Amber [RTE] [** Spoilers **]

CountyHurler

Choochtown wrote: »

... and here's another one...The journalist woman clearly said that she hadn't seen Amber since her christianing and yet she was expected to attend her 15th birthday party!!!???

I must say I heard that as well, and I thought it was ridiculous.. Her fekn godmother!!!

IrishLad2012

Writer on Today FM now

Max_Charger

"There was never going to be a second series", writer on Todayfm now.

Alf Veedersane

Max_Charger wrote: »

"There was never going to be a second series", writer on Todayfm now.

Well that's a turn up for the books.

RTE do love flogging a dead horse.

Happyman42

cletus van damme wrote: »

i think people want it all wrapped up in a nice conclusion for them.
real life isn't like that and it was a accurate portrayal

I guess some people don't get that , go watch friends re-runs then

I didn't want it 'wrapped up' in a 'nice conclusion', it was clear from episode one that that wasn't going to be the case as the disappearence itself was pulling the family unit further asunder.
What I did want was a drama that was peopled by real characters, not cliches representing some style based notion of a middle class. I wanted a situation and denouement that I could believe in, not another hackneyed plot driven by shorthands(the gardai, the journalistic content, all unreal, all cliched for a dumbed down viewership)for an international market.

I understand fully that they may have been trying to do something different but I again (as in L/H) blame the commissioning editors for accepting a script that panders to notions, that willingly uses cliches to 'represent', and most alarmingly, simply didn't develop the characters caught in this awful situation and was happy to allow them remain one dimensional throughout.

bottlebrush

I get it that the moral of the story is that in the real world people disappear without trace and are never heard of again.

What I don't get is why it took four hour-long programmes over four nights to teach us this lesson. Had I known that this was the ending I wouldn't have watched it and there were other things on at the same time I would have preferred to watch and I watched 'Amber' because I wanted to see a resolution. Sometimes I don't want to see real-life on tv. In my opinion, the interaction and the characters in the story leading up to the end of the story was not that interesting and I felt I only watched it and stuck it out because I wanted to find out 'who dunnit'.

If a programme 'worked' the producer shouldn't have to come on an tell us why it ended this way and this is the way we should have felt. Maybe I am being lazy but at that time of night I want a show that explains itself as it goes along and I don't have to do too much thinking and analysing and feeling that I have to watch it again to see what this meant and what that meant.

But that's just me.

Mardy Bum

sticker wrote: »

Mardy Bum > Your point is 100% without merit. If this sh*t had half the attributes you suggest, do you not think we would see it?!?

Its worse that you feel the condescending need to try to convince others of an edge that simply doesn't exist here...

I'm not trying to convince anyone. It seems plenty of people agree with me anyway.

Gadgetman496

obi604 wrote: »

Hi. I only seen about 40 mins of this over the first 3 nights, I missed the last episode completely.

Can anyone give me a simple summary of the ending.

Yep!

Amber is missing.

Mr Boom Boom

Mardy Bum wrote: »

I'm not trying to convince anyone. It seems plenty of people agree with me anyway.

Less than 1 in 10 people is not plenty of people

Balaclava1991

bottlebrush wrote: »

I get it that the moral of the story is that in the real world people disappear without trace and are never heard of again.

People disappear but they don't "disappear." As in really vanish. At the end of the show the girl walks down a lane and what? She goes down a rabbit burrow into Wonderland? She turned into a cloud of vapor? A girl who disappears either has been snatched, has met with an accident, has committed suicide or else has engineered their disappearance.

The end therefore was total crap.

Ceist_Beag

Overall I found the show to be very disappointing. The general idea is a good one but there were so many gaps in the story that it just caused frustration watching it - and the fact it was aired over 4 hours in successive nights just added to the frustration. It really could have been shot as a 90 minute show in one night and half the crap removed. Agree with others that there were some tired cliches in there in terms of the characters.
If you're going to do a show about how a missing person impacts on others then do that - but don't throw in loads of rubbish around it to suggest that we're searching for the villain in the piece or that there is something more to be revealed.
Also I found the mother to be about the least sympathetic mother of a missing child imaginable (mind you the father was a complete **** as well) - would it have been that hard to portray the mother as someone just a little bit more upset at losing her only daughter? I can't believe any parent would have been as blasé and unmoved as she was.

bored_newbie

I just caught the end of the interview with Paul Duane on 2FM and heard

she's dead at the bottom of the river

What's that all about?

