TV news and views

[Snoopy]

I finished it last night. It had it's moments but it was all build up and zero pay off. The s3 trailer looked good though

[benji]

i'm sorry is not great, but kind of okay. The media seems to compare it to Curb because apparently they only have one reference, but it feels more like The League. It has the same pacing and scripted dialogue rather than Curb. It also has a number of shared cast including Rafi, but also a reunion scene along with another part of Human Giant. Unfortunately, he disappears from the show midway through and it's a major loss. The biggest problem, and the major flaw of the show, is that Andrea isn't likeable or funny. She's not remotely like Larry, she's a social climber and wants to be popular. She also frets endlessly over her kid maybe being racist, maybe being homophobic, maybe being not feminist, etc. Her husband never disagrees and mostly exacerbates this. Andrea causes basically all her own problems by being weird and not keeping it to herself, but not in the Larry way where you can sympathize with her or because she's stubborn. Which mostly leads to all the side characters, like Rafi and other moms played by people like Judy Greer, being the best part of the show. Andrea Savage is fine and funny in other stuff, so I guess she just shouldn't write her own show. Some of the other writers went to Always Sunny for a bit, which makes sense since The League is no longer around.

Shooter was the opposite in terms of low expectations, great enjoyment. Especially since it was a USA Network production. Yes, it's the same license as the movie and even produced by Mark Wahlberg, and yes, the first season is mostly the same general plot as the movie. That said, it's much better than the movie. Although if you really know the movie, you'll know many of the twists in the first season because they didn't really change the characters other than their gender or skin color or made their last name their first name or whatever.

What made it work for me is that it seemed very committed to lampshading and subverting every possible trope that would traditionally come up in such a show. And despite the fact that the main character does seem to have a superhuman shooting ability, and along with everyone on the show seems to have superhuman ability to withstand near mortal injury, almost all of the sniping in the show is determined more by positioning, preparedness, etc. A number of situations are handled not by having anyone try to take some silly shot instead of withdrawing. Indeed, one of the recurring things of the show is the wise characters being established by their refusal to do something stupid in a situation asking a person to do something stupid against impossible odds rather than just stand down. Most shows would have somebody go all Batman and shoot like five guys in the head to escape.

If there's one complaint, it does get a little silly about the UNDERLYING CONSPIRACY at times even if it's mostly well constructed and the conspiracies aims are actually appropriately trivial. Also the show does seem to skip ahead at points while otherwise mostly being real-time-ish which makes it seem like characters have teleportation because they'll be in DC and suddenly appear in Texas or similar. The ending also definitely feels like they were told they were cancelled and allowed to shoot some new stuff to conclude things because it's kind of resolved as a season ending to continue on and then a ton of stuff happens in like ten minutes with very compact scenes (both in length and the sets) and there's no expected resolution for any of it. Which does make me wonder if the most shocking part of it wasn't added after they were cancelled or if they were really willing to do it had the show continued. It does more to make the final season villain a real villain than anything that happens earlier other than the fact Gerald McRaney plays him.

Of course, now that I've watched that and Patriot, Amazon is trying to get me to watch Jim Halpert: Super Spy and Reacher.

[benji]

A pair of Showtime shows leaving Amazon Prime to celebrate America's 250th:
City on a Hill was entertaining but almost entirely because of Kevin Bacon's character. The other characters are necessary to the plot and everything but effectively wind up being the reasons for Bacon and the character to act around everyone else. The horrific early 1990's fashions are consistently triggering to me so they must have nailed it. But the historical accuracy wasn't entirely perfect because they refer a few times to the internet like any normies would have known about it yet. Also the wide-ranging quality of Boston accents and whether the actors even attempt them is pretty fun.

