Television Trailer for HBO's "Chernobyl" miniseries, update: multiple very positive reviews

[TheGreatGamble]

4 hours ago, SFLUFAN said:

 

I am utterly convinced that the response to this event could have only been accomplished in a state of the type of the Soviet Union.  I have severe doubts that a "Western liberal democracy" would've been able to cut it.

 “Make the Libruls do it! Fucking snowflakes scared of radiation. That’ll teach you for switching from coal! Get cancer and die, libtards!”

 

Thats basically the response I’d expect from half the country.

[69los]

Not much I can add that hasn't already been said but this was a great binge and I'm looking forward to the finale. Ep. 4 was definitely a hard watch with the animal unit.

[CayceG]

I have a feeling that tonight's episode won't have such heaviness associated with it. 

 

But regardless, here's some brevity.

 

 

 

[CayceG]

Yeah, that was powerful. 

 

I don't know what to do with it yet. But this may be one of the greatest TV miniseries in history. 

There was so much death. So much sacrifice. So much bravery. All because of so many lies. 

 

"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth."

 

 

It's going to be very melancholic returning to Ukraine a month from now. 

[johnny]

What an amazing mini-series. I can’t wait for my friends to watch this (they were waiting for it to finish so they can binge). 

 

Give it every award. Even best picture at the Oscars idgaf what they say

[SoberChef]

I cannot help but wonder if this, the culmination of the series, ends on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square, is a condemnation on Communism as a whole (the cynic in me wants to believe it as such.) However, the words spoken about lies coming around to essentially bite us in our collective asses and the lies spoken about this travesty, the tragic event that continues to claim lives today either with our fellow man or by beast, weighs more heavily now that I am actually cognizant of the cost. This is only further emboldened by the cost that those under current Communist rule continue to suffer. Whether blind allegiance, ignorance, lack of education, or the blindfold of so-called "Capitalism" in the current state of China ... makes me ponder the "reality" the rest of us hold toward our own collective governments.

 

I understand "what is good for the country over what is good for the man" however there are certain truths that override all of that, and it is there in which WE as a whole need to look out for humanity and not stand idly by but for our allegiances towards a piece of pretty fabric in spite of ourselves.

 

One thing is for certain, this series brought with it much contemplation, reflection, and a renewed sense of recognition in how things are vs. how things should be. That, in and of itself, speaks volumes for what art, in any form, should and must always strive to do, no matter the form that it arrives in. I'm so very grateful for that.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I'd say this was the best miniseries I've ever watched. Compelling stuff all the way, and the podcast is an excellent companion piece. I'm about to finish reading Midnight in Chernobyl and I've preordered the paperback of Voices from Chernobyl, which was used in the writing of this show. I want to know more.

[JPDunks4]

I also think it was probably the best miniseries.  Perfect length, no bloat.  Really had a big impact with the use of sound.  Had such a sense of dread.  

 

I really liked the finale and how it did a good job of explaining everything that happened and why.  

[CitizenVectron]

Definitely the best show ever made. Incredible. As someone who has been 150km away from Pripyat, I consider myself an expert through proximity. The show got so many details about Ukraine right, down to the colours of the plants (which differ subtly from the west), the clothes, the buildings, etc. I am recommending it to all of my friends. 

 

Finding out how an RBMK reactor explodes was the destination, but the real treasures were the lies we told along the way.

 

EDIT - Also, how appropriate is the show in the current age of global warming denial? "There is no reason to reduce emissions, comrade, the planet is fine."

 

EDIT 2 - The ending montage was probably the most powerful ending to a show I've ever seen. Also, my new favourite line is Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.

[CayceG]

"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth" is one of my favorite lines from any show now. 

 

Also, I've only been as close as ~300 km to Pripyat. Damn you, you beat me.

[TheGreatGamble]

1 hour ago, CayceG said:

"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth" is one of my favorite lines from any show now. 

 

Also, I've only been as close as ~300 km to Pripyat. Damn you, you beat me.

That’s a real quote I think, from one of the scientists. Might even have actually been Vasyli (sp?)

[CayceG]

Valery Legasov. 

[CayceG]

Also, I found this on twitter today. 

 

 

The translation is:

Quote

"I haven't seen a single episode of #ChernobylHBO, but here, near the Kantemirovskaya [Tank Division] is a granite monument with a black plaque, to the liquidators. It just stands by itself near the road... Today, for the first time since I've lived here, there are flowers on it"

 

 

[TheLeon]

I might just have to power through this soon. I stopped watching halfway through the first episode because it was already bumming me out, and I knew it was only going to get worse. 

[Chris-]

My co-worker, who has not seen the series yet, was put off when I advised her that she should absolutely NOT watch it during her beach vacation next week.

[Joe]

11 minutes ago, TheLeon said:

I might just have to power through this soon. I stopped watching halfway through the first episode because it was already bumming me out, and I knew it was only going to get worse. 

 

Literally the same thing happened to me haha.

