Discuss and Rate the Last Thing You Watched (non-movies)
- Thread starter Hawki
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That's the biggest problems and one of the reasons why I stopped watching. I got sick of Randy Marsh so much.
Your Honor
Watched the first five episodes so far but the table was set within the first ten minutes or so. Been eating pretty well so far overall too, even though most of what’s served has a R rated made for TV dinner feel to it. Walter White plays a judge with much of the same character flaws as his meth cooking counterpart. The lying, the misguided judgment, doing it “for the family”, etc. Albeit in this case he’s trying desperately to keep his probably autistic son Adam from getting killed. The aforementioned setup is he’s visiting the site of his mother’s murder and has an asthma attack while driving and winds up killing the son of a ruthless mob boss while he was out joyriding on his new motorcycle, which the mob boss’s wife definitely did not approve of.
The show dangles the carrot pretty well, as characters get tangled up together, threatening Adam’s safety, and his guilty conscience often feels like the domino that could set things off in the wrong direction. The writing isn’t as carefully crafted or slow building as something like Breaking Bad, but it’s good enough to give each episode some tension and have me yelling and/or wincing at the screen.
Watched the first five episodes so far but the table was set within the first ten minutes or so. Been eating pretty well so far overall too, even though most of what’s served has a R rated made for TV dinner feel to it. Walter White plays a judge with much of the same character flaws as his meth cooking counterpart. The lying, the misguided judgment, doing it “for the family”, etc. Albeit in this case he’s trying desperately to keep his probably autistic son Adam from getting killed. The aforementioned setup is he’s visiting the site of his mother’s murder and has an asthma attack while driving and winds up killing the son of a ruthless mob boss while he was out joyriding on his new motorcycle, which the mob boss’s wife definitely did not approve of.
The show dangles the carrot pretty well, as characters get tangled up together, threatening Adam’s safety, and his guilty conscience often feels like the domino that could set things off in the wrong direction. The writing isn’t as carefully crafted or slow building as something like Breaking Bad, but it’s good enough to give each episode some tension and have me yelling and/or wincing at the screen.
- Feb 7, 2011
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School Spirits (Netflix)
A murdered girl's soul is stuck inside the high school where she died as she attempts to solve the mystery of who killed her while coming to terms with the fact that anyone can be a suspect, her boyfriend, her favorite teacher, her friend, even her mom.
It's a supernatural high school drama, but actually a pretty good one. It has some of that Twin Peaks feel. A small town where everyone knows each other and everyone has something to hide. The acting is pretty good, the mystery is engaging, and the characters are all pretty likable (though the main character has a bit of the "not like other girls" try-hard vibe).
The season is only 8 episodes long and ends on a cliffhanger, but it has already been renewed for a second season (though it's possible that it will be Paramount+ exclusive).
A murdered girl's soul is stuck inside the high school where she died as she attempts to solve the mystery of who killed her while coming to terms with the fact that anyone can be a suspect, her boyfriend, her favorite teacher, her friend, even her mom.
It's a supernatural high school drama, but actually a pretty good one. It has some of that Twin Peaks feel. A small town where everyone knows each other and everyone has something to hide. The acting is pretty good, the mystery is engaging, and the characters are all pretty likable (though the main character has a bit of the "not like other girls" try-hard vibe).
The season is only 8 episodes long and ends on a cliffhanger, but it has already been renewed for a second season (though it's possible that it will be Paramount+ exclusive).
We differ there. I think I mentioned it before in another thread; I actually like Randy. That's why I mentioned further in my musings that even he couldn't save this special for me.
I think most viewers would agree Randy carries the show more often than not. Largely because hes getting into whatever the plot is lampooning. Over time hes sort of replaced Homer Simpson as a the "Average lcd american dad". I don't tune in regularly to South Park, but when I hear about some funny new episode, its whatever Randy is getting into.
Yeah, we had this discussion before back in 20-21 in the hot takes thread. Randy works at times, but he got way over used and I stopped caring. The other reason being, I got plain tired of SP and wanted to move on to better things. I'm glad I did and never looked back.
Yeah, Randy is the current Fladerization of "dumb dad," and South Park's willingness to routinely push the envelope has allowed him to go to some pretty outrageous lengths for the laughs. I mean outside of Cartman, none of the core boys are funny; Stan and Kyle are the straight men, and Kenny has been a dated gimmick for years (even the writers got that last point when “oh my God, they killed Kenny!” stopped being a regular thing.) Butters is still a good butt of the joke/whipping boy from time to time, but outside of that, it’s been one-off/semi-regular/new characters or Randy and Cartman getting into extreme situations to carry an episode.
Cool. More Randy for me.
And I got much better, smarter, or more interesting characters in return from different shows. We both win.
