Patriot on Amazon Prime: Let me Walk You Through Our Donnely Nut Spacing

part of what resonated so much with me is John Tavner is, for me (and I guess informed by my own life), the most realistic portrayal of depression as it is experienced...not a dramatic, theatrical thing but just slogging through, jaw set, mechanically going through the requirements of your job and life in this grey cloud in a sort of disconnected, 1000 yard stare way

he's also the first "television badass" i've seen that is genuinely haunted by his actions in a meaningful way. he's a terrible person doing horrible things, often to people who don't deserve it and he knows it.

definitely, the mental cost is there that never is usually, i guess the sopranos deals with that in a different context

the father/son dynamics wrt to that are super deep and fucked up too

I enjoyed the pilot but, a bit like Fargo, I found the violence & direction a little glib and distancing - maybe that's the point, though? I guess my question is - is this the kind of show that needs you to watch a few episodes to settle into it, or is the pilot a good indicator of where it goes for the rest of the show?

I would be content with a decent Terry O'Quinn delivery vehicle, though, which it seemed to be.

also possibly the first tv badass whose main motivation for carrying out his job is guilt induced by his father xxp

It clicked for me after the first and got me really hooked by the second but I feel like it could take three episodes to get past "grim and gritty white guy drama" fatigue if your expectations have been constructed a certain way already? It is anything but predictable and distancing once you get to it, I can promise you that. It got me weepy in a couple of moments.

I'm 4 episodes in and the idea of carrying on is fucking stressing me out, it's that good.

Damn, wish this thread had existed sooner, lots of good posts about it sprinkled across a half dozen other threads.

i wouldn't compare it to fargo. i don't see the violence as glib, i think it's perfunctory in that it reflects john tavner going through the motions with little regard for the overall purpose or his own well-being

the utterly unique and fairly brilliant dynamic in my mind is the mirrored setup between:
1) an emotionally (and by proxy physically) abusive user of a father who clearly loves his sons but is willing to chew them up if he has to / deeply damaged, easily manipulated, well-meaning men who eat their own souls trying to please an unpleaseable master
2) country / patriot

It also has one of the more indelibly brilliant, if unknowable female leads on television.
Rochambeau?

Damnit I only just started getting back into the Expanse, I might have to give this a go now

The other other other thing it does amazingly is capture the existential despair of office life in a humorous way but still anxiety provoking.
I would say that anyone watching this owes it to themselves to at least watch until you get to the Leslie backstory episode; how they fill that character in is amazing.

BTW! the guy who plays dorky Dennis is the showrunner's brother and one gets the distinct sense looking at their bios that the Tavner family dynamic is drawn from their lived experience.

aaaaaand i see NA covered that upthread, my bad

kurtwood smith is amazing in this show. it's crazy he's not in more stuff.

the most stress i felt watching the show was related to john having to fulfill his office duties, not his "real" duties. it felt a lot like those dreams of being back in college but totally unfamiliar with the course material and the final exam is that afternoon

i guess he acts regularly but he should get more leading roles in good shows/movies
xpost

the show is pretty stressful, given that the plot is a chain of things going successively wronger and wronger

#jellyfish, only true patriot heads know

the most stress i felt watching the show was related to john having to fulfill his office duties, not his "real" duties. it felt a lot like those dreams of being back in college but totally unfamiliar with the course material and the final exam is that afternoon

the "pin fastened pam flats" schtick suggests that john is missing some integral part of understanding his world and is masquerading his way through by hurting everyone around him... which he is! but i know that's a fear that pops up in my mind regularly and i guess it's pretty common. the show captures it well.

I think I made this thread to force me to go watch season 2. General consensus seems to be that it's not as good as the heights of 1 but still consistently strong?

that alienation one feels at a team meeting in which everyone seems to understand some hot new corporate catchphrase or acronym except you xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iPf_T7OYdo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Yo2ZYAdxa4

I was today years old when i found out that Michale Dorman aka the lead in Patriot is also the lead in the apple tv show "For All Mankind" which is created by Battlestar Galactica's Ronald D Moore, so maybe I will watch that.

Yes, forks, season two both is very good and expands upon themes that you seem to appreciate (the abusive father narrative becomes even more foregrounded). Watch!

Cool.

imo s2 was a slight step down but just bc s1 is so perfect. s2 also felt sadder than s1.

