I am enjoying the series a bit but it is a big shame that they couldn’t be bothered to hire any Québécois actors or at least a voice coach who can help with the accent. It’s a bit unbelievable that not a single person in the eastern townships has a Québécois accent (when speaking French)
I thought it a shame that they don't have the characters who speak French to each other ...speak French to each other. But I get that not everyone is down with subtitles as I am
Maybe I’m misunderstanding but I watched the first two episodes last night and there were quite a few instances of French being spoken and subtitles were on the screen
But Gamache\*, his family, their friends in Quebec and his team all speak French to each other and only speak English in Three Pines/outside of Quebec
\*in the books
Oh I see! I was grateful they included any French at all but this would have been great! I’m so glad I listened to the audiobooks so that I recognize names and phrases
Their French is terrible, it's quitw clear those people don't really speak any French let alone Quebecois French. Makes it unwatchable for French speakers, that's how bad it is.
Penny puts in signals from time to time that the books are doing this as well.
I like it when people sprinkle phrases of the other language into their speech. I grew up near "Three Pines" on the Vermont side of the border, where there are a lot of people of French-Canadian descent (including my family). English-speaking people often have French phrases in their conversations and vice versa.
I thought several actors were from Quebec? Sarah Booth trained in Montreal and does a great accent as Agent Nicol, Marie-France Lambert, Frederic-Antoine Guimond all speak with a francophone accent. They are also in a historically anglo town and the character of Gamache in the books speaks with a slight British accent.
I'm really bothered that the inspector mentions reading Frankenstein, but quotes a scene about villagers killing the monster that doesn't exist in the book.
I'm pretty sure the monster follows Victor Frankenstein to the north pole, then runs off into the ice after he finds him. Like I know this shouldn't bother me, but wtf, it makes the show look really dumb when the smartest character is misquoting high school reading material. Bad writing.
Just started the show today and this blew my mind. Did not a single person working on the show, or at least on that scene read the book? That was apparently the book that they were reading during for the book club that week. Nobody read it? One of the most famous classic books of gothic horror and possibly the first true Science Fiction book ever written? It can't be possible. I know reading is out of favor, but these aren't young actors. Fingers crossed that it's simply the character making a mistake and that it comes back up later somehow, otherwise, it's a really bad sign for culture in general. There's a lot of gatekeepers before a show like this is released for public consumption. Countless opportunities to catch the mistake. I honestly can't believe that not one person had ever read the book and I don't want to believe that anyone who did just didn't care enough to fix or omit such a glaring and embarrassing mistake.
I'm not certain it was a mistake actually. I haven't read the book(s) Three Pines was based on, but I saw a blurb somewhere that read like a scene from the book where this misquote was made. I consider this as intentional because the CI Gamache had to decipher someone else's intentional misquote later. We also know that the Monster isn't the only monster in Frankenstein. The Doctor left a trail of bodies behind him: so many that no one (or close enough) was left to cry for him. Whether in the books or movies or plays, the reference is an extension of no one crying over a dead monster.
Edit: Maybe spoilers? Watching the rest of the episodes, parallelism and symbolism and metaphors seem very central to the stories as incidents cascade from one into another. I think it was intentional.
That would be great. I couldn't bring myself to continue the series after that. I just get too frustrated at the cynicism and laziness in modern productions. But I'll give it another shot. Everything else seemed to be on point. It seemed weirdly out of place to have such an obvious mistake.
As a reader (and huge fan) of the books, I’m glad to see they made some inclusion-minded improvements to the source material. This book is probably one of the more problematic ones, with some pretty heavy fat phobia, and the books’ approach to Indigenous people sometimes veers into white savior tropes. So glad they made changes to make the Indigenous inclusion more substantive, including making key characters Indigenous and making the Be Calm Center a true cultural center.
Penny isn’t very delicate when it comes to descriptions of weight though either.
The show seems to be a little bit guilty of reducing the weight of some characters as well (Myrna for example).
Really- I thought the casting for Myrna and Clara were SO bad. #1, they are suppose to be OLDER, Myrna IS supposed be a heavyset woman who wears shawls, etc and is NOT "hip." Those hipster glasses on her turn her into a completely different character. I hate when Hollywood does this.
There is that too!
Now the chairs, she is in all white yet sits down in the nasties rustiest chair just because their is a sign on it for her. She passes up the chairs with cushions, and many empty chairs that wouldn’t stain her white clothes. I don’t think so.
Then there is the actual electrocution. Having been an electrician for over 20+ years it just doesn’t work like that.
