Discuss and Rate the Last Thing You Watched (non-movies)

[Thaluikhain]

DI RAY

British TV show about the eponymous DI Ray, who deals with racism and corruption in the British police. Pretty decent.

Miss S
It's the Mandarin version of Miss Fisher, except set in 192's Shanghai instead of 1920s Melbourne, cause those are basically the same place. Didn't watch the first ep for very long before giving up.

Holding
Irish (that is, Republic of Irish) series, advertised as a comedy, which has maybe 2 or 3 sorta funny scenes and the rest of it is a serious and well done murder mystery, based on a book by Graham Norton. Very well done. Also:

Bloodlands season 1

Irish (that is, Northen Irish, which they could have specified right at the beginning) police drama. Starring James Nesbitt, and one woman from Derry Girls and one man from Hornblower and one man from Derry Girls and Hornblower, cause there aren't many shows about Ireland that go international I guess. Pretty decent.

One from Derry Girls and one from Bloodlands in this one.

 

[Dreiko]

So I dunno how it came to be but I felt like properly sitting down and watching Avatar (the last airbender, not the blue aliens one).

I would catch episodes of it on tv all the time back in the day but I had never actually properly sat down and watched all of it and in the right order, and man it's a lot better than I remember it. It's prolly that I went into it with the proper mood to watch it instead of just happening to catch it on tv at some random time and it being a random episode.

But yeah, the action scenes and world feel are great, I love the designs for all the various wild animals too, very creative. I can see they do this american cartoon thing in combat where you can't have physical contact so it's all energy pushes and elemental hits and so on but the choreography is actually very nice so it works.

About the only issue I guess I have is that the characters are overly simplistic and shallow at times, when at other times they're nuanced and quite deep. Like the show remembers that its age rating is 7 years and up so they have them act like a char in a show made for little kids would, and then you have the more thoughtful bits that I guess they made for the parents to enjoy as they watch with their kid or something, either way it is kinda jarring and weird but I don't watch american made animation all that much so it may just be my not being used to it. Like for example there's this episode where Aang hides this map and his friends randomly abandon him and then decide to unabandon him with nothing prompting the change, it's kinda bipolar. Also him hiding the map in the first place doesn't jive with his general sense of wisdom and kindness and selflessness, cause yeah sure he felt kinda left out but based on his previous personality he would never do such a thing. All in all it was a weird episode, at least that dominatrix with the whip and that giant sniffing badger were cool.

One thing I do remember is loving Zuko's uncle. And yeah I still do, char is wise, kind, hilarious and a little pervy. He makes every scene he's in. So far for a rating it's a high 9, very fun show with a lot of cool moments and promising buildup.

 

[thebobmaster]

Have fun with ATLA. The first season is the weakest season, IMO, and even then it's still really good. And yes, I think everyone wants to have an Uncle Iroh in their life.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Man vs. Bee: Mr. Bean / Great

Rowan Atkinson plays a first-time, professional house sitter watching the very high-end and technologically convoluted home of a snobbish couple who can't be bothered to explain much of anything as they go out the front door on vacation. Things seem manageable enough, but a single bee makes its way into the home, and chaos ensues as Atkinson tries nearly every trick in the book to eliminate it.

I won't readily recommend this to anyone as I can see the concept sounds really dumb, and maybe it is, but it IS fun and funny. If you like Mr. Bean, you might like this. Atkinson has a very special place in my heart as I used to watch Mr. Bean with my dad (much to the chagrin of my mother.)

One odd thing is it's episodic, but each episode is only about 10 minutes long, so they chopped up a 90-minute film into 9 episodes. Thankfully, each one doesn't have an intro you have to skip (that would have gotten tiresome quickly,) but also makes it even more baffling that they didn't just release it as a feature-length film.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Finished The Boys S3
We're more or less back to the beginning of the season, couple of changes here and there but intactly for the most part. Feels like the wheels start spinning every third season of every good show (Succession S3 was another major plateau in recent memory; Goliath too). Still had a lot of fun with it.

Only other complaint is they really abuse the hell out of fakeout deaths for major characters this season, while guest characters are usually offed within the episode. Which is a bummer - they keep doing the Rick and Morty thing of creating colorful new characters on the spot just to get killed off for a laugh or a shock.

