Station Eleven (HBO Max)

gmisk · 31-12-2021 9:35pm

I finished episode 2.

It is definitely an acquired taste it will be too slow and ponderous for many people, it's probably why I gave up on the book!

I will admit I do prefer the sections set at the start of the pandemic so far (ther child actor , but Lori Petty (great to see an upturn in her career since orange is the new black) and Mackenzie Davis are always hugely watchable.

jill_valentine · 01-01-2022 5:02am

I get what people mean about the future stuff but I really think both halves inform the other, especially by the time you get to ep 7 and they start to blur together a lot more overtly.

And yeah, Lori Petty and Mackenzie Davis are just so damn watchable. That little scene of them playing cards is nothing, really, but it’s got more charm in it than whole sitcoms ever manage.

Homelander · 04-01-2022 1:38pm

I'm up to date now and absolutely love it. Reminds me of something like The Leftovers - huge background concept, but really boils down to just being a very grounded and exceptionally well-made production about the people left behind.

Favorite episode so far was either the opening episode, or the one which had David Wilmont front and centre. Terrific performances.

I would agree that while MacKenzie Davis is pretty good, the future stuff is really not remotely as engaging for me either. For me it's at least partially due to the casting, I can't take to Lori Petty and I think David Cross was a poor choice here as well.

But the overall quality of the future segments is lagging behind. Overall though, superb drama so far.

06-01-2022 8:18am

Never seen such a good first episode building amazing tension and style descend into such boring garbage. What were they thinking! It went from brilliance to something from The Walking Dead Season 50.

Slydice · 06-01-2022 11:18pm

I

Remember

Damage

08: Oh.. I don't think things are going to end well

for the people of the airport

Had a bit of a google for the Ave Maria used at the end of this but couldn't find it. Search results for Ave Maria are not exactly thin on the ground 🙂

yabadabado · 06-01-2022 11:28pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118430379#Comment_118430379

That version of Ave Maria is from a band called 7th Avenue.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/13EahEu09Px92S8GLirDey?si=9RnwnOciSl-D8fyefWlNYg&utm_source=copy-link

Slydice · 07-01-2022 2:24am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118430450#Comment_118430450

Ah! That's the one! Such a distinct sound compared to the others I found on my search.

Really fits the feel of Station Eleven too.

Found a youtube version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdZFgbbIZuI

fritzelly · 07-01-2022 5:00am

I'm finding the future story very disjointed and hard to follow - watching episode 8 and I was like why are they now at the airport

fritzelly · 07-01-2022 5:38am

Right...so we had a meetup of the past and present storylines then in episode 9 we go back in to the past again

Some really bad editing/scripting on this show

Checking the shows writers - Emily St. John Mandel (listed first) one credit! Patrick Somerville - a few shows but not much under his belt

Executive story editor/written for television by - some unknown who has a couple of tv episodes behind her

Needed better pedigree for this show to work

satguy · 07-01-2022 5:44am

The show jumps about in the timeline,, but it's a slow show,, so not too hard to twig where the jump has landed.

The birth scene and mother death, lets you know exactly where you are in the timeline.. "there is no before" ..

All in all ,, 10/10 and 9 episodes in = Happy ..

fritzelly · 07-01-2022 5:48am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118431259#Comment_118431259

Have you read the book?

mountain · 07-01-2022 8:44am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118431260#Comment_118431260

Having read the book, it’s easier to keep track of what’s going on

jill_valentine · 07-01-2022 11:14am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118431256#Comment_118431256

Mandel was the book's author. She was not involved in the day to day writing. Cord Jefferson, ex Watchmen, Good Place and Succession was though.

Somerville worked on The Leftovers for two seasons and Maniac (which was a bit Marmite) and was a novelist before that. Several episodes as well as the overall direction were steered by Hiro Murai (director of, among other very hypey things, Donald Glover's This Is America video) and also by Jeremy Podeswa, who's a veteran director of stuff like Game of Thrones, True Detective, Boardwalk Empire, Handmaids Tale and Homeland.

