It's not easy to make this type of show for modern horse racing.

Two of the bettors (the degen who plays poker and the guy in the wheel chair) are belivable and remind me of people I know from the track.

They really have to reach in a lot of areas to get the drama...where incredible true story drama and charchters would have been there in a late 1800's time period.

I still have enjoyed the first 3 episodes though.

haven't watched luck, don't plan to.

war and peace was a very, very good book.

Or they could just get it over with and line all of their favorite actors up and have a rainbow party with them. Because that's what I'm getting from the show so far. Adulation of old actors.

Thats why I get on the tread mill and watch it for a second time. Hell, I even pick up things that I didn't get the first time. I really enjoy the grunts and broken english. It just makes it alot more realistic.

Hoffman is the biggest name in the show and I have found his role hard to get. Clearly he's a big, connected business guy who took a fall and did time, but he appears closer to Rain Man than an all powerful guy. He even walks in that shuffle. I hope the character becomes less stiff. This is a guy that one would assume would be the commanding figure in a meetings etc and yet other than the outburt with the ripped shirt, he seems almost timid.

I also agree that there is little likeable out the 4 degenerates. None seem to have the redeeming quality that makes you root for them in spite of themselves. I hope that changes. I get that they have compressed many different "gambler characteristics" in to just 4 guys, but it sure would be nice if one of them was appealing on some level.

In the same way, they have taken many "typical horse trainer" qualities and crammed them into two men who end up looking like stereotypes; the old hardboot and the hispanic guy with cheaper horses who gets involved with a shady but wealthy owner to aquire a fancy stakes horses.

I think Gary has been good and the bug rider has done a good job of being "naive kid" but that might be easy for him if he doesn't understand racing.

With Garys role, I wonder how far they will take him down.
Is his role along the lines of VP?

HBO video recap of series so far.

http://www.hbo.com/luck/index.html#/...ayMQIAVKYXOA==

Maureen Ryan: Why You Should Stick With Luck

I watched episodes 2 and 3 twice. How can you not smile at the shot of the Four A Stable (Jerry,Marcus,Lonnie, Renzo) holding their carrots out with open hands near the end of episode 3. The next shot was a close up of Mon Gateau watching these characters, as you just did, and wondering, as you just did, what the hell is going on now?

Overall, I wish the "every-part-of-this-needs-to-be-real-or-else-I'll-find-something-to-dislike-and-talk-about-it" phase of this show would stop, and the general enjoyment/entertainment would begin.

I don't think mobsters and their associates sat around after the first three episodes of The Sopranos and said - "come on, Tony didn't eat enough bracciole" or "your office doesn't have that many files in it to make it look legitimate" or "when I whack guys, they don't fall like that"

Let's stop overanalyzing the trees and start enjoying the forest.

Lets be fat and stupid.

Campbell is right. They should totally do a balanced series of episodes where they show the rise and fall of a highly touted horse. The first half would be the pageantry: The horse would be the half-brother of an upstart Kentucky Derby winner. He would be sold at a 2yo-in-training sale to a famed racing syndicate for $500,000. He would be turned over to a corporate trainer that wins everything. He would show stakes quality in his initial starts.

Then the seedy underside: His form will take an abrupt nose dive. He'll disappear from the racetrack for a year. He'll return as a gelding. He'll make a comeback and fail miserably. Rather than retirement, the racing syndicate will turn him over to another trainer on a lesser circuit and run him for $5,000, 1% of his original purchase price. The horse will win, but he'll also be claimed.

The audience is left wondering if the horse will be sentenced to a career of complete decline, running for starter fees in Pennsylvania or if he'll go on a massive tear in $5k starters a la Rapid Redux...

Pageantry, Sportsmanship. If Brother Bird had a middle finger, he'd reserve it for Cot Campbell.

This is so great.

call me sappy but...
 

the race scene with the strings in the background was one of the best scenes i have ever seen in a tv show. it was so friggin beautiful. the looks on the faces of everyone watching including the agent b/c his heart is dropping to his stomach, the trainer crying b/c he is connected to the horse and that he knows has something. No matter how it shakes out that has to be an unreal feeling to own/train a horse and watch it run its 1st race and know that you may have something special. i like the show a lot and hope the rest of you guys keep up. the pace seems to be picking up as well. but that scene i rewound it 3 times to watch it again and i swear i almost started crying and im a 40yr old man. That feeling must be one of the sweetest in the world.

