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Persons Unknown - Page 3

post #101 of 116
8/29/10 at 5:52am
It boggles my mind that the people behind this show thought that it could go to a second season. Even after a couple of episodes I was getting bored with the lack of forward momentum, not to mention the fact that the show redefined the word glum, but I stuck with it just of curiosity over how it would end up. It was only 13 episodes after all.

SPOILERS, I GUESS, EVEN THOUGH THE SHOW'S OVER



But that finale was just staggeringly bad. The big ending was that they pushed the reset button? So a second season would be the same thing all over again? But with two groups? Awful.

The only payoff was the penultimate episode - it was obvious early on that they were pretending to knock each other off in order to fool the powers that be. So the rest of the show became hee-larious. It was almost like a ZAZ spoof of "Saw", with the ridiculously unconvincing 'deaths'. And the fact that the showrunners actually thought it would be a surprise that they were all alive (complete with "Saw"-style flashbacks showing how they did it) - as funny as anything I've seen recently.

Not to mention Picardo's apppearance in the finale. I actually thought/hoped his bizarre get-up was pushing the show into sci-fi territory. No such luck.
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post #102 of 116
8/29/10 at 7:25am
Well that fucking sucked. No answers whatsoever, no resolution, no explanation, just a giant reset button for "season 2" which they must've known wasn't coming for MONTHS. Sigh.

Incidentally, the boat name was "almas perdidas", which means lost souls.
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post #103 of 116
8/29/10 at 8:30am
funny, i only knew the main girl hadnt died.

I've just gotten used to the show being so awful that I thought it was actually that poorly written, shot, and edited... like the guy falling from ten feet up.... or the strangle with the fire extinguisher.... and how blackums death was never shown or talked about (thought it must have been edited for time or something).... it all just seemed like par for the course...e.g. when they show the saw style reveal its just as poorly shot as the deaths themselves, like when erica lays the piano piece down for a door jam in overly slow, deliberate movements.

yeah it is a bit obscene how poor this show was from start to finish, and that rather than just explain anything, they almost literally hit reset.
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post #104 of 116
8/29/10 at 8:42am
I actually liked episode 12. Maybe like you I had such low expectations that I simply believed what I was seeing, rather than shouting "YOU DON'T DIE FROM FALLING 3 METRES AND LANDING ON YOUR FEET". Even the Saw-style "this is what really happened" didn't bother me.

And then episode 13 came...
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post #105 of 116
8/29/10 at 2:16pm
well...I guess I'm glad I have been missing this since the move to Saturdays.
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post #106 of 116
8/29/10 at 9:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brechtsky View Post
funny, i only knew the main girl hadnt died.

I've just gotten used to the show being so awful that I thought it was actually that poorly written, shot, and edited... like the guy falling from ten feet up.... or the strangle with the fire extinguisher.... and how blackums death was never shown or talked about (thought it must have been edited for time or something).... it all just seemed like par for the course...e.g. when they show the saw style reveal its just as poorly shot as the deaths themselves, like when erica lays the piano piece down for a door jam in overly slow, deliberate movements.

yeah it is a bit obscene how poor this show was from start to finish, and that rather than just explain anything, they almost literally hit reset.
Yeah I know what you mean. As stupid as the the guy falling 10 feet to his death is I bought it in context of of awfulness of the show. Although I kind of wish all of that was real. One part that really took me by suprise in a good way was when Ricki Lake started slamming Erica's head into the piano. Would of been a nice twist for the shows gentlest people to go insane. Also these people that have been doing this for 25 years and they never had a group fake their death before? Not even a couple of them?
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post #107 of 116
8/29/10 at 10:45pm
Yeah, this was utterly retarded. It did at least manage to keep me watching til the end, though.

I like how the boat at the end has a flag with the Secret International Conspiracy logo on it. That's cute.

I didn't catch every minute of it, as I was working, but I'm guessing by the other comments here that I didn't miss any bits of dialogue that might have gone towards explaining what the hell the point of this thing was.

So I'm guessing the show was like Lost early on, where the writers didn't really have any idea what was going on beyond the group of characters and the mysterious setup?
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post #108 of 116
8/30/10 at 4:20am
Well showrunner Remi Aubuchon (McQuarrie ditched this ages ago) said in an interview they knew everything that was going on, and it wouldn't have "...none of those maddening teases that we’re going to tell you the answers and then we don’t tell you the answers".