Most of the rest of the episodes were directed by Helen Shaver, who at 70 something is both a former actress and a veteran director of decades, notably for Orphan Black, Westworld, Vikings, Person of Interest and Dead Like Me.

Whether you're down with the show's nonlinear style or AV tricks or whatever or not, it has about as much pedigree as it is possible for a show to have.

I genuinely don't find it difficult to follow the sequence of events if you pay attention. Ep 5 should have made it clear why they were heading for the airport - having been invited to the Museum twice at that point by a character we see then see in the airport flashbacks, and seeing Clark begin the Museum.

Ep 8 was the weakest of an otherwise excellent show though, and although Ep 9 was far stronger that has me worried about how the final episode is going to pull off the finish. That was an awful lot of time to waste on Clark, Elizabeth and Tyler, likely the least interesting members even of the 2040 cast, and I'm concerned that what I'm enjoying isn't what the show thinks I'm enjoying. There's a huge ton of stuff to close out in only an hour, including, inevitably, more emo Tyler stuff, and the second half of the season has had a lot less momentum than the really compelling first half.

yabadabado · 07-01-2022 1:00pm

I haven't read the book but I don't think it's difficult to follow the timeline.

jill_valentine · 07-01-2022 1:48pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118432464#Comment_118432464

Not so much here, but on twitter etc I think people are mistaking "Not having all the info yet" for being "confused". There are a lot of things the show deliberately presents out of context or out of order, particularly in relation to Kirsten's memories, so that you're shown firstly how she thinks about it and then how it actually happened. The show does sometimes ask you to trust that if it leaves something unexplained for now it'll come back around to it and that seems to throw people off.

It's not just regular viewers though, as an aside, the AV Club reviews in particular have been very odd. For example they complained it felt creepy that Kirsten was sleeping with the Conductor - something that at absolutely no point was implied - and thought a character died who hadn't, even though we saw them alive onscreen and people talked about them surviving later in the same episode.

I think maybe the show asks people to pay closer attention than we've gotten used to sometimes, but by ep 9 I don't think there are any major questions left about the timeline to this point.

Slydice · 07-01-2022 4:28pm

09: That was a good episode.

He didn't leave her!!! He's still alive!!! I hope they meet!!

I swear I lept when the wolf pounced! I thought he was a goner! Think I was influenced by the bear attack in The Revenant in my mind while watching.

That was so uplifting seeing all the mothers and the babies.

Then so sad about Rose. 😥 She was only on screen for such a short amount of time but made such an impression!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118431259#Comment_118431259

There is no before!

Again, this episode, the actress who plays lil Kirsten! All the scenes were so well done. That reaction when

Jeevan said about the play 😟

yabadabado · 07-01-2022 8:28pm

Watched episode 9 ,there seems to be an awful lot of loose ends to tie up in the last episode.

Is it longer episode ?

Slydice · 07-01-2022 9:44pm

Can't see anything obvious on it. The imdb page has it at 45mins but that might just not be updated: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10579934/

maybe a lot of stuff goes down real fast.. or maybe it's a longer episode

gmisk · 07-01-2022 10:38pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118431256#Comment_118431256

I don't think that's fair, Patrick Somerville has some great credits like writing episodes of the leftovers and think he is involved with made for love which is terrific, he also created Maniac which was insanely well received.

In fairness I think it is beautifully directed and I would say it is a really difficult book to adapt. It has grown on me as a show.

fritzelly · 13-01-2022 8:35pm

And so it ends with a whimper

Slydice · 13-01-2022 9:04pm

Finished! Overall, I liked this show. It's not action and adventure. It's end of the world (and that is handled really well) but it's on-the-other-side looks at survivors/next generation who are theatrical workers. It starts pretty hectic and complicated and works it's way through mysteries into a well wrapped ending.

The jump out performance had to be lil Kirsten (Matilda Lawler)

Danielle Deadwyler as Miranda Carroll also

though she had so much less screen time

They're on the countertop!

