What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Thanks Jason, that sounds like something I want to check out. In the middle of season two of Warrior I am slowly losing momentum.
It's fine and good-looking, it just doesn't seem eager to go to places we haven't been to before.

Nodens wrote: Thanks Jason, that sounds like something I want to check out. In the middle of season two of Warrior I am slowly losing momentum.
It's fine and good-looking, it just doesn't seem eager to go to places we haven't been to before.

I have a similar but conflicted reaction after watching just the first episode of season 1. I'm interested in the period and setting, since there haven't been many shows that cover it, even incidentally. But the whole package just feels too staged. You know how (to take a rough contemporary) the people and places in Deadwood felt real; like they'd been plucked from that actual point of history (the dirt, the personalities, the attitudes)? Warrior doesn't have that. Everything is clearly shot on a soundstage and feels like it (no dirt anywhere in one of the poorest sections of the city!) and all of the characters are perfectly placed for who and what they are. They don't have idiosyncrasies or texture. They're clearly meant to be Conflicted Lead Hero and Mysterious Brothel Owner with Heart of Gold and so forth. There's nothing to learn about these characters that isn't expressly driven by the plot. Think about how your impression of characters like Al Swearingen and Alma Garret changed in just the first few episodes of Deadwood. Plus, the lead character is on the Hero's Journey- but basically doesn't suffer any setbacks! He's an Asian laborer who fought back against two White immigration officers and didn't get thrown in a cell for a few days, at minimum, or get even threatened with simply being shot.

Part of the problem is the evidently limited writing, but part of it is the level of performance, as well. There was no one that made me think "Yeah. I want to see that person again." in the same way that Alex did in Maid, for example. Again, I appreciate the setting and it was entertaining to see the fight scenes in a show nominally based on Bruce Lee's writing actually use jeet kune do, but the rest of it is bang average, at best.

Oh, DEFINITELY stick with Warrior if you are already into season 2, at least through the insane bloodbath that is S2E9! It does slow down a bit with some of the new characters (Sophie, ugh).

It ain't high drama, but for me it is good fun drama with a fast pace, strong characters that are internally consistent with themselves, and a unique setting. The first few eps do the yeomans work of setting the stage, then it gets rolling. Ah Sahm does have set backs, though he is the hero fighter. He will fade a bit in prominence but his fighting prowess is never really explained other than he constantly puts in the work (yet so far has avoided the inevitable traumatic brain injury all those roundhouse kicks to the head would have induced). Just picture him as Bruce Lee. Give it to the saloon "travel" ep (S1E5?). If the show hasn't hooked you by then with at least the Ah Sahm/Young Jun relationship it probably won't with anything else.

That episode where they are traveling with the coffin was my favourite. It had development in the relationship, overall story and showed how the (cardboard) characters still work outside of Chinatown/SF.
But yes, brilliant acting or true to the time period it is not. It doesn't want to be, just look at the costumes of the female leads. I am rather happy with the acting tbh, for this purpose it's more than I expected.

I watched Resident Alien and warmed to it a bit, but still felt it didn't quite hang together.

Tudyk is always good value - although, disconcertingly his alien mannerisms reminded me of that WW1 vet in Boardwalk Empire with the face mask. It just kind of struggled to hit a consistent tone at times for me, I couldn't work out what show it was trying to be. Sometimes it seemed a very "everyone learns a lesson" type thing, other times it was a bit more dark. I couldn't believe that his new acquaintances would be that accepting of his weirdness. Which is dumb in a comedy with a premise like that - as in, I'm the dumb one - but I think it was because of the above-mentioned "everyone learns a lesson" tone, which just didn't match - if you want me to take those things seriously, then, how can I not take the non-serious bits more seriously - "As if!" ? That's a fine line to tread - many shows have been able to over the years, but I think this one just missed.

Still - some fun characters. The mayor and his family were a bit of a weak link but the rest of the ensemble were pretty good.

Finally finished Midnight Mass on netflix. This is the bi-annual (semi-annual? whatever 'every other year' is) Mike Flanagan joint like Hill House and Bly Manor. It starts off good enough, remote tiny fishing island off New England(? maybe the PNW? hard to tell) starts to have strange shenanigans. Is it Innsmouth? Aliens? Ghosts? Zombie apocalypse?

