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Post by BeastieBoy on Apr 20, 2016 12:17:52 GMT -5
A number of critics changed their view about the show and have admitted that the show got better as Season 1 progressed. The review you just shared was done at the end of S1, so the reviewer was kind of redoing her view of the Pilot with hindsight. But if you read her original review, it was quite negative. Whereas the one I shared was done when the Pilot originally aired. Reading between the sarcastic lines, I felt the reviewer actually did seem to enjoy the show as a kind of "guilty pleasure", in the same way that I do. I wish there were more like this sexpocalypse review at the time of the Pilot's airing. I think the majority of the critics were pretty harsh on the Pilot, which probably hurt the viewership. Ratings for the Pilot were good, very close to Arrow's premiere ratings. But 1x02 saw a big drop in viewers. It's all water under the bridge now, but like I said, I've been feeling kind of nostalgic lately.
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Post by bbatb on Apr 20, 2016 15:03:57 GMT -5
Aww S1 and memory lane. Those were the days. I love TV Empress, I love her way of putting things and how she expresses herself. I read every one of her reviews. Thanks Jewels for reminding us of this. And thank you BeastieBoy for getting this ball rolling. Feeling nostalgic since S2 turned bad.....
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Post by alwayscrazedbatbfan on Apr 24, 2016 21:16:04 GMT -5
And the Pilot just had the best episodic MUSIC. You had M83's "Midnight City" for the transition song to 2012 New York. Plus, Train's 2003 hit "Calling All Angels" for outside the Salty Dawg in 2003.
And I just recently learned what song was playing while Cat investigates the camera surveillance outside the hotel where she sees JT's car. That is Snow Patrol's "The Weight Of Love," which is my new current favorite BATB hit. That is SUCH a great song!
You have the episode end with Florence + the Machine singing "never let me go" as Cat looks into the night from the glass doors of the engagement party. All while actually being watched herself from the neighboring building by a Vincent. And Jay Ryan plays that MOMENT so perfectly--the look of someone desperately wanting something so much that he KNOWS he can't possibly have. He now actually KNOWS the girl that he has passionately followed for so long from afar.
And he never bothered to learn the names of those others he had saved. Yet he HAD to go look up Catherine in the newspapers back in 2003 JUST to learn who she was AND saved the article in order to have a PHOTO of her. And he became DETERMINED to ensure her safety. I would have LOVED to have learned if Vincent tried to RATIONALIZE just WHY he could never let Cat go, even AFTER almost 10 long years. He would ALWAYS at least check up on her at her birthday, which just meant he went BEYOND the newspaper article to learn everything about her.
Just the fact that Vincent later KNOWS what Evan found in Cat's file about her parents tells you EVERYTHING about how devoted Vincent truly was to learning everything about Cat. Even AFTER he had stopped trying to bring Muirfield down and sought out JT, he MUST have gone back in to Muirfield in order to look at Cat's file HIMSELF in order to already know more about her than even Cat knew.
SIGH. The ROMANCE elements were just all THERE in that first episode, if you knew where to look. . . .
Part of the problem with the 1st episode, in my opinion, was something that I felt the network/showrunners SHOULD have found a way to work around---the fact that KK was so SICK during the filming of the Pilot. You could NOT hardly hear ANYTHING that she said. Quite frankly, they should have just re-dubbed more of the thing later AFTER the Pilot was picked up by the network. I have had to play the Pilot over and over again SO MANY times just to finally learn what all Catherine ACTUALLY said. With viewers having to work so HARD to understand what people were saying, you lost something in the episode.
Plus, at that time, you had BONES and CASTLE, both of which were operating at their peak. So you ALREADY had couples working cases that were solved in one episode. While BATB chose to ADD the element in of HAVING to have all the episodes directly RELATE to the VinCat relationship at that point in time, it just made the CASES more ridiculous and FAR-FETCHED as a result.
(Besides, was ANYONE actually watching BATB for the CASES post-Pilot? NO. So the showrunners really had NO IDEA of how to balance career-life with personal life and Beast-in-hiding from the get-go. BETTER PLANNING and more MYSTERY around Vincent and beasts in general would have been FAR preferable.)
I think BATB really tried to find a way to be X-Files in some ways. They wanted that conspiracy-ridden underlying element, but they had no way to make POLICE CASES really link well with this. And BATB also later tried to repeat Smallville in so many ways, in my opinion. It is too bad that the CW didn't make BATB more like Smallville's early days of creature-of-the-week that would reveal certain powers/talents that Clark had. And reveal how important the ultimate Mysterious Background would be to Clark's future. Had BATB gone a little more in that direction from the get-go, and THEN bring in the TOTALLY UNEXPECTED angle of having Catherine LINKED to beast-heritage, you could have had a REALLY interesting and UNIQUE take on the whole thing. You could have had the Gem linked to CATHERINE'S ABILITIES by making the gem actually ENHANCE her unique genetic structure. Which would have THEN made BOB's presence/fatherhood SO MUCH MORE relevant, since HIS ancestor also welded the gem. So THAT would be the REAL REASON Vanessa Chandler ended up at Muirfield---she already knew that Cat had a DESTINY all her own, linked to beasts through the Gem, as it was in the past.
