The Glade 4.0

Fantastic show. One of the few premiers I've been looking forward to, and it delivered. Big time.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Ok...here is my problem with it.

Nothing has power, why they did not explain. Yet they can still make booze in a still??? Which means they can still boil water for steam and have not figured out how to make stuff work using steam power.

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Raell Kromwell

It has been 15 years(9), since the power went out? And no electrician, scientist, or anything else survived the collapse that can rebuild a motor? The premise alone is about as bad as a Kevin Costerner movie (water & dirt world)

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

Crap, was that this week? I thought NBC's premiers were next week, so I hadn't set up anything on my DVR.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The pilot is available for free on VOD options (iTunes, Amazon Instant).

Edit: well, not Google Play, of course.

So why is the power out? And after 15 years, why is it not back on?

And crossbows/swords? Did we magically lose the ability to make gunpowder?

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Holy shitsnacks!

speculating wildly here as I too missed the premire, but a massive EMP would fry most anything with an electronic circuit. If it were repeating it might make rebuilding all but impossible. (unless of course they go back to vacuum tubes or other well shielded/resistant circuit) but your average toaster should still work.

hmm. What about a massive increase in the electrical conductance of the air? (highly ionized atmosphere) might short circuit anything electrical.

I get the feeling the pitch went like this:
"Ok, get this. Its our world, but 15 years in the future. All the power is off. Humanity is reduced to swords, bows and horses."
"Sounds interesting. Why is the power off though?"
"It just is. Something happened or something to cause it. We'll call it the Event."
"Excellent. Here's a hojillion dollars. Call Jon Favreau."

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Holy shitsnacks!

I liked the pilot, it was shot well, even though the story doesn't make a lot of sense. I have a feeling by the end of the first season we'll know whether this is lost 2.0, or if they have this **** written down somewhere. Still, the first season of lost was awesome, so I'm in.

or like the Cylons and their plan.... though they never really had one.

Except they did.

Step 1. Toast the Colonies.
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Profit.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Reduction to the technology level seen in the trailers within fifteen years completely strains credibility. Furthermore, if humans are reduced to bows and swords in the span of fifteen years, one man can not get the power back on.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I'm headin' out Californy-way. I hear tell they's gots Internets.

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They stated that it not just stopped but that the literal physics don't work anymore. They stated batteries and internal combustion engines don't work - like firing Styrofoam bullets into granite doesn't work.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

So while I liked it I found it to be infuriating in such a crazy way.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

This... this is stupid. Physics is physics.

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Holy shitsnacks!

And people don't fly. Yet comics and superhero movies sell because they're enjoyable entertainment to consume.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yeah yeah. That's usually "Our world, but mutants." or "Our world, but Batman."

This is "Our world but IC and Batteries and **** doesn't work." For seemingly no other reason than "Because".

Broken premise is broken

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Holy shitsnacks!

It all comes down to suspension of disbelief.

Audiences are willing to put aside their knowledge that, "**** don't work like that," for some story aspects, but they aren't for others.

In the case of superheroes, what we have to suspend is the knowledge that superpowers don't really exist. Once we embrace that, a lot of other things follow more or less without issue.

Radiation does weird **** in the real world, especially if you're not a scientist or an engineer who understands the governing physical law. Maybe in a world with superpowers, that's one of the things that radiation can do to you. Bit by a radioactive spider and got some superpowers? Gamma radiation gave you superpowers? Okay, that works.

Chemical waste does weird **** in the real world, especially if you're not a chemist. Got splashed by some chemical waste which burned out your eyes but gave you some superpowers? Alright. We'll go with that.

Gene mutation does weird **** in the real world, especially if you're not a biologist. In a world with superpowers, that could be some of the weird **** that happens. We're good to go!

Then, the comic book superheroes often don't diverge that far from real-world science once you get past the "superpowers exist" hurdle. Take Magneto. He's one of the biggest badasses in the Marvel universe that isn't a god. That actually makes sense when you consider that he controls magnetism, which is inexorably tied to electricity, and those two phenomena govern pretty much everything that happens on Earth. Then, figure he doesn't just have minor control over his power, but is one of the big dogs who has total control over his power. The laws of physics say that if he can do that, he should rock the house - and he does.

Now look at Colossus. The guy covers himself with steel. Well, steel is **** heavy. His other power should be super strength, and it is.

It helps that for comic books, you have to accept something completely ludicrous. There aren't really superpowers, so nobody's going to look for a rational explanation for why superpowers exist. Well, the power actually could go out. So now we're grounded in reality, and we're looking for a rational explanation for why sometihng that could happen actually did.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

What Coro said

I'm willing to suspend my disbelief pretty far, and it all depends on the genre and how hard/soft its science is.

A jetliner in a flat spin crashing into the ground in the promo just because the power went out? Wait... what? Was the pilot asleep or in the head or something? Swords horses and crossbows in a modern world that *just has no power*? Why again don't guns work? Gas should still burn, batteries should still produce electricity, steam should still be able to drive a turbine....

I'm sorry show. I can't be the viewer you want.

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Holy shitsnacks!

/Batman
You're the viewer they need, but not the viewer they deserve

Guns do work. They were used in the pilot. When Gus Fring came to the village with all those troops he told us that guns are outlawed. Only the milita is allowed to have them.

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Raell Kromwell

Ah. So it's not that all of this technology stopped working, or even was lost in any fashion. A totalitarian dictatorship took over, turned it all off, and forbade it from being turned back on.

And I suspect I just spoiled the season finale for everyone.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

No. The population of the US has been decimated. Urban centers crumbled, and the central government with it. There seems to be many small republics of various political bents all over whatbused to be the country. From what I can tell, the only dictatorship to be shown so far has no idea what happened, and is using his unilateral strength to figure it out.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I saw a comment somewhere that this is based/stolen on a book series that did a much better job of making it clear that nothing works - electricity, batteries, gunpowder, combustion, etc. It might be this one, Dies the Fire, by S.M. Sterling. But I'm sure in the pitch room, or through the TV blanding process, someone figured it would be better if it were just electricity that went out and no longer works.

I love post-apocalyptic stuff, but I have a feeling this would just piss me off.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge