OK... this one I had to sit down and write a WTF review. That is... I hate TV show episodes that present a problem and deal with it in sixty seconds and leave the viewer scratching his head.. going WTF? Because of complicated things that are shown in fast forward or noised in a hurried line by a character.
OK... first of all... newest character, least experienced, sister to Hardison... has the solution here that the seasoned best thief in the world, the grifter of all continents, the baddest muscle to ever darken a stage, and we are missing the mastermind, Nate Ford, and a seasoned corp lawyer, do not come up with. And the answer has nothing to do with coding, computers, or hacking. Hm.
But it is the black girl who is smarter than all the rest of those dumb ass white people. Right? Elliot, Parker, Sophie, and Harry are just dumb asses with their thumbs up their butts... "Gee, there is too much money to take out. How do we get it off the boat?"
And then we are to believe as someone else mentioned that multi million dollar river boats have one inch pine plywood floors, beneath which is the open river. Right. (not) See if they were catamarans, this would work. But, I went to pictures of big wheeler river boats, and guess what? They all have boat hulls, and the floor of the main deck is above the water. So if the floor of the vault led to the water directly, the boat would have sunk, because the water would have rushed in. But no riverboats, except catamarans, have main decks above open water. The main decks have a hull beneath them, or the main deck would BE the hull, which is impossible, because it would be two to four feet UNDER the water. See what I mean? Eats at your brain.
See this is where in shows like this I feel cheated. Because the writers and producers come up with a solution that does not exist in real life and is not believable, which leaves you wondering... how the hell DO you get a big hatch hole in the middle of the floor of a bank vault that is on a riverboat? Ocean's 11 and Twelve and Thirteen did spectacular heists, and the reason they were so good and so popular is that OCEAN's movies TOLD YOU how they did it. They showed you. And it was believable. They worked. And therein is the genius and the wonder of the movies. They were believable.
If you ever watched Below Deck, you are thinking fiberglas hull, possibly steel second inner hull protected, above which is the inside finish floor which might be carpeted and laid over some kind of solid teak wood. Not something Bob Vila would use to put up a tree house with. Snore. Cheated.
... Imagine if you carried the episode to this point and then just went... "and they got the money out somehow and they all lived happily ever after." Like the plot does not count... cause the writers have to finish the show in sixty seconds and all we really wanted to do is show our characters in motion and ripping off this evil guy. Good believable endings be damned. (Why did they not consult a yacht builder for the answers? I needed the step by step in how they got into the vault, bagged the money, opened the floor and got out and away. Watching it again, I get now why Parker was hauling orange bags out of the water. Somehow, they were luckily aboard the cheapest built river boat ever made, which probably would NOT have sunk when you cut a hole in the floor, cause a one inch wood floor would not have held the pressure anyhow. And the floor was obviously not the hull, because it was built above the water and not on the water, which begs the question where the hell WAS the hull of the riverboat? Oh well. This is one of those TV shows where sometimes you have to write an alternate ending which works and put that in your mind and forget what the producers put out there, just so you can sleep at night. Sloppy. Surprising with a show that is otherwise done so well. Every Rose has it's thorns.
Oceans movies always showed a believable ending and tell you how they did it... so you don't go out of the movie and wonder... WTF? How did they do it? But lazy writers are too often guilty of this, and blow off unbelievable endings in a couple minutes so hopefully the audience does not ask questions. Bugs the hell out of me, really.
Okay I know my ex wife would be rolling her eyes and sucking on her teeth here at my comments... cause it's a TV show and it's about the story and the people, not the engineering and the believability. Which is why I never wrote a space ship movie. Because I would want the physics to work. I would want the highly educated men and women who saw the movie to not roll their eyes at the impossibility of what I wrote. Gene Roddenberry bent the rules a little, I know. But somehow he pulled it off. Even without a physics degree.
And I loved Star Trek. And Star Wars was okay. But at least the reason the Death Star blew up has a believable reason... the little hole in it necessary for the exhaust or whatever... made it vulnerable. I GET THAT. I can handle that. Riverboats with flooring made of the stuff you nail shingles to on a roof that floats about three feet above the water... with no hull under it... goes beyond believability to the point of magic and other dimensions. Sigh. I think you get where I am coming from.
