What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Shellhead wrote:

Jackwraith wrote: Battlestar Galactica was failing with the second season, but they heard the clamor for less introspective horseshit loud and clear and went in a starkly different direction with the third season, which is what all my friends try to tell me when I tell them that I stopped watching after the second season. So, it is possible.

I didn't start watching BSG until after getting the boardgame, but I'm surprised to hear that the show was failing with the second season. It wasn't quite as good as the mini-series or the first season, but still pretty good. Third season is where the show lost its way, especially in the second half of the season. It became apparent that the writers had run out of their planned material and were just making shit up along the way. I gave up at the end of the third season with zero regrets about skipping the final season.

What he said.

Maybe I'm thinking of the first season then? I don't remember. I stopped watching when they were doing the "social problem of the week on our ragtag fleet." It was the season with Apollo's encounter on the gambling ship that may have also involved drugs or something like that. The episodes became fairly tedious space soap operas, much like the last couple seasons of ST: TNG. Perhaps that was when the writers had the response that so many fans of the show have told me about and started off in a new direction (i.e. one actually driven by a plot) for the second season. Whatever.

So Shinichiro Watanabe is having a moment. Not only is the Cowboy Bebop game not trash, but he has a new series on Netflix, Carole & Tuesday. It may be set in the Cowboy Bebop universe is much closer in spirit to his semi-autobiographical Kids on the Slope. Straight up it’s just his love for music but pop rather than jazz, and two episodes in it’s pretty great. The actual piano notes and guitar chords are animated. The story is looking like A Star is Born retread, but the visual storytelling is gorgeous.

Watch it, so you can stop saying you don’t like anime except Bebop. Then watch Samurai Champloo and Kids on the Slope because Watanabe only hits inside-the-park home runs.

The Society - Teens are suddenly left by themselves in a small town with no roads going out. This Netflix show has gotten good reviews and is supposed to be like a modern Lord of the Flies, but I'm 3 episodes in and so far its like a CW show with badly written teen drama overtaking the more interesting mystery part. Its partly filmed where I live (the bridge above is across the street from me) so I'll probably hate-watch the rest of it and hope the reviews don't lie and it gets better.

DarthJoJo wrote: Watch it, so you can stop saying you don’t like anime except Bebop. Then watch Samurai Champloo and Kids on the Slope because Watanabe only hits inside-the-park home runs.

I thought maybe I was an anime fan for like a year or two but then I discovered I just really like Watanabe and to a lesser extent Miyazaki.

Gary Sax wrote: I thought maybe I was an anime fan for like a year or two but then I discovered I just really like Watanabe and to a lesser extent Miyazaki.

That's legitimate. I would suggest you take a look at the fine works of Satoshi Kon, an under-rated visionary.

Amazon foisted a free trial of Prime membership on me again, the last time I tried it was six months ago so I caved in to see what’s new.

Undone is amazing. You guys are wasting your time talking about how shit Carnival Row and The Boys are when you should be talking about how awesome this show is. It’s kind of trippy, sort of fantasy/alternate life with shades of The OA and Russian Doll, heck it’s just great. The only off-putting bit about it is the casting of Bob Odenkirk who I just can’t shake off as you-know-who despite giving a consummate performance.

Good Omens is of course incredible. I was glad to see Peter Serafinovich pop up in a cameo as he was so good as Crowley in the audio drama. I think they made good choices in the adaptation to screen.

Nothing else was interesting. I’m happy to watch the good stuff for free once every six months.

Joebot wrote: I watched a documentary called Eye of the Beholder last night on Amazon Prime. It's all about Dungeons & Dragon art, and all the artists who have worked at TSR / Wizards over the years. They spent a good chunk of time on the Big Four -- Elmore, Easley, Parkinson, and Caldwell. At one point, they dragged out an old copy of the "Art of the Dragonlance Saga" book. I still have that book, and I spent countless hours flipping through it when I was a kid. The documentary is pretty good. They show tons of art going back to the 70's across all kinds of D&D materials. They also talk about the origins of TSR and what it was like to work there in the early days. Very fun documentary, and the artwork is just a blast to see.

Finally watched this, and liked it. Sometimes the subject matter of a documentary has some abstract elements that can't be easily shown, and that can lead to some dry monotone exposition by an expert. Eye of the Beholder had a wealth of colorful subject matter on display, and the talking people tended to be very enthusiastic about the topic. To avoid lengthy exposition, the format switched between brief comments from a variety of people to longer scenes where someone related an interesting anecdote.

While the big four tended to have all the best art, it was interesting to see so much of the earlier D&D art for the outsider art that it was. Jeff Dee admitted that he dropped out of high school to become an artist and then dropped out of art school because he was getting so much work from TSR. I still have a fondness for that early D&D art despite it's inferior quality, because it was so strange and imaginative and accessible.

It was jarring to see porn star Satine Phoenix (identified in the documentary as a "community manager") because she was wearing donkey-sized elf ears and had mistakenly opted for collagen-injected lips at some point. But even her enthusiasm for D&D art was infectious, and understandable since she was a regular on the youtube series I Hit it With My Axe.

The only bad part about Eye of the Beholder was that they wasted about 20 minutes of quoting a wide range of people who were all saying the same thing: the art in D&D was important because it helped players visualize the encounters and inspired the dungeon masters. The point is valid and important, but redundant after the first five minutes.

