great show. My only complaint is that they are not showing him make multiple attempts at changing the past like they did in the book
Dont be that guy. Having said that. Last week, or maybe two episodes ago - when he was in his classroom, having that discussion about time travel. Did you guys take that as after the fact, or maybe he went back and tried again? That seemed purposely vague to me.
I'm not being that guy. It's just an aspect of the book I wish they had carried over. I thought the same thing as you. He seemed a lot less clean cut and a little older in that scene so I wouldn't be surprised if it took place after the fact
If you guys remember he looked older and rougher before he shaved and got a haircut to go to 1960 permanently? Why would he waste his time doing this if everything is erased as soon as he walks through the portal?
Book is better obviously but I think they've done a decent job adapting it. My main complaint is still with Franco as the lead.
I think the problem with this, when being condensed to 10 eps or whatever it is, is that he goes back to 1960. That was my biggest flaw with the storyline from the get go, I get that's how it is in the book, but it was gonna make for very poor pacing. I don't think it's a coincidence this show got much better when they just fast forwarded 2 years. (i say the next part as a non-reader of the book and don't want anyone to reply with a spoiler): I think it would be cool if toward the end they showed him stopping Lee then it not changing, then him coming back and having to find multiple shooters/fbi/cia whatever and keep failing until he finds someone who changes it but I just don't know how that would work when every time he goes back it's 1960 because the character has to waste 3 years just for to fix one day. It's one thing if he flashed back to that morning each time but (for whatever reason) he goes to 1960. I just don't know how many times a character would go back if he had to keep waiting 3 years just for another attempt.
They could easily fast forward to where he was prior to resetting each time he starts over. The movie Edge of Tomorrow showed it perfectly.
I'm not saying you can't do it from an editing stand point, I'm saying from a character stand point. Edge of Tomorrow is one day, not 3 years. Those are not comparable.
So now I believe LHO was just one of those nutjobs that thought the government was out to get him and that no one forced him to do it
I hate this amnesia shit. I feel like Stephen King does this with a lot of stuff. He thinks of a great premise then like halfway through does something really stupid that derails it.
yea, the plot could have been executed a lot more cleaner...while going more in-depth with the strategy. still a good show, just seems a bit choppy here.
It's been a few years since I read the book, so someone could correct me, but I am pretty sure that wasn't in the book. Not to be all BOOK IS BETTER, but I am definitely in that camp. The addition and subtraction of certain storylines/characters have given it a different feel. Which I understand - the book is almost 1000 pages. But I absolutely loved the book. It's one of my favorites from King. But this show has been so up and down at points. There are some things it does well but at times I don't feel like the actors are buying into what the show is selling. LHO actor is the opposite - I think he's gone so far in that he's a robot. And maybe that's how he was irl. But his character is just odd to me.
Sorry to disappoint you, but the amnesia shit is indeed in the book. It's blamed on the 'time is obdurate' plot device that's a lot more prevalent in the novel. He gets his memory back a bit differently though.
Yeah - him getting his ass beat and being out of it was in the book. The biggest change is Bill. He was a the tiniest character in the book. I think his role as a sidekick works well in the show.
No clue if this ruins or spoils shit for ppl but i dont care and not a lot of action itt I would have liked to have seen him going back-and-forth in the portal to correct his mishaps, etc. Guess it would have drawn out the story a lot more and probly not enough episodes. But i would have liked it.
Finale talk below. Spoiler very underwhelming end. Spent more time on Sadie than explaining what went down after JFK survived and how the world got all fucked up, etc.
Spoiler Agreed. They completely brushed over how history changed to get to all the Sadie stuff at the end. Not to mention the fact they didn't even really bother to explain the Green/Yellow/Red Card Men and their role. It sucks, because King, who is notorious for being unable to end his projects even decently, really did wrap it all up pretty well. [\spoiler]
Spoiler Think that was an issue with the whole season really. They rushed to cover certain aspects of the story to the detriment of the Jodie/Sadie story from the past. Then at the end, they rushed the jfk/future implications part to focus on Sadie which I don't think they had earned. Just felt like a giant misstep. A lot of shows these days seem like they stretch too thin and suffer in the middle and/or at the end. This one felt rushed and could have used another 5 episodes to develop more. Idk. I'm not mad that I watched it (it was only 8 hours spread over 2 months) i just wish they had done a better job overall. It did make me want to go back and reread that one at some point
All in all it was a pretty good series but I could've done with an extra episode or two focused in Jodie and an extra 10 minutes set in the alternate future. There was no reason to even have the Yellow Card Man in this since they didn't explain anything about him.
