What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Awesome as always. And its 25th Anniversary is coming up.

The Book of Boba Fett - I enjoyed it. It's weird they added new episodes of The Mandalorian at the end. But I like that show so I'm not going to complain. There was also a lot of cool shit from robbing a train with sandmen to the return of Space Marshal Bullock to Chekhov's rancor.
Sidenote: The girl with the robot arm starred in the movie Prospect with Pedro Pascal.

Agatha Christie's Criminal Games - Started watching this series of French TV movies on mhzchoice.com. Loosely based on AC's novels but set in 1950's France and no Poirot/Marple. Main characters are a very serious male inspector, his adorably ditzy secretary, and a manic pixie female reporter who helps solve the cases. Subtitles or not, the show is high production and gorgeously shot with great use of colors. I don't know anything about fashion but it's pretty obvious everyone is dressed off magazine covers.

I started Legend of Vox Machina, it is pretty damn legit. Yeah they say "fuck" a lot and it has some potty humor but the "DnDness" of it is off the charts. They love the bard a bit too much but hey at least someone does.

And no complaints about the audio quality of the dialogue, EVERYBODY is loud and clear in this one, the sound mix is on point. After all the overly dark cinematography and muddled dialogue of Book of Fett and the like, it's nice to see something with sharp visuals and crystal clear audio.

For something even more vulgar and crude, there is Supermansions also on amazon. This is basically a "Robot Chicken" style stop motion show about ANOTHER parody of the Justice League. But it is damn funny with a biting humor that not many other shows are doing these days (though this could be a few years old itself). The superhero genre is always about 2 steps above self-parody anyway so this kind of in your face mocking of it is great in short doses. Good voice cast led by Brian Cranston as the aging superman type figure and lots of other folks you'll recognize as it goes on.

Before watching season two of Euphoria, I decided to re-watch season one and the two specials. I originally got lured into this show because of Zendaya's interesting supporting role in the MCU Spider-man movies, and it turns out that Euphoria is a drama about teenage girls. But it is an exceptional show that has held my interest, with strong writing, good acting, interesting cinematography, and occasional weirdness that reminds me of Fight Club and Trainspotting.

Here's an example of the quality of the writing and acting: Zendaya's character is making a snack in the kitchen while her mom is hanging out with some normal guy that mom has been dating. The normal guy tries to tease Zendaya about her dating a girl, and she tells him to fuck himself. Her shocked mother makes her apologize, so Zendaya says that she is truly sorry that she told him to fuck himself. And that what she meant to say was that she didn't like seeing him sit in her (deceased) father's chair and thought that her mother could better than him. Which was much more devastating than telling him to fuck off. And every actor in this scene had perfect delivery.

I finished Search Party (available on HBO). This is such a weird show. Over its 5 seasons, one would never imagine where it ends based on where it starts. The characters are at times likable, but will often piss you off. I'd recommend watching the first couple of episodes to see if it grabs you. It definitely will defy your expectations.

The premise is that a group of friends attempt to locate a college acquaintance who has gone missing. Things spiral wildly from there.

Reacher - earlier comments might not be wrong about Reacher's characterization. But that is one doorway-sized mofo playing Reacher, for sure. Caught the spousal unit's attention. Maybe Reacher makes sure he's never far from a Planet Fitness as he walks the earth like Kwai Chang Caine.

The Expanse - finished S6. I liked it, but I could feel where it was shortened to fit into six episodes. I assume the showrunners left a few things in there to hang a future series off of if they want to.

I appreciate your comments about The Expanse, RobertB. I liked it well enough but have this mental block against watching the final season.

Watched the Expanse s1 and 2 a few years back, I think, and have finally got around to starting to watch the rest.

We decided to jump straight into where we left off after reading an excellent recap of season 1 (mostly those are too long or too short....), forgetting we had indeed watched season 2. What was weird was neither of us had any memory of any of it until the bit where Miller is laying the bombs on Eros. Then we were like.... I feel like we saw this? And then next episode it was back to not remembering at all.

Anyway, just finished s3 now. There are things that annoy - Holden's drunk face when he is trying to emote, the really really annoying pastor character, good god. Please tell me she doesn't change Amos, I don't think I'll be able to hack it if she does. I can dig Amos changing, but not because of that character, it just totally does not fit. But what is keeping me going is in fact yes the cool physics stuff, and some of the politics, too. So - do we ever get to see Mars in any more detail?

Expanse s4 is the one most people have a problem with (I thought it was fine), so be prepared for disappointment.

I thought s5 was Great and s6 was Good. Amos changes, but gradually and not because of the Preacher lady. She only shows up again in a brief cameo in s6, I think, so you don't have to worry about her anymore.

Edit: Oh yeah, Mars. It depends on what you mean by "more detail," but there's some good stuff there in s5, I think. Now I'm forgetting my seasons.

I don't even remember a preacher lady from Expanse, so she definitely isn't an important character. I had very mixed feelings about season 4. On the one hand, it was disappointing to see the potential of all these space portals narrowing down to the main characters spending a season at what was more or less a frontier town in Alaska. On the other hand, it was probably a realistic take on life in a new colony on an alien planet, plus some interesting stuff does happen. Season five managed to make Mars interesting to me, but the drama with the terrorists seemed too familiar and derivative. And maybe I don't like Nah-O-Me enough to care about her broken family.

Her . She was brought into S3/Book 3 as part of a multifaith group to opine on what the Ring means for their religions. She was a viewpoint character trying to get everyone to calm down and stop shooting, with limited success.

A lot of the inaccessibility if The Expanse the show is a consequence of the writing style. The book are exclusively a POV experience, so in order to get a scene it has to be witnessed by a character you are in the head of. So they end up creating characters just to have their POV of certain events.

This also means that a LOT happens "off screen" which is bad enough in the books (I often go back to relisten to scenes because I missed a major event that was basically a throwaway line) but crippling when it happens in the show. The show tends to dwell too much on character and not enough on plot. Fine for book readers I think, not great for pure show watchers.

Still, it's the best sci-fi since early seasons of Stargate SG-1 or maybe Babylon 5 iMHO.

With the exception of a prologue or two, the Game of Thrones books were all POV, and yet the show did a great job of translating the books to the screen. The show might have been nearly perfect if Martin had finished writing the books before the show started.

Moving into book territory here, but IMO the books were getting kind of sloppy anyway.

I did watch the last couple of episodes of GoT. They still suck.