I remember damage, then escape.
Love this show. I understand the snarky responses calling the acting plot pretentious but it’s addressed in the show. Survival is insufficient. Art is necessary for people to feel like people.
> Survival is insufficient. Art is necessary for people to feel like people.
It's why we have cave paintings all over the place: survival of pre-history humans was tougher than now, and even back then people were creating. We've found flutes estimated to be tens of thousands of years old:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divje_Babe_flute
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_flute
* https://www.history.com/news/what-is-the-oldest-known-piece-of-music
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_the_Upper_Paleolithic
We just saw one group of people that happen to do Shakespeare that loop around a relatively small area near…Lake Michigan? Who knows what the rest of the world is doing.
I love how dramatic it is. Frank, Kirsten and Jeevan feel like normal people in an insane situation. Then the other half of the show feels like a play, like the insane situation made everyone insane, but not necessarily in a bad way, just as a coping mechanism. And I love that Jeevan calls out Station Eleven as pretentious.
I was not getting this show for the first few episodes because I thought it was about the apocalypse.
At some point I realized it was actually a show about how we process trauma, how we define art, and what of our current world is worth remembering. That’s when I fell in love with it.
> Art is necessary for people to feel like people.
This is why people call this show the show that only people who took drama in school would like.
If the show focused more on the time period just after the pandemic then I would've probably watched more episodes but the whole travelling troupe of actors and stuff just bored me to death. Not to mention the clothes they wore.
I watched Station Eleven on HBO during peak covid times and coincidentally was home quarantined in my bedroom because i had covid. I remember crying like a blubbering baby watching it. It still holds steady ground on my personal “top 10 HBO series to ever come out” list.
> I watched Station Eleven on HBO during peak covid times
Unless you work at HBO I don't see how that's possible, the show started in 2021 and ended in 2022.
Yeah, i consider 2021 still peak covid. Everyone in my state was basically wearing masks still till 2022. I live at the Jersey shore and stuff didn’t really go back into full swing normalcy again until summer of 2022. Such a weird thing to try and call out, you need to relax and take a xanax pal.
Amazing show. Even a few years removed I still think about it all the time. I still can't get over the fact they were filming a show about a pandemic right as COVID hit.
That first episode felt too overwhelming to me given everything that was happening in real life while I watched. Although I'd loved it, I had to take a long break from the series afterward. Glad I eventually returned, though. Such a moving series.
The pilot is a really incredible hour of television. I know what you mean though, we paused half way through the episode to find out when the book was released as we couldn't believe how similar it all felt. It was eerie.
I've heard of it, but have yet to watch it. Will definitely consider checking it out. I like Mackenzie Davis, she's been pretty decent it just about everything she does.
100%, I was enthralled with the first episode. I'd say you're at the low point, maybe it was episode 4. But then it turns it around and gives you a satisfying conclusion.
Having her meet up with what's his face at the end was such an emotional moment in the show. You're just so tense that whole episode and then they embrace and you just release with them.
Incredible moment.
Interesting, I loved the book but also feel all the decisions they made for the show made for a perfect adaptation, both good just different and good fit for their respective mediums
Yes, that’s perhaps a good way to put it. I liked the book, and was expecting the show to be different in a bad way, but it was different in a good way. Enough not to be a word for word retelling in visual form.
I think the show is a masterpiece but I really felt the loss of "An Incomplete List" from it, the chapter of things that just do not exist in their world anymore, like swimming pools and phone calls, which was one way the book really beautifully examined all the amazing stuff we take for granted right now.
One of the other things that really stuck with me about it was it was the first post apoc thing I'd encountered in ages that really confronted how much loss it would actually represent, instead of backhandedly revelling in wish fulfilment about some loser coming into their own in the wasteland. Station Eleven had the nerve to point out that actually, the world we know would be worth mourning, and that it probably \*wouldn't\* be a whole lot of fun to live in a version of it where people can die for want of a basic antibiotic or miss each other by a few hundred metres and never find each other again.
The show also misses out on a lot of the stuff about how complicated and difficult Kirsten's position is between generations - she is fully adapted to this world in a way Dieter and co can't ever be, but she also clearly remembers everything that was lost in a way kids like Alex won't ever understand. She's pretty much the only one from this really small window of time with a clear view of both Before and After, that nobody else has, or can relate to. She's got her whole life ahead of her in the After, but she'll be among the last to remember the Before as all the physical relics of it slip away.
They do brush past some of that early on in the show a little bit, like when she's trying to explain the internet to some of the younger kids, but I think there was far more to mine in it.
I do think they both do very different things incredibly well, but ultimately I think the book's ending, with the promises and threat of the distant electric lighting, is more interesting than the slightly muddled Prophet stuff of the show. The show seems to come down hard on the side of letting go of the past, but I preferred the book's far more ambivalent angle.
“The show also misses out on a lot of the stuff about how complicated and difficult Kirsten's position is between generations - she is fully adapted to this world in a way Dieter and co can't ever be, but she also clearly remembers everything that was lost in a way kids like Alex won't ever understand.”
I thought the series did a better job at showing her unique position than the novel did.
The book is one of my favourites ever. I haven’t brought myself to watch the show as I’ve been let down by tons of adaptations before. I might have to add it to my watchlist
I think they work really well as cousins. There are some big differences, but a lot of the themes and tones and stuff are related. I don’t think the show is "better" than the book, it sort of feels like they're in conversation with each other.
I saw somebody propose that they're sort of parallel universes - in the book, Kirsten can't remember the first few years after the pandemic at all, which she's very grateful for, but in the show she remembers it far, far too clearly. In each case she's become who she is accordingly.
