When 1024x768 is too much (bringing back the fullscreen thread)
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@dkf said:
Hard to say for sure, as doing an amphibious assault would have been very difficult for the Germans. (I don't think they had total air superiority over the UK, and they certainly didn't have superiority at sea. Without both of those, an amphibious assault would have been a horrible massacre; like the bloodiest parts of the D-Day landings — but in reverse of course — but with a lot more dying.) Things would have got very unpleasant though, due to shortage of supplies.
I think things would have been a little bit more than "unpleasant". Britain was out of gold in late 1940. If it hadn't been for Lend-Lease, the UK would have run out of ammunition and materiel. I mean, you guys were buying a good deal of what you were using at that point, and if you could no longer buy then you would have been S.O.L. Same for the Soviets.
@dkf said:
Funnily enough, Pearl Harbor was a strategic failure. In particular, no aircraft carriers were damaged and the port wasn't out of action for as long as the Japanese Navy desired.
Yes, but I'd say the biggest strategic mistake of Pearl Harbor was picking a fight with a country that had the ability to wipe them off the face of the Earth. The Emperor could have probably raped and murdered his way across most of southern Asia and it's doubtful anybody would have stopped him. But the Japanese worried about US naval power in the Pacific, and figured that a quick, debilitating strike to the primary naval base of Pearl Harbor would cause the Americans to bow out of the war. Based on the decadent and pacifistic tendencies of Americans, the Japanese assumed the American public would see no point in pursuing a war once their navy had been crippled. What they failed to realize is that Americans may have been reluctant to get involved in somebody else's war, but that they were quite willing to go to the ends of the world for vengeance.
Amazingly, even though the Japanese had their own deeply-ingrained codes of honor, they failed to recognize that Americans had a similar honor code; one which demanded the unconditional defeat of an enemy who engaged in cowardly surprise attacks.
@dkf said:
Whether the US could have beaten Germany without the Russians on the eastern front is entirely speculation though. They'd have had enormous trouble without the UK though, as they would have had difficulty bringing men and materiel across the Atlantic. (It would have been at least comparable to a ground invasion of Japan in terms of difficulty, except the Germans had a lot more resources.)
I don't consider it that speculative. The fact is, the US out-produced the Germans massively. So much so that we were supplying a significant amount of the materiel that every ally was using. And as the war drew to a close, the US found itself with such an overabundance of military hardware that the disparity between the US and every other nation on Earth was laughable.
What's more, you're forgetting that we developed the bomb. Although some in Germany thought such a weapon was possible, it was never given serious attention. Who needs to bring men and material across the Atlantic when we could just send some long-range bombers and turn Germany into a pleasant, unthreatening lake?
Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoy teasing you guys, but that doesn't mean I don't comprehend or appreciate the awesome sacrifice made by the Allied nations. Whether you think we could have done it without you or not, it would have been much more miserable to go it alone.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Amazingly, even though the Japanese had their own deeply-ingrained codes of honor, they failed to recognize that Americans had a similar honor code; one which demanded the unconditional defeat of an enemy who engaged in cowardly surprise attacks.
Worth noting that virtually every Japanese officer who had spent any length of time in the US (including Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Pearl Harbor attack, and Tadamichi Kuribayashi, commander of the defense of Iwo Jima) did know the Japanese Supreme Command was full of shit. The quote from Yamamoto "we have awoken a sleeping giant" might be a work of fiction, but it accurately conveys his opinion on the matter.
BTW, the Germans would have starved the British to surrender if their submarine commanders hadn't been such idiots. (At the very least, if they had realized months earlier that the allies had cracked their codes-- they honestly thought it was an insider feeding them information long after the naval codes were cracked wide-open. Mostly because German procedure at the time called for daily weather reports, so there was a lot of radio traffic to perfect the cracking *on*. Idiots.) As-is, the British were within a hair's breadth of being below the critical level of imports required to survive, and they literally could not build or buy enough ships to make up the gap. Not until US ships started sailing directly there after our declaration of war.
@morbiuswilters said:
What's more, you're forgetting that we developed the bomb. Although some in Germany thought such a weapon was possible, it was never given serious attention. Who needs to bring men and material across the Atlantic when we could just send some long-range bombers and turn Germany into a pleasant, unthreatening lake?
