General TV thread
- Thread starter Ⓐaron
- Start date
Oh, by that I was mainly referring to a (new) character that comes up later on in the show and how they factor into the penultimate episode... it's kind of hard to talk about it without giving stuff away, let's just say it's rather incongruous; it didn't sour me on the whole show or anything, though (like I said, I really liked it and there are tons of great moments, but high expectations can ruin things more than low ones, so I'll say no more as long as you're gonna give it a go
). The show pretty clearly deliberately avoids nostalgia in a big way, so no need to worry in that regard, IMO - I remember reading an article around when S3 was announced that feared it would just be a sort of feel-good "damn fine coffee!"/cherry pie fest that would do nothing more play on fans' fondness of the previous seasons (given how reboots typically go), which got me worried, and it's almost comical how swiftly and thoroughly the show put those fears to rest.
Cthulhu
Administrator
- AKA
- Yop
Netflix is TV right? Just started S2 of Star Trek Discovery, they really pulled out all the stops didn't they? o_O. I'm sure they've spent a lot of the budget on just the first episode and the rest will be a lot more chuntering, but still, fuck me do they spend a lot on series.
Interslicery
.....
Been watching The Office for the first time. Just started season 3, and I'm really loving it. I thought it was pure comedy, but like half of it is a drama and they mix it all together pretty well.
Glaurung
Forgot the cutesy in my other pants. Sorry.
- AKA
- Mama Dragon
Been watching at long last the last season of Gotham. I love the series even if my knowledge of Batman lore is only the movies and the 90's animated series. Love love love Cameron Monaghan and Camren Bicondova. Those two kids are pure gold.
Also, do web series count as TV? Because I've been hooked to Critical role for more than a year.
Also, do web series count as TV? Because I've been hooked to Critical role for more than a year.
Clement Rage
Pro Adventurer
Line of Duty, Season 1
Quality TV, the kind where I slow down to savour it properly instead of binging.
Quality TV, the kind where I slow down to savour it properly instead of binging.
Edley
Pray for Sound
- AKA
- Issac Dian, Dudley, Chev Chelios
LicoriceAllsorts
Donator
During lockdown I started watching Korean romantic dramas because I found them soothing and escapist.
Then I stumbled across one with a really unpromising title, "My Mister", which has turned out to be one of the most thought-provoking meditations on the nature of love, duty, success and failure, and family dynamics, that I've ever seen. Like all Korean dramas it's quite slow-paced compared to American shows, but I like that. It's the opposite of escapist. If you are interesting in learning more about the realities of life in South Korea, it seems very realistic (not that I have any means of judging, but it comes across as a show that is meant to feel authentic to its home audience), so it's at once very Korean, and universal. Every human being around the world can relate to these characters.
I can't recommend it too highly. It's on Netflix.
Then I stumbled across one with a really unpromising title, "My Mister", which has turned out to be one of the most thought-provoking meditations on the nature of love, duty, success and failure, and family dynamics, that I've ever seen. Like all Korean dramas it's quite slow-paced compared to American shows, but I like that. It's the opposite of escapist. If you are interesting in learning more about the realities of life in South Korea, it seems very realistic (not that I have any means of judging, but it comes across as a show that is meant to feel authentic to its home audience), so it's at once very Korean, and universal. Every human being around the world can relate to these characters.
I can't recommend it too highly. It's on Netflix.
crazyrabbits23
yes.
- AKA
- Alex
20th Century Fox is done - it's now been rebranded "20th Television".
X-Men: Dark Phoenix was so bad it managed to crater the brand name of one of the most storied studios in Hollywood.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix was so bad it managed to crater the brand name of one of the most storied studios in Hollywood.
Fangu
Great Old One
I saw the first episode of Cobra Kai last night and I absolutely loved it. It's so much unsympathetic anti hero midlife crisis story, but unlike other things that are exactly that, this one I actually found to be heartfelt, and clever. Plus they actually went a bit further describing the unsympathetic part - the drinking and driving, the racism, the sexism... plus, speaking of that drinking and driving, that nostalgia scene of him reliving his past, a 50+ man reliving his life as a 17(?) year old... is the most honest portrayal of... of, idk how to describe it? I'm not gonna say 'being stuck in the past' because that's limiting what it really is, but what it is is sort of pathetic and vulnerable at the same time. As someone who can get a bit too much nostalgic I can completely relate. I think it was a very honest depiction, laying it out without making fun of him, even if they still are, in a way? idk I had many thoughts and I will definitely keep watching. My boyfriend was kinda meh about it so this is something I can watch whenever I want 
Fangu
Great Old One
Been watching some Netflix. Started a lot of series but it takes a bit for me to go into episode 2.
- Rewatched "Better Call Saul", must be like my 5th time. It's the best TV show I know.
- Saw "Bridgerton" - was watchable enough but some of the characters and plot points made me wrinkle my nose. That Duke dude certainly is oestrogen fuel tho, I bet he's lot of 14 year old female viewers to masturbate lmao.
