Hell on Wheels

My dad just discovered the show and is loving it. He's always loved westerns and the old west and this is one of the few shows that keeps his attention.
 
It was always on at odd times for some reason. We found it towards the end of the series. They coulda made a drama about the Art Institute in the 90s based out of Allegheny Center lol.
 
Love the series, but can't stand AMC's commercial breaks. You get 15 minutes of uninterrupted show, and then the next 45 minutes is a commercial break every 5 minutes. By the end of the show you could swear you watched more commercials than show.
 
I just started watching this on Netflix and really dug the pilot. Dammit. I hope AMC makes the Season 2 episodes available online for a while so I can catch up.
 
the_batdemon said:
That would have been a combination of Mad Men and Breaking Bad! :lol
Click to expand...

I only visited there once and it's the only place where you can see a roach smoking a roach. Yeah i know non AIP students won't get that joke :lol Seriously that place had some horrid roaches, the old rumor was they were escapees from when Romero was filming part of Creepshow. Anyhow hopefully Hell on Wheels will keep going, it's hard to find shows my dad likes anymore.
 
Ugh. Just watched season one on Netflix. I love westerns and I love the idea of shows like this. Hell on Wheels COULD have been great but in my opinion it is virtually worthless. Why? Because it is a very modern take on a very different time. The way it deals with race and gender issues has been completely written for a modern audience and to be palatable to the politically correct. This show is not a story but yet another vehicle to preach modern social views in a horribly clunky and ham-fisted way. Any time I see that, I am immediately turned off and annoyed. If I want to be preached to, I will go to church. I don't need my entertainment to preach to me. Want to make me think or present a new and different take on an idea? Awesome. I love shows and movies that make me think... but don't preach to me. When I think back to an amazing show like Deadwood, it becomes clear what a watered down bunch of drivel Hell on Wheels is and what a shame since the era is such an interesting time in US history with the end of the civil war, the freeing of the slaves and the expansion West. Just so many cool things and so much opportunity... squandered.

With all of that said, the pilot was pretty epic, dramatic and brutal. It made me think we were going to have something really great, but AMC missed the mark on this one.
 
I'm annoyed with AMC because I can't find S2E1 anywhere online (legitimately) at this point. Why the hell does AMC only allow, like, three episodes of a show to be online at any given time?! Why don't they allow viewers to watch any episode of the current season online at least? Hell, NBC does this with Grimm and it's great. Lets you catch up at your convenience.
 
They kinda have to water it down just to get it on tv since certain words can't be said when it comes to realistically showing the interaction of the various races. Mind you archy bunker and red foxx said far worse things 30 years ago lol. My dad likes the show, even though he agrees with you Art, and given how rare it is for him liking a show we got him season one for christmas.
 
Wes, my issue is not so much with the language or lack thereof but more with the stories and the way races and genders are represented. This is written from an apologist's POV which is a relatively modern concept and from the history I have read, doesn't resemble the attitudes, the people or the time very accurately. I just think Deadwood handled this much better as it was raw, brutal, very politically incorrect by today's standards, and unapologetic in its potrayal of characters. Minorities and women were oppressed and there was no resolution or escape for them (again, from all I have read, this is more in tune with how things actually were at this time). While I don't much care for Mad Men, at least some of its portrayal of inequality is interesting since it is set in a time period when things truly were changing and the status quo was being upset. In the 1860s? Not so much. The country only began to truly see the first of those kind of things near the very end of the 1800s.

Not trying to get on a soap box.... I just hate it when I see something that looks really good or an idea that I really like be ruined by social commentary. For me the new BSG series was exactly the same. The mini-series was absolutely amazing and was some of the best stuff I have seen since Star Wars, but it quickly devolved to social drivel that is so outside the realm of a military organization, chain of command, and rules and order that it made me hate the series.
 
Thread revival! Why? Because I just caught up on the show, and am planning a costume from it, so naturally I came here to search for info on props and such. Sadly this was the only thread I found, but I decided to belatedly jump in the convo.

I think you're reading either too much, or not enough into it Art. While I understand your argument, I think it may not totally be valid in the way you are presenting it. Firstly, The race and gender relations you mention are just as present in HOW as they are in Deadwood. They are just presented in a much milder fashion for the platform. They also spend a lot less time focusing on it in lieu of character development.
That character development goes back to why I never could get into Deadwood. Deadwood focuses almost entirely on individual situations and violent altercations to show the brutality of living in their world, where as HOW focuses on character development and empathy. We spend less time looking at how society treats a specific individual or group of individuals, and more time looking at how that individual reacts to how society treats them.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that YOU are wrong. I'm just saying that I think you misread it. HOW shows the same oppression and violence of the era as Deadwood, they just do so in a much, MUCH, more family friendly fashion.

I also feel it's unfair to compare the two shows as they are really only LOOSELY connected by an era. Both show take place in different places, in different situations, with different social pressures being placed on them. An outside attacking force will bring people together far more than an inside corruption. The recent political climate is a great example of this. When we were under threat of terrorist attack, Americans were together in their stand, but when it came down to the last election, we were ready to throw our closest friends under the bus for their political views.

Now somebody help me find Bohannon's knife!
 
That being said... I am a little offput by the fact that I keep expecting them to play the Beatles "Come Together," in every 3rd scene of the movie... They do lay the comraderie on pretty thick.
 
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