What TV SHOWS are you watching?

I heard that Echo underwent significant revisions and re-shoots because Kevin Feige considered it unreleasable in its original form.

Fourth season of True Detective continues to impress me, aside from the disappointing musical selections. The show does a great job of portraying a harsh northern winter, and the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska has a very lived-in texture. So it is disappointing that the music utterly detracts from the atmosphere by being a mish-mash of sounds from unrelated times and places. Musician and composer T-Bone Burnett did a great job with handling the music selections for seasons one and three (and inexplicably failed with season two), but he is not involved with season four. I was hoping for some traditional Inuit music and some dark, northern folk, especially given the supernatural aspects of this season. Instead, episode 2 featured songs by the Spice Girls and the Beach Boys. However, the theme song by Billy Eilish is growing on me, as it suits the visuals in the opening credits.

So how does this season connect, if at all, to prior seasons of True Detective? I don't remember any connections between season two and anything else, but seasons one and three both involved child abductions in the deep south. There is a recurring spiral symbol in season one that is back in season four. And here is a big one: Detective Rust Cohle used to live in Alaska, with his father Travis who died of leukemia. In season four, an old woman is haunted by the ghost of her deceased lover Travis Cohle, who had leukemia. I didn't connect the dots until episode two revealed that Travis had leukemia, and then it came together. My brother-in-law has leukemia, so the reference got my attention the last time I re-watched season one.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is a weird one. I absolutely loved it for the gorgeous animation and take on the material but can’t, in god faith recommend it to someone who didn’t also love both the movie and graphic novels. Even then it would be iffy recommend. It keeps the spirit and is a marvelous translation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s art but is an incredible swerve on the story with a new emphasis on characters who didn’t get their time in any earlier iterations.

I’m glad it got made and that it took risks, but I get it if it falls flat on its face. I also get it if it becomes a stone classic in the next ten years or so.

For the sake of my Star Trek trivia team, I am continuing to watch all Star Trek, in chronological order. I am currently watching season 4 of Enterprise, and found the overall show better than I was expecting. Third season was one big storyline, but it was a reasonably good one, and season four seems to consist entirely of shorter story arcs, like two or three episodes each. A couple of days ago, I started watching a three-part story set on Vulcan, featuring Gary Graham, who plays recurring character Ambassador Soval of Vulcan with impressive dignity and gravity. Then I learned that Gary died on Monday of this week from a heart attack, at age 73. He was also played one of the main characters on the tv version of Alien Nation.

I've been watching season 2 of The Durrells. I watched the first season some years ago and though I liked it enough, it didn't grab me. Decided to give it another shot and have dug the series more this time. Intend to continue through all 4 seasons. I like how they have no big problems and all like each other but are still a completely dysfunctional family. A relaxing show so far because of the light-hearted atmosphere.

Finished up The Durrells in Corfu. I had noticed the increasing mentions about the rise of fascism in other countries (1930's) as the show went on, with the usual talk of not needing to worry about it yet because its far away. The last season does a good job of bringing WWII close enough that they flee back to England, while maintaining the quirkiness that makes the show fun. And giving all the children a chance to show they've grown some. Would watch more if there was more.

You might appreciate the books if you liked the show, but yeah it ends with the advent of war so anything further would be completely made up.

Holy mackerel does Scavengers Reign on max just make me want to itch and claw myself! CRAZY level of body horror in some episodes. The very languid pacing and low energy voice acting does get me sometimes though. Visually the show ALWAYS has cool new stuff to show but these 'scavengers' are almost always just "huh, wow" like they are on permanent klonopin. Some action bits and high energy though, so it's a minor quibble. Still, how these folks haven't macguyvered together flamethrowers just astounds me, that whole planet needs to be razed to bedrock

The wife has been blowing though The Big Bang Theory of late. I had forgotten just how mean that show could be (often towards Penny) but also to a lot of the other characters. Bingeing it really brings out the repetitive "comedy" cycle. Kinda like Friends it's lukewarm comfort food at best.

TRUE DETECTIVE season 4….man it’s a slog. I always thought S1 was overrated and got buzz due to the two lead actors; this season feels like more of the same. Too much character backstory, esp for a season with only six episodes.

