What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Gregarius wrote: Wow! I just watched it (Mandalorian) over my lunch hour. I loved it!

Great action, tight storytelling & direction, and tons of detail & references. The art design was amazing. This felt like the most Star Wars-y thing I've seen since, seriously, ESB.

This is via Disney, or Apple?

I saw it via Disney+.
I don't need yet another streaming service, but I signed up for that pre-launch deal of 2 years for like $130 or some such. An impulse buy, but it seemed worth it.

We're getting to a place (in my house) where we're figuring to subscribe to the different services for six months at a time, maybe having two or three active at once. Once one becomes stale it goes.

Disney + is incredible. I’ve had it on in the background all day. I’ve had several Simpsons episodes going, Gravity Falls, Treasure Planet, DuckTales, Gargoyles, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Escape from Witch Mountain...there’s SO MUCH good stuff. IDGAF about all the anti-Disney anguish. These are films and shows I deeply love. Gummi Bears on in five...

The Jeff Goldblum show was cute...going to watch Forky Asks a Question in a minute here.

Disney+ is great. I started watching Star Wars: Rebels on my bus commute this morning.

Sure, it probably has less breadth/variety than all the other streaming services I've tried, but the depth is fantastic.

My girlfriend's daughter stayed home sick from school yesterday (semi-legitimately); She watched 8 movies in a row.

After enjoying season three of True Detective, I went back to watch season one again to see how they compare, and it's too close to call. Season one is bold and shocking, and addresses touches on some interesting concepts, like synesthesia, m-brane theory, and Carcosa. Season three is more grounded and realistic in approaching the investigation. Both shows offer interesting characters and compelling stories.

Pushing my luck, I decided to re-visit season two. There is no question that season two is the worst season of True Detective. It's still an interesting show, but much less enjoyable. The biggest problem is the four protagonists. All four characters are damaged, and they in turn harm the people who get close to them. They are bitter, corrupt, haggard folk who wallow in their respective miseries, or take ineffectual actions that sometimes make things worse. Perhaps this is a personal failing of mine, but I require main characters in tv shows to offer some degree of likeability, because the tv format means that I will be potentially spending many hours with them. It's like real life in that I don't want to spend much of my valuable free time hanging out with shitty people.

Beyond the problematic characters, there are other things that work against season two. For a show called True Detective, there isn't much detective work happening. Time spent showing how these characters are damaged takes too much time away from the murder mystery. The conspiracy veers a bit too close to mystery box territory for my tastes. And the music is often deliberately awful. It's generally slow and bitter, with suicidal lyrics like "This is my least favorite life." I also dislike the theme song by Leonard Cohen, though I have enjoyed some of his past songs. I appreciate that the show takes place in California without spending too much time around Hollywood, but found the number of characters spouting new age psychobabble to be a bit excessive. And while maybe it was inappropriate to the story to cast so many attractive people as cops, the devastating makeunders seem like overcompensation. Vince Vaughn looks really old. Colin Ferrell gets a pornstache and looks overweight. Rachel McAdams looks like the young woman with the bad hair from The Onion's American Voices. Even Taylor Kitsch looks jowly.

In spite of all the problems, there are some occasional good scenes in season two. David Morse shows up and turns in a decent performance. The cinematography is good. The set dressing is good. The leads are all decent actors even if they working with a second-rate script. Not sure about the overall story yet, as I am only halfway through the season.

Michael Barnes wrote: The Mandalorian is GREAT. At least the first episode. It really paid off to put Dave Filoni as the writer, it has the extremely high quality, thoughtfulness, and measured reverence that The Clone Wars has. It felt very much like a live action Clone Wars episode which is definitely a good thing.

It’s also TOTALLY a Western. Like, 100 percent. More so than Firefly. You could replace every story element and narrative beat with 1864 America stuff and it would be the exact same show.

Seeing an IG droid fight was like a thousand times cooler than seeing Yoda fight. And then they rolled out the E-Web...loved it!