You vastly overestimate aircraft ranges available at the time. Neither Germany, nor anybody else, where anywhere close to developing a bomber that could cross the Atlantic, drop a load of bombs, and return. Although Hitler, who was completely bonkers in his last few months of command, was absolutely convinced Germany had such bombers and (according to those close to him at the time) repeatedly asked why they hadn't been used against the US.
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@_gaffer said:
Is Tumblr leaking into the forum or are you having a particularly sub-par acid trip?
Just to recap:
- You're querying the drug habits of a man with cake for a face.
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As a german I have a read a great deal on our submarine war effort in that time, and the failures of the Nazi germany leadership was amazing:
Dönitz (leader of the submarine) was presenting plans for crippling great britian with 300 submarines. But this was rejected by the leadership of the Kriegsmarine (Reader and Hitler) because they liked "bigger ships" more. Do look up the z-plan, which essentially was an effort to build a gigantic fleet, without relaizing that there is no need for that.
When war broke out, there where not enough submarines and the ones which where in service, spend a lot of time while searching for targets. The Luftwaffe could have provided critical reconaissance, but never got around to that, because Göring was too busy to get his next shot of Morphium.
In 1939 there where trials for new submarines which would have vastly outperformed all existing designs, especially they where faster submerged than floating - they could have litterally teared apart the british convois. But they where build 1945, because the plans get stuck in the muddled waters of byzantine beaureaucracies.
But to put this into context: Germany could not have won the war. While the american leadership had leadership and "doing dumb shit" issues - they worked for a common goal. The german leadership was divided into different sections and competed for Hitlers favour - effecticely creating so much friction that everything would have stopped working sooner or later. Also there was no sensible goal or agenda to that conflict - so Germany faught at war, but had no Idea how to end it.
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@MiffTheFox said:
So Poker Night at the Inventory 2 came out today. (Now with even less to do with video games!)
Does it default to taking over my screen at the lowest common denominator of resolutions, good ol' 1024x768? Nah, this is a 2013 game. It's gotta be 16:9!
The game can detect you're using a 16:9 monitor and select a 16:9 resolution. Having said that, it could have chosen a BETTER 16:9 resolution.
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@_gaffer said:
Is Tumblr leaking into the forum or are you having a particularly sub-par acid trip?
smad
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@Cassidy said:
@morbiuswilters said:
You mean the heavily-armed, geographically isolated country with a massive industrial base that invented the A-bomb?
*cough* British patent 630,726 *ahem*@Wikipedia said:
Leó Szilárd [...] was a Hungarian- born American physicist and inventor.
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@HerrDerSchatten said:
Dönitz (leader of the submarine) was presenting plans for crippling great britian with 300 submarines. But this was rejected by the leadership of the Kriegsmarine (Reader and Hitler) because they liked "bigger ships" more. Do look up the z-plan, which essentially was an effort to build a gigantic fleet, without relaizing that there is no need for that.
Dönitz was right, in that their money would have been better invested in more submarines than surface ships. Dönitz was wrong in that he was fighting a war from the last century. He had no idea about signals intelligence, no clue the allies had centimeter-length radar that could detect submarines in any visibility condition at a range of 12+ miles. Basically he was fighting the submarine war of WWII the same way he fought the submarine war of WWI.
The only major successes he had were: 1) in the early months of the war, before the allies had been able to counter the German's "wolfpack" strategy. (Convoy escorts could fight off one or two submarines, but 5+ was a little much) and 2) when the Americans entered the war, and his subs went hunting off the US East Coast, still flush with ships not taking proper anti-submarine precautions.
Other than those periods, he was losing more submarines than was sustainable.
@HerrDerSchatten said:
In 1939 there where trials for new submarines which would have vastly outperformed all existing designs, especially they where faster submerged than floating - they could have litterally teared apart the british convois. But they where build 1945, because the plans get stuck in the muddled waters of byzantine beaureaucracies.
They weren't defeated due to technical failures, they were defeated due to operational failures. Faster submarines wouldn't have made a difference; the only thing that would have helped is submarines that never needed to surface, and those were impossible to build at the time. (And indeed, diesel electric submarines now can't even spend all that much time underwater. Battery technology is slow compared to almost all other fields. That's why the US went nuclear.)
@HerrDerSchatten said:
The german leadership was divided into different sections and competed for Hitlers favour - effecticely creating so much friction that everything would have stopped working sooner or later.
True. The same was true of the Japanese. And to a lesser extent the British. (While the British signals intelligence was brilliant, their treatment of agents in the field was abysmal. Partly owing to having two different intelligence agencies each trying to usurp the other.)
