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soggybagel posted:I am at the same spot with this show. A couple years ago I just made the decision that if its a work of fiction I immediately skip it. It's made my listening more enjoyable. Count me in too. Particularly when they don't clearly state that it's a work of fiction before the story and you have to work it out. (There was that short story they did years back - "X is resurrected"? - about a guy repeatedly half-drowning an armadillo, which had me boggled that they were broadcasting tales of animal cruelty.) More generally, the fiction seems like it's way outside the program's brief. True stories, history, how the world works, examining people's motives and feelings - then you slam a bit of fiction in there? One of these things is not like the other.
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Nov 12, 2013 14:31
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C-Euro posted:I have to admit I was bummed that that the latest TAL episode featured two fictional stories, which are the usually the worst things that TAL does (in my mind) Totally agree. And it's maddening how they often don't announce that it's fiction. The recent episode on "housing is destiny" was an eye-opener. Fighting integration battles in the 70s and 80s?
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Dec 29, 2013 22:58
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I haven't listened to the latest TAM and you've got me all curious ... Is The Moth fair fodder for the thread? It's certainly a fellow traveller of TAM. There's something about The Moth that irritates me. Maybe it's the way the stories are so studiously crafted to fit a certain form: SELF DEPRECATING JOKE / PATHOS / IMPORTANT LIFE LESSON. Not that I'm denying that strength can emerge in adversity, but when so many of their stories are all "it was a tragedy but that's okay, I had this insight", it becomes an uninformative cliche. TAM has it's own favoured forms and cliches, but they don't appear in every story. On the other hand, two of their recent stories were from celebrities, who apparently hadn't been coached and seemed to be on just because they were celebrities. Thomas Dolby, that was a really dull anecdote. Rachel Dratch, your dating life is not very interesting.
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Jan 24, 2014 19:41
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I'm still there for Serial. But while I appreciate that the the length benefits the story in some ways (e.g. like in the first episode where they show how absurd it is ask what someone did 6 weeks ago), the show still feels a bit drawn out. It could be 2/3 the length and work just as well. There's a bit too much emphasizing points, listening to tapes and the narrator listing her thoughts. One question: I missed it in episode 3 and couldn't find the point again - why did Asia recant?
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Oct 21, 2014 22:45
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effervescible posted:I'm still on the fence re: whether Adnan killed Hae, but this is how I feel—obviously I wasn't on the jury, but I'm seeing tons of reasonable doubt. They had a quote in the first episode from one of the jurors saying she was still confident in the decision they made, didn't they? I would love to hear more about what the jury was actually shown. This most recent episode shows how complicated the thing has got, at least for me. Conflicting witnesses, timelines, faulty memories, many characters and names ... if the whole thing ends with a shrug and "see how complicated justice is?" I'll be disappointed but not surprised. EDIT: having read an NPR blog or two, Koenig maintains she doesn't know where the story is going. Which I'm slightly suspicious of - what if in the second episode they'd discovered something that 100% pinpointed Adnan as the killer? Still, it seems like they are they're headed for an ambiguous end. nonathlon fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Nov 7, 2014 |
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Nov 7, 2014 10:54
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Euthyphro posted:Serial should be in its own thread. It's a different show, and over a million people are listening. Some of them are coming to this forum to discuss it, seeing nothing, and not suspecting that the discussion would be taking place in the TAL thread. Eh, we're not exactly overwhelmed with discussion about it here. (What, one or two posts a day about it?) Even if people can't find it. Make thread if it bothers.
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Nov 12, 2014 00:21
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Snuffman posted:Man, TAL just can't get a break. To be fair, this is a bit different. The people TAL were talking to were defrauded by a third party. Still messes up the story, but not TAL's fault. Veering slightly off topic, I'm always puzzled by these cases of high profile scientific fraud. Fraud in the small scale, sure: massage some data, tinker with results, alter a few minor details. No one will notice. But when you claim to have made a superconductor or stem cell, people are going to pay attention. They'll try to repeat your work. You're going to get caught.
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May 21, 2015 09:49
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Was that "Game Face" episode really weak? A group of tourists get stuck on a glacier overnight and have a lovely time. A comedian has a few mediocre shows. It's like they collected all the B-side stories that wouldn't fit anywhere else and shoved them together.
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Jun 9, 2015 11:50
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Watermelon City posted:Anyone else a fan of the BBC World Service Documentaries series? A recent program, "The Search for Tiny Libraries in New Zealand" reminded me of a classic This American Life segment but set in New Zealand. Worth a listen while we're waiting for new TAL episodes, anyway. RTE (Ireland) World on One documentaries are quite good too, including some that they're dug out of the vaults and rebroadcast which are like a window on a different world. ("Now tell me Mrs O'Flaherty, how did you feel when you heard the priest had been shot? You poor 'ting, it must have been terrible. Another cup of tea? Don't mind if I do.")
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Jul 31, 2015 12:08
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Drunkboxer posted:Is the different world the past or just Ireland? Is Ireland actually the past?? Both, although I was mainly talking about "Ireland of the past", a world in which the priests rant from the pulpit, many Irish don't stray from their village and tales of woe and famine abound.
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Jul 31, 2015 22:28
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Crisco Kid posted:Man, I'm going to need a few days to mull over S-Town. I found it uncomfortable and relatable and infuriating and true and FRUSTRATING in too many ways to unpack at once. I know a bunch of fellow Alabamians who are listening to it, and I'm champing at the bit to get a mass Facebook convo going or something before I crawl out of my skin. I've got as far as Episode 4 and I'm super ambivalent. It's certainly unique and a strange story / stories. But I'm uncomfortable about lots of things: the problems of consent and privacy, the feeling of a bait-and-switch and the slow pace of the story, the TAL-cliche of the reporter telling you what they feel about the story, the overall that I'm not sure why I should listen to this. Honestly don't know whether I'll go further. nonathlon fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Apr 2, 2017 |
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Apr 2, 2017 14:46
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bad day posted:I'm sure absolutely everyone interviewed on this show signed the requisite legal documents. There's at least one person who the reporter doesn't know the name of, which would indicate that not everyone signed off. What are the guidelines for this sort of thing? quote:edit: I agree with many of you in that the self-insertion in this series is not good. The reporter is always the least interesting person in these stories and their role should be minimized as much as possible. It's very much the NPR style, isn't it? And I found the reporter a bit fake as well.
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Apr 3, 2017 07:48
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