Over*There on FX

MrBadExample

MrBadExample

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Is anyone else watching Over*There on FX? I've only seen the first two episodes but it's very good. I can't vouch for it's realism but it reminds me a lot of Black Hawk Down in that regard. It feels real.

Just wondering what everyone else thought.
 
The show sucks liberal activist anti-war balls.

According to last night's show:

- Terrorists are soldiers
- Americans are liars who don't keep their word
- Americans purposely kill innocent civillians

The best part is that it only took 3 episodes for them to bring up the torture issue. This show is nothing more than a piece of Hollywood anti-war propaganda.

:puke:
 
[quote name='Scrubking']The show sucks liberal activist anti-war balls.

According to last night's show:

- Terrorists are soldiers
- Americans are liars who don't keep their word
- Americans purposely kill innocent civillians

The best part is that it only took 3 episodes for them to bring up the torture issue. This show is nothing more than a piece of Hollywood anti-war propaganda.

:puke:[/QUOTE]

you ever notice how propaganda rhymes with shut the fuck up?
 
Mr. Bad cocked his head in virtual ecstasy. Eyes rolling back, lids fluttering, warmth washing, then a quiet enveloping stillness sent him sailing toward astral awareness.

"Speak to me...," he murmered through his spit sealed orifice, oozing a well wanked drool down the side of his face as he formed the words and drifted down. He felt the popping, whizzing and ticking away as the neurons fired, echoing the loop of left brain lunacy that pounded the meningial membrane. He dug a hole for himself went deeper.

Voltaic visages flashed his mind with a convincing reality. A pulsating cityscape. Instruments blaring, the city's lights rose to meet him as he raced the wave and vectored toward the inner metropolis. A city, a central protrubrant core, brilliant, radiating, pulsating. Here was the source, unaltered, unalterable, it's perfection only to be observed with objective percision. Yet, it was changing before his very eyes.

"This can't be happening...," he thought, "Am I controlling this, or it me?" He asked himself. "I feel like it's PART of me..," he could not finish the notion before coming in contact with it. Daisy chains and laughs, they moved together, he and it now one heavenly union.

"Welcome, my son," a voice answered with cold delivery, convincing as the reality of a stone wall, yet instinctly and hypnotically absorbed. "You are what you believe," It said again. He knew it as truth in it's purest form, unmovable, yet moving through him, slowly, caringly, lovingly. It gripped him in a way he'd never been able to grip even himself.

"It's so big..." unable to finish the thought as the spirit overflowed inside him, shocking him back to the outer level of unconciousness. Re-aware of his comfortable, numb familiarity, he instantly knew he was back on the lower plane of existence where he belonged. "Home again," he spoke sadly. A smile and a tear were all that was left on his face.
 
[quote name='Scrubking']The show sucks liberal activist anti-war balls.

According to last night's show:

- Terrorists are soldiers
- Americans are liars who don't keep their word
- Americans purposely kill innocent civillians

The best part is that it only took 3 episodes for them to bring up the torture issue. This show is nothing more than a piece of Hollywood anti-war propaganda.

:puke:[/QUOTE]

What the fuck do you know, chickenhawk?
 
The Narrator's Apprentice said:
Mr. Bad cocked his head in virtual ecstasy. Eyes rolling back, lids fluttering, warmth washing, then a quiet enveloping stillness sent him sailing toward astral awareness.

"Speak to me...," he murmered through his spit sealed orifice, oozing a well wanked drool down the side of his face as he formed the words and drifted down. He felt the popping, whizzing and ticking away as the neurons fired, echoing the loop of left brain lunacy that pounded the meningial membrane. He dug a hole for himself went deeper.

Voltaic visages flashed his mind with a convincing reality. A pulsating cityscape. Instruments blaring, the city's lights rose to meet him as he raced the wave and vectored toward the inner metropolis. A city, a central protrubrant core, brilliant, radiating, pulsating. Here was the source, unaltered, unalterable, it's perfection only to be observed with objective percision. Yet, it was changing before his very eyes.