@HerrDerSchatten said:
Also there was no sensible goal or agenda to that conflict - so Germany faught at war, but had no Idea how to end it.
Hitler knew how to end it; he wrote the plan in Mein Kampf. The problem was early victories fooled him into thinking he could actually pull it off*, and when it became clear they couldn't, it also became clear there was no "plan B". If Hitler had been sane, he'd have sued for peace after conquering France, bided his time for a few years, then tried to talk the US into supporting a war against Russia.
*) Hell he even managed a successful sneak attack on Russia, and goddamned Stalin should have known better by that point!!!
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Fun fact! PAL has less bandwidth than NTSC (run the numbers). NTSC also stopped requiring manual colour correction not too long after the magic of "solid state" televisions came out. PAL televisions for several decades after that were STILL causing me migraine headaches with that horrid 50 Hz flicker. Anyone who has used a CRT based PC will agree with me, even 60 Hz is too little. Now imagine the hell that is 50 Hz.
I will give one thing to you, though, teletext kicked ass. :)
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@blakeyrat said:
Mostly because German procedure at the time called for daily weather reports, so there was a lot of radio traffic to perfect the cracking *on*.
Especially egregious was that apparently the leadership insisted on the messages having to look "neat" by always following the same layout with plenty repeated text in the headers to give the egg-heads at old Bletchley an extra-long lever for cracking them wide open.Thank god we have come such a long way since then, that nowadays it would be absolutely inconceivable for management to insist on stupid pointless procedures being followed no-matter-what even if it means a potential security risk. Ha!
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@shepd said:
I will give one thing to you, though, teletext kicked ass. :)
It's still there. Most modern (DVB) European televisions still support teletext. Some retarded TV networks still use it for subtitles, despite them being a built in feature of DVB. They tried to replace it with a java-based interactive thingie but for some reason it didn't catch on.
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Teletext primed me for the internet.
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@Anonymouse said:
@Wikipedia said:
Leó Szilárd [...] was a Hungarian- born American physicist and inventor.
.. but wasn't he (and Oppenheimer, Teller, et al) all foreigners, and America just collected them into one location to build the beast?
I'm thinking of the dramatisation I saw where plenty of Jewish scientists were working as physicists in America because they'd been persecuted over in Germany. I don't know if that made them American physicists, but then Hollywood's been known to amend history from time to time.
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We weren't putting them in ghettos or concentration camps, so it probably looked pretty good compared to the alternative.
Our concentration camps were too busy dealing with all the Japanese-Americans.
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@Cassidy said:
.. but wasn't he (and Oppenheimer, Teller, et al) all foreigners, and America just collected them into one location to build the beast?
By this reasoning, we're all Middle Easterners. And many who worked on the Manhattan Project were (or became) citizens. And they didn't move to America because it sucked, they moved here because it was a place they could do their work without being persecuted by one of Europe's periodic descents into Fascist nationalism.
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@blakeyrat said:
You vastly overestimate aircraft ranges available at the time. Neither Germany, nor anybody else, where anywhere close to developing a bomber that could cross the Atlantic, drop a load of bombs, and return.
Who says they needed to return? Or even launch from the continental US?
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@Cassidy said:
@morbiuswilters said:
You mean the heavily-armed, geographically isolated country with a massive industrial base that invented the A-bomb?
cough British patent 630,726 ahem
I don't dispute that Britain contributed quite a bit to the bomb, but they didn't build one. And, as someone has already pointed out, Szilard was just working in Britain at the time. And his patent predated the outbreak of hostilities by a few years. So even if Britain had fallen in 1941, I doubt it would have stopped the US from getting the bomb.
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@morbiuswilters said:
they moved here because it was a place they could do their work without being persecuted by one of Europe's periodic descents into Fascist nationalism.
Yeah, that's the message the film/docudrama made out. On the surface it was "America's got greater freedom than where we lived" but the undertones were "American millitary are willing to fund our nuclear research (and we're not being exploited, no really)".
I suppose that raises a question: were the immigrants granted citizenship by way of gratitude? Pedantically you could argue that they weren't American scientists at the time the bomb was constructed, but it's no denying that it wouldn't have been developed as quickly without US support and organisation.
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@morbiuswilters said:
I don't dispute that Britain contributed quite a bit to the bomb, but they didn't build one.
That's Blitish behaviour all over: we run out of steam once we've got the ideas and never seem to see it through.
