Amber [RTE] [** Spoilers **]

Kav0777

Calliope Chubby Larvae wrote: »

Given how intensely the man on the Luas was looking at her, would he not have remembered seeing her when her picture was all over the papers and come forward? He wasn't up to anything so presumably had nothing to hide.

I interpreted the ending as the last sightings of Amber, kind of a like a crime call reconstruction, the problem I saw with that was that it didn't tally with other clips of Day 1, like clip explaining how the mobile phone was taken from her.

For me it was neither one thing nor the other, you either show just what was known to the characters (like the details in from the garda investigation), or you show the explanations to the viewers. I think this show tried to do both, leave the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Amber but fully explain the disappearance of her mobile phone: how it got robbed, fenced, back to the find amber office, and ultimately disposed of.

c68zapdsm5i1ru

Mardy Bum wrote: »

I don't think many people have said it was an excellent production. Most posts have lamented the lack of a conclusion. A few posts have clarified that this was not the point of the show anyway and it was an examination of the effects of the disappearance. This was very evident from the outset but some posters are still criticising Charlie and the prisoner's story line for the wrong reason. It is vitally important to the show. It was about their lives, not Amber's. We see Charlie as a compassionate person who is trying to carve out a place in the world but ends up back where he started. We are given a brief picture of a man who appears to have a very shady past and who is ultimately overcome with grief. We see a journalist who tries anything to get a head in her profession. Amber's friend ends up with Manga Boy. The mother gets over her early grief whereas the father is overcome with his suppressed grief. I found the different story lines interesting. Obviously it is not the best show ever or even close but it was different and for a television programme that in itself should be lauded because 99% of stuff is generic crap.

I agree, the premise was very good. It was the execution that was flawed.

c68zapdsm5i1ru

Kav0777 wrote: »

I interpreted the ending as the last sightings of Amber, kind of a like a crime call reconstruction, the problem I saw with that was that it didn't tally with other clips of Day 1, like clip explaining how the mobile phone was taken from her.

For me it was neither one thing nor the other, you either show just what was known to the characters (like the details in from the garda investigation), or you show the explanations to the viewers. I think this show tried to do both, leave the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Amber but fully explain the disappearance of her mobile phone: how it got robbed, fenced, back to the find amber office, and ultimately disposed of.

I totally agree.

Spindle

When you mention specific times in your script make sure they make sense and stick with them.

If Terence is sending a text at 7pm, this is around day 191, that is the 27th December, as June 20th is the date Amber goes missing, yet the whole scene plays out during daytime and not an xmas tree in sight!

Also when digging up the body the the leaves are a still on the trees, it is December!

One of the many timeline issues in the whole show.

WayneScott

Spindle wrote: »

When you mention specific times in your script make sure they make sense and stick with them.

If Terence is sending a text at 7pm, this is around day 191, that is the 27th December, as June 20th is the date Amber goes missing, yet the whole scene plays out during daytime and not an xmas tree in sight!

Also when digging up the body the the leaves are a still on the trees, it is December!

One of the many timeline issues in the whole show.

weren't there leaves beginning to fall when he was dropping her to her friends house, the one she did not go into?

Spindle

WayneScott wrote: »

weren't there leaves on the ground when he was dropping her to her friends house, the one she did not go into?

There was indeed, but on the journalist list June 20th is the date down that Amber went missing. It bugs me that when you are using timeline jumping that specific dates/times are given and then a stupid day counter is used, but nothing ties in.

Leave out specific dates or don't use a day counter, just jump around and use little hints to show a non-linear story. It is a easy way out to use a date counter to provide reference.

scopper

Irish people don't deserve good TV. Back to Fair City with the lot of ye.

WayneScott

One thing it illustrated well is how shallow journalists are

Kav0777

scopper wrote: »

Irish people don't deserve good TV. Back to Fair City with the lot of ye.

Just as well we're not getting it then ..... BOOM

bored_newbie

Kav0777 wrote: »

I interpreted the ending as the last sightings of Amber, kind of a like a crime call reconstruction, the problem I saw with that was that it didn't tally with other clips of Day 1, like clip explaining how the mobile phone was taken from her.

