The Third Day

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Hester Prynne
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Re: The Third Day

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Jasper wrote:
Would I be correct in thinking that you didn't watch the 12-hour special?
I watched a two hour condensed version on YouTube, but haven’t had much luck streaming the full 12 hour version - don’t know if the condensed version was from HBO or a fan. I have HBO on Roku, but you can only access Summer and Winter. Would love too see the whole thing though from the descriptions above, so will try the Facebook route this weekend.
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N. Needleman
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Re: The Third Day

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I've been watching it in the two parts on Facebook (you can access them without being a FB user - I'm not). Very slowly due to other distractions, lol. I'm halfway through now, 3 weeks later, and hope to wrap it in the next few days and move on to Winter/Naomie Harris' section of the series. Autumn is a beyond mesmerizing experience.

I hear they cut some of Jess/Katherine Waterston's bits out of the 2-hour edit. I hope not, they're key IMO, as is the stuff with Epona's father and the doomsaying woman.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: The Third Day

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N. Needleman wrote:
I hear they cut some of Jess/Katherine Waterston's bits out of the 2-hour edit. I hope not, they're key IMO, as is the stuff with Epona's father and the doomsaying woman.
I’ve still got about 4.5 hours to go, and probably won’t finish tonight due to work and the Presidential debate. The sequence with Epona’s father (Jason I think?) was mesmerizing.

Jess’s character “twist” was the one thing I really disliked in Summer. It felt both predictable and unearned, as well as rather nonsensical. (Why on Earth would her kids be in the Big House? Why wouldn’t her husband have them wherever he lives?) But Waterston is great and I loved Jess throughout Summer up until that reveal. I’m hoping the character gets some more to do.

I get the appeal of a two-hour edit just to catch up on all the plot points (of which there frankly aren’t many, at least as of where I am), but viewers are really missing out on the experience by not watching the thing in full.
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Re: The Third Day

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It’s comforting to know there are others in the universe without a Facebook account. :)

This is probably reaching, but I wonder if only being able to watch the live event on Facebook was by design. I’m guessing there are other reasons for that which have nothing to do with the show itself, but it’s ironic the only way you can watch events unfolding on an island secluded from the rest of the world is on Facebook.

I have some thoughts about Jess, but it has spoilers, so don’t read until you’ve watched Winter:
Spoiler:
I wonder if the islanders did the same thing to Jess that they did to Sam. Are her daughters on the island really even hers? It’s always bugged me that they don’t look anything like her. They could have been coached like the little boy pretending to be Nathan. It would be easy to get her to stay on the island by convincing her they were holding her daughters and the islanders were her husband’s “spies.” While the Martins were manipulating Sam, it seems like Jason and others could have been manipulating Jess - she admitted to having a previous experience with a cult, so probably wouldn’t be hard to do. Hoping I didn’t miss anything in Autumn with regards to that.
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N. Needleman
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Re: The Third Day

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Mr. Reindeer wrote:Jess’s character “twist” was the one thing I really disliked in Summer. It felt both predictable and unearned, as well as rather nonsensical. (Why on Earth would her kids be in the Big House? Why wouldn’t her husband have them wherever he lives?) But Waterston is great and I loved Jess throughout Summer up until that reveal. I’m hoping the character gets some more to do.
I mean, it's a pretty traditional staple of the paranoia thriller/cult genre - the one trusted person turns out to be in on it too. But they drop many hints in the first two episodes in hindsight, there's clearly more to Jess we're not privvy to yet. I couldn't tell during Summer if she and her husband were part of the cult, or if he was part of something else. It seems the Jess situation with her husband's calls continues to evolve throughout the Autumn livestream too. (That's also clearly her two girls wandering around throughout Autumn, IMO - you can see her watching them run around and play when she's sitting at the table when she's first revealed.)

