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

[Thaluikhain]

What ? What are you talking about ? What is going on ? They've restarted Doctor Who ? Why isn't anyone ever telling me anything ?

It's a first doctor story from the 60s, only one episode and the sound for the other survived, so they go an animation company to re do the visuals. They are doing that with all the missing episodes, rather slowly, and seemingly at random, and often not very well.

 

[Absent]

It's a first doctor story from the 60s, only one episode and the sound for the other survived, so they go an animation company to re do the visuals. They are doing that with all the missing episodes, rather slowly, and seemingly at random, and often not very well.

Oh. Regardless of the result's quality, the idea itself is nice.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Oh. Regardless of the result's quality, the idea itself is nice.

Oh sure. And, some of them do look good, they tend to have trouble with the human characters, but there's some nice looking animated daleks and cybermen.


It's just that once they get a good animation team for a story, they'll switch to someone else for the next one, which is annoying. Also, there's often deliberate changes to the animated versions, compared to the original broadcast versions.

As an aside, before this, there were multiple different fan reconstructions of each missing doctor who story, which odd camera angles to avoid showing faces and so on.

And for one episode "Mission to the Unknown", since still images of the backgrounds and props exist, as well as the original audio, there's plans to film themselves lipsynching to the dialoge, greenscreen the background and props in, and use deepfakes to put the original actors faces on top of their own. This is by fans, mind, which is impressive.

 

[Absent]

It's just that once they get a good animation team for a story, they'll switch to someone else for the next one, which is annoying.

I've just watched this video

and it illustrates pretty well what you're saying (plus : best yt video ending ever). I had no idea this was a thing.

 

[BrawlMan]

​

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Bad Sisters, season 1

5 Irish sisters deal with the fact that one of them married an absolute piece of human garbage and try to kill him. So it's a black comedy that centers the experience and relationships of women.
It's good, I strongly recommend. It's not great though.
You are going to have to suspend your belief way up high. It took a few episodes for me to get into it because I would think about the plot details and some initial characterizations so.. don't do that, you'll have a bad time.
Instead, this cast and their interplay, the effecting relationships between pairs of sisters, and the situations they put themselves in, that is the strength and it is really wonderful.

It reminded me of Big Little Lies but it's much lighter in tone. Also similar in that both have a satisfying definitive end with the first season yet they're making/made another one *shrug*

 

[gorfias]

You - season 4 (Netflix)

Okay, same shit rolling along. Except they've decamped to London, because reasons. It's set in a university, as our serial killer protagonist has managed to get fake ID able to pass himself off as an academic. However, he still can't escape his difficult backstory, and someone knows who he really is... There's a whole load of "diminishing returns" going on here, but it's okay I guess, as long as you didn't mind earlier series.

However, it's the worst sort of "Britain as uncomplicated to Americans as possible". I can just about forgive the unrealistic posho vibe of London that all those bloody Richard Curtis / Bridget Jones / Working Title spend decades selling. But what really annoys me is that everyone teaching at the university is called professor. In the UK, the academic ranks go lecturer, senior lecturer, (reader / principal lecturer), professor. The only people who get called "professor" are actual professors. Everyone else gets called whatever their normal daily title is - usually Dr., because academics tend to have doctorates. However, as this would add even the tiniest bit of having to soak in some additional information for a US audience, it's not happening. Ugh.

LOL, you expect the yanks writing this stuff to know anything!?!?
Season 1 was a guilty pleasure. It was so evil it had me asking, "am I supposed to be enjoying this?" I skipped Season 2 and watched the last episode of Season 3 and feel caught up. It's like you didn't really need to see them to watch Season 4, which is coming across like an episodic version of "Glass Onion." It could just be a guy with a bad hidden past, on the run, engulfed in a whodunit. I'm liking it this season. I think I'm on episode 5.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Not watch but I tried listening to The Witch Trials of J. K. Rowling podcast and got bored of it during the second episode.

