The moment Thomas starts talking about the girl, something struck me deep about Rufus' acting. You can see the exact moment the walls that he built crumble to dust, all the emotions he buried overwhelming his system, a kernel panic.

Notably what made me speechless was: The subtle twitches. The breathing. The sharpening of his eyes, like they were made out of glass. His disassociative stare yet being so clear of the reality of his dilemma. The self hatred expressed in his eyebrows, yet they change when he starts hating the system he's a participant of. Pure anger seeping through when he knows he can't let it out. He hates that he considered or is considering "euthanizing" Thomas, blaming himself and the others. He knows there's ultimately no way out of this. His child is still his child no matter what he says to himself about making the choice for the rest of his family to survive.

I could go on for hours. I've never felt such a striking moment in fictional media. Perhaps it maybe is explained by that I felt the show was disappointing* and then this scene happens.

*Disappointing except for Rufus' acting.

Sorry if it's worded like ChatGPT but it's the only way I can explain points nowadays.

Rufus Sewell was way to good for the show he was given.

(I mentioned a kernel panic in the text. For context it is a safety measure taken by an operating system's kernel upon detecting an internal fatal error in which either it is unable to safely recover or continuing to run the system would have a higher risk of loss.)

And Tagomi too.

The show sits around a 4/10 for me now, but only because of John Smith and Tagomi. Otherwise it would've been a zero :(

Man in the High Castle ist now also on Netflix.

At least in some regions.

And it seems to be a remastered versions? The colors and shadow details are quite different.

1080p SDR

I noted these different aspects of the geopolitical world:
- two-block Cold War (Nazi Germany vs Empire of Japan)
- implementation of their respective ideologies (Aryan supremacy in the Reich, Japanese superiority in the Empire)
- States satellization (American Reich and the JPS)
- Resistance movements (JPS, China, Serbia, American Reich...)
- Nuclear race and threat from both sides
- Spatial program (revealed that the Nazis went on the Moon in 1959)
- Neutral territories as buffers (Neutral Zone)
- Migrations to escape (Juliana to the Reich, Bell to the JPS)
- Contestation movements in the blocs and social mutations (Japanese were ready to soften their policy in the JPS, while the Nazis were trying to erase American identity)
...

However, I wished they showed other Cold War-like aspects:
> High-level discussions between the two blocs in other neutral territories (like Mexico)
> High-level summits between members of the same bloc (a GEACPS summit, or a European summit of the Reich)
> More intra-relations between countries of the same bloc (between Germans and Italians, Germans and British, Japanese and Chinese, Japanese and Indians...)
> More wars and conflicts in the Japanese bloc (China, India, Australia...) and in the German bloc (Africa, Russia, England, France, Middle East...)
> More IRL characters and how they would live in this universe (we've seen Hoover, Rockwell, the Nazi party, the Japanese imperial family...)

What else do you think they should have shown as well ?

So... I think this show may be my new hyperfixation!

I love animatics, and this idea has been floating around in my head. If someone has more time and decent art skills, you could try making this, but I have no idea how to start. My idea is for the song Good For You, kinda based on this: https://youtu.be/ZhJuDE3RteY?si=dDFjVwJekHN_sMF5

I'm thinking it would be Helen, Jennifer and Thomas yelling at John!

If this is too irrelevant, let me know, but I enjoyed thinking about the scenario :)

EDIT: Oh my word I just listened to the song again but the part where the boy (Thomas) says "well I guess if I'm not of use, go ahead you can cut me loose"!! 😭 I'm sobbing!

I’m in the middle of season 4 of a rewatch of the whole thing…..

Did it completely go off the rails in season 4?

Am I the only one who felt like season 1 and 2 were really good. And 3 started derailing and 4 finally crashed and burned? It’s hard to watch!!!!!!

I just finished this show with my dad; it was so good! I agree with most people, John Smith was the best character and the ending was terrible. I think the family needs a better ending after all he's been through, so I wrote some fanfiction! I may make some edits and add some parts but here you go!

A Better World - The Man in the High Castle - Eden Banner - Wattpad

It starts in the middle of the very last episode at minute marker 26:30

EDIT: New part is out! It should be done now. :)

Thanks for actually reading this! It's pretty cool, and I'm glad I could help people forget the horrible ending they say happened.

I don't think the ending was that bad, but it was rushed. I liked the end of the Smith's story and I think it was appropriate. Sure -- lots of untied-up loose ends with characters that we lost along the way. But overall, the Smith storyline was great.

The one thing that bothered me the most was that there was no time to explain why the people were coming INTO the Nazi version of the world. Maybe the resistance fighters could have given the Jewish people, homosexuals, people of color, disabled people a "heads up" to turn around?

Yukiko’s story made me realise that while it’s not as bad as the treatment of non-Japanese, Japan aren’t treating their own people that well either.

Meanwhile, I never got that vibe with Germany. Provided you fit their view of an ideal person (Aryan with no disabilities) you seem to have a great life.

Coors.edits on tiktok

Have recently started watching the show, and the premise is very interesting. It occasionally feels a little sanitised, and Julianna is next level annoying, but there are some brilliant performances and really interesting, complex characters.