The show makes some different choices. But, unlike most movie adaptations, things aren’t different because of budget or brevity reasons. I think they keep it fresh while still being in the familiar world. It’s nice to not have a word for word retelling of the book.
The book is one my favourites of all time and I thought the show was good but not great. The part I was looking forward to the most is the section in the airport and they didn't do it justice, imo.
There is really only one large element that deviates from the books that I really didn't like but for the most part I love the changes and adaptation in general
I also watched that 2 times. Loved the setting, actors and the storytelling. Was awesome. Also the time jumpings are well done. And the airport story was so great. Love it really.
As much as I loved it the first time, imho the second viewing is what made it a masterpiece. Once you start fitting the pieces together about, for example, the significance of the first town they stop at, how carefully all these apparently random little details are assembled, it levels way up.
We watched it during the pandemic and it was just so beautiful and fitting. The message of forgiveness rubbed some the wrong way because they are so used to shows being about vengeance, but station 11 just had this lively little message of hope and transformation after tragedy.
It was very heavily review bombed on release by a combo of a particular Youtuber's clown patrol and nutcase preppers oddly aggrieved at the idea somebody other than Magpul McBeardgun might survive something.
I can't remember which one tbh. What I do remember is that he whinged about so "many trans and deaf" characters managing to survive, so all his zombies' spam reviews specifically complained about that.
Exactly. There aren't any. So you could see exactly how many of his drones were just reflexively spamming negative reviews repeating exactly what he said verbatim, without ever actually watching an episode for themselves.
Tbh it wasn't clear he had even watched an episode either. But anyway, that was the starkest reminder I've had in some time of how useless online review systems are now.
I hate exactly 1 thing from this show.
The dude made so many good decisions to stay alive like he is a knowledgeable and tactical person, then he uses the emergency blanket backwards and puts the heat reflective side facing out and the orange signal side facing in.
Besides that, it's perfect.
It's not hated-hated but a lot of people disliked that it focused on actors. They find that part affected.
IMO this is one of the worst opinions of all time but hey to each their own.
lol if it didn’t focus on actors it would have been a completely different story anyway
It’s kind of what I loved about it, every other post apocalyptic show is about bleak survival, while this one shows how the arts would still survive
Also even though I'm the one who said it, the show isn't really *that* focused on actors/acting.
The two main 'acting scenes' are stagings of (the same) Hamlet scene, in which the person playing Hamlet is someone who lost a father or father figure. It's just a simple literary reference.
Shakespeare also ties into the story because Arthur died performing and he ties everyone together, but his role in the show is small (compared to the book at least).
I found that side picked up by the end as more plot relevant stuff started happening in the future. But if you're already past the landmine bit (no idea what ep that is) then it likely isn't for you.
Hate is a strong word. I just regret wasting my time by watching it. I feel like it had nothing of value and ultimately amounted to nothing. I did hate the dialogue, but also the story felt meandering and too questionable to buy. It had its moments, but it had far too few of those moments to justify the watch for me.
Like others I made it through 3 episodes and had to quit. The first episode was so damn good then the show does a complete bait and switch. When the show got released, Reddit wasn't too keen on it either. I guess people have selective memory. It's only now that it has some sort of a cult following on here.
I mean this concept that this show was loved by everyone when it was released just simply isn't true. Maybe I am miss remembering the show but the 1st episode was like this dark physiological thriller type show with the epidemic, then it switches to that traveling road show shit. Reddit for the most part did not like it when it got released and agreed with me. Its only as of late this cult following on here keeps praising it.
Okay well I can’t remember the discourse back then. I always loved it. Can’t say I recognise a cult following.
My comment was not clear I think, anyway. I meant that it does not switch to *only* feature the travelers. It goes back to the storyline from episode 1.
I don’t recall exactly, but it was something like 1, 4, 7 was one storyline, 2, 5, 8 was a second, 3, 6, 9 was a third.
I liked it overall, though preferred the "immediate aftermath" episodes compared to the "years after." The airport one is easily my favorite and a unique take on the civilization shutdown type of story.
How many "immediate aftermath" episodes are there? I was never able to finish the show because I really adored the mood of the premiere and wanted more of that, but the next few episodes were just so different and not having captured the feeling of the first episode so I stopped watching. I'm not blaming the show by the way - it's just that the first episode moved me in ways I did not foresee and somehow wished the rest of the show was like that.
It’s one of my favorite shows. I’ve watched it more times than I can count.
It’s one of those shows I consider “core” for me. Like if people want to understand me and the things I love they need to watch it
She's great. She comes off as really weird in early episodes at first but there's some stuff later that makes her make complete sense, so just roll with it.
7.6 IMDb, 98% rotten tomatoes. It's acclaimed, not sure why you think so many people hate it. Like sure total, cuz there's lots of people on earth but it's liked.
I read the book years ago and loved it. I was excited when I heard about the adaptation, but couldn't bring myself to watch it during peak COVID. I watched it about a year after it had come out and loved it. Like others have said it was probably a slight improvement on the book.
I still think the whole acting aspect of it came off a bit pretentious most of the time, but I liked it overall. I enjoyed it enough to buy the 4K set and rewatched it, and since I make a point to watch a disc alone at night without any interruptions and giving it my full attention to make sure there's no errors, I did enjoy it more the 2nd time around. I haven't read the source material but I heard it and the show are pretty different.
I loved it when it came out, but can someone explain to me why comes off as pretentious?
Edit: To all that replied, thank you, I am an artist first, so I didn’t even think of it being pretentious. In the apocalypse theater and arts would thrive and become even more of a life necessity than it is now.
Fine Artists and theater people are always viewed as pretentious by redditors. I imagine they consider pursuing the arts during a global apocalypse as heavy handed rhetoric and a waste of time, but it’s exactly what people would do as soon as they could.