For me it was neither one thing nor the other, you either show just what was known to the characters (like the details in from the garda investigation), or you show the explanations to the viewers. I think this show tried to do both, leave the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Amber but fully explain the disappearance of her mobile phone: how it got robbed, fenced, back to the find amber office, and ultimately disposed of.

Surely tracing the whereabouts of the phone was vital to the narrative... it introduced Charlie and explained the violence from Amber's dad towards him. This was an important part of showing the dad's mental state. The purpose of the series was to show the effect of the loss of a loved one and the unfathomable frustration it causes to their loved ones. You have to accept that sometimes people go missing and it just remains unexplained. No neatly wrapped ending with a bow on top.

I'm really glad they didn't leave us with a clichéd white transit van ending.

WayneScott

where is the last part filmed, the road she walked up?

Thoie

WayneScott wrote: »

where is the last part filmed, the road she walked up?

Laughanstown luas stop.

Mr Boom Boom

WayneScott wrote: »

where is the last part filmed, the road she walked up?

You gonna try and look for her ?

c68zapdsm5i1ru

bored_newbie wrote: »

Surely tracing the whereabouts of the phone was vital to the narrative... it introduced Charlie and explained the violence from Amber's dad towards him. This was an important part of showing the dad's mental state. The purpose of the series was to show the effect of the loss of a loved one and the unfathomable frustration it causes to their loved ones. You have to accept that sometimes people go missing and it just remains unexplained. No neatly wrapped ending with a bow on top.

I'm really glad they didn't leave us with a clichéd white transit van ending.

But they devoted a quarter of the entire four hour programme to this. How is that justified if it didn't add significantly to the storyline? I wouldn't have mindedCharlie and the other guy in prison having their own episodes if they had been properly woven in with the other episodes, but that didn't really happen and a lot of the time it was done in a way that was downright confusing. The whole thing had a disjointed feel and could have been done more skillfully in my opinion. If you're going to pick a technique like this to tell a story it has to be done with a lot of skill, and that just didn't seem to happen here.

RichardoKhan

Yer all gonna hate the RTE follow up series then:



"Shergar"

WayneScott

Mr Boom Boom wrote: »

You gonna try and look for her ?

yes getting dogs out. No i was curious where it was
lets start a faecbook find amber

WayneScott

Thoie wrote: »

Laughanstown luas stop.

so it is Laughanstown she was walking towards?

cmore123

Spindle wrote: »

When you mention specific times in your script make sure they make sense and stick with them.

If Terence is sending a text at 7pm, this is around day 191, that is the 27th December, as June 20th is the date Amber goes missing, yet the whole scene plays out during daytime and not an xmas tree in sight!

Also when digging up the body the the leaves are a still on the trees, it is December!

One of the many timeline issues in the whole show.

That's sloppy production, which is a shame. I found it compelling, but the ending was frustratingly unsatisfactory....

A "might-have-been" masterpiece...

Thoie

WayneScott wrote: »

so it is Laughanstown she was walking towards?

She was walking east along the road marked "Lehaunstown" on google maps:

http://goo.gl/maps/IcfvK

Following that road would have brought her to the Brennanstown Road, which would be the correct pedestrian route to walk back to the Carrickmines luas stop. http://goo.gl/maps/7M9k9

cmore123

I heard that someone spotted the young actress who played Amber the other day, stopped her and said to her, " you should ring your mum!"

That girl will probably get that for a while!

WayneScott

cmore123 wrote: »

I heard that someone spotted the young actress who played Amber the other day, stopped her and said to her, " you should ring your mum!"

That girl will probably get that for a while!

there will probably be idiots who ring the gardai to report a sighting

an o rak

The thing that annoyed me the most was the gardai stopping Ben flying to Ukraine, The is a free country ffs.