Penny Dreadful is justified almost entirely for Eva Green going nuts. The second season is kind of worse despite possibly better general plotting because she does so little of it. The third season is widely condemned but I'm not to it yet. A big flaw in the second season is that the first season seems to indicate that Eva Green got semi-sane and immediately launched into trying to save Mina Harker. Yet the second season basically says, nope, actually she spent possibly years doing some other shit and that was more foundational than anything ever and she just never bothered to mention it. Which, okay, I know it was really because they hadn't thought of this when that season happened, but maybe put some thought into how it might work? Like, maybe, she undertook this to help her with her quest for Mina and she kept being about how she had to get back to that? Nope, just it was this thing that happened and she took her time because it was such a major life pursuit. But also it's completely tied into everything about the first season and was the actual plot all along that nobody ever thought to bring up or discover and this one-time appearing character was actually super important. That kind of "plotting" with nobody caring about actually establishing any of it to preserve "twists" that don't matter. Do better show from a decade ago.

On imdb there's a massive drop in the reviews for a particular episode and if you look at them it's all because there's like thirty seconds of gay sex depicted. The reviews are all "FORCING THEIR AGENDA ONTO US" and blah blah blah. The show had sex scenes from the start and the very first appearance of the character has him lounging erotically with another man, you saw the other guy naked with his dick out earlier, and this is what finally got you upset? "I didn't think they'd actually show it!!!"   Also, this is a British co-production, it's not an "agenda", it's just them being British.

I think I partly like it because despite the horror stuff it kind of feels like a London-set Deadwood with the era and language and monologues and violence and drinking/drugs and prostitutes and everyone scheming against everyone. (Though it largely avoids the obviousness of having the elite aware of or engaged in the supernatural stuff. Which limits just how Deadwood it could be.) There's an aspect of the "dawning 20th Century" running into The Old in its themes.

[Snoopy]

Don't waste your time. The first season of Penny is ok. The rest are shit

[benji]

Watched a near random selection of British sitcoms. I'm weird because I much preferred Black Books and The Thin Blue Line to Spaced and Black Adder. I know I'm really weird because I not only didn't really care for either of the main characters of Spaced but I think I actually prefer the setup of the first Black Adder where he's stupider to the latter ones where he's smart. Even though this change is what Wikipedia tells me saved the series and turned it into one of the greatest of all time. The better episodes were when the guest characters were pretty smart and he had to deal with an inability to manipulate everyone like he typically could with the regular side characters, which is kind of the premise of Frasier's better episodes.

[Potato]

The Hawk is suitably trashy shit from Will Ferrell. 

Highly recommended.

[Snoopy]

If your watching Brit sitcoms then Peep Show, Alan Partridge and The Thick Of It should be top of your list. Followed by Detectorists, Nathan Barley, Nighty Night and Inbetweeners

[Besticus Maximus]

Watched a near random selection of British sitcoms. I'm weird because I much preferred Black Books and The Thin Blue Line to Spaced and Black Adder. I know I'm really weird because I not only didn't really care for either of the main characters of Spaced but I think I actually prefer the setup of the first Black Adder where he's stupider to the latter ones where he's smart. Even though this change is what Wikipedia tells me saved the series and turned it into one of the greatest of all time. The better episodes were when the guest characters were pretty smart and he had to deal with an inability to manipulate everyone like he typically could with the regular side characters, which is kind of the premise of Frasier's better episodes.

blackadder 2,3 and 4 are genius imo. You are correct that black books and thin blue line are good. Does Benji know about father ted and patridge, big questions

If you've never seen Bottom you absolutely have to watch bottom.


And Fawlty Towers, obviously.

The Brittas empire is a good weird one from back in my childhood, how do you even explain to an american what a leisure centre is

[Polident]

Cyberpunk Edgerunners

It’s cool how much it ties into the game world, and the core story and such are interesting, but I wish it were 20% less modern anime cliches. Feel like my tolerance for anime has dropped.

[benji]

If you've never seen Bottom you absolutely have to watch bottom.

So far I don't get the "comedy" of this one, just seems to be a bleak documentary about two blokes living like we all do in late-stage capitalism. And this Ritchie is a pretty obvious egg.

[Snoopy]

Fun co-incidence. I finished rewatching The Wire so I was looking for something new. I put on the Cape Fear remake and Marlo was in the opening scene.