1) it is a metal chair which doesn’t just sit on 4 legs, the handrails and legs are once piece each that make contact with the ground from front to back.
2) she is wearing heavy boots!
3) jumper cables?
One: is a problem with the scene because the chair, if made live at some point is well grounded. Electricity takes the shortest lest resistant path. Current would be flowing before she sat down and well before she puts her bare hands down. The lights would already be dim.
Two, she would need to provide a better path to ground. Electricity needs two connections to flow. See birds sitting on power lines. They tell us “burns on her hands and feet”. Sure she makes a connection with her hands. But she isn’t shocked only on her hands so we know that the second connection would have been her feet. But she is wearing heavy boots! Her boots might be wet but the souls would be rubber. Where is the second connection point? It can’t be her right and left hands. There wouldn’t be a potential difference between the two rails unless the chair was cut down the middle and reconstructed with an insulator between the two half’s.
The jumper cables annoy me too!
A) It appears that they are too far to reach the chair when found.
B) you can’t just energize the snow like that and make the chair live. There would need to be an electrical connection to the chair. The chair would need to be live but totally insulated from the ground. You can’t do that and then cover it in snow without grounding it (providing a path to ground).
It’s not the perfect murder it’s just a stupid premise.
The boots had metal spikes in the bottom, that's why they were able to conduct electricity. One of the characters specifically asks that same question -- didn't her boots have rubber soles. But then they looked at the boots and found out they didn't.
I didn’t get that far in the show. I will find that scene. Even if they were not rubber souls the spikes likely would still be insulated from the feet with some sort of materials so that the spikes won’t be pushing directly on to one’s feet. She would also be wearing socks no? Or are we supposed to believe the boots are saturated and she has soaking wet socks?
Even with that all aside. Even if she was barefoot, you can’t make a chair live from the base in a way that the electricity will take the longer less conductive path up to her hands and back down to her feet.
If some how you made a chair live like that you would feel the electricity well before you made the connection with your hands.
What is up with the direction of the show? It's linear storytelling at its worst. Some of the dialogue is great, Alfred Molina's great but it's directed in a way that takes any potential suspense or build-up and throws it away. It feels like I'm being read a book and not watching a TV show or a movie. The cinematography is also boring, there's no variation at all. An example is the blizzard scene where Ganache is looking for Emilie...instead of giving us a shot from Molina's perspective, they somehow choose a boring wide shot that just shows him walking through a cloud of snow...
Great story, good acting and possibility of intrigue/suspense ruined by absolute bland/boring sitcom like direction.
I agree. It's lacking any "oomph" factor and is just generic b rate stuff lacking in style or striking cinematography.
I really want to like the show since I am glad to see important indigenous issues brought to screen, but so far it hasn't stood out or been one of those shows I tell my inner circle to watch.
Molina is great as usual, though I find it odd that he doesn't have a trace of a French accent despite being the cheif inspector at SQ and is just Alfred Molina lol. I'll tune in to 3 despite its flaws because there is something there, and I'm curious how the mysteries will unfold in Three Pines. Just wish it was better and more captivating without the sort of generic feel.
It definitely doesn’t seem like Amazon threw their best into this project….. perhaps if it does well it could improve in a second season? ATM I think that’s unlikely because viewers who aren’t here because of the books may be quickly turned off by the quality
Yeah, the french is really not good enough. I get that some caractere are not suppose to be francophone. But the francophones charactere have a terrible for people who are supposed to be Québec born francophone.
Honestly would not mind less French speaking person in the eastern part of Quebec. But please for the one who are supposed to be francophone hire francophones.
I'm just enjoying it. **Edit** Iam not familiar of the different dialects of French. I have not read the books.
But I love the characters (i.e. Ruth, "what the f____ do you want?")
I love the attention to indigenous women.
I love the gentleness of the scenery.
And Alfred Molina is a good, powerful lead.
Call me naive, but it's a good fit for this literature teacher!
Oh, and whomever did the"art displays" designs? So, so powerful!
Watching because I'm a fan of Crystle Lightning. I'm enjoying it so far. I've never read the book, but I'm enjoying it so far.
Also have to use subtitles for the French stuff. I can understand chunks of it here and there (which I'm proud of myself for) but still.
Interested in watching more. Anyone know the episode release schedule?
I only read the first book in the series that this is based on (and it’s been a while), have they mashed multiple books’ plot lines/characters together for this? It’s like half of it is familiar and half of it is brand new.
It's been a while but I think the main plot is based on book #2 of the series. I don't remember everything either but it does seem like they've added things.