 

[thebobmaster]

Through Season 5 of Star Wars: Clone Wars. On the one hand, this season had my least liked story arc...as in, I only finished half of it before deciding with the friend I'm watching with that it was a stupid arc that was almost certainly going to go nowhere, and we mutually agreed to skip to the next arc.

That said...that next arc, and the season-closing arc as well, are probably my two favorite arcs of the show so far, so the season more than made up for having the weakest arc of the show. Definitely looking forward to where Season 6 goes, especially with how Season 5 ended things.

ETA: It's a shame that Ian Abercrombie died, and let's just say it's REALLY obvious that Palpatine's voice changes partway through the season. That will happen when your replacement is a voice actor/actual actor with an extremely distinctive voice. Like, I don't know, TIM CURRY? Seriously, as much as I like Tim Curry, I couldn't help but hear Arl Howe during the last story arc instead of Chancellor Palpatine.

 

[sXeth]

Finished The Boys S3
We're more or less back to the beginning of the season, couple of changes here and there but intactly for the most part. Feels like the wheels start spinning every third season of every good show (Succession S3 was another major plateau in recent memory; Goliath too). Still had a lot of fun with it.

Only other complaint is they really abuse the hell out of fakeout deaths for major characters this season, while guest characters are usually offed within the episode. Which is a bummer - they keep doing the Rick and Morty thing of creating colorful new characters on the spot just to get killed off for a laugh or a shock.

IDK, obviously some ass pulls could happen but they prettymuch wrote themselves into having to end it next season.

Spoiler

Butcher only having months to live kind of puts a kybosh on the main character lasting more then a season. Homelander moving into openly bad guy status and Victoria gunning for the white house is probably the pre-eminent stakes you can get in the story.


There's some dangling threads with Soldier Boy being scooped up by Grace and the last Temp-V vial (I was expecting MM to end up taking it to save Butcher, but that didn't happen).


Maeve getting depowered and Noir getting offed does cut down on the checklist of the Seven too. A-train's ongoing existence seems weird though, he's been fake-deathed (or depowered) like, 4 times now?

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Through Season 5 of Star Wars: Clone Wars. On the one hand, this season had my least liked story arc...as in, I only finished half of it before deciding with the friend I'm watching with that it was a stupid arc that was almost certainly going to go nowhere, and we mutually agreed to skip to the next arc.

When I read this I guessed either a Jarjar arc, or a droids arc. Guessing its the droids?

 

[thebobmaster]

Yep. We just couldn't with the droids arc. Which, funnily enough, the episode that broke us was George Lucas' favorite.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Yep. We just couldn't with the droids arc. Which, funnily enough, the episode that broke us was George Lucas' favorite.

Yeah I've seen that interview. Which is... interesting. He also really likes the Gungan episodes apparently. George has a lot to do with how great TCW was, but man, he sure has tons of bad ideas too.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

IDK, obviously some ass pulls could happen but they prettymuch wrote themselves into having to end it next season.

Spoiler

Butcher only having months to live kind of puts a kybosh on the main character lasting more then a season. Homelander moving into openly bad guy status and Victoria gunning for the white house is probably the pre-eminent stakes you can get in the story.


There's some dangling threads with Soldier Boy being scooped up by Grace and the last Temp-V vial (I was expecting MM to end up taking it to save Butcher, but that didn't happen).


Maeve getting depowered and Noir getting offed does cut down on the checklist of the Seven too. A-train's ongoing existence seems weird though, he's been fake-deathed (or depowered) like, 4 times now?

I think they can pull out of all of those as there's precedent for pretty much everything by now.

Spoiler

Kimiko was already depowered by the same thing that depowered Maeve, and she got her powers back a couple of episodes later. So not that big of a deal. Also Maeve should've died from that anyway, which felt like a massive cop out.

Noir "dying", if he is dead, is also reversible. A-Train, Maeve, Kimiko all had bullshit fake-out deaths this season. He's been "dead" before too. Basically anybody can be Noir under the suit. Even if he was given a backstory he's still pretty much character-less - no face, no voice, just a suit.

Homelander and Neuman are still more or less where they were at the beginning - HL has his rabid MAGA followers, Neuman is politically moving up. They inched closer to wherever it is they're headed. Neuman should've been offed, or at least they should've done something about her. They learn she's the head-popper in the first episode and then do nothing about it for the rest of the season.

Soldier Boy is another cop out - he should've died as well. He started a prisoner in Russia and now he's a prisoner in America. Again, not much of a change.

