What TV SHOWS are you watching?

hotseatgames wrote: Re-watched season 1 of True Detective. Still fantastic stuff. The way Marty looks at Rust as he is driving always cracks me up.

Also watched a Netflix anime called Japan Sinks 2020. It's about a family struggling to survive as earthquakes cause Japan to... sink. It's pretty good... depressing as hell quite often. Definitely not the feel good hit of the summer.

I'm curious about Japan Sinks. How....anime is it? By that I mean lots of gloomy emo characters, needless voice-over during panning static shots, endless screaming of another characters name, and very little plot development? I used to love anime back in the day but all the recent ones I've tried to watch are just cold, sterile, and filled with unlikable characters with lots of budget cut measures.

It's really like a normal show that happens to be animated. It is "anime" in its implausibility... but this is not Dragonball.

dysjunct wrote:
Wife is currently watching CURSED, yet another Arthurian reimagining. It's forgettable. On one hand, I get that the way myths survive is to constantly reinvent themselves for each new generation, but this one rankles me for various reasons, most of them probably petty.

I'm interested if your rankling matches my ranking on Cursed.

the_jake_1973 wrote:

dysjunct wrote:
Wife is currently watching CURSED, yet another Arthurian reimagining. It's forgettable. On one hand, I get that the way myths survive is to constantly reinvent themselves for each new generation, but this one rankles me for various reasons, most of them probably petty.

I'm interested if your rankling matches my ranking on Cursed.

Caveat that I am only half-watching while mindlessly scrolling, so this might have some in-universe explanation that is plausible.

- Uther (Arthur’s father) is roughly the same age as him.
- But is of a different ethnicity.
- “Paladins” are religious fanatic bad guys. They all wear red robes (redshirts?) and suck at fighting.
- Related: pagans good Christians bad. I’m not religious but I’m so tired of the largest religion in the world being portrayed as either 100% conniving hypocrites, or 100% Hallmark channel perfect aw-shucks mom, apple pie, and Jesus. Related to the recent thread about Battlestar Galactica — I read on multiple occasions that the series was popular with enlisted people because it portrayed the military as regular people. Some good, some bad, but mostly ordinary folk trying to do their best in a really shitty situation. It would be nice to see religion treated with the same level of respect and humility.
- Everyone fights with swords always. Pitched battle? Sword. Close quarters? Swords. Peasant conscripts? They draw swords.

Edit:

Finished Avatar. What a triumph. Just top notch execution from beginning to end. I don’t know the last time I felt privileged to watch a TV show. Spawn insisted on immediately starting over from S1E1, so we did.

Currently: Dr. Who, lady Doctor season. It’s fine I guess. The spousal unit had never seen Dr. Who, whereas I watched it on PBS in the mid 80s while my parents were at my more athletic siblings’ sports games. I introduced her to the reboot with Eccleston and she became obsessed. For me, it’s about Baker with Tennant a decent second place. Mostly it’s hard to watch when there’s so much better TV, even if you limit it to the nerdy sci-fi space.

dysjunct wrote: Finished Avatar. What a triumph. Just top notch execution from beginning to end. I don’t know the last time I felt privileged to watch a TV show. Spawn insisted on immediately starting over from S1E1, so we did.

Avatar: The Legend of Korra will be on Netflix starting August 14th. We've watched the first two of four seasons, and should pick it up again. I don't think it's as good as The Last Airbender, but it's pretty good.

They seemed to do away with the Uther > Arthur lineage and I think it may be a combination of Arthur being a secondary character and the writers wanting to keep the main cast in the same age range (the CW effect). The Arthur + Morgana = Mordred angle will probably not be handled in the traditional way.

The sheer amount of Red Paladins is ridiculous. They are the equivalent of Arrow's ninjas. I get what you mean about the religion being cast as an evil boogeyman, but in this setting that fanaticism and zealotry may not be totally out of place. A friar/priest who was not beholden to the Pope's decrees would be the outlier it would seem.

Yes, the swords. The writers definitely ignore the training it takes to effectively use one and hand them out willy nilly. I suppose because they read better in stage combat. It also suffers from the 'attack one at a time' syndrome.

What got me was that the main female characters only seem to do shitty things because they are under the influence of external forces. It feels like it takes agency away from the characters.


I am interested in how they handle the rest of the retelling. It is a new take on it and better than most of the retellings that have been brought to the small and large screens.

Cursed -- They got a deal on the swords from the props department, spears were extra.

I tried very hard twice to get through the first episode, but I found cleaning up the kitchen more entertaining. The leading lady is very flat, very bland. I don't know if it's the directing (which I suspect because all the other characters feel that way too) or a limitation of her skills, but she's not grabbing me. I know, first episodes are usually pretty rough. But as it stands right now it feels like a 9th grader's D&D campaign.

We've stumbled onto Scott and Bailey, one of dozens of crime dramas by the BBC. Capably acted by a broad cast of people, and there's these little flourishes that British television does that American television doesn't, for whatever reason. The boss' nickname is Godzilla, but they don't explain that. The name is used in context and you pick it up. One of the pathologists is called "Scary Stacey" and you never meet her but the nickname and the way the character spits it out tells you all you need. The writing is such that characters can develop even when they're not on the screen. There's a richness in these sorts of passing glances at the setting and players.

Then I turn on Cursed, and the characters need to spend all their dialogue explaining the plotline which is perfectly obvious. Hardly fair to compare the two given their budgets, but budgets aren't what makes this kind of difference. Please let me know if Cursed settles down into a place where they can move the plot without telegraphing it. Love the era, love a strong female lead. Might be a winner six episodes in.

