Anyone else watching the Hatfields and McCoys on Lifetime? It’s the second night of a three day series, and I’m actually enjoying it. Even Kevin Costner hasn’t irritated me yet.
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by John Cole| 45 Comments
This post is in: Television
Anyone else watching the Hatfields and McCoys on Lifetime? It’s the second night of a three day series, and I’m actually enjoying it. Even Kevin Costner hasn’t irritated me yet.
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David Koch
Boston vs the LeBrons
MikeJ
The same one that was on History a week or two ago? I tried it I was only half watching it, and it was kinda dull if you weren’t paying full attention.
Yutsano
I find this impossible.
khead
Romania is no Mingo County, WV.
And the southern WV counties could certainly use the business…..
Just sayin.
patrick II
@David Koch:
I am watching the game too, and rooting for those old Boston guys to beat the LeBrons one more time. Whoever wins this series is going to lose to the Thunder in the finals though.
Stuck in the Funhouse
No thanks, saw enough of the real thing back in the day when I lived and worked in Clay
Slay Co.Ky. Though fortunately I didn’t grow up there, but in a more civilized version of hillbilly heaven.They had entire families slaughtered, and this was in the 80’s, for shit their relatives did 50 or a hundred years ago. Fucking savages with long grudges and longer memories, and I walked around carrying every gun and knife I could conceal and carry, just to go out the front door in the morning.
I don’t want to see no more family feuds in that god forsaken world.
David Koch
ps Hatfields and McCoys is on the History channel. Lifetime is a soccer mom channel.
David Koch
The only thing bad about the NBA is they discriminate against hard working white people.
honus
Pig fuckers. Once you cross the Tug River, they’re pig fuckers.
Also, too, John, the old WV joke: “don’t ask us if we have toothbrushes, shoes, cable TV, etc. Hell yes we have that stuff, this ain’t Kentucky.”
Just Some Fuckhead
I watched it when it premiered on the History Channel, as you know if you paid attention to my Facebook page.
I think they got a lot of really key stuff wrong, particularly the personalities of Hatfield and McCoy and the nature of the relationship between Johnson Hatfield and Roseanna McCoy. Although, ya can’t really fault Costner for playing the lively and gregarious Devil Anse as stoic and taciturn since he’s such a lousy actor.
Mrs. Fuckhead comes from the West Virginia side of the Kentucky-West Virginia border and is related to both families, but more directly to the McCoys. (She’s a cousin to Don Blankenship.)
Phylllis
We have it saved on the dvr; I’m hoping we actually watch it at some point instead of saving it for three months then deleting it.
Watching the Braves & the Fish & probably fixing to head off to bed. Got suckered into going to a damn MLM ‘opportunity’ earlier this afternoon. I’m afraid my boss and her husband have already put in their $499 fee and it really bothers me.
piratedan
to get in the mood, you should probably cue up Matewan for afters
AliceBlue
I just watched last night’s Daily Show. For the second night in a row, Stewart did another truly dickish piece on the Wisconsin recall.
Mike in NC
It was OK, and Kevin Costner is better in it than in his famous duds like “Waterworld”, “Robin Hood”, or “No Way Out”. My wife is reading a book called “Outliers” with a chapter on the Scotch-Irish of Appalachia and their “Culture of Honor”, which over decades led to scores of family feuds like Hatfield-McCoy.
The author notes that similar violent behavior is found in parts of Greece, Spain, and Sicily where people live on land where farming is nearly impossible, so even the loss of a cow or sheep to a neighbor is a big deal and must be dealt with harshly.
Rafer Janders
When did it become Lifetime: Television for Hillbillies?
Before anyone jumps down my throat, yes, yes, I know they want to be called Sons of the Soil, but it ain’t gonna happen.
Roger Moore
Wow. I’ll have some of whatever Cole is having; it must be really good stuff.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Sorry but rednecks blasting away at each other isn’t my idea of education or entertainment (edumatainment?).
You can tell I’m not a NASCAR fan either. ;)
FlipYrWhig
@AliceBlue: He’s hung up on a very dad-ish sense of fair play. He did the same thing when Republicans were bleating about Obama: there’s a difference between tyranny and losing, or something like that. So it’s totally up his alley: Walker sucks, but trying to recall him for sucking isn’t appropriate. And apparently that’s how a decent number of progressive Wisconsinites saw it too.
FlipYrWhig
@Rafer Janders: “Sons of the Soil” sounds way too much like “Chicken of the Sea.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Kevin Costner was the only one I could tell apart from all the other characters, and not always. Bill Paxton (or was it Pullman?) looked just like everybody else. If I hadn’t known that old guy was Tom Berenger, I never would’ve guessed.
handy
Unpossible.
RD
Fuck the Hatfields, and fuck the McCoys.
gbear
Guess who said this. Christ.
kc
Mmmm. Kevin Costner …
Tokyokie
I thought about watching to root for the Hatfields and hope they kill Colt and Case. But I forgot to set the DVR.
honus
Y’all need to read Altina Waller’s book “Feud” for the real story of the Hatfield/McCoy affair. The TV show is about as accurate as most “dramatizations.” Basically the whole thing was over and got ginned up by Perry Cline in order to paint the HAtfield’s as violent criminals and steal Anse Hatfields’s timber for some wealthy Cincinnati interests after the railroad was built and it became profitable. Cline was pretty much a turn of the 19th century Marcellus Shale-type profiteer.
