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Haven't watched any Adult Swim in over a year I think, but I'm currently on my third run through Frisky Dingo. It's got a lot of the Williams Street stoner absurdism of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, but for some reason it feels like 30% less dumb. (Maybe it's just Killface's British accent.) And the Arrested Development-esque densely layered snowballing jokes make repeat viewings more rewarding. I thought the final five episodes were missing a little something but it's a shame this will never get a proper ending.
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Jun 8, 2009 19:35
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Mitthrawnuruodo posted:Speaking of Entourage, I watched the pilot of that, and it seemed interesting but moved way too fast for me to get a sense of who anybody was. Should I watch it again more closely or keep going and pick it up? It's not really a... complicated series that you'll need to rewatch to understand. The pretty boy actor gets laid, his older brother acts like a vain pussy, the fat guy smokes weed, his agent acts like a dick and the short guy acts like a dick without the agent's charisma. That's every episode of Entourage.
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Jun 9, 2009 02:56
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Of course, waiting until Lost is over means you run the risk of having the many major twists that provide much of the fun of the show inadvertently spoiled by friends or just by cultural osmosis before you get around to watching it, so consider that.
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Aug 7, 2009 20:13
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Dark Weasel posted:Kind of clueless as to what to watch now. For running series I'd suggest Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy, or for a completed show, The Shield. All are good counterexamples to the "each season is worse than the last" thing that you mentioned with Dexter. My recent binge has been Kids in the Hall. If you enjoyed the reruns that used to play on Comedy Central, I recommend you seek out the complete series because I thought I'd seen a lot of it but there was a ton of good material I missed -- stuff was often cut from the original Canadian versions to meet American standards. KICK BAMA KICK fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Jan 4, 2010 |
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Jan 4, 2010 04:57
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butros posted:Guys, I really want to like Mad Men - I'm three episode into season one and have yet to really be grabbed. It's a really slow build and the payoffs are more often of the subtle character revelation variety than crazy poo poo happening. At times it makes even The Wire look like 24 in terms of pacing, but most people who stick with it find it very worthwhile. It's not for everybody (and I think you should feel free to conclude it's not your thing without getting derided as some sort of philistine) but three episodes just isn't enough to judge this kind of show yet.
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Jan 7, 2010 05:08
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A few weeks ago this thread (I think) was talking about how you don't need any actual football knowledge to enjoy Friday Night Lights. I just finished the pilot, and as a football fan, I was a little disappointed with the way the climax of the game played out. There appears to be a huge disagreement in field position between the final two plays, like no one bothered to pay any attention to where they set up the line of scrimmage between takes. And the touchdown pass is pretty absurd. The (backup!) QB has time to fall down, get up, scramble backwards 15 yards and pump fake, then hits a receiver who's only at the 30 yet wide open and behind what should be a prevent defense. Not the kind of thing that'll stop me from enjoying the show but I was hoping they'd at least attempt to do the details better than a typical Hollywood treatment of sports. Does the football get more realistic later?
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Jan 29, 2010 12:09
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I feel obligated to chime in that I thought the latter half of Season 7 of The Shield was by far the most well-executed ending to any quality drama I've ever watched -- and I don't think my opinion is an outlier. I can understand some impatience with Season 6 and the beginning of 7 but eventually it pretty much all pays off with some of the most riveting stuff in the history of the medium. And the person who's stuck in Season 2, at least finish the season. The events of the Season 2 finale, together with what happens in the pilot, are the catalyst for everything that follows in the series.
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Feb 20, 2010 19:36
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Vizrt posted:Just watched the first episode of Season 2. I may have considered skipping it, but after the scene near the end with Tyra and Landry, I'm not sure I could without finding out what happens with that plot line. The thing that happened is ridiculous and out of character for the show, but once you get over it and just accept that it happened, the writers and actors handle pretty much everything that follows with the quality you're accustomed to. Tyra and Landry become two of the best characters, and there's also a nice guest performance in this plot from a character actor who improves everything he shows up in.
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Feb 22, 2010 14:03
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Mrens posted:I also powered through all of Nip/Tuck and have decide I'm in love with the 'Family Drama based around unusual professions' Genre, any other recommendations? Big Love, if you haven't seen that. Most recent season was a huge mess but the first three are pretty much the gold standard of unconventional family drama.