Balaclava1991

IrishLad2012 wrote: »

I thought it was a very good ending. The scene with Amber walking away in the end, to me symbolised a few things, it showed that when people go missing family, friends and guards can speculate as to what happened eg. kidnapped, sold as sex slave, murdered etc. but in most disappearing cases, nobody really knows.

Nonsense. Someone does know and doesn't tell the cops.

I think this is what they were trying to portray with the final scene. I think a lot of viewers believed she would turn up and live happy ever after but sadly the majority of missing persons never turn up.

The majority of missing persons DO turn up. They met with an accident, were found dead from suicide, they are found murdered, they are rescued from kidnappers or else they have engineered a new life and don't want to be contacted by their families.
The reason some people are never found is because one of the above occurred and by sheer fluke traces were not uncovered.
People do not evaporate into thin air.
So the ending was total nonsense.
There was no logical explanation for her disappearance and the story made no logical sense.
The cops or her father never caught up with the pinked haired kid.
That would not be possible in the real world.

The viewers were on tender hooks waiting to find out what really happened and there was no explanation.

The show was crap crap crap crap.

Ash.J.Williams

Balaclava1991 wrote: »

People disappear but they don't "disappear." As in really vanish. At the end of the show the girl walks down a lane and what? She goes down a rabbit burrow into Wonderland? She turned into a cloud of vapor? A girl who disappears either has been snatched, has met with an accident, has committed suicide or else has engineered their disappearance.

The end therefore was total crap.

that's idiotic.

Balaclava1991

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

that's idiotic.

No it isn't.

So Amber walked down a lane and see was consumed by a human eating tree then?

Ash.J.Williams

Balaclava1991 wrote: »

No it isn't.

So Amber walked down a lane and see was consumed by a human eating tree then?

Check out the movie Idiocracy, that's the type of future you are beckoning! Everything spelled out for you!

c68zapdsm5i1ru

Very disappointing ending. This was presented, over four consecutive nights, as a series with all the traits of a whodunnit. Therefore the viewer commited to a four hour series expecting some kind of resolution. Yes, it could have included the family never finding out what happened to Amber, but as the viewer we were being given a more panoramic view of the situation and reasonably expected that this would continue until the finale and we would be allowed to know what happened.
Also her actions at the end made no sense whatsoever. Someone who misses their stop on the Luas would just get off at the next stop, cross the track and take the next Luas back a stop. Why would she go wandering off down some lonely road in an area she was clearly unfamiliar with?

calex71

I was going to say the acting was terrible but that would be unfair to the actors I think. They could only work with the scripts they were given, which were so bad it's not even funny :mad:

Fair city has better dialogue than this had.

Ash.J.Williams

I wasn't sure about the first three episodes, however it all came together in the end. I was sent completely in another direction and right at the end I was brought right back to reality. I was actually hoping the white van was a decoy. That was well done. The end reminded me of the movie "hidden".

Gadgetman496

What a breath of fresh air, wonderful programme.

I wonder how much time was lost compiling\reading 56 pages on this topic here?

Balaclava1991

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

Check out the movie Idiocracy, that's the type of future you are beckoning! Everything spelled out for you!

I am not an idiot. There is logical explanation for everything.
There is what we think we know happened and there is what really happened.
If a tree falls in the middle of a vast forest thousands of miles from civilization and there is no one to see it or hear it or even know about it nonetheless it actually happened and it really did exist.
So even though a missing person's disappearance has no explanation something must have happened to the person in reality.
The writers were showing the audience what really happened while the characters are feeling around trying to find out what the hell is going on.
The writer's clearly got lazy and threw their hands in the air because they didn't know how to wrap up the story.
The whole point of the show should be a resolution where the audience finds out what happened to the girl.
Did she fall into quicksand, was she gobbled up by a jelly monster or pulled into a PTO shaft.

sticker

Mardy Bum wrote: »

I'm not trying to convince anyone. It seems plenty of people agree with me anyway.

We're clearly on different boards -What towering denial!