Like I said, this was the really big misstep, IMO. The only reason the Yellow Card Man was in the entire series was that completely unearned scene at the end where, for some reason, an unexplained crazy guy ranting about Sadie always dying convinced our main character to abandon his wife. I mean, without ever explaining the Yellow Card Man and why what Jake is doing is so dangerous to all of reality, what's the real consquences even if she eventually dies? Jake could spend literally years with Sadie in the past, then simply reset the timeline after she dies. No real consequences, and certainly better than sitting in the future alone.
Still do not understand the amnesia bullshit at all. It made no difference. I, and I guess I'm alone so far, loved the finale and ending. I hated that she got shot in the Depository because that's just predictable bullshit. But I fully expected it to be drawn out and him save JFK with like 5 minutes left and then Franco decide to stay in the past. I'm really happy with how they resolved the JFK stuff pretty early on and drew out the ending and told more of the story. It was completely in line with the character arch. He went in wanting to help and sticking to the plan but then deviated when he met her so it's only right that it ends in the fashion that it did.
It wasn't Sadie, it was his daughter he was crying about always dying. This yellow card man had been in a loop trying to save his daughter and it always ended the same and he had to deal with it manually all over again. He was warning Jake not to go down that route
I didn't read the book, so I had no clue if I was onto something. I'm kind of disappointed that this was all it was
that reminds me of watching LOST when we'd pour over screencaps for hours in the days after an episode. and there were more than a few times there was a continuity error and everyone went crazy trying to figure out what it meant and why it was there, only to find out it was just someone screwed up.
didn't read the book, but thought it was decent. little heavy handed w/ Sadie towards the end, don't remember seeing her in any of the commercials Spoiler man they just yada yada' the whole bombing thing at the end. I'm guessing the USSR bombed us? Happen during Wallace's presidency?
In the book everybody bombs everybody. Really disappointed in the lack of time they spent on that. Here are book spoilers, but it gives the alternate history line it's due: Spoiler This is how the old man explains what happened after John F. Kennedy was saved in Dallas on 11/22/63: * 1964 election: John F. Kennedy defeats Barry Goldwater. Lyndon Johnson remained Kennedy’s Vice President. Texas Governor Connally “worked like a slave for Kennedy” because Connally was personally embarrassed by the 1963 assassination attempt on Kennedy in Dallas. This was called ‘The Embarrassment Endorsement”. Many who would have opposed Kennedy’s “New Frontier” initiatives supported them because they were ashamed that Kennedy was almost killed in Dallas. * 1964 election: Kennedy thought he would sweep Goldwater but instead only won by 40 electoral votes. * 1965: Kennedy upsets right-wing voters and “the military establishment” by declaring “North Vietnam less a danger to our democracy than the racial inequality in our schools and cities”. * 1965: Kennedy does not withdraw American troops entirely from Vietnam, but restricts troops to just the city of Saigon and a perimeter around it he called “The Green Zone”. In Kennedy’s second term, troops were not sent to Vietnam as reinforcements…and instead economic aid was sent. * 1965-1969: civil rights reforms did not happen because Kennedy was still president and had no inclination to do the things that Johnson did in our timeline. * King claims that “Republicans and Dixiecrats filibustered for one hundred and ten days, with one actually dying on the floor and becoming a hero”…and this made Kennedy give up on civil rights. Kennedy makes the quote: “White America has filled its house with kindling; now it will burn”. * 1965-1968: Race War; Martin Luther King is assassinated in Chicago. The assassin turns out to be a former FBI agent working under the orders of J. Edgar Hoover. Blacks burn Chicago to the ground in retaliation and set fire to a dozen other American cities. * 1965-1968: Kennedy preoccupied with Race War and allows South Vietnam to fall to North. Public opinion heavily swings against Kennedy and he will leave office a broken, battered, and maligned figure. * Jake Epping himself became a point of fixation for conspiracy buffs, since after saving Kennedy he just “vanished” and no one was ever able to find him again. He had been using the name “George Amberson” in the past; President Kennedy was able to call him and thank him for saving his life on the telephone, but “Amberson” disappeared shortly after that. When “Amberson” never made it to the White House to accept Kennedy’s thanks in person, people started wondering what happened to him. By 2012, whole conventions emerged around the cottage industry of who Amberson really was and why he saved Kennedy’s life that day. * 1967 — “The Great Saigon Fuck-All”; Instead of a Tet Offensive happening in 1968, it happened in 1967. * 1968: George Wallace elected 36th President of the United