 

[Ag3ma]

LOL, you expect the yanks writing this stuff to know anything!?!?
Season 1 was a guilty pleasure. It was so evil it had me asking, "am I supposed to be enjoying this?" I skipped Season 2 and watched the last episode of Season 3 and feel caught up. It's like you didn't really need to see them to watch Season 4, which is coming across like an episodic version of "Glass Onion." It could just be a guy with a bad hidden past, on the run, engulfed in a whodunit. I'm liking it this season. I think I'm on episode 5.

I kind of suspect they do know. After all, it's full of British actors, some of which (including the series' lead actress) will have degrees from British universities.

I haven't finished the season. But as far as the whodunnit goes it's obviously the apparently nice guy planning to run for mayor.

 

[Ag3ma]

The Consultant (Amazon)

Thriller with some hints of comedy set in a mobile game developer. The company founder, Sang, is dramatically shot dead by a child, and it emerges that the company is in serious trouble - then this mysterious man arrives, Regus Patoff, who now apparently runs the firm following Sang's death and is set on saving it. The film revolves around Patoff (Christoph Waltz) and two of its employees, Elaine and Craig, who set out to investigate who the hell Patoff is and what's going on. Elaine is an ambitious but somewhat good-natured woman who has an unclear if relatively senior role ("Creative Liason") at the firm, and Craig as a programmer who has talent, but is undermined by lack of confidence and laziness. Just as they are interested in Patoff, Patoff shows a worrying interest in them.

Patoff is, frankly, weird. He knows nothing about computer games or how the company runs, and his past is murky. Whilst charming, he is also manipulative, amoral, and cares about nothing except apparently making the company a success - in fact he's distinctly sociopathic. Then there's also the fact that he has some bizarre problem walking up stairs, needing assistance, and yet refuses to use the lift. This gives the series an almost supernatural edge.

It functions most obviously as a satire on business and capitalism. Waltz is of course exactly the sort of actor you'd want to take on the role of this bizarre and malevolent central character, and carries it off well. Most of the rest of the cast are relative unknowns, but get their job done well. Broadly, however, I feel after the good start, the series gradually loses steam and fades somewhat as it moves along.

I haven't quite finished it yet. It might occur that Patoff is the devil. I think this idea of a deal with the devil is the base concept, except Patoff is not Old Nick himself but a sort of "demonic" avatar of capitalism / business... to a not wholly dissimilar effect. This might be similar to anyone who's read the book "The Corporation", which presents the theory that if businesses were people, they would have the personality of a psychopath. So whilst Patoff, we must assume, is going to save the company and even make it thrive, he is going to do this through means involving cruelty, manipulation, and wanton harm to staff and customers. Elaine and Craig are, I think, people he sees with talent - if only he can adjust their personalities and behaviours to make them more effective.

So, all in all, pretty decent.

 

[gorfias]

Yellowstone Season 2 (Peacock +)
Can't grade this as I can't take my eyes off it yet, it over-all feels stupid.
They set up a situation and by the end of Season 2, you just shoot to death anyone that is a problem. It is like watching Paul Newman and Redford in The Sting and as they're planning the 1st stages of the con, someone walks in, shoots them to death and credits roll.
But, I do want to see what happens next in this story of a family owned cow ranch and the challenges they face from would be casino owners encroaching native Americans asserting their rights and more.

 

[Absent]

It is like watching Paul Newman and Redford in The Sting and as they're planning the 1st stages of the con, someone walks in, shoots them to death and credits roll.

Is it scripted by tarantino ? He tends to do that when he gets tired and bored mid-writing.

 

[Gordon_4]

Yellowstone Season 2 (Peacock +)
Can't grade this as I can't take my eyes off it yet, it over-all feels stupid.
They set up a situation and by the end of Season 2, you just shoot to death anyone that is a problem. It is like watching Paul Newman and Redford in The Sting and as they're planning the 1st stages of the con, someone walks in, shoots them to death and credits roll.
But, I do want to see what happens next in this story of a family owned cow ranch and the challenges they face from would be casino owners encroaching native Americans asserting their rights and more.