The title should clue you in, but this is a catholic ass catholic show. Like REALLY catholic. So catholic that if you are a lasped catholic then this series will count as going to mass for at least 6 months. If you are NOT catholic then you might be an honorary one by the end

It is also VERY slow. Like drying blood rolling down a gentle slope slow. Lots of those long monologues Flanagan likes to put in his shows punctuated by brief moments of terror. Some of these work really well (a couple, like the rowboat scene, EXTREMELY well), others are kinda repetitive.

The acting is fine. There are some odd casting choices that will become clear later on. The netflix algorithm is in full swing as well, this is the most ethnically diverse tiny remote isolated fishing village in existence but none of that really matters to the plot so it's fine.

So if you want a somewhat creepy, very introspective, long winded musing on God, death, humanity, death, suffering, death, guilt, parenting, and did I mention death? then this is the show for you.

If you want action then steer clear as that is very sparingly doled out. It isn't much of a mystery either despite throwing out a bunch of tantilizing clues early on. It's an experience, like a visual novel or arty video game, mean to make you feel what must have been a big catharsis for the writer.

Just watched The Baldies, a documentary about an anti-racist skinhead crew from Minneapolis in the late 80's. Sadly, still relevant. Maybe more than ever. Check it out.

The Baldies

Cool. Is it a doco or a drama thing or what?

As someone who grew up in a similar kind of scene, it was always a bit weird/frustrating that almost all the movies and pop culture stuff that was created outside the scene was always about nazi boneheads.

Finished The Chestnut Man on Netflix. A pretty good Danish police procedural, bloodier than the standard fare. Only 6 episodes, so the plot moves right along.

My spouse has been watching all of the seasons of the british game show Taskmaster and it has a lot of genuinely good laughs in it. It's free on Youtube.

It's a proper documentary, and they actually touch on how the media at the time focused primarily on the boneheads and never really clued people into the much larger SHARP scene that was going on. I also came up in a similar scene right around the same time in D.C. and watching this really brought me back.

Cheers for that jay, just watched, that was great. More than a few memories sparked, particularly those early scenes in the care-free days. Luckily we never had more than a few run-ins back in my day, which was more 90s... (and I'm glad we don't have guns down here in Oz.!) although, having been out of "the scene" directly for many years and looking from the outside in now, a lot of the hardcore scene especially seems to have gone a bit... questionable. There were always those dudes that were like "a-political". Uh-huh. So yep, for sure, totally relevant to today, and I genuinely wonder how many of those dudes might have had different paths if we still had a bit of a stronger scene (and probably no internet....)

Anyway, thanks again. Funnily enough over the last couple of months I have grown my hair for the first time in about 25 years

mc wrote: Funnily enough over the last couple of months I have grown my hair for the first time in about 25 years

Wow, same here, but it's been more like 30!

Watched the first episode-and-a-half of Squid Game. It's not that it isn't well-acted and that it isn't a good production. It's well-done and is certainly entertaining at face value. But it's also incredibly derivative (i.e. it's similar to any of a number of other scenarios and characters) and doesn't really say anything differently to all of those obvious parallels. The one departure from things as old as The Most Dangerous Game is that



So it's not that it's "bad". It's fine. But that's all that it is: fine. I could certainly watch more if I felt like it and/or I didn't have anything else more interesting to watch. But I don't find it particularly compelling and am definitely not one of those raving as if it's some kind of monster hit. It's OK. That's it.

Jackwraith wrote: Watched the first episode-and-a-half of Squid Game. It's not that it isn't well-acted and that it isn't a good production. It's well-done and is certainly entertaining at face value. But it's also incredibly derivative (i.e. it's similar to any of a number of other scenarios and characters) and doesn't really say anything differently to all of those obvious parallels. The one departure from things as old as The Most Dangerous Game is that

I mean, most stuff is derivative at this point. It really makes S. Korea seems like a bleak place with capitalism gone too far. A show like this makes it or brakes it based on the characters not the plot. The dubbing seems good. Not sure it should be a smash hit, but there is a relative lack of new good stuff at the moment.

I've decided to wait until Foundation is done with season 1 and binge it. Episode 5 was a beauty, but as Joebot said, glacial. Started watching Picard, but I'll probably give up on it. Horrible pacing, plot jumps around randomly, and everyone talks about how great Picard is but seems let down by how he treated everyone in the last decade (like basically he turned into a PoS in between the end of Enterprise until now).