What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Binged through the new season of Love, Death & Robots. The Three Robots continue their cruise through the wasteland, post humanity. Bad Travelling was just downright creepy, but cool with the main character bargaining with the monster in the hold. Night of the Mini Dead, was like something out of Robot Chicken and really funny.

Bad Travelling is noteworthy because it was directed by David Fincher. It was standout for sure.

I think the final episode with the conquistadors, Jibaro, is probably the best episode the show has produced. I think I need to watch it again, it's stuck with me like a bad dream.

I really enjoyed Bad Travelling, Kill Team Kill, and something something Tomb, the military squad going into the cave after some insurgents.

hotseatgames wrote: I really enjoyed Bad Travelling, Kill Team Kill, and something something Tomb, the military squad going into the cave after some insurgents.

The line from KTK that made me snort out laughter "...It treated my team like an Afghan buffet."

In Vaulted Halls Entombed - Special forces meets Kachooloo. That gave me 40k flashbacks IG v. Tyranids. *SHUDDER*

charlest wrote: Bad Travelling is noteworthy because it was directed by David Fincher. It was standout for sure.

I think the final episode with the conquistadors, Jibaro, is probably the best episode the show has produced. I think I need to watch it again, it's stuck with me like a bad dream.

I've seen Jibaro a few times now and had to explain it to the wife, so I'm not sure it holds up to close scrutiny. It teases a couple of themes, greed and lust, colonial exploitation, corruption of a miracle, evil masquerading as beauty, but never really settles down enough to live up to the astonishing visuals.

A lot of the S3 stories are like that for me. Compared to the more solid stories of S1 with IMHO a complete narrative arc and nice final punch (could just be letting Sonnies edge and aquila rift overshadow some of the others) these stores feel like partial concepts.

Still, a fun watch overall.

charlest wrote: The finale of Severance was fantastic. Sad now we have to wait for the next season.

I loved the show (sadly you can't really talk about it without almost every plot point being a spoiler) but I'm not sure how I felt about the last episode. It was almost necessary to do (at some point), but at the same time it means Season 2 will be a very different show. And with so many of the origins/motivations now filled in, I'm not sure the show carries the same surreal, mysterious energy.

I agree, it seems to have shot its shot, but a second season that wrapped it up could be very intriguing.

I just finished Severance last night, and agree that the finale was fantastic.

However, I disagree that there aren't still mysteries around. We still have no idea what Lumon is doing or what the whole deal with Kier is. I think the revelations about the characters will make the development of the Innies much more interesting in S2.

Gregarius wrote: I just finished Severance last night, and agree that the finale was fantastic.

However, I disagree that there aren't still mysteries around. We still have no idea what Lumon is doing or what the whole deal with Kier is. I think the revelations about the characters will make the development of the Innies much more interesting in S2.

There are certainly still mysteries to be uncovered, but now we know what those questions are. Compare that to the beginning when it's difficult to say exactly what questions we should even be asking. Who is who? Who knows what? Who is in on whose side? Is this real? Is part of it real? Is any of it real? That's what made the show so unique, you didn't even know what questions to ask. Now that the backstories have all crystallized, now we have the script, we just need to keep turning the pages. Before, we didn't even have the script.

I'm still interested in S2, it will just be a more conventional TV show experience when we get there.

Watched the first two episodes of KENOBI this morning. Took some unexpected turns but overall solid, if not as enthralling as MANDALORIAN, which set an admittedly high bar. Ewan MacGregor has certainly settled back into the role well after a 20 year absence.

I dunno, there are some serious issues with that show, the fact that ANH Leia doesn't seem to give much shits about Obi Wan, her rescuer from a certain death, dying in battle to rescue her, yet again, being paramount amongst them.

The idea that Ben doesn't know about Vader being Anakin yet some scrub sithette just casually drops that info also irks me.

I'm not sure what I really wanted this show to be. An Obi Wan version of Taken? Some drifter just getting into scrapes? Obi Wan the resistance fighter being driven I to exile and watching over Luke? I dunno, but this......isn't it.

My kid likes it though, so many, just maybe, I'm getting too old for this shit

(and YES, let's fix this image posting thing so I can post my Lethal Weapon gif!!!!)

We are still enjoying our weekly anime series but my girlfriend asked me to watch another togeher: My Dress Up Darling.

At first glance, this yet another wish fulfillment show in which an attractive woman throws herself to a loser audience surrogate. In this case, a nerdy, energetic girl meets a boy in her class who knows how to sew because he has dedicated his life to making porcelain dolls. There's a bit of fanservice, the protagonist bumbles his way through and, instead of reciprotacting, he gets flustered when the girl makes a move. You know the drill.

Except this is not at all accurate. Once you scratch the surface, you realize it's really about the women. This is, after all, a series about a man that sews costumes, that does your makeup, that is tall, that finds you sexy and that even watches the magical shojo anime you like. There are several scenes in which the female protagonist discusses with her friends whether two guys from a show that is part Sailor Moon and part Magical Doremi are gay for each other. Which they so totally are.

The show is not a masterpiece, but it is entertaining and I really enjoy this kind of female focus. Most notably, women in media tend to be depicted, almost invariably, as not being interested in sex. The female protagonist here, however, very much is. Like many female anime nerds, she likes sexy characters and she likes to dress up like them, partly because it's fun and partly because she wants to show some skin. She likes flirting and she likes the kind of fucked-up porn games our very respectful society assures us women don't actually like. And, while the show doesn't dabble in it, it seems to be aware that a good chunk of women are bisexual.

The main problem with the show, as my girlfriend puts it, is "fake innocence". The female protagonist is inconsistently innocent about getting undressed and "doesn't see the big deal" about wearing a revealing bikini and asking the dude to measure her assets. Look, it doesn't work, it's dumb. It would be much more effective if she was always aware of her flirting. Personally, I find the erotism passé in the age of softporn shonen and the main character a pushover (why are you making cosplays for free? are you dumb?) but it's entertaining enough and it gave me an excuse to discuss the taboos that surround the dicussion of female anime nerds.

Finally watched the sixth and final season of The Expanse. It was short and it wrapped things up, but it was one of the weaker seasons. While the character beats were okay, there were structural problems with the writing, starting with the completely unconnected subplot taking place on one of the newly-colonized worlds beyond the gate. Resurrection is a big deal, but it had zero relevance to high stakes confrontation between the Free Navy and the combined forces of Earth, Mars, and the Belters not aligned with the Free Navy. A new McGuffin involving the proto molecule is introduced to no apparent effect until it becomes a convenient way to wrap things up in the final episode. Maybe this stuff was all handled better in the books, but I have no intention of reading the books because I am sick to death of James Holden. I liked him during the first couple of seasons, but he wore out his welcome by season three with his grim and obsessive idealism.

I guess there was some decent character development in the show, because my favorite characters changed dramatically over the course of the series. In season one, my favorite character was Miller, but he eventually was reduced to a plot device/clue dispenser. I disliked Amos in the early seasons, but by season five, he was my favorite. Nah-Oh-Mee was fine until season five, and then I was sick of her because of her whole ugly connection to the Free Navy. Chrisjen, Alex, and Bobbie were all good characters that I generally enjoyed watching.

The Expanse was an ambitious show that visually looked great, played with some interesting ideas, and represented a reasonably possible future compared to most science-fiction. The story felt a little too contrived and I had issues with the main characters, but I would still recommend it to any science-fiction fan.

I've not read the books but I have read summaries. My understanding of the standalone opening scenes taking place on the ringworld in each episode is that it leaves the door open for another season should the show be revived on another network. Duarte and his breakaway government on that world are a central plot point in the later books.

I do wish the last season had more content; it seems a sad trend that big budget series get shortened seasons as they age and the final season always gets truncated as everyone seems to just want to GTGO and be done with it.

If you haven't seen or listened to the TY AND THAT GUY podcast/YouTube channel its well worth checking out . Its got good behind the scenes information, funny stories and interviews with many of the cast members. Cara Gee ( Drummer ) looks about 20 years younger in real life and the actor who plays Marco Inaros is actually a nice guy, LOL.

Watching Amazon's Night Sky. It like everything else has JK Simmons whose acting holds the show through. I guess he is the new Nicholas Cage.

The show basically opens with an elderly couple that has a door in their backyard that teleports them to a room in another planet. The rest of the eight episodes is really long because every single character is constantly lying (lies of omission) to basically every other character. If you want to watch for the sci-fi plot there is only enough for two episodes max. Basically another character driven show with a sci-fi backdrop.