As for Butcher dying slowly... Reversible with some bullshit drug/technobabble. There's no The Boys without him so even if they decide he's going to die from that then next season might as well be the last, and that's no biggie as I always assumed he was too reprehensible to survive the show. The point is he's still up and around doing the same thing for the same reasons until the show ends.

I guess Ryan was the biggest flip this season, but since he was absent for all of it I wonder what even was the point and couldn't they just ended S2 with him on HL's side if it was gonna happen as randomly as that?

So that's my take - a few pieces changed position across the board, then circled back by cheating or changing the rules (also cheating), and now we wait for the game to actually play out.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I was gaming for half of Ms Marvel episode 5, but didn't feel like I missed much.

Kamal's powers are just fucking dumb at this point. It was bad enough they had to change her goofy powers to this awful light show mess. So why they decided to give her powers such a ridiculous backstory is beyond me.

 

[gorfias]

The Boys Amazon Prime S3E8 season final:
A
Um, things come to a head and we see some crazy Super action scenes.


EDIT:

Spoiler

my biggest beef against this awesome episode is I have to suspend disbelief as to why Soldier Boy continues to fight Homelander, even after the Boys no longer want him dead. Interesting finale: Homelander does something horrible and the crowd loves it. Kinda reminds me of the US Democrat strategy to pick a horrible Republican nominee to support and to "pied piper" that person, and to their shock, lose to the piper

 

[sXeth]

I think they can pull out of all of those as there's precedent for pretty much everything by now.

Spoiler

Kimiko was already depowered by the same thing that depowered Maeve, and she got her powers back a couple of episodes later. So not that big of a deal. Also Maeve should've died from that anyway, which felt like a massive cop out.

Noir "dying", if he is dead, is also reversible. A-Train, Maeve, Kimiko all had bullshit fake-out deaths this season. He's been "dead" before too. Basically anybody can be Noir under the suit. Even if he was given a backstory he's still pretty much character-less - no face, no voice, just a suit.

Homelander and Neuman are still more or less where they were at the beginning - HL has his rabid MAGA followers, Neuman is politically moving up. They inched closer to wherever it is they're headed. Neuman should've been offed, or at least they should've done something about her. They learn she's the head-popper in the first episode and then do nothing about it for the rest of the season.

Soldier Boy is another cop out - he should've died as well. He started a prisoner in Russia and now he's a prisoner in America. Again, not much of a change.

As for Butcher dying slowly... Reversible with some bullshit drug/technobabble. There's no The Boys without him so even if they decide he's going to die from that then next season might as well be the last, and that's no biggie as I always assumed he was too reprehensible to survive the show. The point is he's still up and around doing the same thing for the same reasons until the show ends.

I guess Ryan was the biggest flip this season, but since he was absent for all of it I wonder what even was the point and couldn't they just ended S2 with him on HL's side if it was gonna happen as randomly as that?

So that's my take - a few pieces changed position across the board, then circled back by cheating or changing the rules (also cheating), and now we wait for the game to actually play out.

I think

Spoiler

Maeve not dying was literally the writers trying to not bury the season in complete grimdark territory, as basically every other outcome was things getting worse.


Re-powering anyone has been cut off. Ass pulls may occur of course. But the two inside agents at Vought that were able to get V (Starlight and Maeve) are both no longer. And Homelanders absolute takeover lowers a boom on the odds of anyone getting in (and not immediately being killed. Unless Ashley and the intel lady who deleted the security cam of Maeve alive turn.


Neuman, Grace, and Ryan all do feel like they were effectively sidelined throughout the season. Presumably highly important but at the end only used to bait the next season (or in Grace's case, some follow up with Soldier Boy). Maybe they've got some back pocket idea of Grace making a "Suicide Squad" esque group, or maybe there was enough fan support for Ackles they wanted to keep the door open.


If there is a "healer" power that shows up, I'd expect it to be MM using the last temp V vial. But thats a potential cop-out. Also contracts are a real thing and Karl Urban is a relatively big name (And whispers of a nu-trek 4th movie are around). IN the comics the final "battle" ends up with Hughie killing Butcher (or well, Butcher falls and impales himself while fighting Hughie), so.


Soldier Boy and Homelander's dynamic felt super-rushed. It was like 90 seconds of the second last episode and never really built on. I think the idea is that SB never could actually let go of being the "chosen one", and his father/son speech was actually bullshit. But the entire thing was majorly rushed and didn't really get good screen time to indicate anything going on.

