TV Shows

Discussion in 'Entertainment' started by Kratos, Aug 12, 2008.

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  1. Harmonices

    Harmonices Senior Member

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    That's a great observation. And I think you're right. What is a superhero without his / her nemesis? Nothing really. I guess they're basically defined by the conflict with their opposite number. So the antagonist needs to be super strong. Not just strongly written, but strongly acted too. And that's a tough gig, pulling off a great bad-guy. Not many actors seem to have the necessary 'vibe' to communicate the power and menace that a genuinely great baddie needs.
     
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  2. Laughing Rabbit

    Laughing Rabbit Active Member

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    I haven't seen either one, what I heard about Jessica Jones, I didn't think I would be interested (I read that she is being manipulated by the antagonist in ways I don't care to watch). I may give it a try if it has a strong story line. I really didn't like the Daredevil movie and the trailer I watched for the series hinted that it was going in the same direction, same big bad and all. So I didn't want to watch it.

    I'm pretty much done with series that have romance subplots that take over the main story line and love triangles. I don't like romance in general and it's very rarely portrayed well.
     
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  3. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    Jessica Jones S1 is really good and trust me it's depiction of her relationship with the antagonist is not problematic as such(although certainly unpleasant).
     
  4. Harmonices

    Harmonices Senior Member

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    Hear hear!!! Shit, don't they do it all the time though. Even fucking Star Trek has been smothered in that crap.

    It's like some marketing think tank got together some time in the early 2000's.

    Brilliant marketing mind 1: "Hmm, you know what, science fiction and superheroes are too male oriented, we need to increase our female audience for these shows."
    Brilliant marketing mind 2: "But how??"
    Brilliant marketing mind 3: "Just shove a bunch of love stuff in there, that'll please the ladies."
    All brilliant marketing minds: "Wow, great plan. Done!"
     
    Last edited: May 2, 2019
  5. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Black Summer on Netflix is fucking idiotic.

    I used to like zombie films, but they are the laziest genre to make. Couple gallons of gray makeup, couple gallons of fake blood, half a dozen sets of white contacts from Hot Topic, and you've got yourself a movie.

    You can film it on your cell phone.

    This adds nothing to the genre. The zombies are fast, turn fast (seconds), only respond favorably to head shots, and every death results in zombification. Or at least we can assume so, because the filmmakers didn't have the cash to spare for the sort of deaths that would require more than the above makeup; there's no twitching finger like in World War Z.

    The main characters (there's really no clear MC, although several are teased at, then eliminated) are fucking idiots. I don't think these people could survive a five minute wifi outage at Starbuck's, let alone a wave of zombies. They put in one competent character, but made her Korean with practically zero knowledge of English to handicap the rest of the morons, who can nevertheless understand her when they need to.

    What's that, girl? Timmy's fallen down the well?

    The non-zombie bad guys have really poorly defined motivations. Why would you just stalk someone when there's no police? Oh, right, to get the gasoline from the car they are driving and utterly failing to defend when there are literally thousands of abandoned and totally undefended vehicles surrounding you, not to mention that this is like Day Three or so, so the gas stations may still be working. Oh, and note to the stunt director: Tinted windows, yes, but there was only one person in that truck during the "action" scene you blew the rest of the budget on, dunno where the other four came from when the truck finally crashed into a wall that no one noticed.

    If you're going to put military into your little video Kindle self-pub, fuck you. That soldier with the beard? Yeah, the full beard. Huh, seems you maybe saw some CNN vids of "operators," because operator-chic is all the rage now among the ammosexuals, but that dude was no operator: SEALS don't get beaten down by guys in cuffs. Oh, and the uniform said "US ARMY" on it, so why was he talking about taking the brother to "the brig"?

    Because you know shit about shit and should have your writer's license revoked, that's why.

    I suspect this was the same person who wrote the recent adaptation of King Kong, the one with Samuel L. Jackson. The Sharknado series had better military advisors than that piece of garbage.

    Some random internet reviews say that it's good because no one has plot armor. I say that fact that none of them have died from licking electrical sockets is some James Bond-grade plot armor in and of itself.

    Don't waste your time.
     
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  6. Harmonices

    Harmonices Senior Member

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    I watched the first episode. Really didn't see the point.
     
  7. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    I think we watched three, just to see if it was going to go anywhere. Pinned to the sofa by booze, honestly.
     
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  8. Osprey

    Osprey Member

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    Anybody else been watching Chernobyl?

