I personally don't like sitcoms in general. At least for me the premise of any scene has to be everyone is intensely unlikable, and no one reacts the way a reasonable person in real life would. I'm very aware Im watching a show about people deliberating written to be jerks, put in purposefully over-the-top situations designed to show off how much of a jerk they are. And its like there's nothing pleasant in this for me.
It's interesting, I hadn't heard of Yellowstone until I was listening to Darren Moony who was talking about 1899 and brings up he was in a taxi and both him and the (Irish) taxi driver thought 1899 might be a sequel to Yellowstone.
I don't know why I started this series as I've no predilection for anything Addams Family, but I did, so my bad for being unimpressed. My biggest gripe is how it tonally shifts from moment to moment, from quirky comedy, to teenage drama, to teenage comedy, to horror, to murder mystery, etc. It's all over the place, which makes it really hard to bite into and appreciate. I always thought the Addams Family was about off-kilter humor, but Wednesday just comes off as a milquetoast, goth sociopath who's great at everything which isn't really interesting outside of the context of the collective Addams Family who so far contribute little more than cameos. I'll likely finish this season out just to find out what the deal is with "the monster," but I'm probably done after that.
Finally, while I'm aware Ortega is of adult age (20,) she really does pull off mid-teens extremely well (she looks like a child,) but the men cast as her ostensible suitors clearly look like guys in their early 20s, so the love dynamic appears really icky on screen. And for the use of the word "icky," I'm obligated to chug a Bud Light, smash the can on my forehead, and be kicked in the balls thereafter to remind myself that I am a man.
It's interesting, I hadn't heard of Yellowstone until I was listening to Darren Moony who was talking about 1899 and brings up he was in a taxi and both him and the (Irish) taxi driver thought 1899 might be a sequel to Yellowstone.
1899 is a German Sci Fi series, the most expensive ever made by them and it is 8/10. Worth watching.
I have to think 1923 is the most un-asked for, unnecessary series of all time. Like making a prequel to King of Queens. Do you really need to know about where his grandfather came from?
EDIT: I've heard 1899 will not get a 2nd season. Hope the same for 1923.
I don't know why I started this series as I've no predilection for anything Addams Family, but I did, so my bad for being unimpressed. My biggest gripe is how it tonally shifts from moment to moment, from quirky comedy, to teenage drama, to teenage comedy, to horror, to murder mystery, etc. It's all over the place, which makes it really hard to bite into and appreciate. I always thought the Addams Family was about off-kilter humor, but Wednesday just comes off as a milquetoast, goth sociopath who's great at everything which isn't really interesting outside of the context of the collective Addams Family who so far contribute little more than cameos. I'll likely finish this season out just to find out what the deal is with "the monster," but I'm probably done after that.
Finally, while I'm aware Ortega is of adult age (20,) she really does pull off mid-teens extremely well (she looks like a child,) but the men cast as her ostensible suitors clearly look like guys in their early 20s, so the love dynamic appears really icky on screen. And for the use of the word "icky," I'm obligated to chug a Bud Light, smash the can on my forehead, and be kicked in the balls thereafter to remind myself that I am a man.
I couldn't get into it. I watched the first episode and found Wednesday so intensely annoying and cringe-worthy, I just stopped. Now it looks great! Great atmosphere, great characters, acting, dialogue, great cast. It all hits the perfect Wednesday Adams feel. Its just that Wednesday Adams is a terrible character. Selfish, egotistical, mean spirited, lazy, entitled, rude, self centered and obsessed and more than anything...just a bore. Oh you like Gothic things and spiders and rain, how fucking original! Just you and every other teen girl who watched Twilight.
You know those alternative/Goth/Punk reimaginations of Disney Princesses? That's Wednesday to me. Or better yet, the subreddit r/NotLikeOtherGirls.
Which, to dial back the snark, I guess is the point. The Adams family is "weird" in that they're not weird. Morticia and Gomez are genuinely in love, with a healthy sex life, and love and adore their children. And the kids are well adjusted kids who like their parents and each other and have both independent hobbies, and shared family activities. They're the classic perfect family, they just happen to be Goths instead of I guess not-Goths. Its just Wednesday is going through her "*****" phase, and you know, I can skip that.