I think we just get bored after the foreplay.
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@Cassidy said:
On the surface it was "America's got greater freedom than where we lived" but the undertones were "American millitary are willing to fund our nuclear research (and we're not being exploited, no really)".
I'm sure it was both. And exploited? They were given what they wanted. In fact, many were quite okay with an atomic bomb being used against Germany.
@Cassidy said:
I suppose that raises a question: were the immigrants granted citizenship by way of gratitude?
It didn't hurt things, but they probably would have become citizens even if they'd just taught physics at some US university. Teller became a citizen in 1941, before joining the Manhattan Project; as was von Neumann. Fermi became a citizen in 1944, the earliest that was permitted by law. Oppenheimer, Feynman and Lawrence were all born in America. Szilard became a US citizen in '43. He was notorious for quarreling with the military and had wished the US would first demonstrate the bomb before dropping it on population centers. The truth is, that would have been foolish, as even after bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki the military leaders refused to surrender (the only reason they did is because the Emperor intervened and made them surrender to spare Japanese civilians.)
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@Cassidy said:
That's Blitish behaviour all over: we run out of steam once we've got the ideas and never seem to see it through.
Don't sell yourselves short. Hey, you killed and oppressed a lot of dark skinned people, am I right? You guys certainly didn't give up on that one. Coochy coo, who's my little imperialist aggressors?
@Cassidy said:
I think we just get bored after the foreplay.
I wouldn't have thought the country that spawned the phrase "lie back and think of England" would even have foreplay.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@blakeyrat said:
You vastly overestimate aircraft ranges available at the time. Neither Germany, nor anybody else, where anywhere close to developing a bomber that could cross the Atlantic, drop a load of bombs, and return.
Who says they needed to return? Or even launch from the continental US?
... how would the German air force launch fighters from the continental US? I guess if they used teleportation magic anything is possible!
Anyway it is possible they could have dropped bombs, then ditched and lifted a ride back by U-boat, but 1) what a waste of aircraft, 2) what a waste of U-boats, 3) they *still* couldn't build a bomber that could cross the Atlantic with a load of bombs anyway.
The B-52 was still a decade away.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Szilard was just working in Britain at the time.
He was also one of many that contributed to the atomic bomb, it reminds me of a quote from Lavoisier. On a sidenote he was also a bit paranoic, he went batshit insane due to a joke perpetrated by a colleage about his "death ray" invention (of course there was reason, he filed that patent a few days before and he was worried about leaks)
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@morbiuswilters said:
And exploited? They were given what they wanted.
Oh, true - the film made much of the fact they'd escaped persecution and possible prison camp statistic and received a much better quality of life over in the US but some scientists felt ill at ease with the notion they could have sold their souls.
@morbiuswilters said:
In fact, many were quite okay with an atomic bomb being used against Germany.
Mmmm... dissension began to grow within the ranks yet Oppenheimer still held out, fixated upon the idea that they were doing right - and it wasn't until the Trinity test did he finally reflect with "I am become death" (yes, I know it wasn't his quote originally). Again, I'm just going on the dramatisation and accept that creative embellishment could play a part there.
@morbiuswilters said:
Hey, you killed and oppressed a lot of dark skinned people, am I right?
Not me personally, but I'm sure history will show some ancestors enjoyed teaching them damn nig-nogs a jolly fine lesson before breakfast, what?
@morbiuswilters said:
Coochy coo, who's my little imperialist aggressors?
Oh, you. You're making me blush now. Hush!
@morbiuswilters said:
I wouldn't have thought the country that spawned the phrase "lie back and think of England" would even have foreplay.
bu.. bu.. but.. that is foreplay. Any more and you're just keeping her waiting.
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@blakeyrat said:
but 1) what a waste of aircraft,
Wasn't this the whole design ethos behind the doodlebugs anyway?
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@serguey123 said:
he went batshit insane due to a joke perpetrated by a colleage about his "death ray" invention (of course there was reason, he filed that patent a few days before and he was worried about leaks)
I'd be worried about a leaking deathray.
Although I can understand how QA wouldn't want to spend toooo much time testing.
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@Cassidy said:
@serguey123 said:
he went batshit insane due to a joke perpetrated by a colleage about his "death ray" invention (of course there was reason, he filed that patent a few days before and he was worried about leaks)
I'd be worried about a leaking deathray.
Although I can understand how QA wouldn't want to spend toooo much time testing.
