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roomtone posted:I'm not from the US, but I've never watched any finding relatives type show, so I didn't have that basis for comparison - but a lot of what makes Finding Frances work so well is that Bill isn't portrayed neutrally. His flaws are focused on as much as his desire to find some old love from his youth, and there's the thread of Nathan being lonely running alongside it. There's this constant skirting between ridiculous and sad which I doubt you'd get in some straight faced find my grandmother type of show starring a presenter and some Normal Person. Yeah, just to back this up, having seen/heard the occasional show/podcast about reconnecting with people, part of what Nathan did that was interesting was push back on the narrative. A lot of times the shows just kind of run with what the lead is saying. For example, they'd neither just rip off the bandaid and point out that Bill and Frances weren't kept apart by circumstances or other people, but because he was a young, arrogant horny guy. Nathan keeps poking at it, which creates room for exploring some interesting points about the usual topics (lies we tell ourselves, fake history, dreams, longing, second chances, etc.). And it also kind of has fun pointing out the false reality of those other shows. And it gives room for Nathan to kind of contemplate his own show. At the time, it was the endcap to 4 seasons of pretty crazy TV and conveyed a sense of Nathan kind of wrapping up what he set out to do. There's a cut line (or maybe an easter egg) in the subtitles at one point where Nathan narrates to the audience that he's worried that he's just clinging to the show because he's scared to let it go and that maybe he'd only followed Bill this far into his questionable story because he was running out of interesting ideas. Which of course kind of tied into the story. It was a good cathartic end...that's not really going to hit if you're literally watching his new show.
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Jul 25, 2022 00:52
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i think "The Hero" is just as good and hosed up as Finding Frances
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Jul 25, 2022 02:25
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I can't believe I read all the discussion in here about when the rehearsed confession about cheating was filmed in Episode 1 because the outfits matched and then I rewatched the episode and there's a very clear scene in the first half where Nathan has Kor pick out what he wants to wear on the day
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Jul 25, 2022 02:45
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yeah this thread rules
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Jul 25, 2022 02:47
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hughesta posted:I can't believe I read all the discussion in here about when the rehearsed confession about cheating was filmed in Episode 1 because the outfits matched and then I rewatched the episode and there's a very clear scene in the first half where Nathan has Kor pick out what he wants to wear on the day I'm not even going to check if this is true
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Jul 25, 2022 03:24
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I was v relieved when Robin bailed
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Jul 25, 2022 03:27
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It sounded like Robin was just a normal rear end in a top hat who had a serious mental breakdown when he crashed his Scion Tc at 100mph. I felt real bad for his roommate, who also just seemed like a normal rear end in a top hat, who seemed like he was living in absolute hell with having that guy around everyday and its probably been their 50th screaming match. For some reason the funniest part of the episode was Robin basically going "yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna end up banging her Nathan."
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Jul 25, 2022 03:53
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hughesta posted:I can't believe I read all the discussion in here about when the rehearsed confession about cheating was filmed in Episode 1 because the outfits matched and then I rewatched the episode and there's a very clear scene in the first half where Nathan has Kor pick out what he wants to wear on the day
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Jul 25, 2022 03:54
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Caesar Saladin posted:It sounded like Robin was just a normal rear end in a top hat who had a serious mental breakdown when he crashed his Scion Tc at 100mph. Knowing Nathan if things even started to go that way the robot baby would go into crying overdrive.
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Jul 25, 2022 04:11
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It’s amazing a woman who is probably well into her 30s told him that under no circumstances would she have sex before marriage, and his thought process was “but…I’m good looking? I’m still gonna have sex with her, tonight”
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Jul 25, 2022 04:24
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veni veni veni posted:It’s amazing a woman who is probably well into her 30s told him that under no circumstances would she have sex before marriage, and his thought process was “but…I’m good looking? I’m still gonna have sex with her, tonight” Stop signs werent a problem for his Scion Tc at 100mph, and they aren't going to be a problem for him, tongiht. (i was very relieved when he left)
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Jul 25, 2022 04:30
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Caesar Saladin posted:It sounded like Robin was just a normal rear end in a top hat who had a serious mental breakdown when he crashed his Scion Tc at 100mph. I really want to know the story about the other 9 cars.
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Jul 25, 2022 04:35
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veni veni veni posted:It’s amazing a woman who is probably well into her 30s told him that under no circumstances would she have sex before marriage, and his thought process was “but…I’m good looking? I’m still gonna have sex with her, tonight” nathan mentioned she was 44. she was overlooking the +10 year age gap between them (and everything else about him) because she thought he was hot. Old Kentucky Shark posted:Like, you would think so, right? But according to that video that's the tenth car he's gone through. It wasn't even the only Scion tC he destroyed. i wonder how the hell this guy makes a living, if he even does. to go through 10 cars, has a nice place, constantly buying weed, decent clothes, but he seems barely functional.
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Jul 25, 2022 04:46
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god giveth and god taketh
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Jul 25, 2022 04:47
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Somehow having three mattresses is one of the least weird things about this guy.
