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Discuss and Rate the Last Thing You Watched (non-movies)
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Afraid there is, and this show does it, and the writers do not know how awful they sound. Even so, have to check out the Jesus thing. I'm sure its a jest, but WTF?
EDIT: Yeah, not buying it. Such an unforced error. He says he thought the image would be of him as a medical doctor related to red cross spending but... really. It has been deleted
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.
If you've watched the Walking Dead, you'll know that characters move in and out of the spin-off shows, and this appears to exist to complete the arc of Rick and Michonne.
This is tricky territory in terms of spoilers, but I'm just going to have to decide that the Walking Dead is sufficiently established that if you are unfamiliar with the main series, you can just cope with knowing that Rick is at some point whisked away by a military force whilst Michonne keeps going a bit longer before eventually leaving to find him. And so we get this.
It's a mess.
Six years later. Stuff has happened, so it rushes us through a load of exposition, except for a few bits it spent more time on. This does not work well. The producers evidently wanted to keep Rick in their back pocket and this military outfit was a good idea, but no-one ever fleshed out what it was when it happened. Now someone's had to flesh the idea out, and it feels like this military unit and supporting society doesn't make sense both in continuity and in overall structure. One of the features of the Walking Dead are all the socities, and the unique ways that they have decided to handle the zombie apocalypse in their own way. Perhaps one main feature is that our heroes' societies are trying to maintain or rebuild civilisation as "normal". They are set against antagonists and incidentally encountered communities that are psychopaths or weirdos. So here's our new weird survivor society based around the military.
Nothing really hangs together. The setting seems bogus, the plot is frail, the characterisation perfunctory. An example of the rush is that in the preamble, Rick cuts his own hand off. Isn't that a big deal? No, it's just casually done with little emotional weight, even maybe as some routine, Walking Dead obligatory gore. It's symptomatic of the lack of time and attention you'll be sitting through for the next few hours of limited series.
Rick and Michonne are going to find each other, because love conquers everything I guess, and that's great. But was it really worth this janky knock-off sullying the hard work of the original series? Maybe not.
If you've watched the Walking Dead, you'll know that characters move in and out of the spin-off shows, and this appears to exist to complete the arc of Rick and Michonne.
This is tricky territory in terms of spoilers, but I'm just going to have to decide that the Walking Dead is sufficiently established that if you are unfamiliar with the main series, you can just cope with knowing that Rick is at some point whisked away by a military force whilst Michonne keeps going a bit longer before eventually leaving to find him. And so we get this.
It's a mess.
Six years later. Stuff has happened, so it rushes us through a load of exposition, except for a few bits it spent more time on. This does not work well. The producers evidently wanted to keep Rick in their back pocket and this military outfit was a good idea, but no-one ever fleshed out what it was when it happened. Now someone's had to flesh the idea out, and it feels like this military unit and supporting society doesn't make sense both in continuity and in overall structure. One of the features of the Walking Dead are all the socities, and the unique ways that they have decided to handle the zombie apocalypse in their own way. Perhaps one main feature is that our heroes' societies are trying to maintain or rebuild civilisation as "normal". They are set against antagonists and incidentally encountered communities that are psychopaths or weirdos. So here's our new weird survivor society based around the military.
Nothing really hangs together. The setting seems bogus, the plot is frail, the characterisation perfunctory. An example of the rush is that in the preamble, Rick cuts his own hand off. Isn't that a big deal? No, it's just casually done with little emotional weight, even maybe as some routine, Walking Dead obligatory gore. It's symptomatic of the lack of time and attention you'll be sitting through for the next few hours of limited series.
Rick and Michonne are going to find each other, because love conquers everything I guess, and that's great. But was it really worth this janky knock-off sullying the hard work of the original series? Maybe not.
Rooster, episodes 1-5.
Grade: B.
It is, in fact, the most B show I've seen in a while. The season's still going but it's the kind of show that absolutely won't change for as long as it's on so it's fine to talk about it.
HBO comedy starring Steve Carrell as the best-selling author of corny beach-reading dude books who is pressured to take a position at a small liberal arts college to help his daughter going through a messy split with her pos husband.