[CayceG]

Also, remember Sitnikov? He was the engineer that Bryukhanov and Fomin ordered to go to the vent block roof and confirm whether or not the reactor core exploded. He obviously died after receiving an incredibly large radiation dose. 

 

This is an article regarding his widow.

 

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2019/06/04/the-pain-doesn-t-fade

 

Quote

He told me that he’d inspected all the rooms surrounding the reactor, on verbal instructions from the director [Viktor Bryukhanov]. He admitted to me over the telephone: “I’m feeling awful. I’m throwing up.” I told him, “Go to the medical center!” But he said, “I can’t go…” Then I called the medical center, and they told me that they had a lot of patients, so my husband needed to come to them himself. In the end, though, I convinced them to go get him.

...

Then I asked him why he went to the fourth reactor, even when it wasn’t his responsibility. And he said, “There was nobody who knew the reactor better than me, you see? If it weren’t for us, it would have been the end of Ukraine definitely, and maybe half of Europe, too… You need to understand this.”

 

On the experience of the other patients in Hospital 6:

Quote

I remember, there was this guy named Sasha in one of the rooms. I dropped in on him once, and he yelled at me, “Mrs. Sitnikova, don’t look! I’m lying here naked!” And I told him, “Oh, Sasha, sweetie, you’re shy around me! That’s great! It means you’re alive!” The next morning they told me he’d died overnight. Immediately afterwards, I ran into his wife in the hallway. She’d just arrived in Moscow. She ran up to me and asked, “Well, how is my Sasha?” My breath left me. How could I tell a wife that her husband was dead? And then, fortunately for me, the doctor called her into his office, and I wasn’t the one who had to tell her that Sasha was gone.

...

 

But Tolya gradually got worse and worse, and then he had a pulmonary edema. The last evening I spent with him, he said at one point, “You know, just go home…” But what was there for me to do at home? There was nobody there waiting for me. “You don’t understand,” Tolya told me. “You need to get up at five in the morning and go to the guys. They really need you. While they’re here in the hospital, you should be here.” Then he called for the doctor, they gave him an injection, and he fell asleep.

The next morning, I came to the hospital again, and ran into a nurse in the hallway. She was one of those people who always wants to be the first to report any news. She said to me, “Oh, your husband died!” That was May 31, 1986.

 

 

This is heart wrenching...

Quote

I remember there was this guy named Sasha [a different Sasha], who’d been brought from Pripyat together with my husband. I’d come up to him, while he was in and out of consciousness. Once I said, “Sasha, try to look at me, sweetie. Do you recognize me? Sasha, remember: everyone’s already left here. They’ve been at the ‘Goluboi’ [rehabilitation center] for some time now.” “And Mr. Sitnikov?” he asked. I nodded, even though Tolya was long ago buried, by then. “Everybody’s already out of the woods, you see? Now it’s your turn. You’re young and strong,” I told him.
 

Years passed, and with another April 26, came another anniversary. Standing at my husband’s grave, someone came up behind me and put his arm around my shoulders. I turned around, and there was Sasha. “Mrs. Sitnikova, if it weren’t for you…,” he said. “It wasn’t me. It was all Tolya… He asked me to help at the guys,” I told him. In the end, Sasha managed to live another 20 years.

 

Quote

They say pain fades with time. It doesn’t. It slows down, and then you start remembering, and everything surfaces again. Maybe it would have consoled me some, if I’d remarried. The pain isn’t going away. But I forgave everyone. You can’t live your whole life with the feeling that you’ve withheld forgiveness. Now everything is fine: I have wonderful daughters, of whom Tolya was very proud, four grandchildren, and a great grandson. Life goes on, you see.

 

Heroyim Slava.

[Bloodporne]

I thought some of you might find this interesting being currently a bit invested in this era in general. Two of my uncles worked on this never-finished Kernkraftwerk as it is called in German. This is in Stendal, East Germany. You can google more if interested in photos.

 

Stendal (GDR/DDR) Nuclear Power Plant

 

And a rather striking photo I've seen around the net for many years. This is during the construction phase so probably around the mid-to-late 80's.

 

 

Edit: Gladly, after the wall the city saw a lot of renovation and so forth. I've been back several times since and was happy to report to my family that it looks rather beautiful these days. 

[CayceG]

Stendal was planned to use a VVER reactor, which is a pressurized water reactor with an integrated primary containment pressure vessel. That's much more similar to western reactors than Chernobyl's RBMK. 

 

Chernobyl basically scared the Soviets into not cheaping out on their nuclear reactors. 

 

[Bloodporne]

3 minutes ago, CayceG said:

Stendal was planned to use a VVER reactor, which is a pressurized water reactor with an integrated primary containment pressure vessel. That's much more similar to western reactors than Chernobyl's RBMK. 

 

Chernobyl basically scared the Soviets into not cheaping out on their nuclear reactors. 

 

I've read everything about it in German so sometimes the English jargon evades me but makes sense. It's called Druckwasserreaktor in German. 

 

I don't really know the details though particularly, just was always fascinated by this monstrosity for the history. Also one of my uncles has a photo of himself and his pals working there in his living room haha. 

