|
Just finished binging The Knick season 1. What a gorgeous show, beautifully shot. Not sure how I missed this show back in 2015.
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 05:23 |
|
|
# ? Apr 17, 2024 22:51 |
|
drrockso20 posted:Does someone really count as a main character if they die that early? Probably not. She's also barely in the show's first episode. Spooks certainly did kill off an awful lot of cast members, but usually only during season openers or climaxes, which I figure isn't what you're looking for here. Otherwise you could include shows like Being Human or Misfits, shows which removed or killed their entire casts over a protracted period of time. But there aren't any mid-season casual massacres on any of these shows.
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 05:52 |
|
A Law and Order clip channel got into my youtube recommends so I spent the 5 bucks on Peacock and started binging it as background noise. The first season on the service is S13, from 2002, and holy poo poo it is WEIRD. The amount of hyper-right-wing rhetoric getting thrown around on this show is kind of shocking, but what makes it weird rather than offensive is how the show frames a lot of it. The Law and Order style is so documentarian that its really hard to get a read on how you're supposed to feel about these statements in terms of narrative framing, so you have to go off the character's reactions and comments to them, and the characters are borderline cyphers, not because they don't have their own beliefs, but because they're constantly devils advocating and positing extreme examples then hedging back from them or even making comments that prompt direct confrontations only to leave their answer hanging rather than confirm or deny their ultimate position. And that's not even getting into the defense lawyers, and how throughout the season they have a habit of raising the most insane defenses based on ripping open societal wounds to get the jury to nullify or succeed as an affirmative defense. Sometimes based on extreme right-wing positions on race, Islam, Israel, Christianity, drugs and white grievance, sometimes based on extreme left-wing positions on racial justice, anti-Iraq sentiment, mental health, and the horrors of homelessness, but almost always once its over there's a scene where they basically come out and say "Well, don't worry, I don't really believe the argument I'm making, except for this one specific part or in a less obviously extreme form." And sometimes they'll just say literally anything if they think the Jury will buy it because ADVERSARIAL SYSTEM GAMESMANSHIP, CHASE THE WIN! The best way I can describe it is Aggressive Centrism. Its so in your face about Both Sides Are Right And Both Sides Are Wrong So We Need To Accept The Status Quo And Take Every Single Situation Case By Case its almost stunning. Like, people talk about The West Wing poisoning American politics for a generation, but if you want a culprit for how a lot of people in our society operate and/or think about the government and how its supposed to work, look no further than Law and Order. I find myself wondering, is this Dick Wolf soap-boxing his own beliefs through ripped in the headlines storytelling, is this an accurate time capsule of Giuliani's New York post-9/11, or is it somewhere in the middle? I can't say I'm not entertained though. The dialogue is snappy and the actors deliver is very well, even when its horrific. Lenny Briscoe, Ed Greene and Jack McCoy are just as great as I remembered and are injected with so much likability, humanity and sympathy that you can't help but like them and see them as people trying to be good and do right even if they're flawed. Even DA Arthur Branch, as insufferable a racist bible-thumping dog-whistling Vintage Bush Republican he is and how many Vietnam flashbacks he gives me to the horror show of the 00s is hard to hate thanks to the quality of the dialogue writing.
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 09:01 |
|
drrockso20 posted:Does someone really count as a main character if they die that early?
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 11:31 |
|
Being Human UK. Such a gorgeously written show, wonderful, clever, emotional dialogue in that greqt slightly stagey, slightly naturalistic kitchen sink drama tradition. It's absolutely destined to be one of those forgotten television shows, probably remembered largely because a lot of its cast became very reputable character actors. But it's a favourite. My god though, the loving eagle strike noise this show does every time the vampires get angry is the campiest poo poo. Pablo Bluth posted:Strictly speaking, I guess not, but with the right combo of casting a big name and promotional framing, you can certainly setup the expectation that someone isn't a redshirt. It's also the sheer brutality and pointlessness of it all. It's an episode about Catholics who bomb abortion clinics or something equally banal, and a weird throwback to a time when these were the kinds of topical issues MI5 could be convincingly seen dealing with on screen.
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 14:27 |
|
Just finished Fargo season 4. I liked it alright. Haven't seen season 3, is it worth a try?
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 16:01 |
|
Most Extreme Elimination Challenge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jeZwUP6fu0
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 16:35 |
|
knox posted:Most Extreme Elimination Challenge I can watch and enjoy it in the mindset of "it's a product of its time", for the same reason I can watch 40's and 50's Looney Tunes shorts that come off as horribly racist today - they weren't okay then either, but the world was different. Just be aware if you haven't seen MXC before. Or just watch Takeshi's Castle untranslated, which is (sort of) the same show with different editing.