Isn’t this the most popular show on American television right now?

 

[gorfias]

Isn’t this the most popular show on American television right now?

Mores the pity, I do believe it is Has like 2 or 3 spin offs. 1883, 1923 at a min.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Formula 1: Drive To Survive, S5:Ep1: More DTS / Great

More overdramatization of the ins and outs on the Formula 1 grid and between its divers, team principles and the media.

I know OG F1 fans don't like DTS because of its docutainment vibe versus a more austere and soulless straight up documentary one, but its some entertaining stuff when taken for what it is and not held to standards it isn't. I would have liked for this latest season to have dropped sooner since the 2023 season kicks of this Friday; could have scratched my F1 itch during the offseason.

 

[Piscian]

Mandolorian S3E01

Mando? More like MEH-do

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Severance (Season 1, 2022)

Dark comedy about people working at a dystopian corporation that has them undergo a procedure to split their personality between their work and private life, so they're unable to remember one during the other. It follows the employees of a department called "Micro Data Refinement" who are forced to do seemingly arbitrary work of sorting numbers with no discernible purpose. Meanwhile the company itself demands cult like devotion to their company culture and their founding family, expressed in various semi-religious rituals.

Satire, ladies and gentlemen. Forgive me the snark, it's not that I think subtlety is a measure of quality, but bear with me here. I like surrealism, I've done so since long before I even knew that term, but using it for straight forward social commentary like this just... it takes the fun out of it, you know? Now, I still watched the entire season, so it's not like the series is all bad or anything, but if you expect it to have more to say than it already does in the first episode, you should expect less.

It's all quite well presented, mind you. Severance stages it's kafkaesque lampooning of corporate America with a cool precision that makes it somewhat more effective than you'd probably expect it to be. The labyrinth of austere Paul W.S. Andersonian white corridors and drab, windowless office spaces convey the overwhelming claustrophobia of its central setting, and the rest of the world that we get to see doesn't look much more inviting. It's a very mundane dystopia, stagnant in it's late 20th century technology. Corporate, not in in the neon drenched, oversaturated cyberpunk sense, but almost insufferably minimalist. A world where the megacorps are so powerful, they have evolved beyond advertising.

Generally speaking, there is a decent amount of fun stuff in Severance. I don't think you'll ever see anything else that casts Christopher Walken as the love interest for John Turturro. Tramell Tillman's "fun boss" routine is infectious. As the season goes on it even conjures something like genuine tension and drama. It just asks you to really submit to a premise that's way too on the nose for its own good. Have you seen the movie Sorry To Bother You? It does a lot of the same things, but funnier. If you haven't seen it, you totally should, it's pretty good. Which isn't to say that Severance doesn't have its share of funny bits. Occasionally we get to hear excerpts from a hacky self help book written by the protagonist brother in law, and it got a chuckle out of the me every time.

It's a pretty well made show, it just can't really grow beyond its overly literal premise. It tries to present itself as a kafkaesque parable about the alienated labour, but it comes off like a more literal and hence less compelling version of THX 1138. It's the sort of thing that shows clearly that you need more than just a concept, even a decent one, to drive 8 hours of television. And that's just the first season, the cliffhanger ending shows quite clearly that there's an intent to continue it and I'm not entirely sure if the premise hasn't already worn thin.

Don't get me wrong, Severance isn't bad television, it just feels a bit limited and single minded. Visuals and cinematography are very sleek end elegant and a lot of the performances are fun, but I'm not entirely sure if it had enough ideas to sustain it for a single season, much less multiple. I spent most of the season waiting for it to kinda grow beyond its basic premise and I don't think it ever did.

 

[laggyteabag]

Watched the first episode of The Mandolorian season 3, and it was a

Mandolorian S3E01

Mando? More like MEH-do

View attachment 8126

Yeah, this was a pretty uneventful episode.

I don't feel like the plot progressed at all, since we last saw Mando in The Book of Boba Fett. It felt very much like a catch up episode, primarily for those who didn't watch that show.

