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Dead Letters

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Guest MillenniumIsBliss

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Oh, and by the way, I wont hold you to any of the information you aren't sure of. I'm sure you got the gist of it right, and it's just us MM junkies here.

MIB...OK...i located the section from the interviews of Season 1 that support my statements...its about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way thru the Season 1 interviews. There is a section where various individuals discuss the intensity, etc of the show, and Thomas Wright describes the scene in "Dead Letters" i had earlier addressed and is very descriptive of just how the scene, with its body parts, blood, etc, really got to Lance initially. Also, Wright also indicates that a script supervisor quit the show due to the gratuitiousness of this particular episode...

4th Horseman...

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Guest MillenniumIsBliss
Oh, and by the way, I wont hold you to any of the information you aren't sure of. I'm sure you got the gist of it right, and it's just us MM junkies here.

MIB...OK...i located the section from the interviews of Season 1 that support my statements...its about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way thru the Season 1 interviews. There is a section where various individuals discuss the intensity, etc of the show, and Thomas Wright describes the scene in "Dead Letters" i had earlier addressed and is very descriptive of just how the scene, with its body parts, blood, etc, really got to Lance initially. Also, Wright also indicates that a script supervisor quit the show due to the gratuitiousness of this particular episode...

4th Horseman...

Thanks Horseman, I might make an exception and watch the interviews. This also makes me curious enough that I might go back and watch the episode again. Just out of curiosity, what was your take on the episode? Did you find it to be gratuitous? I watch so much stuff like this, both fact and fiction, that I tend to lose perspective on what the general public might think. I seem to recall the bodies being pretty well covered up. The feeling I got was that they were going for realism rather than gratuitousity. By the way, I'm not sure about that last word, did I just make up a new one?

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Guest MrCox

The way the violence, blood and the dead bodies are shown it adds A LOT to the realism of this episode. The postal worker's body can only be seen a few seconds, but someone who has to work on this set, including a dead body that looks so real, it can be a nerve wrecking experience indeed.

But in my opinion MM never took these things too far, even for television standards.

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Guest MillenniumIsBliss
The way the violence, blood and the dead bodies are shown it adds A LOT to the realism of this episode. The postal worker's body can only be seen a few seconds, but someone who has to work on this set, including a dead body that looks so real, it can be a nerve wrecking experience indeed.

But in my opinion MM never took these things too far, even for television standards.

I agree, I don't think they ever got too carried away. I have seem more gruesome images in documentary type shows that show crime scenes. As far as that goes, I remember a couple of books, in the library of my elementary school, about WW1 and WW2, that showed more gore than most of what you see on MM. Still though, the people who created MM gave us enough to get a good feel for what law enforcement and people like Frank have to deal with on a daily basis.

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Guest ___ L@the_of_Heaven___
I agree, I don't think they ever got too carried away. I have seem more gruesome images in documentary type shows that show crime scenes. As far as that goes, I remember a couple of books, in the library of my elementary school, about WW1 and WW2, that showed more gore than most of what you see on MM. Still though, the people who created MM gave us enough to get a good feel for what law enforcement and people like Frank have to deal with on a daily basis.

Remember too how much more graphic television has gotten in just the last 7 years; shows like CSI (which I don't watch) show stuff FAR, FAR more explicit and in my opinion gratuitous than anything MillenniuM ever did. But FOR THE TIME, it was pretty heavy duty stuff. We have to keep in mind the exact time period when the show was aired.

And, YES, the Clown Dream was awesome! Any show with creepy clown dreams is all right with me! :yes:

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Guest SouthernCelt
Remember too how much more graphic television has gotten in just the last 7 years; shows like CSI (which I don't watch) show stuff FAR, FAR more explicit and in my opinion gratuitous than anything MillenniuM ever did. But FOR THE TIME, it was pretty heavy duty stuff. We have to keep in mind the exact time period when the show was aired.

And, YES, the Clown Dream was awesome! Any show with creepy clown dreams is all right with me! :yes:

I never thought MM's gore to be gratuitous from a viewer's perspective. I can see where crew members might have problems being around realistic looking gore on a constant basis, but the amount of time the viewer is exposed to the scene is very short.

I used to watch CSI (the original) pretty regularly and at times found its depiction of the cause of death of some victims to be a bit troubling (as much from sound effects as the image). The real turn-offs for me, though, were the descriptions given by the investigators once they had finished their work. I started tuning in to lighter fare after the episode where the obese fellow died in his bath and the hot water slowly liquified his fatty tissues so that it flowed out with the water. The description of that was simply nauseating.

