afamaral

I remember enjoying hospital dramas throughout my earlier life. Still, I had gotten so done with them that it's been well over a decade before I've given any hospital drama much of my attention. Since I've enjoyed Noah Wylie's work over the years and had just binged The Librarian movies, I gave the season opener a chance. The Pitt had me hooked by the end of that first episode, and I've been looking forward to new episodes each week. I'm only writing this review now because I had to check out and confirm what I thought was the final episode of the season last week.

Like a good story, it wrapped its first season with a satisfying finish that left no doubt that the story was complete and that I was just left hanging, wanting more.

The Pitt is an emotional coaster ride that puts you in the middle of chaos that feels more real than any hospital drama I've ever watched. The Pitt is by far the best hospital drama I've watched. After being hooked on "House," it felt like that was the end of enjoying hospital dramas. I tried watching others afterwards, but they all felt like that was no longer my cup of tea.

While House was a fantasy hospital drama, this was a hard reality punch to the head and heart.

The Pitt reignited my interest in the genre, and it all boils down to good storytelling, excellent writing and a cast and crew that can bring it all to life.

I thoroughly enjoyed the hour-by-hour episodic delivery like 24, while the tensions that the format built up created a knitted consistency between episodes that immediately placed the viewer back into one of the most chaotic and stressful days one could ever experience. The respect I have always had for the medical profession has dramatically increased after watching this show. Although it was a very intense exposure to an emergency ward, it was an excellent introduction to very real and likable characters who were all easy to identify with.

I'm already considering rewatching it as a binge fest rather than week by week. Still, I'm nervous about it because it is a very emotionally powerful experience that will leave me drained if I don't stretch out my (re)viewing experience. I can't wait for season two. I am happy to see it's already approved. I also hesitate to get my hopes up for round two because the first season already seems impossible to top.

I actually believed, after all the lead in dialogue over this Star Trek entry - not hype (which I appreciated), that this was going to be a serious entry into the Star Trek universe. I didn't even mind the opening, nor do I have any issues with the production quality.

Everything was bang on and slick insofar as caring enough about a visually appealing professional creative product was concerned.

Except, following the introduction to. Emperor Georgiou's rise to power - which was okay on its own but after those first few minutes of setup came the great let down.

It reminded me of a poor version of the Crackdown video-game and its introduction to the mission assignment protocol with a pale degree of its narrator's enthusiasm.

When I saw that, I knew what kind of movie I was about to watch and adjusted my expectations accordingly.

As much as I could appreciate some of the effects and the slick quality of eye-candy graphics, I couldn't care less about any of the characters. There was no emotional investment and I struggled to maintain interest in any of it the more I watched it.

I'm pretty sure I began missing quite a bit by the halfway mark as my phone began capturing my attention more than the story I had settled into watch in an uninterrupted manner.

I really wanted to focus on what was happening but it was all just too puerile. I'm still struggling with how terrible the writing was. It's not even that it seemed written to appeal to a preteen audience but that the writers pumped out their uninspired ideas in between whatever else was more important to them while working on this project but that the dialogue itself was never read by them with the intent of editing any of it for corrections or improvements.

If the characters were any more two-dimensional, this would have been an animation. I've seen children's animations with more respect for writing than this outing.

Someone else entitled their review as "Worst Star Trek Movie Every" and I have to agree. No matter what other disappointments I've ever experienced with other Star Trek entries, none were as much of an embarrassment of writing as this tripe.

I really wanted to enjoy this and I did enjoy the graphics. I loved the space station. It was a brilliant design.

The writing, however, could have easily been surpassed by a team of high-school students. That's how bad the writing was. How the double-hockey sticks these writers can justify their salary is a testament to how little respect producers and investors have in the axiom, "If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage."

This was a disgusting insult on levels beyond the kind of shocking of the terrible redesign of the Klingons in Discovery was. At least with that error in judgment, one could still reason they were attempting to push creative boundaries.

In this case, however, it was beyond clear that the writers could clearly not care less about their efforts in this project. It was either a consequence of hiring lousy writers - which I doubt was the case, or it's a case of terrible management where the idiots with money overruled their creative judgment to such a degree they stopped caring altogether about what they were doing.

If this were written by AI, then it would be easily understood as a bean-counter's disrespect for the creative process.

That's the only way I can process how horrible this writing was.