    I thought it was pretty great. Also really considerate of HBO to release it before my HBO cancellation takes effect.
     
  9. Night Herald

    Night Herald The Fool Contributor

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    Watching Happy! season 2. This show isn't right in the head, and I love it.

    Also trying to binge through The Office (US) before my HBO expires. Never saw a single episode before. It's good.
     
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  10. Maverick_nc

    Maverick_nc Contributor Contributor

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    Really enjoying that show, up to episode 4 at the moment and it's gripped me the whole way.
     
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  11. Maverick_nc

    Maverick_nc Contributor Contributor

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    Has anyone watched the new series of Black Mirror yet? I'm a huge fan but feel like they've messed up a little this season.
     
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  12. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Watched the first two episodes. #1 was entertaining, although the demography kept me guessing as to what the point was far longer than it should have. #2 was a little disappointing in that it could have just been news, no real futurism/weird to it.
     
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  13. Adenosine Triphosphate

    Adenosine Triphosphate Member Contributor

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    It's on my watchlist after the rest of Ozark.
     
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  14. Kinzvlle

    Kinzvlle At the bottom of a pit Contributor

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    Zombie moives actually have a rather interesting history. The original concept stemming from Haitian tradition was more of being trapped in your own mind with someone else having control of your actions. Around the cold war when the threat of nuclear and bio warfare was looming on everybodys mind is when that fear was used to create the modern zombie concept.

    Theeeennn it got all pulpy and cheap.


    Been wacthing The Protector on Netflix. Caused a bit of a problem with me procrastination binging lmao. Its kinda standard supernatural guy finds out hes a chosen one semi genric set up but its set in Istanbul gives it a nice unique flavor. Could have gone with that angle more and added more of the culture and history but still compeling enough to keep me following along. All the actings good.

    Allmost done with the first season. Theres another one but that'll have to wait for tomorrow.
     
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  15. Night Herald

    Night Herald The Fool Contributor

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    Finally getting around to watching The Sopranos. I decided to watch it because it's often mentioned in the same breath as two of my favorite shows, Breaking Bad and The Wire, and because I heard that it's "pretty good". Well, consider me sold. The writing is solid, the dialogue excellent, and there's some really fantastic acting on display. I'm especially enjoying Dominic Chianese as "Uncle Junior". And I love the way they talk. As a language lover and student of Italian, I find this Jersey Italian both fascinating and bewildering. Great show. Well worth keeping my HBO alive a little longer.
     
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  16. Oscar Leigh

    Oscar Leigh Contributor Contributor

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    Watching Channel Zero S1 Candle Cove. As a fan of Kris Straub, definitely captures his style. First episode felt slightly too frequent with the spooks though, second episode so far is better at rationing them with more buildup, which is how this stuff works best. Special effects are pretty damn good.
     
  17. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Binged Stranger Things Season 3 yesterday.

    Overall, I liked it.

    But... A couple issues. First, where did the dirt go? Really, where did all that extra dirt go? I understand hiding some construction under, well, construction, but the size of that Soviet facility would have required ludiculous amounts of specialized extra construction equipment and loads of workers to build. The building trades are well and truly unionized in the States, if you started bringing in guys without their cards, your little shopping mall would have a whole lot of accidents. And most importantly, where did the dirt go?

    Soviet uniforms? Honestly? Yeah, I get it, you've infiltrated the US of A, and we've got a pretty lax policy as far as tourist visas and such, so it wouldn't be that hard, especially in the 80s, to smuggle in a bunch of guys to run things, but why take the risk of smuggling in Soviet uniforms as well. As soon as you get caught with one of those in Reagan-era America, there are going to be questions. Just wear whatever Europeans wore.

    A short-barreled AK with a scope? That's one time I wasn't upset that he was firing it from the hip, the standard barrel is straining at area targets at 400m, with that stubby little tube you're going to have a month of angle of accuracy. Plus, I don't think AKs were really accessorized much in the 80s, could be wrong though.

    Finally (and this is a biggie), where the first season was a bunch of scrappy kids and an unhinged mommy going after a gubmint experiment gone wrong, and the second was a bunch of kids and an unhinged mommy going after the spillover from the first season, after two extradimensional incursions in as many years, there should be the equivalent of a full NEST team arriving every time a mosquito farts off-key in that town. Honestly, they paid more followup attention to Love Canal than whatever the name of Hicksville was in this series.

    Eleven reminds me of Ellen Ripley.
     
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  18. Moon

    Moon Contributor Contributor

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    On the topic of Stranger Things S3....