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 17:49 |
|
drrockso20 posted:Does someone really count as a main character if they die that early? In Night Court the original love interest late in the first season came to work sick as the B plot. Then the next week was off sick and the plot was about her substitute. Then she never came back. When I rewatched the show a few years back I got to joking about how they killed her off and never talked about it. I only learned later that it was because Karen Austin got Bell's Palsy so they sidelined her for the rest of the season, then never brought her back. While mostly keeping it out of the press, kinda shittily. Of course they did have the first two female bailiffs die because their actors did, both of lung cancer I think. Seems most of the cast changes on that show were medical-related. None of this is really relevant to shows killing characters off for plot reasons, I just like Night Court.
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 18:04 |
|
Night Court is top-tier 80s sitcom. And I always forget that Harry Anderson had passed on and I get sad every time I remember it.
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 18:39 |
|
Open Source Idiom posted:Probably not. No, I'm specifically talking about random mid-season episodes like for example The Orville S01E10: Firestorm, or Stargate Universe S01E08: Time, or Star Trek Voyager: Year of Hell, or the episode of Another Life that prompted me to discuss this, Ep 4: Guilt trip. Most of the way through these episodes I'm thinking there's no way this is a) really happening, or b) if it is, it's all getting reversed or undone in some way because too many people have died, and it gives a sense of pointlessness and that my time is being wasted (well, even more than it already is watching all these lovely shows lol.) So yeah, just once in my life I'd love to be taken by surprise by one of these types of episodes and be sitting there rolling my eyes every time another huge character death happens, waiting for someone to wake up or for the big technobabble maguffin to reset it all.... and it doesn't. It just sticks with it and goes from there.
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 18:44 |
|
I started watching through Law & Order SVU since it gets referenced a lot. Perfect show to have on while I work. Some of these episodes are really damned good too, like the piano teacher one I just watched at the end of S1. Super excited to get to S2 and Ice-T
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 19:00 |
|
Collateral posted:Watching Colony. A little bit of both. I thought what they had worked for an ending.
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 19:57 |
|
Aardvark! posted:I started watching through Law & Order SVU since it gets referenced a lot. Perfect show to have on while I work. Some of these episodes are really damned good too, like the piano teacher one I just watched at the end of S1. It gets both worse and better at the same time as the seasons go on.
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 20:07 |
|
Aardvark! posted:I started watching through Law & Order SVU since it gets referenced a lot. Perfect show to have on while I work. Some of these episodes are really damned good too, like the piano teacher one I just watched at the end of S1. SVU is a fun show when it A) doesn't have a lovely downer ending that ruins an otherwise great episode and B) doesn't get bogged down by crappy courtroom scenes(cause as good as they are at making the Detective characters compelling to watch, they are horrid at doing the same with any lawyer characters or many of the judges) Which means watching SVU is kinda the TV equivalent of playing Russian Roulette as sometimes you'll get an excellent episode, sometimes you get a boring slog of an episode, and sometimes you get an episode that seems like it'll be in the first category and then shits itself in the last five minutes and just leaves you mad for the rest of the day for wasting your time and insulting your intelligence
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 21:07 |
|
already seen examples of all of that in the first season so yup I get that. I also love the dumbest poo poo the detectives find that the crime scene guys somehow missed. Olivia walking 4 feet down a hill from the scene of the crime and finding a book just lying there that nobody spotted. Or telling the M.E. to check under the victim's tongue.
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 21:15 |
|
drrockso20 posted:SVU is a fun show when it A) doesn't have a lovely downer ending that ruins an otherwise great episode the worst ending in the series is when they receive a phone call saying that this young Hispanic kid who accidentally shot a young black girl at school when he was aiming at a drug dealer who was threatening to kill him was suddenly murdered by a young black kid as revenge because he wasn’t convicted.
