Links to stuff mentioned:
* At the moment, you can watch Roots: The Next Generation on Youtube. Who knows how long it will stay up, but for the moment at least here's a link to the first episode: https://youtu.be/uWVXScIrKpg?si=lTMSySBKpzC6qVTi
This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost. For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE:
In this case, the old blog post is here: https://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2013/11/television-addiction-part-4.html
This is also part of my Television Addiction series. For my explanation of what the Television Addiction series is and why I'm doing it, see: https://youtu.be/T5CEQ9-35xA and http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2021/04/television-addiction-article-on.html
Roots: The Next Generations
I was first introduced to Roots when my 5th grade school teacher showed us the first couple episodes.
It wasn’t until years later, when I was in Japan , that I finally got my hands on the whole series. (The Japanese video rental store near my town had the series in stock—in English with Japanese subtitles.)
But I’ve never had an opportunity to watch Roots: The Next Generations until now when I stumbled upon it at a DVD store in Cambodia .
Before I watched this series, I had always assumed that Roots: The Next Generations was just an attempt to milk more money off of the original Roots. But I was mistaken. This is the ending of the story, and without this sequel the series would not have been complete.
Roots: The Next Generations came out in 1979 just 2 years after the original Roots, and it picks up right where the original Roots left off. And it completes the goal of the TV series which, like the book, is to follow Alex Haley’s family tree all the way from Africa to the present day.
I suspect what happened is that the book got split into two different TV shows for economic reasons—the TV company wasn’t willing to commit to the whole story until it knew it had an audience, and only after the success of the original Roots did they agree to complete the story.
But now that the whole series has been produced, they should really just stop selling it separately as Roots and Roots: The Next Generations and instead put box up both DVDs together into one package and sell the whole thing as Roots, because it really is just one continuous story.
The TV show is from 1979, and has a lot of the hallmarks of television drama from the late 1970s/early 1980s that strike us as cheesy today—over-acting, overly dramatic music that swells up at the end of each episode just as a character looks off into the distance and says some sort of dramatic line, a complete lack of any subtlety, et cetera.
And yet, inspite of all its flaws, it’s still incredibly addictive to watch. The cheesy 70s television drama still has a strong narrative appeal, and I found myself getting sucked in episode after episode and unable to pull myself away from my couch. (I guess it was not for nothing that Roots was one of the the most watched mini-series in American television history.)
All the famous actors who participated in the series also make it fun to watch: Peter Fonda, Marlon Brando, James Earl Jones, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis.
Related Playlists:
Scripted Reviews Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x5BKcEIufNKlS58JHU_glyL&si=Pje0KQqIqOgWGGUI
Television Addiction: Oh, the TV Shows I've Seen: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x5dG-fZus5AmF1kQSDBfSDJ
Television Addiction Part 4: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7tGOeUw5E7xQBVO_DQ3xcn&si=lM1iMgfWSgaA3Bzf
History Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x52uI39vSXVrJvUFjdN9QkL&si=dICJTZngZlwi8WIT
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Check out this series on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3S0SOUN (This is an Amazon Associate's Link. If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
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