Thomas-Sox-WorldSeries wrote:
Was sick yesterday and we have free HBO for a week and I saw this show. I read the book (which was kind of stupid) and I saw that it had amazing ratings, so I watched a few episodes.
It was honestly pretty lame.
I take it that things change in seasons 2 and 3? Maybe I have the wrong show.
I didn't think the book was stupid, but it was nowhere near as good as the show. That's pretty atypical. A book is almost always better than any adaptations.
To me this show is the pinnacle of prestige television. It couldn't be more perfect.
I don't understand why you characterize the episodes you watched as "lame." I understand that the show is very dark, especially in the beginning and it develops rather slowly.
The show really gets going in the third episode, "Two Boats and a Helicopter." You have to be able to accept that something has changed in the post-"Rapture" world of the show and you aren't going to know exactly how or why- just as the characters don't- and the showrunner is NOT going to spell it out for you. The use of the Iris Dement song over the opening credits in the later seasons is really on the nose.
Episode 6, "Guest" is about as perfect as an hour of television can be. And the first season finale is pretty powerful.
But the show takes off once Lindelof hands over the reins to Mimi Leder in Season 2. The second season is about as entertaining and intellectual as anything that's ever been made for television. It's just in another league. This isn't a show for little brains.
Eventually, it becomes a standard love story, but within the context of the damaged world of the show it's probably not right to call anything "standard."
I recently rewatched it and it was a lot more poignant in the post-COVID world, a world that has been destroyed in many of the same ways the world of the show was destroyed by the event of October 14.
It's a modern woman's dream. Generally solid men with some flaws who are gaslighted into believing they are the villains of the story by objectively horrible women.