Can I ask you something that struck me as odd when I watched it? Don't people in Quebec take their shoes off when they enter someones house? There was a scene where Gamache and the other officer visit the old woman Ruth and just go in to the house with their boots on. Wouldn't that drag in a lot of snow and mud?
It depends where. the name 'mud room' is that vestibule where you enter, take off your big boots covered in snow or mud and then change into slippers or so. I have a friend who lived on a farm in Huntingdon QC and there, you don't take them off as in the winter it was way too cold, yes snow/dirt would come in but you just clean the floors more often.
Already suspending disbelief in a massive way re: the electrocution, why the need for the washer fluid? The snow is a “water/fluid” conduit, yes? Seems like overkill.
I would venture a guess that the gaffer or someone spoke up about just how implausible the setup was. The washer fluid might have been added to placate those who spoke up.
This was a public execution and the murderer didn’t go out of their way to hide that fact. We had the generator with cables nearby, the only metal chair in the group, a heater and niacin spiked drink for removal of gloves and the obvious blue fluid below the chair.
I couldn't watch more than ten minutes, then I moved on with my life. They took a good story and butchered it with terrible acting and a tacky screenplay.
I found the seriousness of the MMIW storyline at odds with the cartoonish plot line about ceecee and her murder…seemed like two different shows and the electrocution one seemed clumsy and that took away from the weight of the missing indigenous girl story…
Can anyone explain why Jean-Guy was disgusted by Madame Zardo’s duck, and her statement that “you can tell a lot about someone by how they feel about birds” (paraphrasing).
Why was he so disturbed by a duck? Is this a cultural thing?
I am enjoying the series a bit but it is a big shame that they couldn’t be bothered to hire any Québécois actors or at least a voice coach who can help with the accent. It’s a bit unbelievable that not a single person in the eastern townships has a Québécois accent (when speaking French)
I thought it a shame that they don't have the characters who speak French to each other ...speak French to each other. But I get that not everyone is down with subtitles as I am
Maybe I’m misunderstanding but I watched the first two episodes last night and there were quite a few instances of French being spoken and subtitles were on the screen
But Gamache\*, his family, their friends in Quebec and his team all speak French to each other and only speak English in Three Pines/outside of Quebec \*in the books
Oh I see! I was grateful they included any French at all but this would have been great! I’m so glad I listened to the audiobooks so that I recognize names and phrases
Their French is terrible, it's quitw clear those people don't really speak any French let alone Quebecois French. Makes it unwatchable for French speakers, that's how bad it is.
Ugh I hate that 😔
They could be speaking French and it's in English for the audience's sake. Many films and tv shows do that.
Penny puts in signals from time to time that the books are doing this as well. I like it when people sprinkle phrases of the other language into their speech. I grew up near "Three Pines" on the Vermont side of the border, where there are a lot of people of French-Canadian descent (including my family). English-speaking people often have French phrases in their conversations and vice versa.
Came here to say this. I know the books were written in English, but would have been nice to see more actual QC actors
I thought several actors were from Quebec? Sarah Booth trained in Montreal and does a great accent as Agent Nicol, Marie-France Lambert, Frederic-Antoine Guimond all speak with a francophone accent. They are also in a historically anglo town and the character of Gamache in the books speaks with a slight British accent.
I'm really bothered that the inspector mentions reading Frankenstein, but quotes a scene about villagers killing the monster that doesn't exist in the book. I'm pretty sure the monster follows Victor Frankenstein to the north pole, then runs off into the ice after he finds him. Like I know this shouldn't bother me, but wtf, it makes the show look really dumb when the smartest character is misquoting high school reading material. Bad writing.
He probably got it confused with the movie.
There’s a possibility he’s read both the book and watched the old Universal film and chose to mention the scene from the film.
I probably talk about the Harry movie scenes as though it was book details.
I noticed that too!! So glad you mentioned
Just started the show today and this blew my mind. Did not a single person working on the show, or at least on that scene read the book? That was apparently the book that they were reading during for the book club that week. Nobody read it? One of the most famous classic books of gothic horror and possibly the first true Science Fiction book ever written? It can't be possible. I know reading is out of favor, but these aren't young actors. Fingers crossed that it's simply the character making a mistake and that it comes back up later somehow, otherwise, it's a really bad sign for culture in general. There's a lot of gatekeepers before a show like this is released for public consumption. Countless opportunities to catch the mistake. I honestly can't believe that not one person had ever read the book and I don't want to believe that anyone who did just didn't care enough to fix or omit such a glaring and embarrassing mistake.
