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northwoods1992
Reviews
Reign (2013)
Started bad, got worse.
I had high hopes for a show featuring the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, as she is a historical figure that I studied in Scotland to learn about. To be blunt, this is absolutely not about the life of Mary, Queen of Scots.
This show is the rough equivalent of taking less than half of the actual names from the history books, applying them to an uncharacterized version of that person and setting up a pseudo-political romance drama straight out of Teen Vogue, complete with modern music, dress, and everything.
As if it weren't clear by now, the show was about as pinpoint accurate as trying to write with your eyes closed. And boy does that feel like how it was written.
In the spirit of fairness, I understand that the point of the show was not to be historically accurate but rather to put romance in a non-clichéd setting. Fair enough, I'll begrudgingly suspend my disbelief and review it on its merits as such.
The first couple of seasons were actually not terrible. The teenage angst was always a bit overdone and rather contrived, not to mention that the entire series of romances never really clicked with the setting. The major problem that I had that made me stop watching it after this point was the unremitting spiral into complete sexual deviancy and promiscuity. I'm not exaggerating when I say that by the most recent season (which I stopped halfway through), there were more scenes that were sexual in nature than there were actual dialogue and intrigue, a stark contrast from the first seasons. It became clear rather quickly that they were running out of ideas and decided to just fill space with the easiest way to get ratings.
Ultimately if you're a fan of history, avoid like the plague. If you like the Renaissance setting, you will be disappointed. If you just love romances, Reign has little depth. Give it a miss.
The Curse of Oak Island (2014)
Fair and Honest Review
Although I agree with the points of many others regarding the errant direction of History (previously the History Channel), that is not the point of this review - rather to honestly and fairly review The Curse of Oak Island.
I shall start off with the negative aspects of COOI: the show is slow and has obvious pacing issues as many others have said here. We as the audience are naturally impatient and are more interested in the results of the digs, the investigations, etc rather than watching the process unfold. This has led many times to a series of events that rightfully should have taken one episode being stretched out to three or four.
Personally I find the narration to be a bit degrading as well. It feels as if the narrator is attempting to catch us up on what's happening after every small occurrence. For example the main characters might be investigating some pirate treasure theory, and the narrator feels the compulsion to butt in with "Pirate treasure?! Could it be?" Contrived is the word I would use.
As an additional observation, something always seems to go wrong with the investigations - hence the idea of the Curse of Oak Island, but there are times when it becomes obvious that the difficulties are self-inflicted - for example, "Well, it's getting late, we'll have to continue the dig tomorrow," they say in broad daylight - to which we all respond, "great, we'll have to wait until next episode. Again." Still with all of that being said, overall I have enjoyed the show. It is a bit overlong at times, but the processes they take are logical and they are very conscientious of local laws and very respectful of other owners of the islands' wishes. As much as the theories seem to be far-fetched at times, I find them to be refreshing takes on the holes in between the stories of the history books. To be honest, this show contains more history than a number of History shows, even if they are just theories.
All in all, I think it's not a bad watch. I really hope they're able to discover something - hopefully in a more timely manner.
Ghost Hunters (2004)
The ghost show that actually gets worse as it progresses
I'll admit that when I first started watching this show, at a friend's request of course, I thought it was vaguely interesting. I've always loved paranormal things, and figured a show called "Ghost Hunters" could fill my insatiable need to understand such things.
Unfortunately that was not the case. Gradually I became more and more annoyed at this show and their methods. Mainly I have a few issues with how they handle things. First, some of their members don't seem to respect the ghosts, or spirits if you will. I recall there was an episode in which one of the members was trying to provoke the ghost into doing something by calling it names. Careful doing that, newbie, you might just get possessed.
Another issue I had is that they rely on technology for EVERYTHING. They'll set up thousands of dollar's worth of cameras and other equipment around the place in hopes that they'll catch something. This may be scientifically proved to catch things that we have scientific proof of, but when you're trying to catch PARANORMAL things with EVERY DAY technology, you've got to know that you're going to get little to nothing. At least Paranormal State has the balls to use psychics, mediums, and religious methods, which are far superior to technology.
Last issue is my main problem. They're rarely willing to draw a conclusion about a whole lot of ANYTHING. They use their "scientific method" to try to rule out regular happenings before they can draw a conclusion, but even when they do rule out everything else, they STILL aren't willing to admit it's paranormal. For example, if they had a camera get knocked over or something, they would test for ground movement, wind, drafts in the house, physical intervention, etc etc, but even when they rule that nothing normal could've possibly effected it, they only rule that it could POSSIBLY be paranormal, and that's being generous. Get my drift? If science can't explain it, then obviously it must be PARA - NORMAL.
And whenever they DO find something they deem to be "paranormal", they don't do anything about it! I can't tell you how many times they've heard EVP's saying "help" or "help me", but they never do! They log it as just another phenomenon. Has it occurred to them that these spirits actually want help passing on, and this is their only way of asking for it? Nope, they wouldn't know. It's all about ratings and money.
Ultimately I don't like how they go about doing things on this show, and I believe that ultimately their methods are causing them more trouble than it's worth. I'll stick with Paranormal State, thanks.