MovieChat Forums > The Lottery (2014) Discussion > Things I learned from watching The Lotte...

Things I learned from watching The Lottery

posted 10 years ago by neobond
22 replies | jump to latest

-The first thing the government does is fire the person leading the successful viable embryo experiment
- A lottery of random people (many of who probably won't meet the criteria) is better than running a census and going from there
- Highest levels of government (the man and the woman chief of staff) blatantly can't agree on anything to the point killing or torturing people is necessary
- When you're a fugitive on the run, the first thing you do is go to another of "the six" (under the scrutiny of the Department of Humanity)
- When you're on the run and at that safehouse, you then decide to go get insulin for your son instead of asking the woman, who isn't plastered all over the news and internet
- Finding a cure for humanity means it's perfectly OK to delete all the donor data so the scientists can't access it
- A keycard in what is supposedly the most secure building in the country is all you need to sneak back in (after being fired) and successfully steal 1 of the only 100 viable embryos in existence (the US government "took over" the whole experiment at this point but forgot guards I guess).
- When you are warned by the government that you can't disclose what or where something happened to you, immediately disclose that you were held at the department of humanity
- ugh, many more.

Turned off halfway through the second episode.

[–] gswan 10 years ago

Highest levels of government (the man and the woman chief of staff) blatantly can't agree on anything to the point killing or torturing people is necessary.

Hmmm. Have you forgotten that this is PRECISELY what happened during the Bush administration?

VPOTUS Cheney told Americans that America had to cross over to "The Dark Side", and use torture. Meanwhile law-abiding civil servants, who honored the principles America was founded on, tried to prevent the USA's captives from being tortured.

Alberto Mora, who was the US Navy's General Counsel, has described trying, and failing, to make sure no Navy personnel were involved with torture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_J._Mora

Initially, FBI agent Ali Soufan interrogated some of the USA's most senior captives, using the legal rapport-building technique that had a proven track record of success. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Soufan But the impatient torture fans within the Bush administration directed that the interrogation of captives be taken from the professionals, like Soufan, to cruel and incompetent amateurs employed by the CIA, who used the cruelest and most painful, frightening and degrading torture techniques.

The proponents of torture argued that the CIA would be more effective at getting "results" than the patient and legal "rapport-building" interrogation techniques. Did torture work? Torture proponents said it did, pointing to long and apparently detailed confessions. But, as torture critics had predicted the confessions were all fictions, proving that, with enough torture, even the bravest man will invent a false confession if they thought it would get the torture to end.

So, rather than being an unrealistic aspect of this show, it is one of the accurate parts.

[–] cinsmith1 10 years ago

No, they used enhanced interrogation techniques.

[–] gswan 10 years ago

No, they used enhanced interrogation techniques.

Since I can't tell whether you are being serious, or sarcastic, let me explicitly state that every technique the Bush administration called an "enhanced interrogation techniques" had long since been recognized as a gruesome torture technique.

There are gruesome wood-cuts from the middle ages showing the Catholic Inquisition torturers using essentially the same waterboarding techniques then, that the Bush administration used on the Guantanamo captives.

North Korean interrogators used these techniques to "break" American GI during the Korean War. Psychologists who studied the victims told the US intelligence establishment that the techniques were worthless at extracting genuine information, but were great at getting the torture subjects to "willingly" repeat the false confessions the North Koreans wanted for propaganda purposes.

[–] gswan 10 years ago

When you're on the run and at that safehouse, you then decide to go get insulin for your son instead of asking the woman, who isn't plastered all over the news and internet.

Elvis's dad didn't go to a pharmacy and hand over Elvis's prescription, for a refill. He stole the insulin.

Maybe he thought asking the beautiful MILF to host them was as much as he could ask -- as she could always plead she didn't watch the news, and didn't know he was a wanted man. Asking her to steal insulin would undeniably make her a felon, as well.

I agree, it was bad writing to ask us to believe he would hide out with anyone who was a known associate of his, or any of the other parents of the six.

FWIW, it is bad math for the writers to have one third of the world's six year olds be Americans, when the USA is just 5 percent of the world's population.

[–] JCrewgirl 10 years ago

Actually you can just buy insulin with out a prescription you just go to the pharmacy and ask for it my sister buys it for her daughter all of the time

Save the date: Decemeber 31, 2014 is Cassie's big day!!!

[–] Jessica008 10 years ago

Actually, you can't. I'm a nurse and you cannot just go to the pharmacy and request insulin without a prescription. The reason for that is because your doctor has to regulate the dosage.

[–] cinsmith1 10 years ago

Actually it depends on the state; some require a prescription for the insulin, some require one for the syringes and some require one for both. All states require prescriptions for insulin analogs but only Alaska requires one for older (Regular) insulin and syringes and less than 1/4th require one for the syringes.

[–] OccamsBarber 10 years ago

That seems insane to me and yet I just checked and you're right. OTC for a drug you can easily kill yourself with yet codeine (otc in Canada packaged with aspirin - I so miss it) you need a prescription for. No rhyme nor reason.

---
- I'm not sure if I should.
- Then you're not sure if you shouldn't.

[–] gswan 10 years ago

Finding a cure for humanity means it's perfectly OK to delete all the donor data so the scientists can't access it.

Perhaps this is a sign that the epidemic of infertility is a secret conspiracy? I presume it was torture guy who deleted the records, and he did so because he didn't want the cure to be found by the lab. His conspiracy doesn't need a cure to b e found -- they caused the epidemic, and have a cure in hand, ready for the right moment to use it to win power. He wanted his fellow conspirators to be able to release the cure at the time that would be of the most benefit to them.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ndr77 10 years ago

- even though there are basically no kids around, you can still hear their playground screams in the background noise of the city, sometimes. Stopped watching 29 minutes into the pilot.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] cinsmith1 10 years ago

Considering that the two most recent things that Carlton Cuse wrote are Bates Motel (I couldn't even get through the first episode, that's how bad it was) & Lost I am glad that there are more Chuck Lorres than Carlton Cuses.

[–] Korios 10 years ago

So why must you criticize?

No criticism leads to no effort, which leads to stupid things, going backwards instead of forward and devolving instead of evolving. "Do not criticize so that you are not criticized" is the motto of the absolute, ultimate and safest road to nihilism and decadence. It is a call for going back to the dark ages, "where everything was much simpler".

Fanboy : a person who does not think while watching.

[–] daxisunder 10 years ago

- the american government always finds a way to justify anything they want to do if it serves some "greater good" of theirs.

F..K YOU AND YOUR POINT OF VIEW!

[–] mimosveta 10 years ago

From latest episode:
- If you break into a house thus activating the alarm, you can disable the alarm by shooting the person who set the alarm up

And old but gold ones:
- One way to stop person from committing suicide is to make it suicide by cops
- Bubonic plague is transmitted by viruses
- Viruses have husks that look like fleas
- You can see that husk of a virus if you do a DNA analysis of the host
- Creating hypoxic environment (hypoxia is 10th leading cause of neonatal death) is most likely reason behind successful insemination of 100 eggs
- Creating of acidic environment which kills off sperm is also one of most likely reasons for successful insemination of 100 eggs
- Recreating conditions in uterus, has beneficial affect on in vitro fertilization somehow

I don't really pay attention when I watch, but these kinda jumped at me

___
Anyone who has ever read any spoilers,
knows that Winter Is Coming

[–] Korios 10 years ago

- In the future bullet proof vests were oddly uninvented, and even the president of the united states does not wear one.

Fanboy : a person who does not think while watching.