What TV SHOWS are you watching?

I liked Obliterated.

Jason10mm already said as much, but Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is absolute garbage. The present-day leads are just contemptible whiners entirely devoid of personality. I don’t care about the search for the missing father or their occasional attempts at caring about each other. After every scene my wife and I ask why the series couldn’t be about any other character we just met instead.

And it could have been. A third of the series is set in the mid-twentieth century with way more interesting characters looking for monsters. That should have Monarch: a search for a new kaiju in a new locale every week.

Maybe it’s the tension between the metaphor and camp of Godzilla. Or maybe it’s the struggle between the metaphor and the contemporary impulse for lore and world building. Whatever it is, they absolutely blew it and look all the worse stacked against Godzilla Minus One.

I enjoyed season 1 of Altered Carbon. I like how close it gets to nailing the Blade Runner feel and the whole 'save your personality digitally' shtick gets played through interesting conundrums, e.g. like how that would mean immortality for the rich and only for them while poorer people will have to make do with any body (sleeve), if they can get their hands on one.
Based on recent experience, I don't expect the second season to be worth watching. In these times it's very unlikely.

Nodens wrote: I enjoyed season 1 of Altered Carbon. I like how close it gets to nailing the Blade Runner feel and the whole 'save your personality digitally' shtick gets played through interesting conundrums, e.g. like how that would mean immortality for the rich and only for them while poorer people will have to make do with any body (sleeve), if they can get their hands on one.
Based on recent experience, I don't expect the second season to be worth watching. In these times it's very unlikely.

It's not.

It's been a bit but I recall the Altered Carbon anime not being too bad.

We are watching the final season of The Crown. It feels like a bunch of patched together episodes without much focus after

We are still enjoying it.

Manhattan - I guess I wasn't done with Los Alamos after watching Oppenheimer a few weeks ago. I decided to give this 2 season show from a decade ago a chance. I never would have watched when it was on because the title would make me assume its in NY. Maybe thats why despite good reviews it had low viewership. Should have called it Los Alamos instead.
If you didn't watch it, its mostly fictional characters with cameos by real ones. Most of the characters work on the implosion team and are considered the B team in every way as the gun model is the favorite. First season focuses more on the family lives with secrets and compartmentalization, while the second season focuses more on the scientists and different spies. Co-stars Mrs Maisel a few years before that show. Cancelled but ends with a bang and wraps up enough.

I tore through The Brothers Sun on Netflix. This Chinese / American show centers on a Triad boss's family that is split between Taiwan and Los Angeles. The tone of the show is generally comedy, but there are a lot of rather cool fight scenes.

The writing is sometimes a bit weak, with some plot holes introduced here and there, but I still really enjoyed the 8 episodes. The biggest reason to watch the show is that it stars Michelle Yeoh, and she even kicks some ass in it. Most of the fighting is done by her eldest son in the show, though.

I also am pretty sure I spotted Bolo Yung in one scene, but he didn't get any lines. Assuming it was him, he has gotten much smaller in his old age. Not surprising. C.S. Lee from Dexter also shows up once.

Took me a while to warm to The Diplomat on Netflix. Part of the trouble was getting on its wave length. Never felt like I could quite place it. There was comedy and soap opera and a touch of political thriller but all grounded by a bunch of bureaucrats trying their best while pulled by their personal and professional needs; the will of the people and their bosses; and what is actually right.

But I did come around largely on the strength of the acting. Rufus Sewell was a particular delight as a charming rockstar diplomat who struggled to not put himself first.

Then the last five minutes of the last episode overheated the camp and soap opera to Dexter levels. No storylines were resolved, and everything became much stupider. Hard to recommend after that.

True Detective season four looks very promising. This first episode dropped with perfect timing, as most of the U.S. is in the grip of cold, snow, and ice. Minnesota has been enjoying an unusually mild winter, including a brown Christmas, but the temperature did drop to -10F last weekend in the Twin Cities.

All three previous seasons of True Detective were primarily male and sweaty, focused on conventional crime and corruption in warm or hot climates. This season is dark, cold, and female, featuring two female leads and a female writer/director Issa Lopez. And there are strong indications that season four will feature supernatural elements. Jodie Foster is great as the lead detective investigating a mass disappearance at an international research station in Alaska. I am not familiar with Kali Reis, who plays a state trooper obsessed with a cold case, but she has a formidable presence and was a professional boxer.

Some of my all-time favorite horror movies take place in cold, dark wintery settings: The Shining, The Thing, and 30 Days of Night. Lopez has indicated that this season was influenced by both The Shining and The Thing, as well as Alien. She didn't mention 30 Days of Night, but the first episode takes place right at the start of a month of winter darkness. I am guessing that the ultimate threat will prove to be supernatural and not alien in nature. Maybe some sort of Inuit spirit of female vengeance.

My one disappointment is the music. The opening theme is from Billie Eilish, who is overly fond of ponderous and dismal melodies. There is an okay reggae song playing on a car radio in one scene, and a Beatles song used to dramatic effect. Nothing else really stood out. Still better than the music from season two, but nowhere near as good as seasons one or three.

Scavengers Reign - An excellent cartoon about scattered characters from a broken spaceship trying to survive on a very alien planet after their escape pods landed in different places. If a sci-fi Robinson Crusoe on a world overflowing with weird, living organisms is your cup of tea then definitely check it out.

The Money Heist prequel, Berlin is on Netflix, and I've watched 5 episodes so far (of 8). It is a fun heist show, not as good as the original series, but better than the Money Heist Korea spin-off, which was literally just a retelling of the first show.