Not to discount the solid performances from Mackenzie Davis (Kirsten), Himesh Patel (Jeevan), David Wilmot (Clark, the Irish guy TM 🙂) and Nabhaan Rizwan (Frank)

10: Well, that wrapped the show just fine.

I had a bit of a moment when they teased the possibility of Jeevan and Kirsten not reuniting. It felt great when they did.

I'm glad the kids and Tyler didn't complete their Beacon mission. I'm glad what it meant didn't come up much after the golf club.

They also did the opening scene of Hamlet with the Ghost pretty well 🙂

Me at the start of this series... oh I wonder what the mystery will be all about.

Me at the end... I remember damage!

Also: Woah, look at the undersea! So many! 😲

Future: You know.. I could see possibilities for more in this universe.. just whether it could get much backing from a film/tv studio.. I dunno. I'm not sure it's the type of show that's gonna pull along a huge audience and take in a bunch of money.

yabadabado · 13-01-2022 10:30pm

Finished it .

I was sceptical that they could tie it all together in the last episode but think it was well done .

13-01-2022 10:35pm

So the last one is up, is it?..I've been waiting for it..read the book a few years ago..

yabadabado · 13-01-2022 10:48pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118470608#Comment_118470608

Yeah all ten episodes available now.

13-01-2022 10:49pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118470715#Comment_118470715

Yabadabadoo!!..

jill_valentine · 13-01-2022 11:02pm

Phew. I have some annoying gripes about the finale itself, but otherwise, wow, what a show. What a raft of performances. I'm going to give myself time to recover and then watch it from the start again, there's so much stuff that meant more than it seemed to at first glance. I haven't seen much like that before.

jill_valentine · 17-01-2022 3:17pm

The soundtrack to this is on Spotify now and its unreal. More diverse than I'd really appreciated in the show too, there's some weird synthy stuff in next to a load of bluegrassy fiddles and folk. It's great.

ObeyGiant · 18-01-2022 4:17pm

I absolutely adored this show.

Have been going back and listening to interviews with the showrunner and the producers and hearing some of the decisions they made really explained that sense I had when watching it that I was in safe hands, that the makers knew what they were doing. E.g. an interview with Mackenzie Davis she said that her first days of shooting were what became episode 7, which gave her a load of powerful emotional context for her character.

And yeah, can't wait to go back and watch it again to pick up on all the stuff I missed first time through. Like

Episode 2, the symphony visits St Deborah by the Water, which has a statue of a lady holding a baby. Terry, from episode 9, is Deborah 🤯

yabadabado · 19-01-2022 2:19am

I think I'll give it a rewatch ,in a few weeks time.

Not something I'd usually do but think it will be worth it with this show.

steve_r · 26-01-2022 2:42pm

I don't think it was great.

There are parts of it that I felt were very good, the scenes in the past with Jeevan, Kirsten and Frank, in particular, were very strong. I also enjoyed the Clark/Arthur dynamic, and the early scenes in the airport.

However the massive stumbling block for me is all the scenes in the future, and I think they torpedo the show, unfortunately.

The Shakespeare group is large and none of the characters are really developed - we see Sarah getting sick but we don't really know her story, we see Gil being presented as this influential figure but then killed off.

The prophet shows up - and adult Kirsten distrusts and stabs him - but then follows him? I thought the play set up at the end was ludicrous and in such contrast to the grounded scenes with young Kirsten (who was fantastic by the way).

There's also the story of Miranda which was bizarre at times - she has a breakdown in the meeting with the client, but they pair her with Timmothy Simmons who is playing a comedic character? They could easily have told her story without him and I think it would have worked better.

I haven't read the book, and maybe the book does a better job on the future part of the story, but I really feel this let the show down.

I was reminded of Lovecraft Country watching this, not in terms of tone/content/plot etc but that's another HBO show where the showrunners fundamentally failed to tell the story well at times. HBO are known to be fairly hands off with their shows so maybe this is a show that could have done with a bit more direction.

Station Eleven (HBO Max)

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