An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents(tldr; Wherein a race condition in UI code results in the massive and lethal over-radiation of several patients. Company denies that this is possible, issues several patches that fail to resolve the issue, and deaths continue to occur. A process audit shows a complete lack of quality control or testing procedures.)
Srsly, though, read it. It'll make you say WTF, but not in an amused way.
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@Cassidy said:
Wasn't this the whole design ethos behind the doodlebugs anyway?
Doodlebugs were a lot cheaper than the cheapest manned aircraft. A lot.
A theoretical cross-Atlantic bomber would be a LOT more expensive to sacrifice. And in any case it's moot, since Germany didn't have one.
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@joe.edwards said:
Srsly, though, read it. It'll make you say WTF, but not in an amused way.
I know the story well. I'm ISTQB-qualified.
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@blakeyrat said:
Doodlebugs were a lot cheaper than the cheapest manned aircraft. A lot.
I know... I read the story that - when faced with the problem of losing German pilots during bombing raids - a scientist that proposed strapping the engine to the bomb itself and pointing it in the right direction without a pilot was an absolute stroke of genius.
The design of the V2 came about as a way of addressing some shortcomings of the V1 - not only the range and accuracy, but the languid speed and wing configuration meant Spitfire pilots could match speed and tip them away from their intended target.
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@blakeyrat said:
... how would the German air force launch fighters from the continental US? I guess if they used teleportation magic anything is possible!
I'm talking about the US bombing Germany, not the other way 'round.
@blakeyrat said:
1) what a waste of aircraft
If it ended the war, it would be a pretty good use of aircraft. What's more, during the Cold War both the US and Soviets had plans which called for ditching long-range bombers in the ocean because they wouldn't be able to make it back to friendly territory.
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@Cassidy said:
Mmmm... dissension began to grow within the ranks yet Oppenheimer still held out, fixated upon the idea that they were doing right - and it wasn't until the Trinity test did he finally reflect with "I am become death" (yes, I know it wasn't his quote originally).
His "I have become death" thing was merely a reflection on how the world would never be the same. Unlike some of his more fickle co-workers, Oppenheimer never regretted developing the bomb. He was gravely concerned with how the military would use the bomb, but he remained convinced he was doing the right thing until the end. That's even more amazing considering the shameful treatment he received from his country.
@Cassidy said:
bu.. bu.. but.. that is foreplay. Any more and you're just keeping her waiting.
Teehee.
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@Cassidy said:
The design of the V2 came about as a way of addressing some shortcomings of the V1 - not only the range and accuracy, but the languid speed and wing configuration meant Spitfire pilots could match speed and tip them away from their intended target.
And yet the V-2 was an absolute disaster, consuming huge quantities of German resources and inflicting very little damage on the Allies. Most of its victims were the slave laborers who built the damn things. The V-1 was a much more effective weapon.
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@Cassidy said:
Although I can understand how QA wouldn't want to spend toooo much time testing.
"Yes, I know that the last 20 test bombs we set of detonated perfectly fine. But how will we know for sure that this one will when we drop it on the enemy - without trying it first?!"
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All this talk of Poker Night 2 just makes me want to go and play more Poker Night 2. So I will.
Sure, it's not a GOOD poker game, but it has unlocks so damnit I feel compelled to unlock everything. Also, it's occasionally funny.
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@DaedalusRaistlin said:
Sure, it's not a GOOD poker game, but it has unlocks so damnit I feel compelled to unlock everything. Also, it's occasionally funny.
Have you tried Achievement Unlocked (2 3)?
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@morbiuswilters said:
the country that invented the A-bomb?
Yeah, if you wanna claim credit for a device invented by a German, based of mathematical and physical principles discovered (mostly) by Germans, on the basis that he happened to be in your country at the time, then knock yourselves out.
America must be the one country in the world where they actually believe their own hype!
Question to the American guys here.... In all seriousness.... is the following sentence correct: "America is the best country in the world" ?
Now... having answered that question, go back and show your working.
If you still haven't managed to reach the conclusion "No, its a stupid fucking question.... patriotism and nationalism are the preserve of fucking morons who are unable to understand how they're minds have been hijacked by these memes which serve only to prevent them from questioning how they and their parents before them have been exploited since birth", then you're a pitiable fool.
You know those subhuman idiots that literally cry because "their" team lost a match to "not their" team, when what actually happened is that two groups of humans who have never met the aforementioned idiots played a game which didn't involve the idiots (except, perhaps, involving the transfer of some cash from the idiots indirectly into the bank accounts of the players). Those idiots are EXACTLY as retarded as anyone who believes in their country.