That's right folks, we're in a college, and you know what that means- snowflakes! Wokes! You-can't-even-say-anything-anymore-kids-these-days-amirite?!
Before I rant more about that, the strength of the show is the charming cast. Carrell is, I think, one of the few universally beloved actors of our time and he's playing the most Steve Carrell-ass role ever. It's nice.
There's his daughter whose husband ditched her for a grad student. The husband is the guy that played Jamie Tart in Ted Lasso so he's handsome and British and all the girls catoonishly go ga-ga over him in the show. The asshole boss doctor from Scrubs is the weirdo boss in this show. Danielle Deadwyler plays the cool/hip potential love interest and she emits insane charisthma. This actress is in a bunch of small but beloved genre fare and will be starring in the upcoming X-Files remake.
The humor of this show is as such: character says or does something profoundly stupid. Then they will lampshade it. That's... it, that's the show.
It's basically the Swiss Miss cocoa mix of HBO comedies. Is it good? No, but it's warm and comforting, and maybe once a week you want something safe, warm, comforting, and easy for half an hour.
My one pet peeve is the whole sensitive snowflake college campus thing. Every episode has a scene where Carrell is brought before a disciplinary meeting because some one complained about something he said. Even for a silly comedy, the complaints are even worse than what some youtube right-winger would make up. Like someone complained because he said "white whale" and the idiot college kid thought it was racist and not Moby Dick. HAHAHAH WOKE... *rolleyes* stfu
Grade: B.
It is, in fact, the most B show I've seen in a while. The season's still going but it's the kind of show that absolutely won't change for as long as it's on so it's fine to talk about it.
HBO comedy starring Steve Carrell as the best-selling author of corny beach-reading dude books who is pressured to take a position at a small liberal arts college to help his daughter going through a messy split with her pos husband.
That's right folks, we're in a college, and you know what that means- snowflakes! Wokes! You-can't-even-say-anything-anymore-kids-these-days-amirite?!
Before I rant more about that, the strength of the show is the charming cast. Carrell is, I think, one of the few universally beloved actors of our time and he's playing the most Steve Carrell-ass role ever. It's nice.
There's his daughter whose husband ditched her for a grad student. The husband is the guy that played Jamie Tart in Ted Lasso so he's handsome and British and all the girls catoonishly go ga-ga over him in the show. The asshole boss doctor from Scrubs is the weirdo boss in this show. Danielle Deadwyler plays the cool/hip potential love interest and she emits insane charisthma. This actress is in a bunch of small but beloved genre fare and will be starring in the upcoming X-Files remake.
The humor of this show is as such: character says or does something profoundly stupid. Then they will lampshade it. That's... it, that's the show.
It's basically the Swiss Miss cocoa mix of HBO comedies. Is it good? No, but it's warm and comforting, and maybe once a week you want something safe, warm, comforting, and easy for half an hour.
My one pet peeve is the whole sensitive snowflake college campus thing. Every episode has a scene where Carrell is brought before a disciplinary meeting because some one complained about something he said. Even for a silly comedy, the complaints are even worse than what some youtube right-winger would make up. Like someone complained because he said "white whale" and the idiot college kid thought it was racist and not Moby Dick. HAHAHAH WOKE... *rolleyes* stfu
Invincible, season 5 (with one ep left)
Ready to be done, I think, unless something amazing happens with the season finale.
It's one of those things where, it's not like all of a sudden the show SUCKS, it's more like it may have run its course for me. Unlike the Boys, the other cynical meta-comic-book show, there has been no final season set AFAIK, so I have to assume it's just gonna keep going. And it's not doing anything interesting any more.
I guess my biggest gripe is that while part of the fun was the gruesome violence, I just feel that's literally all that's happened this season. Yes it was inevitable they would have to fight the Viltrumites head on but there's no interesting hook there, no cool characters. Ominman/Nolan's redemption arc isn't that interesting. Mark/Invincible cycle of getting almost killed and then coming back and worrying about Oliver is the same old shit now. Oliver is such a profoundly boring character.
The highlight of the season was Invincible's mom getting to finally tell her ex-husband what the deal is. I'm not like the biggest Sandra O fan but she is a good actress and that moment is one of those you can use to prove voice acting = acting if you needed to.