People who have watched the movie by Terry Gilliam already know this story. The premise of a time traveler returning to an earlier period to alter future events is not a new one within the realm of Science Fiction by any stretch of the imagination. What made the movie special was a combination of directorial vision, superb writing, excellent acting, and mood enhancing cinematography - all the requisite elements for delivering an engaging piece of dramatic fiction. It was a story told well with effective pacing which reached a satisfying conclusion within the span of one sitting.

My first thought upon learning this story was being re presented within a re-imagined version spanning an untold number of episodes throughout a television series was that I hoped they would be able to pad it with enough substance for it to maintain interest. We have already been witness to the far too many entertainment failures by many who have attempted to re-purpose completely self-contained short works into unsuitable formats. Video game adaptations are the first culprits which come to mind. The games themselves may have been engaging in an interactive format but fell miserably flat when translated into a passive medium. Doom is probably one of the best (or at least most popularly recognized) examples of this sort of effort. Some short stories by authors have been more successful than others, such as those penned by Stephen King - but I believe his work lends itself well to a visual interpretation.

Although there are examples of movies successfully translated into television series such as the two espionage shows based upon the character named "Nikita" (first embodied by Anne Parillaud); I don't recall any other efforts in porting a story as self-contained and complete as Twelve Monkeys (I am willing to stand corrected on this score). I wondered how they would manage maintaining suspense when we were already familiar with the broad strokes of the mystery. It struck me a like having read the end of a novel before starting at the beginning. I assumed the creative vision required to keep viewers in suspense necessitated altering that mystery in a significant way without diluting its punch.

In watching the first season, it became abundantly clear that it is an homage to the vision first circumscribed by Terry Gilliam. The creators and writers have clearly studied the source to such a degree they likely can recite every line spoken and describe with abundant detail every scene in the movie. Their efforts shine through and have paid off in a way to deliver an engaging story to audiences of this genre. People who struggle with continuity in a story that jumps about through various time periods where the past is often a future event, it can be a confusing effort in keeping track of a linear accounting of events and character progressions. Nonetheless, the writers and production staff succeed in their efforts to ensure clarity is provided through visual cues and references to leading events.

The production values remain true to the original vision in an albeit less foreboding tone but that sort of atmosphere can become too oppressive to want to experience it over the long haul of multiple seasons. The "whodunit aspect" of the mystery is delivered with a sufficient number and degree of twists to keep audiences guessing. It also a show which, due to its expansion over the original, allows for character exploration and development and this lends dimension beyond what we experienced within the movie version.

We are witness to evolving dynamics which change characters on a fundamental level and which lead to implications affecting outcomes. The entire structure of the story is altered by character developments and this approach successfully maintains its integrity as a mystery to be solved. Unlike the movie where the mystery is unraveled with a neat ending twist in one time period, the series ties together multiple time-lines to weave a web of interconnected intrigue from past, to present, to future. Each time it appears we have gotten closer to knowing who has been responsible for destroying human civilization and why, we are introduced to a new turn of events which shatter our illusions of certainty.

This short story however, having been subjected to an expansion well beyond its original intent does introduce moments when one becomes impatient for progress. I must admit though, that my own patience had been blurred by personal events which made it difficult for me to maintain my degree of engagement on a weekly basis. As I have become jaded by the experience of weekly doses of entertainment in favour of binge watching, I would recommend one set aside the requisite time to experience this series in this manner to achieve maximum enjoyment.

I do recommend watching the movie first - if you have not already, but that perhaps might be because it's my own frame of reference. I do believe though, that there are a sufficient number and degree of differences between the movie and the serial to preclude boredom. I believe the movie offers a conceptual point of entry into the series which adds dimension to questions about where the story will lead. I also think that one can find themselves more easily lost in tracking events within the series well enough to follow along without losing interest in discovering where its destination may lead.

The production values are solid, the writing is creative and clever, and the characters are well cast, acted, and scripted (with some familiar faces from the most recent Nikita series). (Most of the main characters from the movie have been preserved, but the choice of recasting Brad Pitt's exceptional portrayal of a psychotically disturbed individual in a significantly altered form was an excellent decision.) All in all; for fans of this genre, I believe it is a worthwhile piece of entertainment which can pique curiosity, interest, and empathy while satisfying one's appetite for action-oriented imaginative drama.