Also, is it me or is Jess' omnipresent red raincoat - seen in episode 3 but also throughout Autumn - a direct reference to Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now?
I get the appeal of a two-hour edit just to catch up on all the plot points (of which there frankly aren’t many, at least as of where I am), but viewers are really missing out on the experience by not watching the thing in full.
I suspect the stuff with the doomsaying woman turning up over and over to insist Sam is the wrong choice for the Father ("Osea will burn!") - something Larry picks up on and begs the townsfolk to listen to as well, while also heavily implying that Jess is pregnant with Sam's child - is also pretty important.
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Jasper
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Re: The Third Day

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Some people haven't watched Autumn at all, some have not finished watching Autumn, and some haven’t watched Winter.

For this reason it would probably be good to spoiler tag anything from Autumn or Winter.

This clusterfuck of a spoiler situation is one of the reasons that I didn’t make this thread myself. :lol:
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: The Third Day

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Thoughts on the rest of Autumn:
Spoiler:
It lagged at a few points, but overall it was mesmerizing. I loved the step dancing sequence, the lingering shot of a table and glasses, and then a cigarette slowly burning down, as the party goes on in the background. The frantic moment when mud got on the camera and they were desperately trying to get it off. :lol: That gorgeous fire burning away over the last few minutes. Lovely stuff. It was wonderful during the ending march getting to see Law happy and celebratory—again, all the party stuff at the end is certainly blending fiction and reality, as everyone was certainly relieved that the tough part was over and they could just dance and howl and celebrate. As someone said, I really hope we get a behind the scenes of this someday.
Winter:
Spoiler:
This was a mixed bag. The first part was maddening, as it almost entirely consisted of the typical horror trope of “character ignores clear red flags to leave.” I hadn’t been spoiled, but I sort of assumed pretty early on that Helen was Sam’s wife, just based of the episode titles (“The Father” vs. “The Mother”), and the fact that her actions made ZERO sense if something like that wasn’t the case (also, we already knew Sam has two girls). Even then, though, once she sensed that this place was WAY creepy, why wouldn’t she get her kids out of there and try again some other day alone? Why would she even bring them to begin with, if all she wanted was the money, and not to reunite them with their father? The ways she continued to put her kids at risk after like fifty clear signals that this place is dangerous could be the basis for a Child Services action for removal.

The other two parts were a bit stronger as the pieces came together, and Harris was great once the writing for her character stopped being so aggravating and focused more on emotion, but as Soolsma said, it was all pretty predictable. Jess’s character seems to radically shift just to service the plot and/or deliver twists, to the point where she isn’t really a definable character at all by the end of the show. Similarly, I can’t track Jason’s character motivations at all by this point. He went from violent asshole to sympathetic misunderstood grief-stricken parent in Summer (a character turn that I thought worked really well), but I don’t recognize him as the same character in Winter, and no explanation is given for him abruptly gutting Mr. Martin with an ax. Yes, I get genre tropes, and letting an audience fill in the blanks to some extent, but at a certain point, it just feels lazy when the writing doesn’t do ANY of the legwork in making a character’s actions believable. Even in Winter, she’s saying the baby was an accident, so it’s not like she had this nefarious slow-burn plan to get Sam’s baby in her from the get-go. I need some character development before you ramp up to her trying to stab a nine-year-old out of nowhere.

I did enjoy the way the depths of Sam’s guilt and insanity were slowly brought out over the course of the whole series. Summer was particularly effective once we realize that Sam is an unreliable narrator, but everything—or almost everything—that happens SEEMS to be real. Winter tied that up nicely with the reveal about (probably) fake Nathan. When Helen says Nathan disappeared ten years ago, I got chills, and you suddenly realize how truly unhinged Sam is. I did think that aspect was very well executed, as was Sam becoming a completely unglued murderous psycho.

Overall, a journey I’m glad I took, but much more memorable for the performances, setting and production aspects than the story.
I’ll again recommend The Young Pope (and its sequel, The New Pope) for anyone in the mood for another moody, sometimes-mesmerizing HBO show with Law giving a different but equally electric performance.
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Jasper
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Re: The Third Day

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Even putting aside the narrative issues, Winter simply lacked the flare of Summer and Autumn. It felt much more like standard television fare.

Summer and Autumn can basically stand on their own. Winter feels like someone else came along and decided to create an unnecessary addendum to Summer and Autumn, and didn't do a particularly good job of it. There were definitely some things I enjoyed about it, but ultimately, for me, it drags the whole project down. I think it would have been much more effective to simply stop with Autumn. How are you supposed to top that anyway?