Hopefully next week's episode gets the ball rolling a bit more, but this was a pretty dull return for the series.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Severance (Season 1, 2022)

Dark comedy about people working at a dystopian corporation that has them undergo a procedure to split their personality between their work and private life, so they're unable to remember one during the other. It follows the employees of a department called "Micro Data Refinement" who are forced to do seemingly arbitrary work of sorting numbers with no discernible purpose. Meanwhile the company itself demands cult like devotion to their company culture and their founding family, expressed in various semi-religious rituals.

Satire, ladies and gentlemen. Forgive me the snark, it's not that I think subtlety is a measure of quality, but bear with me here. I like surrealism, I've done so since long before I even knew that term, but using it for straight forward social commentary like this just... it takes the fun out of it, you know? Now, I still watched the entire season, so it's not like the series is all bad or anything, but if you expect it to have more to say than it already does in the first episode, you should expect less.

It's all quite well presented, mind you. Severance stages it's kafkaesque lampooning of corporate America with a cool precision that makes it somewhat more effective than you'd probably expect it to be. The labyrinth of austere Paul W.S. Andersonian white corridors and drab, windowless office spaces convey the overwhelming claustrophobia of its central setting, and the rest of the world that we get to see doesn't look much more inviting. It's a very mundane dystopia, stagnant in it's late 20th century technology. Corporate, not in in the neon drenched, oversaturated cyberpunk sense, but almost insufferably minimalist. A world where the megacorps are so powerful, they have evolved beyond advertising.

Generally speaking, there is a decent amount of fun stuff in Severance. I don't think you'll ever see anything else that casts Christopher Walken as the love interest for John Turturro. Tramell Tillman's "fun boss" routine is infectious. As the season goes on it even conjures something like genuine tension and drama. It just asks you to really submit to a premise that's way too on the nose for its own good. Have you seen the movie Sorry To Bother You? It does a lot of the same things, but funnier. If you haven't seen it, you totally should, it's pretty good. Which isn't to say that Severance doesn't have its share of funny bits. Occasionally we get to hear excerpts from a hacky self help book written by the protagonist brother in law, and it got a chuckle out of the me every time.

It's a pretty well made show, it just can't really grow beyond its overly literal premise. It tries to present itself as a kafkaesque parable about the alienated labour, but it comes off like a more literal and hence less compelling version of THX 1138. It's the sort of thing that shows clearly that you need more than just a concept, even a decent one, to drive 8 hours of television. And that's just the first season, the cliffhanger ending shows quite clearly that there's an intent to continue it and I'm not entirely sure if the premise hasn't already worn thin.

Don't get me wrong, Severance isn't bad television, it just feels a bit limited and single minded. Visuals and cinematography are very sleek end elegant and a lot of the performances are fun, but I'm not entirely sure if it had enough ideas to sustain it for a single season, much less multiple. I spent most of the season waiting for it to kinda grow beyond its basic premise and I don't think it ever did.

I think the reason Severance worked so much more for me is that it started so slow. For the first couple of episodes I was like wtf is this... different enough to keep going. Then around the 3rd or 4th episode I locked into its whole thing and any hesitation with the premise went away and I was totally in. I think having the unique perspective of the woman character and that dynamic with the main guy was instrumental to that, it would not work without that element.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Watched the first episode of The Mandolorian season 3, and it was a

Yeah, this was a pretty uneventful episode.

I don't feel like the plot progressed at all, since we last saw Mando in The Book of Boba Fett. It felt very much like a catch up episode, primarily for those who didn't watch that show.

Hopefully next week's episode gets the ball rolling a bit more, but this was a pretty dull return for the series.

I wasn't gonna watch it 'cause I expected as much but then I changed my mind and I was in the mood for some light spectacle entertainment and you know what.. I like this show again. It really is completely superficial and meaningless but I kind of like it for that now. The episode has a huge-ass alligator monster, a Western movie fast draw battle, and little robots carrying Apollo Creed's ridiculous cape train. And I lol'd at the quich Poochiefication of Gina Corano's character.