Very poor taste by the French.

[Kirk Gallaway]

David Andrews said:

I dunno, I thought The Americans was pretty even-handed, and indicted America for several evils from an imagined Soviet point-of-view.  If anything, I thought it soft-pedaled many ills of the Soviet system, though it also ignored some elephants in our room, notably the Contra war. 

I agree David, Though I don't want to spoil it for any who haven't seen it. Obviously spies in the arch enemy foreign country would have to be more discreet than murdering so many nationals and even officials (FBI agents). It's  lack of realism is just artistic license in storytelling, and it's understood,  and not any commentary on the ruthlessness of the old KGB. Nor should there be any partisan commentary about the ultimate revealed motives of the handlers in the end.

The hero Soviet Agent who in the conclusion is in jail, Costa Ronin is also the current villain in the past season of "Homeland".

 

Edited July 4, 2018 by Kirk Gallaway

[Paul Brancato]

On 7/2/2018 at 12:48 PM, David Andrews said:

I dunno, I thought The Americans was pretty even-handed, and indicted America for several evils from an imagined Soviet point-of-view.  If anything, I thought it soft-pedaled many ills of the Soviet system, though it also ignored some elephants in our room, notably the Contra war. 

It was a TV show - it used selective history to make dramatic points.  The worst thing about it was the old-hat staging, camera framing and editing that made it look like a 1980s network TV show - a mimetic fallacy that had me expecting to see the NBC peacock logo pop up at the corner of the screen every 15 minutes.

Another worst thing - the pregnant pauses. Show lost heart until the last few episodes

[David Andrews]

16 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Another worst thing - the pregnant pauses. Show lost heart until the last few episodes

I'm not sure if I shouldn't congratulate them for so diligently keeping up the look of an NBC drama during the Reagan years.

I was impressed by the good work among all the actors, playing whatever nationality.

(Spoilers Ahead)  It had this for it: Who among us didn't want to see Pastor Tim get it in the neck?  (He didn't)  Who didn't want to see Keri Russell deliver a beatdown to Margo Martindale's character?  (She did.)  And then Pastor Tim refused to rat the family out -- above average plotting for TV that atoned for many sins.  What the daughter did in the end, and how the couple shrugged it off, was also story gold. 

Edited July 5, 2018 by David Andrews

[Joe Bauer]

I can remember feeling a little uneasy when the comedy show "Hogan's Heroes" first debuted on national TV back in 1965.

This was a totally silly comedic version of the film "Stalag 17" which itself even exhibited a little humor but in a much more serious tone.

I was only 14 at the time but I had already been very exposed to and emotionally effected by the horrors of the Nazis and WW II of just 20 years earlier that was so widely depicted in all forms of our media and history books, that any entertainment venue trying to find humor in anything Nazi was still a little uncomfortable, even for me as an American teenager.

I was a "Combat" TV show fan before "Hogan's Heroes."  Quite a leap from serious to silly.

Later, after exposure to Mel Brooks, Peter Sellers and Dick Shawn etc. clowning in this vein, you got more numb to it all.

I imagine that in the Nazis death camps, that the innate human nature sense of humor occasionally popped up even there. Rarely one can be sure, but for any reason at all, simply to try anything to get one's mind off all the unfathomable suffering all around if even for a few seconds?

It's a touchy area of political, social and moral correctness conflict anyway you look at it.

However, I do still feel a little uncomfortable regards trying to find any humor in the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations. I suppose my emotional connections to these tragic deaths and losses to humanity are too personal?

And who could find humor with genocide?

How about the U.S.S. Liberty? The Tuskegee Syphilis non-consensual experiment on uninformed black Americans?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 5, 2018 by Joe Bauer

[David Andrews]

CBS had considerable reservations about Hogan's Heroes and almost kept it off the air - but it became a hit.  As Newkirk would say, "It sayeth in the Good Book, 'There is a time to mourn, and a time to taketh the p*ss.' "

Edited July 6, 2018 by David Andrews

[Cliff Varnell]

5 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

And who could find humor with genocide?

All depends on how the material is handled.

 

[Ron Ecker]

6 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

And who could find humor with genocide?

 

Dr. Strangelove had classic fun with nuclear war, ending with beautiful atomic bomb blasts.