OK... first of all... newest character, least experienced, sister to Hardison... has the solution here that the seasoned best thief in the world, the grifter of all continents, the baddest muscle to ever darken a stage, and we are missing the mastermind, Nate Ford, and a seasoned corp lawyer, do not come up with. And the answer has nothing to do with coding, computers, or hacking. Hm.
But it is the black girl who is smarter than all the rest of those dumb ass white people. Right? Elliot, Parker, Sophie, and Harry are just dumb asses with their thumbs up their butts... "Gee, there is too much money to take out. How do we get it off the boat?"
And then we are to believe as someone else mentioned that multi million dollar river boats have one inch pine plywood floors, beneath which is the open river. Right. (not) See if they were catamarans, this would work. But, I went to pictures of big wheeler river boats, and guess what? They all have boat hulls, and the floor of the main deck is above the water. So if the floor of the vault led to the water directly, the boat would have sunk, because the water would have rushed in. But no riverboats, except catamarans, have main decks above open water. The main decks have a hull beneath them, or the main deck would BE the hull, which is impossible, because it would be two to four feet UNDER the water. See what I mean? Eats at your brain.
See this is where in shows like this I feel cheated. Because the writers and producers come up with a solution that does not exist in real life and is not believable, which leaves you wondering... how the hell DO you get a big hatch hole in the middle of the floor of a bank vault that is on a riverboat? Ocean's 11 and Twelve and Thirteen did spectacular heists, and the reason they were so good and so popular is that OCEAN's movies TOLD YOU how they did it. They showed you. And it was believable. They worked. And therein is the genius and the wonder of the movies. They were believable.
If you ever watched Below Deck, you are thinking fiberglas hull, possibly steel second inner hull protected, above which is the inside finish floor which might be carpeted and laid over some kind of solid teak wood. Not something Bob Vila would use to put up a tree house with. Snore. Cheated.
... Imagine if you carried the episode to this point and then just went... "and they got the money out somehow and they all lived happily ever after." Like the plot does not count... cause the writers have to finish the show in sixty seconds and all we really wanted to do is show our characters in motion and ripping off this evil guy. Good believable endings be damned. (Why did they not consult a yacht builder for the answers? I needed the step by step in how they got into the vault, bagged the money, opened the floor and got out and away. Watching it again, I get now why Parker was hauling orange bags out of the water. Somehow, they were luckily aboard the cheapest built river boat ever made, which probably would NOT have sunk when you cut a hole in the floor, cause a one inch wood floor would not have held the pressure anyhow. And the floor was obviously not the hull, because it was built above the water and not on the water, which begs the question where the hell WAS the hull of the riverboat? Oh well. This is one of those TV shows where sometimes you have to write an alternate ending which works and put that in your mind and forget what the producers put out there, just so you can sleep at night. Sloppy. Surprising with a show that is otherwise done so well. Every Rose has it's thorns.
Oceans movies always showed a believable ending and tell you how they did it... so you don't go out of the movie and wonder... WTF? How did they do it? But lazy writers are too often guilty of this, and blow off unbelievable endings in a couple minutes so hopefully the audience does not ask questions. Bugs the hell out of me, really.
Okay I know my ex wife would be rolling her eyes and sucking on her teeth here at my comments... cause it's a TV show and it's about the story and the people, not the engineering and the believability. Which is why I never wrote a space ship movie. Because I would want the physics to work. I would want the highly educated men and women who saw the movie to not roll their eyes at the impossibility of what I wrote. Gene Roddenberry bent the rules a little, I know. But somehow he pulled it off. Even without a physics degree.
And I loved Star Trek. And Star Wars was okay. But at least the reason the Death Star blew up has a believable reason... the little hole in it necessary for the exhaust or whatever... made it vulnerable. I GET THAT. I can handle that. Riverboats with flooring made of the stuff you nail shingles to on a roof that floats about three feet above the water... with no hull under it... goes beyond believability to the point of magic and other dimensions. Sigh. I think you get where I am coming from.