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Jul 31, 2010 22:22
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Mitthrawnuruodo posted:I also find the notion that Tony's family don't know about his job a bit tough to swallow. How far in are you? The fourth and fifth episodes of the first season, "Meadowlands" and "College", both deal very explicitly with the extent to which each member of his family is aware of how Tony provides for them. e: I'm about halfway through the first season of The Larry Sanders Show. I'm enjoying it, it's a very likable show, especially the performances of Jeffery Tambor and Rip Torn, but I'm just not finding it that hilarious. A few possibilities: maybe it's just not quite to my taste; maybe it worked better for audiences of its time; or maybe the marked improvement in the quality of TV shows across the board in the last ~15 years due to the proliferation of cable networks creating original series has simply made it seem less impressive to a modern viewer. Like I said, I enjoy it and will continue watching, but it's not having the impact I expected given its reputation. Thoughts? KICK BAMA KICK fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Aug 1, 2010 |
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Aug 1, 2010 00:24
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Judging from the threads here, tastes in comedy are much harder to predict than dramas, so it's probably not very useful for random people to just tell you which of those we like. That being said, of the ones I recognize -- I'm assuming some are British/etc. because I'm not familiar -- I'm almost certain 30 Rock would be quantitatively the most widely recommended. If you are starting at season 1, the first few episodes aren't really that bad but most people agree that it doesn't hit its stride until maybe six or eight episodes in and you might consider that a waste of time on an airplane. It's not big on continuity or serialized plots so you could skip around if you wanted, though you'd probably miss a few callback jokes.
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Aug 31, 2010 02:20
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Mitthrawnuruodo posted:I started watching Lost this week [...] When does it supposedly get poo poo? I don't know that there's much of a consensus. Half the fun of watching Lost while it was still on was arguing about whether it was still any good. I think it's commonly agreed that there are problems in the middle of season 2 and the beginning of season 3 but seasons 4, 5 and 6 each bring major changes that were pretty divisive so your mileage may vary.
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Sep 3, 2010 13:28
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Yates posted:I just started The Wire. How many loving times can motherfuckers say gently caress in one loving episode? Approximately as often as "cocksucker" was used on Deadwood.
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Sep 9, 2010 05:49
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Trig Discipline posted:as opposed to five or six weeks' worth of waiting to get back on track. Even longer. There was a break of like two months after the sixth episode. "Kate, run!" And agreed, I don't think many people consider it a bad season, the first segment was just a little frustrating, compounded by that terrible scheduling move.
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Sep 17, 2010 02:31
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Yomofo posted:I'd like to try something else and I'm torn between 24, Lost, or The Shield. The Shield is among the finest dramas of the last decade or so. The creator of Sons of Anarchy was a producer/writer/(briefly) actor on The Shield; it doesn't have quite the same aesthetic, Sons is a little pulpier but there are definitely similarities. Of the three choices you listed, I think it's the overall best show by a good margin and, like Sons, has a good mix of what you said you're looking for, "action/drama". Lost was a very solid series. It's not in the same "best of TV" class as series like The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Breaking Bad, Mad Men or The Shield but it's definitely among the most ambitious, original things attempted on network TV. However, opinions vary as to how well it ultimately fulfilled its ambitions. Recommended but understand that you may go from loving it to hating it and back again at any given moment throughout its run, as you can probably see if you read any random page of this thread. 24 is a ridiculous thrill ride, nothing more -- it doesn't really attempt to be high-quality drama (and when it does, it fails) but if that's what you're looking for there's nothing better. Another series where it's kind of impossible to predict what parts you'll like, every season seems to have defenders and detractors, aside from 6, which nobody liked at all. The good parts, whichever you decide those are, are turn-your-brain-off TV at its finest.
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Sep 20, 2010 19:20
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Adrianics posted:It was just too over-the-top, I guess is what I'm saying, especially with how well they were building up the Landry/Tyra relatonship near the end of the first series. This is the way I look at it: yes, that incident was severely out of place in this show, but, once you accept that it happened and just go with it, the way they handle that storyline is up to the quality you expect from Friday Night Lights. It doesn't ruin what they were building between those characters; it actually gives Adrianne Palicki and Jesse Plemons a chance to do some stuff you didn't know they were capable of (plus a great guest role for Glenn Morshower). It may not seem like it at first but to me this winds up being one of the less problematic aspects of season 2 -- I'd lose the plots with Saracen and the nurse and Buddy taking in that Latino kid before that one if I had to choose. And like said above, basically everything that happens is completely dropped for season 3 so don't worry that this is a new direction for the rest of the show.
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Sep 22, 2010 17:50
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Kingtheninja posted:Started watching Weeds last week. Just started season three, about one or two episodes in. I like most of the characters and their interactions with each other, but I feel like every season kind of drags until the halfway point. Can anyone comment about the quality of future seasons? Something of a debate as to exactly where it happens but Weeds is considered by many to have one of the worst drop-offs in its later seasons from a show that started out genuinely good. Each of the seasons after 2 has a few defenders, but the consensus holds 1 and 2 in much higher esteem than everything that follows. You're approaching a point where the show experiences some confusion as to what it wants to be about and it suffers as a result.