Billy the Kid season 1 5/10
If "Western" and "competent enough character drama" are enough descriptors to keep you baseline entertained as they are for me, this series on Epic will do the trick.
It takes the legendary outlaw figure of Billy the Kid and makes him the sympathetic protagonist- someone who fell into a life of crime through mostly bad luck, tough circumstances and a couple of poor but understandable decisions. There's always someone worse around to make him not actually the bad guy.
Nothing really happens in terms of plot, action, or character that goes beyond "competent" though.
It's 8 episodes and it goes through his whole life so you got two episodes where he's a kid, dealing with his saint of a mother and asshole dads.
(One pleasant casting surprise was Joe Baty who played Jaskier in the Witcher as Billy's father).
It does a decent job of showing some of the travails of immigrants and frontier folks but nothing you can't see better versions of elsewhere like the Yellowstone prequel 1886. The show starts to pick up some when Billy is trying to balance survival with ethics and anger. I guess the show's biggest strength and weakness at the same time is that like everybody else in the American west is a g-dm piece of absolute shit so our poor lil' outlaw just can't help being doomed.
A solid "ok" and I know I say this about a lot of modern shows but if it were more than 8 episodes a season I can't imagine bothering but as it is it's perfectly pleasant if like me you can just vibe with horses and plains and whiskey and twirling revolvers.
If "Western" and "competent enough character drama" are enough descriptors to keep you baseline entertained as they are for me, this series on Epic will do the trick.
It takes the legendary outlaw figure of Billy the Kid and makes him the sympathetic protagonist- someone who fell into a life of crime through mostly bad luck, tough circumstances and a couple of poor but understandable decisions. There's always someone worse around to make him not actually the bad guy.
Nothing really happens in terms of plot, action, or character that goes beyond "competent" though.
It's 8 episodes and it goes through his whole life so you got two episodes where he's a kid, dealing with his saint of a mother and asshole dads.
(One pleasant casting surprise was Joe Baty who played Jaskier in the Witcher as Billy's father).
It does a decent job of showing some of the travails of immigrants and frontier folks but nothing you can't see better versions of elsewhere like the Yellowstone prequel 1886. The show starts to pick up some when Billy is trying to balance survival with ethics and anger. I guess the show's biggest strength and weakness at the same time is that like everybody else in the American west is a g-dm piece of absolute shit so our poor lil' outlaw just can't help being doomed.
A solid "ok" and I know I say this about a lot of modern shows but if it were more than 8 episodes a season I can't imagine bothering but as it is it's perfectly pleasant if like me you can just vibe with horses and plains and whiskey and twirling revolvers.
Outer Range Season 2
Like another Western version of Back to the Future, but surly, morose and prone to waxing poetic about, uh, time being a river and all that.
A kid has been kidnapped by her time-travelling mom. The kid's future self happens to be visiting the present. Her dad jumps into a time travel hole and appears in the past where he meets a young version of his own dad. Meanwhile the old version of his dad, who's in the present, is feuding with the dude who used to court his wife in the past (and may have fathered his oldest son out of wedlock). There's also a sheriff investigating all this who herself travels even further to the past into the late 1800s - and she meets an even younger version of the dad, who himself time-travelled as a kid into the 1960s.
I haven't even gotten into the plot, although I guess there isn't much to it: it's three generations of characters split across two warring families, half of whom have been unhinged from time. I guess each of them are more or less trying to get back to one another although the mystery box element deprives it from much urgency.
Like another Western version of Back to the Future, but surly, morose and prone to waxing poetic about, uh, time being a river and all that.
A kid has been kidnapped by her time-travelling mom. The kid's future self happens to be visiting the present. Her dad jumps into a time travel hole and appears in the past where he meets a young version of his own dad. Meanwhile the old version of his dad, who's in the present, is feuding with the dude who used to court his wife in the past (and may have fathered his oldest son out of wedlock). There's also a sheriff investigating all this who herself travels even further to the past into the late 1800s - and she meets an even younger version of the dad, who himself time-travelled as a kid into the 1960s.
I haven't even gotten into the plot, although I guess there isn't much to it: it's three generations of characters split across two warring families, half of whom have been unhinged from time. I guess each of them are more or less trying to get back to one another although the mystery box element deprives it from much urgency.