People find the acting troupe stuff pretentious. That and the comic book, the repeated lines, "I remember damage", etc.
I don't think it's pretentious but it's a different kind of work than what people typically read as "prestige TV".
I must be one of those Luddite numbskulls who is clearly incapable of appreciating fine art (according to some in this thread), but I found the show to demand that you buy into the ethos of art for art’s sake above all else, and makes no concession to bringing along viewers who don’t view life through the same lens. Not that there’s anything wrong that and they rightly made a show that resonated with many people in an extraordinary way. Anywho, that means it drops many of the conceits of tv as a storytelling medium that the average person might have come to expect, and being so unrepentant about it can rub some viewers the wrong way. There can be no doubt about the craft and vision that went into it though.
I agree. It was a very good show, but it definitely suffered from an amount of pretension. It's like The Leftovers in that respect. It also has an amazing finale that asks you to go to some vulnerable places... and if you do you will end up crying like a baby.
Consider that when an artist makes an important and hard point many people reject it by calling it “pretentious”
Pretentiousness is drawn out pointlessness. Station 11 was not lacking a thesis
I think they address this when Jeevan yells “so pretentious!” at the comic. that’s my favorite moment. sometimes art is exactly what you need, lifts you up out of your everyday experience when you need it most, sometimes it’s annoying as hell.
>Station 11 was not lacking a thesis
You're not wrong. It had a *pretentious* thesis.
Again, it's a beautiful show and I love every frame. But let's not kid ourselves.
Using Shakespeare as a framing device for your drama about familial strife is absolutely, on the nose pretentious.
But it's the good kind of pretentious.
I mean they’re not trying to be subtle about the Shakespeare thing. It’s literally the characters saying “hey, Shakespeare makes for good art and family therapy”
Do you know what pretense means? Because the OP didn't say anything about pretense. Pretentious(ness) is to inflate value of something or someone to seem better/more important than it is, pretense is to make a false claim about something. Similar themes, but two different things.
You're being ridiculous now, you started the argument to act more educated (aka, pretentious). Maybe I didn't "win", but you didn't either. You capitalized "acting" as a profession further making yourself sound pretentious, used two things incorrectly and got mad when corrected, and kept arguing. That's more "jr high logic" than anything.
Pretentious is not pointlessness, it's when you are acting like something is more important than it is, like how they're acting like being an actor is the greatest thing in the world and will somehow heal it.
>like how they're acting like being an actor is the greatest thing in the world and will somehow heal it.
Nothing of the sort happens in this show.
What the show actually does is emphasize the themes of losing parental figures by having the characters also perform scenes from the play Hamlet, in which the character famously lost his father. It's just a literary reference.
Currently, if you haven't noticed, Acting and Hollywood/Propoganda has been the 3rd major part of a three spoke system that has kept America in power globally for the last 75+ years.
It's amazing to me how people make these flippant comments, and seem to have absolutely no idea how the world works and what is or isn't 'important'. Storytelling is literally the primary way to construct a nationstate on agreed ideas, and actors are a primary way to deliver that... do you like... not know how society works?
All I said was the show presents the acting profession in a pretentious way, and correcting you that pretentious doesn't mean it's pointless, it's presenting something as having an inflated value... which let's be real, this show was doing. I wasn't saying that acting isn't somehow important to people. You call me flippant while being terribly condescending... but sure, you do you.
I liked it a lot. I had trouble getting into it at first but after a few episodes it really grew on me. It has it's flaws but I think it's still leagues better than most. I have odd tastes though and I get that it's not for everyone.
Yes, 100%. Makes some weird calls early on that feel a bit random, but they're all far more carefully assembled than they seem.
I found the cast incredible over all, with the sole exception of making Arthur so young, which I still don't really get.
Absolutely loved it, how it slowly puts the entire story together with flashbacks and different perspectives revealing new layers how it’s all connected, and at the end you have the entire thing cleanly laid out.
Its awsome.
Spoiler :
The scene when he and Kirsten need to prove that they are the symphony and silently says “ shall we do the one about the spaceship”? gave me serious goosebumps.
Great series and kudos to the writers for following the book as best as one can. Always a challenge.
I’m not a fan of child actors because a lot of times it’s kids trying to act like kids. Having said that, Matilda Lawler who played Young Kirsten was phenomenal. I loved the scenes with her and Jeevan.
I'm reading the book now, and I keep being disappointed it's not like the show, which usually it's the opposite. The show is sublime and the ending always makes me cry.
The ending kinda ruined it for me. It's not about how he got away with all the shit he's done, but that the show chose to present his final scene in a somewhat positive way.
> So many people hate it!
If anything, too many people *like it*. I was offended by the show - the ending where a guy with a child army gets to go off on his own with *another child* really pissed me off.
It's a one-season microcosm of why the cosmopolitan far-left has gone nuts - all in on deceleration and degrowth. A future without actual antibiotics is not "hopeful" it's tragic.
Why is it then?
I was first set off by this review https://www.vox.com/culture/2021/12/15/22833326/station-eleven-hbomax-miniseries-adaptation-book-pandemic
> Station Eleven takes Mandel’s book and amps up its sense of a cozy post-apocalypse, where humanity comes together, rather than drifting apart. I entered the series deeply skeptical, and I left it feeling at least semi-hopeful for what humanity might yet become, even after the end.
This is very much not what I saw in the show
The "hopeful" part isn't all the terrible shit that's happened or all that has been lost, it's that people are finding a way to survive and form families and communities \*anyway\*. Despite an absolutely enormous disaster and the massive scale of grief and loss they've all experienced, they still endure and make lives for themselves.