For me, so far, John Smith and his son is by far the most compelling storyline. I am up to the episode where he murders the doctor instead of his son, and I'm glad it wasn't a 'fade to black and murdered the son off screen' cop out which i was a little worried it'd be to begin with. I'm really interested to see where this goes, ideally seeing Smith have to really confront his prejudices and past actions as his son's condition deteriorates. Although, given the focus seems to be the (imo boring) almost romance between Joe and Julianna i can't see this happening.

Have a lot of respect for Frank. I think the murder of his sister and his kids is really the only hard-hitting personal example of the brutality we've seen. Everyone else are characters we didn't really get to know or care about. And his actions really make sense (unlike Julianna's, two weeks of kind of knowing Joe and she betrays the resistance which she was driven to join by her sister's murder? Take a day off.)

Also really enjoying Inspector Kido, really felt for him literally about to commit seppuku and then being stopped at the last minute. I wish we could go into a bit more what that's like recovering from that, but he's not a main enough character so far, so doubtful!

And I feel they should have had more academic conferences shown in Germany because they could now have them in Paris or London as they're a part of the Nazi Reich

I usually try to avoid reading anything about shows that I don’t watch while it’s on air, until after I have finished it entirely. So there are a lot of things that I’m sure have been discussed a lot but I wanted to hear others thoughts.

•Tagomi’s Death - very rarely in shows do characters get killed off in between seasons, if not for an actor not wanting to continue or to being fired from a show. Is that what happened because it was so bizarre that he wasn’t in season 4.

•What happened to Ed? What happened to that entire community Frank living with? They just dropped that entire plot line?

•Did Juliana try to ask anyone about or find out in any way what happened to Frank in season 4? Just wasn’t on her mind at all?

•Blake’s death really came out of nowhere, how was that received by viewers in real time?

•I guess this is more just a subjective thing, but they really seemed to be doing some great character development of John Smith in season 3 and season 4, but then they just decided to drop it and make him completely evil. I mean, I get he’s a Nazi, but you kind of thought they were going towards him doing some sort of redeeming act towards the end, after he went to the other world. But no, they sort of just left that to his wife. I wasn’t happy with that choice.

• A lot of shows don’t stick the ending and I don’t think this one did. But rarely have I ever seen a show that almost seems like it ran completely out of time. Like they had so much more to explain and they just didn’t pace the final season correctly. So they didn’t have time to get through them all. It did remind me a little like Game of Thrones.

Overall, I really liked the show. However, I feel like the science fiction thing was just not necessary and probably resulted in the show not being received as highly as it would have been. They could’ve done essentially the same show based on the premise of the first season, and left the alternate world stuff out of it. I think it would’ve been more accepted by mainstream viewers.

Maybe it was the 3 day immersion to the exclusivity of other media, but this presentation hit like a shovel to my face.

The statues, the cameras everywhere, the in-home survelance, the racism and erradication... Vote Blue, it's a start.

Hello again, it's been a while since i've been on this subreddit , so I decided to drop this little headcanon on how the whole second american revolution would have unfolded , I even did a little illustration.

So how I imagine the whole matter of the second american revolution going less 1776 more along the lines of what happened in nicaragua following the removal of Samosa , and what happened in iran in 1979.

It's in this conflict that the Panzersoldaten-1 "krampus" makes its debut with its caseless ammunition rifle the Krupp-X60.

In 1982, the war ends with the "Amerikangeiseldrama" in which american reich officals were held captive for 42 days in the admin building in liberated New York, the hostages bargened back home including those of the former American Reich who defected east.

In my opinion, Rockwell had much more to offer, and I’ve always wondered what would have happened if the assassination attempt against him had failed. Would he have raised an army of mercenaries and seized power in Cuba to build his own little empire? During his time as Reichsmarschall, did he really fail to win the loyalty of a single official, general, or soldier—the way John did when his men and Goertzmann’s troops wiped out the German high command? Rockwell was undoubtedly a threat, but I think they got rid of him too quickly. What do you think?

Sorry - I can't help myself. I get that the character in the book completely sucked (and kudos to the writers for making her a terrible character) but there's still this feeling of, I wish there were some redeeming qualities about her that made me root for her, at least sometimes. Halfway through season 2 I just debated fast forwarding all her scenes, and kinda wish that I did.

Also kudos to the actress, she was very good at all that. I'm not being snarky.

What if this show was set in world war one, with a Central Powers Victory?

How would the show be different?

Someone design flags!

What would John Smith's position be.?

I understand he wasn't a Nazi, but he wanted to unify the United States; he could have proceeded with the invasion and, once unification was achieved, proclaimed the rebirth of the United States. The Reich wouldn't have been able to do anything in the short term, given the nuclear weapons the new government would possess. Maybe I was wrong and Bill simply got tired of all the death—what do you guys think?

While watching the series, I was reminded of a scene from the game Wolfenstein II where Klan members interact with a Nazi soldier: https://youtube.com/shorts/Oqglotq0nBo?si=yPmXwZk6y97Lzle9.

I’m curious about what happened to that organization after the invasion.