Major Autumn spoilers:
Spoiler:
It also feels as though Winter erases the end of Autumn. Maybe when Sam sees his (reincarnated?) son at the end, (who is nevertheless his blood relation), and doesn't carry on with the group, it's a sign that he's slipping right back to where he was. That's not how I took it at the time, but maybe that's what they meant with it, given his state in Winter. Still, he seems to go through a heroic process of self-actualization in Autumn, rising up a transformed man. It would have been fascinating to see him ruling the island as the new Father, or simply to imagine it, if Autumn was the true ending.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: The Third Day

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Jasper wrote:Even putting aside the narrative issues, Winter simply lacked the flare of Summer and Autumn. It felt much more like standard television fare.

Summer and Autumn can basically stand on their own. Winter feels like someone else came along and decided to create an unnecessary addendum to Summer and Autumn, and didn't do a particularly good job of it. There were definitely some things I enjoyed about it, but ultimately, for me, it drags the whole project down.

Major Autumn spoilers:
Spoiler:
It also feels as though Winter erases the end of Autumn. Maybe when Sam sees his (reincarnated?) son at the end, (who is nevertheless his blood relation), and doesn't carry on with the group, it's a sign that he's slipping right back to where he was. That's not how I took it at the time, but maybe that's what they meant with it, given his state in Winter. Still, he seems to go through a heroic process of self-actualization in Autumn, rising up a transformed man. It would have been fascinating to see him ruling the island as the new Father.
Spoiler:
Well, Autumn ends with some very heavy-handed symbolism, where Sam literally throws aside the hopes and dreams of his people in order to prioritize bonding with fake Nathan, and the hopes and dreams of the people then burn up. It’s not really clear how or why the cage of hopes catches fire though, since nothing else around it seems to be on fire. HBO’s synopsis of Autumn also claims that Sam’s neglect of the hope-cage leads directly to the island fire which was predicted by the prophet-lady, even more heavy-handed symbolism indicating that his obsession with fake-Nathan makes him an unfit “Father.” But in the version of Autumn as shot, the burning hope-cage is nowhere near the buildings that catch fire! It’s really not clear at all why either thing catches fire, but they seem to be totally unrelated (or were both set on fire by someone, but it’s not Sam’s fault). That sequence was beautifully shot, but the seeming intent of making Sam culpable for the fire(s) was not well conveyed.
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Jasper
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Re: The Third Day

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Mr. Reindeer wrote:
Spoiler:
Well, Autumn ends with some very heavy-handed symbolism, where Sam literally throws aside the hopes and dreams of his people in order to prioritize bonding with fake Nathan, and the hopes and dreams of the people then burn up. It’s not really clear how or why the cage of hopes catches fire though, since nothing else around it seems to be on fire. HBO’s synopsis of Autumn also claims that Sam’s neglect of the hope-cage leads directly to the island fire which was predicted by the prophet-lady, even more heavy-handed symbolism indicating that his obsession with fake-Nathan makes him an unfit “Father.” But in the version of Autumn as shot, the burning hope-cage is nowhere near the buildings that catch fire! It’s really not clear at all why either thing catches fire, but they seem to be totally unrelated (or were both set on fire by someone, but it’s not Sam’s fault). That sequence was beautifully shot, but the seeming intent of making Sam culpable was not well conveyed.
Spoiler:
Ah, yes. I temporarily forgot about the burning house. That did indeed seem very ominous. That might have made Autumn even stronger as a true ending.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: The Third Day