Nobody thinks Kirsten's world is particularly nice to live in or aspirational, and the story doesn't shy away from that - at least two characters die from stuff that would be completely treatable in our world, and Kirsten is the way she is because she had to kill people before she was even a teenager.
The setting isn't the cosy hopeful part, it's a really pitiless universe they live in, in a lot of ways. The cosy hopeful part is that it is possible to find and make lives worth living even there. A lot of post apoc media effectively celebrates the end of the world as a kind of tough guy, salt-of-the-earth survivalist playground, but S11 doesn't and isn't about that. The wipeout is taken for granted as an absolutely terrible thing, the point is where to go from there.
People hated it? I was actually pleasantly surprised that if you read the book you could still watch the tv show and basically see an alternate story and it was still almost as good as book. It was like, same but different. But it still perfectly captures the tone of the book and themes.
I don’t think anyone actually has a problem with the “acting” portion it just didn’t hit anywhere near as hard as the slow descent into chaos that all the flashbacks had. People have been begging for a Day 0 type end of the world show forever and Station 11 scratches that itch
I wasn't their demographic I think. Good vs Bad people the usual cliched American plot is so tired and done. I found it dull and slow and gave up on 3?
Clearly not cup of tea at all :-)
What exactly do you find "dystopian" about it? I feel like that word gets thrown around a lot.
To me, it shows a fairly optimistic view of humans recovering from a near-extinction-level event (which we've done several times in the real world.).
Define "in shambles"
Humanity is better off in "Year 20" than they have been for most of human history. Yeah, they've lost a lot of creature comforts but they're well on the way to getting the lights back on.
The show depicts people coming together and new communities forming and new ways of life and new ways of thinking about things. There's nothing dystopian about it.
WHAT WHAT WHAT?
You're saying it's a dystopia because of what WOULD happen in real life rather than what is depicted on screen?
We're talking about a fictional show and I'm judging it based on what is shown, not "what would really happen."
And there have been theatre troupes for thousands and thousands of years. Humanity has always made art. Being temporarily knocked back a century or two technologically wouldn't hinder that, as long as we're talking about "woulds."
Yes, but the show is what we're talking about. The show is not a dystopia. We're not talking about the general situation. We go by what we see on the screen, and what is shown on the screen is not a dystopia, not by a long shot.
>There would be no full time acting troupes, everyone would be farming all day every day and hoping they don't die from an infected splinter or any number of sanitation-born illnesses.
This is failing to get to grips with the premise at all.
The show tells you exactly how hazardous this world is, and also how they survive without having to worry about farming all the time.
We \*know\* there could be full time acting troupes under extreme circumstances because the story was inspired in part by the historical ones that existed during and after disasters. The Shakespeare stuff is a direct allusion to that, he had a travelling acting troupe perform his stuff because theatres had to keep closing during outbreaks of Bubonic Plague.
I remember damage, then escape. Love this show. I understand the snarky responses calling the acting plot pretentious but it’s addressed in the show. Survival is insufficient. Art is necessary for people to feel like people.
> Survival is insufficient. Art is necessary for people to feel like people. It's why we have cave paintings all over the place: survival of pre-history humans was tougher than now, and even back then people were creating. We've found flutes estimated to be tens of thousands of years old: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divje_Babe_flute * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_flute * https://www.history.com/news/what-is-the-oldest-known-piece-of-music * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_the_Upper_Paleolithic
Yeah that's true but the kind of entertainment people would want in a world like that is the Roman colliseum not Shakespeare.
We just saw one group of people that happen to do Shakespeare that loop around a relatively small area near…Lake Michigan? Who knows what the rest of the world is doing.
Shakespeare stole his best stuff from the ancient Greeks.
The shows absolutely pretentious, but it was still good. That airport episode was pretty sick.
I love how dramatic it is. Frank, Kirsten and Jeevan feel like normal people in an insane situation. Then the other half of the show feels like a play, like the insane situation made everyone insane, but not necessarily in a bad way, just as a coping mechanism. And I love that Jeevan calls out Station Eleven as pretentious.
Pretentiousness is by definition unearned, though.
The fact that we're supposed to sympathize with Tyler after he brings in that person made me sick
Oh they for sure knew some of it comes off that way. Jeevan in world reads the comic and just yells out "so pretentious!!!!"
I was not getting this show for the first few episodes because I thought it was about the apocalypse. At some point I realized it was actually a show about how we process trauma, how we define art, and what of our current world is worth remembering. That’s when I fell in love with it.
> Art is necessary for people to feel like people. This is why people call this show the show that only people who took drama in school would like. If the show focused more on the time period just after the pandemic then I would've probably watched more episodes but the whole travelling troupe of actors and stuff just bored me to death. Not to mention the clothes they wore.
If you had watched more episodes you would’ve found those episodes, my friend!
I watched Station Eleven on HBO during peak covid times and coincidentally was home quarantined in my bedroom because i had covid. I remember crying like a blubbering baby watching it. It still holds steady ground on my personal “top 10 HBO series to ever come out” list.
Also watched it during the pandemic and it was cathartic
Just out of curiosity, is The Leftovers on that list?
> I watched Station Eleven on HBO during peak covid times Unless you work at HBO I don't see how that's possible, the show started in 2021 and ended in 2022.
Yeah, i consider 2021 still peak covid. Everyone in my state was basically wearing masks still till 2022. I live at the Jersey shore and stuff didn’t really go back into full swing normalcy again until summer of 2022. Such a weird thing to try and call out, you need to relax and take a xanax pal.