[Besticus Maximus]

Cape Fear is actually great, its complete shite but it is also brilliant at times, very complex. I have been practicing a max cady impression and im considering it for halloween.

[benji]

Because he was in Bottom and presumably because I watched Blackadder, I'm watching The New Statesman and I like Mayall in this more than in the other things I've seen him in. I like it, I especially like that Alan gets away with nearly everything, that was one aspect of Blackadder I didn't think was as smart after the first series. And most sitcoms of any of this type refuse to let the bad guy main character actually get away with his schemes even when he's smarter than everyone unlike a, say, Always Sunny.

What I don't understand so much is the "satire" claim, especially the claim of "provocative" and "biting", because Alan (and really a few of the other Tories in the show) is less "conservative" compared to flat out evil. He doesn't even try to justify any of it to anyone.  

I know I know, that's conservatives, but he does things like argue for slavery just to be more extreme in order to get a column printed and makes at least half the other political choices because of what would benefit him personally in some sudden scheme that came to mind. I liked the porn episode but the other people are (mostly) all portrayed as honest in their opposition and Alan just takes advantage for himself rather than the show even critiquing the censorship position. Arguably the most honest Alan is is in the early episodes before they decide to just make him totally evil where he admits to being libertarian but there's too much power (or money) in his pretending to be conservative.

Not to say there's not any, just that it's not really part of the show's plotting, it's more characters making commentary. To compare with Yes, Minister where it's generally core to the plot. Again, I don't mind it, I like it and Alan's being evil, I'm just commenting on the way others wrote about it. Which might be why I enjoyed it as I was expecting a more typical dumb "political" sitcom versus a real b'stard. The porn episode is a decent example, but one where Alan eliminates the dole for the elderly is another good one, where the show goes an extra step beyond what a typical show would do. Of course Alan is going to try to con someone opposed to porn and his mother is going to have to come live with him and he'll hate it, and he'll have to get out of a complication but that's only really the halfway point of the plot and Alan is going to have to scheme at another level.

The last season where everyone becomes MEP's and the show moves to Brussels is kind of clearly worse in every way but the budget. It really feels in places like they started with a normal season in London and UK politics but then decided to move it, hastily rewrote chunks to keep the general episode ideas and forced in a bunch of references to other European countries. I do like that Alan was gone for three years but the show feels like he was only gone a week and nobody really acts like he was really gone longer and it's right back to things as normal.

Can't watch any of the specials as they're behind an additional subscription for some odd reason. Not the only UK show like this on Amazon Prime where the entire seasons are available but special episodes aren't. And those are often not on any other service.

[benji]

Forgot to comment on Rik Mayall saying "RIGHT!" constantly as a transition. It really stands out when you watch a bunch of episodes of something with him in a row.

[Rendle]

Lucky - OK
Silo - OK
House of the Dragon - Bad
Furious - Good
The Wire - Great

[Polident]

Cyberpunk Edgerunners

It’s cool how much it ties into the game world, and the core story and such are interesting, but I wish it were 20% less modern anime cliches. Feel like my tolerance for anime has dropped.

All in all, I enjoyed it. I watched the English dub and it wasn’t overboard in trying to replicate the Japanese cadence like most English dubs these days.

[DavidCroquet]

I watched the English dub and it wasn’t overboard in trying to replicate the Japanese cadence like most English dubs these days.

I was shocked to read this only because I had essentially given up on anyone actually noticing it. I thought I was losing my mind or something. It's been a problem for ages.

So many videogames/anime would be vastly improved--or at least made more tolerable--by truly localized spoken VA. Script localization has gotten better over time, but the actual delivery of the lines is as shitty as it ever was most of the time. I gotta believe it's possible to speak in culturally recognizable English cadence that roughly equates to "badass loner" or "sexy lady" or whatever that doesn't require a direct mimicking of the Japanese VA line delivery.

But also at this point it's clear that a lot of people are actually here for the grunts and sighs and affected baby voices.

[HardcoreRetro]

Made me think of this video.

