over there

Táck

dont watch it religously, but the few i've seen have been ok imo

anyone else agree?

ixoy

Not seen it but don't get too attached as "Over There" is over over there (in the US). Didn't get renewed for a second season.

Táck

ixoy wrote:

Not seen it but don't get too attached as "Over There" is over over there (in the US). Didn't get renewed for a second season.

lol....good reply.

Lump

Did it even finish the first season?

Táck

dunno. i only ever watch when i see some war scenes in it. some of the scenes they make are very good imo. not suprised its not getting a sceond series. cant imagine the americans would be overly impressed with it. its not a propaganda programme anyway.

Dirk Gently

T&#225 wrote: »

its not a propaganda programme anyway.

Have to disagree with you there. It is definitely propaganda imo. Every episode deals with a reality of the war, usually with the outcome that the heroic Americans either save the day or else done their best to save the day.

Episodes I've seen.......

- American soldiers come across a C.I.A. prison where prisoners are being abused. The soldiers have a moral dilemma and then decide to take command of the prison from the C.I.A. to protect the human rights of the prisoners against a few rouge C.I.A. people.
Made it look as if American soldiers would always disobey orders if those orders were immoral and U.S. soldiers would shut down any torture centres if they new about them.

- A news clip is realised about an American massacre. Later on in the episode it is revealed that the Iraqis staged the event and were waiting for the Americans to turn up so they could video them from decieving angles and use it against them.
Made it look like every piece of news footage from Iraq against the U.S. army is staged and manipulated.

- The group of American soldiers go to a small remote town somewhere in Iraq and ask the locals if they want anything built. An Iraqi woman asks for a school but all the men in the village insist on having a mosque. In the end the woman ends up hated by the towns people for wanting a school and her life is in danger.
Makes it look like all Iraqis are backward and against progress and don't want any facilities built for them except mosques.

Other episodes about soldiers being injured and given leave but wanting to return to the fighting ASAP. A soldier went AWOL while on leave in America but soon decided to report back to the army and asks to go back to Iraq. A soldier was pictured by a reporter posing with his gun and said something like “born to kill”. The episode later went on to show how the soldier was manipulated into posing and acting the hard man. Makes out that the soldier was naive and was manipulated by a greedy reporter.

The programme focuses on real life situations in Iraq which have received negative media attention and portray the U.S. in a bad light (prison camps/massacres/lack of rebuilding)and makes the viewer believe that the U.S. are actually victims of evil Iraqi propaganda and that the U.S. soldiers are caring Humanitarians. It is the most blatant use of propaganda I've seen in an entertainment programme which is not a pentagon press release.

Even the theme tune is sentimental ****. All this "entertainment" does actually affect how ordinary people view the american soldiers in real life.

Táck

I suppose you ahve a point. i just though seeing soldiers dying, getting wounded and not being able to walk again weren't very pro-war. i also seen an al'qaeda detainee not being brought to guantanemo becasue they had to go "by the book" there, so they brought him off somewhere else and gave him a few slaps, kidanapped his sister and said she'd be raped daily in an afghan prison if he didn't talk!

lostexpectation

happened to watch a few eps after watching some late night bones, its strange to see progs reference katrina (+thief) and the iraq war, they did a haditha type ep that was pretty okay.

over there ain't the worst they do the whole im only protecting myself and the man to the left thing, which is bollox really when you think about the larger implications and then they do the whole we're trying to build schools hospital things which is bollix too.

the_syco

Don't think the producer expected a nice response, as it wasn't meant to paint a "nice" picture of whats happening in Iraq.