Does the flight attendant really think anyone believes she wasn't blowing Jerry on the reg?

Awesome so far.

I guess they'll make us wait until the end to find out which one was the tipster?

What's amazing about this is how bad the video quality was back in 2000 ish. Terrible

amercer said:

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Awesome so far.

I guess they'll make us wait until the end to find out which one was the tipster?

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My early guess is Robin

Man, I don't know what some of you want from this show. I just watched this week's ep, expecting the worst, but that was riveting. Not only was Gloria's story heartbreaking, but things took a real sinister turn. We have to connect with some of these people's stories or it's all just sting operation mechanics for six hours. Jerry Colombo went from lovable goon to evil, pathological scumbag, and we don't get there without spending the time we did with Gloria. Now I have both a greater understanding of the two Jerrys' operation and an active investment in seeing the FBI take this whole operation down. I thought this episode was great and crucial.

Slightly off topic, but I read something a while back that talked about how HD makes old footage like that look way worse to us now than it did back then. When that kind of footage is shown on a normal TV from the '90s, it doesn't look nearly as grainy.

The conversion from 480 interlaced lines to 720/1080 progressive scan lines does make the old video look worse than what it looked like on a SD tv

TCTTS said:

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Slightly off topic, but I read something a while back that talked about how HD makes old footage like that look way worse to us now than it did back then. When that kind of footage is shown on a normal TV from the '90s, it doesn't look nearly as grainy.

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That a normal TV in the '97 was 22" and today is 47" doesn't much help, either.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/961283/united-states-average-tv-screen-size/

4:3 vs 16:19 distorts those numbers a bit, but they're still quite a bit larger.

Could we get there without spending time watching some of these people make themselves breakfast while there is no dialogue?

I only remember a few seconds of a woman cooking and then depressingly eating breakfast while watching a TV that was sitting on top of her fridge raptor.

I have no idea what a "fridge raptor" is, but I'm not changing the autocorrect because it sounds incredibly awesome.

DannyDuberstein said:

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Could we get there without spending time watching some of these people make themselves breakfast while there is no dialogue?

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Don't forget ordering coffee. Also, they put the lying old italian lady on over and over and it is pretty obvious that she is full of crap so why include it at all?

TCTTS said:

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I have no idea what a "fridge raptor" is, but I'm not changing the autocorrect because it sounds incredibly awesome.

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Not sure either, but I bet it makes you lose weight. Unless you are the fat mob lady and she can scare it back.

TCTTS said:

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I have no idea what a "fridge raptor" is...

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It is what they used to protect the game pieces when away from home

I've had a major project for the last week, and haven't been able to watch the new episode. Looking forward to it tonight.

TCTTS said:

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I have no idea what a "fridge raptor" is, but I'm not changing the autocorrect because it sounds incredibly awesome.

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Perfect.

Can't remember if I read it here or elsewhere (probably here), but Affleck and Damon have the rights to the film based off the article from a few years ago. So the question is, does this series help or hurt the chances of that getting made? In one sense, I could see it helping because this has certainly created a lot of interest in the story. But on the flip side, it's hard to see what could be offered over the real life Agent Matthews or the stereo-typical trash mob wife. Any thoughts?

I posted about the movie a little bit on the first page. In short, what I've heard is that Mark Wahlberg was pissed when fellow Bostonians Affleck and Daman got the jump on the movie rights to the story. So Wahlberg set out to beat them to the punch with a documentary, as he's one of the producers on this. But I don't think it affects the movie in any way. The audience for the documentary is relatively small compared to what it would be for the movie, and I can see the movie version being told from Uncle Jerry's point of view (as opposed to the FBI's) since Damon is rumored to star as Uncle Jerry. But we'll see. Damon and Affleck are currently filming a movie together for Ridley Scott as we speak, so I imagine it's going to be a while before they get around this to this. That said, there's no way the $1M they paid for the screen rights will go to waste. This'll happen at some point for sure. My guess is we see it around 2022 or so.

