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The first season of the Leftovers is absolute garbage and obviously the other two are more highly regarded.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 16:16 |
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# ? Apr 19, 2024 21:07 |
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hah. I like s1 of The Office, Parks & Rec, 12 Monkeys, and the Leftovers. In fact, I disliked every other season of Leftovers and 12 Monkeys.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 16:41 |
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I loved season 1 of Halt & Catch Fire, and I liked season 1 of The Leftovers. Still that doesn’t change that they got even better in season 2. Of course my take on it, yours may vary.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 19:17 |
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It's almost like creative endeavors don't emerge from the author's head as perfect beings, but instead go through some kind of process of improvement based on feedback.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 19:31 |
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Especially with sitcoms, it usually takes a while for the cast's personalities to mesh. It's hard to be funny right away when you only have the broad strokes of the characters, because any good sitcom's humor comes from how they interact with each other.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 22:23 |
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It's kind of interesting to see it play out though. I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are the shows where the writers spent 8 years writing and re-writing the first season so it's great and then they're like "oh gently caress, people liked it, now we have to write it again" and S2 will be a big step down, versus things that got green-lit more on potential or the strength of a multi-season arc where it can get better as it goes along. Our current watches: For any people who watch cooking shows, Nadiya Hussain, one of the recent winners of the Great British Baking Show has her own series now on Netflix (Nadiya's Time to Eat). She's a pretty charismatic host and the shows move along between her cooking, cooking along side a pleeb who needs help, and then a trip to a dairy or baked beans factory or whatever to see where food comes from. New wasting time show: Bones (my first time through). Definitely reminiscent of Lucifer with the mystery-of-the-week not being that exciting but the cast isn't bad. Just started: Orphan Black. Only a few episodes in but enjoying it so far. Also started: Hap and Leonard. First few episodes are pretty good. The drug dealers Angel and the dude are kind of ruining the show for us. I'll probably keep watching but not sure if my wife will.
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# ? Nov 28, 2020 22:27 |
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Nate RFB posted:The first season of the Leftovers is absolute garbage and obviously the other two are more highly regarded.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 00:40 |
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I think Veronica Mars is a show that never beat its first season.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 00:56 |
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BetterLekNextTime posted:It's kind of interesting to see it play out though. I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are the shows where the writers spent 8 years writing and re-writing the first season so it's great and then they're like "oh gently caress, people liked it, now we have to write it again" and S2 will be a big step down, versus things that got green-lit more on potential or the strength of a multi-season arc where it can get better as it goes along. Westworld.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 01:12 |
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Probably Flight of the Conchords too.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 01:59 |
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Futurama is I think one of the rare examples of a sitcom that was great right from the start. Sure, there’s plenty that are good from the start, but don’t quite resemble the show they became famous for. Futurama has a super strong start. The only misstep is that weird career chip thing which they mostly ignored afterward. Collateral posted:Westworld. Absolutely. I can’t imagine many shows have declined that hard, that fast. I can’t believe anyone say through season 3 after season 2. Luckily season 1 is a self-contained story.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 02:02 |
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Westworld felt like it had one story in mind, then told it well during the show's first season. It raises interesting questions and explores them. Honestly, season one felt like a complete, fully-told story. Same with Stranger Things. Some shows don't need to keep going forever. For both shows, I watched about three episodes of season two, realized that I was already completely satisfied with the show, and stopped watching. In other cases (Lost, Battlestar Galactica), it's clear that the creators want to make a multi-season show but didn't plan out much past the premise. I liked both of those shows, but really wished the writers had been able to stick the landings better.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 02:25 |
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DorianGravy posted:Westworld felt like it had one story in mind, then told it well during the show's first season. I've said this before, but the Westworld first season finale is kinda terrible, and the love for the show's first season always boggled me. But it did progressively get worse, I definitely agree with you on that one.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 02:31 |
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Doctor Spaceman posted:I think Veronica Mars is a show that never beat its first season. Yeah they ran out of ideas fast
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 06:57 |
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DorianGravy posted:Westworld felt like it had one story in mind, then told it well during the show's first season. It raises interesting questions and explores them. Honestly, season one felt like a complete, fully-told story. Same with Stranger Things. Some shows don't need to keep going forever. For both shows, I watched about three episodes of season two, realized that I was already completely satisfied with the show, and stopped watching. I’ve been repeatedly yelling at people for wanting another season of The Queen’s Gambit. There’s twenty million good books in the world: use the exact same production team and make a new good show!
