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

[Dwarvenhobble]

Harley Quinn Season 3

Rating: 8/10 - if this is the end it wasn't a consistent season but it was consistently at least good ad at times really great.

So It's hard to talk about this show because of spoilers but following on the kind of big status quo changing ending of Season 2 at the wedding of Poison Ivy season 3 picks up from those events and runs with it delivering a season that if this is the shows last it went out on such a high note and tied up so much so nicely that it almost feels like this could happily fit into actual DC continuity (if they you know hadn't killed off half of Batmans Rogues gallery lol).

The show finally seems to have found it's feet and and those feet are planted firmly on some pretty well done stories of character growth interspersed with mix of kind of random humour and fairly obscure (to many modern audience newcomers at least) reference humour. E.G. remember the time Batman in the Adam West film had to run along a pier carrying a bomb? You do? Well now imagine modern batman in the new sort of dark gritty redesign Kevlar body suit outfit doing it. This is a show not afraid to poke fun at modern DC while taking some pretty well places shots at DC and comics more in general.

So into more specific spoilers of events and a possible massive planned out hilarious move the writers might have done deliberately.

So following on from Season 2 where Harley confessed her love to Ivy at Ivy's Wedding to Kiteman and they ran off together leaving Kiteman at the alter the shows carries on with the new couple of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy celebrating getting together.

The season's overall arcs are Poison Ivy trying to enact a plan to terraform Gotham, Bruce Wayne and Selena Kyle's relationship and the problems that causes as the two very different people start to have their differing issues cause trouble. Also Bain trying to take revenge on Harley Quinn & Ivy not for destroying the villain group Bain was part of but for refusing to give him back the pasta maker he gave Ivy as a wedding present before the wedding was abandoned.

What made this season feel great is they really did tie things back in and tie up a lot of loose ends. Kiteman who they took from an joke D list villain to a character with depth who you actually you rooted for him didn't end just being left at the alter as one last joke, no the writers actually wrote closure and a happy ending for him seemingly as he ends up in a happy relationship with Golden Glider.

The Joker's ultimate joke plot.

Ok this was either super well crafted writing or they managed to hit gold by pure fluke pulling in stuff from earlier seasons.
Joker in season 1 decides to take over Gotham and ends up learning Batman is Bruce Wayne before being crushed under a massive tower.
Joker comes back in Season 2 but mostly seems to be reformed.
Joker in season 3 runs for a becomes Mayor and then sack commissioner Gordon.
As Mayor Joker then implements a "Secret Lair" tax which the show mostly plays off as a joke about Joker trying to spite Lex Luthor who is meant to keep trying to build secret Lairs in gotham.
Season 3 end with the Joker as Mayor having Bruce Wayne arrested for Tax fraud, the show however never mentions what taxes.

The kind of genus (if planned) and amazing luck (if not planned) plot the writers managed to create here is the Joker using the very system Batman has such belief in being the right way for things to be done against him. Joker managed to win over Batman by using the system against him and having him arrested as Bruce Wayne because the Joker knows Bruce Wayne is Batman and so put in a secret Lair tax deliberately to be able to then get Bruce Wayne for Tax evasion as Bruce either had to pay it thus admitting he had a secret lair or not pay it thus having the system be able to come after him.

 

[gorfias]

Quantum Leap (2022) S1E1 on Peacock Network

Similar enough to the OG. Loved that show, so this can be fun too as, they're doing the same sort of thing. With a few caveats.

Sam Becket is a thing in this show. They're using his tech. He never made it home.

They review the rules of this thing: He could travel throughout the timeline of his lifetime. He would fix a problem for someone and that would cause a leap to the next time/place/person to inhabit. Though when the OG started, he would have to do some non-sensical thing to leap, ie, turn on a hair dryer at a church at a certain time and day. But it then became canon that he helps someone to cause the leap. When he leaps, he occupies the body of a person in another time and place. What happens to Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman 84 was, I think, an homage to this show.

So, is this new guy leaping around Becket's life time time line, or, what I think would make more sense, his own.

Well, S1E1 takes place in 1986. Star Raymond Lee was born in 1987.

Another quibble: in the show, if he sees his reflection, he sees the person he occupies. We see his reflection in a shiny van and, it is the actor, not the person he occupies. Hey, poking holes in shows is fun.

 

[Ag3ma]

Hey, poking holes in shows is fun.

In which case Jack Ryan is blasting away continuously at a roadsign with a 50 calibre machine gun for an hour.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

BoJack Horseman S6

Nearing the finish line. BoJack's hair is gray, Diane got fat, Todd is stupider that ever and PB and PC are still the best characters. They've really committed to keeping track of all the horrible things BoJack has done throughout every season and playing around with what's the thing that's gonna fuck him over in the long run.