Love that they are digging into the Mandalorian lore from Clone Wars- it was a highlight of the show. But it’s at an accessible level, no previous viewing required.

The bit at the end was a stunner!

Oh and Werner fucking Herzog...I’m not sure he wasn’t just playing himself. Loved it.

Agreed, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was an excellent pilot episode, and I LOVED the fact that you got no exposition, no hand-holding, no clunky voiceover or text scroll bullshit. They just plop you into the action, and we're off. Really effective storytelling.

This is easily the coolest Star Wars has looked since Empire Strikes Back. The production design is fantastic, and they totally nailed the look and the sounds. They really leaned hard into the imagery and themes from Westerns.

IG-11 stole the episode for me. Here's hoping he returns.

The reveal at the end ... ehhhh, we'll see how that goes. I definitely didn't see it coming.

Edited to add: Forgot to mention the closing credits! They show scenes from the episode drawn in Ralph McQuarrie style paintings. VERY FUCKING COOL.

Shellhead wrote: I decided to re-visit True Detective season two...

I watched it again a few months ago. It has issues. The biggest one in my mind is there are too many subplots going on. (Like you say, the season is more focused on the many damaged characters rather than the murder.)
Did we really need all of:

• Vince Vaughn and his wife trying to get pregnant;
• Taylor Kitsch's inner conflict with his homosexuality;
• Rachel McAdam's mistrust of and coldness towards men, and why;
and

• Colin Farrell's strained relationship with his son?

It's too much bolted onto an already convoluted main plotline. I'm glad they simplified season 3 in terms of the number of characters and the number of subplots. The core mystery of each season benefits when there is a more laser focus on it, both for the audience and by the detectives.

Whoa, The Mandalorian was FANTASTIC.

Totally a Western as Barnes said. This is the best thing since Return of the Jedi IMO. I think that pilot was better than Rogue One and certainly better than 7/8/Solo. The tone and touch of humor all felt perfectly Star Wars. Wow.

Spoilery thoughts:

I signed up for Disney+, and I watched THE MANDALORIAN and it was fine. I really liked IG-##, I thought he was awesome. I thought the horse riding scene was bad, and some of the CGI is stiff as hellllll--the ships especially. Not like BABYLON 5 bad, but that's not a real ship for sure. Trying to not fall into the trap of STAR WARS as a setting makes this awesome. Can it be awesome on its own? The lead actor seems clunky in the armor--not sure if that's shtick or because the armor is awkward. You'd think someone wearing it all the time would have it worked out.

I also watched PIPER (love it!), LAVA (eh), and other Pixar shorts and projects (SMASH & GRAB, PURL, FLOAT) that'd missed over the years of not seeing mediocre Pixar films. Solid products, but getting formulaic. I hope Pixar can get back to some of the meanspirited elements of FOR THE BIRDS or ONE MAN BAND that make those lively.

I put GRAVITY FALLS, the X-MEN cartoon from yore, and some other stuff on the Watchlist, too. Looking forward to it, seems like a solid effort out the gate.

The Mandalorian straddles that thin, blurry line between western and samurai movie.

I really liked it, but Rebels is better.

That's funny because after watching The Clone Wars animated series, I thought I'd be all over Rebels. First season of Rebels hasn't done much for me and Ezra is a dumb punk.

Yeah, I'm going through Rebels as well, and so far it isn't really doing much for me. However, it took me a while to get into Clone Wars, so I'll stick it out.

Sure, Ezra is a bit of a dumb punk, but Luke was also a bit of a whiny little wiener.

I think part of the greater appeal for me is that I'm more interested in Jedi and Sith than scoundrels and bounty hunters when it comes to Star Wars. I like the epic more than the gritty. (I tend to like the military stuff more than the grit as well.)

That, and Rebels has some major bad-ass villain moments.

Rebels got better as it went along, but I can't say it ever really grabbed me. Then again it is a cartoon for kids so that's probably why.

Haven't watched Mandalorian yet. Second episode is tomorrow so I'm waiting until the weekend to watch them back to back.