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I've been watching CW's Nancy Drew. It's a guilty pleasure, dumb supernatural mystery soap opera but I was roped into it. It's interesting how much it feels like they were aiming less for "Nancy Drew mysteries but with real ghosts" and more for "Veronica Mars in overly haunted Maine." Also with covid interruptions the first season got cut from 22 episodes to 18, which you can imagine did great things for a season-long arc mystery show. There are things I find charming and things I find ridiculous about it, but the crazy thing is how season 2 seems to be moving toward a really weird shared universe with the Bobbsey Twins set up as recurring characters and an upcoming Tom Swift backdoor pilot.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 05:40 |
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# ? Apr 25, 2024 12:53 |
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Cactus posted:Well, poo poo. I'm going to have to watch this now, I loving love mad-watching terrible sci-fi shows. Especially since I'm under lockdown. I love trash tv and another life is 100% hot garbage. Feels like there's so much wasted potential with the only real redeeming thing is some good music here and there. Not as bad as the I-land but I can't wait for season 2
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 08:18 |
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Just finished Giri/Haji on Netflix. Phenomenal show all around. Great mix of yakuza crime story and family drama.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 10:02 |
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Killer robot posted:I've been watching CW's Nancy Drew. It's a guilty pleasure, dumb supernatural mystery soap opera but I was roped into it. It's interesting how much it feels like they were aiming less for "Nancy Drew mysteries but with real ghosts" and more for "Veronica Mars in overly haunted Maine." Also with covid interruptions the first season got cut from 22 episodes to 18, which you can imagine did great things for a season-long arc mystery show. That's cause they're all Stratemeyer Syndicate properties
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 13:20 |
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WhiteHowler posted:
Season one of "Salvation" is worse. From the "Elon Musk, but attractive" male lead to the "Donald Rumsfeld, but attractive, has plenty of time to leave the office and solve mysteries" to the Q is real and good and will help the secret president take back rightful office" you might forget that the premise involves a planet killing asteroid.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 13:27 |
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sad question posted:Just finished Giri/Haji on Netflix. Phenomenal show all around. Great mix of yakuza crime story and family drama. I saw this last year, it’s great! Phenomenal cast and acting. Only downside is it’s a really bleak show and I needed a comedic chaser after finishing it.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 14:47 |
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:Season one of "Salvation" is worse. From the "Elon Musk, but attractive" male lead to the "Donald Rumsfeld, but attractive, has plenty of time to leave the office and solve mysteries" to the Q is real and good and will help the secret president take back rightful office" you might forget that the premise involves a planet killing asteroid. I must've been half-watching that because I don't remember the Q stuff but yeah it was a pretty unremarkable series. Wow you guys weren't exaggerating about Another Life! Was the dialogue written by a thirteen year old? It's so cringey and everyone is needlessly confrontational and shouty all the time, to the point of being outright psychotic. I don't think I'll be finishing this one either, but I'll see how far I get. It is a curiously bad bit of tv. In contrast I've also been binging the Magicians and I feel like that is a much more successful attempt at pulling off the whole "all of my characters are unlikeable toxic pieces of poo poo" style of writing while still keeping them somewhat relatable and interesting to watch.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 14:59 |
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I envy people who get to watch the Magicians for the first time. Just an amazing transition from "eh, it's on" to "I will die for these mumbly twenty-somethings."
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 15:05 |
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:Season one of "Salvation" is worse. From the "Elon Musk, but attractive" male lead to the "Donald Rumsfeld, but attractive, has plenty of time to leave the office and solve mysteries" to the Q is real and good and will help the secret president take back rightful office" you might forget that the premise involves a planet killing asteroid. I gave it a try but it far overshot "so bad it's good" and circled back to "no it's actually just bad"
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 15:38 |
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Once, just once, I want to be watching a show where most of the cast is killed off in the 4th or 5th episode and it doesn't turn out to be just a dream.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 17:21 |
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drrockso20 posted:That's cause they're all Stratemeyer Syndicate properties I mean it makes sense on that level. It just feels weird.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 17:29 |
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sad question posted:Just finished Giri/Haji on Netflix. Phenomenal show all around. Great mix of yakuza crime story and family drama. I loved this too. I like that it wasn't just fish-out-of-water situations but really felt like good attempts at Japanese crime and brit cop dramas combined into one series, and I remember there being some cool almost fantastical interludes too. Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:I envy people who get to watch the Magicians for the first time. Just an amazing transition from "eh, it's on" to "I will die for these mumbly twenty-somethings." When is this supposed to happen? I'm a few eps into S2.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 19:57 |
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Looten Plunder posted:"I am Uthred son of Uthred" I am OOT RED son of OOT RED
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 20:11 |
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I've been making my way through Portrait Artist of the Year which is just an incredibly cool british competition show where each episode, artists paint portraits of 3 different celebrity/famous sitters/guests. Kind of hard to find, but some seasons are on Youtube. Worth it! It makes me want to paint!
