This starts tonight on HBO. It was announced about eighteen months ago, yet I can't find a single mention of it in OOTV using the search function. I'm not sure if that's because people just got pretty sick of Boardwalk Empire by the end?

Still, regardless of your thoughts on BE, that seems like a pretty solid couple of paragraphs! And the premiere is nearly 2 hours long!

Unfortunately, the reviews aren't super glowing (mild spoilers from this point forward), with the main complaints being that whilst Cannavale gives a great performance, his character simply isn't that interesting, and is someone we have seen countless times before, albeit in other environments. There have been numerous comparisons to The Sopranos and Mad Men, and the show is said to not hold up too favourably to those.

Sepinwall says:

With that said, I feel I should point out that most of the reviews still place this firmly in a solid grade B territory, for example, Vox were a bit more positive:

Anyway, I'm sure we'll all be checking this out regardless.

the Diceman!

Looks to be your standard high quality HBO viewing. But based purely on the teasers and trailers I'm def not expecting anything groundbreaking.

Honestly **** those reviews, I thought this show was dope as ****. Made me wanna be the main character during those times, just an awesome scene to be apart of. I couldn't help but expect Bobby Carnevalle to start doing some ganster **** everytime he had a lil disagreement with a person, to much of his Boardwalk Empire character in my brain lol. I was looking forward to this for a long time and it delivered, can't wait to seem more! Loved the end part too and was googling it was a real event that happened. I'm curious how much of this show is based on history and how much of it especially the main character was based on real stuff or just inspired at least as I'm sure the main character is made up especially with what happened in the pilot. HBO has been hit or miss with me for the last 5 years or so and this is definitely a hit!



Pro critics are **** imo, all they do is sit around and watch/critique shows and movies so they can't really appreciate what they are watching. In this day and age it's all about user ratings. Is there a Rotten Tomatoes/IMBD type of user rating system for tv shows? Seems like critiques are people who just hate life and like to **** on things.

I thought the pilot was awful. The pacing was dragging, several of the musical transitions felt forced and out of place (30 second shot of a back woman singing and playing the tambourine as she walks through an office?) which helped pad the run time to 2 hours when there really wasn't enough to hold my interest for that long.

There were several moments that just strained all credulity. No coke head is ripping their rear view mirror off their car to do lines. No one is just going to casually let a bunch of teenagers run over their cars either.

And the last scene... to say that it was based on a real life event is a stretch even by Hollywood's infamously loose 'based on a true story' standards. Yes a building once collapsed, that is the extent of it though. The building wasn't ripped to shreds by the power of rock and roll, there wasn't even a show at the time.

I don't understand how anyone could watch that 9/11 style collapse, followed by the main character waking up completely fine (and the lights still somehow working as well) and do anything but eye roll and groan.

I will concede that the whole thing looks gorgeous. The sets, wardrobes and cinematography are all great.

You seem like you'd be fun at parties

Do you have any actual thoughts on the show or do you just want to make snide comments about me?

Thought it was really good, as a lover of old music.

So this is what killed Boardwalk Empire.

Unless the genius of this is that it's a comic book super-hero show in disguise, I'm taking his just getting up and strolling out of the remains of a building collapsing on top of him as a drug induced hallucination.

i have heard similar opinions to this before, and i really find it to be a super dumb opinion, especially when directed at tv 'reviewers'. it's been pointed out on this forum in the past but most of these guys are just super enthusiastic fans of television writing enjoyable recaps that will often point out some of the references and callbacks you may have missed. they are generally not attempting to do any sort of high-brow analysis that you might get from movie reviewers, and if anything i think they are typically looking to find the good in shows as opposed to the bad.

so yeah, in conclusion i have no idea why user ratings comprised of the general public (which will include a lot of idiots) are better than a user rating comprised of 60 reviewers.

yeah, they're called Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB.

Enjoyed this, Juno Temple is hot.

The scene with the Led Zeppelin manager yelling about unauthorized sales of posters or shirts is a recreation of Peter Grant, their real life manager, in a scene from The Song Remains The Same. Or at least inspired by it... I mean, they both call someone a silly ****, so there's that.

Tnm,

You actually thought it was unrealistic to have him rip off the mirror in that spot? Do you have any experience coming down from a brutal coke binge? That's basically exactly what would have happened. It's certainly not so implausible to the point where you had nothing beter to do than come run here and complain about it.

The more unrealistic part of that scene was him wasting a bunch of it rubbing it on his gums which does virtually nothing. That little toot he put on his finger would have went right up the nose.

It started slow, but picked up with the lunch meeting with the A&R crew, when Richie went ape-**** on them.

It kept my interest...

Andrew Dice Clay was awesome.

+1. Best thing he's done and it's not even close

FWIW, I always rubbed coke on my teeth and gums when I did it. I haven't watched the scene yet so idk how much he wasted doing it though.

I always put the coke up my bum. You got the rush and then also got the added bonus of putting something up your bum.

Loved last nights episode. Ray Romano crushed it

The cast is doing a great job. The music is great. I'm still having trouble understanding what this is though. Walking away from a collapsed building with just a few scratches still confuses me.

Chip Rosseti all coked out at a Bruce Lee movie was awesome and so was him beating up Ray and his other partner and him flipping out on the A&R crew. This show is pretty awesome! The cut scenes of the wife driving and then some random singer seemed like it kinda stuck out where other cut scenes of musicians seemed to work for me.


This show makes me wanna work in the music industry of the old days.



To me reading reviews of movies or tv shows is a lot like coming to 2+2 and reading reviews. They seem to dwell on so much of what didn't work instead of just enjoying the show and I can see why they would do that, everyone would if they sat around watching things so they could write up a critique. With 2+2 tho it's interesting to see everyone's different perspectives, you learn a lot about what you're watching and then you can discuss it. I used to read pro reviews all the time but after I while I just couldn't do it as it seemed to kill the fun of whatever I was watching.

Uh, that was supposed to be Karen Carpenter.

Since you brought it up, I'm really liking the surreal musical interludes that invade our main characters' lives, like Karen Carpenter in the car with Devin, singing Yesterday Once More, or Richie imagining Jerry Lee Lewis at his piano.

if only he'd read a recap