 

[thebobmaster]

The same day I finished Season 5 of Clone Wars, I also watched episode 5 of Ms. Marvel.

To me, this is the worst Disney+ MCU show so far. It definitely didn't start that way. I enjoyed the first couple of episodes as we were introduced to Kamala as a character, and her culture. All that was well done. And then they brought in the villains, who were and are still woefully underdeveloped, and hard to even care about as villains because of it. In addition, the pacing of the show is way off. We don't get an explanation why what the villains want to do is actually wrong until about halfway through the 4th episode out of 6...and then that threat is wrapped up by the end of episode 5, leaving what should be the smaller threat of a government agency hunting down Kamala as the final threat for her to deal with.

Keep in mind, if the villains had done what they intended, it would have resulted in the end of the world. That is the threat that gets dealt with an episode after it gets introduced. The government agency is the threat that's been in the background the whole show, and is now the final threat for Kamala to deal with.

Oh, and her possible love interest got superpowers because his mom sacrificed herself to shut down that world-ending threat. He was in a completely different part of the world, and apparently some of her essence went into him to give him superpowers because she sacrificed herself for him. After she had disowned him for being unwilling to kill Kamala. The more I type out what's happened in this show, the dumber it sounds.

It isn't a terrible show, nothing the MCU done has crossed that threshold that I've seen (although Inhumans came close), but this is the first Disney+ MCU show I'm finishing out of obligation over desire.

 

[gorfias]

Yikes. Not sure what to make of the Terminal List on Amazon Prime.

Chris Pratt is a very pissed off Navy Seal who believes he was betrayed on a mission that got a lot of his fellows killed. And his wife and daughter too.

And he torture kills a guy in one episode in a way that is beyond NC17.

Like a train wreck, I can't take my eyes off it. On Episode 6 now.

He does have a brain tumor and is an unrealiable narrator. Dunno how much of what we're seeing is even real.

 

[Bartholen]

The Boys season 3.

Yep, still one of the best shows around. This season feels even more lurid with the gore and overall shock value, which is quite saying something. But the core cast remain solid and engaging, even if M.M. and Butcher's dynamic feels like it's repeating the same beats a lot this season. The social commentary is getting almost too close to home, seeing as you can see pretty much anything in the show mirrored 1 to 1 in real life by visiting any news site. The recreations of the Kendall Jenner pepsi ad and the "Imagine" embarrassment were goddamn spot on and fit perfectly.

I think one of the best things about this show is how it eschews predictable plot elements and storylines. Starlight having to walk on eggshells around the head popper lady could have been an entire plotline in a lesser show, but here it's like "Come on, we both know that we know" and gets on with it. Or like how the temp V is clearly a stand-in for drug addiction with Hughie, but it doesn't spend multiple episodes going "drugs r bad mkayyy". Same goes for Soldier Boy: it would have been easy to make him the comedic man out of time and play it for laughs, but he's played mostly straight. And what's even better is that they don't overdo the serious part either: he's not some screamingly racist, misogynist, loose cannon tough man caricature. He still acts somewhat rationally, he's able to have fun and able to work with people. Jensen Ackles is great. I haven't seen him in much besides Supernatural, so it's great to see him play a character so clearly different from Dean Winchester.

It does feel that this show should end with season 4 though. Seeing as Kimiko and Frenchie are mostly outside the main plot this season, it feels like a lot of characters getting axed off is thinning out the cast so we can have a more focused finale. Things are coming to a head in ways that can't last much longer: Homelander's pretty much an open villain even in the eyes of the public now, Victoria's aiming for the White House and Butcher's on borrowed time. I do wonder if the show is going to do Butcher's superhero genocide plan from the comics, since that would serve as a pretty natural conclusion, but there's been basically no setup whatsoever for that. My guess is that Ryan's going to be way more central next season, and probably play a pivotal part in how Homelander's taken down. I'm not ruling out Homelander dying and the show still continuing either, since now there's several elements that could serve a villain role even after him: Soldier Boy's still around, Ryan's pretty much being groomed to alt-rightdom, an ultra-powerful supe's headed for the White House, and even the ordinary people seem to be agitated in ways that won't untangle themselves easily.

And he torture kills a guy in one episode in a way that is beyond NC17.