    Some things bugged me this season. The jarring "music video" between two pre-teens right in the middle of an intense moment, the ability of their 80s radio to work more than just one way (dafaq?) and the Soviet things Iain mentioned.

    One really big thing: How and why did the Mind Flayer die? See, they said the gate needed to be closed for it to die - got that, sure, but didn't Eleven close it at the end of season 2? If the gate the Russians opened up is what kept the Mind Flayer alive for well over a year (after the events from season 2), why did it die when the gate in Hawking was closed? Shouldn't it have lived?

    I can understand if, say, the Russians gate opened up after they closed the gate in Hawking (for the second time)....but that gate was closed for quite some time and the Mind Flayer was still hanging around like a shadow fart in Hawking doing...absolutely nothing for awhile.

    Overall, not a bad season, but I personally liked the past two better.
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2019
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  19. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    One more whinge. I like skinny ladies. I like curvier ladies. My standards of beauty are pretty open-minded.

    But Natalia Dyer looks like a frakkin' coat-hanger. And not one of the good ones that you get at Walmart, one of the really cheap wire ones that the dry cleaners gives you. Every time she came onscreen she was a distraction, and not in a good way. FWIW, Reddit seems to agree that she's showing some key signs of anorexia.

    Somebody get that girl a Big Mac and a therapist:

    [​IMG]
     
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  20. Moon

    Moon Contributor Contributor

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    :superlaugh:

    "Why did Jonathan fight so hard for a stick...guess men really are dogs." :p

    Speaking of Nancy and Jonathan...damn did I find most of their parts boring this season.

    Dustin and crew were the bees knees though.
     
  21. Shenanigator

    Shenanigator Has the Vocabulary of a Well-Educated Sailor. Contributor

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    After seeing one episode at a friend's house and getting totally hooked, my next binge watch will be Los Espookys. It's hilarious!
     
  22. Kinzvlle

    Kinzvlle At the bottom of a pit Contributor

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    My watching habits took a bit of a trip lately. After losing interest for a bit in most of what I was watching I went and finished the Magicians. Still, love the show, liked the end mostly.

    Q`s death was unexpected but from what I`ve read they felt his story was done which...is fair enough. I did like how his less than epic discipline in minor mending is what saved the day. Really that`s his whole arc..well maybe not a arc but as much as his mother sees him as someone who breaks things a lot of what made him be the "hero" was wanting to and trying to fix things. He wasn`t the strongest, or the smartest just...wanted to fix it. I do call total bullshit that him and Alice got back together, especially with no post monster god Elliot closure. There`s queerbaiting then there`s literally telling us two characters love each other and just...nope. I absolutely love what the original Penny has become though.

    Then after that, the new Veronica Mars season came out. I liked it, not quite the same as the original but I wouldn`t expect or really want it to be. The characters would've had to grow over all these years. Logan sure did.

    The ending....felt lazy. Rob Thomas talking like he had to do it to free the character or something just made it worse. He wants to take the show in other directions and doesn`t want to have to deal with writing around Logan....fine...fair enough. He had enough of a growth-based thing this season if handled right you could`ve done him justice and ended the arc here. A last-minute car bomb, which cuts IMMEFDIATLY into what is the new style set up monlouge...no. Why have them get married only for Logan to blow up minutes later? Hell why even bring him back? There really didn`t seem to be much point to his short return to duty there other than Veronica and Leo almost happening.

    From Veronica, I wanted more PI fun sooo...new (and last) season of Jessica Jones. Man, I`m I gonna miss this world. Loved the season.

    Still not quite sure why Hogarth started defending the guy. I get trying to save her image but....could've been better ways. I know Hogarth was dieing, and trying to save her legacy and all that but a lot of her actions and paranoia just didn`t make sense.

    From one black-haired snarky badass to the next I caught up on Wynonna Earp. I really enjoy that show.

    Doll`s death felt kinda rushed in but I wasn`t too fond of the character anyways sooo. Plus with black badge gone, he was kinda redundant. The places they went with Doc and Waverly where deeply unexpected. The ending was great, I don`t even skip the intro because I love the theme so much and that last bit where the now Vampiric Holiday is going in after Waverly and the "And I told that Devil to take you back." played it was perfect. Still want to know where the fire witch went, thought she went into Holiday and that's why he bit the firefighter. I was wrong. Also, Jeremiah is easily one of my favorite characters and him and Robin are the cutest couple. However, I feel he gets little to no development or exploration. The bits he doe♂5 get our treated so much as side dialogue it`s irritating. Also, where did Kevin go?