I couldn't get into it. I watched the first episode and found Wednesday so intensely annoying and cringe-worthy, I just stopped. Now it looks great! Great atmosphere, great characters, acting, dialogue, great cast. It all hits the perfect Wednesday Adams feel. Its just that Wednesday Adams is a terrible character. Selfish, egotistical, mean spirited, lazy, entitled, rude, self centered and obsessed and more than anything...just a bore. Oh you like Gothic things and spiders and rain, how fucking original! Just you and every other teen girl who watched Twilight.
You know those alternative/Goth/Punk reimaginations of Disney Princesses? That's Wednesday to me. Or better yet, the subreddit r/NotLikeOtherGirls.
Which, to dial back the snark, I guess is the point. The Adams family is "weird" in that they're not weird. Morticia and Gomez are genuinely in love, with a healthy sex life, and love and adore their children. And the kids are well adjusted kids who like their parents and each other and have both independent hobbies, and shared family activities. They're the classic perfect family, they just happen to be Goths instead of I guess not-Goths. Its just Wednesday is going through her "*****" phase, and you know, I can skip that.
I finished all 8 episodes, and it really did overall feel like a protracted episode of Scooby-Doo with the occasional "F" bomb, violence, straight-faced comedy unbefitting the austerity of the story arc, and nods to the classic show which this series is emblematic of anything but. I mean, Gomez, Morticia, Pugsley, Uncle Fester, and Lurch are on screen collectively for about 8-10 minutes total, and only to open and close an independent story arc that added nothing to the series' larger arc. I know, the show is called "Wednesday," but outside of the context of her equally quirky family, she's just a disturbing girl embroiled in a murder mystery.
It's weird. I can't call it outright bad; I enjoyed pieces of it in their given silos, but as a whole, it didn't completely work for me. And a lot of it felt really try-hard, like casting Christina Ricci? C'mon, I prefer my nostalgia feel natural, not forced down my throat with all the subtlety of an airhorn in the ear. I don't like numerical ratings, but my knee-jerk says it was an easy 6/10; I've seen worse, but I've seen better.
I couldn't get into it. I watched the first episode and found Wednesday so intensely annoying and cringe-worthy, I just stopped. Now it looks great! Great atmosphere, great characters, acting, dialogue, great cast. It all hits the perfect Wednesday Adams feel. Its just that Wednesday Adams is a terrible character. Selfish, egotistical, mean spirited, lazy, entitled, rude, self centered and obsessed and more than anything...just a bore. Oh you like Gothic things and spiders and rain, how fucking original! Just you and every other teen girl who watched Twilight.
You know those alternative/Goth/Punk reimaginations of Disney Princesses? That's Wednesday to me. Or better yet, the subreddit r/NotLikeOtherGirls.
Which, to dial back the snark, I guess is the point. The Adams family is "weird" in that they're not weird. Morticia and Gomez are genuinely in love, with a healthy sex life, and love and adore their children. And the kids are well adjusted kids who like their parents and each other and have both independent hobbies, and shared family activities. They're the classic perfect family, they just happen to be Goths instead of I guess not-Goths. Its just Wednesday is going through her "*****" phase, and you know, I can skip that.
It works best when the whole family lean in to the macabre. Like the intro to the first movie has them pouring boiling oil on Christmas carollers. That sort of thing.
Keep Breathing (Netflix). It's a person who seems to be trying to survive in the wilderness based on survival tips picked up from TV, furthering the cycle of people not surviving in the wild because they learned it from TV; like a progressively bad xerox of dying. And my god she's clumsy.
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.
The show is written in such a way that the entertainment factor rises above all else. I mean, this includes performances of which the leads all do a great job, but it also feels like kinda pulpy mainstream “TV” drama. There are prequels now though too, which each have a very different feel by contrast; with a lot more narrative and thematic weight behind them, which is felt within the first few minutes. Sam Elliot is in the first (1883) and while he said he loves the cast of Yellowstone he just can watch it because it “feels too much like fucking Dallas.” lol
I watched Episode 1 of Little Demon, and I don't know if I'd call it actually good or if it's because I watched it off the back of Velma, but I quite liked it.