Atom Eve does literally nothing this season, just completely sidelined so the boys can fly around and punch each other.
Whatever happened to that crazy scientist guy bopping around dimensions? They had teased his story as being so important and we've seen nothing.
There was a whole episode about a civil war in hell and I legit thought it was like an April Fool's joke, what was the point of that?
I'm guessing it's all like the comic books and comic books go on forever which is why I don't read them.
I like this show a lot but after 5 seasons I think it's been enough.
Ready to be done, I think, unless something amazing happens with the season finale.
It's one of those things where, it's not like all of a sudden the show SUCKS, it's more like it may have run its course for me. Unlike the Boys, the other cynical meta-comic-book show, there has been no final season set AFAIK, so I have to assume it's just gonna keep going. And it's not doing anything interesting any more.
I guess my biggest gripe is that while part of the fun was the gruesome violence, I just feel that's literally all that's happened this season. Yes it was inevitable they would have to fight the Viltrumites head on but there's no interesting hook there, no cool characters. Ominman/Nolan's redemption arc isn't that interesting. Mark/Invincible cycle of getting almost killed and then coming back and worrying about Oliver is the same old shit now. Oliver is such a profoundly boring character.
The highlight of the season was Invincible's mom getting to finally tell her ex-husband what the deal is. I'm not like the biggest Sandra O fan but she is a good actress and that moment is one of those you can use to prove voice acting = acting if you needed to.
Atom Eve does literally nothing this season, just completely sidelined so the boys can fly around and punch each other.
Whatever happened to that crazy scientist guy bopping around dimensions? They had teased his story as being so important and we've seen nothing.
There was a whole episode about a civil war in hell and I legit thought it was like an April Fool's joke, what was the point of that?
I'm guessing it's all like the comic books and comic books go on forever which is why I don't read them.
I like this show a lot but after 5 seasons I think it's been enough.
It's on its 4th season. But they went on hiatus midway through season 3 so it feels like more.
The show has become DBZ on cocaine at this point. Every episode seemingly introduces a bigger threat, a higher power level. Lots of PNG files floating in the middle of nowhere, exchanging blows to no effect. The good guys have a handgun with infinite ammo that can shoot a laser through a whole planet, and that somehow isn't a conversation finisher. The bad guys can flick off heads with little more than a handwave yet their go-to 99.99% of the time is hurling their opponents. Against what? They're in space. Space empty. It's not even good animation. And now that everyone's a telepath they don't even have to animate their mouths half the time.
SAS: Rogue Heroes
BBC show that tries to give the Guy Ritchie treatment to the SAS chapter of WW2 in Africa. I know the name Dudley Clarke from the intro to Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, and he's played by Dominic West in the show, but our main POV is David Stirling, the other founder of SAS. And as far as I'm concerned West should've been our main guy. I don't think the dude playing Stirling is very good or can carry a show. But whenever West walks in, holy shit, please stay.
Anyway, the Guy Ritchie thing: we freeze on characters whenever they're introduced, their names stenciled across the screen like they're Borderlands NPCs, and the soundtrack is pure punk rock. Everyone's simultaneously witty and rowdy. The humor is hit and miss. I suppose it's all broadly accurate - Stirling's parachuting accident, the Lewes bombs, the raids on Axis airbases - with the usual distortions and exaggerations. Everyone existed in real life, with the exception of course of the one female character, a spy played by Sofia Boutella who starts every conversation announcing that she's a spy and for lack of anything meaningful to do becomes Stirling's love interest.
It's alright. Band of Brothers it is not.
BBC show that tries to give the Guy Ritchie treatment to the SAS chapter of WW2 in Africa. I know the name Dudley Clarke from the intro to Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, and he's played by Dominic West in the show, but our main POV is David Stirling, the other founder of SAS. And as far as I'm concerned West should've been our main guy. I don't think the dude playing Stirling is very good or can carry a show. But whenever West walks in, holy shit, please stay.