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 09:26 |
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BetterLekNextTime posted:It's kind of interesting to see it play out though. I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are the shows where the writers spent 8 years writing and re-writing the first season so it's great and then they're like "oh gently caress, people liked it, now we have to write it again" and S2 will be a big step down, versus things that got green-lit more on potential or the strength of a multi-season arc where it can get better as it goes along.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 13:15 |
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Heroes has to be up there when it comes to nose-diving quality in the second season.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 14:42 |
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Heroes was never good.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 15:21 |
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ratinggraph.com has episode ratings graphs (even if they rely on the opinions of imdb users...) Heroes Tanks after S1 True Detective Tanks after S1 Westworld Gradual decline I was going to suggest Lost but apparently the poeple who stuck around to keep watching it felt differently. https://www.ratingraph.com/tv-shows/lost-ratings-18880/ I'll finish with the 23 year decline of The Simpsons....
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 15:40 |
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Pablo Bluth posted:ratinggraph.com has episode ratings graphs (even if they rely on the opinions of imdb users...) I wonder if the season 9 episode 11 episode of the simpsons was a standout terrible episode, or if it's just americans downvoting everything 9/11. It was aired in 1998, so I'm inclined towards the former.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 17:02 |
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clown shoes posted:Heroes was never good. I disagree, the first season of Heroes was very fun to watch live and theorycraft about between episodes. If you weren't in the middle of the post-Lost zeitgeist of combing over every scene and any bit of supplemental material for clues then it probably seems dumb but at the time (before it was obvious that the creators weren't putting as much energy into the lore of the show as the fans) it was great. It was a very different era in TV in general and probably impossible to capture or recreate, but oh boy was it a loving blast.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 17:10 |
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Extremely hot take: Westworld season 1 is just okay, and season 2 is better simply because there are like 2 exceptional episodes.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 17:22 |
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The first season of Heroes was great. It might seem cliche and campy and it is but we also didn't have the over saturation of super hero stuff when it came out and I think that definitely taints the lens looking back on it.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 17:25 |
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kanonvandekempen posted:I wonder if the season 9 episode 11 episode of the simpsons was a standout terrible episode, or if it's just americans downvoting everything 9/11. It was aired in 1998, so I'm inclined towards the former.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 17:34 |
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The Lady Gaga episode is from 2012, man time loving flies.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 17:46 |
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Instead of trying to make Heroes a show that was like a comic book they should have just made it an actual comic book, and it would have been much better. Or they should have at least stuck with their original idea of having a new cast every season. A new cast every season would also avoid the problem of actors demanding more money on a successful show (not sure if that was ever an issue or not with Heroes, but that show had so many other issues anyway). The first season was decent, but everything after that was literally throwing poo poo at a wall to see what would stick.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 18:13 |
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Pablo Bluth posted:I was going to suggest Lost but apparently the poeple who stuck around to keep watching it felt differently. I mentioned it before in this thread, but as someone who watched all of LOST for the first time in 2019, I liked it fine the whole way through. I can see why some people weren't happy with the last season after building it up in their head for years and years, but as a new viewer on a binge, I wouldn't have known that the last season was widely hated if I hadn't already known it going in.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 19:32 |
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I think most Lost fans were still pretty consistently getting their minds blown at least through the 3rd season. S5 is when it starts getting real weird and I think started really losing some people. And for me and a lot of people I knew S6 was just kind of "well, I gotta finish" territory.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 19:58 |
