I can only assume that a whole new writing staff who never watched the first three seasons took over for Season 4. It was shocking how the story, script writing and character development (as in, no continuity from Season 3) simply imploded, almost from one episode (S3 E 8) to the next (S4 E1). I gave it an 8/10 after three seasons. The characters were interesting, believable and three-dimensional. The multiple storylines were no doubt a challenge to manage but they were well-handled up until the last season. All of that more than made up for the heavy-handed gender studies feel of some episodes. Anyway, no need to repeat all the criticism. Just wanted to express my disappointment.
Reviews
6 Reviews
Interesting and well researched, a little sloppy on the details
22 February 2020
Well researched series with a solid set of experts providing interesting color and background. The color restoration footage is excellent. Some editing would have helped avoid instances where the film footage didn't match the narration (e.g. narration about US troops, film showing British soldiers).
Mary Queen of Scots
(2018)
Stop complaining about historical inaccuracies. The problem is, it's just plain boring
27 January 2019
The complaints about historical inaccuracy are overblown. I think it's clear the film's makers have not set out to create an accurate historical record. They are interested in the theme of women in positions of power and how they deal with the constant efforts of the men around them to influence and/or control them. So what if they made up a probably fake meeting between the two women (anyway, there's no proving that such a meeting did not take place) in order to flesh out this idea? And the culturally diverse courtiers are just a funny little extra head-nodding to the cultural perspective of today, by which the film makers are obviously telling their story. So cut them some slack ... it's story-telling, for crying out loud.
It's just not a very well-told story. They didn't really make any effort to take a close look at what forces - cultural and otherwise - were at work to make the relationship between these two women so problematic, or that made their lives so intolerable. They really boil it down to the meddling of the hard-hearted men around them, and the fact that it's lonely at the top (which is true regardless of gender). But the men are portrayed as such mediocre and incompetent blowhards that the idea they could in any way outwit or manipulate these two strong women seems ludicrous. If they were trying to tell the story of two remarkable women and how they struggled to rule in a man's world, or maybe the story of what history might have looked like if women had been allowed to rule by women's rules instead of men's, they didn't try very hard. It would be an interesting story to tell.
It's just not a very well-told story. They didn't really make any effort to take a close look at what forces - cultural and otherwise - were at work to make the relationship between these two women so problematic, or that made their lives so intolerable. They really boil it down to the meddling of the hard-hearted men around them, and the fact that it's lonely at the top (which is true regardless of gender). But the men are portrayed as such mediocre and incompetent blowhards that the idea they could in any way outwit or manipulate these two strong women seems ludicrous. If they were trying to tell the story of two remarkable women and how they struggled to rule in a man's world, or maybe the story of what history might have looked like if women had been allowed to rule by women's rules instead of men's, they didn't try very hard. It would be an interesting story to tell.
Medal of Honor
(2018)
A disappointingly superficial treatment of such compelling material
17 November 2018
Two confessions up front: One, I only watched the first episode; and two, that's because I had just finished watching Ken Burns documentary series on Vietnam. That made Medal of Honor seem like a stale Pop Tart served after eating a five-star filet mignon (sorry, that's the best I've got). I don't know how you can take something as dramatic as Sgt. Sylvester Antolak's one-man attack on a machine gun nest during the U.S. spearhead out of Anzio in WWII and make it feel unemotional, boring and meaningless. That was enough for me to give it a quick thumbs down and move on. The reenactment was unrealistic, slow-paced, poorly acted and plain boring. The panel of expert commentators provided surprisingly little insight into the events or the motivations of the participants, other than to fall back on the easy cliche of brothers fighting for one another, not for their country. The show even managed to make the comments from a modern Medal of Honor recipient look more like an NFL Films Top Ten football game review. The whole thing looked to me like cheap exploitation of some of the most profound human sacrifices. A shame, really.
Stalingrad
(1993)
Doesn't stand the passing of time
6 October 2013
I have wanted to watch this film for many years but only got around to it last week. Many reviewers have highlighted the fact that this is not a Hollywood treatment, which can be a positive. But for anyone who has been exposed to the realism of Saving Private Ryan and similar movies, the absence of Hollywood production values and standards of acting and realism make Stalingrad hard to take seriously. It is highly theatrical, in the sense that the acting is over the top and the motivations and actions of most of the characters do not line up with anything that I'd call realistic, in terms of what I have read about the battle itself or based on what one would consider believable human behavior. Very simplistic in all respects. Probably would have been quite OK in 1993, when it was released, but by today's standards, not something I would recommend.
The Pacific
(2010)
Fails to convey the particular horror of the Pacific war
18 April 2010
Band of Brothers was a magnificent achievement and of course The Pacific will be held to the same standard, which I think it clearly fails to achieve. There are two reasons for this in my view. One is that the makers of the series have not accomplished one of their main goals, which was to show how nature of the Pacific war was completely different from that in the European theater. The producers spend a lot of time showing how the climate and living conditions were so difficult, but a key issue from a psychological point of view was the deep racial undertones at work on both sides of the conflict and, at least as of Episode Four, these issues have not been addressed. The portrayal of Japanese fanaticism and the reactions it produced in the Marines has also been superficial at best, despite a promising start. All of that makes it difficult to really empathize with characters who are showing such strong emotional reactions to the events they are going through. Sure, I realize in my head how terrible it was, but somehow the series doesn't make me feel it, whereas the Band of Brothers put me right there in the middle of the war. I guess that's the real disappointment of The Pacific ... it's like a mediocre documentary but lacks much emotional punch.
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