What TV SHOWS are you watching?

hotseatgames wrote: I've now watched all 4 available episodes of The Periperal, and while I enjoy the show... I have no idea what the fuck is going on. I keep feeling like I missed some vital plot point, but I don't think I did. I think it's just a bit needlessly arcane.

The Peripheral will have the same problems as Westworld, because the creators of both shows haven't had time to learn from their mistakes on Westworld.

Interesting bit of trivia, one of the producers/writers for THE PERIPHERAL was our backyard neighbor when I was growing up in Ohio back in the 70s.

Binged the last half of the last season of Atlanta

Probably should have taken it more slowly because each episode was great in its own way.

So glad it was able to end on its own terms as (IMHO) its one of the most exceptional shows of the year, maybe the decade.

Watched all 8 episodes of Ratched on Netflix. This is supposed to be the origin story for Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, apparently.

You basically watch Nurse Ratched play the long game in developing various schemes, both murderous and underhanded.

It starts out alright, and perhaps even gets a bit interesting.... but after episode 6 it starts to nosedive in episode 7, and episode 8 is ASTONISHINGLY bad. One of the worst season endings I've seen. Apparently a season 2 is coming, a fact that is beyond me based on what I watched.

It's not worth your time.

Oh The Peripheral. It is starting to feel like a WB soap opera.

Ms. Marvel absolutely flamed out in the last episode. Just totally doused itself in gasoline and fell three stories into a dumpster fire.

I think “plot holes” are the laziest possible criticism, demonstrating an unwillingness to actually engage with a series or film by picking on minor details. I’ll even forgive legitimate plot holes if they allow the plot to work and move on. But nothing about that finale made sense. We need to stall the bad guys to buy time for our friend to escape. But that stalling isn’t on the spot improv but hours of Home Alone-ing building? And the building is so unsecured that six different people snuck in four different times without using superpowers? I was absolutely on the side of Damage Control. I was convinced that kid was going to explode. Someone with experience needed to get on top of that, not smuggle him out of the country.

And yet the first few episodes until the Karachi adventure are good enough to put it alongside WandaVision just behind Hawkeye in the Marvel rankings. Just a wonderful slice of immigrant family life and creative visuals.

DarthJoJo wrote: But that stalling isn’t on the spot improv but hours of Home Alone-ing building? And the building is so unsecured that six different people snuck in four different times without using superpowers?

You know how sometimes you read a title and your mind substitutes in something similar but completely different? The whole time I was reading your review, right up until you said "superpowers," I thought you were talking about The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Watching season 3 of Dead To Me, and it is excellent, as expected. Dead To Me is the second-best thing Netflix has ever produced, after Bloodline, and you should absolutely watch it!

It's also nice that episodes are 30 minutes for a change.

Andor - I think a redditor described it best as "competency porn." Everyone is at the top of their game. Which alone makes the characters, good and bad, watchable.

Been re-watching Rebels now and then too. For some reason this time I enjoy that the characters are action figures come to life. Plus even though they take place in the same time period and are about the early rebellion the two shows feel nothing alike.

Competency porn is a fine description; another one I read is that it’s the first Star Wars series where the characters came first, and the universe conformed around them, instead of the opposite.

At any rate, I enjoyed ANDOR immensely, and think it is pretty clearly the best SW media. The complete lack of Jedi, and the Skywalker family specifically, is an immense strength. I regret to inform you all that they suck and are dumb.

ANDOR started off strong and stuck the landing in the season finale. Its gonna be a long wait til Season 2 .

I've watched the first couple episodes and, in contrast to everyone else here, I have to say that I'm kinda underwhelmed and don't really see what the fuss is about. Maybe it's better for hardcore Star Wars fans? I saw Rogue One once, so that doesn't carry a lot of weight with me in terms of the nostalgia effect of seeing Cassian again (I barely remember him from the film) and so far the story build-up hasn't been delivering a ton for me. I haven't found any characters that strike me as very compelling ("Can't wait until THAT PERSON comes back on camera!") and I'm kind of waiting for the story to get somewhere, too.

Maybe it's just that I'm really not a Star Wars fan. I watched the first couple episodes of The Mandalorian recently, too, and while it has more interesting people than anyone so far in Andor (Nick Nolte's Ugnaught farmer being the best, at the moment, even if his motivation for helping the Mandalorian is completely opaque), it's still your average adventure show to me. I always thought the fans' devotion to the character of Boba Fett was kind of absurd, given the amount of screen time that he had in the original trilogy, so I'm not carrying any particular attachment to a character of the same sect who somehow never remove their helmets (even to eat?) and say that weapons are "part of my religion" without any obvious devotion attached to that claim (it's not like he's a wandering daoshi, serving a warrior god or something like that.)

So, yeah, I'm totally missing it right now. Maybe I'll keep watching both of them and see if something catches my eye, but can't say that I'm eager to do so. Finished Moon Knight and it was... odd, but given that they seem to be following in Doug Moench's footsteps with the original comic series, I guess that's enough. It seems to be treading this fine line between an actual story about dissociative identity and slam-bang superhero stuff. I have to say that , but whatevs.

But, yeah, overall right now I can't really say that Disney+ is wowing me on a money-for-entertainment level.

I rewatched the entirety of Seinfeld. I remember watching this show as kid when it originally aired, though it became apparent it was mostly the last few seasons. Overall I really liked it and thought it was pretty funny. I think it really gets going in the third season and is pretty solid all the way through, though season nine is a small dip in quality. I was surprised at how many call backs and references there were to older episodes that are probably not as apparent when not bingeing it. I haven’t watched a proper sitcom in decades, so maybe this is standard practice?
As for the finale, I, like everyone else at the time, thought it was bad. Watching it now, I don’t think it is as awful as everyone felt it was. It’s not great, especially since it is partially a clip show, which is weird considering the two previous episodes were straight up clip shows that didn’t even bother with a framing story. But the finale drove home hard just how terrible these people actually are and I think overall it worked.

It remains such an incredibly cruel show, it's amazing it was just popular mainstream comedy.

the Peripheral keeps on delivering. It has a definite slow grindy pace punctuated with some well done action. The future stuff is filled with horribly overwrought dialogue to the point where there can be a 10 minute scene of dialogue between two characters, both saying impressive sounding things, but NOTHING of substance actually is said. The hillbilly mountains are much more refreshing with direct dialogue and some actual normal sounding human interaction. I think I know where it is going and I hope this first season has a bit of closure (this is a trilogy from Gibson, IIRC so hopefully they have a multi-season framework already) and they don't try to drag out some aspects.

And I gotta say ep6