Anyway, the Guy Ritchie thing: we freeze on characters whenever they're introduced, their names stenciled across the screen like they're Borderlands NPCs, and the soundtrack is pure punk rock. Everyone's simultaneously witty and rowdy. The humor is hit and miss. I suppose it's all broadly accurate - Stirling's parachuting accident, the Lewes bombs, the raids on Axis airbases - with the usual distortions and exaggerations. Everyone existed in real life, with the exception of course of the one female character, a spy played by Sofia Boutella who starts every conversation announcing that she's a spy and for lack of anything meaningful to do becomes Stirling's love interest.
It's alright. Band of Brothers it is not.
The daddiest TV. Miss my grandpa. He liked Bonanza and thought Star Wars was stupid.
My grandfather didn't think it was stupid, but he'd grown up reading Asimov and Clarke and Doc Smith. And reading Dan Dare. Star Wars just didn't have much to offer him. Loves Star Trek though.
I was so bored with the show that I decided to read all the comics instead, and honestly, majority of the problems in the show are present in the comics as well. I think it's because I was so down on the the show already, but I did not like the comics as much as I hoped I would.
Season 1 of the show was a huge departure from how things went down in the comics, and it was a great improvement. And the animation was great too. But season 2 onwards, it turns out they were essentially just adapting the comic 1:1 and with a seemingly smaller budget. They try to improve things, like with Oliver and Nolan's redemption, but it's such a half-hearted attempt that it doesn't really do anything.
That said, at the very least I can say that the comics handle the flow of time pretty well. Mark moves on from high school, to college, to adulthood, etc, up until the series ends on a kind of silly but wholesome note.
Yeah, the show is pretty good but it's "goodness" is kinda tied to how satisfying the answers/reveals are. I hope this is the last season.
Thirding the From props. Cool show. Thx for reminding me there's a new season. I hope the first episode is accompanied with a solid "previously on" segment though.
"Unfortunately," my source being my friend who enthusiastically texted me in advance of the start of this 4th season, there's going to be a 5th and final season, so don't expect any definitive answers throughout this 4th season. But it's so good, I don't mind. Apparently, writers have hinted that the answers are in the first season... WTF?!? That gives me hope that they've thought this through already, but also unnerving that they're just fucking with us for two more seasons. It's like magic: I want to know how it's done, but at the same time, I greatly appreciate the mystique of the illusion. So far, this show has not done what a lot of other shows do which is fuck around with retrospective or tangential storyline episodes; every episode is "now," and we the audience are just as confused and frustrated in the moment as the characters. Such a great fucking show, and if they stick the landing in season 5, I'll easily call it the best show I've ever suffered through.
Yes, there's a recap, but while informative, it does not do the full journey justice. You can't recap 3 seasons of a show like this in 3 minutes, but it does enough to give new viewers the gist. The best way is to start at the first season and work your way to the present to understand the absolute duress and struggle our protagonists have been through.
I get it; I remember you commenting that you've watched it, just saying that for any newcomers, the recap at the start of S4 doesn't do the entirety justice. The recap is perfectly serviceable for From veterans who might be fuzzy on a bigger details, but anyone who thinks they can jump in "now" with a 3-minute recap is missing a TON.
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen
The Duffer brothers of Stranger Things fame (only) produced this as a psycho-natural horror series, and after three episodes it still hasn’t grabbed me. A soon-to-be married couple heads to a remote cabin owned by the groom’s twisted family and all sorts of wtf-ery ensues. I don’t care for how much this production leans into the “spooky” sfx trope, but after *update* four episodes at least the plot is going somewhere promising. Thinking this will end either with a *chin rub-would watch a season 2* or *wet fart sound-what a letdown*
Your Friends & Neighbors season 2 caught up
I like that they made the new mark more than Coop probably bargained for. Continues to be a good nightcap dark comedy show.
The Duffer brothers of Stranger Things fame (only) produced this as a psycho-natural horror series, and after three episodes it still hasn’t grabbed me. A soon-to-be married couple heads to a remote cabin owned by the groom’s twisted family and all sorts of wtf-ery ensues. I don’t care for how much this production leans into the “spooky” sfx trope, but after *update* four episodes at least the plot is going somewhere promising. Thinking this will end either with a *chin rub-would watch a season 2* or *wet fart sound-what a letdown*
Your Friends & Neighbors season 2 caught up
I like that they made the new mark more than Coop probably bargained for. Continues to be a good nightcap dark comedy show.
Hacks: S5:