Firstly, let's get one thing off my chest, and that is fuck you, Netflix.
"1899" is already cancelled. Netflix feels like possibly the worst television company in the world for just dropping things. It's habit of doing this shows zero loyalty whatsoever to viewers and programme-makers to put a show on their service and then just end it because their algorithm or whatever decided so. I feel it is tiring, wasteful and disrespectful to us. It got good reviews, but Netflix has zero stamina to see if they can make things work: they just ditch stuff in the blink of an eye if it didn't meet whatever crude metric they use.
* * *
Anyway, this is a sort of SF/supernatural thriller; it's German and although multilingual, the vast majority of the lines are in English. Emily Beecham plays Maura, a doctor on a European steamship, the Kerberos, travelling to the USA at the end of the 19th century. Typical conventions of the time - a load of stuck-up poshos in the rich section, and the lower class in the grotty cabins deep in the ship. Anyway, evidently, things are not great with Maura - she seems strangely vague about her history and she keeps seeing things - chiefly, a psychiatric facility. This might not be unusual in one sense as Maura has trained as a medical doctor specialising in neurology... except that in her visions, she appears to have been a patient. We are introduced to numerous others with their own personal plots going, chiefly the capitain Eyk Larsen, who too seems to be troubled by visions.
Then, they hear word from the radio of another ship, the Prometheus, which had disappeared several weeks ago, and the captain decides to do his duty and divert from their destination to check it out. Already at this stage evidently is not quite right with the Kerberos (or its crew and passengers), and encountering the Prometheus just make things go downhill into greater weirdness.
Obviously, 1899 is all about viewers gradually finding out what the hell is going on. It's not perhaps particularly novel in concept, but it's very well executed and effectively builds a sense of weirdness, later turning into fear and confusion. It's slick, effectively directed and acted, and is all round a good piece of work, if not brilliant. But it does not have a satisfactory conclusion and we'll never find out where it was going to go in the long run, because bloody Netflix thinks it's better to litter its streaming library with dried husks of unfinished shows.
I really liked it and was disaapointed by the cancellation, but also not sure how they'd have pulled off a second series without the mechanism of the first series to rely on. Would have liked to find out though!
Chambers (Netflix). Spooky heart transplant stuff. Not a hugely novel concept but done quite well I think. Some of the class stuff is maybe heavy handed, but sometimes TV needs to be heavy handed to make it clear that rich people are bad.
I finished all 8 episodes, and it really did overall feel like a protracted episode of Scooby-Doo with the occasional "F" bomb, violence, straight-faced comedy unbefitting the austerity of the story arc, and nods to the classic show which this series is emblematic of anything but. I mean, Gomez, Morticia, Pugsley, Uncle Fester, and Lurch are on screen collectively for about 8-10 minutes total, and only to open and close an independent story arc that added nothing to the series' larger arc. I know, the show is called "Wednesday," but outside of the context of her equally quirky family, she's just a disturbing girl embroiled in a murder mystery.
It's weird. I can't call it outright bad; I enjoyed pieces of it in their given silos, but as a whole, it didn't completely work for me. And a lot of it felt really try-hard, like casting Christina Ricci? C'mon, I prefer my nostalgia feel natural, not forced down my throat with all the subtlety of an airhorn in the ear. I don't like numerical ratings, but my knee-jerk says it was an easy 6/10; I've seen worse, but I've seen better.
It's funny, for a hot minute there was a ton of clickbait news articles on the wednesday dance and then they even paid a couple famous people to do the dance to try and make it go viral, but then a week later it never popped up on google news or reddit, whatever again. I would love to be a fly on the wall of the marketing sides follow up meeting. Massive fail. Ironically the show did fine, so they probably blew 10-30mil on a nothing campaign for nobody.
I really liked it and was disaapointed by the cancellation, but also not sure how they'd have pulled off a second series without the mechanism of the first series to rely on. Would have liked to find out though!
