What TV SHOWS are you watching?

mc wrote: Anyway I'm watching Twin Peaks which is probably the genesis of a lot of this stuff haha.

You may be right. I think it also highlights that serialized narratives work best when surrounded by episodic stuff. Twin Peaks is the annual over indulgence, it can't be a regular staple.

Long form storytelling is its own distinct artform and requires a level of craft and unique vision that most shows can never achieve, and letting the same old "writers room" structure loose on it is a big part of the problem. Add in the horrible "mystery box" technique and it is all due for a reset.

I just watched the most recent episode of The Last Of Us and it was pretty crazy violent. But damn, compelling as hell. Usually they show women going toe to toe with men from a strength perspective which is bullshit. The choreography in this one favored the girl’s tactics, and was absolutely believable. They fucked up the fire, but every show fucks up fire so I’ll give them a pass on that.

I think I said “holy shit” four or five times watching it.

Yeah, I feel like we have progressed as a fight choreography society to get to scenes of women fighting (or any smaller man versus a much larger one) at least seems a little realistic. Elsa Patek (or whatever her name is, Chris Hemsworth's wife) is a TINY woman, even if quite athletic, so when she went mano-a-mano with a 250+ pound bruiser in that Interceptor movie they had to get really creative. Watched some network cop show and they had 125 pound women taking punches to the face from 200+ pound assassins.....yeah.

It works when it is Bruce Lee as that guy was fast as shit. It works when it is Gina Careno or Cynthia Rothrock because those women are actual fighters and know how to move, ditto for a lot of actresses from asian countries with a stronger martial arts inclusive culture. Even a dance background can help, as seen with River in Firefly. Katie Sackhoff has some body mass and can sell a fight, not sure if the actress has any actual experience beyond time on set though.

As for Last of Us, I find the show to be very well made, but EXTREMELY meandering and kinda pointless. Was the game like this, more about delivering vignettes on the human condition, or is that just a show thing? So far I've yet to see why these fungi things are as tolerated as they are when it seems like the humans are quite capable of fighting each other and ought to be out sterilizing the fungi wherever it has taken root.

jason10mm wrote: As for Last of Us, I find the show to be very well made, but EXTREMELY meandering and kinda pointless. Was the game like this, more about delivering vignettes on the human condition, or is that just a show thing? So far I've yet to see why these fungi things are as tolerated as they are when it seems like the humans are quite capable of fighting each other and ought to be out sterilizing the fungi wherever it has taken root.

Well, the game is obviously longer (more hours) so it meanders a bit. Also there are a LOT more fungi-zombies in the game (it's a shooter, after all). But the main difference is that in the game the fungi are spread through the air. Whenever you go near a nest, you have to wear a gas mask, which doesn't work as well on television where you want to see the actors' faces (Mandalorian excepted).

One of the nice things about LAST OF US are some of the small touches. For instance, in the latest episode the villagers are all carrying hunting rifles. In an earlier episode, Joel discards an assault rifle saying ammo is too hard to find. This makes sense , as even in current times .223 ammo goes thru spot shortages. Whereas hunting rifles use non .223 as well as are more likely to have reloaded ammo available.

Msample wrote: One of the nice things about LAST OF US are some of the small touches. For instance, in the latest episode the villagers are all carrying hunting rifles. In an earlier episode, Joel discards an assault rifle saying ammo is too hard to find. This makes sense , as even in current times .223 ammo goes thru spot shortages. Whereas hunting rifles use non .223 as well as are more likely to have reloaded ammo available.

Yeah, but then there was that one QZ where everyone was in tac gear and doing multiple mag dumps.

Personally after 20 years you'd think everyone would have shotguns converted to a muzzle loader or something. Obviously that limits the amount of 'run n'gun' you can do (Last of the Mohicans aside) but seems far more realistic.

The show does suffer a lot for characters stomping about, yelling at each other when supposedly travelling through infected territory. I'm just gonna have to accept this is NOT a particularly well done survival apocalyptic show and just enjoy the emotional beats as they come. The Bill and Frank ep was a highlight for that.

Yakamoz S-245 - After finishing both mini-series for Into the Night, I checked out the Turkish spinoff. Instead of a plane its a submarine. I liked it better overall. Most of the crew are of course military so there's less interpersonal drama than on the plane. The two series have some cross-over as well. Not sure if they'll continue either series but I hope they do.

jason10mm wrote:

Msample wrote: One of the nice things about LAST OF US are some of the small touches. For instance, in the latest episode the villagers are all carrying hunting rifles. In an earlier episode, Joel discards an assault rifle saying ammo is too hard to find. This makes sense , as even in current times .223 ammo goes thru spot shortages. Whereas hunting rifles use non .223 as well as are more likely to have reloaded ammo available.