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 21:27 |
|
The whole point of SVU is "law and order but extreme emotional manipulation of the viewer so it feels more serious." Also, it's just a game of musical chairs with the suspects until the time runs out. The explanations are never the slightest bit memorable or interesting, but it seems like it tries to somehow present itself as more realistic than other cop shoes in a way to obfuscate this fact. mystes fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Feb 27, 2021 |
# ? Feb 27, 2021 21:29 |
|
My problem with SVU is that even when I was a dumb teenager I could tell that Stabler was a horrible rights-abusing law-breaking psychopath driven by personal demons who cared more about hurting criminals than anything resembling justice and who had no business being a police officer, that everyone with authority over him was protecting and enabling him because he's good at helping them get arrests and convictions with his criminal behavior, and that he was actively teaching Olivia to be just like him and she gets progressively more lovely as a human being and cop as the series goes on. With how things are now and how I've changed in this area, watching normal Law and Order is hard enough, andthere the cops generally don't do anything blatantly illegal in the course of their duties. I imagine trying to watch SVU would be like pulling teeth. Chris Meloni is a very compelling on-screen presence and his performance really brings the character to life and injects him with a lot of nuance and sympathy but also never totally absolves him of the bad things he does, but I can't say the actual writing of the show does the same. Its hard to deal with the show de facto holding him up as a hero, especially when you have The Shield as a contemporary unafraid to say "Yes, in fact this criminal cop is a bad person no matter how much theoretical good is coming from his crimes and he should be stopped." If the show had just been about Munch and Finn it would have been a much more enjoyable experience.
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 21:33 |
|
I've been watching NYPD Blue clips on YouTube, probably going to gear up for a full watch as i was pretty young when it started and i missed most of the first season and a lot of the last two years. Cop shows used to be so good.
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 21:36 |
|
Rhyno posted:
Preach
|
# ? Feb 27, 2021 22:33 |
|
On a whim watched Behind Her Eyes on Netflix, sucked in by the quietly intense preview clip, and enjoyed it. Even if it does wind up falling into some Rather Problematic Tropes at the end. Without spoiling anything specific, I've seen reviews saying that the ending came out of nowhere and I absolutely disagree, those people just thought they were watching a different type of show but it was incredibly obvious from the beginning that something supernatural was happening. I won't say more even under tags because there are kind of a lot of twists and it's more fun not to know them.
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 03:07 |
|
anatomi posted:Just finished Fargo season 4. I liked it alright. Haven't seen season 3, is it worth a try?
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 03:26 |
|
I've been hate watching Good Girls. I only have a few more episodes and then I'll be free of this curse the show has left on me (at least until there's a fourth season). This show isn't "so bad it's good", it's a car crash I can't look away from for some unknown reason. This is obviously attempting to be the female version of Breaking Bad, and to make it even more insulting it actually straight up plagiarizes Breaking Bad's dialogue just replacing meth stuff with money counterfeiting (lol). I guess they think they can get away with it because,as we all know, no women watch Breaking Bad, hence the need for a female version. I really enjoy stories where characters find themselves over their heads in some criminal plot, but this show has zero logic and zero likable characters. I'll be watching the show feeling like I have to yell at the screen, imagining how scenes could have been changed slightly to make the show just a tiny bit more believable. The show meanwhile emphasizes that these women are good at their criminal enterprise, even though all we see is just them loving up everything but there being no consequences due to some deus ex machina. Good Girls was created by Jenna Bans, who was the head writer on Desperate Housewives (probably in my top 5 shows of all time) so I actually expected to like this show before I started watching it. Somehow this show manages to be less funny than Desperate Housewives, but also less subversive even though its trying very hard to be a "dark comedy". Also, is Christina Hendricks actually good in other things or do people just like her because she has big boobs? I feel like it's the latter from watching this.
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 06:02 |
|
Just finished up The Knick. Fantastic show, highly recommend to anyone. I'd love to see a season 3 if they can keep the same writers and director.
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 06:10 |
|
I just want to thank the general gooncensus for the Knick. I 100% never would have watched it. Three episodes in with my spouse and we are loving it. Just a great show.
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 06:39 |
|
Open Source Idiom posted:Assuming you haven't seen them, based on your list I think you'll like these: Holy poo poo I've been watching this and it's so good. I'd never even heard of it until now but it's one of those gems I discover in threads like this one and wonder how have I not heard of this yet? Imagine if Mike from Breaking Bad/Call Saul and Amos from the Expanse somehow had a baby girl. That baby girl would grow up to be Jett. It's a really sharp heist show with nods to stuff like Breaking Bad, Lock Stock and 2 smoking barrels, Oceans 11 etc. Also Giancarlo Eposito is in it and plays a much warmer more charismatic version of the underworld boss character he likes to play than I've seen him do before.