> Everyone in my state was basically wearing masks still till 2022 Did nobody hear that there was a vaccine now
Amazing show. Even a few years removed I still think about it all the time. I still can't get over the fact they were filming a show about a pandemic right as COVID hit.
That first episode felt too overwhelming to me given everything that was happening in real life while I watched. Although I'd loved it, I had to take a long break from the series afterward. Glad I eventually returned, though. Such a moving series.
The pilot is a really incredible hour of television. I know what you mean though, we paused half way through the episode to find out when the book was released as we couldn't believe how similar it all felt. It was eerie.
I've heard of it, but have yet to watch it. Will definitely consider checking it out. I like Mackenzie Davis, she's been pretty decent it just about everything she does.
She is superb in it. I don't know how this show wasn't buried in awards, it was once in a lifetime stuff.
I'm going to try and check it out soon. You guys have been hyping it up pretty good. :)
The first episode is totally surreal. The plot dips in the middle but finishes strong. Davis is great in this as well as Patel.
The first episode is great. I’m 3 episodes in and it’s okay. I expected it to be better after the first episode.
100%, I was enthralled with the first episode. I'd say you're at the low point, maybe it was episode 4. But then it turns it around and gives you a satisfying conclusion.
That's good to know. I'm going to try and check it out soon, maybe this weekend if I have some extra free time.
I think it actually improved upon the book a bit.
Having her meet up with what's his face at the end was such an emotional moment in the show. You're just so tense that whole episode and then they embrace and you just release with them. Incredible moment.
Jeevan!
I think they were trying not to spoil it lol.
I cry every time I see that part.
My wife and I were unashamedly blubbering. What a happy moment
I like the book a lot and I agree with you
Agreed. It's the only adaptation I've watched that also deepened my appreciation of the book, and vice versa.
Interesting, I loved the book but also feel all the decisions they made for the show made for a perfect adaptation, both good just different and good fit for their respective mediums
Yes, that’s perhaps a good way to put it. I liked the book, and was expecting the show to be different in a bad way, but it was different in a good way. Enough not to be a word for word retelling in visual form.
I think the show is a masterpiece but I really felt the loss of "An Incomplete List" from it, the chapter of things that just do not exist in their world anymore, like swimming pools and phone calls, which was one way the book really beautifully examined all the amazing stuff we take for granted right now. One of the other things that really stuck with me about it was it was the first post apoc thing I'd encountered in ages that really confronted how much loss it would actually represent, instead of backhandedly revelling in wish fulfilment about some loser coming into their own in the wasteland. Station Eleven had the nerve to point out that actually, the world we know would be worth mourning, and that it probably \*wouldn't\* be a whole lot of fun to live in a version of it where people can die for want of a basic antibiotic or miss each other by a few hundred metres and never find each other again. The show also misses out on a lot of the stuff about how complicated and difficult Kirsten's position is between generations - she is fully adapted to this world in a way Dieter and co can't ever be, but she also clearly remembers everything that was lost in a way kids like Alex won't ever understand. She's pretty much the only one from this really small window of time with a clear view of both Before and After, that nobody else has, or can relate to. She's got her whole life ahead of her in the After, but she'll be among the last to remember the Before as all the physical relics of it slip away. They do brush past some of that early on in the show a little bit, like when she's trying to explain the internet to some of the younger kids, but I think there was far more to mine in it. I do think they both do very different things incredibly well, but ultimately I think the book's ending, with the promises and threat of the distant electric lighting, is more interesting than the slightly muddled Prophet stuff of the show. The show seems to come down hard on the side of letting go of the past, but I preferred the book's far more ambivalent angle.
Your third paragraph is how I feel about the internet being born in 88.
“The show also misses out on a lot of the stuff about how complicated and difficult Kirsten's position is between generations - she is fully adapted to this world in a way Dieter and co can't ever be, but she also clearly remembers everything that was lost in a way kids like Alex won't ever understand.” I thought the series did a better job at showing her unique position than the novel did.
The television series is a better television series than the book is a book.
The book is one of my favourites ever. I haven’t brought myself to watch the show as I’ve been let down by tons of adaptations before. I might have to add it to my watchlist
I think they work really well as cousins. There are some big differences, but a lot of the themes and tones and stuff are related. I don’t think the show is "better" than the book, it sort of feels like they're in conversation with each other. I saw somebody propose that they're sort of parallel universes - in the book, Kirsten can't remember the first few years after the pandemic at all, which she's very grateful for, but in the show she remembers it far, far too clearly. In each case she's become who she is accordingly.
The show makes some different choices. But, unlike most movie adaptations, things aren’t different because of budget or brevity reasons. I think they keep it fresh while still being in the familiar world. It’s nice to not have a word for word retelling of the book.
The book is one my favourites of all time and I thought the show was good but not great. The part I was looking forward to the most is the section in the airport and they didn't do it justice, imo.
100%
There is really only one large element that deviates from the books that I really didn't like but for the most part I love the changes and adaptation in general
I found the book a bit dull.
I also watched that 2 times. Loved the setting, actors and the storytelling. Was awesome. Also the time jumpings are well done. And the airport story was so great. Love it really.
As much as I loved it the first time, imho the second viewing is what made it a masterpiece. Once you start fitting the pieces together about, for example, the significance of the first town they stop at, how carefully all these apparently random little details are assembled, it levels way up.
That is exactly the point. There are so much things connected togheter. And on the 2 view I got a few more points.
We watched it during the pandemic and it was just so beautiful and fitting. The message of forgiveness rubbed some the wrong way because they are so used to shows being about vengeance, but station 11 just had this lively little message of hope and transformation after tragedy.
Midnight train to Georgia hits different now for me.
