I don't know. Everyone complains that the new season is too hollywood, but they also complain they dislike Daenyrs decision to burn Randyll and Dickon despite the fact Tyrion disagreeing clearly advertises that the show does not necessarily expect agreement. Isn't that part of the cynical Game of Thrones shtick? Sometimes you might seriously disagree with protagonists, sometimes the fact it was a flawed or corrupt decisions is even obvious. Because the protagonists aren't perfect. In addition, of course this season is a bit epic and less scheme-y. All the stuff's coming together like everyone been begging it to. All the "the dragons are taking forever talk" seems to have totally flip-flopped. I would say they should probably have made the seasons longer to allow for some of the time scale that seems rushed, which also allow them to fill in more character interactions and a sense of what's going on in other places they've neglected for a while. Like who's in charge of the Riverlands now exactly?Freys are dead and the last Tully is presumably in a Lannister prison. I need to knooow. The Olenna death scene was spectacular though. She's always had some of the best dialogue and acting. In connection with that, I liked the way they set up this great strategy of Tyrion's and then threw a huge spanner in the works with Euron and Jaime's surprise attack on Olenna. That felt like a realistic strategic inter-play.
I'm not a big fan of Dany, but I don't blame the show runners for that. It's more the lazy writing like Jaime not drowning in plate armour, a raven travelling at the speed of light (or people surviving on a frozen island for a week with few supplies, then having the strength to fight hundreds of undead). And then the director says "it might not make sense but people seem to like it so it's okay" (paraphrased). It is still a good show in parts, but it's clear that they don't care about it like they used to.
I mean, did they give a clear time for the travel? It does seem rushed, which is why I recommend they should have gone back to ten episodes instead of this hasty seven, but is it actually identified how long some of travelling this season actually took?
I'd say it's about 50/50. There is some travelling that can be justified, but pretty much no matter what way you spin the travelling between Casterly Rock, Highgarden and King's Landing it doesn't make sense with Cersei's two week schedule that she sets, even if you add another week. The main offender for me is the raven in Ep 6. I don't understand why they didn't just have Dany go to Eastwatch with them and stay there until needed, or had her feel like she had to go despite Tyrion's judgement and she leaves before the raven gets there. The fact is that we probably shouldn't need to have this discussion. If half of the fanbase is confused about timelines and the other half are just guessing, then the writers have not done their job well.
Anyone else excited for the new season of Dirk Gently? I sure as hell am! Holy hell am I hyped! Such a great show! 10/10 I recommend it to everyone!
It's amazing. Great characters. Spectactularly wierd yet also very human with a very realistic sense of randomness. Somewhat different plot with a number of new concepts and characters though. It's not a direct adaption.
The new season of BoJack Horseman has been such a disappointment so far. Especially when it goes political I'm sensing an overprivileged and under-read writing team trying to do scathing political satire instead of what they do best, satirize Hollywood, celebrity culture and consumerism. It's cringey. Some of the dialogue is funny, though. I tried to watch the first season but it never really clicked with me. Loved the books, though.
It goes a few episodes for you to understand what going on well enough to decide what to think. But the weird and random element is what ultimately is one of it's most interesting features.
After years of resistance I finally gave in to pressure and decided to give Game of Thrones a try. I'm 45 minutes into the first episode and bored shitless.
The new MacFarlane sci-fi crap: - I have just watched the pilot (some of it, at least). I must admit that I am perhaps a little biased; I would sum up Seth MacFarlane's career as having created four great animated seasons 15 years ago, a moderately funny comedy movie 5 years ago, and a lot of mediocre or plain bad (lazy, obnoxious, shocking for the sake of shock-value alone, tired, reliant upon random pop-culture references for "humour", devoid of any subtlety or inventiveness, creatively bankrupt) seasons and movies in between. I have never liked MacFarlane as a screen presence, his acting veers from insufferably smug to gormless. I also dislike vanity projects, and this has all the markings of one. Unsurprisingly, MacFarlane failed to grab me in this pilot, I simply cannot get invested in him as the MC. He should stop casting himself in favour of better, more nuanced and funnier actors. The second cardinal sin committed by this show is that the opening scenes (and all the scenes that followed, at least those I watched) were tedious. The opening scenes comprised of lengthy exposition and introductions to unamusing characters. There was no hook, nothing to reel me into the show's world. The first character is introduced as a nerdy man-child who draws penises; I can't wait to see more of that; that set up is comedy gold. The alien character is introduced as a love-child between a Kling-on and Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy (I assume this was the actual character pitch); like Drax he lacks humour but he has none of the charm or timing, and a far inferior script to work with. The rest of the characters are instantly forgettable. As a parody of The Next Generation they at least got the CGI correct, since it appears to date from the 80's. Unfortunately the scenes in which the bad CGI is show-cased drag on and on. The scene of the ship undocking lasted a minute and a half, during which I had a quick nap. At this point I was left with one over-riding question: Where are the jokes? There is nothing more miserable than bad comedy. When joke after joke misses it is the anti-fun, it seems to suck all joy from the room. When other genres are bad, they are at least watchable, but bad comedy is actively depressing. For this reason I turned the show off at this point. But like I said, I am biased, I am generally not well-disposed towards MacFarlane.