Oh, and as for the notion of hereditary violent tendencies of the hillbillies, Sid Hatfield of “Matewan” fame wasn’t a Hatfield by blood. He was just a homeless kid taken in and raised by the Hatfields.
Fluke bucket
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I wondered how close to the actual events it was. I loved the series.
The Dangerman
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I liked the miniseries, quite a lot, but a lot of facts were only hinted at…
…as, if I know the story correctly, Johnson was a full-on player and really didn’t care about Roseanna after the booty call. From pictures of Johnson, the women of that area must have been desperate (he was butt ugly; Roseanna was kinda pretty in her old pictures).
S. cerevisiae
OK, screwing up on names as I usually do- is Perry Cline the sleazy lawyer?
Origuy
I’m a descendant of a Hatfield and a McCoy, though both were decades before the feud. I just finished reading the part of Albion’s Seed about the Scotch-Irish who settled in the Appalachians. They came there from the Borders between England and Scotland, which had been a lawless area since William the Conqueror, or from Ulster, which was largely settled by people from the Borders.
jfxgillis
I was watching the Celtics until garbage time, then switched to Baseball Tonight.
Why is Curt Schilling on my tv set? And not getting asked hard questions by a reporter?
Mnemosyne
My favorite version of the Hatfield/McCoys story is Buster Keaton’s Our Hospitality (full movie can be watched here).
The replica 1830s “hobby horse” bicycle that Keaton rides in one scene was so accurate that the Smithsonian Institution asked Keaton to donate it to their collection and he agreed.
Lynn Dee
@David Koch:
History channel last week; Lifetime this week.
Will
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
You’re joking, right?
c00ster
wtf? they are playing the same damned episode over and over and over and over and over and over and over………..
James E Powell
@FlipYrWhig:
And apparently that’s how a decent number of progressive Wisconsinites saw it too.
That’s what makes them losers. Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Will:
Not in the least. Though I haven’t been back there in more than 30 years. “Manchester” is the county seat of Clay County, Ky, that we would call ‘Gunchester” That even made a religious website’s list for the most transformed, troubled places in the world. I would have to see it to believe it. Cause when I was there, it was nothing less than a third world shithole, and maybe was per capita murder capital on American soil, though a sparsely populated one.
Scroll halfway down to find it, along with Cali, Columbia, amongst other ‘transformed’ assholes of the world.
RadioOne
If you like period dramas, watch Downton Abbey. It’s about a Lord in Britain in the early 20th century whose estate and castle will be passed on to his third cousin, despite the fact that he has three legitimate daughters, because his third cousin is a man.
Throw in the fact that the third cousin is a very decent man, and that almost every one else on the show is tying to subvert and defeat the Lord’s daughters claim to the estate, and you have a really fun TV show.
Polar Bear Squares
I dug the Hatfields & McCoys. Being from California, I grew up with gang culture and this show is similar to me. That’s really all a gang rivalry is. A blood feud that was probably started by something as fucking stupid as some slight or relationship gone wrong. Usually its fueled by some type of alcoholic spirit or narcotic. And this continues on for years. It just resonated with me. Even Kevin Costner. Maybe it was how layered the beef was. It wasn’t just one thing but a combination of things including a combination of people who were all being true to themselves yet dishonest about their intentions and actions. I was unaware of how inaccurate it was but I figured that.
I was also happy to see Boston get its freakin’ @$$ kicked. Their fans are obnoxious, particularly to Lebron. He skipped town on Cleveland, why are you guys pissed again? I was pretty happy he shut their crowd up. And all those old guys who yell, scream and push all game. Play the game, guys. Stop acting like my father when we used to play in front of the garage.
mining city guy
I watched it last week and thought at the time that Bugs Bunny should have been called in to deal with the situation. Bugs knew how to deal with feuding hillbillies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIXf1A1erX4
NCSteve
Says all you need to know about the region that I was always more ashamed as a Kentuckian that the McCoys got their asses kicked than I was as an Appalachian that the feud ever happened. To their credit, every Hatfield or McCoy I’ve ever known was more embarrassed by the feud.
Pococurante
The bastards were from the WV side of the border.
My opinion is not at all influenced by the fact I was born in Pikeville and my roots in Pike County go back to well before the Whiskey Rebellion.
WhyKnot241
Blood feuds are just about the stupidest thing. I mean really, really, rock-stupid stupid.
Go watch Matewan if you want to get your blood up. That’s what we should be about.
Grow up you stupid fuckers and fight for what’s important.
Sad_Dem
Great comments, everyone. I too expected that sooner or later Costner would be his usual irritating self instead of a character, but instead he stayed within his limited range. The inaccuracies are many but part of the game of dramatization. Favorite scene so far: the “trial” about the pig. Very funny and very sad at the same time, which is not easy to do.
Haydnseek
@Yutsano: Exactly. Why he hasn’t experienced a huge comeback during a period of endless zombie films will remain one of the enduring mysteries of life.