Latest / The K.B. Radio Network / American Primeval - Limited Series Review
Transcript
- 0:02and still enjoy that party of him that will bring you to the top of the top.
- 0:11Welcome everyone to the concession stand here on the KB Radio Network.
- 0:16I am your host Kevin Reed and this is the review of the Netflix limited series
- 0:23American Primeval which is a western TV miniseries created by Mark L.
- 0:31Smith and all episodes are six episodes are directed by Peter Bird.
- 0:37This show stars Taylor Kitsch,
- 0:40Betty Gilpin,
- 0:42Kim Colts,
- 0:43Jai Courtney,
- 0:45Shea
- 0:46Willingham.
- 0:47And this show examines the fight to gain control of the American West and sometimes violent clash between religion and culture.
- 0:57This.
- 0:58was a show that I was highly anticipating being as though
- 1:02I was raised on westerns my dad was a big western guy
- 1:08I mean that's all we watched at least not we but that's all he watched in the house hence we had to watch it from time to time you know gun smoke and uh have gun will travel all that good stuff and guess
- 1:25it caught on you
- 1:26Because
- 1:27I actually was anticipating this Western,
- 1:30even to the point now where
- 1:33I would watch
- 1:35Yellowstone. And I just got on to Yellowstone.
- 1:39My wife started watching it,
- 1:42I would say,
- 1:43over the Christmas holidays.
- 1:45You know,
- 1:45because there was nothing else on,
- 1:46and she picked that to watch.
- 1:48I caught a few episodes,
- 1:50and I was like,
- 1:50okay,
- 1:50this is interesting.
- 1:51It's more of a modern Western,
- 1:53of course.
- 1:55It drew my interest.
- 1:57I was hooked in it.
- 1:58It was such a good show.
- 2:00I just love westerns.
- 2:02And so this show had my attention.
- 2:05And then you had Peter Bird,
- 2:07who I didn't even know was a part of this show until I started watching it.
- 2:11Peter Bird,
- 2:11who directed
- 2:14Hancock, who directed
- 2:16Friday Night Lights,
- 2:18Battleship,
- 2:19for better or worse,
- 2:20Lone Survivor,
- 2:21Deepwater Horizon.
- 2:24I actually enjoy his films.
- 2:26He was an actor before he turned to directing,
- 2:30and
- 2:31I actually liked him as an actor as well,
- 2:33but I enjoy his work as a director.
- 2:36So my interest was especially piqued when I found out he directed all of these episodes,
- 2:43and not just one or two,
- 2:45the pilot or whatever.
- 2:47No,
- 2:47he directed all six episodes,
- 2:49which dropped on Netflix on
- 2:51January the 9th.
- 2:53i watched this in one sitting that's how good this show was one sitting one day six hours straight it was it was that good of a show um what intrigued me about this western is
- 3:10it showed the brutal nature of i guess you can see how this country came to be and how uh violent everything was it wasn't
- 3:22So bubblegum,
- 3:23happy-go-lucky,
- 3:24as is depicted in,
- 3:26I guess you could say,
- 3:26some history books or even movies that show these times.
- 3:31Yes,
- 3:31you see cowboys and Indians and blah,
- 3:34blah,
- 3:34blah,
- 3:35and old John Wayne movies and all this other good stuff.
- 3:40But it wasn't so black and white.
- 3:43You know,
- 3:43it wasn't so the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black hats type thing.
- 3:50You know,
- 3:51you knew who the bad guys were in this show.
- 3:54It shows that it's deeper than that is more political.
- 3:58In some instances,
- 4:00it's religious,
- 4:03you know,
- 4:03religion that drives people into this battle for power.
- 4:10And it is so frightening.
- 4:13This was a frightening show.
- 4:16Now,
- 4:16is it 100 percent accurate?
- 4:18I can't tell you that.
- 4:19I don't know.
- 4:19I wasn't there.
- 4:20I wasn't alive during these times,
- 4:23but it fits the bill.
- 4:25I can say that much.
- 4:27It passes the smell test of how brutal the West was.
- 4:33You know,
- 4:33it wasn't,
- 4:35okay,
- 4:36there's some land here.
- 4:37I'll just take some of this land that's just free and clear and build something here.
- 4:43No,
- 4:43it was much more than that.
- 4:45And the inclusion of.
- 4:48the indigenous people of this country,
- 4:52how they were pushed out and their anger and,
- 4:55you know,
- 4:56how they feel towards the white man and all this other good stuff.
- 4:59It's all depicted in this show.
- 5:03The actors in this show,
- 5:05nothing,
- 5:06or should I say no one who you would say are big stars,
- 5:12you know,
- 5:13but they are actors and actresses that you know,
- 5:16that you've seen in big projects in the past.
- 5:20Taylor Kitsch,
- 5:21who at one point Hollywood was trying to make Taylor Kitsch a thing,
- 5:27you know,
- 5:27for just a.