That race felt longer than the Melbourne Cup and it seemed like there were 24 horses in the race. :D

agree coach race was a little long but i go back to the emotional part of it, even the degenerat gambler on oxygen knew that he had seen a great performance and i know what that feels like to be at the track and see something like that it leaves me speechless. just a friggin great scene. i remembered reading somewhere in a review for the show that in the 4th episode there was an unreal scene and they were right.

Luck
 

What wac said. Episode 4 tonight was the best one yet. The depiction of the race with Nolte's horse had a decent musical backdrop and used cutaways to what all the characters were involved in. I thought this was well done. Pacing problems not evident and I could (mostly) hear what the characters were saying.


Ocala Mike

Watching nick nolte do the clapping thing on the side of his binoculars was the highlight of the show. Is he supposed to be muddy waters or blind melon chittlin?

I watched Luck tonight although I did not watch ep #3. I did like #4.

The dude losing all his money playing cards is turning my stomach a bit. Not that he's hard on the eyes, just the fact that he hit the P6 and is pooping it all away.

The race scene was amazing for all reasons listed in previous posts. One of the longest stretch runs in history.

too much talking to the horse by nicks the'trainer' ..think stevens is doing a great job..

I thought " East Bound and Down",which comes on after "Luck",was funny as hell!!!

WOW !!!!

Funny, i thought it sucked.

My favorite scene in Luck so far isin Epi 3 when Jerry pays Turo a visit for his opinion of Mon Gateux. The dialogue between Jerry and Chan throughout the show is cool too.

I think the show is awesome and can't wait til it really hits it's stride.

I really want to like it but I am close to packing it in as the mumbling Nick Nolte and the uncomprehendable other trainer are killing it for me.

I'll admit, the NOlte character is a real snooze, and it's tough to decipher what in the hell he's talking about. (most likely its about Delphi lol)

You don't like Escalante??? I feel like he's one of the three best characters on the show. I liked his move last night when he was about to walk out of the barn until he saw 3 of the 4 amigo's (the ones he doesnt want to deal with) and decided to just watch from his office window with a smile.

It might take me one or two times to watch it to fully understand every word they say in the show, but once i catch on to it, i must say that i think its brilliant.

I love Esclante character but I don't understand half his dialogue and have to work way too hard to understand what I do... When they produce these things is that even a consideration??? I also love Nick Nolte Character but again why must I watch a scene 3 times to understand what he says?

A naked Rosie is all I can remember from the last episode...yum yum

The closed captions for this show are terrible. They miss whole sentences and words. It is complete BS for people that actually need them to watch the show and I'm not talking about turning them on to understand the trainers.

I do hope the cc will improve. The race scene was a work of art and Rosie's beauty fit well within this episode.
Getty image 1/25/12

I'm trying to like it. All and all it's pretty boring. Why does the jockey agent have to talk like that?

I watched that too. What a wacky show. This is the last season from what I read about it. It was funny. Very different for sure.

Well since they have another season there is no reason why the cast has to stay the same.

Just a suggestion...

Get rid of the poker degenerate and his friends. Pair him with a 20-something college dropout that is obsessed with crop duster's horse. Turns out she has some dark secrets...think human centipede type hang-up.

"Ace" and the grandson that is responsible for him doing 3 years of hard time has got to be a bigger part of episodes to come, I am not sure we have met the grandson as of yet but he may be 1 of the four that won the Pick 6 winners which would make things far interesting?

The board room scene in episode 3 ,with Hoffman, where he lays out the ceiling for the purchase of the slots deal at Santa Anita seems like a page from " The Untouchables" minus the baseball bat, but there is time yet to see "Ace's" temper when provoked. Loyalty, rare as it is, seems to be a big theme in this show.

If the grandson turns out to be still flawed, like card playing Jerry, without contrition for grandfather's sacrifices we could have some real fireworks soon.

I like the show and think HBO has many angles of interest to play yet.

Honu in "Luck"
 

C'mon, details! You were in a shooting of Luck this past weekend, spill the beans!

You should ask her in the LUCK thread

why? if there can be a new thread for every dammed debate, there can be a new one for every question!

One of the mods can move this to the "Luck" thread, that's fine!

Yesterday we shot in the studio in "The Longshot" bar I was part of background for a scene where the old man was talking with(flirting) with a lady friend. In the bar they actually had copies of old win pictures of Warren Stutes from the 60's and old vintage photographs of Lucky Baldwin driving a team of horses around the grounds of where he was going to build Santa Anita.

Much better tonight.

I thought it started at 10 :wf