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 21:44 |
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BetterLekNextTime posted:
They start really going off the books at the end of season 2 and things are about to pop off. Look for the new tone to really take off once Elliot starts singing.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 22:15 |
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:They start really going off the books at the end of season 2 and things are about to pop off. Look for the new tone to really take off once Elliot starts singing. Although I fast forwarded through the song because I hate musical numbers presented in that style, it was around mid-season 2 where I started to actually like some of the characters. Mostly Julia and Margot. Penny can gently caress right off with his constant emo "I'm so above everything you're all doing" poo poo. Gets really old. I'm midway through S3 now and a certain thing happened to that character which I'm hoping starts them on an arc that fixes this. (No plot spoilers here, just character ones.)
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 22:29 |
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On the back half of season 2 the Quentin and friends show starts morphing into the full ensemble and the show is massively better for it.
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 01:04 |
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Cool, I'll keep going then.
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 01:14 |
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Cactus posted:I'm midway through S3 now and a certain thing happened to that character which I'm hoping starts them on an arc that fixes this. Uhh. Don't get your hopes up. Pretty much everything to do with the Underworld Library ends up as a dropped plot point. Season Four drops a loooot of balls. Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Feb 25, 2021 |
# ? Feb 25, 2021 04:03 |
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nwin posted:How would people rank the seasons you think? Curious if 4 is worse than 3 or not. I think 4 was the worst season of Fargo, but still decent. IMO 3 is slow to get out of the gate but I ended up really enjoying it.
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 08:20 |
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Cactus posted:Once, just once, I want to be watching a show where most of the cast is killed off in the 4th or 5th episode and it doesn't turn out to be just a dream. I only watched the first season or two but The 100 was just killing off major characters constantly when I fell off with it.
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 08:23 |
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Open Source Idiom posted:Uhh. Don't get your hopes up. Pretty much everything to do with the Underworld Library ends up as a dropped plot point. Oh well. Trig Discipline posted:I only watched the first season or two but The 100 was just killing off major characters constantly when I fell off with it. Yeah that was one of the better shows for that. I was actually refering to when shows do that thing where there's an extended sequence that takes up anything from a third of an episode to almost the whole episode where they have something catastrophic and unexpected happen that takes out 90+% of the main cast, and the whole time I'm always thinking ok, this is a dream or a holodeck simulation or something, there's no way this just happened for real - and sure enough after a while you get the reveal that none of what you just saw actually happened due to whatever sci-fi conceit. Another life just did it, which prompted me to post about it. Other examples I can think of are Stargate Universe, Star trek Voyager, The Orville... Dark Matter I think did it, probably Stargate, probably Farscape (I can't remember for sure that far back which means they're probably overdue for rewatches) - basically most of the long-ish running sci-fi shows have used this trope. It's annoying because as soon as it twigs that what you're seeing can't be real it sucks all of the tension out of watching because you're just waiting for the fakeout to end, which can sometimes take half an hour or more. Does a show exist where they've done one of those episodes and the Big Twist is actually no, you're wrong, this actually did happen? The big "it was all a dream/parallel timeline/simulation" reveal is not coming? Yes, you just saw 90% of the main cast die in one random mid-season episode; dead-forever you saw the open-eyed bodies, they're not coming back! Deal with it. I can't think of one and I wouldn't even want to be robbed of the shock of ever watching it by having the answer revealed if such a show exists. Red Wedding is not what I would consider an example of what I'm talking about but it probably came the closest to giving you the same feeling of shock you would get.
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 09:58 |
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I assume we're counting out shows that kill large portions of their casts over consecutive episodes, 1-by-1 style, so not Heathers, Van Helsinki, Mr. Robot, etc. ? Or shows with multiple deaths as part of their season (or series) climax or season opener (e.g. Game Of Thrones, Lost, Defiance)? Then, the only one that I can think of that gets close is Love My Way, an Australian drama about a divorced couple that shares their kid between their two new families. They kill the kid, randomly, halfway through an episode in the middle of the first season. It doesn't count as an example that kills off many cast members, but it's 20% of the cast, completely unanticipated by the plot of the season or even the episode, and a kid, so I think it counts. It's a very good show.