But regardless of where the writers went from the Pilot onwards does NOT take away from the Pilot itself. While the PLOT might not have been anywhere NEAR perfect, the WAY the VinCat scenes played MADE me love the series from the beginning. The CHEMISTRY between VinCat was just THERE. That Subway LOOK. Those LONGING LOOKS at the end. That WAREHOUSE MOMENT when Cat comes in all dressed for the party, and Vincent just SEES her there and looks so IN AWE of her beauty! SWOONWORTHY!
I can NEVER get enough of this episode, even if I secretly mute-out moments from the case. But that is why critics often missed the point of the thing, which was the VinCat CONNECTION, right from the start. (And the fact that Vincent had been lost in the relationship for SO VERY LONG, even before EVER meeting Cat. WOULD HAVE BEEN SO GREAT to have seen flashbacks of Vincent longingly following Catherine from so long ago. I guess the CW feared that Vincent would look too much like a deranged Stalker if they went that route!)
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Post by BeastieBoy on Apr 25, 2016 0:31:53 GMT -5
alwayscrazedbatbfan - Interesting comment about not being able to hear KK's voice well. IDK, I could hear her just fine. Her voice did sound horse in some scenes and at other times she seemed to be trying for a New York accent. But other than KK not always sounding like her normal self, I really had no problems at all understanding her words.
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Post by alwayscrazedbatbfan on Apr 25, 2016 1:51:47 GMT -5
BeastieBoy:
It may be that on newer televisions, you can hear KK better. Without having the Pilot right in front of me, an example of where it was hard to hear certain lines that I remember off the top of my head was when KK says "way to bury the lead" to Evan. I had to get the S1 DVD and play it on my portable DVD player before I ever was able to completely hear all the lines. The scenes in the precinct were the ones I most remember being problematic in the Pilot. Even when she softly says "it's you" in the subway. I had no problem with the warehouse scenes or the voiceovers, but I do remember there being some critics slight about KK's voice in the Pilot, so it wasn't just me. I would have no way to locate the old articles but would welcome anyone else that could. I'm also terribly nostalgic right now and am loving the old stuff, particularly things being posted now that I had never seen or read before.
As I recall, there was one interview about the KK Voice Issues with Sherri and Jennifer where they discussed that KK had the flu at the time. They even had to have a doctor come on set to administer something for her throat due to her being hoarse and people having a hard time hearing her while filming certain scenes. They mention that they did re-dub a lot of the lines as a result, but KK's voice was never so thin as it was at some points in the Pilot, at least with my old-school televisions. (If anyone knows where that interview went, I'd love to re-see it. I think it was one that also covered how they re-shot that scene at the warehouse and changed it later after testing the Pilot due to people questioning whether or not VinCat slept together when she fell asleep in his bed. So they scrubbed having Cat fall asleep in exchange for her walking around looking at his stuff, etc.)
The interview also covered the fact that during the outdoor shoot where Cat's mom gets shot, it was incredibly cold, and the script hadn't called for Cat to have a jacket. So either Sherri or Jennifer lent her their own personal jacket, and had Vanessa add those lines about putting on the jacket. (Which would surely explain how KK could have gotten the flu in the first place, in my opinion, if they had her running around freezing at night in a Canadian winter in nothing but a short-sleeved shirt!)
I would really love to know if other scenes were affected by KK being sick. She seems unusually pale during certain scenes, but that could have just been the lighting. Plus, you have KK seemingly swipe at her nose in the warehouse right before the engagement party due to its beginning to run. Which happens when you are crying anyway, so it could have just been in revelation to the stuff about her Mom. But it was a nice touch, if it was all her and not something where her illness actually helped contribute to the scene!
I know one online article by either a critic or someone had picture(s) from the original scene where Vincent watches Cat sleep. Does anyone know where those photo(s) or articles are? I'm also heavily BATB-nostalgic and would LOVE to view other stuff about the Pilot. It has been SO LONG since I heard/read those initial articles about the filming of the Pilot.
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Post by BeastieBoy on Apr 25, 2016 4:56:20 GMT -5
The pic of the deleted scene where Vincent watches over a sleeping Catherine is on page 2 of this same thread.
