11.23.63 - New Hulu Series

[davejames]

So anybody else check this out yet? Kinda surprised there hasn't been a thread created yet, at least that I could find.

Personally I thought the first episode was really good. I haven't read the book, but the series did a good job setting up the basic premise and the time travel rules that the main character has to follow. And while it all seems completely arbitrary at first, I very quickly found myself just accepting it.

And unlike a lot of critics, I thought Franco was really good in the role. Watching him react to the 60s for the first time was a ton of fun (especially when it comes to how ridiculously inexpensive everything was), and when things get more desperate later on I completely bought that from him as well.

Unfortunately the one element I'm not really sure about yet is the central JFK story. While the show tries to provide motivation, it's still kinda hard to believe Franco's character being that emotionally invested in old JFK conspiracy theories or the idea of changing history, or thinking such a thing would be a remotely good idea considering what a huge impact that might have on everything else.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I have read the book.

Recently.

If I knew this was coming, I wouldn't have read the bastard.



I can't believe he brought a cellphone into the past.

Fuck saving JFK, give that Phone to Howard Hughes if you want to see a new Golden Age for America that lasts a thousand years.

 

[Dream]

Is 11.23.63 anything like CBS' Under The Dome?

Under the Dome was the best unintentional comedy in years, so bad that it was good.

I liked that Dome book, except for the terrible cop out ending.

 

[Arrrrgggh]

It's 11.22.63.

It's not bad for what it is. I like that the second episode gives a stronger, or at least more in-depth, explanation for why the first guy wasn't able to do the job (you'd think it'd be pretty easy after two or three travels at most).

And no, it's nothing like Under the Dome.

 

[davejames]

Yeah this is thankfully a much better and smarter show than Under the Dome.

And I agree it was a bit odd that he took the iphone back in time with him... although I have to admit the temptation to show the thing off to people from the 60s and get their amazed reaction would be pretty great.

 

[Push The Button]

I read the book a few years ago, and was happy with the first episode. I had my doubts about Franco at first, but he's doing a good job so far.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I read, and enjoyed, this book a couple of years ago. I had no idea there was a series based on the book in the works! Hulu, eh? Well then it's completely inaccessible to me here in Canada. Hopefully it will get a DVD or Blu-Ray release at some point.

 

[kitik]

I love Franco, he even had some delicious pie!

Decent series so far. It has my interest, though there are some rather glaring flaws in the show's logic. When Franco asked the old guy why he didn't just kill Oswald when he saw him, he said it was because he didn't know if he was guilty yet, but according to the rules of time travel that the show set forth, all you'd have to do is kill him and then go back and see if he changed the world. If he didn't, then go back and hit the reset button, and Oswald is alive again. Of course beyond that, there's the glaring question of whether Kennedy even should be saved. The world survived, the Cold War stayed cold, and no nuclear missles were ever launched (save for the ones that Ant-Man, James Bond, Tom Cruise, and their ilk always stopped in mid-air). I think the old guy seemed to have some personal motivations for wanting to change history due to Vietnam, but Franco shouldn't be as easily swayed.

The second episode was good too. Josh Duhamel played a great bad guy, and the show had my attention from start to finish. This one certainly played out more like a Steven King horror. Nice little twist at the end too. I want to know where that's going.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Yeah, there were some great, unsettling scenes in the second episode, between Duhamel taking Jake to the killing floor at the meatpacking plant and Arlis recounting the tale of how he earned his bronze star in WWII. I'm really enjoying the series so far.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I was trying to figure out if he played Luke or Bo in the Dukes of Hazard, and if Annete O'Toole was married to Luke or Bo in Smallville... On one hand you can say it's the wrong cousin, that she can't claim to have been pre-vetted to already be sleeping with the man since their characters where TV married, on the other hand, maybe she's going for a full set and looking to become TV/Fake romantically entangled with all three Duke cousins.

Yes, I saw Supernatural a couple weeks ago.

 

[kitik]

Sadie makes this show really easy to watch.

 

[Starbreaker]

I think there are two reasons why Al doesn't kill Oswald right off the bat.

1. Oswald is in Russia. The show condenses a lot of the time. He has to wait quite a while for Oswald to come back. If he goes to Russia and kills Oswald, it's a risky move to try to get away with murder and then get back to the time portal.
2. It's cold-blooded murder if he's wrong. That would probably screw with anyone's head.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Okies.

This is what I would do.

Burn down the book depository as quickly as possible.

Go back to the future and see what has changed.

Maybe Kennedy is alive, and maybe he isn't.

But examining the differences will reveal a lot.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

If he goes to Russia and kills Oswald, it's a risky move to try to get away with murder and then get back to the time portal.

Hell, it'd be a risky move just to BE in Russia at that period in history.

 

[Arrrrgggh]

Yeah, the whole methodology doesn't sit well with me. Jump back, do a minor change as soon as you can, return see if it had any effect. Wash, rinse, repeat til you find a key moment. Record that moment, reapply, change something else. Repeat until you have the desired outcome.

Spend years and years of your life just to gather intel is pretty wasteful when you can travel through time and reset it if it didn't work out.

As an aside, and a prime example of the stupidity of his method: You know saving the kid who grew up to be mentally challenged (I'm not good with names, sorry) is going to bite him in the ass even if he winds up saving Kennedy. He'll have to reset it, change how he saves the kid if at all, and then go through all those years of waiting again...

 

[Starbreaker]

Jake is not a cold-blooded murderer. He murders out of necessity and is supposed to be struggling with it. The book transports him back to 1958 and far away from Dallas if I remember correctly. He has years to plan and make sure he's doing the right thing.

There's also the fact that he doesn't know if killing someone is actually reversible.

 

[Arrrrgggh]

I didn't say anything about killing anyone. It doesn't take much to change a person's path, especially when you have three years in between the events.

 

[Snick27]

So the last episode is almost on us and just watched the 7th episode. Got to say im kinda disappointed in this mini series. I understand they want to keep this as close to the book as they can. But i was kinda hoping we would see Jake take chances at changing the past and then going back to the future and see how it all played out.
Never read the book so not sure how the final will end but Jake really failed to do much of anything it seems.

 

[Push The Button]

I'm wondering how far the series will stray from the book as far as the ending. The Bill Turcotte character wasn't exactly the same in the book, though I understand why he was added into the series the way he was, otherwise Jake would have been busy 24 hours a day, between his teaching job and Sadie and wiretapping the Oswalds apartment...

 

[Guy Gardener]

George ended up failing to stop the retarded kid getting whacked with a hammer once and then maybe saving him twice maybe? He had a couple short run throughs and start overs before he felt content to make the shlep to 1963.

In the book his test case to check if shit would be changed was a girl crippled in a hunting accident a couple months after his arrival, which took him a couple tries to get right because Time kept fighting him.

If Oslwald is a Patsy, and the CIA, or the Mob, or Castro, or Magneto or the Magestic 12 are really behind the assassination, they can find another Patsy to course correct for Oswalds unexpected early death before they tricked him into being culpable for their master-plan.

If George has to have a second run through because Oswald is following orders, he needs to know who exactly the someone else is who is pulling Oswalds strings and how to stop them from using Oswald or anyone else like a chesspiece, rather than trying to watch Oswald even closer a second time, trying to figure out who his masters are.

Wow.

Marina and Oswald are Australian actors. The kid playing Oswald was in the Doctor Who spin of about K9 marooned in the future that no one watched.

And Bill is played by an English actor.

In the Book, Bill and Sadie were never pulled in as conspirators because we were privy to George's ongoing internal monologue of doubt, theory and suspicion. And the brain damage stuff from being beaten was not part of the book at all.