[Snoopy]

Your Friends And Neighbors. This is like the opposite of Mad Men which started off slowly and got better as it went on. This starts off well and turns into mundane shit. Terrible sex scenes. Unbelievable characters. Horrible American Beauty voice over. Ugly middle aged lizard women everywhere. I like John Hamm. Great in Mad Men. Great as the evil sheriff in Fargo. Here he's just a shit Kevin Spacey surrounded by retards.

[benji]

Been watching the Aussie Rake (free on Roku), in part because I really liked the US adaption and of course people were always telling everyone to watch the original instead. I now see that the US one was a pretty faithful adaption, many of the weekly cases are the same kind of premise. There are differences adjusted for the different legal systems. I actually assumed the US one added the politics plots because that's a very US thing to do, but nope, the Aussie version has (drastically different owning to the differences) even more. The US stuff was mostly focused on an upcoming election, while that's harder to do since elections in Aussieland don't last months on end, so their election happened off-screen between the seasons. The plots happen more in office/Parliament/etc.

Actually, my favorite character on the Aussie one is one of the political characters who is Attorney General and then becomes a conservative talk show host on the Murdoch stand-in network. Probably my favorite actor on the show too.

Seeing where the Aussie version goes does kind of make me sad that the US one didn't last long, I really liked Kinnear's version of the character and it would have been fun to see him get into similar situations, except in retrospect I think the Kinnear version is far far less of a "rake" and significantly toned down. Keegan Deeane was pretty sympathetic in a number of his misfortunes while Cleaver Greene is pretty much not. For example, Keegan rarely got drunk to get drunk as is typical on American shows. Cleaver does this even when has things he needs to do.

Keegan/Kinnear was worse, and I think this is entirely an American thing, at selling that everyone deserves good representation. Although Cleaver/Roxburgh's character excuses a lot by "just getting paid", there's an idealistic aspect I like even if nobody else on the show thinks his clients deserve any representation let alone good representation. As much as Americans deride the "wokeness" of other cultures, I'd say our media (especially before recent times) has been far less forgiving about letting bad people get away with things because it's right. Rake, for the most part, understands the actual justice that lies in that.

[benji]

Also, while I can accept judges in them for whatever reason, I can't accept a system with barristers in wigs as a serious legal system. Sorry, not sorry.

[Besticus Maximus]

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Because he was in Bottom and presumably because I watched Blackadder, I'm watching The New Statesman and I like Mayall in this more than in the other things I've seen him in. I like it, I especially like that Alan gets away with nearly everything, that was one aspect of Blackadder I didn't think was as smart after the first series. And most sitcoms of any of this type refuse to let the bad guy main character actually get away with his schemes even when he's smarter than everyone unlike a, say, Always Sunny.

What I don't understand so much is the "satire" claim, especially the claim of "provocative" and "biting", because Alan (and really a few of the other Tories in the show) is less "conservative" compared to flat out evil. He doesn't even try to justify any of it to anyone.  

I know I know, that's conservatives, but he does things like argue for slavery just to be more extreme in order to get a column printed and makes at least half the other political choices because of what would benefit him personally in some sudden scheme that came to mind. I liked the porn episode but the other people are (mostly) all portrayed as honest in their opposition and Alan just takes advantage for himself rather than the show even critiquing the censorship position. Arguably the most honest Alan is is in the early episodes before they decide to just make him totally evil where he admits to being libertarian but there's too much power (or money) in his pretending to be conservative.

Not to say there's not any, just that it's not really part of the show's plotting, it's more characters making commentary. To compare with Yes, Minister where it's generally core to the plot. Again, I don't mind it, I like it and Alan's being evil, I'm just commenting on the way others wrote about it. Which might be why I enjoyed it as I was expecting a more typical dumb "political" sitcom versus a real b'stard. The porn episode is a decent example, but one where Alan eliminates the dole for the elderly is another good one, where the show goes an extra step beyond what a typical show would do. Of course Alan is going to try to con someone opposed to porn and his mother is going to have to come live with him and he'll hate it, and he'll have to get out of a complication but that's only really the halfway point of the plot and Alan is going to have to scheme at another level.

