What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Shellhead wrote: I am NOT watching Rings of Power. The first season looked amazing but the writing was awful and I didn't like any of the characters enough to care what happened to them.

It's bad. I made it through half of episode four and just stopped. They're obviously trying to retcon the ending of season 1, where Sauron, a demigod of cruelty, was hanging out with Galadriel of the Sindarin for reasons unknown to anyone but the writers but probably so they could do the BIG REVEAL at the end of the season, which presented us with THE RETURN OF SAURON!!! And... now what? It was critically panned and audience numbers dropped as it went along, so now they've decided that "Well, no, Sauron really hasn't returned, since this elf, Adar, is really running Mordor, so now he's on the outs again... just like last season!" Plus, they're kind of rerunning the whole ring forging thing, where they left out Annatar in the first season but now he's here because they're probably responding to the criticism of them wholly rewriting the central aspect of the story. It's just bad. Oh, and it's not lacking in expository dialogue if you're really into that. [We see that swords have no effect on the barrow wights.] Next line: "They're impervious to our weapons!" Yes. We saw that. A total shitshow. I really can't believe how much money they're spending for what they're churning out.

I finished the new animated Batman series on Prime. Caped Crusader? maybe? It's pretty good, and channels the original animated series pretty hard.

Episodes end rather abruptly. I hope there is a season 2.

Thought it was excellent. I mean, yes, it's Batman: The Animated Series because it's Bruce Timm again. But they consciously decided to make Batman stories for an older audience, which means they could skip all the inherently "moral" lessons and just focus on the stories and the characters. I think their rendition of Harley Quinn is the best one I've ever seen, since she's actually a person with motivation, rather than just a clown with a hammer who happens to be the female version of The Joker. And, most of all, I appreciate that they're more willing to examine the mental trauma that Bruce is exhibiting in the main focus of his life. It was just better storytelling all around and that's coming from someone who was a big fan of B:TAS and never quite finished a series of reviews on every episode they ever made...

Batman: the Animated Series was groundbreaking at the time, and opened the way for some other excellent DC cartoons, like Superman: the Animated Series, Justice League Unlimited, and Batman Beyond. It offered a definitive version of the Joker and the debut of new character Harley Quinn. The show focused on an experienced Batman facing classic interpretations of his comic book rogues gallery. However, there seemed to be network pressure to keep the show accessible to kids, which included wrapping up most stories in a single episode.

Batman: Caped Crusader is a different experience. I have a strong suspicion that Bruce Timm was a fan of The Wire, because this show doesn't just change one or two classic characters from white to minority, it does several: Commissioner Gordon, Barbara Gordon (Batgirl), and Harley Quinn. Even Renee Montoya (previously latina) now looks more African-American. To be honest, I found that slightly annoying at first, until a scene where Barbara, Harley, and Renee had lunch together and it was suddenly easy to tell them all apart. I was also annoyed at the depiction of Alfred the butler as chubby and scolding.

More importantly, Caped Crusader is doing the modern television long-form storytelling, setting up stories in advance, and doing callbacks later. Long-term Batman fans know what will happen to Harvey Dent, for example, but it was interesting choice to introduce him immediately and gradually build up to his fall from grace. The show is also starting very early in Batman's career, and for that matter Jim Gordon's career. Batman doesn't have a working relationship with Gotham PD, and Gordon is not yet the commissioner. There is no Robin, and no Batgirl, though their civilian identities are present. I look forward to a season two.

I finished a rewatch of the first season of Lost for the first time since it originally aired, and I have to say .. it holds up incredibly well. Thoroughly entertaining. Probably peak network TV. Even if it did spawn a million inferior knock-offs. And 25 episodes!! Remember when TV seasons had that many episodes? And they knocked that shit out every year? Now we're lucky to get 8 episodes every 3 years.