States with Curtis LeMay elected Vice President. * 1968: Earthquakes begin hitting the world as ramification for all of the changes to the timeline. * 1969 — “Hanoi Hell”, when nuclear weapons were dropped on Vietnam. Between 1969-2012 more than twenty-eight atomic bombs were used in various wars around the globe. * June of 1969: President Wallace declares all-out-war on Chicago and attempts to regain control of the city from the blacks who set fire to it and took control, creating a fiefdom in Illinois. * June of 1969: President Wallace gives Ho Chi Minh an ultimatum: make Saigon a free city like Berlin or see Hanoi become a dead one like Hiroshima. * August 9th, 1969: “Uncle Ho” thought Wallace was bluffing, but Wallace marks the 24th anniversary of President Truman dropping “Fat Man” on Nagasaki by turning Hanoi into a radioactive cloud. Wallace gains enormous approval ratings from the bombing. * May 15th, 1972: President Wallace assassinated by man named Arthur Bremer with a .38 revolver “Police Special” in a shopping mall in Laurel, Maryland. * May 15th, 1972: Curtis LeMay becomes the 37th President of the United States. * November 1972: Humbert Humphrey elected the 38th President of the United States. * 1972: Earthquakes worsen, world suicide rate explodes, religious extremists seize chaos as opportunity for war between India and Pakistan. Bombay and Karachi are destroyed by nuclear bombs. * 1972-1976: US, Russia, and China join together to force India and Pakistan to end their war — or risk being bombed “back to the stone age” by this coalition. * 1976: Ronald Reagan elected the 39th President of the United States in a coast-to-coast landslide where “The Hump” couldn’t even hold onto his home state of Minnesota. * 1979: 2,000 commit suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. * November 1979: Iranian “students” overrun the American embassy in Tehran and take 200 hostages. Muslims executed Americans on live TV by beheading. President Reagan does not use nuclear weapons on Iran, but sends in military troops. Muslims form terrorist group called “The Base” — in Arabic, “Al Queda” — to plant roadside bombs in a guerrilla war against Americans in Iran. * 1980: The Beatles reunite for a “peace concert”; a Muslim terrorist bomber detonates his vest and kills 300 spectators while also blinding Paul McCartney. * 1980: The entire Middle East goes up in flames as militant Islam seizes on the chaos to enact the battle plans of the Koran. * 1981: The Soviet Union collapses. Former Soviets begin selling the USSR’s nuclear arsenal to Muslims in Al Queda. * 1983: John F. Kennedy dies * By 1994: Middle East oil fields are “so much black glass” * 6/19/1999 — “Vermont Yankee went China Syndrome”; a nuclear reactor in Vermont was hit with an earthquake that irradiated New England and southern Quebec. The radiation slowly turned most New Englanders into radiation zombies whose faces gradually melted off. * 2004: Hillary Clinton elected the 44th President of the United States…after Bill Clinton dies of heart attack at Democrats’ convention and Hillary is named the nominee in his place. No word on who her Vice President is. * 2005 — Maine becomes a province of Canada * massive, regular earthquakes in the Midwest, California, Europe, and China * 2008 — four of the Japanese islands swallowed by the ocean “like they were dropped by an elevator”; Hokkaido and “three smaller islands”. Scientists say “it’s something to do with the Earth’s crust” * 2008: Hillary Clinton re-elected; man on the street says “she’s doing a good job” and isn’t being blamed for the natural disasters since “no one can legislate against earthquakes”. This proves it’s an alternate dimension because in our world Hillary Clinton is blamed by many people for everything from rain storms to Tim Russert’s heart attack in the MSNBC studio. * 2010: Muslims detonate suitcase nuclear dirty bomb in Miami, rendering the city uninhabitable for 80 years * 2011: Gulf of Mexico declared “Dead Soup” from Islamic nuclear attack * 2012: No mention is made of who is running for the 2012 presidential election. Since the apocalypse is near, it’s not hard to imagine Barack Obama being a candidate. * 2080 — the year scientists believe Earth will be torn apart into an asteroid belt by the earthquakes Read more http://hillbuzz.org/what-if-jfk-had-lived-spoiler-for-stephen-kings-112263-alternate-timeline-79702
I'm really late to the party here, but I really enjoyed this series. I did not read the book but I thought Franco was great. I did like the focus on Sadie at the end (although they definitely could have at last spent another 30 minutes or so on the alternative future.)
If you think you were really late then I feel like I just stepped back into the portal and started my 1960 journey. I just finished. I didn’t read the books. Watching this as a binge seems to have left me with a better overall impression of the entire series than those who did it weekly. I really enjoyed this show. Sure there were issues, but I saw it more as a love story then anything else when watching it the way I did, so the things that weren’t explained didn’t seem all that important, and I didn’t have a lot of time to ponder what wasn’t working because I was on to the next episode.