Killser

God Almighty, this was brutal - I invested the time in watching the four eps, and am so sorry I bothered. The trailers looked promising, but it was terribly dissapointing. Thought the acting was poor enough, but that was largely the fault of the writers who gave them empty plot and undeveloped characters. Ultimately, I never identified with any one of them, especially Amber herself, I didnt really care if they found her at all, her story never developed at all. I DID feel bad for Charlie who tried to help and ended up getting deported back to China - the moral being, keep your mouth shut and do nothing. The Terence story line did nothing to progress the story. At least the last ep saw the Dad still investigating - and the mam giving up, and gettin some bloke to move in, where did he come from, never saw sight of him in any of the lead up bits.

One word, chronic.
Advice - get writers to look at the 'The Lovely Bones' !

Kav0777

bored_newbie wrote: »

Surely tracing the whereabouts of the phone was vital to the narrative... it introduced Charlie and explained the violence from Amber's dad towards him. This was an important part of showing the dad's mental state. The purpose of the series was to show the effect of the loss of a loved one and the unfathomable frustration it causes to their loved ones. You have to accept that sometimes people go missing and it just remains unexplained. No neatly wrapped ending with a bow on top.

I'm really glad they didn't leave us with a clichéd white transit van ending.

You're missing my point, I get that the show was about the effect of an unsolved disappearance, so, in my opinion, there was no need to show the audience more information than the characters (whether they be the Parents/Garda/ Charlie) received. That way the audience would be just as frustratingly mystified. For example, we didn't need to know where the phone ended up, or how it was taken in the first place. By showing the audience these explanations it let us think we were "in the know" and let us think that we were also going to get an explanation about Amber.

teddyhead

The alledged 'realism' of the ending was undone by the total unreality of the Chinese dude, the weirdo guy in prison, the unlikely rescue in the Ukraine and numerous other inconsistent scenes. This was not complex ,artistic or hard to understand, it was just bad soap opera.

twowheelsgood

cmore123 wrote: »

That's sloppy production, which is a shame. I found it compelling, but the ending was frustratingly unsatisfactory....

I thought the end was clear. She didn’t learn the moral of the little red riding hood story, left the path, encountered a Larry Murphy type and is now six (ok, two) feet under somewhere in the Dublin mountains.

Ok, we didn’t see the white van brake lights going on after it passed her and before the fade but I think we can join up the dots. We weren’t told/shown what happened to Tony Soprano but we can similarly figure it out.

All the hints and hope of one of the leads leading to a definitive conclusion were or would ultimately go nowhere. We learn this from the last scene, the family would come to learn it after 10-20 years. Presumably, this is what the writer was going for?

Ash.J.Williams

had a walk around town there at lunchtime...amber stuck in my head...just seeing weirdos everywhere!!

I guess one of the morals of the story is we're all a little bit weird and you can't really protect your kids from everything.


(two morals)

Leroy42

The premise of the story was good, but those going on about the ending being experimental obviously don't watch much TV, it has been done before.

There were a lot of scenes that just didn't make any sense. The whole Charlie episode was pretty much a waste of time, as was the creppy jail guy. WHy show us the phone being taken by that other guy but never involve him in the plot?

I think what they wer trying to do was straddle both fences. In one part we are supposed to be as confused and in the dark as the family yet on the other hand we are given access to information they wouldn't have.

The fact they never even bothered to locate the red hair guy, what else to the guard need than on online entry saying she can't wait to get of here...and then she goes missing?

They knew she got off the dart, and since they found the bag in the water they never thought to check the surrounding roads and ditches?

The story isn't the problem, it was the pointless storylines that seemed to only be put there to confuse people.

Even the directors interview on radio this moring "we know what happened, people just have to work it out". If you tell a story and nobody gets it I would take a look at the storytelling.

Since USual Suspects many writers seem to think that they can just confuse people to make a story interesting. However, the real trick is to have all the clues there but people just didn't look for them at the time. This series fell into the trap of getting up its own ar5e

dr.kenneth noisewater

Very disappointing ending. Heard on the radio this morning that the writers included loads of references and imagery related to water so they seem to be hinting she drowned!

TequilaMockingBird

I didn't mind the end, but it was so disjointed. When the mum's boyfriend suddenly appeared I actually stopped it and went back to see if I'd missed an episode. From then on I was just irritated!