How can they get it this wrong?
First, I know a significant amount of this history. I have ready many many books on the Space Program, have devoured dozens of documentaries and love movies and shows like "The Right Stuff" and "From Earth to the Moon." I am also a big Mad Men fan and a fan of this era in general. It's not possible to make a perfect period piece and even Mad Men had its revisionist moments. But what Mad Men got right was excellent writing. It's also did a fairly good job of evoking the era in terms of how people spoke and behaved and an excellent job with the styles and set design. More than all of that, it was outstanding at using music to set the mood. The Right Stuff and From Earth to the Moon, also did good jobs of evoking the era and were fairly accurate in their portrayals of the history. All of that said: WHAT was this? What I don't get is - the people who made this show (and show like Pan Am and the Playboy Club) have SO much source material to draw from.Did the people who made this even watch any of the shows/films I already mentioned? In this case, I know it's not a documentary, but at least attempt to mirror the actual history somewhat realistically. Also, keep the revisionist cliches to a minimum. Yes, we know: they lived in the "repressive" 1960s and stayed home while their husbands worked. There is absolutely no need to remind us of that fact in every other scene. Plus, they speak, all of them, like modern Americans and not like the way that people spoke during that era. Some of the actresses were barely containing the Valley Girl upspeak. Take a look at the photos of the real wives of the Mercury astronauts...they look like they belong in their era (obviously). This was like a bad, low budget, poorly researched tv movie. And you can never, ever, not ever hope to realistically evoke an era, especially this era, without contemporaneous music. But ABC apparently decided to go cheap and use new music. If you are going to do that, at least attempt to make it sound right for the era. It can be recreated easily, probably more easily today than a decade or two ago because there are so many modern artists that record in that style. If you aren't going to do that, at least use good music. The music in this was amazingly awful. This was a complete farce. Unfortunately, a few more failed attempts and the door will be shut (for now) on period dramas.
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