragic note, there's strong historic evidence that young Lady Catherine had experienced SA as a very young girl at the hands of male cousins and their cronies growing up in her rather detached grandmother's abode.

IOW,considering ALL the above, the writers REALLY blew the chance to accurately depict Henry's doomed 5th union.

Edited April 3 by Blergh

[andromeda331]

4 hours ago, Blergh said:

On a tragic note, there's strong historic evidence that young Lady Catherine had experienced SA as a very young girl at the hands of male cousins and their cronies growing up in her rather detached grandmother's abode.

That's what I've heard too. 

[Spartan Girl]

6 hours ago, Blergh said:

On a tragic note, there's strong historic evidence that young Lady Catherine had experienced SA as a very young girl at the hands of male cousins and their cronies growing up in her rather detached grandmother's abode.

Oh yes, I know all that. That’s why I can’t judge her too harshly.

Yes, it WOULD have been nice if the show had depicted it more accurately, wouldn’t it?

[Notabug]

3 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

Oh yes, I know all that. That’s why I can’t judge her too harshly.

Yes, it WOULD have been nice if the show had depicted it more accurately, wouldn’t it?

It also would've been far more interesting to me, anyway, if they'd given the story the layers and nuance that the actual history provides rather than the misguided Lolita they presented as the Rose without a Thorn.

[proserpina65]

16 hours ago, Blergh said:

On a tragic note, there's strong historic evidence that young Lady Catherine had experienced SA as a very young girl at the hands of male cousins and their cronies growing up in her rather detached grandmother's abode.

The evidence on that is actually sketchy, but it is possible.  It's also possible that she was sexually precocious without ever having been abused by anyone.  Either way, she was something of a fool to not realize her lack of virginity might be a problem and that having an affair with someone else was incredibly stupid, given what had happened to her cousin.  But at least in every other dramatization of her story I've ever seen, she didn't act like a medieval hooker, unlike in The Tudors.

[Notabug]

On 4/3/2024 at 3:58 PM, proserpina65 said:

The evidence on that is actually sketchy, but it is possible.  It's also possible that she was sexually precocious without ever having been abused by anyone.  Either way, she was something of a fool to not realize her lack of virginity might be a problem and that having an affair with someone else was incredibly stupid, given what had happened to her cousin.  But at least in every other dramatization of her story I've ever seen, she didn't act like a medieval hooker, unlike in The Tudors.

There is also speculation that Henry had performance issues (seems pretty likely at that point) and the marriage to the teenaged Katherine Howard was supposed to resurrect him, so to speak, and allow him to produce another son in case something happened to Edward.  Henry's bastard son, Henry FitzRoy, who was seemingly far more robust than Edward, had died in his teens just a few years earlier.  With only a single son, there was still a reasonable chance that Henry wouldn't have a male heir to carry on after his death and continue the Tudor line, which is exactly what happened.

The Howard family were big time schemers, always trying to stay in the King's good graces and maintain their standing in society.  Since Katherine had been raised by them, it is not unlikely that she knew how important it was that she have a son, she was Anne Boleyn's cousin after all.  That being the case, presuming Henry wasn't doing his thing in bed, Katherine may not have been such a fool, but rather desperate to get pregnant ASAP.  If Henry couldn't do the deed, she needed to find someone who could.  And her Howard relatives were probably more than happy to facilitate those activities and probably didn't discourage her from them.  Since it was the Howards themselves who pushed her for marriage to Henry as a spotless virgin, despite knowing that she was not; she may have felt cornered into following their script; just as the Boleyn daughters had before her.  The Howards were the ones who proclaimed her The Rose without a Thorn, after all.  They had no problem throwing Anne to the wolves, they seemed to consider girl children to be disposable and had no problem casting them aside when needed.  Katherine had to have been aware of all that and it may well have played a part in her indiscretions.'

Personally, I think Katherine Howard was mainly a victim of her times and her family's complete indifference to the well-being of the female members and willingness to sacrifice them as needed to advance themselves.

Edited April 4 by Notabug

[Blergh]

OK, on a somewhat lighter note:

Good Times (1974-1979) break out character J.J. (Jimmie Walker) didn't have the sharp intellect of his younger sibs Thelma or Michael but even so, it's hard to believe he could be so dense even when the family was depending on him.

Case in point in 'The Mural' (Season Three) , in order for Thelma to obtain the $200 needed for college (scholarship included [can you BEAT that price even in the mid 70's?!], J.J. agreed to paint a mural at a bank for $250. He and the rest of the family smugly predicted that this was going to lead to future fame and glory. Now, since this was a commission that he was doing at the behest of a patron (specifically the bank president) one would think J.J. would check his ego at the door long enough to paint something apt for a bank [e.g. a mural of multicultural patrons in suits and uniforms in line at the bank to help fulfill their goals] but instead he painted a rather raucous match at a pool hall which prompted the bank president to attempt to refuse to pay him. Incredibly, not just J.J. but his entire family (Willona included) took umbrage at the mural not being adored- as though the bank president was being totally unfair, square . .etc. for not being crazy about the mural's subject matter but surely they'd all seen the inside of bank lobbies before this and on what planet would that painting have been suitable for that particular venue? If this had been  a pool hall, SURE but this was a BANK!  Finally, after James threatened physical harm to the bank president [?!], the bank president agreed to pay the monies to J.J. as he had agreed to but they all seemed rather put out that the mural was still going to be painted over.  OK, since the bank president initially HAD agreed to pay J.J. the money [and it was for a worthy cause], I get that that was fair. However, J.J. would have done well to learn the phrase 'when in Rome' [AKA  banks AREN'T  pool halls] when accepting a commission [especially when working to help his sister with her education] instead of going rogue first thing!