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Jasper wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:
Spoiler:
Well, Autumn ends with some very heavy-handed symbolism, where Sam literally throws aside the hopes and dreams of his people in order to prioritize bonding with fake Nathan, and the hopes and dreams of the people then burn up. It’s not really clear how or why the cage of hopes catches fire though, since nothing else around it seems to be on fire. HBO’s synopsis of Autumn also claims that Sam’s neglect of the hope-cage leads directly to the island fire which was predicted by the prophet-lady, even more heavy-handed symbolism indicating that his obsession with fake-Nathan makes him an unfit “Father.” But in the version of Autumn as shot, the burning hope-cage is nowhere near the buildings that catch fire! It’s really not clear at all why either thing catches fire, but they seem to be totally unrelated (or were both set on fire by someone, but it’s not Sam’s fault). That sequence was beautifully shot, but the seeming intent of making Sam culpable was not well conveyed.
Spoiler:
Ah, yes. I temporarily forgot about the burning house. That did indeed seem very ominous. That might have made Autumn even stronger as a true ending.
Spoiler:
Unrelated to that, but another convoluted thing that confused me: Why on Earth did they need to kill Jason’s son if Nathan was actually dead? They had their fall guy in Goltan, who actually killed Nathan and turned himself in. Why throw Nathan’s body in the water and murder another child to create a decoy corpse for absolutely no reason? I guess this is an argument for those who want to say Nathan is actually alive and magically young (and lighter skinned) for some unexplained reason, but I find that deeply unsatisfying too. This is one of those stories that just gets messier the more you think about it. It’s strange that Winter seems to undo so much of what was good about Summer, given that I believe it was always planned as one story.
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Jasper
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Re: The Third Day

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Mr. Reindeer wrote:Why on Earth did they need to kill Jason’s son if Nathan was actually dead? They had their fall guy in Goltan, who actually killed Nathan and turned himself in. Why throw Nathan’s body in the water and murder another child to create a decoy corpse for absolutely no reason? I guess this is an argument for those who want to say Nathan is actually alive and magically young (and lighter skinned) for some unexplained reason, but I find that deeply unsatisfying too. This is one of those stories that just gets messier the more you think about it.
I guess I've been thinking that they'd already killed Jason's son by the time that Nathan died. I'm probably not remembering things with sufficient detail. Do we have any idea how far away Goltan was hiding out?

(I'm not spoilering this part because I think that everyone in the thread has seen Summer and Winter.)
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: The Third Day

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Jasper wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:Why on Earth did they need to kill Jason’s son if Nathan was actually dead? They had their fall guy in Goltan, who actually killed Nathan and turned himself in. Why throw Nathan’s body in the water and murder another child to create a decoy corpse for absolutely no reason? I guess this is an argument for those who want to say Nathan is actually alive and magically young (and lighter skinned) for some unexplained reason, but I find that deeply unsatisfying too. This is one of those stories that just gets messier the more you think about it.
I guess I've been thinking that they'd already killed Jason's son by the time that Nathan died. I'm probably not remembering things with sufficient detail. Do we have any idea how far away Goltan was hiding out?
Ahh, that’s probably it. I remember them making it a point in Winter that Goltan was supposed to “lay low” for awhile, which doesn’t make a ton of sense. Why wouldn’t they just tell him to return to Osea immediately where they could hide Nathan? I wonder if the authorities actually searched on Osea at all.
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Jasper
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Re: The Third Day

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Autumn spoiler:
Spoiler:
One interesting thing I read was that Law didn't know about all of the things that he'd be doing in Autumn. Obviously he had to get cleared/insured for some of them, but not all. This was in a post-Autumn interview that I saw, but I didn't mention it because I didn't want to ruin anybody's immersion. When Jude Law gets pulled out of the big house, down to the beach and into the water for the Last Supper event, and he looks like he's got no idea what's going on, it's because he's got no idea what's going on. He knew nothing about the scene at all, so both he and his character are baffled, which is another good example of the blurring of reality and fiction that happens in Autumn.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: The Third Day

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Jasper wrote:Autumn spoiler:
Spoiler:
One interesting thing I read was that Law didn't know about all of the things that he'd be doing in Autumn. Obviously he had to get cleared/insured for some of them, but not all. This was in a post-Autumn interview that I saw, but I didn't mention it because I didn't want to ruin anybody's immersion. When Jude Law gets pulled out of the big house, down to the beach and into the water for the Last Supper event, and he looks like he's got no idea what's going on, it's because he's got no idea what's going on. He knew nothing about the scene at all, so both he and his character are baffled, which is another good example of the blurring of reality and fiction that happens in Autumn.
Oh, that’s great to know! That was possibly my favorite scene in the entire thing. Do you have a link to the interview?
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