Aerial America: Texas (Howe: gas, murders, program)

[Nairobi]

It's not as if I had planned on watching this, and, apparently, I didn't miss anything.

[Scientific]

No real mention of East Texas. Ive never been or seen West Texas.

[madrone2k]

Ah, well. If the California episode was dumb and the Texas episode was dumb, too ... will all the other episodes about the "in between" states be the same way? Is it possible they would defy expectations and make really good ones on Kansas and Missouri?

[KathrynAragon]

Originally Posted by Scientific

No real mention of East Texas. Ive never been or seen West Texas.

The only mention I saw of East Texas was Kilgore - not exactly the jewel of East Texas. And they went on and on about Kilgore and showed numerous shots of all the oil derricks downtown - failing to mention that this is just one historical section of downtown and that the derricks are, of course, non operational.

No Tyler, that beautiful small city filled with brick streets and azaleas and roses? No Marshall, with it's huge, stately historic homes? No Jefferson, no Nacodogches? No Canton Trades Days? No hauntingly beautiful Caddo Lake? C'mon, man!

[Nairobi]

Originally Posted by KathrynAragon

The only mention I saw of East Texas was Kilgore - not exactly the jewel of East Texas. And they went on and on about Kilgore and showed numerous shots of all the oil derricks downtown - failing to mention that this is just one historical section of downtown and that the derricks are, of course, non operational.

No Tyler, that beautiful small city filled with brick streets and azaleas and roses? No Marshall, with it's huge, stately historic homes? No Jefferson, no Nacodogches? No Canton Trades Days? No hauntingly beautiful Caddo Lake? C'mon, man!

Yeah, it sounds like they need to do a part 2 or something.

[Cathy4017]

They covered Spindletop/Beaumont. Isn't that definitely East Texas??

It is to me!

[joqua]

I think this "aerial" series does a good job of covering the segments in the one hour that is allotted. Obviously, there will always be those who are dissatisfied. I mentioned the oversight of panhandle cities and towns. A more glaring oversight, IMO, was the lack of coverage of:

Guadalupe Mountains National Park is in the Guadalupe Mountains of West Texas and contains Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at 8,749 feet (2,666.7 m) in elevation.

[Nairobi]

Originally Posted by Cathy4017

They covered Spindletop/Beaumont. Isn't that definitely East Texas??

It is to me!

It is, but, as others have said, it seems that they didn't seem to focus on anything except the oil and gas industry, as if that's all we're about.

I still can't believe there wasn't even a mention of Caddo Lake.

[madrone2k]

From watching the California episode, it struck me that their strategy was to focus on a few places, rather than try to sample them all. However, their choices of which ones to cover seemed odd and they wound up spending a lot of time on some places, while ignoring (in my opinion) other more-interesting ones. In the CA episode, their segment on the Hearst Castle seemed to go on forever -- after awhile the shots of flying back and forth over it seemed like an endless loop.

BTW, the entire state of CA was basically represented by flying along Hwy 101 from Big Sur to SF. No Yosemite, no Death Valley, no LA, no San Diego. Of course, everyone knows about those places, without having them included in the show. That's not true for the places they omitted from the Texas episode, which makes it a shame, I think. Plus, it did nothing to make people outside Texas question their simple, 2-dimensional stereotypes of our state. I still haven't seen the TX show, but peoples' comments here suggest that it just reinforced those stereotypes.

[Jack Lance]

Originally Posted by madrone2k

From watching the California episode, it struck me that their strategy was to focus on a few places, rather than try to sample them all. However, their choices of which ones to cover seemed odd and they wound up spending a lot of time on some places, while ignoring (in my opinion) other more-interesting ones. In the CA episode, their segment on the Hearst Castle seemed to go on forever -- after awhile the shots of flying back and forth over it seemed like an endless loop.

BTW, the entire state of CA was basically represented by flying along Hwy 101 from Big Sur to SF. No Yosemite, no Death Valley, no LA, no San Diego. Of course, everyone knows about those places, without having them included in the show. That's not true for the places they omitted from the Texas episode, which makes it a shame, I think. Plus, it did nothing to make people outside Texas question their simple, 2-dimensional stereotypes of our state. I still haven't seen the TX show, but peoples' comments here suggest that it just reinforced those stereotypes.

Did they touch on any disasters that happened in California like earthquakes , mass murders or assassinations? I ask this because they did touch on all those in the Texas episode , the 1900 Galveston Hurricane , The Austin Tower sniper and of course the JFK murder, I am interested in what you say. I was thinking about watching the California episode to find out just that.