What TV SHOWS are you watching?

I watched episode 1 of Hunters last night. I liked it, and also found it a bit hard to watch, but mainly because, much like the recent Wolfenstein games, it's far too easy to see it as real life these days.

hotseatgames wrote:

mc wrote: FInally got around to watching Dark.

It gets pretty convoluted. If you watch the whole thing and are never surprised, well that would surprise me.

Convoluted is right.
My partner had to print off a chart.
We frequently have to pause. "Okay, wait. So.... "

It's pretty good, I don't mind a time travel mind melt now and then and it certainly delivers on that. You are right, there have been a few surprises - not so much the "wasn't expecting this gap to be filled by this character" sort, but of the character action sort - like the Ulrich/Helge interaction. Having said that I don't really care about any of them.... oh, I guess Jonas is fairly sympathetic. Everyone else is a bit of a dick or talks in riddles when they could speak plainly and have no reason not to which is a personal bugbear. Or is just dumb. Particularly Ulrich.

Like, someone goes back in time and has definitive proof that they are clearly in the past and then starts speaking to people like they have not realised it or forgotten. WHY.

Still watching some 21 Jump Street. The only good episode in the first season was the punk rock episode. By season two, most episodes had a mixed quality that was both cool and corny, and sometimes a little preachy. By season three, the show is solidly good, with a couple of great episodes so far. The preachiness has gone away in favor of a more nuanced look at tricky topics like abortion and labor union politics. Holly Robinson was great, too, though she got an unfortunate mom haircut in season three. Peter DeLuise and Dustin Nguyen unfortunately went the opposite way with long mullets. Young Johnny Depp is full of star quality even then, and it's funny to watch him out-act other young actors who got big later, like Brad Pitt, Russell Wong, Sherilynn Fenn, and Vince Vaughn. Richard Grieco is more of a mystery. He made a strong debut at the start of season three and is consistently good on the show, and leaves by the end of the season to star in his own show Booker. But after one season of Booker, he mostly dropped out of site. As I suspected, the bland music on the show replaced the music originally used during broadcast, due to rights issues.

Season two of ALTERED CARBON. Betrayal! Weird pseudo-immortal body-jumping! AIs with questionable motives!

Still fun, less noir than season 1 but to its credit I think.

I'm sure haters will find a reason to diss it, but I really enjoyed the latest episode of Picard.

Finished season four of Better Call Saul on Netflix. Not as strong as the third season (lower stakes for Jimmy and a damp squib of a storyline for Mike), but I continue to prefer it to Breaking Bad. Saul is just the more mature show. Breaking Bad was total wish-fulfillment for a large category of men. I could totally be the most terrifying, cunning, ruthless drug dealer in the Southwest, if I needed to, they would think. Saul? The protagonist tops out at being the sort of lawyer guilty people hire.

Yeah, I love Saul more than Breaking Bad as well. Season four was a little disappointing, but I found Mike's story really good. That last scene with his German friend was pretty rough.

Yeah, thematically Mike’s story worked, but it’s setup unimpressed me. I’d really rather not see these last seasons turn into explaining every minor detail of Breaking Bad, like Solo, and instead keep the focus on the characters, like the prequels.

Arrow season eight. It is getting weird with dimension hopping and time travel and so on. But it is fun and I’d rather a superhero show lean into the inherent goofiness of the genre than try to make it all edgy grimdark all the time.

dysjunct wrote: Arrow season eight. It is getting weird with dimension hopping and time travel and so on. But it is fun and I’d rather a superhero show lean into the inherent goofiness of the genre than try to make it all edgy grimdark all the time.

I gave up on Arrow after season three because it seemed to be too much of a soap opera and Oliver's allies were all exasperating. When does it get better?

Shellhead wrote:

dysjunct wrote: Arrow season eight. It is getting weird with dimension hopping and time travel and so on. But it is fun and I’d rather a superhero show lean into the inherent goofiness of the genre than try to make it all edgy grimdark all the time.

I gave up on Arrow after season three because it seemed to be too much of a soap opera and Oliver's allies were all exasperating. When does it get better?

Its a CW teen soap with adults. It never gets better.

ChristopherMD wrote:

Shellhead wrote:

dysjunct wrote: Arrow season eight. It is getting weird with dimension hopping and time travel and so on. But it is fun and I’d rather a superhero show lean into the inherent goofiness of the genre than try to make it all edgy grimdark all the time.

I gave up on Arrow after season three because it seemed to be too much of a soap opera and Oliver's allies were all exasperating. When does it get better?

Its a CW teen soap with adults. It never gets better.

This is correct. The soap opera and exasperating allies are the good parts.

dysjunct wrote:

ChristopherMD wrote:

Shellhead wrote:

dysjunct wrote: Arrow season eight. It is getting weird with dimension hopping and time travel and so on. But it is fun and I’d rather a superhero show lean into the inherent goofiness of the genre than try to make it all edgy grimdark all the time.

I gave up on Arrow after season three because it seemed to be too much of a soap opera and Oliver's allies were all exasperating. When does it get better?

Its a CW teen soap with adults. It never gets better.

This is correct. The soap opera and exasperating allies are the good parts.

Correction. The soap opera and exasperating allies and Willa Holland are the good parts.

I'm about halfway through season 4 of Better Call Saul on Netflix. I agree with the general consensus that this is a better show than Breaking Bad. I admired Breaking Bad more than I liked it, if that makes sense. It was just so relentlessly bleak and grim. It's nice to see the TV industry tell some other stories besides the "angsty white male antihero" formula that dominated prestige dramas for a solid decade.

I will say though that season 4 feels a bit disjointed for so far. It's always fascinating and entertaining, but it's a bit like watching three separate shows at this point: Jimmy and Kim; Mike and his adventures; Gus and Nacho. There's very little cross-over between these plots so far. I'm hoping that changes in the back half of the season.

I finished Hunters this weekend, as well as The Outsider. I enjoyed both, and they both feature excellent performances.

I found the concentration camp scenes in Hunters to be fairly hard to watch, and I'm sure that was the intent. This show flips from social commentary to crazy spy action on a dime. It's probably my favorite Al Pacino performance, ever.

Outsider's ending was ok, but I think I was hoping for more emotional punch. I can't really put my finger on it, but it wasn't completely satisfying.

I've been unhappy with Al Pacino's acting for a long time now. He was amazing in multiple roles in the '70s, but by the mid-'90s, he seemed to be channeling Foghorn Leghorn. Shouting his lines and chewing the scenery like crazy. Except he turned in a nicely restrained role in Insomnia. But I agree that Pacino was really good in Hunters.