Edited April 5 by Blergh

[Mabinogia]

I totally agree. I get that it is hard for creative types to put aside their own "vision" to cater to their client's tastes, but that is what you have to do when someone is paying you. It is the one thing that has always held me back from "doing what I love" for a job. 

I love writing, do it all the time, but I know that I would love it less if I had someone telling me what to write or to change parts of my stories that I really care about. But as someone who likes having a somewhat comfortable life, I know that if I wrote for money, I'd have to "give the people what they want". 

I think that, because I think that way, characters like JJ who just do whatever they want and expect others to love it and think they are great annoy me to know end. That's just not how life works. 

That he was trying to get money to help his sister just makes it more annoying. I get it, being poor and having to make compromises and sacrifice's sucks, but that's life. It was also very shortsighted. 

If JJ made a mural the bank liked, they would have kept it up, more people would have seen it, they might have asked him to do another, or recommend him to other companies. He shot himself in the food by not understanding his clients needs. Of course this is the same dude who walked around saying DYNOMIIIITE all the time so, I guess it makes sense. (He was my least favorite character on that show so I'm a bit biased against him).

[andromeda331]

9 hours ago, Notabug said:

There is also speculation that Henry had performance issues (seems pretty likely at that point) and the marriage to the teenaged Katherine Howard was supposed to resurrect him, so to speak, and allow him to produce another son in case something happened to Edward.  Henry's bastard son, Henry FitzRoy, who was seemingly far more robust than Edward, had died in his teens just a few years earlier.  With only a single son, there was still a reasonable chance that Henry wouldn't have a male heir to carry on after his death and continue the Tudor line, which is exactly what happened.

Oh he was definitely no longer able to father a child. Considering that Katherine Parr got pregnant by her next husband Thomas Seymour. Clearly she wasn't the problem.

Quote

Personally, I think Katherine Howard was mainly a victim of her times and her family's complete indifference to the well-being of the female members and willingness to sacrifice them as needed to advance themselves.

I agree. Royal and noble families had no problem throwing their daughters to the wolfs. You would think after Anne's beheading families would be more hesitate to throw their daughters' at Henry. Nope. Katherine Parr almost met the same fate because she dared to question Henry but she managed to talk her way out of it. Luckily for her he died. 

[Blergh]

8 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

I totally agree. I get that it is hard for creative types to put aside their own "vision" to cater to their client's tastes, but that is what you have to do when someone is paying you. It is the one thing that has always held me back from "doing what I love" for a job. 

I love writing, do it all the time, but I know that I would love it less if I had someone telling me what to write or to change parts of my stories that I really care about. But as someone who likes having a somewhat comfortable life, I know that if I wrote for money, I'd have to "give the people what they want". 

I think that, because I think that way, characters like JJ who just do whatever they want and expect others to love it and think they are great annoy me to know end. That's just not how life works. 

That he was trying to get money to help his sister just makes it more annoying. I get it, being poor and having to make compromises and sacrifice's sucks, but that's life. It was also very shortsighted. 

If JJ made a mural the bank liked, they would have kept it up, more people would have seen it, they might have asked him to do another, or recommend him to other companies. He shot himself in the food by not understanding his clients needs. Of course this is the same dude who walked around saying DYNOMIIIITE all the time so, I guess it makes sense. (He was my least favorite character on that show so I'm a bit biased against him).

Oh, I agree with ALL the above! Yeah, it would be great if there were steady jobs out there where one could be guaranteed of being paid to 'do your own thing' while completely disregarding any expectations of patrons/bosses,etc. but that's not reality.

 Yeah, J.J. truly shot himself in the foot (and the food) via not making even the slightest effort to consider what MIGHT have been apt subject matter for a bank lobby which could have led him to be put on the 'art map' far beyond his housing project neighborhood.

I also agree that he  was often a rather annoying character who was only tolerable when his bragging,etc. backfired on him. I also thought he often was needlessly antagonistic towards Thelma- to say nothing of often being needlessly flippant to James [not that James himself was the most levelheaded or even tempered character but still. . .].

[proserpina65]

On 4/4/2024 at 5:16 PM, Notabug said:

Personally, I think Katherine Howard was mainly a victim of her times and her family's complete indifference to the well-being of the female members and willingness to sacrifice them as needed to advance themselves.

I agree that she was to a certain extent.  She was also foolish.  It was all a pretty fucked up situation.