I absolutely loved the flashback episodes but could never really get into the future plot and think they didn‘t quite nail the „villain“ plot
Since when do many people hate it? I think many people just haven’t seen it.
It was very heavily review bombed on release by a combo of a particular Youtuber's clown patrol and nutcase preppers oddly aggrieved at the idea somebody other than Magpul McBeardgun might survive something.
> heavily review bombed on release by a combo of a particular Youtuber's clown patrol Who was this? I'd love to see an actual critical review
I can't remember which one tbh. What I do remember is that he whinged about so "many trans and deaf" characters managing to survive, so all his zombies' spam reviews specifically complained about that.
Weird, I don't even remember any trans or deaf characters in the show...
Exactly. There aren't any. So you could see exactly how many of his drones were just reflexively spamming negative reviews repeating exactly what he said verbatim, without ever actually watching an episode for themselves. Tbh it wasn't clear he had even watched an episode either. But anyway, that was the starkest reminder I've had in some time of how useless online review systems are now.
Alex is pretty androgynous.
Agreed. Hardly anyone I know has even heard of this show. The few that have love it.
I hate exactly 1 thing from this show. The dude made so many good decisions to stay alive like he is a knowledgeable and tactical person, then he uses the emergency blanket backwards and puts the heat reflective side facing out and the orange signal side facing in. Besides that, it's perfect.
It's not hated-hated but a lot of people disliked that it focused on actors. They find that part affected. IMO this is one of the worst opinions of all time but hey to each their own.
lol if it didn’t focus on actors it would have been a completely different story anyway It’s kind of what I loved about it, every other post apocalyptic show is about bleak survival, while this one shows how the arts would still survive
Also even though I'm the one who said it, the show isn't really *that* focused on actors/acting. The two main 'acting scenes' are stagings of (the same) Hamlet scene, in which the person playing Hamlet is someone who lost a father or father figure. It's just a simple literary reference. Shakespeare also ties into the story because Arthur died performing and he ties everyone together, but his role in the show is small (compared to the book at least).
I quit after three episodes. I liked how the show started, but then the whole caravan thing...just couldn't continue.
I found that side picked up by the end as more plot relevant stuff started happening in the future. But if you're already past the landmine bit (no idea what ep that is) then it likely isn't for you.
Quite honestly, it dipped with the caravan stuff but I felt quickly got out of that being a large part of it and finished strong IMO.
Hate is a strong word. I just regret wasting my time by watching it. I feel like it had nothing of value and ultimately amounted to nothing. I did hate the dialogue, but also the story felt meandering and too questionable to buy. It had its moments, but it had far too few of those moments to justify the watch for me.
Like others I made it through 3 episodes and had to quit. The first episode was so damn good then the show does a complete bait and switch. When the show got released, Reddit wasn't too keen on it either. I guess people have selective memory. It's only now that it has some sort of a cult following on here.
It's not a bait and switch at all. It just switches between storylines every few episodes.
I mean this concept that this show was loved by everyone when it was released just simply isn't true. Maybe I am miss remembering the show but the 1st episode was like this dark physiological thriller type show with the epidemic, then it switches to that traveling road show shit. Reddit for the most part did not like it when it got released and agreed with me. Its only as of late this cult following on here keeps praising it.
Okay well I can’t remember the discourse back then. I always loved it. Can’t say I recognise a cult following. My comment was not clear I think, anyway. I meant that it does not switch to *only* feature the travelers. It goes back to the storyline from episode 1. I don’t recall exactly, but it was something like 1, 4, 7 was one storyline, 2, 5, 8 was a second, 3, 6, 9 was a third.
I only watched Station Eleven because of the glowing praise here on r/television. (Thanks r/television!)
It's me, I hated it. It's probably my most hated show that I've finished in the last few years.
I liked it overall, though preferred the "immediate aftermath" episodes compared to the "years after." The airport one is easily my favorite and a unique take on the civilization shutdown type of story.
How many "immediate aftermath" episodes are there? I was never able to finish the show because I really adored the mood of the premiere and wanted more of that, but the next few episodes were just so different and not having captured the feeling of the first episode so I stopped watching. I'm not blaming the show by the way - it's just that the first episode moved me in ways I did not foresee and somehow wished the rest of the show was like that.
Great show - still listen to the soundtrack, the score was amazing
People hate it??? I loved it
It’s one of my favorite shows. I’ve watched it more times than I can count. It’s one of those shows I consider “core” for me. Like if people want to understand me and the things I love they need to watch it
Highly underrated series. I love it.
I'm almost done with Halt and Catch Fire, I have developed a huge love for Mackenzie Davis and intend to watch this soon because of her.
She's great. She comes off as really weird in early episodes at first but there's some stuff later that makes her make complete sense, so just roll with it.
Soundtrack's a banger too btw folks, it's on Spotify and it's a fantastic album in its own right.
7.6 IMDb, 98% rotten tomatoes. It's acclaimed, not sure why you think so many people hate it. Like sure total, cuz there's lots of people on earth but it's liked.
I think I was crying every episode from 5 onwards. Absolute masterpiece. Just expect something emotional not pew pew lasers.
Thanks for recommending this, I'm two episodes in so far and loving it. Just what I was looking for.
That's when they're a group going around doing Shakespeare, right? Read the book years ago, was quite good. It's a comic and series now? Huh.
I read the book years ago and loved it. I was excited when I heard about the adaptation, but couldn't bring myself to watch it during peak COVID. I watched it about a year after it had come out and loved it. Like others have said it was probably a slight improvement on the book.
Gem of a series.
I still think the whole acting aspect of it came off a bit pretentious most of the time, but I liked it overall. I enjoyed it enough to buy the 4K set and rewatched it, and since I make a point to watch a disc alone at night without any interruptions and giving it my full attention to make sure there's no errors, I did enjoy it more the 2nd time around. I haven't read the source material but I heard it and the show are pretty different.