I'm not entirely sure I agree with that: the "what's going on?" mechanism could certainly apply to a season two, it would just have a radically different setting.
I'm not entirely sure I agree with that: the "what's going on?" mechanism could certainly apply to a season two, it would just have a radically different setting.
Certainly they could have used S2 to explain S1 a bit, but S1 relied so heavily on the fake memories/loop concept that I'm not sure how it would have worked without that (I would OTOH have been annoyed with another series of exactly that but in a different setting). But I really liked the show for what it was too.
It feels a bit like it was going to be at risk of being another Lost where it all spiralled out of anything explainable (I never got to the end of Lost, so maybe it all worked out in the end?).
It feels a bit like it was going to be at risk of being another Lost where it all spiralled out of anything explainable (I never got to the end of Lost, so maybe it all worked out in the end?).
Apparently that was at least partially the fault of them upstairs. Happens to a lot of shows, they get told to wrap things up or to drag things out with new stuff, and the orders keep changing from one to the other without much notice.
Certainly they could have used S2 to explain S1 a bit, but S1 relied so heavily on the fake memories/loop concept that I'm not sure how it would have worked without that (I would OTOH have been annoyed with another series of exactly that but in a different setting). But I really liked the show for what it was too.
It feels a bit like it was going to be at risk of being another Lost where it all spiralled out of anything explainable (I never got to the end of Lost, so maybe it all worked out in the end?).
I agree, the whole fake memory / loop would likely test the audience's patience if it tried it for a second series.
However, despite the season 1 end, there's no reason to think Maura and others necessarily must understand/remember the nature of the new situation they're in either. In that, it would still be very possible to create a creepy, paranoid, mystery very close to season one.
* * *
I lost interest in Lost quite rapidly, I'm mostly a bit aware of later seasons because I was occasionally around when my wife was watching it. I felt it was a bit superficial and wanky, really. My general feeling is that the creators probably ran a pitch that was a great idea for a series start, but that idea that had never been thought through to conclusion. And across those seasons, they never thought of a really good conclusion, so it sort of dragged it out and spluttered and fizzled along.
Sitcom about a family in a fundamentalist Christian sect. Simon Bird (The Inbetweeners, Friday Night Dinner) is the patriarch David, achieving one of those feats of going from two roles of adolescent / post-adolescent immaturity straight into that of a parent with teenage kids.
It's quite well handled. It's obviously at core a form of "fish out of water" comedy, with this family so out of step with the rest of modern life. David is of course the most absurd: overbearing, zealous and pompous, albeit leavened by his positives of being a genius at his job (which is, admittedly, just mail sorting) and in his own deeply clumsy way, genuinely loving of his family. His wife Fiona has the frustration of being a smart woman who gave up her opportunities for religion and is underneath chafing under the confines, their daughter is late teens dreaming of university and the prospect of maybe even a boyfriend, both against the wishes of her parents, and their son is full of subsumed rage drawing pictures of his dad enduring eternal torment in hell. Meanwhile the sect of course is significantly more relaxed than David: much of the comedy is David's fantacism for a church that in return finds him deeply annoying.
It's not brilliant, but it works and it does have some really good lines.
I have mixed thoughts about this. To anyone who asks, yes, the trailer for the show was absolutely terrible, and yes, I stand by everything I said about it. But as for the show itself? It's...okay. Mixed, really. Fortunately, it's not as obssessed with identity politics as the trailer, and instead, has a whole slew of other problems. So on that note, I'm just going to have some random thoughts:
THE GOOD
-The actress who plays Beth/Alice is excellent. Really excellent. While she's right at home in the Batman trope of "insane villain," here, it manages to feel fresh. All the more kudos in that she actually has to play two versions of the same character through a couple of episodes (alternate realities and all that). Whatever my thoughts on the season as a whole, Beth's character and the actress playing her deserve all the credit.
THE OKAY
-Most of the cast is...fine, really. Kate is fine. Mary is okay. Luke Fox is pretty decent. Everyone else is...fine. Honestly, apart from Beth/Alice, there's not really anything that stands out for the better.