I also watched the first two episodes of Kaos on Netflix. Pretty fun "Greek mythology in the modern world" type thing. Jeff Goldblum is at the point in his career where he's just "Jeff Goldblum" in everything, like Christopher Walken or Jason Momoa. And it's fine! Because he's delightful. My teenage son walked in during a scene with an old guy chained to a cliff, and he asked, "Is that supposed to be Prometheus?" And I just stared at him and asked, "How the hell did you know that?" He shrugged and said, "Percy Jackson books." He then proceeded to "teensplain" the entire lore and backstory of Prometheus. Well done Rick Riordan in getting an entire generation of kids interested in Greek mythology.

I'm also not watching season 2 of Rings of Power because I didn't like the first season at all. I also don't have an Amazon Prime subscription anymore, so there's that.

According to Forbes, only 37% of the people who watched the first episode of the first season of Rings of Power also watched the season one finale.

I am the bottom 37% (unfortunately.)

I am one of those who started season 1 of rings of power and fell off. It was not compelling enough. It sure looked nice, I could tell where the money went.

I made it through the first season of Rings of Power, but just barely. I wanted to see if it improved after the disappointing early episodes. No chance that I will be watching the second season.

Joebot wrote: I finished a rewatch of the first season of Lost for the first time since it originally aired, and I have to say .. it holds up incredibly well. Thoroughly entertaining. Probably peak network TV. Even if it did spawn a million inferior knock-offs. And 25 episodes!! Remember when TV seasons had that many episodes? And they knocked that shit out every year? Now we're lucky to get 8 episodes every 3 years.

We were just discussing "old school" TV series with 22-26 episode seasons on the Discord. It is jarring to watch seasons that long these days where most premium TV series are more in the 8-12 episode range. I don't think I can subject myself to LOST again - while I am glad I saw it, I do remember being exasperated at how long it took to resolve stuff. To be fair the showrunners, while getting a lof of grief for that, were also at the mercy of the network who wanted to milk that ratings juggernaut as long as possible. Back then, the concept of "showrunner" really was just starting to come into existence and they probably didn't wield the power their modern day counterparts do.

hotseatgames wrote: I finished the new animated Batman series on Prime. Caped Crusader? maybe? It's pretty good, and channels the original animated series pretty hard.

Episodes end rather abruptly. I hope there is a season 2.

My kid really liked B:CC and any and all attempts to transition that to the far superior B:TAS have failed (mainly because the notable drop off in animation quality from the pilot to the other eps). I have issues with Caped Crusader, primarily to over focus on Barbara and sidelining of Bruce, but maybe it will go somewhere? I also dislike how they draw a lot of the women, they moved away from the curvy Timm pin-up look and doing that with the lesbian characters specifically kinda plays into the butch dyke stereotype a bit much. I think they burned HQ a bit fast as well, having her be a season long threat would have played better I think as she had 90% of the Bruce time. Harvey Dent as 100% frat boy wasn't a great choice either, I think, should have been allowed more nuance and less leering at Barbara (who is decidedly less physically appealing and has a rather abrasive personality in this version so it seems odd that he seems so smitten).

Anyhoo, it's better than I feared it might be given some of the showrunners so I hope we get more soon.

Great writing can make almost any show work. Great writing plus good acting can almost definitely make any show work. When I first heard that HBO was going to have a show about Penguin, I was completely disinterested. The Penguin has always been one of my least favorite comic book villains, with odd gimmicks (penguins and umbrellas), a cartoonish appearance, and a generic villain personality. And I have spent way too much time in Gotham City in recent years, watching or re-watching shows like Caped Crusader, Batman: the Animated Series, Gotham, and even Pennyworth. Enough shows to harden my conviction that Batman's highly-regarded rogues gallery has always been a little less interesting than Batman himself. But I came across a very positive review for The Penguin, and decided to give the first episode a try.

I was completely blown away. On a superficial level, the show depicts a very dark and corrupt city, with a moderate amount of action. But many of the conversations in this first episode are riveting because the stakes are so high. A single word can set someone off, with hellish consequences. In that regard, The Penguin reminded me of the better scenes in Inglourious Basterds, which would be every scene with Nazi inquisitor Cristoph Waltz. The opening scene does a great job of introducing this version of Penguin, and revealing his motivation and dreams without any heavy exposition. We soon meet Penguin's new nemesis, Sofia Falcone, a brilliant and intuitive mobster who tends to second-guess herself due to her recent stay in Arkham Asylum. Batman is mentioned in passing just once, early in the episode.