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 11:22 |
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Cactus posted:Oh well. One example of this that I thought of while reading this was an episode of the old British cop serial The Bill where one of the officers accidentally triggered a massive explosion at the police station while a going-away party was happening for one staff member who was transferring, and about 7 main characters were killed in a matter of seconds with at least 2 more dying in the hospital 2 episodes later.
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 11:22 |
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Open Source Idiom posted:I assume we're counting out shows that kill large portions of their casts over consecutive episodes, 1-by-1 style, so not Heathers, Van Helsinki, Mr. Robot, etc. ? Sounds to me like they had issues with the kid's actor(or more likely their parents) and just chose to get rid of them as soon as they could
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 11:42 |
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drrockso20 posted:Sounds to me like they had issues with the kid's actor(or more likely their parents) and just chose to get rid of them as soon as they could Maybe, but I dunno. It completely changed the course of the show, in a way that made it clear that it was an essential beat of the show theywere telling. The show becomes quite an effective show about mourning the loss of a child. Also the kid comes back for a few appearances.
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 11:47 |
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Open Source Idiom posted:Maybe, but I dunno. It completely changed the course of the show, in a way that made it clear that it was an essential beat of the show theywere telling. The show becomes quite an effective show about mourning the loss of a child. Also the kid comes back for a few appearances. Well I was leaning on the likely Doylist reason they went that path, certainly commendable on their end to make good storytelling out of something that on a lesser show would be a cheesy and tasteless marketing stunt
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 11:53 |
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Wanted to put together a COVID binge list (in order, starts from March 2020). Only includes stuff I binged, not episodes that come out weekly like the latest season of The Expanse so I just skipped those shows. Completed: Letterkenny Tiger King Devs Silicon Valley The Last Dance The Haunting of Hill House The IT Crowd Greatest Events of World War II In Colour Narcos: Mexico The Leftovers Unbelievable Indian Matchmaking Homecoming The Handmaid's Tale Watchmen The Haunting of Bly Manor The Looming Tower Code-Switched Evil The Queen's Gambit The Terror (Season 1) Small Axe Animaniacs (new series) The Witcher Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Tim and Eric's Bedtime Stories How To with John Wilson Pretend It's a City Veep The Earliest Show Curb Your Enthusiasm Entourage + movie Eastbound & Down Deadwood + movie Godless Currently binging: Six Feet Under (on season 1) On Deck: Peaky Blinders The Knick The Flight Attendant Avenue 5 30 Coins Lovecraft Country Warrior Succession Industry I was also considering adding Justified as I've heard good things. How's the pacing on that show?
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 16:42 |
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The Drew Carey show, seeing if its everything I remember from the original broadcast. Loved that show, lets see if it aged well.
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 16:50 |
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Assuming you haven't seen them, based on your list I think you'll like these: - Undone - Upload - The Great - The Act - Search Party - The Americans - Halt And Catch Fire - The Knick - Jett - The Good Fight And any of the TV classic shows, e.g. Deadwood, The Wire, The Sopranos, Girls, etc.
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 17:46 |
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Recently started rewatching Ally McBeal to see if it’s as funny as it was when I was 10. It mostly holds up, although one S1 episode featuring a trans prostitute played by the doctor from Star Trek Discovery has aged like loving milk.
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 17:51 |
Ginny and Georgia is a really fun and clever show. Only three episodes in, but I'm super hooked and all the characters are very interesting and seem to have some serious depth.
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 18:41 |
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Poo In An Alleyway posted:One example of this that I thought of while reading this was an episode of the old British cop serial The Bill where one of the officers accidentally triggered a massive explosion at the police station while a going-away party was happening for one staff member who was transferring, and about 7 main characters were killed in a matter of seconds with at least 2 more dying in the hospital 2 episodes later. Holy poo poo I forgot about that. In addition to the explosion and transfers I think a few characters also committed suicide in that same season as well, it was like a hosed up mass exodus. That was right around when I started watching it too
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 20:22 |
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Cactus posted:Does a show exist where they've done one of those episodes and the Big Twist is actually no, you're wrong, this actually did happen? The big "it was all a dream/parallel timeline/simulation" reveal is not coming? Yes, you just saw 90% of the main cast die in one random mid-season episode; dead-forever you saw the open-eyed bodies, they're not coming back! Deal with it. I can't think of one and I wouldn't even want to be robbed of the shock of ever watching it by having the answer revealed if such a show exists. Not with big deaths so much, but to an extent Fringe did something similar with its reality-bending premise. Their format changes about once per season, and they don't look back. Even when main characters try to change things "back", or when you get a different version of the same thing, it never actually returns to a status quo. That's a show I started out not liking at first, but then ended up loving because it made some really bold choices and really rewarded long-time viewers who stuck it out.