Shellhead wrote: It was jarring to see porn star Satine Phoenix (identified in the documentary as a "community manager") because she was wearing donkey-sized elf ears and had mistakenly opted for collagen-injected lips at some point. But even her enthusiasm for D&D art was infectious, and understandable since she was a regular on the youtube series I Hit it With My Axe.

That was indeed jarring! I feel like the elf ears were a joke that went on for too long and then it was too late to change it. Like she said, "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if I wore my giant elf ears during the interview?" And then the director says, "Sure, go for it." Then the editor says, "Sure, I'll use this footage." And by that point, there's actually a woman with giant elf ears in an otherwise pretty sedate documentary.

Joebot wrote:

Shellhead wrote: It was jarring to see porn star Satine Phoenix (identified in the documentary as a "community manager") because she was wearing donkey-sized elf ears and had mistakenly opted for collagen-injected lips at some point. But even her enthusiasm for D&D art was infectious, and understandable since she was a regular on the youtube series I Hit it With My Axe.

That was indeed jarring! I feel like the elf ears were a joke that went on for too long and then it was too late to change it. Like she said, "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if I wore my giant elf ears during the interview?" And then the director says, "Sure, go for it." Then the editor says, "Sure, I'll use this footage." And by that point, there's actually a woman with giant elf ears in an otherwise pretty sedate documentary.

I hate the donkey-size elf ears. I don't know if it started with anime, but it looks crude and foolish compared to more discrete pointed ears like with Legolas or Spock. I looked her up and found that Satine was indeed the Community Manager for Wizards of the Coast at the time of the documentary. The job apparently involved promotion of D&D through social media and events, and she was probably a great fit since she alsp worked with Wil Wheaton on his TableTop web series.

Ran through all two seasons and twelve episodes of Derry Girls with my wife inside of a week. As you might presume, I enjoyed it pretty well. To call the characters one note is generous and, to use the parlance of the show, they are all dicks for whom nothing can go right, but what can you honestly expect from the sitcom exploits of teenage girls in Northern Ireland in the early '90's?

And Sister Michael is the true star. Her absolute disinterest, if not outright disdain, in everything is class.

Don't forget about the priest and the Grandpa! Derry Girls is hilarious. Sister Michael is far and away the best.

I finished first season of Babylon 5 and already watched the first episode of season two. The show got better during first season, after maybe a half dozen episodes. Claudia Christian unclenched and turned out okay. Michael O'Hare ended up as my favorite on season one, and his presence was sorely missed at the start of season two. Maybe the new commander will be okay, but so far he seems pretty bland. Even the aliens gradually became less ugly to me.

Maybe it was the directors of the first season episodes that made the show seem so bad at first. Multiple characters seemed afflicted with the notorious Mid-Atlantic accent, and the style of acting even reminded me a bit of early Hollywood, when actors delivered lines in a loud, phony voices as though they were trying to make sure that the people sitting in the back of the theater could hear them. The writing might have been a factor, too. JMS writes decent storylines, but his dialogue often sounds a little too Dashiell Hammett, a mixture of cliches and ham.

The network may have also taken a hand in the shift in direction that began near the end of season one. The action picked up frantically in the last few episodes, and then season two rolled out with some big servings of exposition. A large percentage of first season episodes were resolved by a wise compromise, which is probably less exciting for some viewers. Maybe it was intentional, but Commander Sinclair often seemed much more diplomatic than the actual alien diplomats onboard. The new commander has been pitched as more of an action guy, so I anticipate that I will be seeing more explosions and less in the way of wise compromises. Overall, I still find the show to be just okay, with occasional flashes of genuine quality.

Over the last month finished up two Amazon Prime shows and one Netflix one, all extremely well done.

In reverse order we just finished Netflix's SPY. It's got Borat (Sasha Cohen) in a serious role as a historical Israeli spy inside Syria in the 1960s. It opens with him on his way to be executed then the six episodes goes over the five years between his recruitment until execution. The last (sixth) episode is a little cringy and you know he is going to be captured and it becomes difficult to watch him make clear missteps. I hated how everything not in the director's focus was blurred, but it didn't affect my enjoyment of the story.

On Amazon Prime also finished Carnival Row that is a intrigue/mystery set in a hybrid fantasy setting. Imagine centaurs, fae, satyrs, etc exist along with humans. However the humans still pursued technological advancement and are at a level of approx 1940 and steamrolling the other civilizations. The intrigue takes place in a city that allows other creatures but treats them as second class citizens. Just as much social commentary as intrigue. Think something like NYC in the 1800s or such. The first episode has too many plots that don't seem to connect until 3/4 of the way through the series. It definitely tightens up and the second half is much better than the first when you start to see the threads come together.

Last one was Amazon Prime's Undone. It uses a technique where they filmed the actors then painted over the film to create a live/animated hybrid. It allows for some special effects as the show zooms back and forth through time and between reality and dream. The main premise is the girl gets in a car accident and starts seeing her dead father and is trying to learn to manipulate time to find his killer and bring him back.

All in all I think I am a fan of limited series. They are much more satisfying to me than open ended series. I did watch Dark Crystal: Age of Rebellion a while back when it came out and have mixed feelings about it. I don't like that it was left open for a season two. I also don't like the incongruities with the movie, nor the fact the gelflings won and banded together. I also have thoughts on the mystics being just as responsible for the skeksis's evil, but that is another discussion.

THE BOYS, unironically and enthusiastically. Great, can’t wait for season 2.