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@HerrDerSchatten said:
But to put this into context: Germany could not have won the war. While the american leadership had leadership and "doing dumb shit" issues - they worked for a common goal. The german leadership was divided into different sections and competed for Hitlers favour - effecticely creating so much friction that everything would have stopped working sooner or later. Also there was no sensible goal or agenda to that conflict - so Germany faught at war, but had no Idea how to end it.
My personal favorite example of this was D-day. The Germans had a division of panzers stationed not too far from the landing, that could have crushed the invasion once and for all. But they were the Fuhrer's personal tanks, and could not be used without his authorization. The call went back to Berlin, but Hitler was asleep at the moment, and everyone was too afraid of him to wake him up. And by the time he woke and was able to give permission, it was too late.
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@dkf said:
(I don't think they had total air superiority over the UK, and they certainly didn't have superiority at sea.)
They didn't have all that much in the way of air superiority in the first place.
You ever wonder where the myth about carrots being good for your eyes comes from? The RAF invented that, and spread it around as a rumor to confound German intelligence, to explain RAF pilots' seemingly supernatural ability to spot German planes in the dark and shoot them down. They wanted them to think they had a way to give their pilots incredible night vision so they wouldn't suspect that they actually *did* have a supernatural (or at least superhuman) way of finding them in the night sky: with the aid of a new technology. Back then it was a closely guarded military secret. Today, we call it radar.
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@Mason Wheeler said:
They wanted them to think they had a way to give their pilots incredible night vision so they wouldn't suspect that they actually did have a supernatural (or at least superhuman) way of finding them in the night sky: with the aid of a new technology. Back then it was a closely guarded military secret. Today, we call it radar.
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@eViLegion said:
Yeah, if you wanna claim credit for a device invented by a German...
Bullshit.
@eViLegion said:
...based of mathematical and physical principles discovered (mostly) by Germans...
And yet Germany was such an inept bunch of fuck-ups, they still couldn't get the thing built. Of course, this is a country which engaged in two extremely self-destructive wars and which drove out all of the smart people due to psychotic racism.
@eViLegion said:
is the following sentence correct: "America is the best country in the world" ?
Yes. I wouldn't say America's a great country anymore, but still not as abysmal as everywhere else. Yet.
@eViLegion said:
...patriotism and nationalism are the preserve of fucking morons...
I would tend to agree for just about every other country on Earth. Undeserved patriotism is an ugly thing, but luckily that's not a problem for the country which literally built the modern world. Look, I know it doesn't make sense to be proud of your shithole country, but you are still permitted to have vicarious pride in America. Because without the US your country would probably still be a bunch of cavemen chasing each other around with clubs in knee-deep animal feces.
@eViLegion said:
You know those subhuman idiots that literally cry because "their" team lost a match to "not their" team, when what actually happened is that two groups of humans who have never met the aforementioned idiots played a game which didn't involve the idiots (except, perhaps, involving the transfer of some cash from the idiots indirectly into the bank accounts of the players).
I don't really care for sports, but people like you are the really pathetic ones. You're so filled with impotent rage that when people enjoy something you don't that all you can do is call them names. Look, I'm sorry your sister stopped letting you dry hump her and moved on to a high school athlete, but it's time to let it go.
@eViLegion said:
Those idiots are EXACTLY as retarded as anyone who believes in their country.
Honestly, I'm pretty content with you having this attitude. You shouldn't be proud of your country. Your country is probably garbage. The fact that it's so terrible that you can't even conceive of anyone having a country worth loving is deeply satisfying to me.
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@blakeyrat said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
They wanted them to think they had a way to give their pilots incredible night vision so they wouldn't suspect that they actually did have a supernatural (or at least superhuman) way of finding them in the night sky: with the aid of a new technology. Back then it was a closely guarded military secret. Today, we call it radar.
I miss that show.. :(
What the hell is wrong with British television? It's usually crap, but when they actually make something good, there are only a dozen fucking episodes. And they only make, like, 3 a year. Goddamn layabouts.