I'd definitely stick with it through more than the first episode. one thing i love about it is it sets up characters as a stock "type" (kurtwood smith as leslie, chris conrad as dennis) then you start to learn more layers to them as they open up

Leslie has a podcast concerning his Structural Dynamics of Flow book: https://www.lgclaret.com/podcast

"Think back to the last time you ram-chawed a partial chim set. Standard, right? We've been ram-chawing chims since the aqueducts of Ancient Rome, hey. But what if I told you that's the basis for the empire's collapse?

Hello, I'm Leslie Claret. I'd like to invite you to join countless others who have come to rely on the lessons and explorations of my book to form a deeper understanding of our shared world, with relative specificity to the field application of surface and suppressed surface delivery engineering."

oh wow

holy shit

Four hours of this stuff! And the last one came out this week!

It's like listening to a guided meditation podcast or something. Soothing.

My attempt to sell it in 280 characters or less:

I am some years late to this but PATRIOT is a phenomenal TV series, just a perfect bleak comedy about depression and murder and family and love and the baroque incompetence of the American intelligence services. Brilliantly written, directed and acted. Amazing stuff. pic.twitter.com/OU85VS0XPy

— Caustic Cover Critic 📚 (@Unwise_Trousers) March 17, 2021

Just finished series 1 yesterday. Amazing show.

one thing i love about it is it sets up characters as a stock "type" (kurtwood smith as leslie, chris conrad as dennis) then you start to learn more layers to them as they open up

I don't know if I've come across a straight answer on this one, but: is all of the piping jargon complete bullshit?

Yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w

(there's even a few specific fake phrases being lifted from the retro/turbo encabulator for Leslie's jargon)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkH20fNavoI

It's like the creators wanted this to be a cult show. Or maybe they realized it would work best as a cult show? We found the trailer pretty off putting and didn't get around to watching the show for months as a result. Bad trailer and a forgettable, hard to search show name and an unknown cast isn't a great recipe for popularity. But the cult is growing as well it should.

The dead seriousness with which they spout off the fake piping jargon sales pitches is just brilliant. And the regretful tone of the interwoven interviews from the government investigation after everything goes jellyfish, that's top notch.

And did we talk about Lakeman's songs?

The song as he attempts to steal the gun from the poor Senegalese guy, that whole one-shot sequence; just brilliant.

Just starting S2 and this is great but there is way too much peeing, also - and this is really grouchy - but the artful, check-my-record-collection track choices are jarring, I feel like they're unconnected from the story most times.

Some very goofy moments in season 2. But it stays pretty cool.

Thereis a hilarious peeing scene in ins2ep4

Just finished S1 and I feel like I should just curl up for a while before going on.

This show was already pretty dang funny, and if i was a Luxembourgian process engineer I'd probably think it was the most hysterical thing that ever happened.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that they did zero research on the CIA before making this show. And that's okay, and here's why.

While the show addresses real human issues and relationships, it essentially does so through a prism of pure fantasy.

I dunno, the CIA financing candidates in Iran, a cop getting acquitted for killing a poc kid, the US reality seems to check out.

Would be very happy to hear that all the Milwaukee scenes prominently feature landmarks from, like, Delaware or somewhere tho.

Turns out it was filmed in Chicago. lol

also it was filmed in Prague and takes no care whatsoever to conceal this

Yeah this got to me too, initially it was "hey Luxembourg has a bridge that looks like Prague, who knew" but then "why are all the signs in the background in Czech". There's something lazy and sloppy about the show - the almost-but-not-quite Wes Anderson shots, too many characters and pointless coincidences in S2, for all her screen time and impressive hair Agathe isn't really anything - but the intense sadness of it all has kind of stuck with me and I mutter "pretty good" to myself when I'm having a rough day.

new episode of Leslie's podcast went up over the weekend
https://www.lgclaret.com/podcast/episode/1feaf73a/episode-five-leslie-the-snowman-a-prison-escape-story

Can't believe they're still making that podcast lol

I watched both seasons recently and enjoyed them but season 2 felt off a bit. A little bit short on ideas and the dialogue was sometimes lazy. Still some great moments there though. My favorite scenes are every time Leslie talks to John in S1. There's such a palpable disgust from Leslie, I start laughing before he even says anything

i liked the whole structural dynamics of flow thing going on, the show’s macguffin being about the intrinsic difficult of getting something from a to b (the cash) and the fact that the piping designed to deliver it (the people, the plans, the social relations, the sadness, the loss, the places) creates entire complex (non a-b) situations of strange events and behaviour in “normal” contexts.

would you believe they're STILL making that podcast?
https://www.lgclaret.com/podcast/episode/37e0a001/episode-six-the-caracas-blackouts

hahahaha awesome

Started watching the show this week, inspired by the revive (I'd never heard of it) - thank you ILE!