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That rating graph website is neat. The Game of Thrones curve seems less than ideal: https://www.ratingraph.com/tv-shows/game-of-thrones-ratings-26649/ That said, I wish there was a way of filtering the ratings, perhaps only showing ratings from people who have made a lot of ratings. When you have far more people rating the final season, that's got to skew results somehow. Edit: For instance, I really don't think that the episode "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" (which I liked) is worse than every episode from prior seasons.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 20:23 |
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showbiz_liz posted:I mentioned it before in this thread, but as someone who watched all of LOST for the first time in 2019, I liked it fine the whole way through. I can see why some people weren't happy with the last season after building it up in their head for years and years, but as a new viewer on a binge, I wouldn't have known that the last season was widely hated if I hadn't already known it going in.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 20:33 |
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LOST eventually fell apart because every one of us who loved it brushed over the warning signs because we all assumed right until the end there was a plan.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 20:35 |
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it's not a dramatic falloff like True Detective or Westworld but American Gods S2 is so much worse than the first half-ish of S1 it's incredible
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 21:22 |
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Pablo Bluth posted:I was going to suggest Lost but apparently the poeple who stuck around to keep watching it felt differently. I only felt S6 was weak because they didn't seem to know what to do with minor characters anymore, and the flash storylines that season were largely unnecessary for what they were trying to do. It was very much presented as an alternate timeline, so when you look back at it after the finale, it was extremely padded and drawn out. Torquemada posted:I’ve been repeatedly yelling at people for wanting another season of The Queen’s Gambit. There’s twenty million good books in the world: use the exact same production team and make a new good show! I'm... not even sure how this would work. The show already covers everything and ends at the peak. Season 2 would just be "And then she played more chess." It's a miniseries for a reason.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 22:31 |
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sticklefifer posted:
Now I'm picturing the Rocky franchise but with chess...
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 22:35 |
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Make it a rerun of the first season but told from the perspective of the soviet players who end up in Siberia after losing to a Capitalist Pigdog.
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# ? Nov 29, 2020 22:45 |
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Been going through DS9 season one as background noise. Went off Haven after I read the wiki.
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# ? Nov 30, 2020 08:58 |
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Julio Cruz posted:it's not a dramatic falloff like True Detective or Westworld but American Gods S2 is so much worse than the first half-ish of S1 it's incredible I would love to read a lengthy expose about all the poo poo that went on behind the scenes of that show.
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# ? Nov 30, 2020 09:21 |
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Madurai posted:Ran through all of Beforeigners last weekend. Googled this. Looks good! Very, "the past is a foreign country."
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# ? Nov 30, 2020 10:34 |
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showbiz_liz posted:I would love to read a lengthy expose about all the poo poo that went on behind the scenes of that show. I think there were always problems, I know someone who was attached to star in S1 who dropped it at the last minute because of a lack of competence in certain areas of the production.
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# ? Nov 30, 2020 11:47 |
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# ? Apr 19, 2024 21:07 |
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LOST holds up better through a binge watch than people remember, and I'll die on this hill. It doesn't feel anywhere near as convoluted as its been made it out to have been when you aren't scrutinizing each episode for weeks or months at a time. While originally airing they were marketing it as a complex mystery that can be solved, which was obviously a big mistake, but also a product of the time, back when they weren't sure if they could get network audiences to follow a heavily serialized show. Yes, there's a lot of dumb stuff, but at the same time there is such an abundance of awesome and ambitious moments to a degree that most shows have not been able to capture since (and yes, I've watched plenty of "prestige TV"). When it's good, it's great, and I believe that outweighs the dumb stuff. I also love all the things it got right, like successfully being an anthology-style show and a heavily serialized show simultaneously. What does date it, though, is the editing and filler. Lots of padding, especially in the second and third seasons, and not just every episode but nearly every act break must end on a dramatic cliffhanger. I believe that the show could successfully be trimmed down from 120 episode to 80-ish and re-edited into something great, but obviously that's never going to happen.
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# ? Nov 30, 2020 18:54 |