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 07:39 |
|
Cactus posted:Holy poo poo I've been watching this and it's so good. They've got a new show on the way too, similar cast. https://www.google.com/amp/s/deadline.com/2021/02/carla-gugino-series-leopard-skin-agc-television-1234689942/amp/
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 08:26 |
|
Been watching Batman: The Brave and the Bold recently. It’s like every Silver Age Batman comic animated, though the first two seasons pretend that Superman and Wonder Woman don’t exist. Some real deep cuts there. One annoyance: it’s very much a Boy’s Club, women don’t get much to do in the show and they all look cribbed from Bruce Timm’s pinup book. Still, they did The Rainbow Batman and Bat-Mite is voiced by Paul Reubens, so I’m glad it existed.
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 10:27 |
|
Open Source Idiom posted:They've got a new show on the way too, similar cast. I'll be keeping an eye out for that. Just finished Jett and there'd better be a second season.
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 13:17 |
|
Just got done watching Mayans MC. I went into this with pretty low expectations, figuring it would just pick up where SOA left off in terms of gratuitous violence and vulgarity. The first episode certainly gives the impression it's just gonna be Sons Redux (over the top shootout, dead parent plot, some Tig esque jokes), but it quickly sheds that and gets a lot better as it goes on. I actually caught the first episode around the time it aired and decided to pass on it for awhile before coming back to it because it gave late SOA vibes so hard. I'd actually say that it's miles ahead of Sons of Anarchy, not that that's saying very much, especially taking into account those last couple of seasons. Season two kinda went down in quality at first but it quickly picked back up, and I'm actually excited to see where the story goes in a few weeks. First off, I'm gonna say what I love about it, spoiler marking because I'm gonna discuss the plot and references to SOA's ending. I absolutely love that they concluded the arc the story started with in only two seasons. The whole first season establishes what's going on with EZ's backstory through bite sized flash backs, and ends with him discovering who killed his mother. Season two is all about the pursuit of that person, but it doesn't end there because EZ wants the why as well. The why turns out to go even higher, and not long after EZ discovers who ordered it, he kills them. All this happens in 20 episodes; it took SOA four loving seasons for Jax to even discover what would kick off his revenge plot, it took another two for him to partially fulfill it, and then it was pretty much forgotten in favor of another thing in the last one. No matter how the rest of this show goes, it's already better for that fact alone. A plot was introduced and wrapped up satisfactorily without dragging out. Additionally, the conclusion does end with an over the top shooting, but there was an actual purpose for it. Sure, it was only built up for a few episodes, but the reason they had wasn't some flimsy gun running betrayal plot. It DID involve the gun running and betrayal, but there was a weight to its occurrence and real consequences are set up for it. It wasn't something done to wrap up some loose end nobody cares about, the guys did this for a real purpose. If anything, more plots are going to spring from it, thus giving it a good reason to keep going past the main plot coming to an end. All that being said, there are some downsides. As I said earlier, it does have an over the top shootout in the beginning, and there are a few throughout the two seasons, but I figure at this point it's just gonna come with the territory of being a Sutter show. But I will say, at least they make an effort to keep the shootings from being so one sided. Obviously you know none of the important characters are gonna die, but there is at least the illusion of tension... for the most part. Sometimes it drifts into SOA territory, where the characters are all crack shots and don't need any cover, but it's a lot rarer than I anticipated at least. And it at least makes a bit more sense for some of these guys to be such good shots, since its explicitly stated a lot of these guys had military experience; it doesn't make up for it by any means, but there is some actual effort into explaining it instead of just dismissing it as a fact, and that goes a long way. One more thing that's semi related that was sort of shocking to me considering one of the guys at the helm, a lot of the more gruesome violence actually takes place off screen a lot of the time, which in my opinion always makes it all the more effective. The club members also aren't really that well developed. There are nine in the beginning, including EZ, and I'd say I have a good feel for about four of them as of the end of season two. One of them dies at the conclusion of season two and honestly, I could not give less of a gently caress, and this dude was in the opening credits for some reason. But at least his death seems to have an effect; the above mentioned ending shootout and the character who killed him seems to be effected by it and actually mourning, though whether that will continue on remains to be seen. But I'm okay with it because there are some tiny characteristics to them that give them some sense of identity. None of them are to the level of Chibs, Bobby, Tig or Juice, but they aren't generic blank slates like some of the guys who came around in the later seasons of Sons. On that note, one of those generic red shirts seems like he'll have some importance in this show, and in fact he already has done more in this than he ever did in SOA. But on another positive, characters outside of the club are well rounded, and not just main ones. Just as one example, EZ's family stuff is much better than Teller