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Jul 25, 2022 04:55
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The episode title was so good. But I am already cringing at the idea of trying to raise several 10 year olds who can’t remember anything you say to them because you didn’t say it to -them-.
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Jul 25, 2022 05:11
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Golden Bee posted:The episode title was so good. But I am already cringing at the idea of trying to raise several 10 year olds who can’t remember anything you say to them because you didn’t say it to -them-.  It will be exactly like raising one 10 year old. Amazing.
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Jul 25, 2022 05:18
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Imagine being the guy in charge of Nathan's budget. "Yeah, I need you guys to transport the replica of that bar to Oregon." That's a bit on the expensive side. Do you have any plans for that?" "Not really, no. But it feels familiar."
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Jul 25, 2022 05:36
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roomtone posted:i wonder how the hell this guy makes a living, if he even does. to go through 10 cars, has a nice place, constantly buying weed, decent clothes, but he seems barely functional. It's portland, you don't need a living. I'm also glad it's only 30 mins. 1 hour endurance runs of this show would be too extreme.
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Jul 25, 2022 08:33
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Palmtree Panic posted:Somehow having three mattresses is one of the least weird things about this guy.
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Jul 25, 2022 13:14
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emgeejay posted:But they would pay for a new warehouse and the costs of transporting it there so they... wouldn't feel like they wasted money on its construction? I'll grant that at some point in budgetary discussions, the bar appearing in multiple episodes probably did help justify spending more on building it. But the idea that re-using it was an HBO mandate rather than a creative decision doesn't give the writers enough credit. I'm not really sure what you're arguing against here. You agree HBO probably would want them to reuse the existing expensive set. The episode provides a comedically flimsy reason for Nathan hanging out in a now irrelevant set. Star Trek: Discovery is hardly the only case of warping the narrative to reuse sets. Again, just off the top of my head: In the later seasons of The 100 various plot contrivances appear to allow characters to revisit old locations despite being many light years and hundreds (thousands?) of years away. It's a little different, but in Angel, at the beginning of the second season, despite being a demon-fighting private eye, Angel incongruously decides to buy and renovate an art-deco LA hotel. This allowed many scenes to take place in the large, open, and most importantly easy to film in hotel lobby instead of Angel's cramped PI's office. In Masters of Sex, Masters and Johnson move into a new office for much the same reason, and the fact that they're operating a sex clinic (where privacy would be quite useful) in a large, open plan office with clear glass walls doesn't ever come up. We'll probably never know the exact intentions behind this, but it hardly seems a stretch to imagine a show all about how TV is made would make a meta joke about how TV is made. As for the barn - assuming that the whole baby swapping plan is actually performed for real (and personally I suspect that the timeline is a good bit shorter than the show implies but whatever), they are going to have reams and reams of footage and no idea until it is all over about what is funny or worthwhile. This episode was almost entirely about Angela's dating exploits - it's entirely possible from the beginning that none of that would have been entertaining and might never have even been mentioned on the show. But they hit gold with Robin and so it becomes a big deal. It would be much easier for them to stage conversations in the barn afterwards when they've worked out what the narrative will be later. Remember, in whatever actual control room they'd use to monitor these cameras, the conversations will be about what's funny, not what they have to do to make the experiment work. The barn we see is probably just a sound stage, there's no reason to spin up a location again. There is a lot that we see, of course, that Nathan does for "real". Angela appear to be a "real" person, as does Robin. For their reactions to be authentic, a lot of this has to be carried out authentically. But for everything else, why would they? "Nathan Fielder" is a character, the real version does not actually believe that an elaborate plan to swap children in and out of a house for a week or two is a good way to actually come to terms with becoming a parent. And it's fun to think about where the gaps between what's shown and how it worked lie. veni veni veni posted:Nothing about the logistics of faking moving the set makes sense. No one's suggesting they didn't move the set.
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Jul 25, 2022 13:50
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roomtone posted:i wonder how the hell this guy makes a living, if he even does. to go through 10 cars, has a nice place, constantly buying weed, decent clothes, but he seems barely functional. trust fund, or he's an uber driver/drug dealer. his roommate was tweaking
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Jul 25, 2022 14:36
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precision posted:trust fund, or he's an uber driver/drug dealer. his roommate was tweaking Your driver ROBIN will be arriving in 2 minutes in a SILVER SCION TC For your safety, please confirm there is no license plate before entering the vehicle.
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Jul 25, 2022 15:07
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https://twitter.com/nathanfielder/status/620060895209779200 I hate that I only just realized this tweet I've been laughing at for years is Nathan. I thought it was some random ding dong this whole time! Of course I only found out about Nathan and his works a few months ago.
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Jul 25, 2022 15:19
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I wonder what they would have done if Robin hadn't bailed in the middle of the night.
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Jul 25, 2022 16:20
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Wait are you now arguing the barn is a sound stage or am I misreading your post? Why is it so hard to believe they just cobbled together the funniest convos from the barn? I’m sure they had plenty of footage. I simply do not understand your insistence it must have been done later.