Yeah, but then there was that one QZ where everyone was in tac gear and doing multiple mag dumps.

Personally after 20 years you'd think everyone would have shotguns converted to a muzzle loader or something. Obviously that limits the amount of 'run n'gun' you can do (Last of the Mohicans aside) but seems far more realistic.

The show does suffer a lot for characters stomping about, yelling at each other when supposedly travelling through infected territory. I'm just gonna have to accept this is NOT a particularly well done survival apocalyptic show and just enjoy the emotional beats as they come. The Bill and Frank ep was a highlight for that.

In the Apocalypse Knowledge department, I read somewhere that modern weapons can sort of work with Plain Old Gunpowder (easy to make), brass is reusable, and lead is lead. But the real headache you have when feeding modern weapons is the primer. You need to know a good bit of chemistry to make primers that work, and to not blow yourself up in the process of making them. The 19th Century was just one blowed-up primer factory after another until everyone learned all the tricks.

I think judging them on all of the scientific details that you think they might have missed is doing both the show and yourself a disservice. I say that not because they can't be judged on that stuff. but because you might not be giving the showrunners enough credit for what they do take into account.

I'm a regular critic of post-apoc stuff because I have watched, read, and played (Gamma World, etc.) so much of it. I can regularly point and laugh at the concept of gasoline being viable more than a few years post-disaster (i.e. it won't be unless someone is producing more of it to replace everything that has decayed.) But, first off, Neil Druckman is the original creator of the game, so lambasting him for not creating a good adaptation of it seems kind of absurd on its face. Secondly, Craig Mazin is the creator of Chernobyl, which has been lauded from one end of the spectrum (nuclear scientists) to the other (native Russians who were present in the area in the 1980s) for its amazing attention to detail and cogent presentation of that environment (technologically, emotionally, culturally.)

So, yeah, they took some liberties with what might be the reality in that kind of situation, but you can do that in the name of telling a great story. I don't think they reached Chernobyl levels of quality, but it was still well done and I'm interested in seeing where they take the second season.

Wow, the season finale of TLOU was some video-game ass video gamey shit. As in the moment exciting as it was, looking back it almost totally deflated the entire season.

Pure speculation, especially since I haven't played the game, but



all of which isn't a bad way for a season to end, since it leaves behind enormous story hooks for further development.

The Last of Us - Tried playing the game years ago but couldn't get into it. I like hack/slash, button-mashing stuff if I'm being honest. I mainly watched because Anna Torv was in it. Fuck. I hated all of the flashbacks. Including episode 3. Felt like I was watching a different show every time. I did like that they'd basically given up fighting back and just run/hide/abandon as a way of life. I read they're adding more action for S2 but I hope they don't and add more suspense instead.

I liked THE LAST OF US. I never played the game. I thought the actors were good, I thought the story was fine, zombies are played out but whatever, all good zombie stories are about the humans trying not to act shitty under difficult circumstances so whatever.

MANDALORIAN s3. Hey pretty good, filling in the interesting parts of a dumb universe. I like Katee Sackhoff and am glad she has a bigger role.

For some reason my spousal unit has been binging NEW AMSTERDAM. This is every bad cliche of medical drama. Everyone cares! Everyone sacrifices for the greater good! Everyone thumbs their noses at medical bureaucracy! In case you are wondering how to feel, someone will play soft piano music at appropriate points.

My kid watched DANCE MONSTERS which features amateur dancers in motion-capture suits where they are all furries and it feels like a bad acid trip. Some good dances I guess.

Then she watched some reality show involving flower sculptures. Everything is terrible.

So far, I've been really underwhelmed by the latest season of The Mandalorian. The first two weren't epic TV or anything like that, but this season seems like a real step down as far as writing goes. Everyone's dialogue sounds like a screen test and there's a certain point where the mysticism/artifacts of legend stuff just doesn't mix well with the high tech and I think we've reached it. This is to say nothing of the nominal queen of Mandalor doing nothing but sitting sprawled on a throne, with no one else in the chamber, every time we see her. I mean, sure, the idle nobility and all that, but it's not supposed to be literal.

I watched the first episode of season 3 of Ted Lasso and it was fine. I chuckled a few times. Season 2 was up and down. This had the same vibe. I just don't care about the Nate character, they blew up a minor side character into a big part of the plot, so that's going to be an issue this year.