- "Sweet Home" - I didn't love it as much as "Kingdom" but it certainly was one of the more interesting TV shows I've watched over the past years. I've realised I have an interest in gorey horror - I can't tell you why, it's kind of why I love true crime, yet not? It started with me watching the "Blade of the Immortal" anime last year as lockdown started happening and it just oddly enough gave me so much comfort. There's some new "Kingdom" coming this year, not a full season, will probably have to wait longer for that. Until then I need to find a new show to watch.
- Rewatched "Better Call Saul", must be like my 5th time. It's the best TV show I know.
- Saw "Bridgerton" - was watchable enough but some of the characters and plot points made me wrinkle my nose. That Duke dude certainly is oestrogen fuel tho, I bet he's lot of 14 year old female viewers to masturbate lmao.
- "Sweet Home" - I didn't love it as much as "Kingdom" but it certainly was one of the more interesting TV shows I've watched over the past years. I've realised I have an interest in gorey horror - I can't tell you why, it's kind of why I love true crime, yet not? It started with me watching the "Blade of the Immortal" anime last year as lockdown started happening and it just oddly enough gave me so much comfort. There's some new "Kingdom" coming this year, not a full season, will probably have to wait longer for that. Until then I need to find a new show to watch.
crazyrabbits23
yes.
- AKA
- Alex
I finally got to watching parts of The Stand, the 2020 adaptation of the Stephen King book (and the second TV adaptation after the 1994 miniseries). What were they thinking?
I love The Stand -- it's one of my favorite novels of all time, and I loved the '94 miniseries in spite of its shortcomings (relatively-limited budget, some character beats that just don't work that well), but this was a complete clusterfuck. I've never seen a miniseries with such good casting (they even had Bryan Cranston in an uncredited role as the U.S. President, along with top-tier talent across the board) shit the bed so hard, so fast.
The plot jumps forward and backwards so much, to such a wide timeframe, that it kills the pacing and makes the tension over certain characters surviving completely moot. To note -- the series starts at the most boring part of the book (corpse-clearing in Denver), largely skips the onset and breakdown of society by the plague in the first episode, and largely removes the tension of who's going to survive by setting a large chunk of scenes in Boulder, midway through the book, so you know exactly who's going to be important later. They completely broke the pacing of the original work.
The filmmakers clearly intended Larry and Rita's escape through the Manhattan tunnels to be a big, tense moment, but nobody cares if you've just spent the last episode-and-a-half establishing that Larry is alive long after the events of this sequence. And then this show has the audacity to add padding to Stu, Larry, Glen and Ray's journey to Vegas in the fifth episode of the series, via numerous transitional shots that do nothing but take up screentime that could have been better spent... I don't know, setting up numerous characters who are completely unreferenced (did you know that Judge Farris was a woman? I didn't know until after the character was dead!) or introduced with no explanation (the Rat Woman, or Teddy, who finally introduces himself by name just before he gets shot and killed, lol).
It's a series where large swaths of plot are either ignored or minimized, despite this being twice the length of the '94 miniseries and going to pains to restore as many characters from the book as possible (e.g. Rita Blackmoor), and then give them little or nothing to do. Stuff like General Stockey's arc trying to contain the pandemic (reduced to a single scene where J.K. Simmons rattles off a few plot points before the character shoots himself), Rae Flowers, pre-pandemic life, the majority of Stu's time in the Center for Disease Control, Frannie's father, the residents of Arnette, Nick's interactions with the thug who beat him in the police station, several ancillary characters in Vegas and more get short shift, despite there being ample space being relegated to it. And then they cast Alexander Skarsgaard as Randall Flagg, make him largely unthreatening and give him even less to do than Jamey Sheridan did in the previous adaptation -- barring his weird, nonsensical rambling in his final moments, which may be accurate to other versions of the character, but comes completely out of left-field here.
Christ, they cast Heather Graham as Rita, relegate her to one episode as a pseudo-damsel in distress and then have her die off-screen by swallowing pills, not even bothering to mention her fate until an offhand comment one episode later.
It's weird as hell, because this miniseries takes pains to add in contemporary concepts, but the one time they had an opportunity to play up the whole "fascist state" of Flagg's Vegas, they completely shit the bed and make it this half-assed Gomorrah-type atmosphere where everyone's busy doing drugs and fucking, which is so counter to the way Flagg ran Vegas in the book that I'm amazed it got through the writing process.
The amazing part is that the best part of the series, bar none, is the final episode (which Stephen King himself actually showed up to write the teleplay for), which is basically just the extended epilogue from the "Complete and Uncut" version of the book. It's so much better than the rest of the series that I'm bewildered. The first eight episodes have absurd pacing that's all over the place, lame character beats and plot points, missing parts of the story, terrible tension... and then, when it gets to a glorified "road trip" sequence with Stu and Frannie, the tension suddenly ratchets through the roof, the heroine gets one final confrontation with the villain, and several of the plot threads built up over the series actually resolve themselves in a compelling way.
What the actual hell.
