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Kings: 3/15: "Goliath" - Grading & Discussion (Two-hour premiere)

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  • Total voters
    48
Great start, good, if not great, characterizations seeing as Silas and David both have depth, directly relevant to our society given the parallel elements between the nation in Kings to ours with the "nefarious military-industrial" conspiracy aspect.
 
I wanted to add how much I loved the scene with Reverend Samuels wiping the shmutz off of David's face. A benediction. :techman:
 
Temis should be happy. The premiere didn't do very well, even by NBC standards. NBC has awesome shows, but no one watches them. I really don't know why. It's like once Scrubs left, so did half their audience.
 
Wow, I had the opposite reaction of most in this thread. I found the show to be unintentionally hilarious. It is very pretentious. It is pure cheese. And not cheese that is self aware and done in a good way, like say, nip/tuck. I mean, this thing is just BAD.
 
So what kind of alternate universe is this? Does this 'kingdom' exist in any particular place on Earth (i.e. does America, for example, not exist in this world?) or could it be anywhere?

They don't really say. There are 3 countries (that I remember) mentioned. Gilboa (the country where the characters live), Gath (at war with Gilboa in the pilot) and Osteria (maybe Austeria).

We know that the capital of Gilboa is Shiloh, newly built on top of the ruins of an abandoned city, is fairly close to Gilboa's border with Gath.

Culturally we know that composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886) existed in this world as well as ours, so the POD is somewhere after his time period, or at least late in his life when he'd already become a composer.

Maybe this isn't Earth at all. It could be Kobol! Or one of the Colonies! :D
 
They don't really say. There are 3 countries (that I remember) mentioned. Gilboa (the country where the characters live), Gath (at war with Gilboa in the pilot) and Osteria (maybe Austeria).

We know that the capital of Gilboa is Shiloh, newly built on top of the ruins of an abandoned city, is fairly close to Gilboa's border with Gath.

Culturally we know that composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886) existed in this world as well as ours, so the POD is somewhere after his time period, or at least late in his life when he'd already become a composer.

Maybe this isn't Earth at all. It could be Kobol! Or one of the Colonies! :D

Well, all this has happened before... :lol:
 
Best new show of the year and it probably won't even all 13 episodes at this rate. Oh America, why do you hate good TV?
 
Not enough Wes Studi.
Hopefully his role will grow.

Mentioning the dates for Listz threw me out of the show for a bit. How can the story of Saul and David have AD dates??

But it was well produced, they started the gay Jonathan storyline, and the only other thing I catch on Sundays is The Simpsons, so I'll keep watching.

What Sunday sports does NBC air? Sunday shows always get tossed around when sports run late. That's got to hurt the ratings.
 
NBC has Sunday Night Football during football season. So if this did survive, it would probably come on post-NFL season. Not sure if they have baseball or not.
 
Wow, I had the opposite reaction of most in this thread. I found the show to be unintentionally hilarious. It is very pretentious. It is pure cheese. And not cheese that is self aware and done in a good way, like say, nip/tuck. I mean, this thing is just BAD.

The somewhat nelly David getting a crown of monarch butterflies. And Ian McShane stares like it's no bizarre ass occurance. WTF?
 
Wow, I had the opposite reaction of most in this thread. I found the show to be unintentionally hilarious. It is very pretentious. It is pure cheese. And not cheese that is self aware and done in a good way, like say, nip/tuck. I mean, this thing is just BAD.

The somewhat nelly David getting a crown of monarch butterflies. And Ian McShane stares like it's no bizarre ass occurance. WTF?

The way he was looking made me believe that maybe the King's butterfly story isn't made-up. It actually happened and now God has passed him over and selected David as the new King.

Since the show seems to be pushing religion pretty heavily if it goes that way then.

The ratings for the show were pretty horrible so I expect it to be cancelled after not a few eps. I am not a religious person, I stopped putting out any kind of facade about it a long time ago... But I do find it ironic that I'm sure people who are able to accept all the strange things going on in a show like say Lost would likely react very differently if you suddenly tied it all into religion or God.

It's like "oh, the 'island' that's cool." don't say the g word.
 
So even though I made this thread, I didn't watch it and probably won't watch it. Looks like there's some decent activity here though, so if someone else would like to make a weekly thread, go for it.
 
I DVR'ed it, and watched it today.

Not great, but not awful...I'll keep watchin', see how things go for a few episodes.
 
Overall, i thought this was pretty interesting. I didn't get a chance to see everything, but got a got view of it. There are a lot of interetsing details, such as David's musical ability.

But what i didn't like was the same thing in a recent (well, maybe quite a few years now)TV movie production of David & Saul (with Jonathan Pryce):

1. David's fighting Goliath is lackluster (i.e. he's scared, has some kind of feeble attempt...trying to make him look "human")
2. Saul's too short...he's supposed to be literally a head above everyone else...an imposing person.

With #1...David's story is interesting, and he IS human in fact....he should've been portrayed as a passionate, sometimes hothead. If you read the biblical account, he seems larger than life at first, but falls when he actually gets the throne

With #2 -- Saul is someone who LOOKS like a leader, and perhaps we see traces of his initial humility...but he is a man who falls in love wiht his pown title, and forgets what made him a good choice to begin with.

That said, Ian McShane does do a great job...kinda like Lionel Luthor (to me).

I do NOT like Jack seemingly becoming David's enemy...i would rather have one of the OTHER brother's Jonathan has be the man plotting against David.

Michal should start from loving David to hating him...


I wonder, too, if the story would have worked with flashbacks (David was maybe 12-13 when he first came on the scene), where we see how these characters were earlier, and then stting up the Saul-David drama.


To me, a much better David/Saul analogy is the Korean Historical Drama, Emperor Wang Guhn.
 
The wife and I were not impressed. It was predictable, flat acting, failed to explain the backstory... Doubt we'll be tuning back.
 
I watched this online (nbc.com) after seeing Ian McShane on The Daily Show this evening. The low premiere ratings don't surprise me as I hadn't heard of this show prior to this evening.

The pilot was light on exposition for a two hour event but it looks like this could be a good show... not that it matters if they can't get the numbers up.
 
I didn't expect to like this but it was pretty good. The alt-reality premise was interesting and there actually was some action, though I fear that after the pilot the war scenes will go away. It's funny how the second hour completely turned around everything established in the first hour; the Prince is a closet homosexual, the King is a puppet of corporate interests, the Queen is a political marriage and he has a mistress and bastard child on the side... Interesting. My only main complaint is that David was boring, whether by way of the writing or the actor.
 
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