"This can't be happening...," he thought, "Am I controlling this, or it me?" He asked himself. "I feel like it's PART of me..," he could not finish the notion before coming in contact with it. Daisy chains and laughs, they moved together, he and it now one heavenly union.

"Welcome, my son," a voice answered with cold delivery, convincing as the reality of a stone wall, yet instinctly and hypnotically absorbed. "You are what you believe," It said again. He knew it as truth in it's purest form, unmovable, yet moving through him, slowly, caringly, lovingly. It gripped him in a way he'd never been able to grip even himself.

"It's so big..." unable to finish the thought as the spirit overflowed inside him, shocking him back to the outer level of unconciousness. Re-aware of his comfortable, numb familiarity, he instantly knew he was back on the lower plane of existence where he belonged. "Home again," he spoke sadly. A smile and a tear were all that was left on his face.
Click to expand...

Dude, I can totally hook you up with the editor of Harlequin Books.
 
"Peace at any price" purveyors are going gaga over the new FX Channel series "depicting" the Iraq war, "Over There," produced by Steven Bochco of Hill Street Blues fame. "Wow! Anybody else watch Over There last night?" gushed a writer for the heavily-read antiwar blogsite, Daily Kos. "Within a few minutes . . . it was obvious that Iraq was Vietnam all over again."

How a fictional show shot in La La Land could make anything about Iraq policy "obvious" is hard to fathom. But the series does tout its realism, as have some reviewers who've never gotten closer to Iraq than filling their gas tanks. Further, Bochco claims it's politically neutral. Unfortunately, "Over There" puts reality in a body bag and is as unbiased as if scripted by a guy named Allen Qaeda.

If "Over There" has a true military advisor, he deserves the firing squad. In the first episode a squad is pinned down while besieging a terrorist-filled mosque. The unit remains for about 36 hours with no air support, because "Air is dedicated to another area." Never mind that planes or choppers are always available within minutes. They request artillery, again to no avail. There's no armor.

In order to include women, two females from a transportation unit just happen to join the siege. In fact, they just happen to tag along for the rest of the series! Reality is sacrificed to the God of Diversity. Why didn't Bochco also include a Klingon?

Towards the end of the show a troop transport pulls off to the side of the road, an idiot thing to do since that's where improvised explosive devices are almost always buried. Naturally they roll over a powerful IED, even though the bombers have kindly marked it with little white flags. A horribly wounded soldier is then evacuated in a type of chopper not used in Iraq.

Clearly this is a military that can't even tie its bootlaces and in the immortal words of Pogo: We have met the enemy and he is us.

The terrorists are downright chummy compared to U.S. commanders. The besieging squad repeatedly suffers because of the idiotic orders of a general 75 miles away. Another off-site officer orders the troops to move forward from a relatively safe ridgeline to a completely open area. In another scene, a GI declares he'd rather risk being blown to bits than tell a sergeant he's wrong.

Particularly appalling to me was a slam against Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD). It simply fails to show up to disarm a vehicle packed with enough explosives to blow up Rhode Island. I was embedded with the EOD unit of the 8th Engineer Support Battalion at Camp Fallujah. They react to calls with the speed of firefighters (or Domino's pizza) and coolly and professionally carry out some of the most dangerous jobs of the war.

The GIs ARE depicted as both brave and dedicated, as they must be in order to be proper pawns. Conversely they're also hot-headed; they constantly bark at each other like obnoxious poodles and there's a knife fight by the second episode. Do the soldiers beat and torture prisoners? Do you have to ask?

Meanwhile the terrorists, who in reality favor "soft" civilian targets, are braver and tougher still. They make the Viet Cong look like pansies. One literally has his torso blown off and yet his legs incredibly keep marching forward. A metaphor, perhaps, for the invincibility of the terrorist Jihad?