 

[SilentPony]

So I watched the first two episodes of the new Velma tv show. Its bad. Its really really bad.
I mean the opening scene, of the first episode, is Daphne, underage girl, naked, taking a shower at school with a bunch of other naked underage girls, while talking about how lame the first episodes of TV shows are because they throw in teen girl nudity and gore. And then we find the dead body of a girl who had her skull caved in. It reminds me of the ending to SheHulk where the writers write a scene where the writers are told the scene they've written is bad. So to with this. Purposefully calls out baiting content in tv shows, and then unironically does the baiting.

Like I don't care they changed the ethnicity of most of the characters, that's fine so long as they keep the characters. And they really don't. You know how you had that horny nerd friend in high school? The one who jerked it to Teen Titans porn and said Velma is like a secret lesbian sex goddess? Yeah turns out Mindy Kaling is that nerd. Like I get the characters are teens, and teens are hormonal as fuck, but it doesn't make for good watching. For whatever reason Velma is just horny for the entire gang. She has a crush on Daphne, Fred and Shaggy. I shudder to think what happens when they introduce Scooby.
Its so awkward. Mindy Kaling produced, wrote and stars as Velma, who is the smartest kid in school, and everyone secretly has a crush on her, even the girls. And its like...Mindy, living a little vicariously through a fictional character are we? And it has the same comedic timing of the Office, which at least personally I can't stand. Every joke feels like its a second too late and goes on a second too long.

and the whole concept of GASP Velma might be a lesbian is so like 1999 at best. It wasn't a very clever or original take, and its not really in the text of any of the other shows.

1/10, skip it

 

[gorfias]

The Last of Us (HBO-Max)

IMDB gives it a 9.5/10. I'd give it about the same.

Follows the game closely enough. There are a few different beats to keep you off balance but pretty much takes us to where I left off when playing the PS3 version years ago. Time to pick that one back up!

Cool I thought Marlene looked a lot like the character from the game. It is the same actress, Merle Dandridge.

I really enjoyed the opening as they show an old TV talk show in which a scientist explains just how dangerous it might be if one day we could be infected by fungus.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I watched Velma on HBO Max and oof. Just fucking OOF.

It's as bad as I initially figured the Harley Quinn show was going to be based on its Comic Con announcement trailer. The difference being Harley Quinn is actually funny. Velma shows how hard this kind of aggressive edgey humor falls on its face when it isn't actually funny, and it's pretty fucking hard, like 'face smacking into the pavement, and chipping your front teeth' kinda hard.

What's worse is the galvanizing factor this will obviously be for certain people online, because you know, race swapping and gay representation in a property that turned out to be kind of a trashfire. So you know... get ready for a High Guardian Spice amount of shallow content farming on youtube for the next month at least.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Wildcat

A no-frills nature doc about a young suicidal British vet losing himself in the service in Afghanistan and later finding himself in the deep jungles of Peru, where he meets a girl and they rescue baby ocelots from the illegal environmental encroachment of humanity’s finest /s and spend eighteen months teaching them to survive in the wild.

It’s cute, somewhat disturbing and would probably be something Kojima would get a kick out of.

”SNAAAAAAKE!!”. Yup, it’s got a few of those too.

 

[SilentPony]

I watched Velma on HBO Max and oof. Just fucking OOF.

It's as bad as I initially figured the Harley Quinn show was going to be based on its Comic Con announcement trailer. The difference being Harley Quinn is actually funny. Velma shows how hard this kind of aggressive edgey humor falls on its face when it isn't actually funny, and it's pretty fucking hard, like 'face smacking into the pavement, and chipping your front teeth' kinda hard.

What's worse is the galvanizing factor this will obviously be for certain people online, because you know, race swapping and gay representation in a property that turned out to be kind of a trashfire. So you know... get ready for a High Guardian Spice amount of shallow content farming on youtube for the next month at least.

I read one review that wondered if "progressive" shows like this are purposefully botched because a bad "liberal" show gets way more attention, reviews, hate watch, etc...than a good "liberal" show.
and I mean it must have worked, because with a tomato score of about 50% and a user score of 7%, Velma season 2 is already announced.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I read one review that wondered if "progressive" shows like this are purposefully botched because a bad "liberal" show gets way more attention, reviews, hate watch, etc...than a good "liberal" show.
and I mean it must have worked, because with a tomato score of about 50% and a user score of 7%, Velma season 2 is already announced.

Yeah, that seems unlikely. Streaming shows are renewed and cancelled for spurious reasons these days. Maybe Velma was already signed to have 2 seasons before it even released - I think Mindy Kaling has some pull in Hollywood.

Obviously Kaling and HBO are going to try and turn the hate to their advantage, but they would've undoubtedly prefered praise over hostile ridicule. The latter might give them a boost in the short term, but that cools quickly. Meanwhile people are still looking forward to a 4th season of Harley Quinn, because it's actually well liked.