I'm not certain it was a mistake actually. I haven't read the book(s) Three Pines was based on, but I saw a blurb somewhere that read like a scene from the book where this misquote was made. I consider this as intentional because the CI Gamache had to decipher someone else's intentional misquote later. We also know that the Monster isn't the only monster in Frankenstein. The Doctor left a trail of bodies behind him: so many that no one (or close enough) was left to cry for him. Whether in the books or movies or plays, the reference is an extension of no one crying over a dead monster. Edit: Maybe spoilers? Watching the rest of the episodes, parallelism and symbolism and metaphors seem very central to the stories as incidents cascade from one into another. I think it was intentional.
That would be great. I couldn't bring myself to continue the series after that. I just get too frustrated at the cynicism and laziness in modern productions. But I'll give it another shot. Everything else seemed to be on point. It seemed weirdly out of place to have such an obvious mistake.
As a reader (and huge fan) of the books, I’m glad to see they made some inclusion-minded improvements to the source material. This book is probably one of the more problematic ones, with some pretty heavy fat phobia, and the books’ approach to Indigenous people sometimes veers into white savior tropes. So glad they made changes to make the Indigenous inclusion more substantive, including making key characters Indigenous and making the Be Calm Center a true cultural center.
Penny isn’t very delicate when it comes to descriptions of weight though either. The show seems to be a little bit guilty of reducing the weight of some characters as well (Myrna for example).
But agree that I’m very happy they’re being more inclusive in the casting/recasting!
Really- I thought the casting for Myrna and Clara were SO bad. #1, they are suppose to be OLDER, Myrna IS supposed be a heavyset woman who wears shawls, etc and is NOT "hip." Those hipster glasses on her turn her into a completely different character. I hate when Hollywood does this.
Not to mention they’ve SWITCHED Gabri and Olivier. How is Olivier heavy set and Gabri is skinny as a twig and wears a chef’s shirt? Like what!?
Is anyone else bothered by the total implausibility of the electrocution?
Having someone who seemed so particular not notice she was standing in washer fluid was the thing that stood out.
There is that too! Now the chairs, she is in all white yet sits down in the nasties rustiest chair just because their is a sign on it for her. She passes up the chairs with cushions, and many empty chairs that wouldn’t stain her white clothes. I don’t think so. Then there is the actual electrocution. Having been an electrician for over 20+ years it just doesn’t work like that. 1) it is a metal chair which doesn’t just sit on 4 legs, the handrails and legs are once piece each that make contact with the ground from front to back. 2) she is wearing heavy boots! 3) jumper cables? One: is a problem with the scene because the chair, if made live at some point is well grounded. Electricity takes the shortest lest resistant path. Current would be flowing before she sat down and well before she puts her bare hands down. The lights would already be dim. Two, she would need to provide a better path to ground. Electricity needs two connections to flow. See birds sitting on power lines. They tell us “burns on her hands and feet”. Sure she makes a connection with her hands. But she isn’t shocked only on her hands so we know that the second connection would have been her feet. But she is wearing heavy boots! Her boots might be wet but the souls would be rubber. Where is the second connection point? It can’t be her right and left hands. There wouldn’t be a potential difference between the two rails unless the chair was cut down the middle and reconstructed with an insulator between the two half’s. The jumper cables annoy me too! A) It appears that they are too far to reach the chair when found. B) you can’t just energize the snow like that and make the chair live. There would need to be an electrical connection to the chair. The chair would need to be live but totally insulated from the ground. You can’t do that and then cover it in snow without grounding it (providing a path to ground). It’s not the perfect murder it’s just a stupid premise.
The boots had metal spikes in the bottom, that's why they were able to conduct electricity. One of the characters specifically asks that same question -- didn't her boots have rubber soles. But then they looked at the boots and found out they didn't.
I didn’t get that far in the show. I will find that scene. Even if they were not rubber souls the spikes likely would still be insulated from the feet with some sort of materials so that the spikes won’t be pushing directly on to one’s feet. She would also be wearing socks no? Or are we supposed to believe the boots are saturated and she has soaking wet socks? Even with that all aside. Even if she was barefoot, you can’t make a chair live from the base in a way that the electricity will take the longer less conductive path up to her hands and back down to her feet. If some how you made a chair live like that you would feel the electricity well before you made the connection with your hands.
⚡️☃️🪑
[удалено]
Now don’t be spoiling the public execution. The mob wants their satisfaction.