[CayceG]

22 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

I've read everything about it in German so sometimes the English jargon evades me but makes sense. It's called Druckwasserreaktor in German. 

 

I don't really know the details though particularly, just was always fascinated by this monstrosity for the history. Also one of my uncles has a photo of himself and his pals working there in his living room haha. 

 

VVER is the Soviet model of the reactor. Druckwasserreaktor literally translates to "pressurized water reactor." 

 

I simultaneously love and hate German :P

[Bloodporne]

4 minutes ago, CayceG said:

 

VVER is the Soviet model of the reactor. Druckwasserreaktor literally translates to "pressurized water reactor." 

 

I simultaneously love and hate German :P

 

[JPDunks4]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/crystalro/chernobyl-top-rated-show-ever-imdb

 

well deserved

[JPDunks4]

Really amazing album with everything Chernobyl

 

https://m.imgur.com/a/TwY6q

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

4 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

Really amazing album with everything Chernobyl

 

https://m.imgur.com/a/TwY6q

I'm just going to give a warning about some of the images of the victims.

 

They truly show that the  miniseries was NOT exaggerating.

[JPDunks4]

25 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

I'm just going to give a warning about some of the images of the victims.

 

They truly show that the  miniseries was NOT exaggerating.

I didn’t look that far down yet as I’m only on my phone.  I apologize for not giving a warning .  

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

25 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

I didn’t look that far down yet as I’m only on my phone.  I apologize for not giving a warning .  

No worries!  I just thought it best to let people know!

[osxmatt]

2 hours ago, JPDunks4 said:

Really amazing album with everything Chernobyl

 

https://m.imgur.com/a/TwY6q

 

What a fascinating and horrifying journey.

[Jwheel86]

 

https://news.avclub.com/russia-hates-hbos-chernobyl-vows-to-make-its-own-serie-1835298424

 

Ffs, more debt to the truth. 

[PaladinSolo]

 

Everyone knows you don't need to sabotage Russian/Soviet equipment, it does that on its own.

[CitizenVectron]

Craig Mazin's path to greatness:

 

[TwinIon]

12 hours ago, Jwheel86 said:

 

https://news.avclub.com/russia-hates-hbos-chernobyl-vows-to-make-its-own-serie-1835298424

 

Ffs, more debt to the truth. 

 

I imagine this will be a fun watch:

Quote

a Russia-produced series from the country’s NTV channel. Directed by filmmaker Alexei Muradov, their project will focus not on the aftermath of the explosion, but instead on what Shepelin calls a “conspiracy theory” that inserts American spies into the narrative.

 

I just read the New Yorker piece on what Chernobyl got horribly wrong, and I feel like the overall criticism is horribly vague, or directed at dramatic devices that I find easy to forgive. Yes, it's probably true that a scientist like Legasov would have known how the system works, and there would have been fewer direct threats or direct challenges, but I can forgive those artificial moments for the drama they produce. The amalgam character of Khomyuk exists to show all the alternative viewpoints and outside expertise that various scientists brought to the disaster. She's a convenient narrative device, if not a very accurate one.

 

The big lie, according to the New Yorker, is that Dyatlov was not particularly responsible for what happened. Instead it was simply a matter of "a system digging its own grave." My reading of the series is that's exactly what Dyatlov represents, but the New Yorker doesn't address any specifics as to what happened to cause the disaster. From the little outside reading I've done on this subject, I feel like Craig Mazin did his best to accurately represent exactly what happened, as far as we can tell. Maybe we should have spent more time with Dyatlov before the disaster to better understand all the incentives and deficiencies in the system that explain his actions that night, but it certainly seems like the mechanics of the story were correct.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

35 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

Craig Mazin's path to greatness:

 

Bloody amazing!

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

@TwinIon - I too had similar thoughts about the New Yorker piece as well.

[CayceG]

I haven't read the New Yorker piece, but I have read things about Dyatlov. 

 

He was a guy baked into the system and was ambitious to ascend and become a "boss" like Fomin. He was very competent and knew how the operate the reactor, but he was a shrewd manager and did indeed berate people. However, after serving a prison sentence for his role in the disaster, he spoke out against blaming the personnel (Akimov, Toptunov, etc) for their actions, because of the flaws in the reactor design. So he was a complicated figure that got some form of redemption for the operators in the end, but did wind up dying of radiation related illness. So I'd say that's some penance. 

 

Additionally, Legasov is not portrayed this way in episodes 1-4, but he was a party apparatchik in real life. That comes out a bit when the KGB guy gets him in the room in ep. 5 and recounts the things he's done on his way up the ladder. But knowing what I know about him, he was a party guy through and through. He just broke out beyond that through the course of the disaster. But of course, portraying it that way would prove difficult, narratively. 

 

Should I bother? Because I don't care to read rehashed criticisms of "oh, well, Khomyuk wasn't a real person, so they got it wrong" or "Ignatienka already had kids when she was pregnant at Hospital No. 6."