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

Re: the Americans

How it was to end,  was an  intriguing exercise in storytelling. I never would have accepted an end, where they just got back to their homeland without a stitch, even without Henry. Yet several women I know, would have chosen that as their ideal ending. (They know in case you don't, that they are married in real life.)

David said:    Who among us didn't want to see Pastor Tim get it in the neck?

 Hmmm,........ Can't say I did David. I didn't really even see that as a possibility.............But I could see some guy having a male fantasy where every potential antagonist to the Jennings family could be seen as dead meat for our bloodthirsty, little, psycho killing Marxist wife! ---------So that's cool man!😃

I thought Pastor Tim comported himself very well, of course he is "Pastor Tim."

Though it was a more obvious conclusion, I was quite willing to sacrifice Elizabeth, perhaps in like fashion. But I knew it wouldn't end that way, and didn't really want it to. That's a good paradox for a viewer to have.

Paige's actions were great, they had to somehow reconcile  their ideals, and what better way, than to sacrifice their nurturing, which with their lives of total depravity,  they never had much of anyway. Phillip's "pitch to the stars" ("My whole sh-tty life".) with   Stan was great heartfelt drama interspersed with egregious omissions, but what could he do? Given Stan's  suspicion at both of them leaving at Thanksgiving and the resultant deaths in Chicago, his reaction was pretty remarkable. 

Yes the end, one is characteristically wistful and one is characteristically "moving on".

Edited July 6, 2018 by Kirk Gallaway

[David Andrews]

David said:    Who among us didn't want to see Pastor Tim get it in the neck?

 Hmmm,........ Can't say I did David. I didn't really even see that as a possibility.............But I could see some guy having a male fantasy where every potential antagonist to the Jennings family could be seen as dead meat for our bloodthirsty, little, psycho killing Marxist wife! ---------So that's cool man!😃

+++

Oh, please, man - Pastor Tim wormed his way into the family's life; brainwashed the daughter into confessing that her parents were spies; and by the end of his storyline had the daughter spying on him before the Jenningses got him mercifully deported to South America by a Soviet-connected missionary society.  And through all that it was actually Phillip Jennings who hated and distrusted him the most - the father, not the mother.  Despite humane regrets, Phillip killed people for less.  Inherent in the idea that they let him go is the idea that it could have gone the other way.

It was good soap opera writing to let Pastor Tim escape with his life; it was great TV writing to have him not rat the family out to Stan in the end.  I applaud both moves, though my prime reason for wanting Pastor Tim to get it in the neck is that he took up so much valuable story time.  It seemed like the writers were setting the character up for killing in the same way the writers on The Sopranos gave long arcs to annoying characters who would finally get whacked, giving macabre satisfaction and relief to the audience that had to put up with them.  In Pastor Tim's case, the setup seemed to go on at least a season too long - but the double payoff was great.

As for Keri Russell's character - it was plain by season 6 that she didn't require my beneficence in the least.

 

Edited July 6, 2018 by David Andrews

[Ray Mitcham]

Strange that nobody has mentioned "Mash", an absolutely brilliant humorous take on the Korean conflict, with contrasting humour and tragedy.

[Kirk Gallaway]

Joe Bauer said:

I can remember feeling a little uneasy when the comedy show "Hogan's Heroes" first debuted on national TV back in 1965.This was a totally silly comedic version of the film "Stalag 17" which itself even exhibited a little humor but in a much more serious tone.

Re: Hogan's Heroes and this political sensitivity thing.. I was traveling around Europe in 1996, and I wanted to see Amsterdam, with their legal window  shopping prostitution and the open marijuana venues, which was what I was interested in. I came to this row of clubs. I first went to some regular bars and they were kind of  pick up scenes that was roughly 50-50% men and  women, with women dressed up pretty sexy. I then went into a hash bar, it was completely different.. It was about 80-20 male and very laid back.

 

I met these 2 Dutch guys  and I smoked at a public establishment for the first time with them. These guys actually spoke English like Americans, though every once in a while with certain words, they'd sound  British. I mentioned to them how American they sounded and they said they grew up on American TV without subtitles and mentioned that Germany had the same American TV shows but they had subtitles. I asked what shows, and they said like, "Bonanza", "the Fugitive" and "Hogan's Heroes."  And I said "The Germans grew up with "Hogan's Heroes"? and they said "Yes."

 

 

[David Josephs]

On a semi-serious note - it does appear they are TRYING to be accurate....

Actors portraying DPD cops on television AND in Dealey Plaza