What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Darth, have you seen the Star Wars anime shorts collection? I felt that was actually WAY more creative than i was expecting, might be more of what you are looking for. The MCU stuff is so tightly controlled, in 20 years folks will be unable to tell what was made by whom because it almost all sounds and looks like the same person did it. Of course the benefit to that is MCU stuff is generally acceptable "comfort food" with a level of action, humor, and drama that can be predicted to the second. "What if..." had some "OMG look who died!!" stuff but since there were no repercussions it had little weight.

Star Wars is ALLL over the place quality wise. The SFX folks are generally on point but there are clear examples of the action scenes being borderline laughable because hey, it's still TV and this stuff has a very short shooting schedule. I like the go watch stuff from the 70's and 80's just to remind myself HOW LOW BUDGET that stuff looked, but how well the writing made up for it. Character actors nailing their roles, leads with charisma and charm, hammy SFX and action but the writers knew this to be the case so they tried to cover for it.

These days we get near movie level productions that just bite off more than they can chew and when they fall on their face it is really obvious. "Prestige television" really should be reserved for a very select level of production.

Watched Stranger Things. I really do enjoy the tone on a number of levels - the edge of silliness (pushed slightly too far with basically all the Soviet stuff and Murray usually, but, it's fine), and the humour, also, sometimes, just skating the line (susie's family.... okay). I felt like this one got back to some better brooding creepiness than the last couple of seasons too. But it was waaaaay too long. And still another half season to go. I dread to see how long the episodes will be by the end. We watched the last 3 episodes in one yesterday and I was second screening and having a little nap during it. That says more about me than anything I'm sure but I definitely had a case of "just get on with it"s, like, come on.

Supposedly "volume II" of s4 will be two episodes only. One is about 90 minutes, the other 150 minutes.

Episode 2 of Season 1 of January 6th Commission Hearings is due to drop today, last episode ended in a cliff-hanger.

20 million viewers on traditional TV channels, to date Donald Trump's highest rated TV episode by far.

Faux News should have their Whitehouse privileges revoked for their unwillingness to show their own complicity to their flock.

Sagrilarus wrote: Stranger Things Season 4 -- I'm only one show in and my thought coming away at the end was that you have an entire town with undiagnosed, untreated severe PTSD. Going to be a real entertaining spin through mental illness, always a crowd-pleaser.

That said, the montage between the basketball game and the D&D session was really well done. Bringing Vecna back was a pretty doggone amusing scene. Someone did their homework.

Shortly after that the special effects department kicked in for the remaining 10 minutes in the episode.

The only thing that rubbed me the wrong was in that wasn't the basket ball/ D&D matching action, which was fine. But the build up to it. The ribbing of Erica was good, but when she said her character was a Level 14 Rogue, I winced. The character classification back then was Thief, not Rogue. It probably was an oversight on the writers' part since everyone says Rogue since 3.x. The other thing was the dice rolling. Not the climactic D20, but the build up to it. I saw percentile dice being rolled with another die and thought, "They don't care about accuracy. Only what looks cool."

I'm halfway through it, but I'm not entirely liking it like I did the previous seasons.

I don't have Netflix, but I did see season one of Stranger Things a few years ago, thanks to the local public library. It was... okay. The 80s music always makes me nostalgic. The story was okay. The acting was okay. But it seems like a lot of people give this show too much credit because it provides a positive depiction of kids playing Dungeons and Dragons. But the first season doesn't spend a lot of time on D&D, because frankly watching other people play D&D is not super-interesting.

Years ago, I tried watching I Hit It With My Axe, which is a YouTube series of real-time sessions of female porn stars playing D&D with a male edgelord DM. It isn't very entertaining. There is nothing wrong with the DM or the players, aside from the fact that they, like most role-players I have ever met, fail to speak in character while role-playing. This drains the proceedings of any semblance of role-playing and tends to create more of work-like, procedural feel to the sessions, which is not interesting to watch.