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Jan 17, 2011 00:49
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thrawn86 posted:e:whats the consensus on Big Love s4? I finished the first 3 a few weeks ago. Kind of a disaster. The performances and direction are typically strong but it's all sabotaged by the writing. The main plot sets Bill on a path implausibly stupid and selfish even by his standards, and happenings at the compound are likewise absurdly grotesque even for them. It still has little moments that remind you what the series is capable of so it's not unwatchable but be prepared for the worst, especially coming off the excellent third season. The fifth and final season premiered Sunday. Some people behind the show have publicly acknowledged the problems of the fourth season and said they intend to put things back on track. We'll see.
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Jan 22, 2011 21:00
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With the obvious exception of Heroes. I also think you're perfectly justified in bailing on Weeds after season 2 or 3, but that's more debatable.
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Feb 13, 2011 23:08
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Just finished the first week of season 1 of In Treatment. Enjoyed it more than I thought I might but the couple that were Thursday's patients I found intensely unlikable and their story seemed too predictable to make up for that. Do their episodes improve as the season goes on?
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Feb 22, 2011 18:24
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Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:Just started watching In Treatment and I hope I am not alone in this feeling but the show is really really good. You're not, it's probably the most underappreciated drama on TV. Really hope they can find some way to do a fourth season but it didn't sound likely.
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May 11, 2011 03:24
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BlazinLow305 posted:Can someone recommend me stuff? Deadwood and Justified are must-see for someone with those tastes; I'd add Terriers if you don't mind something that got canceled after one season (but ends well).
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May 11, 2011 18:05
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Harmonica posted:[In Treatment]: If it does continue Byrne has I think signalled he won't play any further role in it. But I honestly hope it continues with Amy Ryan as the lead. It would follow naturally on from season three where it seemed she had been awakened by her experiences counselling Paul. Yeah, I've heard that and would be completely on board with this, really liked that character as the season went on. I think one suggestion was also that Byrne wouldn't leave entirely but would remain just as her patient, one episode a week, though that doesn't really square with how the third season ended. BlazinLow305 posted:About Deadwood though, isn't it like Carnivale in that it got canceled or does it wrap up well enough not to blueball? The end of the third season isn't optimal for a series finale but it's not like a torturous cliffhanger. Certainly could be better but the series is fantastic, well worth watching despite that. Also seconding ^^^ Veronica Mars and Rome. Been looking for more in the vein of Rome myself -- historical/period political intrigue and backstabbery. Already seen Deadwood, as mentioned above, and Kings; and I am watching Game of Thrones, which is what piqued my appetite to get around ot Rome. Any suggestions, maybe some British stuff I'm not aware of?
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May 11, 2011 18:38
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Gateoraade posted:I need a new comedy to watch. Bored to Death is next on my list to try but I'd like something else as a backup. Eastbound & Down was the lead-in for Bored to Death (or maybe it was the other way around) for their second seasons. It couldn't be more different but it's excellent so just roll with HBO's logic and try that.
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May 22, 2011 03:46
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Yer Burnt posted:I don't get why most people hold Season 1 in such high standing. Really, really glad there's a few more people here who watched this. I mostly agree about S1 vs. 2. At first Mia seems almost too similar to Laura, but with a better actress and without the baggage of the supposed chemistry with Paul that just never really manifested. And I thought the Gina sessions got much more interesting after that scene late in the first season where Paul's needling her again about her former patient... Charlie?, and she just destroys him with a devastating monologue. She kinda annoyed me at first but after that she made a lot more sense. Adele was pretty good from the start because it's such a different dynamic but for a while it lacked something in comparison to Gina because she and Paul didn't have that knowledge and ability to hurt each other that he had with Gina. She got a lot more interesting in her last few episodes when that started to change.
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May 27, 2011 08:36
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Superrodan posted:I thought episode 2 of Sherlock was weak. 1 and 3 were amazing, though. Just went through them this weekend and had the same reaction. The villains in "The Blind Banker" weren't intriguing at all, and the Asian characters all felt really dated -- and I get that they're trying to preserve elements from the originals but that episode felt like it was written by somebody's grandfather who still calls Asian people "Orientals" (at best). Still some fun interactions between Sherlock and Watson but a pretty lame plot that would've benefited from some more modernization. Plus the fact that it revolves around a book cipher kills any sense that you're playing along at home -- not that I was able to crack the mysteries in the other episodes but I at least felt like I wasn't completely out of the loop. (I think the only thing in the series I was able to figure out before Sherlock was that the killer in "A Study in Pink" would be a cab driver. As soon as Sherlock says "Who do you trust even though you don't know them?" while wandering the streets of London that's the obvious answer. Seemed like a glaring lapse that he has that thought, makes the cab casing the location, chases it down and checks out the passenger but completely ignores the driver.)