THE IFFY
The season doesn't feel that cohesive, but here's some ballpoints:
-Kate lets off Beth (who turns out to be her sister) go way too often, and countless people die as a result. Once, sure, twice, maybe, three times, no. I wouldn't mind so much if the season actually examined this, but nope, it never really comes up.
-The season hints at larger issues, but never really goes into them. Not that it's under any obligation to, but for instance, the conciet is that with Batman gone, Gotham's protection is mainly carried out by the Crows (a private security firm) and the GCPD, which plays second fiddle. It's hinted that the Crows tend to favour the wealthy (as in, patrol more well-off areas), that they stand to benefit from continuous crime (if crime goes, who pays them), and I assume there's tension between the Crows and GCPD, but nope, this never really comes up. Again, to be clear, I don't buy the argument that a series is obliged to explore certain ideas/themes, but what's frustrating is that the season hints at this stuff, yet never does any of it.
-There's a key plot point that develops later that's just dumb. So basically, the Batsuit is impervious, and there's a running plotline of finding something that can penetrate it. That it's impervious to bullets strikes me as overkill (takes away a lot of potential tension), and let's assume that's the case, what about explosives? Anyone? Nope. We have to get a railgun, and after that, we have to seek out...sigh, kryptonite. By "we," I mean Alice, and by "seek out," I mean convoluted schemes to kill Batwoman, who Alice already knows is Kate. So instead of just going after Kate in her civilian gear, she has to jump through all these hoops because...reasons.
THE STUPID
-I mentioned how stupid the trailer was. The comments made by the characters in such a trailer are still stupid, but thankfully, mostly absent from later episodes. However, there's one particular plot element where it's revealed that Batwoman is a lesbian. And by "revealed," I mean that in-universe, Kara Danvers does an expose on Batwoman revealing her to be a lesbian. Because of this, the GCPD refuses to work with her.
I...what? Okay, so basically, the GCPD's stance is that Batman is cool, Batwoman is cool, but the entire police force is so homophobic that they refuse to work with a vigilante. Like, THAT'S the line you can't cross? What's weird is that the whole 'gay thing' is done well in Kate's flashbacks (kicked out of military school because she's gay), and her ex-girlfriend comes out to her mother who immediately stops talking to her, and the leader of the Crows (Kate's father) considers Batwoman a threat because of her very nature as a vigilante. You can do reasonable stuff with this. But the whole "GCPD are homophobes" thing is just so forced that the plot point ends up being dropped. Sort of. Like I said, there's not much of an overarching plot here, it's more a series of events strung together in a season.
OVERALL
Overall, the show's just okay. On one hand, it's been given a large amount of hate ever since its first trailer dropped. On the other hand, it's simply not that good. You can see my Arrowverse rankings down below, but at the end of the day, it's nothing to write home about.
RANKINGS
31) The Flash: Season 7
30) Black Lightning: Season 2
29) Black Lightning: Season 1
28) Arrow: Season 8
27) Arrow: Season 3
26) Black Lightning: Season 4
25) Arrow: Season 7
24) Legends of Tomorrow: Season 6
23) The Flash: Season 5
22) Legends of Tomorrow: Season 3
21) Batwoman: Season 1
20) The Flash: Season 4
19) The Flash: Season 6
18) Stargirl: Season 2
17) The Flash: Season 3
16) Supergirl: Season 1
15) Arrow: Season 5
14) Legends of Tomorrow: Season 1
13) Legends of Tomorrow: Season 2
12) Arrow: Season 6
11) Supergirl: Season 2
10) The Flash: Season 1
9) The Flash: Season 2
8) Legends of Tomorrow: Season 5
7) Superman and Lois: Season 1
6) Black Lightning: Season 3
5) Arrow: Season 4
4) Legends of Tomorrow: Season 4
3) Stargirl: Season 1
2) Arrow: Season 2
1) Arrow: Season 1
Oh yeah, Rachel Skarsten is excellent as Beth/Alice, which is typical for everything else I've seen her in, such as Lost Girl, Reign and Birds of Prey many years ago.
The show which isn't about Rachel Skarsten Rachel Skarstening is not very good, which is not atypical for everything else I've seen her in.
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