What was the last TV show you watched?

AtomicEraTom · Oct 31, 2012

Fantastic, aina?

ButteMT61 said:
"The Men Who Built America". Great show.

jamespowers · Oct 31, 2012

AtomicEraTom said:
Fantastic, aina?

Yeah, especially Carnegie.

HoosierDaddy · Oct 31, 2012

ButteMT61 said:
"The Men Who Built America". Great show.

It's great...and I'm addicted to it..!
Marathon of all the episodes this coming Sunday evening.
HD

LocktownDog · Oct 31, 2012

Just saw Extreme Cheapskates on TLC for the first time. Didn't see anything too terribly extreme. Seemed normal to me.

ButteMT61 · Oct 31, 2012

jamespowers said:
Yeah, especially Carnegie.

Guys, it's a great show! Watched four episodes tonight. Good times they were.

vitanola · Oct 31, 2012

ButteMT61 said:
"The Men Who Built America". Great show.

Well I've only seen the first three episodes, and find it a charming fantasy, particularly the most recent one regarding Morgan and Edison.

Then there is the depiction of the Homestead strike. The workers were entirely too innocent and unroganised compared to accurate accounts, but then neither were the Pinkertons depicted as sufficiently vile. The scene of the rafts of Pinkertons floating down the river and being repulsed by the workers of Homestead and the other mills would have made for some fine, though expensive television. Then there is the little matter of the attempted murder of Frick. The program seems to imply a frustrated, desparate worker, rather than Alexander Berkman and his "Propaganda of the deed".

As always, the prop-master in me is agitated when I see something like this series, where the SAME $5.70 1918 Ingraham Square Black Mantle Clock appears in the 1880's homes or offices of virtually all of the wealthiest men in the country . The 1925 radio horn loudspeaker in Edison's 1879 Menlo Park laboratory is also a panic. The "Old Man" certainly was ahead of his time!

ButteMT61 · Oct 31, 2012

I realized 1/2 way into the 4th episode that it was the first one running again! Shows how much I can work, post here and watch TV at once lolYeah, it's part documentary, part soap opera I reckon. But the sets are mostly really engaging and,for TV, pretty good. Regarding the Pinkerton v unions, it's no Gangs Of New York!

vitanola · Oct 31, 2012

Krass's "Carnagie", and Nasaw's "Andrew Carnagie" are fine jumping off points, covering in sympathetic detail the many talents of this brilliant, ruthless, sentimental and supremely generous man.

HoosierDaddy · Oct 31, 2012

ButteMT61 said:
Guys, it's a great show! Watched four episodes tonight. Good times they were.

Yep. Me too! looking forward to the next one.
How many episodes are there?

vitanola · Oct 31, 2012

ButteMT61 said:
I realized 1/2 way into the 4th episode that it was the first one running again! Shows how much I can work, post here and watch TV at once lolYeah, it's part documentary, part soap opera I reckon. But the sets are mostly really engaging and,for TV, pretty good. Regarding the Pinkerton v unions, it's no Gangs Of New York!

Have you read Herbert Ashbury's magnum opus "The Gangs of New York"? The tale told in the Scorcese picture occupies but a few pages of Ashbury's tome, whiich is practically encyclopedic from 1810 or so to the coming of Prohibition. Utterly fascinating. A cheap trade edition came out as publicity for the picture, and is available at a nominal price.

Whilst looking for Ashbury's stuff, check out "The Bon Vivant's Companion, or How to Mix Drinks", a hilarious paen to the long lost days of Demon Rum on The Bowery, and a fine Mixologists guide.

countryclubjoe · Oct 31, 2012