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Jul 3, 2011 23:37
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Strongly recommending Terriers to anyone who wanted to like Veronica Mars but was turned off by the teen drama elements; it's uncannily similar in tone -- charismatic but flawed leads, fun to watch, but with some very dark poo poo going down -- and themes -- outsiders fighting what's probably a lost cause against power and wealth. I thought Terriers' case-of-the-weeks were more consistently entertaining but many plots could be swapped between the shows unchanged and would never feel out of place. The Terriers episode with the teenager and the hooker was practically a lost episode of Veronica Mars. Watched the first two episodes of The IT Crowd (UK) and didn't care for it at all. I haven't seen a lot of The Big Bang Theory but this feels like all the complaints I hear about it -- the nerds are ridiculous stereotypes, their dialogue is just computer words randomly strung together, everybody's mugging like it's the Disney Channel. Pretty sure this is Just Not for Me but is there a point in the first season I should make it to before bailing? Also had this strange feel to it where like there was a weird mix of mostly traditional multi-camera stuff but with the occasional moment that deviated from that, like more artificial camera work or an effect added later, and those clashed. Not sure how to explain it, I felt like I was watching a really long Kids in the Hall sketch sometimes.
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Jul 6, 2011 22:36
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I recently finished Fringe myself; you are very, very close to the point where it actually turns into a fundamentally better show -- the sequence of episodes that begins with "Jacksonville" and runs well into Season 3. Speaking of, what is its status for the future? I know it's coming back for a fourth season, is that a full order? Confident about all those airing/getting a renewal? Any plans for an endgame?
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Jul 31, 2011 21:13
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Mister Kingdom posted:I have The Killing on my DVR, but I accidentally overheard something about the ending. Is it still worth watching? loving God no. Wasn't worth watching in the first place. The finale was a slap in the viewers' face of historic proportions but its failures went far beyond that. It was a dumb, dumb show made by people who had no idea how dumb it was.
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Aug 14, 2011 23:32
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And just to add: this is not like with Lost or Battlestar Galactica with a contingent of viewers who turned against the series at various points, whose criticisms are loud (and may be very legitimate), but are not fully representative of the opinion at large, since there remain many defenders. No, the vitriol you are reading is absolute consensus -- not only here but among professional critics and really anyone who cares about quality television. The Killing's greatest achievement is provoking unanimity like I have never seen in TVIV. There is potentially one reason to watch it: it makes for a fantastic case study in the Dunning-Kruger effect. KICK BAMA KICK fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Aug 15, 2011 |
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Aug 15, 2011 06:02
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Bored posted:I just finished binging through Better Off Ted. Was it another series like Pushing Daisies and Reaper that got canned because it had the unfortunate timing to begin right before the writer's strike? Oh yeah, and Pete from Warehouse 13 played Ted's brother in an episode. Writers stike was '07-'08; Ted premiered in '09. It just never found much of an audience, ABC didn't promote it much and wouldn't put it in their Wednesday comedy block.
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Aug 15, 2011 21:28
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McNutty posted:I watched the entire first season of In Treatment in like five days and I have no idea if the show is good or not. I really enjoyed it but I apparently have a massive blind spot for therapy dramas so I don't trust my own opinion. I thought it was mostly great, and I went in pretty skeptical. Gabriel Byrne was masterful and the rest of the cast was almost uniformly excellent. The structure was every bit as bold as Lost or 24. It had room to tell stories that wouldn't fit in anywhere else on television, even if they didn't all work to the same degree. Pace yourself on the rest, though, a binge can be a little too draining.
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Dec 10, 2011 05:17
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Digital Scumbag posted:Hey, did that Lights Out show on FX (I think?) about the boxer dude ever turn into something great? I only sticked out the first two episodes. It was solid, I think it falls a little short of "great" save for a few episodes. There was a brief arc later in the season featuring a new character who really captured everyone's attention and breathed some life into the show. The finale did a pretty good job and managed the same trick Terriers pulled of serving as a solid end to either the series or just the season. (I believe the cancellation was announced before it aired but after production wrapped.) I just never got that invested in the world it tried to build around the lead character. It felt strangely dour and humorless -- if you look at HBO's holy trinity those shows were all frequently hilarious despite a pretty bleak milieu, and Lights Out never seemed to understand that. If you were interested and want to see how the story turns out, go ahead, it's certainly not a waste of time; if you're just looking for great TV I wouldn't make this a high priority. I'm not even sure whether it's currently available through legit means.
