If it’s breaking the 4th wall, no one has ever done it better than Fleabag, particularly the twist in season 2.

I’ve been lucky to have read some very good books already this year, but this is the best nonfiction book I have read in a very, very long time. I can almost guarantee you are going to love it.

A lot of it was taken from Voices from Chernobyl by her, which I assume is just an alternate title. I own that one but admittedly haven’t read it just yet. She’s an amazing author though and Secondhand Time is one of the best I’ve ever read.

It’s kind of crazy to think about, but it’s so apparent in the book how they really had no idea what they should do. So many people were in denial that what did happen was even possible, and it was beyond the realm of any expectation they had. So it was a complete clusterfuck.

This will be my last response because I swear to god I feel like I’m arguing with Donald Trump.

> You’re assuming wrong.

You said:

> You don’t maximize educational potential by lying to young viewers.

Why would you say that if you did not intend that the purpose should be to educate viewers?

> That’s not what I said.

You said:

> It did neither. Lots of it didn’t make sense, and by being untruthful, it was less impactful….that’s a second mistruth, and kind of a big lie considering I’ve said the opposite.

Are you going to be so pedantic as to say, “Well I didn’t say all of it didn’t make sense and I only said less impactful”?

> That’s a common logical fallacy. Popular doesn’t mean right. Or true. Or good. It just means popular.

Okay, I said ‘acclaimed’, not any of the other adjectives you used. I might use those, but I didn’t, so I don’t know what you are arguing against. Acclaimed means publicly praised and celebrated. Chernobyl has an 82 on Metacritic, meaning ‘universal acclaim’. It has a 9.0 user score on Metacritic, meaning ‘universal acclaim’. It has a 9.4 on IMDB which is 5th highest TV show of all time. A logical fallacy is faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument. My argument was as follows: 1. Most people think the show makes sense and is impactful. 2. This is made evident by the fact it gets such acclaim, as seen in the above user scores and critic scores. Where is the fallacy in that argument?

> Universally beloved. Also false.

See above. Unless you are going to be pedantic again and say that because you don’t like it, it’s not universally beloved.

> They won’t accept any improvement.

That’s not true at all, everyone loves improvement. The disagreement lies in that the things you think are necessary, I don’t think will improve the show.

> The facts are what is aggressive.

Well, again, that’s not what I have ever argued against. I have admitted that there are deviations from the factual account in the telling of the story, and that those deviations made the show better as a narrative story. You have a subjective opinion that is opposed to that, which is fine. What I opened my initial argument with is that I just disagree, and I stated the reasons for that disagreement.

I’m tired of hitting the quote button, but you are calling lies what I am calling artistic choices because they actively made the decision to not make a documentary and instead making a drama. You are arguing things I’m not arguing, and you are lying about what you are saying as shown above. I can’t tell if you’re just an angry person when it comes to this subject, or if you just don’t know how to debate honestly.

Anyways, cheers. I bear no ill will towards you, though this was pretty unpleasant. In the spirit of the people who now live in this region, Slava Ukraini.

Some of these things I’m not sure how to respond to, but I’ll try.

I think you are assuming that the purpose of the show was to maximize educational potential, I don’t think that’s true. I think the purpose was to tell a story of a crazy event that happened in an entertaining way that hopefully gets people more interested in the event to learn more about it.

I think you are in a very small minority of people who watched the show who thinks the show didn’t make sense or was not very impactful. It’s one of the most acclaimed shows of all time, universally beloved. I get that appreciation of art is subjective, but you are writing those statements as if they are objective fact.

As I stated in my original comment to the OP (not my original reply to you), I’m reading Midnight in Chernobyl right now, which maybe you have read? As I read through it, there is nothing about the way the book deviates from the story the show told that makes me disappointed in the artistic choices the writers and director took. Certainly not enough for me to continuously refer to them as lies.

I don’t think a straight factual telling of the events would be as good as what we got, so I don’t think it would be doubly as good. You seem to be very aggressive in the attacks against the show creators, continually calling their version lies and saying they abandoned integrity. This is pretty interesting, and I’m definitely curious why you feel so strongly. War movies, biopics, really anything that is dramatic that tells the story of a historical incident does this. Why are you so upset about this particular story?

I’ve got to disagree with you, I think the potential was maximized by using artistic licenses when it made sense and provided a more impactful narrative. If you want to watch a documentary, watch a documentary. There’s validity to that being a better educational choice. But to make a dramatic television show or movie, there are choices a writer and director have to make in order to make the story flow better and drive home the emotional points that are important to the storyteller. There is a good podcast that accompanied the show where they discuss the differences between the historical facts and the storytelling on the show, and why they made those choices.

At some point, there is personal responsibility for the viewer to seek out the historical record rather than repeating what they saw on a TV show as historical fact and spreading some misinformation.

I’m reliving this a bit because I’m in the middle of Adam Higginbotham’s incredible book Midnight in Chernobyl which covers the catastrophe. There are different kinds of fear, but there is a palpable dread throughout this show that is based on a very real fear of the reality of the tragedy. I think the most visceral kind of fear always originates with your empathy for the characters in the story, imagining how you would feel if you were them and what you might do in that situation. The fact that it happened forces that empathy on you without the protective mental and emotional separation you can give yourself in a fictional scenario. That, along with the production choices and the musical accompaniment, convinces me that it’s the scariest show of all time.

Horror is by far my most collected fictional genre (all hardcovers for me, though I’m the only person in my friend group that enjoys them). I admit 1/4 of that is probably King and Rice (I think I have about 80 between them currently). Do you have any particularly favorite authors?

Awesome, I’ll def put it in the queue.

Actually haven’t tried that one yet, do you enjoy it so far?

Reacher was so great. The first season of Jack Ryan is near perfect. I liked but didn’t love season 2, but I’m eagerly awaiting season 3 still.