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Show Me A Hero - HBO's New David Simon Drama


Zorral

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I can't stand Bernthal. It's the only quibble I have with the show.

He still comes out as unlikable as in everything he does, but I don't think the character was meant to be unlikable.

 

Luckily, he had a smaller role this week.

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HBO probably shouldn't have given Simon 6 episodes. The constant voting of the city council became tedious, like watching C-SPAN. I was bored after the third episode and haven't watched the 4th episode yet. I was more entertained picking out actors from Simon's previous works. I'll probably only finish it if the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. Shame, I've really enjoyed David Simon's other works.

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The reviews are already overwhelmingly positive. Critics have watched the show a few weeks ago.

 

Actually, the constant voting in episode 2 was the highlight of the show. I really liked it.

There you see how tedious the situation was for everyone involved.

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Finally got a chance to see Parts 3&4. To be honest, a lot of it was kind of dull. I think the whole thing probably should've been four episodes instead of six. I really like all the council stuff, the lawyers, etc. But there's too much time spent on Wacisko brooding/doing home repairs/etc. and there's way too many different stories of people living in the projects. I think two of those at most would've been enough; especially since they don't connect with the main story at all except in the extremely big picture sense of this is who is affected by what's going on. That's important, but there shouldn't be more time spent on that then on the actual story.

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I really enjoyed the finale, and thought they really did a great job of integrating (no pun intended) the stories of the housing recipients.  I was in the camp that they had too many of those and they were eating time for the much more interesting city council stuff, but it really was a powerful ending.  Mary's arc was fantastic.

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Mary's arc was fantastic.

 

Dunno, it was a bit too neat for me.

 

Re: Series overall:  On one had, it did not seem like there was 6 hours of material.  On the other hand, i felt like certain things were underdeveloped.

 

Better than Treme though, that's for sure. :p

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The ending was pretty strong, but overall I still think the first two hours were the strongest two. It was a little strange how unexplained a lot of story was, like who that Republican councilman in the last two hours was or what was going on in the final Mayoral race with Alfred Molina's character not even on the ballot. If the story kept just a laser-like focus on Oscar Issac throughout, that would've been fine (so long as it was interesting enough). But with all the time it had for the stories of the housing residents, it couldn't bother to cover the broader story after having done so in exhaustive detail in the first two hours?

 

Just seemed like odd pacing decisions and I think six hours was exactly the wrong amount of time. Four probably would've been best, but I think eight or ten would've also been better; give more time to not gloss over so much.

 

It was an interesting project, definitely, and I don't regret watching it. I just think it could've been quite a bit stronger.

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Thought it was ok. Worth watching once, but definitely my least favorite of the David Simon projects I've seen (The Corner, The Wire, Treme, still need to see Homicide). Thought the ending was pretty shocking.

 

Don't forget Generation Kill, which is awesome.  

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  • 7 months later...

I (finally) got around to watching this and thought it was fantastic. I agree that the series dragged on a little bit and probably overdid it with the number of characters (not just housing project characters, even Lester's cameo felt forced). But overall, this was pretty powerful stuff for a miniseries, featuring some great performances from the actors playing Nick, Nay, Vinnie and Hank.

Oh and if you're a Springsteen fan, this is pretty much essential viewing.

/necro

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