Here is a player speaking in character while role-playing:

[conversational tone] "Greetings, fellow traveler. Have you seen an elderly man in a dark robe with stars pass by recently?"

Here is a player not speaking in character while role-playing:

[monotone] "My bard asks the elf if he has seen a wizard pass by recently."

If I ever get around to watching Stranger Things season two, it won't be for the D&D references.

Shellhead wrote: Years ago, I tried watching I Hit It With My Axe, which is a YouTube series of real-time sessions of female porn stars playing D&D with a male edgelord DM. It isn't very entertaining. There is nothing wrong with the DM or the players [....]

As an aside, there's (almost certainly) quite a bit wrong with the DM .

The more general criticisms of Stranger Things and inaccurate D&D portrayals remind me of a gag in an old Knights of the Dinner Table strip. The group formed a book club to read some D&D fiction, and at their first meeting two of the members couldn't shut up about how inaccurate the book was. "Based on the number of goblins he killed from the start of the book, he should have been getting way more attacks per round in the final battle!" (etc.)

dysjunct wrote: As an aside, there's (almost certainly) quite a bit wrong with the DM .

Ugh. I heard about that but somehow failed to connect the names.

I've no doubt they knew it should be thief but didn't want a young black girl saying "I have a thief character".

Rogue, for whatever reason, sounds cooler.

Have I ever mentioned that I ran into most of the kid cast of Stranger Things (minus Wolfhard and Milli Brown) at dragoncon a few years back and thought they were just some randos cosplaying as ST kids? Damn, woulda been a good photo op with my son had I not yelled at them for cutting the line to get into the expo hall

Finished watching Who Rules the World on Netflix yesterday. Period Chinese wirefu, GOT fare with much better storytelling than GOT. 40 episodes, but it was worth it.

The Sandman has been announced for August 5th.

Shellhead wrote: Here is a player speaking in character while role-playing:

[conversational tone] "Greetings, fellow traveler. Have you seen an elderly man in a dark robe with stars pass by recently?"

Here is a player not speaking in character while role-playing:

[monotone] "My bard asks the elf if he has seen a wizard pass by recently."
.

I feel like the rulebook specifically says both methods are valid. I agree it's unfortunate as I also tend to prefer dialog. But I think the narrative method makes the game more inclusive to people who aren't comfortable improving in-character. It might even be the biggest influence on modern D&D as its more narrative story-telling together rather than living in the adventure. Both can be fun with the saying "with the right group" being a perfect fit here.

My wife and I have been watching For All Mankind of Apple TV+. I mostly came for the premise, which is that the USSR won the race to the moon, and the Space Race kept going past the 60s. I love the Apollo program especially, so the alternate part of it appealed to me.

But we're in the second season now, and I'm actually really impressed by it. They are putting in the hard work of characterization, poking at character relationships and watching them evolve in compelling ways. The second season represents a time jump of like a decade, and as it goes on seeing the other ways the timelines diverge is interesting.

It reminds me a little of Mad Men, though it's not THAT good. (Not many shows are, frankly.) It has that same tendency to look at the social norms of its time and cause us to reflect that maybe they weren't that great. But it's not as heavy a show as Mad Men, nor as sordid. It's a lot more optimistic, in that the continued escalation with the Soviets tends to push some social boundaries forward quicker than they did in our timeline. I won't say much more, but it's a very good show. It's not gotten a whole lot of buzz, but I definitely recommend it.

Also, I've not followed the conversation here, but I really liked the first part of the new season of Stranger Things. The episodes were all really long, but I liked it so much more than S3. They threw all their characters to the wind, putting themselves in some tight corners, and they're doing the hard work of resolving those characters' arcs where they are. The Hopper storyline is pretty out there, even for a supernatural horror show, but it serves as a really strong thematic rhyme with the "upside down" from S1. So yeah, I'm excited to see how it ends. I was hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. Thankfully it's much closer to the former for me.

I love For All Mankind. How history and technology changes is perhaps my favorite aspect of the show.

It's nice to see Joel Kinnaman succeeding in something post The Killing.