Making History - season 1

[JasonJ]

Well, the FOX television network is generally the more progressive of Rupert Murdoch's networks. Whatever his own leanings, he's happy to make money from viewers of all political stripes, so he caters to the right on Faux News and to the left on the FOX Network. Heck, FOX made its name by showing subversive, risque programs that gave social conservatives apoplectic fits, like Married... With Children and The Simpsons (back when it was considered shockingly bold rather than just part of the wallpaper). And most of its shows today are still pretty progressive, including minority-led shows like Empire and Rosewood, and Sleepy Hollow to a lesser degree. Heck, it carries Lucifer, a show with a bisexual male lead who is literally the Devil, and with a very revisionist and irreverent approach toward the whole God thing. (Heck, they gave God a wife who looks like Tricia Helfer. I'm amazed the religious right is so quiet about it, but there were only a few token objections to the general concept of the show itself last year.)

So if FOX is airing a show with a more conservative bent, that's actually atypical for it.

I guess so. I don't follow all of Fox's subsidiaries or what Murdoch owns or believes.. I suppose from Fox news I assumed most of the network was more right-leaning. Apparently not.

I'm a fairly conservative/libertarian type guy, with a couple socially liberal (progressive?) views; but I watch Fox news as opposed to CNN, MSNBC, etc.... to give background on where my train of thought is/was coming from; I think people in general seem to think that "the conservative right" are far more outspoken and zealous than what we really are. It's a case where the loud few overshadow the many; where the public view of the entire group is defined by the crazy minority within that group.

To stay somewhat germane to the topic, so much tv and media caters to the progressive viewer, it's nice from the other side of the river to watch something that even if for just one episode is not completely one-sided. I feel the same when I see something that DOESN'T portray the American male as the "stupid dad" or as an unintelligent, blithering idiot in the manner that so many shows do, i.e American Dad, Family Guy, Futurama, Black-ish, Modern Family, The Middle, Scrubs, Two-and-a-Half Men, Malcom in the Middle, Everbody Loves Raymond, etc... All guilt y of this, as most TV and Film has been for the better part of 20+ years.

I think I went tangential here... apologies.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Plus, it was nice to see a parody/satire of the gun control debate that seemed to be more pro-gun leaning.

I didn't get that read from the episode at all, not that it took any kind of strong political stance one way or the other, or was ever intended to since it's just a silly sitcom. But they were mocking the American obsession with guns, not celebrating it.

I've enjoyed this show so far in spite of a totally unlikeable lead character in Dan. Chris is fine, but I most enjoy Deborah's earnest wide-eyed wonder at the most mundane aspects of modern society.

 

[JasonJ]

I didn't get that read from the episode at all, not that it took any kind of strong political stance one way or the other, or was ever intended to since it's just a silly sitcom. But they were mocking the American obsession with guns, not celebrating it.

I've enjoyed this show so far in spite of a totally unlikeable lead character in Dan. Chris is fine, but I most enjoy Deborah's earnest wide-eyed wonder at the most mundane aspects of modern society.

See, I took it that way as well, but also saw them mocking the ridiculousness of the pro-gun control stance as well, particularly with the comment about bows and arrows are for hunting, a musket shooting one bullet per minute being a mass killer machine. I also felt like they were mocking the fact that's it's a hot button issue at all as well.

I'm comparing it to the recent episode of Arrow where they took on the same topic, allegedly trying to keep balanced but coming off a bit heavy on one side vs the other.

I like this show, but I do hope they keep the "potty humor" with the puking and such to a minimum. It seems every show on tv nowadays has to have vomiting in it...

 

[Christopher]

I guess so. I don't follow all of Fox's subsidiaries or what Murdoch owns or believes.. I suppose from Fox news I assumed most of the network was more right-leaning. Apparently not.

It's not one network, it's multiple networks that have the same brand name because they're owned by the same conglomerate. That's the way these things tend to be done these days, and it can be very confusing to audiences, because all these different entities have the same name on them. They're still separate businesses with their own distinct target audiences and staffs and so forth, but they're owned by a handful of rich narcissists who want to put their brand on everything they own.

And generally the owners recognize that they can make more money if they appeal to more "quadrants" of the public, so they want to own a bunch of different entities that are aimed for different audiences. Like how Time Warner operates Cartoon Network for kids and HBO for adults.

