What TV SHOWS are you watching?

The "bonus" episode of Sandman.... sucks.

Cranberries wrote: Watching The Old Man with Jeff Bridges and wondering what it would be like with Jeff Daniels.

Just finished the first season and I can't believe they didn't wrap everything up.


“All dogs wanted to be good dogs, no matter how unpromising they seemed. You just had to help them find a way. And they were sunshine creatures. When their master opened his eyes in the morning it was their signal that the day had begun, and a day was to be greeted with joy and intense interest. They were a good example for an old man.”
― Thomas Perry, The Old Man

Rliyen wrote: 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.

Thanks for the recommend. Only five episodes in and its rekindled my love for wuxia's moral-heavy storytelling. Like let's kill some dudes in a fight after discussing if its the most moral option or can be avoided.

hotseatgames wrote: The "bonus" episode of Sandman.... sucks.

I always found that particular story to be the weakest of Dream Country, so maybe it's just a palate cleanser before the Seasons of Mist storyline. But there should be four stories before the plot advances again.
If those other stories (especially Kalliope and Midsummer Night's Dream) were not included at all though, that would piss me off very much.

Finished season one of Made for Love, see above: really good. Now started The Bear about a high-end chef taking over his late brothers' sandwich shop in Chicago. Way less fun and stressful viewing, but word on the internet has it that the kitchen action is spot on, so of course it has to be intense. Also, Chicago. I have a soft spot for Chicago since I was there (a long time ago).

I quite liked that episode. Not much more to say than that I guess. I am glad that it was a nice little way of handling Dream Country because it was always an odd pause in the story when reading through the 10 volumes

The first episode of House of Dragons just aired. It was laying a lot of groundwork, and it was.... fine. Nobody is particularly likable yet, in my opinion. I'll watch next week, so that's something, I guess.

We watched it last night as well. It was a not a particularly exciting one, and some scenes were not lit well enough. The joust turned into an actual Royal Rumble which led to some interesting injury-cam footage. This Targaryen family version had me thinking of Elric, especially with the uncle's jousting armor.

The mixed-to-positive reviews of the first six episodes seem to suggest that it gets better. I thought it was OK, but my expectations were pretty bottomed out. ASOIAF is, let's say, fine. "A Game of Thrones" is a great book. The second one is, to me, kinda meh. The third picks up again. After that, you can't really talk about books 4 and 5 meaningfully at all. Anyway, my point is that it's a little odd that we've made such a deal about a half-finished series of books--only three out of five of which people are enthusiastic about. It's an odd twist of cultural "fate" that's led us here.

I can’t get excited for this. No matter how much backstabbing, casual cruelty, betrayals, and slaughter they put it, it all leads to them making a dweeb the king on the grounds that the plebes like stories.

There was a cultural-criticism piece in the Washington Post today suggesting how great it was that maybe we could build an element of the old monoculture around HotD like we did GoT. It's silly on multiple levels, but it says something about U.S. society that this is what we'd pick as a touchstone. Whatever the series might try to say (if anything, but I think there's an effort) about modern society is sharply undercut by the fact that all our ostensible heroes are monarchists, just good and bad varieties.

I thought it was quite good. Clear signal they're returning to early season dynastic struggles and talking. Definitely pure setup though, it'll alienate the new fans I think. But for me, promising.

I think the first three books are masterful and in retrospect I've warmed to the fourth as I reunderstood what it was trying to do, if that gives you good context. So an OG fan of the series.

jpat wrote: The mixed-to-positive reviews of the first six episodes seem to suggest that it gets better. I thought it was OK, but my expectations were pretty bottomed out. ASOIAF is, let's say, fine. "A Game of Thrones" is a great book. The second one is, to me, kinda meh. The third picks up again. After that, you can't really talk about books 4 and 5 meaningfully at all. Anyway, my point is that it's a little odd that we've made such a deal about a half-finished series of books--only three out of five of which people are enthusiastic about. It's an odd twist of cultural "fate" that's led us here.

That's all true enough (although I liked book 2 quite a bit), but it's not all that different from, say, Star Wars. There's an IP that has dominated pop culture on and off for 45 years, and it has only two legitimately great movies, and a whole lot of crap that ranges in quality from "enjoyable" to "dear God, what the fuck were these people thinking." It makes no sense, but here we are.

It's weird how uninterested I am in House of the Dragon (or "Hot-D" as Martin insists on calling it because he is a huge dork). I used to be such a huge fan of Martin and his world, but I guess that final season of Game of Thrones just soured me on the whole thing (not to mention the 11-years-and-counting wait for book 6). The reviews I've read make it sound like Hot-D is just playing the hits -- dragons, courtly intrigue, incest, and violence. If you like that sort of thing ... well, here's more of it.

I thougt the pilot was OK. It suffers most from the inevitable comparison to GoT, which despite its debatable ending seasons, started off about as well as any series can ever hope to.

The cast while not terrible lacks the standout characters from the original. And the budget was clearly whacked compared to GoT; between spending on CGI for the dragons scenes, there were obvious green screen backdrops that indicate it was more studio shot than location shot. For instance the early scene of the carriage ride into Kings Landing was jarring for how fake the background looked.

The childbirth scene was over the top in terms of how gruesome it was. I get it, medieval childbirth was a dangerous process; I don't need to see it in literally excruciating detail.

Yeah, it looked cheap as fuck.

I liked Matt Smith as the scummy brother and the main actress as the female heir was such an enormous upgrade to the acting for Dany.

I like Matt Smith in theory, but his low-polygon face weirds me out. It is like I am waiting for his face textures to load. Or like if you had a wax casting you put in the microwave too long.