It would be easy to dismiss this show as unnecessary. The recent Sony movies featuring various Spider-man villains have demonstrated the potential futility of taking comic book villains out of the context of the super-heroes that fight them. And the Gotham show of a few years ago already gave us compelling versions of both Penguin and Sofia Falcone, along with some other interesting characters like the Riddler. Even so, this first episode of The Penguin is well worth your time, because the writing elevates it above nearly everything DC-related show that you have seen so far. Beyond that, Cristin Milioti offers a compelling performance as Sofia Falcone, and Colin Ferrell is incredible as the Penguin. To play this part, Ferrell undergoes the makeunder of the century, allowing his rugged good looks to vanish into an ugly/scary blend of Chris Christie and James Gandolfini. He also dismisses his native Irish brogue to adopt a convincing New York accent.

Shellhead wrote: I am still watching Vampire Diaries, now into the third season of eight. I feel dirty saying this, but it's a better show than the legendary Dark Shadows tv show of yesteryear. Nothing about this show is really great, but everything is moderately good. If you really like vampires, this show is worth trying. If you are indifferent about vampires and really hate anything that remotely resembles a CW teen drama, watch something else.

The cast is attractive and every one of them is at least an okay actor. The fx are good enough for a weekly tv show. There is definitely a soap opera aspect to the show, but also a surprising amount of violence. I was worried that the show would become ridiculous because it would just involve too many vampires crowded into a small town, but the writers successfullyu finessed the issue for a while and then finally expanded beyond the initial limited setting. I was also worried that it would become stale for constantly obsessing over vampires, but they quickly added a couple of other supernatural types to the mix early on, and have since added a couple more. Most of the named characters are at least somewhat three-dimensional, and even the villains can be somewhat sympathetic characters.

There are some things that the show does well. The limited flashbacks are on point for costumes and set dressing. There have been some good cliffhangers, and the show continues to gradually introduce escalating threats. One big scary bad guy from one season became more of an unreliable ally in a later season. The current big bad is now revealed to be runninig away from a bigger menace. Another current story line is revisiting a character who was very definitely killed early in the first season. The writers constantly keep a main plot and multiple sideplots going, with some of the sideplots soon advancing to the spotlight.

For what it's worth, Steve McQueen's grandson plays one of the main characters. He's young but shows good potential. However, none of the actors from this show seem to have moved on to better things after the show ended, which is telling.

One year later, and I am nearly finished with season five. A few better but shorter shows captured my attention in the last year, plus I am continuing my long-term project of watching all Star Trek tv shows and movies in chronological order. So I tend to ignore The Vampire Diaries for a while, then check back in and binge several episodes. I have watched nearly half of season five in just the last several days. The writing is consistently engaging, deftly weaving new plots into ongoing ones and throwing in dramatic plot twists with every episode. The soap aspect is an integral part of the show, but the primary focus is on deadly supernatural threats. The show started with just vampires, but is now functioning more like an alternate version of the World of Darkness, with every WoD supernatural type represented except for the fae and the demons. Clearly the show found a fan base, as The Vampire Diaries runs for eight season, plus there are two spin-off shows that add another 9 seasons in the same setting.

AMC's Preacher made its way to Netflix so I've been watching it. I loved the comics back in the day. Now I am older and the purposefully shocking elements have not aged well (or maybe I haven't aged well, or both). The show tones it down a bit and does more absurdist comedy. I don't think I'd be that into it if I wasn't familiar with the source material, but it's fun so far.

Watched that a couple of years ago and really liked the adaptation, especially how Ruth Negga, Dominic Cooper and Joe Gilgun give their own spin on the three main characters. Sadly it deviates from the source material in season four so badly that I'd argue it isn't even the same story any more.