- 5:28portion of time like in the early
- 5:322000s i would say you know with john carter and battleship and x-men origins wolverine where he played gambit in that you know he was just popping up in so much stuff and hollywood was just trying to shove him down our throat it wasn't and he fell from grace and it wasn't him he
- 5:52wasn't the problem i think it was just the uh the forceful nature of his
- 5:58meteoric rise to faint um a lot of people are put off by that you know you can't make a star a star makes itself you know it it shines the light on within itself you don't have to shine all the light on him and that i think that ruined
- 6:16him in a sense even though taylor kitch he was constantly working he always i always saw him pop up and stuff but never to the level where he was
- 6:27early on in the
- 6:282000s where he was given these big blockbuster vehicles to spearhead and all of them pretty much crashed and burned and it really wasn't his fault take for example battleship which coincidentally was directed by peter bird that
- 6:45wasn't his fault that movie just wasn't good you know it had nothing to do with him john carter it it wasn't his fault he was good in it
- 6:55I actually like John.
- 6:56I'm one of the few people who actually enjoyed John Carter.
- 7:00It just,
- 7:02you know,
- 7:02it wasn't this big property that
- 7:06Star Wars was allegedly based upon,
- 7:11you know,
- 7:11or drew inspiration from.
- 7:15Here,
- 7:16this is probably the best Taylor Kitsch I've seen in a long,
- 7:19long time.
- 7:21This was a very good role for him here.
- 7:24Him as the lead in this show his character had so much depth.
- 7:29It was so much to him
- 7:32Um without getting into spoilers I think the journey that he goes on is such an well a well-earned journey
- 7:42For this character and I I was there for it,
- 7:46you know,
- 7:47I was deeply upset when the show ended I wanted more,
- 7:51you know
- 7:52I wanted more,
- 7:53and I know this is a limited show,
- 7:55and we probably won't get a season two,
- 7:57but it is such a good role for him.
- 8:02Betty Gilpin,
- 8:03who,
- 8:04man,
- 8:04God bless her.
- 8:05She needs to be in more big projects.
- 8:08I love her in so many different things.
- 8:12Here,
- 8:13it took a while for me to warm up to her character.
- 8:16Her character was so aggravating,
- 8:20you know,
- 8:20to start off the show.
- 8:22You know,
- 8:23she's searching for help and she's getting this help from people and the people she gets help from are telling her to do one thing and she does a complete different thing.
- 8:34And you sit there and wondering,
- 8:35well,
- 8:36what did you,
- 8:36why did you enlist help from these people if you're not going to listen to these people?
- 8:41You know,
- 8:42you constantly getting them in trouble throughout this series and you just wanted to strangle her.
- 8:49at least her character it was so frustrating but as we got closer to the wrap-up of this season um you did enjoy her character i enjoyed her performance i just didn't care for her character per se but my favorite character in
- 9:07this series or should i say that my favorite performer in this show was shy winningham and i think i'm saying his name right or
- 9:18is it Wig and Ham?
- 9:20We all know who he is.
- 9:22He's been in a lot of projects as well.
- 9:25Most recently,
- 9:25he was in
- 9:27Mission Impossible,
- 9:28Dead Reckoning.
- 9:29He did the voice of,
- 9:31I think,
- 9:32Captain Stacy in Spider-Man across the Spider-Verse.
- 9:37And he has that distinctive voice,
- 9:41you know,
- 9:41when he talks.
- 9:42I love his drawl.
- 9:43He's perfect for a Western.
- 9:45And so he was perfect casting here,
- 9:47but I loved his character.
- 9:49His character was,
- 9:53in any other situation,
- 9:55I could see him being the lead character in another show or film.
- 10:00But this was a different story that was being told here.
- 10:03But he did a marvelous job here on this show.
- 10:08As I was saying earlier about how it depicted the
- 10:12West back in
- 10:1418, whenever this was set,
- 10:17this was a brutal,
- 10:20brutal,
- 10:21violent show.
- 10:23They held absolutely nothing back.
- 10:27Absolutely nothing.
- 10:29was held back on this show you saw everything in all of his glory you saw the arrows piercing people you saw the bullets uh uh tearing people apart you saw a man get partially scalped in
- 10:46this show it was just brutal what um the violent nature of it and i it was all on purpose it wasn't just for gore sake
- 10:57It was truly to show how violent it was back then.
- 11:01And I deeply appreciated it for that.
- 11:05I'm like,
- 11:05man,
- 11:06if we're going to do it,
- 11:06let's do it.
- 11:07You know,
- 11:08if you're going to go in,
- 11:09let's go all in.
- 11:11And it definitely went all in on this show.
- 11:15My flaws with the show,
- 11:17like I said,
- 11:17the
- 11:19Betty Gilpin character was not a real written character.