Money Heist isn't top tier television, but it's fun.

ChristopherMD wrote: Scavengers Reign - An excellent cartoon about scattered characters from a broken spaceship trying to survive on a very alien planet after their escape pods landed in different places. If a sci-fi Robinson Crusoe on a world overflowing with weird, living organisms is your cup of tea then definitely check it out.

I'm enjoying this as well, though maybe I missed something but HOLY CRAP is this world LETHAL yet many of the characters seem kinda blasé about strange worms/bugs/snooty mammals/trees/flowers/pollen/indescribable things coming up to them and not getting a face full of space buckshot. Did they know much about the planet beforehand?

It's a VERY trippy show, amazing visuals, and goes out of its way to highlight some phobias (or fetishes for you weirdoes almost every other scene.

Reacher Season 2 is a downgrade from S1 in about every possible way other than lead Alan Richtsons bulging pecs. Taking Reacher out of small town rural life where he can 'realistically' punch his way through a small stakes mystery with a couple of local cops does not translate well to high stakes international intrigue and a team of "we are the SPECIAL investigators!" that never seem to gel even a fraction as well as the 2 cops from S1. Poor Robert Patrick as the heavy has visible frustration on his face as he paces in a warehouse full of advanced weaponry, sending scores of minions to their deaths, episode after episode. Dunno what happened in the writers room betwixt seasons but substantial mojo was lost.

Very bizarre

jason10mm wrote: Reacher Season 2 is a downgrade from S1 in about every possible way other than lead Alan Richtsons bulging pecs.

The wife and I cancelled Amazon Prime late last year (variety of reasons, including but not limited to price creep, and not wanting to fuel its enshittification) and losing access to Reacher S2 was something that made me mildly hesitate before pulling the trigger. This makes me feel better.

Instead we finished Echo, the Marvel TV series. This is a very short series, five episodes. The first four are good, and then the last one just shits the bed and phones in a completely anticlimactic snoozer. It's very nice that the show highlights people with disabilities, and also many excellent indigenous actors. The lead actress is indigenous, deaf, and is also an amputee. It mostly takes place in the Choctaw nation of Oklahoma. The characters are very well realized, lots of people who are good, bad, funny, or all of the above -- not just the stoic environmental magic Indian type. A good bit of the dialogue is also in Choctaw and ASL, which was cool to see on screen. Vincent d'Onofrio continues to rule as Kingpin, but seems mostly neutered here. And they change Echo from the comics -- in the comics she can replicate physical movement she sees, so she is badass because she can immediately copy any cool kung fu move or what have here. Here she is a competent fighter, but her echoing ability refers to her ability to draw on the strength of her ancestors. So it comes back to magic Indians after all. The first four episodes involve the drama around Echo's relationship to her family, her community, and to her de facto father figure Kingpin. The last episode is a fight between Echo and her family (on one side) and Kingpin and his goons (on the other). Thanks to summoning the strength of her magical ancestors, Echo and her family win in a mostly desultory fashion.

Overall, pass, unless (like me) you like watching things uncritically if they have the "Marvel" branding on it.

dysjunct wrote:
Instead we finished Echo, the Marvel TV series. This is a very short series, five episodes. The first four are good, and then the last one just shits the bed and phones in a completely anticlimactic snoozer. It's very nice that the show highlights people with disabilities, and also many excellent indigenous actors. The lead actress is indigenous, deaf, and is also an amputee. It mostly takes place in the Choctaw nation of Oklahoma. The characters are very well realized, lots of people who are good, bad, funny, or all of the above -- not just the stoic environmental magic Indian type. A good bit of the dialogue is also in Choctaw and ASL, which was cool to see on screen. Vincent d'Onofrio continues to rule as Kingpin, but seems mostly neutered here. And they change Echo from the comics -- in the comics she can replicate physical movement she sees, so she is badass because she can immediately copy any cool kung fu move or what have here. Here she is a competent fighter, but her echoing ability refers to her ability to draw on the strength of her ancestors. So it comes back to magic Indians after all. The first four episodes involve the drama around Echo's relationship to her family, her community, and to her de facto father figure Kingpin. The last episode is a fight between Echo and her family (on one side) and Kingpin and his goons (on the other). Thanks to summoning the strength of her magical ancestors, Echo and her family win in a mostly desultory fashion.

Overall, pass, unless (like me) you like watching things uncritically if they have the "Marvel" branding on it.

I agree with pretty much all of that.

The first episode was the "homework" episode, as it breezed through all the other MCU shows, background, and exposition for those not up to speed. This was a bit of a chore to sit through. Then things finally got interesting with the second episode. The fight scenes were pretty good. I liked the setting and the characters. But as dysjunct notes above, the conflict is resolved in a very unsatisfactory way. For three episodes, Maya is trying to set herself up as the new crime boss after Kingpin's supposed murder (spoiler, he ain't dead). Once Kingpin shows up, Maya seems to drop this ambition entirely, and instead we get this Palpatine/Luke dynamic where Kingpin is trying to lure Maya back into his empire. And then it all just sort of ... ends.

I read a rumor that the show was originally supposed to be 8 episodes, but it seems the creator took to heart the criticism that these Disney+ MCU shows are largely too thin and undeveloped to sustain 8 episodes. The story / pacing seems a bit janky, and I wonder if they edited the hell out of it, to get it down to 5 episodes. It's not a huge complaint, because 5 episodes was fine.

Overall, it was FAR better than Secret Invasion, which was one of the dumbest shows that I've ever seen.