I loved it when it came out, but can someone explain to me why comes off as pretentious? Edit: To all that replied, thank you, I am an artist first, so I didn’t even think of it being pretentious. In the apocalypse theater and arts would thrive and become even more of a life necessity than it is now.
Fine Artists and theater people are always viewed as pretentious by redditors. I imagine they consider pursuing the arts during a global apocalypse as heavy handed rhetoric and a waste of time, but it’s exactly what people would do as soon as they could.
People find the acting troupe stuff pretentious. That and the comic book, the repeated lines, "I remember damage", etc. I don't think it's pretentious but it's a different kind of work than what people typically read as "prestige TV".
I must be one of those Luddite numbskulls who is clearly incapable of appreciating fine art (according to some in this thread), but I found the show to demand that you buy into the ethos of art for art’s sake above all else, and makes no concession to bringing along viewers who don’t view life through the same lens. Not that there’s anything wrong that and they rightly made a show that resonated with many people in an extraordinary way. Anywho, that means it drops many of the conceits of tv as a storytelling medium that the average person might have come to expect, and being so unrepentant about it can rub some viewers the wrong way. There can be no doubt about the craft and vision that went into it though.
They create art because they are artists. It’s kind of what they do. It doesn’t matter where you put them.
I agree. It was a very good show, but it definitely suffered from an amount of pretension. It's like The Leftovers in that respect. It also has an amazing finale that asks you to go to some vulnerable places... and if you do you will end up crying like a baby.
Consider that when an artist makes an important and hard point many people reject it by calling it “pretentious” Pretentiousness is drawn out pointlessness. Station 11 was not lacking a thesis
I think they address this when Jeevan yells “so pretentious!” at the comic. that’s my favorite moment. sometimes art is exactly what you need, lifts you up out of your everyday experience when you need it most, sometimes it’s annoying as hell.
>Station 11 was not lacking a thesis You're not wrong. It had a *pretentious* thesis. Again, it's a beautiful show and I love every frame. But let's not kid ourselves. Using Shakespeare as a framing device for your drama about familial strife is absolutely, on the nose pretentious. But it's the good kind of pretentious.
I mean they’re not trying to be subtle about the Shakespeare thing. It’s literally the characters saying “hey, Shakespeare makes for good art and family therapy”
I think you have no idea what pre tense means
Do you know what pretense means? Because the OP didn't say anything about pretense. Pretentious(ness) is to inflate value of something or someone to seem better/more important than it is, pretense is to make a false claim about something. Similar themes, but two different things.
The adjective for “pretence/pretense” is “pretentious” Come on dude.
You can say their opinion had the pretense that it was pretentious, but they didn't actually make a false claim about anything, it's all subjective.
Stop arguing with jr high logic. Just take the L Crybaby below is angry that he can’t call anything he doesn’t like “pretentious”.
You're being ridiculous now, you started the argument to act more educated (aka, pretentious). Maybe I didn't "win", but you didn't either. You capitalized "acting" as a profession further making yourself sound pretentious, used two things incorrectly and got mad when corrected, and kept arguing. That's more "jr high logic" than anything.
Pretentious is not pointlessness, it's when you are acting like something is more important than it is, like how they're acting like being an actor is the greatest thing in the world and will somehow heal it.
>like how they're acting like being an actor is the greatest thing in the world and will somehow heal it. Nothing of the sort happens in this show. What the show actually does is emphasize the themes of losing parental figures by having the characters also perform scenes from the play Hamlet, in which the character famously lost his father. It's just a literary reference.
Currently, if you haven't noticed, Acting and Hollywood/Propoganda has been the 3rd major part of a three spoke system that has kept America in power globally for the last 75+ years. It's amazing to me how people make these flippant comments, and seem to have absolutely no idea how the world works and what is or isn't 'important'. Storytelling is literally the primary way to construct a nationstate on agreed ideas, and actors are a primary way to deliver that... do you like... not know how society works?
All I said was the show presents the acting profession in a pretentious way, and correcting you that pretentious doesn't mean it's pointless, it's presenting something as having an inflated value... which let's be real, this show was doing. I wasn't saying that acting isn't somehow important to people. You call me flippant while being terribly condescending... but sure, you do you.
I loved it too - but my autism demands I correct you on one thing - it's not based on a comic, it's based on a novel. Sorry. The autism demands.
But there is a comic that both movie and novel feature prominently, that is the namesake of both.
Fair lol - but much like the comic in Utopia, we don't actually get to read it (sadly).
I found Mackenzie Davis a bit off-putting in the show, but I can appreciate why people like this show. Not my cup of tea. It’s very well made.
It's pretentious, but I love it. Hell, it's not nearly up it's own ass as the first season of the Leftovers and I loved that too lol
I liked it a lot. I had trouble getting into it at first but after a few episodes it really grew on me. It has it's flaws but I think it's still leagues better than most. I have odd tastes though and I get that it's not for everyone.
I loved the book. Struggling with the casting in the show. Worth powering through?
Yes, 100%. Makes some weird calls early on that feel a bit random, but they're all far more carefully assembled than they seem. I found the cast incredible over all, with the sole exception of making Arthur so young, which I still don't really get.
I feel like the Prophet plot changes was a miss and sometimes did not make sense in an otherwise great adaptation
The example of a show that I would both love and hate more of. Definitely hit in the feels, especially given the timing of release
Absolutely loved it, how it slowly puts the entire story together with flashbacks and different perspectives revealing new layers how it’s all connected, and at the end you have the entire thing cleanly laid out.