family drama (it helps that EZ and Angel's father is played by the always amazing Edward James Olmos). These characters were made likeable and compelling from the start, not introduced as assholes you're gonna have to put up with 90+ episodes just because. But they're also flawed, and their flawed actions aren't held up like some awesome thing either just because you've come to know them. EZ is also much more likable than Jax, and part of that likability comes from him not being some invincible superhero who never makes a bad call and whose rear end we have to see every ten minutes. Which actually brings me to another good point, the show isn't at all over the top with its sexual content. It's there every now and then but it has yet to touch anything shown on the last show. All of this and some other things are just further proof of that theory posited back on the old SOA thread, which is that Sutter's actually a pretty decent writer, he just needs someone there to reign in his crazier ideas, like in the early SOA years and when he was a writer for The Shield. He got fired from this show after season two, so how much of his style will be around and how Elgin James will handle heading it by himself remains to be seen, but it sort of gives me hope it won't go on too long. Much as I enjoy this, I can't see it going on and still being as good past another couple of seasons. Maybe, maybe it can go up to five seasons. All in all, I'd say it's worth a watch, and if you avoided SOA, you can watch this and still enjoy it, though you'll miss some wink wink nudge nudge moments, but trust me, you're not missing much with those. JaddaCaddra fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Feb 28, 2021 |
# ? Feb 28, 2021 13:50 |
|
Cactus posted:I'll be keeping an eye out for that. According to Wikipedia (I know): "The drama ended with only 1 season and 9 episodes." I had this in my queue to watch -- does the season finale work okay as a series finale?
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 15:19 |
|
WhiteHowler posted:According to Wikipedia (I know): "The drama ended with only 1 season and 9 episodes." It ends on a not exactly cliffhanger but in the last episode something bad happens which was clearly supposed to be setup for the next season. Other than that though the main story concludes. Edit: Cinemax won't be continuing it but the showrunners are looking for a new home for a season 2. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Amazon or Netflix pick it up, given the quality. I'm going to recommend it to everyone I can. Cactus fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Feb 28, 2021 |
# ? Feb 28, 2021 15:32 |
|
VinylonUnderground posted:I just want to thank the general gooncensus for the Knick. I 100% never would have watched it. Three episodes in with my spouse and we are loving it. Just a great show. I watched this having no idea what it was or never heard of it before just because Clive Owen was in it and I mostly like his movies. It was a drat good show.
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 16:02 |
|
Sanguinia posted:My problem with SVU is that even when I was a dumb teenager I could tell that Stabler was a horrible rights-abusing law-breaking psychopath driven by personal demons who cared more about hurting criminals than anything resembling justice and who had no business being a police officer, that everyone with authority over him was protecting and enabling him because he's good at helping them get arrests and convictions with his criminal behavior, and that he was actively teaching Olivia to be just like him and she gets progressively more lovely as a human being and cop as the series goes on. With how things are now and how I've changed in this area, watching normal Law and Order is hard enough, andthere the cops generally don't do anything blatantly illegal in the course of their duties. I imagine trying to watch SVU would be like pulling teeth. Believe me Stabler is a dick but I love the character.
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 17:26 |
|
Fighting Elegy posted:
She is fantastic in Mad Men.
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 19:49 |
|
Most nerds are obsessed with her because she was on that fuckin Whedon show.
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 19:53 |
|
We finished Jack Irish (the 3 short movies and the 2 series). Guy Pearce is a lawyer/investigator with a funny cast of friends. There's some action and mostly not gratuitous violence but the main character is mainly on the receiving end. The mysteries unfold over enough time to be somewhat interesting. I'm psyched that there may be an S3 coming out this year. I also made it more or less through the first five seasons of Bones. We started S6 but I just don't know if I can keep going. The formula is wearing on me a bit. Maybe I'll skip ahead a season or two.
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 20:28 |
|
Aw come on, Good Girls isn't that bad. We've talked about some truly terrible shows the last few pages and I wouldn't put Good Girls in amongst those. I mean, having Mae Whitman in your show automatically elevates it above poo poo-tier before anything else gets taken into consideration.
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 23:17 |
|
|
# ? Apr 17, 2024 22:51 |
|
Cactus posted:Aw come on, Good Girls isn't that bad. We've talked about some truly terrible shows the last few pages and I wouldn't put Good Girls in amongst those. I mean, having Mae Whitman in your show automatically elevates it above poo poo-tier before anything else gets taken into consideration. Yeah, I only watched the first season I think but it just felt like an ok network offering that, depending on the night, could very well be the top one or two show in it's time slot. I didn't find it aggressively bad, but just missing enough that it wasn't terribly exciting.
|
# ? Feb 28, 2021 23:44 |