Fuck that guy.
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post #109 of 116
8/30/10 at 12:02pm
We should all get t-shirts for making it thru all 13 episodes.
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post #110 of 116
8/30/10 at 2:06pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Waaaaaaaalt View Post
One part that really took me by suprise in a good way was when Ricki Lake started slamming Erica's head into the piano. Would of been a nice twist for the shows gentlest people to go insane.
Actually I had been waiting for Moira to snap and start killing people since the first episode. And when she finally did, it was every bit as funny as I had hoped (even though she didn't really kill anyone). And Graham's "fall to his death" was just comically bad. Love that OMG THE ACROPHOBIA IT'S LIKE CLIFFHANGER ALL OVER AGAIN overhead shot of him holding on desperately, then it cuts to a side view and he's like 9 feet up. Almost like a vertical varation of that gag in Police Squad! when Drebin and the criminal are shooting at each other from behind trash cans, then it reveals that the trash cans are right next to each other.

Also, looks like Kat (reporter guy's girlfriend) will now spend the rest of her life trapped in a Viet Cong dog house! What a great way to reward the woman who gave up her life/career for a useless douchebag boyfriend who was obsessed with finding his ex.

But yeah, shitty end to an overall shitty show. Didn't go left-field batshit like I wanted it to, didn't answer any questions (anyone else see those damn promos that said "by the end of summer, everything will be revealed"?). Only way I would have considered watching the nonexistent season two is if they promised to give Bizarro Picardo a bigger role.

I'm a mark for these network filler horror/mystery shows that always get dismal ratings. This show had the potential to be better than the rest. But I think I liked Harper's Island more, that was a crap show but at least it never forgot to be fun. And as bad as Happy Town was, it still had some batshit appeal, and a few great character actors doing their thing. Persons Unknown was a load of suck.
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post #111 of 116
8/30/10 at 2:13pm
Harper's got quite good, in its own way. The deaths started to matter as we'd come to like a few of them. It didn't stick the landing, but it was schlocky fun.

Happy Town, too, I'll defend against the detractors. It was fucking insane at times, and had some fantastic cult guest casting. The finale was really, really intriguing. And it actually had some answers.

Compared to Persons, they were Emmy worthy.
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post #112 of 116
8/30/10 at 2:20pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Murder View Post
Harper's got quite good, in its own way. The deaths started to matter as we'd come to like a few of them.
True. Did anyone actually give a shit when the PU characters "died"?
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post #113 of 116
8/30/10 at 2:29pm
I liked harpers more than happy town.

Despite any answers, when the hill-billie platoon raided the police station, and then walked away sans arrest, I laughed my ass off at how poorly written that show was. ALthough I agree it had its suspenseful and intriguing moments.

But I agree on Harpers, also shared many of those negative qualities, but it had fun and created an entirely cohesive and conclusive story in its run, whereas neither of the other two did.

P.S I had forgotten about that "mysteries revealed" tagline for PU ... so how exactly did they imagine they were being honest at all?
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post #114 of 116
8/30/10 at 3:28pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brechtsky View Post
Despite any answers, when the hill-billie platoon raided the police station, and then walked away sans arrest, I laughed my ass off at how poorly written that show was.
That was definitely terrible, but MC Gainey's triumphant, all guns blazing return at the end of the siege made me laugh. There was a fair amount of enjoyably absurd stuff like that. If Persons Unknown had a Gainey, or a Sam Neill, or a Stephen McHattie, hell even a Peter Outerbridge, then we might be talking "bargaining tool".

I mean, poor Alan Ruck did the best he could... but no. It was a mistake to hold back on Robert Picardo wearing Christopher Lambert's wig from Mortal Kombat until the very last episode of the season.
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post #115 of 116
8/30/10 at 3:36pm
Yeah, why the fuck wasn't Picardo utilised sooner? That kind of casting with that kind of wig would've made for something more interesting than Generic Female Boss.
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post #116 of 116
8/31/10 at 10:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Murder View Post
Yeah, why the fuck wasn't Picardo utilised sooner? That kind of casting with that kind of wig would've made for something more interesting than Generic Female Boss.
It could of been one of those "when season 2 starts we will learn who the true power of the organization is" sort of deals. Its typical very common in the "there is an all-powerful agency shows".
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