I finished watching El Hazard: The Magnificent World OVA 1 & 2. It was fun going back down memory lane! OVA1 holds up the best and has gorgeous animation and background details. Almost all of the characters are lovable or likeable, with only Princess Fatora being a nuisance. Thankfully, when character is revealed, she's barely around for the final episode for OVA1. OVA2 is where she gets annoying and does/tries perverted antics on other women are not funny. Imagine Mineta, but a hot looking princess. I don't which one I hate more at the moment, but it's looking to be about the same. You're clearly not supposed to like her (almost all of the characters do hate her, besides her older sister and a little nymphomaniac sycophant Ailelle), and she ended up being a "subversion/assumption" of a kind princess, when she's revealed to be a spoiled brat in the beginning of the final episode of OVA 1. OVA 2, she has no reason be their, and the bits of comedy in the first half of OVA2 aren't funny and I hate her voice. It's telling when in the last 2 episodes of OVA 2 (4 episodes total, btw), she and her tweedle dee to her own tweedle dumb self, barely show up with a few seconds of screen time. In fact, in the AU TV retelling, Princess Fatora doesn't exists in that version, so he writers realized how much of an annoying generic lesbian pervert she is and no one wants her.
The harem doesn't work as nowhere near as well as Tenchi's, but I like the cast overall. Sheyla being my personal favorite of the girls. Also, Makoto's teacher Fujisawa is hilarious. The English dub holds up great too, Fatora aside.
OVA 2 is still great time overall, but OVA1 is the best. Both OVAs have amazing soundtracks combining orchestra and techno. I swear this soundtrack feels like it came from a Sega Saturn game and Panzer Dragoon. That's how I would described the soundtrack. Very vintage and awesome 90s Sega style music. Ironic, as there is an El Hazard did a video game adaption on the Saturn. So it's very fitting. You can get both OVAs in collection on Blu Ray, at Amazon, if anyone is interested. They have a good sale on it.
The harem doesn't work as nowhere near as well as Tenchi's, but I like the cast overall. Sheyla being my personal favorite of the girls. Also, Makoto's teacher Fujisawa is hilarious. The English dub holds up great too, Fatora aside.
OVA 2 is still great time overall, but OVA1 is the best. Both OVAs have amazing soundtracks combining orchestra and techno. I swear this soundtrack feels like it came from a Sega Saturn game and Panzer Dragoon. That's how I would described the soundtrack. Very vintage and awesome 90s Sega style music. Ironic, as there is an El Hazard did a video game adaption on the Saturn. So it's very fitting. You can get both OVAs in collection on Blu Ray, at Amazon, if anyone is interested. They have a good sale on it.
I haven't watched Dark but my sister did and told me she stopped because picking it up every episode was starting to feel like a chore. So yes.
First season of Your Honor in the bag.
This show is often frustrating in how it moves forward, but it did manage to punctuate things on a fairly surprising note. I’m most curious to see how Walt grows his gnarly beard this time, like the box art shows. Guessing he will leave his judgeship and go after the mob guy vigilante style, but am hoping to be proven wrong.
This show is often frustrating in how it moves forward, but it did manage to punctuate things on a fairly surprising note. I’m most curious to see how Walt grows his gnarly beard this time, like the box art shows. Guessing he will leave his judgeship and go after the mob guy vigilante style, but am hoping to be proven wrong.
Started the fourth season of Fargo.
Fargo's a show that's never been quite as good as its first season but I've always found it immensely watchable and enjoyable. I like how each season is its own thing and casts a wide net over so many interesting characters hurtling into collision with one another. The writing is a bit full of itself and having every character basically speak in parables and monologue rather than talk can be a bit exhausting (everyone's too goddamn witty!) but whatever, the characters and the situations are worth it.
And as I'm finishing Outer Range (three episodes left) I realize that nothing's much happened to "advance" the plot, largely because there isn't one - just sort of watch how the show rattles the mystery box. Piecing together who's who, why the weird stuff happens and what everyone's after simply isn't as engaging.
Fargo's a show that's never been quite as good as its first season but I've always found it immensely watchable and enjoyable. I like how each season is its own thing and casts a wide net over so many interesting characters hurtling into collision with one another. The writing is a bit full of itself and having every character basically speak in parables and monologue rather than talk can be a bit exhausting (everyone's too goddamn witty!) but whatever, the characters and the situations are worth it.
And as I'm finishing Outer Range (three episodes left) I realize that nothing's much happened to "advance" the plot, largely because there isn't one - just sort of watch how the show rattles the mystery box. Piecing together who's who, why the weird stuff happens and what everyone's after simply isn't as engaging.
- Apr 1, 2009
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The HBO mini series From the Earth to the Moon. We had recently re-watched Apollo 13 and were in the moon for more space stuff and I remembered this series and that my dad really liked it but I had never seen it. The series is about the Apollo program in its entirety, from the beginnings of the program to the last flight. So its really damn good, does have a few weaker episodes, mainly the last 2, kinda just felt like they had more episodes then things to really focus on. My favorite episodes were 'Spider', 'For Miles and Miles' and 'Galileo was Right'.
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I finally watched the finale last night (wife was traveling for work and we watch the show together).