Further proof of American exceptionalism: when we find a TV show that's good, we ride that sumbitch 'til the wheels come off. Hell, they're still making Simpsons episodes and that show hasn't been funny since the fucking Clinton administration. And yet Groening gets up every morning, rolls up his sleeves, and cashes those huge, undeserved checks Fox keeps sending him. That takes gumption. It's easy to cash a check for a job well done, but to line your pockets while churning out formulaic shit so dismal that it would have been mocked by the early seasons of your show? God bless America.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Further proof of American exceptionalism: when we find a TV show that's good, we ride that sumbitch 'til the wheels come off.
Then we change the wheels and ride it some more. Case in point: The Brady Bunch, The Brady Kids (animated), The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, The Brady Brides, A Very Brady Christmas, The Bradys, and if Wikipedia is to be believed, an upcoming reboot featuring a divorced and remarried Bobby Brady and his family.
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@da Doctah said:
Then we change the wheels and ride it some more. Case in point: The Brady Bunch, The Brady Kids (animated), The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, The Brady Brides, A Very Brady Christmas, The Bradys, and if Wikipedia is to be believed, an upcoming reboot featuring a divorced and remarried Bobby Brady and his family.
Running a show into the ground is such an American tradition that it actually shocks us when somebody decides to bow out before the quality plummets. I remember when Jerry Seinfeld called it quits and people were like "Oh, come on, the show is still great, just give us another couple of seasons!" But he was smart. He realized that it was better to leave 'em wanting more than to have people 15 years down the road saying "Seinfeld was really good until the 11th Season, after Michael Richards left to pursue a career with the Aryan Nations and they decided to partner Jerry with a sassy, black roommate and his talking dog."
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@morbiuswilters said:
What the hell is wrong with British television? It's usually crap, but when they actually make something good, there are only a dozen fucking episodes. And they only make, like, 3 a year. Goddamn layabouts.
SRSLY.
I have no clue why the BBC does this... IN 2013. (Back in the 60s, well, ok. There were 2 channels. You don't have the airtime for more than 6 episodes-per-show even if you wanted to shoot them.)
Here in the fucking US, Rod Sterling helmed 4 seasons of 30-minute Twilight Zone episodes, 36 to a season-- *36*-- wrote the majority of them, and the quality was fucking THROUGH THE ROOF. In the early 60s. Now that said, Rod Sterling is the best showrunner in the history of television by far and fuck you if you disagree. But still.
Take a more recent example: Red Dwarf, sfx-heavy sci-fi series running from the late-80s to the mid-90s. Star Trek: The Next Generation, ibid. Red Dwarf: 52 half-hour episodes. Star Trek: TNG: 204 hour-long episodes*. FOUR TIMES THE EPISODES, EIGHT TIMES THE FOOTAGE. Fuck, here in the US, we don't even sell syndication packages for a show unless it's had 100 episodes. Generally speaking.
* Would have been 208, except for the writer's strike during Season 2. On that note, it's kind of generous to call "Shades of Grey" an episode, but it did contain *some* original footage.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Running a show into the ground is such an American tradition that it actually shocks us when somebody decides to bow out before the quality plummets.
That is actually something I envy about British TV. In the US, shows are either cancelled long before their due, or long after their due. There's almost no show that was cancelled right-on-time. (Again: except The Twilight Zone, but that's because Rod Sterling is a LIVING GOD MADE FLESH.)
So you end up either with some really great show that never reached its potential, like Max Headroom (no, I'm not going to say the "F" word, fuck you Joss Whedon fans, that show was shit and deserved to be canned), or we end up with shows that get so stale it becomes obvious the writers have no fucking clue what they're doing anymore by the end (X-Files, Lost, Heroes, etc.)
Plus, US networks love to jerk shows around. So they do things like, say, telling Farscape they're cancelled when it was too late to make a finale episode. Or telling Babylon 5 they'd be cancelled 4 years into their 5-year plan, waiting until all the scripts were rewritten to rush the plot, then changing your mind and giving them a season 5 anyway. Or telling the Adventures of Brisco County Jr. to make 4 extra episodes after you'd already completely wrapped-up the plot arc, requiring you to pull some shitty episodes with a totally new premise out of your ass (and killing the show as a side-effect in that case.)
British networks seem to be at least honest with showrunners, and plan more than 1 week in advance.
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@blakeyrat said:
(no, I'm not going to say the "F" word, fuck you Joss Whedon fans, that show was shit and deserved to be canned)
YESSSSSSS. I actually never saw Firefly, but I did see Serenity, twice. It was inexplicably abysmal. The whole time I could see Joss Whedon going on like a 12 year-old on a sugar high "Wouldn't it be cool if we made a show about space, but they were also cowboys!?!" And the dialog.. Jesus. It's like Whedon has never been permitted to hear actual human beings speak. I went into a 15-minute convulsion of laughter when one of the characters used the phrase "I conjure". Conjure?? What, did Ken fucking Curtis wander onto the goddamn set?
