S01.E01: The Chosen One

[paulvdb]

Quote

Czar Nicholas II takes the Russian throne in 1894 and rejects modern ideas to embrace a pure autocracy. Tragedy marks his coronation day.

[formerlyfreedom]

Hmm. Interesting way of designing this. Not entirely sure yet how I feel about the talking heads interspersed with the dramatic portions. My major was history, specializing in early 20th century Russian history, so the talking heads are my jam, and the acting isn't awful? But I'm not sure if it will work throughout. I guess we'll see!

[maggiegil]

I was watching the first episode where Nicholas and Alexandra were getting intimate and I was like "how lazy, the actor has a tattoo on his arm that they didn't cover up". Only to google it and discover that he actually did get a tattoo when he went to Japan on a visit (https://www.slavorum.org/nicholas-ii-the-tsar-with-the-dragon-tattoo/).

It added another element to his attempts to invade Japan later I thought. Also there was an assassination attempt when he was in Japan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ōtsu_incident)

I feel like I've seen quite a lot of documentaries about Nicholas II and they all focus on not being able to have a son for years, Rasputin, revolution and death.

[biakbiak]

5 hours ago, maggiegil said:

It added another element to his attempts to invade Japan later I thought. 

Was he not happy with it? 

I was exited for this but I didn’t like the first episode. It felt like it would have been on the History Channel in the late 90s.

[maggiegil]

1 hour ago, biakbiak said:

Was he not happy with it? 

He showed it off in several photos so I assume he liked it. I meant that he seemed to have an appreciation for Japanese culture and traditions which is what I thought added the interesting element to him wanting to conquer them but its pure speculation on my behalf

[biakbiak]

Just now, maggiegil said:

showed it off in several photos so I assume he liked it. I me

I was joking ie that he was so pissed off about it he decided to invade a country!

[IndianPaintbrush]

On 7/3/2019 at 7:22 PM, saoirse said:

Hmm. Interesting way of designing this. Not entirely sure yet how I feel about the talking heads interspersed with the dramatic portions. My major was history, specializing in early 20th century Russian history, so the talking heads are my jam, and the acting isn't awful? But I'm not sure if it will work throughout. I guess we'll see!

It was jarring when the first talking head appeared, but I got used to it. I liked how the talking heads provided context. I did wish there was a bit more background on Bolshevism and the civil war between the Red and White armies.

Another quibble is that Rasputin's eyes weren't crazy enough, but I'm not sure any actor could fully capture the way he looked. 

[Brn2bwild]

Some interesting information about Rasputin.  I liked it for the most part, though it bothered me that Sergei (also known as "Serge") didn't look anything like his real-life counterpart.

[stitcher73]

Was anyone else completed distracted by the amount of facial hair Alexandra the Czaina had????  every close up all I could focus on the copious amounts and length of her peach fuzz.  Good grief, lady, microblade.  look it up.

[Wordsworth]

So we were concerned about the TV-MA rating.  Granted, Netflix shows are heavy on the language and Russia was a rather violent place even before the Revolution.  Mr. Wordsworth quipped, "Well, if there's a Russian orgy ten minutes into it, we'll turn it off".

20 minutes later, he hollers, "I was joking!"

I do realize that Rasputin's cult philosophy regarding continuing to sin in order to get God's favor is an essential part of his character and that his rationalizing sleeping around figures into that philosophy, but, I did think it was a bit much for one 45-minute episode to focus on titillation to the extent it did.  Was it really necessary to show Nicholas deflowering his bride on their wedding night to demonstrate that they did, in fact, love each other?  How much of Russia's complicated problems did they ignore just to fixate on nude bodies in this show?

[hendersonrocks]

"Feral charisma" is a fantastic phrase to describe everything I've ever read about Rasputin. I found this fairly enjoyable even though it obviously skipped over A TON of history while at the same time finding time to feature tsarina boobs and orgy penii. A tiny omission that bothered me more than it should have was how they never made it quite clear that was Alix's sister, Ella, married to the Grand Duke Sergei.

I'm a big Romanov history buff and was tickled to see Simon Sebag Montefiore as one of the talking heads. His book The Romanovs: 1613-1918 was really good, I thought.  

Nicholas and Alexandra are fascinating people. So flawed, so terrible at the roles they were expected to be good at. I'll definitely keep watching if only because I am kind of intrigued by this half-drama, half-documentary format.