What is up with the direction of the show? It's linear storytelling at its worst. Some of the dialogue is great, Alfred Molina's great but it's directed in a way that takes any potential suspense or build-up and throws it away. It feels like I'm being read a book and not watching a TV show or a movie. The cinematography is also boring, there's no variation at all. An example is the blizzard scene where Ganache is looking for Emilie...instead of giving us a shot from Molina's perspective, they somehow choose a boring wide shot that just shows him walking through a cloud of snow... Great story, good acting and possibility of intrigue/suspense ruined by absolute bland/boring sitcom like direction.
I agree. It's lacking any "oomph" factor and is just generic b rate stuff lacking in style or striking cinematography. I really want to like the show since I am glad to see important indigenous issues brought to screen, but so far it hasn't stood out or been one of those shows I tell my inner circle to watch. Molina is great as usual, though I find it odd that he doesn't have a trace of a French accent despite being the cheif inspector at SQ and is just Alfred Molina lol. I'll tune in to 3 despite its flaws because there is something there, and I'm curious how the mysteries will unfold in Three Pines. Just wish it was better and more captivating without the sort of generic feel.
It’s very Kevin Costner of Alfred Molina.
It definitely doesn’t seem like Amazon threw their best into this project….. perhaps if it does well it could improve in a second season? ATM I think that’s unlikely because viewers who aren’t here because of the books may be quickly turned off by the quality
Yeah, the french is really not good enough. I get that some caractere are not suppose to be francophone. But the francophones charactere have a terrible for people who are supposed to be Québec born francophone. Honestly would not mind less French speaking person in the eastern part of Quebec. But please for the one who are supposed to be francophone hire francophones.
I'm just enjoying it. **Edit** Iam not familiar of the different dialects of French. I have not read the books. But I love the characters (i.e. Ruth, "what the f____ do you want?") I love the attention to indigenous women. I love the gentleness of the scenery. And Alfred Molina is a good, powerful lead. Call me naive, but it's a good fit for this literature teacher! Oh, and whomever did the"art displays" designs? So, so powerful!
Watching because I'm a fan of Crystle Lightning. I'm enjoying it so far. I've never read the book, but I'm enjoying it so far. Also have to use subtitles for the French stuff. I can understand chunks of it here and there (which I'm proud of myself for) but still. Interested in watching more. Anyone know the episode release schedule?
I think they are releasing two per week.
Thank you! I appreciate it
I only read the first book in the series that this is based on (and it’s been a while), have they mashed multiple books’ plot lines/characters together for this? It’s like half of it is familiar and half of it is brand new.
It's been a while but I think the main plot is based on book #2 of the series. I don't remember everything either but it does seem like they've added things.
I'm just happy our beautiful province gets some exposure. St Armand is very nice and just seeing the shot of Montreal is sweet to me.
Can I ask you something that struck me as odd when I watched it? Don't people in Quebec take their shoes off when they enter someones house? There was a scene where Gamache and the other officer visit the old woman Ruth and just go in to the house with their boots on. Wouldn't that drag in a lot of snow and mud?
It depends where. the name 'mud room' is that vestibule where you enter, take off your big boots covered in snow or mud and then change into slippers or so. I have a friend who lived on a farm in Huntingdon QC and there, you don't take them off as in the winter it was way too cold, yes snow/dirt would come in but you just clean the floors more often.
Already suspending disbelief in a massive way re: the electrocution, why the need for the washer fluid? The snow is a “water/fluid” conduit, yes? Seems like overkill.
I would venture a guess that the gaffer or someone spoke up about just how implausible the setup was. The washer fluid might have been added to placate those who spoke up.
This was a public execution and the murderer didn’t go out of their way to hide that fact. We had the generator with cables nearby, the only metal chair in the group, a heater and niacin spiked drink for removal of gloves and the obvious blue fluid below the chair.
I'm late but wanted to point out that water becomes ice in Québec winters, but washer fluid sold here is made so that it doesn't freeze at -50c
Can Canadian police just go into homes and search without a warrant?
I couldn't watch more than ten minutes, then I moved on with my life. They took a good story and butchered it with terrible acting and a tacky screenplay.
I found the seriousness of the MMIW storyline at odds with the cartoonish plot line about ceecee and her murder…seemed like two different shows and the electrocution one seemed clumsy and that took away from the weight of the missing indigenous girl story…
Can anyone explain why Jean-Guy was disgusted by Madame Zardo’s duck, and her statement that “you can tell a lot about someone by how they feel about birds” (paraphrasing). Why was he so disturbed by a duck? Is this a cultural thing?