Yeah, I kinda feel the same way. The allure of "stories about broken people" sweetened with the syrup of supernatural/aliens/sci-fi genre has looooong since worn off for me. I just want cheesy sci-fi again, like Eureka or something technobabblish. The idea that this hick town would chisel up a mountain of corpses and let it drip thaw in the middle of an ice skating rink...WTF? There are elements missing (the road out is iced over, there was a monster blizzard, someone outside is isolating this place) that were sacrificed for nonsense about a rebellious lesbian teenager AND a family tragedy AND long standing infidelity AND professional misconduct all in the same person, JFC already! The good "detective" moments are great, the atmosphere is compelling, but there is no real sense of threat, urgency, or underlying narrative and I'm 1/3rds through it!

About the only really awesome thing they could do at this point to save this series would be grizzled old Kurt Russell as R.J. MacReady wandering into town to torch it all to the foundations

I have been enjoying Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Donald Glover and Maya Erskine. It sort of veers between ridiculous and heavy emotion. Something doesn’t quite work but I can’t name it, although I churned through the first season and liked it.

Four episodes in, and I am on the fence about True Detective season four. The basic premise is fine, with a mixture of mystery, horror, and a harsh winter setting. But the supernatural element might be a mismatch for a detective show, as the keen detectives disregard some major clues because they are too weird to be believed. Compared to previous seasons, there are too many characters (though not as many main characters as the unfortunate season two) taking up too much screen time. It's great that our detectives have interesting personal lives away from the job, but most viewers probably tuned in for the mystery and not the soap opera. But if they manage to stick the landing by the end of the sixth and final episode, it will all have been worth it.

I know this is the tv show thread, but it is a bit relevant for me to mention a movie that I started watching last night. I recently re-watched the Cube trilogy on Amazon Prime, because I learned that there was a Japanese remake of the original Cube movie, just last year. So, I finally got to the Japanese one last night, and had to jump through some annoying hoops with Amazon just to get English subtitles. Tonight, there were subtitles when I watched True Detective on Max, even though the show is already in English and I didn't choose to have subtitles. Even the brief commercial before the start of the episode had subtitles. So, uh, that is a thing. Since I am not finished with the Japanese version of the Cube yet, I left the subtitles alone for now.

Interesting... I have seen all of the Cube films, and the only one I liked was the original. So please, do let us know if the Japanese one is worth watching.

Cranberries wrote: I have been enjoying Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Donald Glover and Maya Erskine. It sort of veers between ridiculous and heavy emotion. Something doesn’t quite work but I can’t name it, although I churned through the first season and liked it.

Apparently Phoebe Waller-Bridge worked on the show, and her and Glover also worked on the Solo movie. Waller-Bridge left the show in production and they recast the lead. Bummer to see two talented artists having a tiff.

""It’s like, 'This is how I run my ship.' 'Well, this is how I run my ship,'" he said. "And it’s such a big idea, this show, I don’t think it can have two captains. I mean, she rewrote the pilot, and I saw her script and I was like, 'It’s definitely not my style,' but if she’d done it with her in it, we’d all be like, 'This is a great freaking show.'"

As for how Waller-Bridge ultimately left the show, Glover repeated that it was "like a real divorce where the hardest part is knowing when to say it’s over."

In hindsight I definitely got some "Killing Eve" vibes--like a diluted Killing Eve.

If you need to sell your girlfriend on the show:

Glover told BI that showrunner and co-creator Francesca Sloane, a prior collaborator who had worked with him on "Atlanta," told him that she wanted him to be "sexualized" in the show. Much of that, as he recounts in the production notes, comes through in the 1970s-inspired wardrobe, which saw him dressed in form-fitting, sheer, and tasteful clothing.

For the less-clad, shirtless scenes in the show, Glover underwent a pre-filming process of drinking orange juice and doing pushups. But even the fully clothed moments left an impression on him.

I was surprised to see Maya Erskine's name, having only known her from the wonderful Pen15. Weird choice for a revival, though - I thought the Brad Pitt / Angelina Jolie version had basically buttoned up that story.

I watched all of season 7 of Rick and Morty. The new voices are very close to the originals, but not exact. I got used to them pretty quickly, though.

Overall this season is not as funny as prior ones have been; I did get the occasional laugh.