MovieChat Forums > Point Pleasant (2005) Discussion > It had flaws

It had flaws

posted 16 years ago by plazbo
6 replies | jump to latest

This show had an interesting theme/story and the tone of the show was pretty spot on with the story, but there were flaws. One that stuck out to me straight away was how they just expected us to instantly believe Christina being around was changing the town. We don't really see how they were before, she washed up pretty early in the pilot and we're just told the town got weird with nothing to back it up. The first episode really could have focused more on the town and then did the Christina washes up thing and had it end right with the scene of her waking up and all the lights comming on. It wouldn't have been much but it might have been enough to demonstrate the towns dynamics pre-christina.

Judy is so inconsistent. She goes from liking Chris to kicking her out to be fiercely loyal to wanting to kill in a very short span of time and while it could be said to be an influence from Christina's prescene it's all a bit messy. She was like the script writers rag doll written to fit any situation but never having been a fleshed out character.

I praise the show for not going over board with the evil characters or the good characters (granted what we're first shown are the good characters, the vatican soliders and the human sacrafice people originally come off as the good characters but is kinda revealed they aren't by Meg and Terry's dad). The evil characters were at times a bit cliche but no biggie.

There wasn't any solid reason of "why?" and there were a couple inconsistencies. In one episode it's made out like Christina is the first of her kind, that she's here because people have lost faith...a couple episodes later Boyd and Wes are talking about previous anti christs and how they always failed because of gods chosen one. The motivations of either side are what? At one point there's talk about Satan wanting the world cleansed because the experiment failed and he wants to start again or something....yet Christina has choice, she isn't necesssarily going to "cleanse" the world even when she is on the dark side she was all about getting what she wanted. How'd the experiement of earth fail? If the church and all that aren't really right like was suggested then what really is the motivations of Satan and God...although that probably would have tuned up in a later season. The whole bigger picture was just absent, the focus was all on Christina, without the bigger picture we can't really understand her or her role to any significant degree.

I would say the show was rushed, but they knew they were cancelled so whatever.

[–] vpal9 16 years ago

Pilot episode was a little bit weak and it might have been better the way you descriped it but these chances were pretty obvious without knowing the characters - like someone shouting "this is not the way i behave normally".

All of Judys actions are more or less explained. Like -
She is the first one to notice the effect that Christina has to other people herself included.
After Judy kicks her out Meg seems to be collapsing.
Founding out that someone close to you is antichrist may cause mixed feelings and we don't know how Christina convinced Judy to trust her anyway.
In the end Judy starts to believe that Meg is not crazy after all and Meg tells her to stay clear of Christina.

Ofcourse Judy didn't necessarely make the right choises but who does anyway.

And how can there be any solid "why" when it comes to motivations of Satan and God. As you said it would have uncovered in later seasons. That was the real mystery of the show.

[–] prydain17 16 years ago

I love the show but I agree that it definitely had lots of flaws. I think the show was so inconsistent because from what I've gathered there was a lot of confusion as to what the network actually wanted from the show.

As for Boyd's comment about the Earth being a failed experiment, I think he probably meant just meant that human beings weren't doing a good job saving themselves. In some stories Satan was kicked out of heaven because he wanted to be the Savior but he thought it would be better to force people to do good. So based on what comments got from the show I kind of just assumed that that's what the writers were going with, perhaps Satan wanted to wipe out the Earth and start over himself?

As for Judy, I don't think she was inconsistent at all. In the pilot she notices that Christina has a strange effect on her - she opens up to her immediately. But as she realizes something is wrong, she just gets over it, and then later accepts Christina again. I don't think it was unrealistically done.

I do strongly agree with you that the show relied too much on exposition, especially when it came to the town. I don't think Christina should have been unconscious for the whole pilot, but a show like this really needs to be BIGGER and more epic in scale but it felt like the main characters were living in a bubble. We should have seen at least a few scenes in each of the early episodes of random town residents behaving strangely since Christina arrived.

I have wondered exactly *how* Christina's presence effected people, if it was something she wasn't doing intentionally. Perhaps that's best explained away if we say that there were either evil spirits that came along with her, or her "evil" nature was just like a force that radiated outward from her. But has she always effected people like this? Did her classmates change when they were around her?

This show could have made very good use of flashbacks, IMO. We should have seen pre-Christina Point Pleasant and pre-Point Pleasant Christina.

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[–] vpal9 16 years ago

Yes, Christina seems to share that Savior perspective in the last episode. "I am here to help you" and "they need to be trained" or something like that. And she would have certainly forced them to do it like in the dinner table scene. It all implies that there might have been some father to daughter conversation between Christina's run from the cabin and arriving to Kramer's in ep 12. Or maybe apple didn't fall so far from the tree after all.

For what i thought about Christina's effect on others - people just seemed to do things much more likely (things that they could do like 1:100000 normally). Maybe it was some sort of (subconscious?) mental link or something.

Flashbacks would have been a good idea. From many perspective - Christina, Boyd, Holly, ...). - I wondered who that Harlan guy was in the pilot. Was he a chuch spy or something? And was Holly been in some crackhouse for last 20 years? What has Boyd been up to? How _did_ Christina end up in PP and much more.

[–] prydain17 16 years ago

Based on things we learned later in the series I assumed Harlan was really working for the Church but he was posing as one of Satan's guys, raising Christina and waiting for the right time to kill her. He did seem to SOMEWHAT care for Christina though, I don't think he wanted to kill her but he had to do what he had to do.

I doubt we would've gotten Holly flashbacks, they might have explained her further in dialogue in season two. Boyd flashbacks...I could totally see that happening in further seasons.

I was and am very confused over Christina's arrival. Obviously she was destined to go there, but in the pilot it doesn't look like she's falling overboard, and there's no shadow of a ship, which you'd think there would be if she really fell overboard. But in "Secrets and Lies" Jesse discovers there's no record of her at the private school she supposedly intended, which makes you wonder if she attended at all (but I prefer the theory that records of her were simply erased by the bad guys for some reason).

And again I thought Christina's effect should have been more properly approached and explained. Marti Noxon said she released people's inhibitions, but everything we saw that was influenced by Christina is stuff you'd see in a regular soap. They should have shown more than people having sex (I refer to Paula and Terry). They could have gone quite dark with that direction.

But anyhoo.

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[–] lferrigon-1 16 years ago

I myself loved the show just the same. Sure some idea of what their lives were like before Christina entered it would have been interesting and I also had expected and disappointed that the couples did not pair up like during that big dinner part at Boyd's. Overall it was a very good show.

[–] Ysquare 13 years ago

The first two episodes were a little bit too soapy for me. VBut after that it got pretty intense.