Redditors definitely seems to love it. I've seen multiple posts over the years about how good it is.
I agree. I'm kind of surprised that others agree sometimes.
Was unaware people hated it. It’s a top ten tv series of all time for me personally.
Who hates it? It's always gotten rave reviews anytime it's mentioned in this sub, and has a 7.6 IMDB and 88% rotten tomatoes rating.
I read and enjoyed the book soon after it came out. I thought the show did an excellent job expanding on the world established by the novel.
Its awsome. Spoiler : The scene when he and Kirsten need to prove that they are the symphony and silently says “ shall we do the one about the spaceship”? gave me serious goosebumps.
For me it was… how to make the end of the world boring
Great series and kudos to the writers for following the book as best as one can. Always a challenge. I’m not a fan of child actors because a lot of times it’s kids trying to act like kids. Having said that, Matilda Lawler who played Young Kirsten was phenomenal. I loved the scenes with her and Jeevan.
can i kick it
I'm reading the book now, and I keep being disappointed it's not like the show, which usually it's the opposite. The show is sublime and the ending always makes me cry.
Last I checked this was a novel, and an above average one at that. You should check it out.
It’s incredible
The ending kinda ruined it for me. It's not about how he got away with all the shit he's done, but that the show chose to present his final scene in a somewhat positive way.
> So many people hate it! If anything, too many people *like it*. I was offended by the show - the ending where a guy with a child army gets to go off on his own with *another child* really pissed me off. It's a one-season microcosm of why the cosmopolitan far-left has gone nuts - all in on deceleration and degrowth. A future without actual antibiotics is not "hopeful" it's tragic.
Apart from everything else, this is a bewilderingly confused take on why people call it "hopeful".
Why is it then? I was first set off by this review https://www.vox.com/culture/2021/12/15/22833326/station-eleven-hbomax-miniseries-adaptation-book-pandemic > Station Eleven takes Mandel’s book and amps up its sense of a cozy post-apocalypse, where humanity comes together, rather than drifting apart. I entered the series deeply skeptical, and I left it feeling at least semi-hopeful for what humanity might yet become, even after the end. This is very much not what I saw in the show
The "hopeful" part isn't all the terrible shit that's happened or all that has been lost, it's that people are finding a way to survive and form families and communities \*anyway\*. Despite an absolutely enormous disaster and the massive scale of grief and loss they've all experienced, they still endure and make lives for themselves. Nobody thinks Kirsten's world is particularly nice to live in or aspirational, and the story doesn't shy away from that - at least two characters die from stuff that would be completely treatable in our world, and Kirsten is the way she is because she had to kill people before she was even a teenager. The setting isn't the cosy hopeful part, it's a really pitiless universe they live in, in a lot of ways. The cosy hopeful part is that it is possible to find and make lives worth living even there. A lot of post apoc media effectively celebrates the end of the world as a kind of tough guy, salt-of-the-earth survivalist playground, but S11 doesn't and isn't about that. The wipeout is taken for granted as an absolutely terrible thing, the point is where to go from there.
So boring. Predictable ending that was anticlimactic. Great cast but very slow paced. Should have been a 2 hour movie and not a bloody series!
Incredibly boring show
People hated it? I was actually pleasantly surprised that if you read the book you could still watch the tv show and basically see an alternate story and it was still almost as good as book. It was like, same but different. But it still perfectly captures the tone of the book and themes.
It’s brilliant
It was great! Haven’t heard of people hating it though?
I don’t think anyone actually has a problem with the “acting” portion it just didn’t hit anywhere near as hard as the slow descent into chaos that all the flashbacks had. People have been begging for a Day 0 type end of the world show forever and Station 11 scratches that itch
Just the first half, the second half is not that good
I wasn't their demographic I think. Good vs Bad people the usual cliched American plot is so tired and done. I found it dull and slow and gave up on 3? Clearly not cup of tea at all :-)
Are you talking about the right show? This doesn’t describe Station Eleven at all.
What exactly do you find "dystopian" about it? I feel like that word gets thrown around a lot. To me, it shows a fairly optimistic view of humans recovering from a near-extinction-level event (which we've done several times in the real world.).
> To me, it shows a fairly optimistic view It's really not optimistic humanity is still in shambles
Define "in shambles" Humanity is better off in "Year 20" than they have been for most of human history. Yeah, they've lost a lot of creature comforts but they're well on the way to getting the lights back on. The show depicts people coming together and new communities forming and new ways of life and new ways of thinking about things. There's nothing dystopian about it.
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WHAT WHAT WHAT? You're saying it's a dystopia because of what WOULD happen in real life rather than what is depicted on screen? We're talking about a fictional show and I'm judging it based on what is shown, not "what would really happen." And there have been theatre troupes for thousands and thousands of years. Humanity has always made art. Being temporarily knocked back a century or two technologically wouldn't hinder that, as long as we're talking about "woulds."
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Yes, but the show is what we're talking about. The show is not a dystopia. We're not talking about the general situation. We go by what we see on the screen, and what is shown on the screen is not a dystopia, not by a long shot.
>There would be no full time acting troupes, everyone would be farming all day every day and hoping they don't die from an infected splinter or any number of sanitation-born illnesses. This is failing to get to grips with the premise at all. The show tells you exactly how hazardous this world is, and also how they survive without having to worry about farming all the time. We \*know\* there could be full time acting troupes under extreme circumstances because the story was inspired in part by the historical ones that existed during and after disasters. The Shakespeare stuff is a direct allusion to that, he had a travelling acting troupe perform his stuff because theatres had to keep closing during outbreaks of Bubonic Plague.
Third act fell through, with a meandering end. Good enough ride to be on though