The Romanoffs

[Datepalm]

Anyone else watching this? The premise was pretty much catnip for me.

The first two episodes were reasonably compelling without being extraordinarily entertaining, but I'm intrigued enough to see where it goes. The first episode was better, though the ending was both silly but and maybe too obviously correct in a kind of strict narrative sense of the princess fairytale ending, complete with wished for heir, evil stepmother and false gold.

I'm curious if it will get more interwoven, maybe sharing characters between episodes (like John Slatterly's Cruise Ship Historian?)

[Datepalm]

Still just me?

I thought this was pretty good - not brilliant, but engaging and enjoyable in some fashion - right up until this last episode, when, just, no, cringe, Matt Weiner, that's not how you do that. What an awkward ham-fisted failure.

[red snow]

I think this show highlights why bezos has demanded they get their own "game of thrones" or "stranger things" hit. Amazon has a lot of well executed and critically well received shows but they don't "grab" viewers or generate much buzz.  I intend to watch but there isn't really any urgency to do so especially with Netflix having shows like daredevil and haunting of house hill competing. Even though this show may be better it kind of falls down the watchlist. 

[Ran]

I've seen the first three episodes. My favorite of those is probably the third, due to the atmosphere it manages to wring out of its premise, and especially due the performance of Isabelle Hupert (Christina Hendricks and Jack Huston aren't too bad either). I think it's an amazing production, visually and in terms of location, with some great talents... but these are _very_ quirky, light-weight stories, and Weiner comes off as a dilettante dabbling in genres rather than having anything really weight to say.

But then, perhaps this is the point, that the myth of the Romanovs is itself something conjured largely out of thin air, a romanticization without basis, and so all these people who connect themselves to it are small and their stories are thus small.

We'll see if that pans out.

[Datepalm]

14 minutes ago, Ran said:

I've seen the first three episodes. My favorite of those is probably the third, due to the atmosphere it manages to wring out of its premise, and especially due the performance of Isabelle Hupert (Christina Hendricks and Jack Huston aren't too bad either). I think it's an amazing production, visually and in terms of location, with some great talents... but these are _very_ quirky, light-weight stories, and Weiner comes off as a dilettante dabbling in genres rather than having anything really weight to say.

But then, perhaps this is the point, that the myth of the Romanovs is itself something conjured largely out of thin air, a romanticization without basis, and so all these people who connect themselves to it are small and their stories are thus small.

We'll see if that pans out.

Yeah, I'm also intrigued by the Romanoffs (of all things) as an organizing framework, and particularly the seeming randomness and of-all-things-ness that make these seem particularly flimsy and vague, as though increasingly that's the point. Most of the episodes also have a lot going on around possession(s) (especially of homes) and privilege, which is usually the strongest tie to the Romanoffs both directly and conceptually. That third episode with Hendricks so far breaks the mold most in that regard.

[Galactus]

When I heard there was a show about the Romanoffs I had been hoping for a big costume drama about the *beginnings* of the dynasty, rather than the end. The Time of Troubles being quite fascinating. 

[Ran]

Caught up now, having watched episodes 4 and 5. I really, really like John Slattery as a performer. He has effortless charm. Amanda Peet was very good in the episode as well. I still prefer the atmospherics of the 3rd episode, but this one held together pretty well (certainly better than the first two episodes). And yet, still, a small story.

As to 5, I've seen much hullaballo about it vis-a-vis Weiner myopically looking at his own recent history, but I think maybe people are not taking every part of the episode -- and especially its end -- into consideration. And it, too, is a small-scale story.

I've enjoyed them all, but they are all so... slight, in isolation.  In fact, episodes 4 and 5 really have the least to do with the Romanov aspect of things, they're quite incidental to it all. I don't know what to make of it, but wonder to what degree Amazon rues the fact that they gave him a huge budget to film with these fine actors and in these varied locations and this is what he gave them. Perhaps when seen all together there'll be some larger statement, but right now it just feels like Weiner is being very indulgent.

[Datepalm]

On 11/7/2018 at 2:41 PM, Ran said:

As to 5, I've seen much hullaballo about it vis-a-vis Weiner myopically looking at his own recent history, but I think maybe people are not taking every part of the episode -- and especially its end -- into consideration. And it, too, is a small-scale story.

I've enjoyed them all, but they are all so... slight, in isolation.  In fact, episodes 4 and 5 really have the least to do with the Romanov aspect of things, they're quite incidental to it all. I don't know what to make of it, but wonder to what degree Amazon rues the fact that they gave him a huge budget to film with these fine actors and in these varied locations and this is what he gave them. Perhaps when seen all together there'll be some larger statement, but right now it just feels like Weiner is being very indulgent.

Re ep 5 - I was quite enjoying it, until it went so flat and didactic at the end (only slightly redeemed by the possibly-ambiguous ending with the odd undermining of the father's rousing defense) and just became too cringey and obviously-about-the-writer. I mean, there's a kind of theme here, of a particular, moneyed class of people caught in up in their tiny scandals, mild hand-wringing justifications of wealth (I earned this apartment! I work in a homeless shelter! The house wants you to live in it!) and often petty attempts at magnification of small incidents that are mostly just - stuff that happens in life, into echoing grandeur and drama and meaning they've not earned.

[Datepalm]

Well, that was the series I guess - I remain oddly baffled and yet somehow intrigued by it. As far as I can tell, its main theme is really privilege - what moving through the world with privilege is, what it allows and where it falls short, how seemingly complex and yet limited the understanding of it is for those who have it, and how small and picayune and particular the lives lived within its cocoon are. That's the great Romanoff motif, an allusion to status and grandeur linked to, and yet quite separate from, money, property and ownership per se. So all these quests for ever more nuanced things, apartments and jewels, and babies and health, and self-assurance and meaning, but also all stultifying and limited by their smallness and ordinariness. (Also, men being ever so slightly better than you might expect, as fathers and husbands.) That's all I got, and while I enjoyed it, particularly on the strengths of the performances and settings, I don't know that I would have watched it if I didn't fit my schedule especially well this semester.

[Joey Crows]

Watched the first episode. It was beautiful if a bit slow. Not sure how I feel about the episodes being self-contained (I think?). Seems like it could use an overarching story.