The last season where everyone becomes MEP's and the show moves to Brussels is kind of clearly worse in every way but the budget. It really feels in places like they started with a normal season in London and UK politics but then decided to move it, hastily rewrote chunks to keep the general episode ideas and forced in a bunch of references to other European countries. I do like that Alan was gone for three years but the show feels like he was only gone a week and nobody really acts like he was really gone longer and it's right back to things as normal.

Can't watch any of the specials as they're behind an additional subscription for some odd reason. Not the only UK show like this on Amazon Prime where the entire seasons are available but special episodes aren't. And those are often not on any other service.

New statesman is secretly the best one tbf.

The conservative framing is more explicitly Thatcherite in focusing on how evil he is compared to the wets, he’s the manifest of self interest and grasping

[Potato]

Primal has no right to be this fucking good!

Like, what the hell?

Cannot wait for Genndy Tartakovsky's Conan the Barbarian adaptation.

[benji]

Incisive review of one of those many shows where a brilliant weirdo with issues solves cases with the police:

[benji]

Perception is okay, Will leaves NYC, Grace, Jack and Karen to become a schizophrenic professor in Chicago. There's a few arcs but mostly everything constantly gets reset to the original premise. He has hallucinations that help him solve cases. Rachel Leigh Cook is a bad actor and character and so is her ex-husband DA. And Allen Strange (who never recharges in his pod) and Geordi are here as side characters that are better but don't get enough time, not even Geordi who never even gets to work on a case. The music is kind of terrible informing you of what to feel type. I'm pretty sure at least half the cited "science" in the episodes is entirely wrong and nobody even tried to Wikipedia it. The easiest example is an episode where people have an inability to feel pain, but the show depicts it entirely as having no feeling at all in their body. The great "solving twist" involves Will touching a woman on her hand and her not feeling it. People with CIP still feel touch, they don't have properly operating pain receptors. Which actually makes the entire crime impossible to have happened because it involves a woman not feeling being shot and dying from the wound going septic.

Raines is funny enough a similar premise but with Jeff Goldblum and he's a cop himself. He also has hallucinations but of the victims rather than semi-random stuff. (Will sometimes hallucinates the victims.) What's better is that they can't know anything Goldblum doesn't know so it's mostly about him investigating them. There's a few nice touches like a victim that Goldblum finds out didn't speak English or multiple victims so they all have to cram into his car. It got cancelled after seven episodes which is unfortunate because it's in the latter ones that Goldblum starts to figure out how to play the character (and be more Goldblumy than depressed) and the side characters (including Empress Hoshi) become more than just giving Goldblum plot info. The whole thing is treated like an old LA noir (good title for a game imo) that Goldblum's character is a fan of and so narrates and has music like, which is kind of lame but also doesn't get used for anything in the seven episodes.

The Magicians is fucking awesome. The premise sounds absolutely terrible and is why I ignored it despite it showing up in my recommendations for a long time. Harry Potter but at a graduate school and with parts of The Unwritten so it's about the kids books that are actually real. Which is like dear god, do not want because this will be terrible. But it does pretty much everything right about this, the worldbuilding is great and the world it builds FUCKING SUCKS like magic should. The plotting is actually great, it's all serial, and it's self-aware so it lampshades and undermines every trope it can, while skipping over explanations by referencing other media like Buffy or even Harry Potter. (I figured they wouldn't with Joanne's evil but they felt fine being that on the nose about such a reference.)

I've seen whining that none of the characters are likeable to empaths and none are powerful perfect selfless heroes and the show is often bleak and yes, this is exactly why it is awesome. The ENDLESS SUFFERING is kind of a bit much when you binge watch something instead of weekly with season breaks so I can't really criticize it for a form it was never intended to be watched in. (Like the season cliffhangers only last until the next episode auto-plays.) My main complaint would be that the romantic stuff is kind of stupid but also they're college age millennials so that's kind of appropriate too. The show does seem aware of this as well and also lampshades that the characters are being stupidly dramatic considering THE WORLD IS ENDING OR WHATEVER. Also I don't know why everyone calls them "magicians" instead of warlocks/witches even though there's also people in world called witches, I don't think anyone ever says "warlock" though. Also the first season is swearing censored apparently on all streaming, you need the discs to hear FUCK and SHIT but the seasons after aren't.