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Post by alwayscrazedbatbfan on Apr 25, 2016 20:50:46 GMT -5
Wasn't there another one where Vincent was actually on the bed watching her rather than the chair? STILL, thanks for letting me know where that one is so that I don't have to search through the various threads.
I wonder if that scene still exists somewhere? It would be lovely to see on some future DVD collection. (You know that individual directors probably still have stuff, especially if a series might get re-released for some future commemorative collection.) I know there was also the additional footage from AMP that the director(?) or someone posted and later removed but can still be seen on some of the past threads. WHY oh WHY don't they release THESE scenes to us VinCat-crazed devotees?
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Post by BeastieBoy on Apr 26, 2016 0:56:07 GMT -5
Wasn't there another one where Vincent was actually on the bed watching her rather than the chair? STILL, thanks for letting me know where that one is so that I don't have to search through the various threads. I wonder if that scene still exists somewhere? It would be lovely to see on some future DVD collection. (You know that individual directors probably still have stuff, especially if a series might get re-released for some future commemorative collection.) I know there was also the additional footage from AMP that the director(?) or someone posted and later removed but can still be seen on some of the past threads. WHY oh WHY don't they release THESE scenes to us VinCat-crazed devotees? Not that I'm aware of. Maybe that's your mind's eye version of the pic because you wanted Vincent to be on the bed? LOL.
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Post by missingalias on Apr 26, 2016 5:27:37 GMT -5
Wasn't there another one where Vincent was actually on the bed watching her rather than the chair? STILL, thanks for letting me know where that one is so that I don't have to search through the various threads. I wonder if that scene still exists somewhere? It would be lovely to see on some future DVD collection. (You know that individual directors probably still have stuff, especially if a series might get re-released for some future commemorative collection.) I know there was also the additional footage from AMP that the director(?) or someone posted and later removed but can still be seen on some of the past threads. WHY oh WHY don't they release THESE scenes to us VinCat-crazed devotees? Yes there is a different cut of THAT scene that the director released. I've seen that, but don't have the link at hand anymore. Maybe someone else has. I also wish other unreleased material to be given out!
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Post by BeastieBoy on Apr 26, 2016 12:59:20 GMT -5
Wasn't there another one where Vincent was actually on the bed watching her rather than the chair? STILL, thanks for letting me know where that one is so that I don't have to search through the various threads. I wonder if that scene still exists somewhere? It would be lovely to see on some future DVD collection. (You know that individual directors probably still have stuff, especially if a series might get re-released for some future commemorative collection.) I know there was also the additional footage from AMP that the director(?) or someone posted and later removed but can still be seen on some of the past threads. WHY oh WHY don't they release THESE scenes to us VinCat-crazed devotees? Yes there is a different cut of THAT scene that the director released. I've seen that, but don't have the link at hand anymore. Maybe someone else has. I also wish other unreleased material to be given out! Are you talking about the Pilot or the Director's cut of the AMP scenes? I know where the AMP "directors cut" scenes are. But if there's yet another version of the Vincent watching Cat sleep scene in the Pilot, I'd like to see it too. I read they cut that scene from the Pilot because they didn't want Vincent to seem too much like some creepy stalker or even raise the notion that they might have slept together after the subway scene.
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Post by missingalias on Apr 26, 2016 13:24:59 GMT -5
Yes there is a different cut of THAT scene that the director released. I've seen that, but don't have the link at hand anymore. Maybe someone else has. I also wish other unreleased material to be given out! Are you talking about the Pilot or the Director's cut of the AMP scenes? I know where the AMP "directors cut" scenes are. But if there's yet another version of the Vincent watching Cat sleep scene in the Pilot, I'd like to see it too. I read they cut that scene from the Pilot because they didn't want Vincent to seem too much like some creepy stalker or even raise the notion that they might have slept together after the subway scene. I was referring to AMP scene. Sorry. I also would like to see Vincent watching over Cat scene at one point,but I don't think that ever gonna happen. :/
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Post by BeastieBoy on Apr 26, 2016 13:58:46 GMT -5
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Post by BeastieBoy on Apr 26, 2016 18:16:03 GMT -5
A few more from Emily Silver on the Pilot.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 27, 2016 1:43:50 GMT -5
Thank you missingalias and @ BeastieBoy I hadn't seen all those pics before. Love the one with KK and JR talking to each other, they seem already so close and into the character... and love words on that twitt
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Post by BeastieBoy on Apr 27, 2016 3:57:48 GMT -5
One more. The Beast! Also, part of the story board from the Pilot. Not specific to the pilot, but it's sad that Emily Silver and many others moved on after S1. The show was never the same without them. This was one of Emily's latter tweets before moving on to Bones. And having some fun with KK...
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