 

[Ag3ma]

Happy Valley - Season 3 (BBC)

This might not be well heard of outside the UK, but it is absurdly superb television. Brilliantly written, characterised and acted. It stars Sarah Lancashire as Catherine Cawood, a police sergeant in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. The term "Happy Valley" is of course ironic. Calder Valley, in real life as in the show, is a place of great natural beauty and picturesque towns dogged by economic decline, poverty, social troubles and drug use. Broadly, across all three seasons, her main antagonist is the father of her grandchild, a psychopath called Royce, chillingly played by James Norton. However, Royce is in ways a subplot, as each season primarily resolves around another ongoing crime. Cawood is a no-nonsense, honest officer who is stuck dealing with her own family troubles, and a bunch of people in work and personal life she frequently has great disappointment and harsh words for.

One of the characteristics of the show seems to me to be human weakness, and how it leads to bad decisions. A gallery of flawed individuals who fall to drug use, criminality, let down their friends and their family because doing the right thing seems harder. In this, Royce and Cawood are different: Cawood chooses and works hard at making good choices; Royce actively chooses to do harm. Most everyone else seems to sort of fail their way to wrongness and tragedy. It's extremely tense at times: even when you can see someone heading inexorably off to a terrible decision, and it's still awful to watch it happen. It doesn't shy away from some graphic and uncomfortable viewing. However, nor is it relentlessly grim: there are parts that are uplifting or funny.

In many ways, it bares similarity to and potentially heavily inspired "Mare of Easttown". Obviously, being British, it's less flashy. It's hard to give a lot of detail about season 3 without spoilering the previous two, but the sort of main crime plot revolves around a pharmacist selling prescription meds to junkies, and inciting the ire of the local drug gang. Meanwhile, Royce is trying to worm his way into the life of his son and Cawood's grandson, Ryan. Ryan is having his own issues at school, in particular with the sports teacher, whose abused wife is buying diazepam illegally from the pharmacist. It's not going to end well for some of these people.

 

[SilentPony]

Yeah, that seems unlikely. Streaming shows are renewed and cancelled for spurious reasons these days. Maybe Velma was already signed to have 2 seasons before it even released - I think Mindy Kaling has some pull in Hollywood.

Obviously Kaling and HBO are going to try and turn the hate to their advantage, but they would've undoubtedly prefered praise over hostile ridicule. The latter might give them a boost in the short term, but that cools quickly. Meanwhile people are still looking forward to a 4th season of Harley Quinn, because it's actually well liked.

Maybe? But the problem is Kaling isn't the liberal icon she pretends to be. She's racist against Hispanics, said more than a few transphobic things and supports JK Rowling, and when she was accused of being a Republican back in the day she denied that, but confirmed she was very conservative.
So is it any wonder her "liberal" take on Velma is she's a drug dealer, and Daphne is a drug dealer, and Shaggy is a stereotypical black dude who likes big butts and does drugs, and Freddy is a rich jerk? Like the show presents a pretty bleak view of these characters, with a lot of stereotypes and flaws.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Dominion Season 2
(Own copy)

So the 2nd season of that show carrying on from the film Legion (that no-one likely remembers really)

It feels like the show was spreading it's wings this season (pun intended) as the War of humanity vs Angels changed a bit as the chosen one Alex ended last season choosing to depart with Gabriel to try and help decipher Gods last message before disappearing only for the humans to nuke Gabriel's hideout all this leads to Alex ended up in New Delphi city a survivor enclave that is choosing to try and create a sanctuary for both humans and lower angels away from being drawn into the war for either side and allowing them to co-exist but there's more sinister things under the claimed good intentions.

Quite a good season only really marred by the fact it ends with a series of set ups for a season 3 that will never happen

 

[Casual Shinji]

Maybe? But the problem is Kaling isn't the liberal icon she pretends to be. She's racist against Hispanics, said more than a few transphobic things and supports JK Rowling, and when she was accused of being a Republican back in the day she denied that, but confirmed she was very conservative.
So is it any wonder her "liberal" take on Velma is she's a drug dealer, and Daphne is a drug dealer, and Shaggy is a stereotypical black dude who likes big butts and does drugs, and Freddy is a rich jerk? Like the show presents a pretty bleak view of these characters, with a lot of stereotypes and flaws.