It also has one of the greatest villain intro scenes (and theme) in anything I've ever seen and almost perfectly placed in the first episode right when you're about to think this show is the shitty version of the premise you thought:


Between this and Warehouse 13 (also The Magicians has an in-world Warehouse/The Library too) I'm really surprised at how good SyFy programming once was. So I've become inclined to look at what else they've done other than Battlestar.

[Rendle]

If you love crap 2010 SyFy you'd love Alphas

[benji]

The show gets a flood of 1 star reviews for the season four finale where a character is killed with titles like "DONE WITH THIS SHOW" and "THANKS FOR TELLING ME I SHOULD KILL MYSELF" and "WE'RE NEVER ALLOWED HAPPINESS" and "TOXIC AND HARMFUL" so on. I think this review explains it concisely:

Especially when it's an lgbt character, on a show which always promised to be a safe space for people like us

Some more that were concise compared to the rambling incoherent long ones:

Poor writing and poor understanding of how important it was to have a depressed queer man as a main character. So beastiality is okay but not healthy LGBTQ relationships.

I've never felt so insulted by writing in life. The longer I have to sit with this, the more I realize I have to be angry about and while the cast has handled it with all the grace we could ask for the writing team responsible for the disaster refuses to own up to their mistakes. It's not an apology if you won't admit you screwed up. Horrible choice for a show that had so much to be proud of.

A show which always offered hope to viewers with mental health issues (& queer people) suddenly kills off its depressed queer man, in a scene which mirrors suicidal fantasies so closely as to be eerie, for what? 'edgy' points? not just bad writing, but real-life damaging to the health of the show's fans. i certainly won't be tuning back in next season.

This. Happens. Too. Often.

They had a whole host of other characters they could dramatically off. But they chose one of their queer characters and I'm sick to death of it. Don't bother with this episode. Don't bother with this show. It's pointlessly depressing, irritatingly blase with subjects that should not be taken lightly, and generally has writers who have no sense of the communities they're playing with.

This episode is bad, and retroactively made me regret investing any time at all in this series.

Best part is that they apparently had already said before the season aired the actor wasn't coming back for the next season because he wanted to leave, some of the complainers even reference this for additional condemnation.  (Obviously now you know who dies because he has less episodes than the rest of the main cast or it says "Season 1-4" next to his name or the fact that he's no longer credited first on Season 5.)

Spoiler: actual spoilers I guess (click to show)(click to hide)

Also lots of complaints that it was QUEERBAITING because he went back to the girl he was in love with and proclaimed his love for the entire series. He was "queer" for all of one scene where they were drunk on magic wine shit or whatever, they only brought it back up because they were going to kill him off and it was an unresolved plot thread.

And the death was narratively appropriate, not promoting suicide jesus christ. "Mirrors suicidal fantasies so closely as to be eerie" he throws a magic thing into a magic thing AS THEY PLANNED AND INTENDED as a magic guy tries to stop him.  The guy who wanted to be a hero finally got a chance to be one rather than irrelevant as he was throughout the series since the show was subverting the SUPERFAN OF THE BOOKS BECOMES THE MAIN HERO trope. These people would rather he turned into a narcissist who doomed the world and his friends (including his queer true love) rather than save everyone.  

edit:

brought to you by the alcohol industry
Another season starts off with everyone drinking and references to drinking. its distracting and unnecessarily.

[Rendle]

I read the books and only the first season. When they didn't include the scene where Quentin walks in on Eliot (consensually) getting his disfigured face spat on during gay sex, that's when I realised the show was unsalvageable and didn't care about LGBT representation.

[benji]

Like the show's not even really that pro-bestiality so I don't know why they're talking as if it was this great safe space of LGBT representation.