I watched the pilot last night and was mildly entertained. I really don't get much comedy. I totally didn't understand why there was an off the cuff reference to Smurfs 400 years from now.
I am glad you enjoyed it, I do not mean to diminish that. Yet I feel compelled to point out that MacFarlane's humour is pop culture references... this is funny because you have heard of it, because you have heard of it, it is funny, so reference! To me that is just lazy humour.
I really didn't enjoy it, and that is not humor to me, and that kind of wraps up my distaste for comedy. My ex used to put on stand up shows and then ask why I wasn't laughing. My reply was usually something like - 'The person on stage is whining about problems they created in their own life. I don't find that to be funny, I find it to be sad. So, should I be laughing with them or at them?' It never went over well.
There are great and original comedy shows out there that are not three camera sitcoms (and most are British), such as: Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Black Adder 2 onwards, Red Dwarf 3-6, The Day Today, Knowing me Knowing You, Father Ted, Spaced, Black Books, The Fast Show, I'm Alan Partridge, The Office, 15 Storey's High, Garth Merenghi's Dark Place, The IT Crowd, and so on. I am not anti-comedy, but my God, MacFarlane's version is cheap and lazy. In conclusion MacFarlane is a hack
I am not sure if I am the first person to say it, but: - I have a few issues that have arisen from season 7, which I will list below: - 1) On occasion it seemed that the writers had a particular plot point they wanted to reach, but they did not know how to get there, and as such parts of the show stretched disbelief or were simply nonsensical. For example, they wanted the white-walkers to have a dragon, so they created this plot whereby a few characters carried out the most stupid plan ever conceived, and then the white walkers stood around wasting time until the dragons could conveniently show up. The show was character-driven, but now it is plot-driven, and the plot relies on tropes and coincidence. 2) The world now feels small and safe due to the time jumps and the plot armour worn by certain characters. In addition, the travel times (even taking into account the jumps between scenes) do not add up. 3) The use of Deus Ex Machina, eg. the cave of convenience (with the cave paintings), Benjen saving Jon, Bronn saving Jaime, characters just stumbling into other characters or pieces of information for no good reason. Google Bran is now just a rod for the writer's back. Again he is used as a deus ex machina only when the plot requires it. 4) Characters acting out-of-character to suit the plot, eg. Baelish was a master manipulator, but my God his plan was transparent in this series, and what purpose did it have, what was his motivation? Daenerys was almost schizophrenic, she would have a different personality in every scene. Tyrion has suddenly become ineffectual and a shadow of his former self. 5) The use of retcons. Since when did all the white walkers die when you killed their leader? The dead used to turn by virtue of being north of the wall, they were not turned by the Night King. If this retcon is now true, then why didn't they just instruct Daenerys to burn him when she had the chance? 6) Fan service is used repeatedly and results in stupid scenes. The scene where Theon's absence of genitals allows him to win a fight was just pathetic. The dragon action sequences are actually less interesting than the lengthy, dialogue heavy scenes of old, when the show was character-driven. A few of these issues in isolation would not bother me, but piled one on another they are turning me off the show.
Yeah but in defense of Game of Thrones I am not a GoT viewer who claims I watch the show for anything other than the big ass dragons.
I also didn't start the show with high expectations. I wasn't expecting much from a widely popular tv show based on a book series that wasn't finished yet, had a set of characters and plots crafted meticulously by GRRM, and had so many moving pieces that watching it over the course of a 50 minute episode would make someone's head spin.
But here is the truth. In the first four series they subverted every genre trope and the plot could not be anticipated. Since they lost the base material they had dragons, and they followed every trope US TV writers tend to use. I said this two posts ago. Read up.
Dude, I'm not disputing that there are writing flaws, I just don't know why anyone expected the show's directors to keep quality writing once they had lost the source material. The problem they're running into is that GoT isn't their story and they aren't operating in a universe they designed. They can't just skim the books, pull out the important plot points, and string them together like they used to be able to. So they're relying on the typical cliches. It's not like this story was created because the show directors and screen writers were awesome of their own accord.