@blakeyrat said:
...X-Files...
YES. When Chris Carter thought the appeal of the show were scripts rejected by Tales From the Crypt for being too cornball, and not the actual characters people had become attached to. I mean, I love watching Robert Patrick, he's great at playing the strong-jawed cop, but why the fuck was he on The X-Files? And Annabeth Gish--that giggling, awkward, every-reaction-is-inappropriate-for-the-situation twat..
@blakeyrat said:
British networks seem to be at least honest with showrunners, and plan more than 1 week in advance.
You know, I used to get mad at Fox for cancelling Futurama, but once Comedy Central brought it back I was like "You know, maybe Fox was right.." Not that it's bad, but it's pretty hit-or-miss. There have been a couple of really good episodes, on-par with the Fox run, and then a bunch of unforgettable, gimmicky bullshit. And watching the writers try to act "edgy" since they're on cable is like watching your grandfather at a rave--goddamn embarrassing. And their "topical" episodes that in 10 years nobody will have a clue what the hell any of it means..
I'm probably going to get flamed for that, but I don't care. "But Futurama is still good." It's better than most stuff on TV, but most stuff on TV is shit. And the CC episodes have done nothing but lower my opinion of the series overall.
Oh, but a show that is run extremely competently is Breaking Bad. I mean, it's a badass show all-around--better than any dramatic movie I can think of in the last half-decade--but I also appreciate how well-made it is. Scripts are tight, every actor is well-cast, Vince Gilligan attention to detail makes it feel more authentic, and they decided to end it before it brought shame on its family. The thing is, I don't even think it's the kind of thing that's that hard. The people in charge just have to not get caught up in greed or laziness or their own Chris-Carter/George-Lucas egomaniacal delusions that they are so brilliant that viewers will eat whatever shit they put before them.
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@blakeyrat said:
In the US, shows are either cancelled long before their due...
cf Arrested Development. Easily my favourite American show of all time.
What never works is when the US tries to remake British comedies - I don't know why. And I'm genuinely sorry you ended up with Piers Morgan - you didn't deserve that.
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@nosliwmas said:
cf Arrested Development. Easily my favourite American show of all time.
But, hey, Netflix is bringing it back. Let's just hope that a decade hasn't dulled whatever made it awesome.
Also, I maintain the suspicion that it was cancelled just-in-time. Oh, the 3rd Season was still very funny, but I got the feeling it was running out of steam behind the scenes.
@nosliwmas said:
What never works is when the US tries to remake British comedies - I don't know why.
Vastly different styles of humor, audiences, production methods.. And really, why do a remake in the first place? If the show was going to connect with US audiences, it will. If it's "tweaked" to fit American tastes, it won't be the same show and will only share a name. The only exception I can think of is The Office, where the US version was vastly superior to the UK version (IMHO, at least.) And they ended up running that show into the ground, too.
There are some shows that seem to have cross-over potential, too. For example, Black Books seemed almost like an American cable sitcom. It was less about dry wit and more about zany situations and bombastic reactions to those situations. It also had the pacing of American sitcoms, with things starting off relatively calm and slow and becoming more and more frenetic until the climax.
@nosliwmas said:
And I'm genuinely sorry you ended up with Piers Morgan - you didn't deserve that.
No, we didn't. But if anybody doubts the mercy and restraint of Americans, just consider that he hasn't been waterboarded yet. And we could totally do it, but we're just too damn nice.
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@nosliwmas said:
@blakeyrat said:
In the US, shows are either cancelled long before their due...
cf Arrested Development. Easily my favourite American show of all time.
What never works is when the US tries to remake British comedies - I don't know why. And I'm genuinely sorry you ended up with Piers Morgan - you didn't deserve that.
Arrested Development was unfunny and awkward when it first aired and it's still unfunny and awkward now.
Then again, I seem to hate everything that was unpopular "in the real world" but is popular online. Take Earthbound for example. I can see where it tries to go with it's gameplay and the story seems good, but I keep running into "sorry, you have to grid against enemies for three fucking hours to do anything anymore" walls that every single fucking JRPG (and many a WRPG) seem to have. -_-
