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What TV SHOWS are you watching?
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Jackwraith wrote: Since I'm in the middle of reviewing the whole run of Batman: The Animated Series, I can't really watch it casually. So.i figured I'd indulge in another Batman property and started watching Gotham. The full run is on Netflix. I'm up to episode 8 and it's decent so far. I like the portrayal of young Penguin as a more ruthless and devious character and the cast is pretty good, including some Wire veterans, like Rawls. Jim Gordon's Boy Scout routine is a little tedious but I recognize the need for that plot element. It's not gripping but it's interesting enough to keep watching.
GOTHAM started out ostensibly as a Bruce Wayne origin/Jim Gordon origin story but like so many of the Batman movies, the writers realized that the villains were more interesting. Not far into the series they started cramming way too many different guest villains etc into the picture IMO and the series started to groan under their collective weight. Still worth a watch for some of the performances; Penguin is among the standouts as well as Alfred and Gordon's partner, Harvey Bullock.
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Maybe worth a look if you like that offbeat sit com thing.
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1. Somebody dies in Pierre's arms, just after whispering their secret recipe for their favorite cocktail.
2. Hitler escapes certain death by diving through a closed window.
3. A minor character does a quick commercial for a random product just before the end of the episode.
4. Credits roll as the whole cast does happy hour, in costume but out of character, including Hitler.
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- Jackwraith
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RobertB wrote: I just couldn't get into Halt and Catch Fire. I was about six episodes into it, and decided I didn't like anybody except maybe Gordon's wife and King Ezekial's assistant from The Walking Dead. Then they had some Star Trek style tech issue that was bullshit, and at that point I checked out.
You lasted longer than I did. I didn't get past the second episode. I kept pointing out so many problems with basic story structure, to say nothing of the factual basis of how things worked ("Star Trek style tech"), that my girlfriend was getting annoyed. And, yes, most of the characters are extremely unlikeable. I have no idea how it lasted as long as it did, except that many critics probably either don't remember the early 80s or don't have much idea about how anything worked back then.... which still doesn't explain the basic plot problems.
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- Sagrilarus
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Shellhead wrote: Still enjoying Danger 5. The show is 1/3 recurring gags and 2/3 wildly subverted tropes, but I really like the recurring gags, which include:
1. Somebody dies in Pierre's arms, just after whispering their secret recipe for their favorite cocktail.
2. Hitler escapes certain death by diving through a closed window.
3. A minor character does a quick commercial for a random product just before the end of the episode.
4. Credits roll as the whole cast does happy hour, in costume but out of character, including Hitler.
Where are you getting Danger 5? I'd love to get back to it. The humor is ludicrous as hell.
I love shows like this from outside the U.S. The leader is a guy with an eagle head, presumably to represent a cliche American. But the magic is that they didn't do a good job with it. If this was an American show they would have CGI'd in some really impressive display of graphics with feathers on his body and the like.
Danger 5 (Australian I think) goes with a big honkin' mask that doesn't move. The guy bobs his head to show when he's talking. Part of the humor is that it's so poorly done. It's just . . . "we know we're low budget, we don't care, kill Hitler." They turned a weakness into a comedic strength.
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Sagrilarus wrote:
Shellhead wrote: Still enjoying Danger 5. The show is 1/3 recurring gags and 2/3 wildly subverted tropes, but I really like the recurring gags, which include:
1. Somebody dies in Pierre's arms, just after whispering their secret recipe for their favorite cocktail.
2. Hitler escapes certain death by diving through a closed window.
3. A minor character does a quick commercial for a random product just before the end of the episode.
4. Credits roll as the whole cast does happy hour, in costume but out of character, including Hitler.
Where are you getting Danger 5? I'd love to get back to it. The humor is ludicrous as hell.
I love shows like this from outside the U.S. The leader is a guy with an eagle head, presumably to represent a cliche American. But the magic is that they didn't do a good job with it. If this was an American show they would have CGI'd in some really impressive display of graphics with feathers on his body and the like.