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Jan 5, 2012 23:19
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Waroduce posted:I'm in the middle of watching The Wire. The first season was absolutely amazing, and the second season grew on me after the first few episodes. I've just started season 3 and the show seems to have recaptured some of its form. I heard the 4th and final season is horrible though Not remotely. Fourth is commonly argued to be its the best*, and even cited as perhaps the pinnacle of television itself. Fifth is universally considered weaker but it's still the loving Wire. * - Unlike many other shows, I don't think any season of The Wire actually comes close to a consensus judgment as the best; it's probably more evenly split (aside from the fifth) than most of the major dramas.
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Jan 19, 2012 20:19
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Any truth to that?
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Started Alias. The first few episodes were fine but I wasn't hooked until "Doppelganger". The structure of mission/counter-mission really started to pay off there. I understand it gets bad later, what's the quality curve on this?
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Feb 2, 2012 01:59
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Major Isoor posted:Just bought and am watching Archer season two - loving a few of the episodes that I've seen, for sure! Especially the tontine episode, for those that have seen it as well! (Also got Futurama season three, as it was actually cheap, surprisingly) Is there an Archer season 3 in the works? I hope so... Airing now -- actually the season finale is this coming Thursday. There's a set of three episodes telling a more or less self-contained story that serves as a bridge between seasons 2 and 3; these aired like two months before the rest of season 3 to benefit from an Always Sunny lead-in. Then there's ten more episodes. Reactions were a little mixed to the three-episode arc but on the whole the third season has been fantastic.
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Mar 19, 2012 07:55
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Four episodes into Southland. Liking it well enough so I don't mean this to sound too pejorative but right now it just comes off as if someone tried to make The Shield without the Strike Team plot. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just really curious when and how this evolves from "very competent but unremarkable cop stuff" to the way people talk about it now. A lot of little things strike me as weird. The tags up front showing someone at the end of the day with that little bit of narration? Seems like a conceit you'd use in the pilot and then drop. They're showing enough (admirable) restraint in not using that for "how the gently caress do they end up in that situation?" hooks that I'm not sure what the point is. Also not that I'm well-versed in these things but something about the editing, the rhythm seems off... like scenes are being split in half for no reason. Just me or do they go out of their way not to teach you any of the characters' names?
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Apr 3, 2012 20:47
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Finished Southland. It was very... OK? I'll certainly watch more if it returns, and I hope it does; I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone looking for a solidly executed "cop show", nothing more or less. A lot of the performances are quite good, Regina King and Michael Cudlitz especially. The thing that keeps nagging at me is a consistent pattern of what strikes me as frankly bizarre decisions in their storytelling. The first season ending with one of the detectives getting shot, but in a way that really has nothing to do with police work, could've happened to anyone who knocked on the wrong door at the wrong time. Following that his partner goes through a string of potential replacements for him who seem like they're being set up to take the role permanently and then disappear without explanation. Or Wood Harris being brought in to serve as what looks like the main criminal villain of the season, like The Shield used Anthony Anderson. And then he only appears in maybe four scenes? At first I chalked this up to uncertainty about its future, and the fact that its first two seasons add up to only a single season on cable and half for a network drama -- well within the grace period for finding its legs. But it continues: in season 3 when one of the main detectives is killed, this is barely referenced at all in the following episode. And maybe that's an interesting idea -- maybe, in reality, nothing much happens that day -- his partner would get debriefed and told to go home, his family would make their arrangements, the rest of the cops who didn't actually know him would say "that's lovely" and go about their business. But it really doesn't make any dramatic sense. And it shows up in the procedural case-of-the-week stuff as well: grandparents caring for their meth-addict daughter's child are found murdered. The junkie and her boyfriend are the obvious suspects, but a piece of evidence later implicates the victims' other, well-off daughter and her husband -- and that's the end of the case. Care to share with us why they did that, Southland? Maybe in a standard interrogation scene like that commonly found in every episode of every police drama ever made? No? OK then. It's like somebody there is aware of the principle that good dramas can trust their audience to follow along without having everything spelled out for them but is grossly misapplying it. Or the writers are forced to produce episodes at random without any idea of what happened on the previous episode. Somebody please tell me I'm not the only one seeing this.
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Apr 21, 2012 01:28
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