Even that wouldn't matter as much if it was actually funny. But yeah, I'm not too familiar with Mindy Kaling, but considering she saw her rise in the early 00's; the height of edgelord, strangly racist, homophobic humor, I'm not too surprised she's still stuck in that kind of mindset. She recently also made the claim that a show like The Office couldn't be made in this day and age, and whenever I hear that kind of talk ('You couldn't make Blazing Saddles or Tropic Thunder in todays climate') some red flags pop up for me.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Just doing a skim of some recent posts...
- Didn't even realize they were remaking/continuing Quantum freaking Leap. But I shouldn't be surprised, every property is getting something it seems like. I would watch it if it's really really really good, because I did kinda like the OG, so I'll wait until the first season is done to decide.
- Velma- can't believe how it's become a "thing." Like, ugh, how can anyone honestly give a s*** about a supporting character in Scooby Doo of all things. People seriously love Scooby Doo that much, what did I miss? I know online discourse has gotten self-parodying stupid but even I'm taken aback that the nerd girl from the Scooby cartoon is the latest focal point around this garbage.
- Harley Quinn- so is it really great though? I could be down for getting into an animated show but I'm kinda burned out on the Batman world.

Wednesday
My wife is into those CW teenage/action hero shows, it is here dumb escapism, and this latest trendy hit is basically that. Wacky too-cool teenagers with lots of snark and meta and too-close camera angles, and of course based on an old property.

This show is the perfect example of a genre of TV I am calling the Eight Episode Series. This means a show I happily watch because it's only 8 episodes. Meaning- it's pleasantly entertaining to watch one or two of these in an evening as way to relax. I don't have to pay too close attention to it and can make jokes with my wife about it. I
t'll never be great or terrible because the cast is charming and the whole premise is so flippant as to be inconsequential. There are some delightful zingers in the dialogue . It's... fine, whatever. It it was like 20 episodes in a season or we had some backlog of content to catch up on, I wouldn't bother.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

The Last of Us ep. 1

It’s well made but yeah, I would’ve definitely enjoyed it more had there not been a game it was based on. Ellie is decent but practically none of these characters feel like their game counterparts. Nothing against performances but it’s just I’m always comparing and the game characters were already done to perfection.

I guess it just shows that there was little reason to turn this into a show. I mean the most interesting part was the opening few minutes, where some dire straits intrigue and theory crafting is built up way more than anything the game had. Maybe if they have more of that later it’ll hold some appeal, but to just take the game’s cinematic beats and copy them nearly 1:1 isn’t doing it any favors, and leaves me wondering if the whole thing isn’t just another pretentious product of “Gotta convert deez games to film cuz no one will take them seriously otherwise!” bs.

 

[mirbrownbread]

The Last of Us ep. 1

It’s well made but yeah, I would’ve definitely enjoyed it more had there not been a game it was based on. Ellie is decent but practically none of these characters feel like their game counterparts. Nothing against performances but it’s just I’m always comparing and the game characters were already done to perfection.

I guess it just shows that there was little reason to turn this into a show.

My thoughts exactly. The show is well made and has all the bells and whistles, but it's all about sending nods to those already familiar with the world. Like the final shot of that building leaning over another building with the ominous music. If you haven't played the game, what would be so special about them? What is the real draw for the people new to this universe?

But if you know why the second episode must revolve around those buildings - then what can you get out of that 60 mins? It won't be as interactive as simply booting up TLoU again and just controlling Joel, that's for sure... Also, she doesn't look one bit like Ellie - nothing against the actor - but they definitely aimed for likeness when picking P. Pascal...

 

[BrawlMan]

Maybe? But the problem is Kaling isn't the liberal icon she pretends to be. She's racist against Hispanics, said more than a few transphobic things and supports JK Rowling, and when she was accused of being a Republican back in the day she denied that, but confirmed she was very conservative.
So is it any wonder her "liberal" take on Velma is she's a drug dealer, and Daphne is a drug dealer, and Shaggy is a stereotypical black dude who likes big butts and does drugs, and Freddy is a rich jerk? Like the show presents a pretty bleak view of these characters, with a lot of stereotypes and flaws.

So who is this chick? I've never heard of her before this point. If I did here or know of her, it must have been really brief back in the day, because I don't remember crap.

 

[gorfias]

So who is this chick? I've never heard of her before this point. If I did here or know of her, it must have been really brief back in the day, because I don't remember crap.

She was on the TV show, The Office, American version. She also had a reasonably amusing show for herself after The Office, The Mindy Project. I found her to be amusing but this sounds like a train wreck of snark and hate.


Watched 1st Season of Parmount's Yellowstone but on Peacock.

I feel like it wants to be Sons of Anarchy. Is raising cattle really this full of suspense and intrigue? Crime and violence?

But you have patriarch Keven Costner and his kids engaged in such shenanigans, along with his cowboys and local officials.

I'll watch Season 2. B

 

[BrawlMan]

She was on the TV show, The Office, American version. She also had a reasonably amusing show for herself after The Office, The Mindy Project. I found her to be amusing but this sounds like a train wreck of snark and hate.

I recognize her, but never knew her name until now. I know why I don't remember much, because I never liked either version of The Office.