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Jul 25, 2022 16:38
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why the hell is every second post in this thread a complaint about how or why this show was made the way it was i get it's a pretty meta show but nothing else on tv receives this kind of criticism. i feel like the people complaining about it are super earnest irl or something and need to have absolute structural integrity before they will engage with a narrative which is in itself a lol
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Jul 25, 2022 16:46
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really its more like every 4th post but you know
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Jul 25, 2022 16:47
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Yeah I don't understand the impulse to ruin a wonderfully weird show by trying to peer behind the curtain
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Jul 25, 2022 17:32
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AndrewP posted:I wonder what they would have done if Robin hadn't bailed in the middle of the night. They would've made sure that he left, no way would they let him be around actual kids.
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Jul 25, 2022 17:40
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AndrewP posted:Yeah I don't understand the impulse to ruin a wonderfully weird show by trying to peer behind the curtain I think there's two mindsets at play: 1. the people who desperately want to go 'Ha! It's all a setup and you rubes fell for it!' 2. the people who see someone like Robin and are just filled with questions about who he is, where did he come from, because his behavior is so alien to them
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Jul 25, 2022 17:45
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I think a show that's so much about artifice and what's "real" is inevitably going to invite people to try to look under the hood.
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Jul 25, 2022 17:56
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It's Nathan's newest magic trick and everyone wants to know how it's done.
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Jul 25, 2022 18:02
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Lastdancer posted:It's Nathan's newest magic trick and everyone wants to know how it's done. But he's showing us exactly how it's being done, that's the entire framing of the show.. There's just a small subset of posters who think there is somehow a secret deeper layer to the trick.
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Jul 25, 2022 18:58
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Comrade Fakename posted:I'm not really sure what you're arguing against here. You agree HBO probably would want them to reuse the existing expensive set. quote:The episode provides a comedically flimsy reason for Nathan hanging out in a now irrelevant set. Star Trek: Discovery is hardly the only case of warping the narrative to reuse sets. Again, just off the top of my head: Those examples are scripted dramas taking place in fictional or historical settings, which have no choice but to build a limited number of sets. This is a docu-comedy mostly using real-world locations. The economical choice would be for Nathan to go mope at a local bar close to the acreage, but instead they did something more expensive to be funny. (Important: the funny part is not that they're trying to save money, because if anything they spent considerably more money and effort for Nathan to continue being the Wizard of Loneliness in his fake bar.) quote:As for the barn - assuming that the whole baby swapping plan is actually performed for real (and personally I suspect that the timeline is a good bit shorter than the show implies but whatever), they are going to have reams and reams of footage and no idea until it is all over about what is funny or worthwhile. Why can't the barn scenes be part of that same pile of contemporaneous footage? Nathan's team's whole thing is capturing exactly this kind of stage-managed reality spectacle on film, so why is it outside the realm of possibility to have a second camera crew on an in-character Nathan pulling the strings? quote:It would be much easier for them to stage conversations in the barn afterwards when they've worked out what the narrative will be later. Remember, in whatever actual control room they'd use to monitor these cameras, the conversations will be about what's funny, not what they have to do to make the experiment work. I thought there was no way to tell what's funny until after shooting is wrapped, which is why what we saw couldn't have possibly been shot simultaneously? quote:The barn we see is probably just a sound stage, there's no reason to spin up a location again. When the tightrope walk episode of Nathan For You aired, were there truthers like this who thought they CGIed out a safety harness or there was a second undisclosed swap to a professional stuntman or something? Did people insist H. Jon Benjamin couldn't really have been in that van coaching Nathan live and his side must have been filmed a week later? emgeejay fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Jul 25, 2022 |
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Jul 25, 2022 20:26
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WampaLord posted:But he's showing us exactly how it's being done, that's the entire framing of the show.. There's just a small subset of posters who think there is somehow a secret deeper layer to the trick.
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Jul 25, 2022 20:48
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It's days like these that I curse Lowtax for making the forums.
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Jul 25, 2022 21:16
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ymgve posted:I watched "Finding Frances" and was a bit disappointed. It was a touching story, but after watching some other episodes of Nathan For You and the first episode of The Rehearsal, I expected more insanity. Do you US guys not have TV shows where they help find people that lost each other/distant relatives, so this is something that's more unique over there? hahaha if they did, would definitely not care to watch that kind of show. Second of all, loving the idea of sitting through Finding Frances taking it as a straightforward "find unconnected person from past" show lol
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Jul 25, 2022 21:37
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General Dog posted:I think a show that's so much about artifice and what's "real" is inevitably going to invite people to try to look under the hood. yeah but it's also going to be funny to walk by a bunch of rubbernecks hunched in a circle over the engine of a clown car trying to figure out what kind of machinery enabled so many cars to fit in there in the first place
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Jul 25, 2022 21:39
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I feel like the only one that thinks the bar is going to be some long term joke throughout the series, and it was planned that way from the start.
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Jul 25, 2022 21:44
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