Okay, I have to admit, now I'm intrigued. I was going to check this out of curiosity, because the trailers make it seem laughably cliché and dumb. But if it goes that hard there might be some violent fun to be had.

 

[sXeth]

Watching Wheel of Time out of idle curiousity.

Adaptations be adaptations and all, but they're kind of over-doing the effort to be grim and all. In the really obvious "adding things that were never in the book specifically for shock value" type deal.

Spoiler

The obvious standout is Perrin killing his non-existent in the books wife by accident during the battle. Like, he does have an arc about accepting the need for violence and all later on, and his powers being kind of vicious. But they're way rushing that. Then there's making Mat's parents neglectful drunks (and lechers in terms of his father).

Its kind of a classic pitfall... if you don't show the good times first, you can't really show the desperate fall to the bad times.

 

[BrawlMan]

crossed that threshold that I've seen (although Inhumans came close), but this is the first Disney+ MCU show I'm finishing out of obligation over desire.

You're not the only one who's had that feeling. This is something I noticed recently with the YoVideoGames crew. Steve said that the problem with Marvel movies and TV shows that you have to see them out of obligation now, instead of enjoying them. If that's the case, I'd rather look this stuff up on Wikipedia. Not the first time I've had to do that, as I skipped out on Ant Man movies.

 

[Hawki]

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (3/5)

Welp, this isn't going to win me any friends here, but meh, I'm well past that point.

Anyway, I was in Melbourne recently, and saw the stage play. I'd already read the 'book' version (the film's script sold as a book basically) and didn't like it much, and the stage play didn't change my mind. If I was judging this purely on the stagecraft, this would easily get a 4, possibly even a 5. It's big budget, big production, kind of like 'The Lion King' stage play, to use another example I've seen, but in terms of sheer effects, this goes even bigger. There's effects that I honestly have no idea how they were able to pull it off, and even then, the stuff on stage itself is excellent. Leaving the theatre, I'd have happily given the overall production a 4/5.

However, having had time to mull things over, the ranking slipped down to 3, because as good as the stagecraft is, it can't make up for how flimsy the plot is once you actually start thinking about things. You might call this nitpicking, but fine, assuming that you know the story, here's some questions:

-So, Bellatrix gave birth to Delphi (ew) not long before Voldemort's death, so what was she doing for the 20+ years until the present. Also, I get that she confounded Amos Diggory, but what about Mrs Diggory? Yes, she exists, check the books, yet she's never even mentioned.

-This isn't really a plothole, but it's really weird IMO that of Harry's three children, the entire plot focuses on Severus, James gets a single cameo, and I'm not sure if Lily is even mentioned. I think the father-son dynamic between Harry and Severus is well done, true to the themes of the books, but James and Lily are a case of "conspicuous absence."

-So, apparently Cedric Diggory wasn't that nice a guy, all it took was humiliation via time travel to turn him into a Death Eater and a murderer? Sorry, Dumbledore, I guess your eulogy for Cedric was just plain wrong.

-So what's Delphi's plan, exactly? Get a time turner, sure, but then entrust it to two 14 year olds to change time that will somehow bring about Voldemort's return. Which it does, but only through dumb (bad) luck, before she hears about it, then takes the time turner for herself. FFS, why not just use the time turner by herself from the outset? This is sort of handwaved aside by the fact that she's 20+ years, so can't really blend in with the other students, but the time turner only allows you to stay in the past for five minutes away, that isn't really long enough for anyone to really do much about her either way.

-Also, I'd argue they really ruin Delphi's character at the end. Thing is, the HP books handled the whole orphan/'damage' aspect really well, the idea that despite both being orphans, Harry and Tom go down very different paths due to Harry finding love/friendship while Tom spurred it. Delphi fits in with that, sure, but by the end, a lot of that nuance is stripped away. Which is a shame, because when Harry and co. are forced to watch Voldemort kill his parents, unable to do anything due to issues with changing the timeline, it's one of the most powerful scenes, but poor Delphi doesn't get any of that.

-Poor Ron. This is arguably the films' fault, but he's still the go-to punching bag.

I suppose the HP series kind of brought elements of this upon itself, that when you introduce time travel into a setting, it opens up all kinds of iffiness - keeping in with the books, if not the films, time is extremely malleable here, so if it's that easy to change time, why has no-one else done it?

Anyway, it was okay - basically great production marred by below average writing.