Change Your Image
mblackford-2
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Impulse (2018)
Watches like a Cliff's Notes version of Downton Abbey if it was adapted by the writers of Suicide Squad while hungover..
I can't help but imagine there were a few conversations that took place while making this show that would explain a lot.
1. I really like Cara Delevigne. Sure, her movies are always horrible but I really like her. So do kids. Will she do a TV Show for us? No? Well what if we just rent her eyebrows and put them on another blonde?
2. Did you realize we bought the film rights to this insightful realistic show about modern teenagers dealing with real life struggles, bullying, and the infiltration of drugs into small town america?
No, but I just got done watching season one of Banshee. Man, that was crazy using the Amish like that! Who's out there that's exactly like that but not, so we don't get sued? ...Well, I guess there's Mennonites?
3. So, about that incredible award winning YA novel we bought the rights to...? Aw, screw it. What's popular right now? #MeToo is big. Give me something with a sex assault survivor but don't make it all gay like in the books. And shows about autism. Yeah. Those are big. Did you see the one where they made the kid, like, a doctor? I want a genius autistic kid in my show. What do you mean that makes no sense? Just do it.
Also, I've got 20$ riding on a bet with my neighbor. He says there's no way we can do a book adaptation of one of the most critically acclaimed YA novels of the last decade while not using a single character, plot point, power, motivation, or even geographic location. Make it happen.
The Passing Bells (2014)
Maudlin hackneyed anti-historical pablum
If your history of WWI was primarily from this TV show you'd probably believe that all the soldiers were 16-17 years old, widely engaged in premarital sex, and that the wars were fought almost exclusively in trenches, including right up to the very end. These are all things that yes, they did happen, but were rare, or happened at points and places in the war very different from that portrayed on-screen. At first I was concerned that the 30 minute format wouldn't allow them to tell the complex nuanced stories that were the reality of the war. By the end I was glad the stories were only 30 minutes long because they were having difficulty filling the time with anything not a blatant trope.
Even if you ignore the history there's some serious structural problems. The German soldier's girlfriend/wife is a major character in the first few episodes before entirely disappearing. All of his home front scenes are about his parents and the wife appears only occasionally as a picture. Seems a little off.
Also, you might recall that the french were a major player in WWI. Something that is sort of overlooked considering that there are almost no french characters, no french scenery, and really, that the western front is located across hundreds of miles of France is barely mentioned. Here's another specific inaccuracy: During early war when the first British reinforcements with our new recruit are deploying in the aftermath of the Marne they march through fields full of poppies. Fair enough, right? Poppies are the anglophile world's key floral symbol of The Great War. Except that after the Marne was September-October 1914 and Poppies bloom in the spring and early summer. They just didn't care.
There is nothing in this show that has not been done better, elsewhere. What there is, is weak or remarkable for its inaccuracies.
Small Hands in a Big War: The Odyssey (2014)
There's better history in most history channel ancient alien bigfoot specials
I appreciate that trying to teach WWI to children and young adults can be difficult. Having watched this episode, and unable to gnaw off my own leg to escape, I watched the entire episode, I have a few thoughts.
1. Maybe the people making this should read a book or watch some better documentaries to learn about WWI before trying to teach others.
2. There's more historical accuracy & realistic situations in most History Channel specials on how Ancient Alien Bigfoot is hiding Hitler's children with the help of a river monster than there is in this show. I don't know how I can damn the makers of this show more than to sentence them to watch their own claptrap.
As an adult grad student who's spent far too much time learning about the Great War I was able to learn many many exciting new 'alternative facts' based off of the content of this episode. Stowaways dress like a circus clown hobo, understand English, and have the survival sense of a suicidal squirrel. The journey from Holland to Scotland takes TWO YEARS. Whoa! Who knew? Surely it felt like this documentary was covering two years in real time yet somehow only an hour passed. The journey was so long that the Germans had time to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare (september 1915) and resume it (february 1917). The dutch-flagged tramp steamer that the family is riding on left port in 1916 based on the cue cards, apparently encountering the Battle of Jutland (May 1916) along the way from the gunnery noises. At dinner, the captain talks about how he carries potatoes to make lots of money. He brings this up despite also mentioning that carrying 'war supplies' gives German captains an excuse to sink your ship and that war supplies include guns or food. So...either potatoes aren't food? Or when the Germans stopped and inspected the ship, they forgot to check for any of these forbidden supplies, instead choosing to focus on interrogating the American family. The dumb mouthy little imbecile shoots her face off about visiting her grandparents in england, convincing the German they're englishmen and that this is justification to sink their ship. This happens during an extended sequence where the German captain, who speaks only German, repeatedly questions the idiot child, who speaks only English. Hilariously, the examples given by the idiot mother of why they must be Americans and not British is that they say potato and brits say po-TAH-to. Great callback to the illegal cargo, mom! The German announces he's sinking the ship for carrying Brits and leaves. He does not sink the ship. Nobody knows why. Maybe he misplaced his torpedoes? Idiot girl-child who nearly got the ship sunk blames her father. Never mind how implausible that would be for a young girl of that era, she really yells at him for not starting a fistfight with the German submarine Captain to defend her because, I'm not kidding, 'Americans defend the weak'. Yes, really. Apparently American fisticuffs also can trump an armed German submarine that has you dead to rights and an entire crew of cranky German sailors. Let's just say that the idiot girl clearly knows nothing about Seamen.
The 'American,' 'Scottish,' and 'German' accents were atrocious but you'll barely notice because of the confused and poorly written script.
Her non-English-speaking German Stowaway neatly bathed, showered, and dressed like a gentleman (don't ask where/how any of that happened) gets off in Edinburgh with the family. They are met by 'Scottish' soldier-inspectors and claim Joachim is an American, too. Congratulations idiot girl! You've actually just committed multiple acts of espionage that by rights should lead to Joachim's execution as a spy and her father's long imprisonment. Never mind that you're also planning to sneak Joachim into the USA which, in the screwed up time line of the show, has declared war on Germany (April 1917) and will be happy to admit a disguised enemy alien at a time when many schools in America were doing charming activities like burning all of the German language books they could find or lynching Germans who'd previously become US citizens.
One other historical note that really rubbed me the wrong way was in the discussion of naval blockades. Sympathy is plainly meant to be aroused for the poor poor Brits who were down to just six weeks of food for everyone due to the Germans resuming unrestricted submarine warfare (also, the show portrays that as happening in some time loop of 1916 and not 1917). It's immediately followed by a briefer note about how, yes, the Brits did do a naval blockade of Germany (and the central powers?) which caused 'some shortages' of food. The show makes that sound far less severe than being down to six weeks' of food but they do very very briefly mention that these shortages caused a few deaths including children. Historians know that time as 'the Turnip Winter' and how tens of thousands of civilians died and hundreds of thousands were starving under the effect of the British naval blockade. It's noted that Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare is against all the rules of war but it's not mentioned that the UK's blockade is, um, also against the same rules. Eh, that's what you get when winners write history, OK, I can accept that. But the rest...
Oh god, what a mess. What a horrific stinking idiotic brown mess someone just dumped on a desk. I can't even tell what they were thinking. Do not watch this. Never watch this. You will be stupider from having seen it and the target audience will be confused & bored while also learning absolutely nothing even close to accurate about WWI.