As for American policy, that's depicted in a dream sequence in which a capture GI is given a litany of reasons for why we're over there such as wanting to steal Iraqi oil, and then asked, "Your masters are liars and thieves, and yet you obey them. Why?" He doesn't deny it, rather providing the pawn answer of "Because I'm a soldier!"

There have got to be a thousand true inspiring stories of courage and kindness by coalition troops during the war, but don't expect to see them on "Over There." The wealthy Mr. Bochco certainly had the resources to tour Iraq before slandering our military and turning FX into the Al Jazeera Channel. But he didn't. Perhaps he was afraid of seeing what the real truth is over there.
 
But the series does tout its realism, as have some reviewers who've never gotten closer to Iraq than filling their gas tanks.
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Never been closer to iraq than their gas tank? Sounds like someone we know, who could it be? hmmmmm................
 
[quote name='alonzomourning23']Never been closer to iraq than their gas tank? Sounds like someone we know, who could it be? hmmmmm................[/QUOTE]


Yes, that kettle IS black, Mr. Pot. \


Bochco claims the show is apolitical. A claim that is an affront to people who use their brain on a regular basis. War, by definition, is always political in nature so the portrayal of the Iraq war will naturally contain political commentary whether intended or accidental. This is akin to Tom Daschle lambasting Bush in the media for using 9/11 for political purposes. The statement in and of itself also uses the 9/11 tradegies as a political tool.


Who knows, maybe all our service people are crass, drug using wife beaters and all Iraqis are american hating, amoral killing machines. In my opinion, portrayal of the current war even as a fictional drama is irresponsible at best, and sinister at worst. It serves no other purpose than to propogate myth and misinformation about the reality of the Iraq situation through shocking visual and vulgar commentary that is far from accurate, yet integrated into the american psyche as truth via television, the most powerful medium of misinformation of all.

Bochco may be a traitor or war monger, who knows, but this series is well beneath his past efforts (save Cop Rock) and shows he's grasping at straws like so many other artists who have past their prime.
 
[quote name='MrBadExample']This show must be even better than I thought since it's got all you conservatives so worked up against it. :lol:[/QUOTE]

I'm not suprised you would draw such a conclusion. Acceptance or formulation of opinion by default is always easier than forging a unique, or objective analysis.
 
I've watched all 3 episodes so far, but I have to say I'm not real big on it. I usually love FX's other series (though I'm beginning to tire on Rescue me as well), but my dislike for it stems from no politcal stance or belief. Kind of like Ackbar, I think the show is poorly written and as a whole pretty uncreative. The characters are very stereotypical, look at Bo for instance. Typical southern kid who was a quaterback and captain of his football team. Or Smoke, thuggish black guy from the inner city who naturally hates everyone else. Dim, the smart guy, Tariq the arabian guy who naturally knows everything about arabic culture and the language despite growing up in Detroit, Ms. B the vindictive girl, Doublewide the nice girl, etc. They are all very plain and boring characters IMo, the only one who actually has any real characteristics in the Sgt. and he's a pretty stereotypical Army Sgt. for war movies.

Also, I dislike the constant addition of side stories. Now we have an apparent rape situation in the next episode, on top of Bo's injury, Dim's stepson running away because his mom is a loser, and so on. By the 6th episode I wonder if it'll have 20 mins of footage about the actual soldiers over there and 40 mins of side stories.

It's somewhat unfair to compare this series to something like Band of Brothers, but one reason a series like that was so great is it focused on the soldiers themselves and the characters where interesting and natural people and every episode you learned something new about each character.
 
It's somewhat unfair to compare this series to something like Band of Brothers, but one reason a series like that was so great is it focused on the soldiers themselves and the characters where interesting and natural people and every episode you learned something new about each character.
Click to expand...

Not to mention BOB it was based on actual historical events and the experiences of the actual men who fought there. They used their real names and based scripts on actual experiences. While every hollywood production uses artistic and dramatic license, the only real truth about Over There is the name of the country where it's supposed to take place.

Over There is to Band Of Brothers like Friends is to living in NYC
 
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