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# ? Feb 25, 2021 22:45 |
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Poo In An Alleyway posted:One example of this that I thought of while reading this was an episode of the old British cop serial The Bill where one of the officers accidentally triggered a massive explosion at the police station while a going-away party was happening for one staff member who was transferring, and about 7 main characters were killed in a matter of seconds with at least 2 more dying in the hospital 2 episodes later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_IrZew437s Starts at 16min. Pablo Bluth fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Feb 26, 2021 |
# ? Feb 26, 2021 00:08 |
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Pablo Bluth posted:Not quite on the same numerical scale of killing characters, but the British soap Emmerdale did a plane crash. It was apparently facing the axe with it's gentle rural plotlines not winning over the audience. gently caress this just reminded me of the episode of yet another British programme called Bad Girls where a prisoner trying to escape the prison blew it the gently caress up which trapped a bunch of the prisoners in I think either the library or the chapel of the prison, and over the course of the hour about 5 of the prisoners either burned to death or died from smoke inhalation before firefighters could get to them. E: https://youtu.be/l56i9GLLQRQ Skip to 3:40 (the clip cuts off just before the stoned one with the spiky hair burns alive) HOLY gently caress posted:Holy poo poo I forgot about that. In addition to the explosion and transfers I think a few characters also committed suicide in that same season as well, it was like a hosed up mass exodus. That was right around when I started watching it too I’m gonna say it, you picked an absolutely awful time to start watching that show, because IIRC only a couple episodes before the explosion, an officer they’d only just introduced got knifed in the loving throat while he was putting the moves on a woman he’d pulled over for running a red light and he bled to death on the road in another officer’s arms. Poo In An Alleyway fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Feb 26, 2021 |
# ? Feb 26, 2021 01:13 |
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Pablo Bluth posted:Not quite on the same numerical scale of killing characters, but the British soap Emmerdale did a plane crash. It was apparently facing the axe with it's gentle rural plotlines not winning over the audience. Ha yes I was going to mention that, I remember it being literally national news at the time even though I didn't watch the show. Like, I know the reason why shows pretty much never do the thing I was describing is the reality of actors' seasonal contracts and the amount of money it would take to completely replace the cast just for the sake of a bold story-telling decision, not to mention how risk-averse studio execs are who don't know anything about anything except for the stat sheets from focus groups they stare at all day when they're not in shareholder meetings. So, given that reality that we the audience are all aware of, I wish shows would stop wasting up-to-entire episodes dedicated to a fakeout that we all know is a fakeout from a few minutes in after a critical mass of main cast members have dropped. Even the magicians did it in the first season but that wasn't so bad because the whole sequence was only about 5 minutes. Still, halfway through it I was waiting for the reveal of how this was all going to be fake it was a "probability spell" and they were casting it to go through the optional scenarios.
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# ? Feb 26, 2021 02:20 |
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A great series for killing off characters was the BBC's Spooks. They killed off one of the main characters in the second ever episode and from then on you really couldn't count on anyone making it to the end of the season. No charatcer or actor was too big named to die.
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# ? Feb 26, 2021 15:28 |
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Just finished binging The Travelers. I really enjoyed it, but it felt like a real throwback. Not in a bad way at all, but it felt like something that could have aired after the X-Files. Probably could have done with less of the story arc though. Felt like it shined more in the one-offs.
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# ? Feb 27, 2021 04:27 |
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# ? Apr 25, 2024 12:53 |
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Pablo Bluth posted:A great series for killing off characters was the BBC's Spooks. They killed off one of the main characters in the second ever episode and from then on you really couldn't count on anyone making it to the end of the season. No charatcer or actor was too big named to die. Does someone really count as a main character if they die that early?
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# ? Feb 27, 2021 04:38 |