Four episodes in and loving this. Michael Dorman may have the most amazing face since yesterday’s birthday boy Buster Keaton.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D4OK83DW4AYVEie.jpg

Think about 'Afternoon Spray' a lot. I really should rewatch this.

Still need to tell my story about the other guy there.

Getting towards the end of S1. The ladies just shared a rental car from the airport. It’s kind of amazing to me how despite the quirkiness it’s really well plotted and paced so that I am pretty much constantly on the edge of my seat. Now Leslie is making his speech about the sun and the planets.

Man, Leslie is as misanthropic as a Jim Thompson sheriff.

It also has one of the more indelibly brilliant, if unknowable female leads on television.
Rochambeau?

I know how you feel. You’re just human. “Hello, club member.”

TS glass blower vs. puppeteer

On to Season Two.

And now on the far side of The Vantasner Danger Meridian.

Re the beef with greg12: the original lyrics of "Pancho and Lefty" say "only let him hang around" in the first chorus and later on it's "go so wrong" instead of "go so long" is that it? It's not just Willie and Merle though, also Emmylou Harris which is maybe who they heard it from iirc.

Not sure what I can watch next that can measure up to this.

amazing
https://www.newtechniquesinmodernpracticalclosecombat.com/

pretty good show

Double good imo

I'm three episodes into this show and enjoying it a lot. It has a weird admixture of vibes - my friend described it to me as "Wes Anderson does James Bond" which put me off it for a while. It has higher stakes for me than any Wes Anderson movie, though I can see where he gets that vibe. The opening in S1 E3 detailing Leslie's backstory is such a punch. I feel like things are converging toward an epic fuckup.

Epic fuck ups incoming. Such a great show. One by one we’ll get everyone to see it.

your friend isn't wrong necessarily but i would sidestep wes anderson in favor of maybe like The Daniels

(and yes, "epic fuckup" is actually underselling what's coming)

There's a lot about this show that I love and am impressed by but, as time goes by, I think I'm most impressed by how much it coasts on pure chutzpah. Like they give zero fucks about how anything (CIA operations, industrial piping, international criminal investigations, etc.) actually works in real life. They whipped up total nonsense that sounded good and committed to it 100%. It's all just window dressing for the real themes of the show anyway so why not.

The conference talk might be my favorite scene from any show ever

omghfs Kurtwood Smith in this

(just finished S01E03)

He only gets better.

We’re ready to start S2. Great show.

Here is my promised story about the co-composer of “Afternoon Spray.”

Once evening I got text from a friend saying: “James Redd, do you know who Syd Straw is?”

Which of course is like asking a question about a bear or a pope.

My friend proceeded to tell me that he had recently met her at a dinner party and that she had told a story about her significant other, Boone, who played a tough guy on a television show (Sons of Anarchy?) and kind of had that look when he was out and about in real life so people were constantly challenging him to fights.

Which I knew about first hand since one day I had a meeting with Paul Lukas of Uni Watch about something at the Grandaisy Bakery near the Holland Tunnel. I noticed that Syd Straw was sitting there with some guy in a bowling shirt who seemed to be scowling at me. I told her I recognized her and said hello and she introduced me to her friend Boone.

So I really appreciated his teddy bear quality in this.

Finally finished Season 2 of Patriot and honestly thought it was a bit of a slog. Not nearly up to the

Complaints included:

-The need to bring back every S1 minor character for brief and inconsequential cameos.
-John turning even more into The Terminator, ignoring multiple major wounds, etc. This was carried over from S1, but was just over the top in S2.
-Continued pulled football where you think John/Tom are going to have a moment where they realize what all this is doing to John, but nothing ever comes of it. Nothing.
-Why are we supposed to care about John in the end? Because he sings bad twee songs? He is a terrible person, especially terrible to his wife (like actually emotionally abusive).

Is the show just an allegory about American interventionism?

Second sentence should read: Not nearly up to the level of S1 (or at least S1 exhausted everything the show had).

Also, Leslie way more interesting character than John. I want the Leslie Claret show.

These are all fair points.