Danger 5 (Australian I think) goes with a big honkin' mask that doesn't move. The guy bobs his head to show when he's talking. Part of the humor is that it's so poorly done. It's just . . . "we know we're low budget, we don't care, kill Hitler." They turned a weakness into a comedic strength.
Danger 5 is free to Amazon Prime viewers. Another great thing about the guy with the eagle head is his weird hostility towards the blonde agent. In the latest episode that I watched, she asked a question about the mission and he pointed a flashlight in her eyes and flicked it on and off a few times instead of answering her question. In another episode, he responded to her question by inviting her to compare the number of stars on his uniform with the lack of stars on her uniform.
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I just couldn't keep that much unbelievable tech bullshit afloat, so bailed out right in the middle of the show. "Okay, that's it."Jackwraith wrote: You lasted longer than I did. I didn't get past the second episode. I kept pointing out so many problems with basic story structure, to say nothing of the factual basis of how things worked ("Star Trek style tech"), that my girlfriend was getting annoyed. And, yes, most of the characters are extremely unlikeable. I have no idea how it lasted as long as it did, except that many critics probably either don't remember the early 80s or don't have much idea about how anything worked back then.... which still doesn't explain the basic plot problems.
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Its almost too fast, no joke has time to breathe. And it is soooooo politically incorrect
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You remember those D&D campaigns where the DM would constantly have NPCs hint around at what the grand plot was but never actually give you any hard info about it? How it was always over your head because it was too large and important for you to be involved in and how your PCs felt like fringe characters in a story that they should've been central characters in? How every NPC felt more important and intelligent than you were? And how you finally realized that there really was no grand plot and your DM was just bad at telling a story? That's Carnivale. It's plot trolling and not much else.
We're given a setting that's loaded with little hints of mysticism- Sophie having a one-sided conversation with her mother; the mysterious "Management"; Ben Hawkins's mysterious(!) origin and his healing of one little girl and draining the life of a whole cornfield to do it (He's a Dark Sun mage!) -but we're never given any indication of why that mystical angle exists, beyond Lodz telling us "it's necessary" (but never WHY it's "necessary".) That's paired with the grueling existence of the Dust Bowl during the Depression, which is supposed to attach some emotional significance to this otherwise completely detached magickal situation. But that mysticism and the mystery behind it is still completely detached. We could've just had a drama about carnie life in the Dust Bowl during the Depression and been completely set. There's enough tragedy, romance, comedy, and adventure there without having to involve the mystical stuff. Except the writers apparently also had a story that was completely external to that harsh reality, so that setting was used as the grounding wire for that story that they didn't know how to tell. That's how we end up with an entire episode (6) about trying to exact "carnie justice" for the death of a young woman whose total screen time through the previous five episodes probably totaled five whole minutes. It wasn't like Sophie or Lila or Ruthie or Jonesy died; someone that the audience had developed familiarity with and could feel an actual sense of loss if they went away. No, instead this bit character was used as an excuse to set up a tragic situation that the DM/writers otherwise didn't know how to deliver. And did it with a town of ghostly miners that Management wanted the Carnivale to stop in for no apparent practical reason, none of which is explained (either why the town exists or why they were stopping there), although Lodz makes sure that the audience knows that HE knows why, because he's clearly more important than the audience/player characters. Again, plot trolling.
Speaking of completely detached, we also have this running side plot, taking place 1000 miles away in California, that has nothing whatsoever to do with our traveling carnival, but would actually make a GREAT Depression-era story; the motivated minister who's responding to people's fervent desire for religion to provide answers in this time of great deprivation and whose efforts to solve some of the social issues that are still prevalent today ("We don't want those migrants here!") are sandbagged by corrupt local politics and greed that costs the lives of children, driving him onto the railways as he loses his faith. That's brilliant! But it's also a subplot that has nothing to do with our magic carnival and which we've been watching for six episodes without explanation because, again, the DM (writers) doesn't know how to deliver a story that works for his players (the audience) and instead is just entertaining himself (themselves.)
So, to quote Clint Eastwood on set: "OK. That's enough of that."
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