My big Trek hot take is that Discovery is the best Trek since Deep Space Nine.
The show was a mess, often confused and all over the place due primarily to behind-the-scenes turmoil. But it was also, at its best, the only Trek show or movie that had any heart, any ambition, and anything new. The shows that get positive attention like Strange New Worlds and Picard season 3 are lame nostalgia bait. The fact that I'm so split from the vocal Trek fan base just tells me what I felt in my heart since the days of Voyager- it was really time to move on. No franchise needs to go on forever.
The final season of Discovery was a bit disappointing plot wise where it's a video game quest basically. But there were individual episodes and scenes that worked. They managed to do one thing well I've never seen another show do well- introduce a new character in the final season and make me care about them. I called this phenomenon the Ezri Dax Problem- DS9 is rightfully beloved but its last season is rough and a big part of that was introducing a new, more annoying Dax that I couldn't be arsed about. Discovery gives us an ornery second in command that is a nice counterpoint to the all-about-the-feels vibe of the other characters.
And it's the reaction to that last point that bothers me most about some of the hatred for Discovery. Yes, the characters talk about their feelings and work together and are friends. This is where we have to remember that Trek works when its utopian and positive. One of my problems with the first season of Discovery is one of my problems with the Abrams movies- sometimes they try to go grimdark cynical because that is the trend and, like- let literally every other sci-fi show do that.
Season 3 has them going to the far future and bringing classic Trek positivity to a broken world and that was the most Star Trek idea the whole franchise had in decades and everybody hated it lol... no let's see the same references, spin-offs, nostalgia b.s. a million times? Guh, no thanks!
I do with the finale ended with the wedding and the scene on the beach. I read an article explaining that they didn't even know it was gonna be the last season and so tacked on that flash-forward epilogue. Typical of the kind of production b.s. that prevented the show from reaching its full potential. Either way I didn't need to see them be old and have a kid and make references I had to research on the internet to other sub-standard Trek things I didn't care about.
What did work was Burnam, Book and Mol figuring out their personal baggage THROUGH a crazy science/tech thing while the spaceship crew performs fantastical feats of derring-do. That is where Trek shines Discovery worked when it just did that.
Well, whatever- I hear they're planning to re-re-boot the movies...
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
This one was strongly recommended by a couple friends and family and they insisted I didn't have to watch the related Monsterverse movies but, as posted in the movie thread, I did watch those anyway.
The show was ok... made me wonder exactly why it was so well received and I think it's because the premise is so dumb that the fact that the production and acting were respectable made it seem more impressive as a piece of entertainment then it is as an actual story.
Basically it's the Monsterverse's analog of what Agents of SHIELD was to the MCU: a TV spinoff that uses an apocolyptic event in the movies as the reference point for an ensemble cast story.
The plot is a lot of running around back and forth not accomplishing much in the current day while more interesting stuff happens in the 1950's. A bit of enjoyable stunt casting where Kurt Russell and his son play the same dude across time. Anna Sawai who is now more famous from Shogun as a lead character and she was fine but the most arresting charisthmatic character in the show is the woman in the 50s who was her gramma. Yeah a lot of it is "omg your'e a woman and a scientist in the olden days!" kind of schtick but she really makes it work.
You get a big monster every couple of episodes which is fun- they try to balance the spectacle of a monster show with the dramatic stakes and it's kind of a mixed bag. The final episode with a bunch of reunions was well done and effective. Overall the 10 episodes felt like it could have been a movie but I think that's just how most shows on streaming services feel to me.
This one was strongly recommended by a couple friends and family and they insisted I didn't have to watch the related Monsterverse movies but, as posted in the movie thread, I did watch those anyway.
The show was ok... made me wonder exactly why it was so well received and I think it's because the premise is so dumb that the fact that the production and acting were respectable made it seem more impressive as a piece of entertainment then it is as an actual story.
Basically it's the Monsterverse's analog of what Agents of SHIELD was to the MCU: a TV spinoff that uses an apocolyptic event in the movies as the reference point for an ensemble cast story.
The plot is a lot of running around back and forth not accomplishing much in the current day while more interesting stuff happens in the 1950's. A bit of enjoyable stunt casting where Kurt Russell and his son play the same dude across time. Anna Sawai who is now more famous from Shogun as a lead character and she was fine but the most arresting charisthmatic character in the show is the woman in the 50s who was her gramma. Yeah a lot of it is "omg your'e a woman and a scientist in the olden days!" kind of schtick but she really makes it work.
You get a big monster every couple of episodes which is fun- they try to balance the spectacle of a monster show with the dramatic stakes and it's kind of a mixed bag. The final episode with a bunch of reunions was well done and effective. Overall the 10 episodes felt like it could have been a movie but I think that's just how most shows on streaming services feel to me.