I love The Stand -- it's one of my favorite novels of all time, and I loved the '94 miniseries in spite of its shortcomings (relatively-limited budget, some character beats that just don't work that well), but this was a complete clusterfuck. I've never seen a miniseries with such good casting (they even had Bryan Cranston in an uncredited role as the U.S. President, along with top-tier talent across the board) shit the bed so hard, so fast.
The plot jumps forward and backwards so much, to such a wide timeframe, that it kills the pacing and makes the tension over certain characters surviving completely moot. To note -- the series starts at the most boring part of the book (corpse-clearing in Denver), largely skips the onset and breakdown of society by the plague in the first episode, and largely removes the tension of who's going to survive by setting a large chunk of scenes in Boulder, midway through the book, so you know exactly who's going to be important later. They completely broke the pacing of the original work.
The filmmakers clearly intended Larry and Rita's escape through the Manhattan tunnels to be a big, tense moment, but nobody cares if you've just spent the last episode-and-a-half establishing that Larry is alive long after the events of this sequence. And then this show has the audacity to add padding to Stu, Larry, Glen and Ray's journey to Vegas in the fifth episode of the series, via numerous transitional shots that do nothing but take up screentime that could have been better spent... I don't know, setting up numerous characters who are completely unreferenced (did you know that Judge Farris was a woman? I didn't know until after the character was dead!) or introduced with no explanation (the Rat Woman, or Teddy, who finally introduces himself by name just before he gets shot and killed, lol).
It's a series where large swaths of plot are either ignored or minimized, despite this being twice the length of the '94 miniseries and going to pains to restore as many characters from the book as possible (e.g. Rita Blackmoor), and then give them little or nothing to do. Stuff like General Stockey's arc trying to contain the pandemic (reduced to a single scene where J.K. Simmons rattles off a few plot points before the character shoots himself), Rae Flowers, pre-pandemic life, the majority of Stu's time in the Center for Disease Control, Frannie's father, the residents of Arnette, Nick's interactions with the thug who beat him in the police station, several ancillary characters in Vegas and more get short shift, despite there being ample space being relegated to it. And then they cast Alexander Skarsgaard as Randall Flagg, make him largely unthreatening and give him even less to do than Jamey Sheridan did in the previous adaptation -- barring his weird, nonsensical rambling in his final moments, which may be accurate to other versions of the character, but comes completely out of left-field here.
Christ, they cast Heather Graham as Rita, relegate her to one episode as a pseudo-damsel in distress and then have her die off-screen by swallowing pills, not even bothering to mention her fate until an offhand comment one episode later.
It's weird as hell, because this miniseries takes pains to add in contemporary concepts, but the one time they had an opportunity to play up the whole "fascist state" of Flagg's Vegas, they completely shit the bed and make it this half-assed Gomorrah-type atmosphere where everyone's busy doing drugs and fucking, which is so counter to the way Flagg ran Vegas in the book that I'm amazed it got through the writing process.
The amazing part is that the best part of the series, bar none, is the final episode (which Stephen King himself actually showed up to write the teleplay for), which is basically just the extended epilogue from the "Complete and Uncut" version of the book. It's so much better than the rest of the series that I'm bewildered. The first eight episodes have absurd pacing that's all over the place, lame character beats and plot points, missing parts of the story, terrible tension... and then, when it gets to a glorified "road trip" sequence with Stu and Frannie, the tension suddenly ratchets through the roof, the heroine gets one final confrontation with the villain, and several of the plot threads built up over the series actually resolve themselves in a compelling way.
What the actual hell.
Makoeyes987
Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
- AKA
- Smooth Criminal
What the actual fuck, are you serious....?
Is your post the truth, because I literally was ready to subscribe to CBS Access to check it out and this sounds like absolute dogshit in a can.
Did they really do all that? Holy fuck....
crazyrabbits23
yes.
- AKA
- Alex
I'm underselling it -- there's so much more that's busted. There's a very good 1.5 hour-long review by The Cinema Snob that goes through each episode. It was telling that I couldn't find much on it until I bothered watching some of the episodes myself yesterday.
Just wait until you see Amber Heard's performance, which alternates between cosplaying as the Corpse Bride and yelling half her lines in a shrill, over-the-top manner, or the way they keep dropping A-list characters in glorified cameo roles only to kill them off one scene later. Christ, they even ruined Nadine's death scene!
Just wait until you see Amber Heard's performance, which alternates between cosplaying as the Corpse Bride and yelling half her lines in a shrill, over-the-top manner, or the way they keep dropping A-list characters in glorified cameo roles only to kill them off one scene later. Christ, they even ruined Nadine's death scene!
Makoeyes987
Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
- AKA
- Smooth Criminal
You saved me. Thank you for the heads up.
I think I can safely skip this adaption.
I think I can safely skip this adaption.
Fangu
Great Old One
Eerie
Fire and Blood
I don't know if there's a Doctor Who thread but:
I think every fan would be stocked to read this.
I think every fan would be stocked to read this.