TCTTS said:

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I posted about the movie a little bit on the first page. In short, what I've heard is that Mark Wahlberg was pissed when fellow Bostonians Affleck and Daman got the jump on the movie rights to the story. So Wahlberg set out to beat them to the punch with a documentary, as he's one of the producers on this. But I don't think it affects the movie in any way. The audience for the documentary is relatively small compared to what it would be for the movie, and I can see the movie version being told from Uncle Jerry's point of view (as opposed to the FBI's) since Damon is rumored to star as Uncle Jerry. But we'll see. Damon and Affleck are currently filming a movie together for Ridley Scott as we speak, so I imagine it's going to be a while before they get around this to this. That said, there's no way the $1M they paid for the screen rights will go to waste. This'll happen at some point for sure. My guess is we see it around 2022 or so.

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Cool, thanks.

Have a hard time believing Damon as a sleazy mob guy, but go for it.

First 2 episodes were AWESOME.... not so much after that unless I am missing something...

But damn, had no idea!!!!!

MuckRaker96 said:

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Does the flight attendant really think anyone believes she wasn't blowing Jerry on the reg?

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"Oh, he gave me money, he must be nice."

Who do you buy the movie rights from in the case of a public story like this that involved so many people?

They bought the rights to this article from The Daily Beast/Jeff Maysh...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-an-ex-cop-rigged-mcdonalds-monopoly-game-and-stole-millions

Good to know. I'm good without seeing the movie!

They really are good at the episode endings

This one dragged a little. This thing has been a lot more interesting from the FBI side for me.

double aught said:

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This one dragged a little. This thing has been a lot more interesting from the FBI side for me.

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I'm in this boat as well. I already know most of the people story and have read about it quite a bit over the last few years once I really realized what had happened, but the FBI side to it is far more captivating than the frauds being interviewed.

Gotta love that attitude, "they make MILLIONS on this promotion, they won't care that they give away a million, they will barely notice". Office space made a whole movie joke about that and these goobs are real life.

The show pacing feels like they are trying to match how an investigation proceeds. First episodes have a lot of initial evidence, interviews, and excitement of working on a new case. The following episodes slow down to the monotony of getting background info and listening to phone convos for any little nugget of info. Every so often there is a peak of excitement during the investigation. I am enjoying the slower parts as you get the think of how everything fits in the overall story and watch the nuances of the individual people.

The are parts where I want more detail than what they present. Like the story of the guy getting injured when the grading machine stalled. How exactly do you fall and get injured when that happened or did he lie about how he was injured?

damn this thing is turning into 'sucks' in a hurry. They wasted the majority of 3 episodes on Jerry Colombo when he needed maybe the majority of 1, and there was no reason to ever include the brother & brother's wife other than to **** on Robin just a bit.

Could have done that entire story in 40 minutes max. Getting bored.

They spent a lot time on Jerry and his supposed connection with the mafia, but it seems like he was just another middleman. I had this episode on DVR and found myself skipping ahead quite a bit. Apart from being varying degrees of weird and pathetic his story isn't very compelling.

Poster above nailed this: no reason for a 6-8 hour docuseries. This story could have been told in 2-3 hours.

I'll still watch til the end. I remember reading the article years ago but the real life interviews are pretty awesome.

Man, I feel like I'm watching a completely different show. Listening to these people rationalize their motivations is just endlessly captivating to me. I genuinely don't understand what you guys want the filmmakers to be showing instead? Had it been mostly FBI stuff, I have a feeling there would be just as many complaints of it being just a repetitive on that side of things, as there's only so much of that stuff they can show as well. I mean, I guess these past two episodes could have been combined into one, but I think the pacing might have then felt too rushed at that point. Either way, judging by the end of this last episode, it looks like things are about to kick into high gear over the final two hours and I can't wait.