 

[Aragorn]

This episode was a lot better than the last two, but it's still a really sloppy and simple show.

 

[Guy Gardener]

"All black people are angels".

That sentence could have put some serious top spin on the timeline.

 

[sojourner]

Scrubs,

Scrubs? I don't recall any character on there being portrayed as the stereotypical stupid american male. In fact, most of those characters were portrayed as pretty damn smart. Scrubs had some of the best writing fora comedy at the time. Much more intelligent than most of the sitcoms we get. I'd put it right up there with Frasure or maybe even M.A.S.H.

On a separate note, I think it's funny that this half hour comedy has more consistent time travel rules than all of the time travel action and drama shows currently on.

 

[Phoenix219]

Not sure how they are showing alterations tot he timeline.

It seemed like Dan was just imagining that Tea from Starbucks being evidence of British rule, all though that Statue seemed to indicate that this was a completely different timeline, which should suggest doppelgängers... Or that their arrival smothers their indigenous counterparts like it does in Timeless.

I thought Timeless never traveled within their lifetimes to prevent paradoxes, but I don't see when anyone would have been replacing their native alternate.

 

[Phoenix219]

That's hard to imagine. I couldn't even get through the pilot. I didn't even mildly chuckle once. The characters were unlikeable, the premise was sloppy, and the jokes were either tasteless or pointless (that whole "Show me the money" thing was stupid). I gave up after the second act, and I wish I'd given up sooner. It's odd, because I saw the original presentation film last year, and it was basically a truncated version of the pilot, and at the time, I thought it had potential. But somehow, seeing the same material again in its fuller context just left me cold.

There's been a spate of time travel shows in the past couple of years, and I haven't been too happy with most of them. 12 Monkeys was pretty good in season 1, but the second season under new showrunners was rather less coherent and more fanciful with its time-travel rules, and I'm not optimistic about where it goes next. Timeless is somewhat entertaining with a good cast, but it's a total mess conceptually and too dependent on the Vast All-Powerful Conspiracy cliche. Frequency lost my interest after two weeks; I didn't like the leads, and the temporal logic seemed incoherent. And Time After Time so far is somewhat bland, not taking advantage of its potential, and also riding too hard on the conspiracy trope.

At least there's Legends of Tomorrow, which is totally dumb but still a lot of fun. Oh, and Netflix's Travelers is pretty interesting, a decent attempt to fill the niche left by Continuum (i.e. thoughtful, serious, very Vancouvery show about averting a dystopian future). Plus we've got Doctor Who coming back fairly soon.

Frequency was actually really good; it told an entire story with an ending, and it had consistent (if non traditional) rules of how the timeline stuff worked.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I thought Timeless never traveled within their lifetimes to prevent paradoxes, but I don't see when anyone would have been replacing their native alternate.

They figured out that the same two people cannot be in the same place at the same time the hard way, before the pilot.

Although it's not exactly a completely quick murder, because they said that it almost killed Matt Frewer (born 1958), but almost means that he totally survived, because you know he's still on the show, mostly.

 

[Aragorn]

At first I thought they were showing episodes out of sequence with how much Deborah regressed, but then they mention the ice cream shop from the previous episode. Also, making every historic figure as stupid as Dan does not equate to consistent humor. This show had a lot of potential and just never went there.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Historically Al Capone had really bad syphilis that he never treated.

Manic behaviour, and black urine.

Last ten years of his life he spent sitting on a diving board sun up to sun down, in his back yard, humming, and fishing in a swimming pool with no fish in it.

 

[Kirk Prime]

I watched the first few episodes, but I decided today that I am officially bailing from this show. I liked the idea of a time travel comedy, and as Bill and Ted pointed out, it can be done, but at this point, this particular show isn't really that funny to me.

So time to pull it from the DVR.

 

[Aragorn]

You know a show is bad when you haven't even noticed it hadn't been on for a few weeks.

New episode, conclusion to the last episode, still bad. The episodes feel more like a skit stretched out past the point of the funny idea with how broadly the characters and humor are written.

 

[Guy Gardener]

This is supposed to be the golden age of time travel scripted media.

####.



I thought that things were going to turn around so much that they would hire Geraldo to screw up his vault opening, but no.

 

[Aragorn]

And in a surprise to no one, Making History has gotten the ax.