Working my way through The Umbrella Academy season 2. Plot wise it is kind of a retread of season 1 with a lot more intersibling whining. It's not a spoiler that it takes place in 1960's Dallas, though you would be hard pressed to place it. Dallas had tall buildings and over half a million inhabitants! Anyway, hopefully the back half of the season gets in focus. Right now there are bursts of coolness with a lot of tedium relieved only by counting the times the Five actor leans way over towards the camera and astonishment at Ellen Pages impressive forehead (seriously, she looks like the Bene Gesserit mother supreme!).

I had to reconcile myself to the fact that they must be is some suburb of Dallas with the small town vibe and not Dallas proper.


If you are not into Cursed now, more episodes won't help. And admittedly, my main interest is how they are tying in the aspects of the Arthur legends I grew up on.

jason10mm wrote:

hotseatgames wrote: Re-watched season 1 of True Detective. Still fantastic stuff. The way Marty looks at Rust as he is driving always cracks me up.

Also watched a Netflix anime called Japan Sinks 2020. It's about a family struggling to survive as earthquakes cause Japan to... sink. It's pretty good... depressing as hell quite often. Definitely not the feel good hit of the summer.

I'm curious about Japan Sinks. How....anime is it? By that I mean lots of gloomy emo characters, needless voice-over during panning static shots, endless screaming of another characters name, and very little plot development? I used to love anime back in the day but all the recent ones I've tried to watch are just cold, sterile, and filled with unlikable characters with lots of budget cut measures.

It's based on an older novel, so it's quite different. Surprisingly depressing in places, which I found refreshing.

Continuum - I've been re-watching this show. It's partly sad because we're even closer to a corporate-run dystopia than when the show aired. I was just watching an episode where the "bad guys" broke into DeutscheBank and stole incriminating stuff from Sonmanto's (aka Monsanto) deposit box. Show starts out very crime-of-the-week but sticks to its world-building more as it goes on. Got about 10 episodes left to go. Probably won't be the last time I re-watch as its a good time-travel show and the politics are still relevant.

War of the Worlds, the 2019 version. I've got to say, watching the human race get exterminated was extremely cathartic. Mass deaths, murder, suicides, and it doesn't shy away from child deaths either. It's one of the best depictions of what happens to a civilian population subjected to that kind of use of indiscriminate weaponry: wherever you go, there are dead people. In the streets, in every building, not blown apart or unrecognisably burned, but just laying there, dead.

A solid cast, with Gabriel Byrne being the most famous there (and the most prone to over-acting), and decent production values. Really enjoyed it. Blows the Tom Cruise film away.

I have complained here lately about the HBO mini-series I'll Be Gone in the Dark. The first five episodes spent way too much airtime on a writer who was obsessed with a serial rapist/killer, and not enough time on the criminal himself, or his victims, or the investigation. Even when I finally admitted to myself the series is apparently about the writer and only incidentally also the killer, it was maddening. So I reluctantly watched the final episode, and it was great.

Yes, great. I even recommend watching the whole mini-series, and not just the final episode, because the first five help set up the delivery of the revelations of the final episode. There were a few minutes about writer Michelle in the final episode, but they were not wasted minutes like some of the redundant fawning of the earlier episodes. The rest was all about the killer, with plenty of time addressing reactions to his arrest from law enforcement, victims, and even some relatives of the killer. Even his original fiancee weighs in with a horrific account of the night that she realized that she couldn't marry him.

The final episode of I'll Be Gone in the Dark is riveting, horrific, and well-paced. The most shocking revelations are from a couple of relatives of the killer. And I was fascinated by a couple of interesting minutes that neatly explain why a large majority of true crime readers and citizen detectives are women. If this whole mini-series had been edited down to a 3-hour documentary, it would rank as one of the best documentaries that I have seen.

RobertB wrote:

dysjunct wrote: Finished Avatar. What a triumph. Just top notch execution from beginning to end. I don’t know the last time I felt privileged to watch a TV show. Spawn insisted on immediately starting over from S1E1, so we did.

Avatar: The Legend of Korra will be on Netflix starting August 14th. We've watched the first two of four seasons, and should pick it up again. I don't think it's as good as The Last Airbender, but it's pretty good.

I've been watching The Last Airbender for the 3rd time thanks to this thread and other people I know getting into it for the first time. It still holds up and seems like one of the best settings for games* if you could somehow figure out how to solve the problem that someone somewhere is the all-powerful avatar.

I've seen The Legend of Korra through once and then got to the 2nd or 3rd season a second time through with someone else, but then whatever streaming service we were watching it on stopped carrying it. I think the biggest differences are the tone, pacing, and the protagonists themselves. With the 10-12 episode seasons, there's less time for goofing off and having fun that you saw in TLA, and it almost feels more like an X-Men show at times, and the characters are also a little older. So much of what happens in the first series is informed by the fact that the main character is so young, scared, and trained by monks to mostly be non-violent that his approach to nearly every problem is very "air-bender-y." Korra typically has a lot more confidence and raw strength, and really struggled with air bending (and its approach) at all for awhile.

I find it hard to say that one is truly better than the other (though I might give the nod to the first series for introducing all the concepts) because they end up pretty different. Depending on how young your kid(s) are, they could very well connect with the first series more.

*If this show had come out when I was 8-12 I guarantee there would have been some games played during summer break or recess where we all pretended to inhabit that world.

Great Pretender. A nice tight anime series with bags of lurid style about a con man falling in with a bunch of other con men and pulling off stings. Some very unlikely five-twists-deep style shenanigans going on, but it has some heart to it.