- 11:26her character was not all that well written um her son and the actor who plays her son very good i i liked him everybody else was good i think every other character was great it
- 11:41was just her she was so annoying and it wasn't her fault it was the way that character was written and you know it's a good thing that we were bouncing to different stories
- 11:55And we weren't just centered on that story for the entire run of these six episodes because it would have got old real quick.
- 12:03You know,
- 12:03because for a couple of episodes in the beginning,
- 12:07it really got old and we were still bouncing back and forth between storylines.
- 12:12But man,
- 12:14her character was really driving me nuts.
- 12:16I'm like,
- 12:17oh boy,
- 12:18Taylor Kitsch character is telling her,
- 12:20look,
- 12:20stay on the horse.
- 12:21Let me handle this.
- 12:22and the next thing you know she pops up ruins the thing now he has to fight for their lives he had to kill people and do all this and do it it's like my god it is all her fault and this happened throughout the show it didn't just happen once and she learned from her mistakes this happened about three or four different times throughout the show and
- 12:41it's and she never learned until the very end when it was too late but aside from that i really did enjoy this show
- 12:51There were some storylines that
- 12:55I'm going off of the assumption that this is it.
- 12:59It's listed as a limited series.
- 13:01This is it.
- 13:02You know,
- 13:02there'll be no continuations as far as I know.
- 13:05And so,
- 13:06with that being said,
- 13:08going off of that premise,
- 13:11there are a lot of storylines that didn't get wrapped up in this show.
- 13:15There are a few that did.
- 13:17You know,
- 13:17the main storylines,
- 13:19I guess...
- 13:20the b storyline kind of did but there was a couple of others that i was very interested in um to see what will be the outcome of the actions of these individuals in this particular storyline and it did and
- 13:36it was only like two different uh instances that happened now if you know history if you're a history buff like me you know you know but if you want to uh see it play out
- 13:49on
- 13:50Netflix in this show,
- 13:52you're not going to get it.
- 13:53But
- 13:54I was hoping to see a kind of a climactic end to a couple of the storylines,
- 14:01and we didn't get it.
- 14:02But it's fine.
- 14:04It's fine.
- 14:04Overall,
- 14:06everything is not supposed to be wrapped up in a nice shiny boat.
- 14:09That's life.
- 14:10You know,
- 14:11life doesn't have happy endings.
- 14:12The only happy ending is when you die,
- 14:15because that's truly the end.
- 14:17And so...
- 14:19you know life keeps going on and in this show life kept going on you know there's still a journey to be had here uh but um you know selfishly i wanted to see uh a certain character get a get his come come up ends and it didn't happen but there's neither here nor there overall i did enjoy american primeval i think it's a very good show to start off to kick off
- 14:472025 i
- 14:48I had a good time with it.
- 14:49Like I said,
- 14:50I was mad when it ended.
- 14:51And when you get that reaction,
- 14:54you know you watched a good.
- 14:56Show
- 14:57American prime evil which is currently on Netflix all six episodes for your viewing pleasure gets a letter greed of a B-plus yes very good show
- 15:09Well worth to watch I'm telling you can get through it in one day
- 15:12I mean easy
- 15:14I did and I was doing stuff in between I had to stop
- 15:17Like between episode three and four something go do something about an hour or two I came back watch the end,
- 15:23you know started it back up and went right through it
- 15:26you know blinked and you missed it and these are hour-long episodes so yeah man it's that good of a show i highly recommend it i would love to know have you checked out american primeval are you planning to check it out let me know what you thought and what you think going in email the show kbradiopodcast at gmail.com you can also search for this show on all social media platforms just search for the kb radio network
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- 16:14Radio
- 16:15Network. Everybody,
- 16:16thank you for bearing with me.
- 16:18If you can't tell by the sound of my voice,
- 16:19I'm still trying to get.
- 16:21over this virus that I had over the holidays for some strange reason.
- 16:27It will not leave me alone.
- 16:31The whole house was sick.
- 16:34I kid you not.
- 16:36Everybody in my house got sick.
- 16:38It lasted two days and everybody else is fine.
- 16:42But when it came my turn,
- 16:45this been going on for two weeks and I'm still congested,
- 16:48stuffed up,
- 16:49still have a cough.
- 16:51What is going on?
- 16:52Why me?
- 16:53Why did it pick me out of everybody in the house?
- 16:57But
- 16:58I'm still doing good.
- 16:59I just got to get this congestion thing under control.
- 17:02But thank you for bearing with me through this review.
- 17:04I had to talk to you regardless.
- 17:06It's the first review of the year.
- 17:08I feel I went too long without talking to my peoples.
- 17:12And I'm glad that I did.
- 17:14Happy New Year,
- 17:15everybody.
- 17:16I want you all to know that I love you.
- 17:18Continue to love.
- 17:19everyone and until we speak again you all be blessed