What was up with the clown dream? I never completely understood how to treat that since a lot of kids fear clowns and it wouldn't be unusual for a clown dream to be a nightmare.

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Guest MillenniumIsBliss
Remember too how much more graphic television has gotten in just the last 7 years; shows like CSI (which I don't watch) show stuff FAR, FAR more explicit and in my opinion gratuitous than anything MillenniuM ever did. But FOR THE TIME, it was pretty heavy duty stuff. We have to keep in mind the exact time period when the show was aired.

And, YES, the Clown Dream was awesome! Any show with creepy clown dreams is all right with me! :yes:

Yes, I used to be a CSI junky, but for some reason I just flat out overdosed on the show and have not watched it recently. I know what you mean about the gore, and here again, it's hard to say whether it is gratuitous or just a realistic depiction. In the case of CSI though, I would lean towards gratuitous in some cases. When they actually show the bullet enter the body and lodge in an organ and the internal bleeding, they are just about taking it as far as they can. Personally, I never really had a problem stomaching these scenes, but I can see where they could be a turn off for some viewers. Even the X-files, which started some 12 years ago got into the game with Scully's autopsies and various other scenes, but we had really seen it all before with the special effects of the late 70s in movies like "The Thing", "Alien" and Friday the 13th etc. I can remember the media talking about the gore and violence of some of these shows, but it has become so routine that you rarely hear them make mention of it anymore. I can't really remember when network television started to get into the gore, other than showing movies like the ones mentioned, but I can remember as early as the late 80s when China Beach had some pretty grisley stuff on a regular basis.

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Guest ___ L@the_of_Heaven___
Yes, I used to be a CSI junky, but for some reason I just flat out overdosed on the show and have not watched it recently. I know what you mean about the gore, and here again, it's hard to say whether it is gratuitous or just a realistic depiction. In the case of CSI though, I would lean towards gratuitous in some cases. When they actually show the bullet enter the body and lodge in an organ and the internal bleeding, they are just about taking it as far as they can. Personally, I never really had a problem stomaching these scenes, but I can see where they could be a turn off for some viewers. Even the X-files, which started some 12 years ago got into the game with Scully's autopsies and various other scenes, but we had really seen it all before with the special effects of the late 70s in movies like "The Thing", "Alien" and Friday the 13th etc. I can remember the media talking about the gore and violence of some of these shows, but it has become so routine that you rarely hear them make mention of it anymore. I can't really remember when network television started to get into the gore, other than showing movies like the ones mentioned, but I can remember as early as the late 80s when China Beach had some pretty grisley stuff on a regular basis.

Hmmm, interesting that you mention 'China Beach'; Usually shows dealing directly with War are given more lattitude when it comes to the 'realistic' depiction of violence.

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Guest MillenniumIsBliss
Hmmm, interesting that you mention 'China Beach'; Usually shows dealing directly with War are given more lattitude when it comes to the 'realistic' depiction of violence.

True, I wasn't condemning the shows gore, I think it was in fact done to give the audience a true sense of what was going on over there and what the characters were dealing with. That was just the first show that came to mind that had that kind of gore. Before then, it seems like the worst we saw was someone get shot on Magnum P.I., resulting in a one inch diameter blotch of ketchup on their shirt. I could be wrong, maybe someone can come up with an earlier example of some real gore on TV. It's hard to believe that we have gone from shows where they honestly didn't even show a mark when someone got shot (yes I have seen this) to shows like C.S.I., where they show the bullets path through body tissue and into organs, and the effect they have on the organs.

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Guest SouthernCelt
... It's hard to believe that we have gone from shows where they honestly didn't even show a mark when someone got shot (yes I have seen this) to shows like C.S.I., where they show the bullets path through body tissue and into organs, and the effect they have on the organs.

I think the increase fits right in with the psychological profile of the culture we live in. The various entertainment media have slowly caused the viewers/listeners of their products to become used to what was once sensationally unique so that they demand ever-more graphic imagery to get the same 'rush' from a viewing or listening. It's comparable to a serial killer's progression as described by Frank (in Paper Dove, I think). As a killer becomes more proficient and confident, he seeks more to bring the satisfaction (whatever that is for him) that he achieved when he began. He may increase his rate of killings, increase the violence with which he kills, become more 'creative' in the way that he causes death, or kill more slowly in an ever-worsening torturous manner...you get the picture...

Anyway that's my opinion on why TV has come as far as it has.

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