    I wanted to parlay the dark supernatural but fun tone into Ash VS The Evil Dead. I want to like the show I do but, I just can`t get into it. Instead, I saw Hulu had new episodes of Harrow almost to the end of that now. I loved him in Forever and I love him in Harrow. None of his film work I`ve seen were that good...those bloody Fantastic Four Films... but both his shows I liked. Forever got canceled quickly...so he went and played another medical examiner. This time in Australia. The same network that canned Forever does the broadcasting of it for America. The irony...wonder if he was in contract.
     
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  23. DK3654

    DK3654 Almost a Productive Member of Society Contributor

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    Agree with you on the 'mostly'. That seems to be the popular opinion.
    Totally agree on Q's death. 'A Life in the Day' from Season Three had already very much raised the spectre of a Quentin/Eliot relationship, only to be immediately disregarded without any kind of closure, so when they finally brought it up again in Season Four with 'Escape from the Happy Place', it almost felt like an apology to all the people who were disappointed with how that was handled, which I liked. And then the way the season was set up, with one of the most major plotlines being Quentin- in particular- desperately trying to save Eliot, and Quentin repeating multiple times how much he cares as if just to lift people's expectations even higher...Only then for Quentin to die before anything else can happen. Like, what the fuck? What a fucking tease.
    And then, meanwhile, you dedicate multiple of the later episodes to exploring a Quentin/Alice reunion, a bit of a bland choice, as I thought it was much better for the series seeing Quentin and Alice grow outside of being the obligatory MC pairing.
    And then there's the scene where Quentin's in the underworld and he says "did I just find a way to finally kill myself?". Hold on. What was that? Where did that come from? You can't just casually throw that in. And for what, setup for the musical scene- "oh yeah, I did actually do it for the sake of my friends and they do actually appreciate me"?
    That's pretty insensitive to not take suicide more seriously.

    So yeah, those last few episodes were a little bit of a trainwreck, but thankfully the good does still definitely outweigh the bad I think. The musical bits in "All that Hard Glossy Armor" were my favourite in the series, though that might just be because I found them personally less awkward than the rest :p, and I like how they deal with a bit of social politics with the Library plotline/s. I am a tiny bit worried about the next season though.
     
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  24. Kinzvlle

    Kinzvlle At the bottom of a pit Contributor

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    It`s not just that it`s a bland boring pairing it`s that the route for more character development for both Q and Alice seems like it would have been in outgrowing the relationship. Honestly felt more like a regression, there`s to much damaged and broken there for it to ever be healthy for either of them. Not like it mattered for Q in the long run. Which really why even set that up for a character whos not even gonna be around? Just to ply on more emotion for his death? Seems kinda cheap. He doesn`t even seem to be thinking of his feelings for Elliot, even after the peaches and plums line which Q sure as hell knew what that meant. Some internal conflict would have at least been something. Plus in no way out of Q`s character. I`m just glad we managed to get through without any Q and Juilea romance. They dropped little maybe hints here and there but I always preferred them as a very strong and powerful friendship. They got strength from each other, relayed on each other, were partners in many ways, and forgave each other no matter what but it wasn`t a romance.Not all deep loves and connections have to be romantic, and it`s great to have a show with multiple pairings showing that.

    Next seasons gonna be make or break. Whether the show can transition well, which I have hope for. From the trailers, I`ve seen looks like Julies gonna be taking Q`s spot as the chosen one/quester of the ensemble. Which is fine I like her character, her plotlines are always interesting. Even if this seasons was less so then the last two. I also don`t really feel any chemistry between her and Penny 22. That all feels very shoehorned. Of course, the shows at it`s best when it leans on the whole ensemble rather then one. Hence why I love the Penny episodes where we pop in on everyone and get his little audience surguete quips. Really Elliot, Margo, Phen, and Josh do and have been carrying the show in a way. Their plotlines just tend to be the most interesting not to mention their characters are vibrant and get more and more devopled each season. Come so far from frat kids.

    Finished Harrow wasn`t disappointed. Wrapped up their story and ended on a cliffhanger for the next one. Which seems to be there formula now. One thing that was bugging me was the lack of any real adressael of some pretty big things from last season but the last episode covered them.
     
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  25. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    I'm two or three episodes short of finishing Weeds. From a writing perspective, I don't think this story has been about Nancy at all; she's the same spoiled upper-middle-class [REDACTED] she was at the start of the story.

    The younger son Shane is the real star of the show.
     
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