Ash.J.Williams

Balaclava1991 wrote: »

I am not an idiot. There is logical explanation for everything.
There is what we think we know happened and there is what really happened.
If a tree falls in the middle of a vast forest thousands of miles from civilization and there is no one to see it or hear it or even know about it nonetheless it actually happened and it really did exist.
So even though a missing person's disappearance has no explanation something must have happened to the person in reality.
The writers were showing the audience what really happened while the characters are feeling around trying to find out what the hell is going on.
The writer's clearly got lazy and threw their hands in the air because they didn't know how to wrap up the story.
The whole point of the show should be a resolution where the audience finds out what happened to the girl.
Did she fall into quicksand, was she gobbled up by a jelly monster or pulled into a PTO shaft.

So how did the jo jo dollard story end?

Balaclava1991

Calliope Chubby Larvae wrote: »

Very disappointing ending. This was presented, over four consecutive nights, as a series with all the traits of a whodunnit. Therefore the viewer commited to a four hour series expecting some kind of resolution. Yes, it could have included the family never finding out what happened to Amber, but as the viewer we were being given a more panoramic view of the situation and reasonably expected that this would continue until the finale and we would be allowed to know what happened.
Also her actions at the end made no sense whatsoever. Someone who misses their stop on the Luas would just get off at the next stop, cross the track and take the next Luas back a stop. Why would she go wandering off down some lonely road in an area she was clearly unfamiliar with?

Precisely. Someone can only go missing on a lonely road if there is something on the lonely road that can cause them to go missing.

Ash.J.Williams

Balaclava1991 wrote: »

I am not an idiot. There is logical explanation for everything.
There is what we think we know happened and there is what really happened.
If a tree falls in the middle of a vast forest thousands of miles from civilization and there is no one to see it or hear it or even know about it nonetheless it actually happened and it really did exist.
So even though a missing person's disappearance has no explanation something must have happened to the person in reality.
The writers were showing the audience what really happened while the characters are feeling around trying to find out what the hell is going on.
The writer's clearly got lazy and threw their hands in the air because they didn't know how to wrap up the story.
The whole point of the show should be a resolution where the audience finds out what happened to the girl.
Did she fall into quicksand, was she gobbled up by a jelly monster or pulled into a PTO shaft.

That's anchorman 2

Max_Charger

LOL. It's comical how over the top of peoples heads the show went.

freshpopcorn

Calliope Chubby Larvae wrote: »

Also her actions at the end made no sense whatsoever. Someone who misses their stop on the Luas would just get off at the next stop, cross the track and take the next Luas back a stop. Why would she go wandering off down some lonely road in an area she was clearly unfamiliar with?

Not everyone would have had the money to do this to be fair.?
Lots of teenager's would only have enough money on them to get what they needed.

c68zapdsm5i1ru

freshpopcorn wrote: »

Not everyone would have had the money to do this to be fair.?
Lots of teenager's would only have enough money on them to get what they needed.

I know but she was only going back one stop, could have held onto her ticket and explained what had happened in the very unlikely case that an Inspector would have come along. It made more sense than wandering off around a strange area with no idea of where she was going.

Balaclava1991

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

So how did the jo jo dollard story end?

I don't know but the ground did not open up and swallow Jo Jo Dollard.
Unless I am mistaken when she went missing she was in a rural phone box and the last thing she said on the phone to her family was that she was waiting for a bus or a lift of something. Just then she said she saw a car pull up and she was going to get a lift and she hung up. The Gardaí tried to trace every single motorist who traveled that road that night and turned up nothing while there were extensive searches of farmland up and down the length of that stretch of road. They checked high and low aboard too in case she left the country.
The only way should could have left on her own and covered her tracks is if she create new identity - fake passport, a bank account under an assumed name etc etc.
I think an opportunist pulled up gave her a lift turned down a back road, overpowered her, raped and murdered her to silence her and then had some farm or remote area ready where he could dig a hole and bury her or else a motorist knocked her down accidentally, put the body in their boot and buried it.
If anyone else knows they are keeping it quiet to protect themselves or out of loyalty to the culprit with whom they are in relationship with or closely related to.

c68zapdsm5i1ru

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

So how did the jo jo dollard story end?

That's not the point. As the viewer we were being given glimpses into Amber's actions that the characters in the drama weren't. It was reasonable to assume that this would continue until we discovered what had happened.

I am amused at the posters on here who seem to assume that because it was 'different' and 'experimental' it automatically must be good and anyone who didn't like it is some kind of soap addict who wouldn't know subtle if it bit them in the arse.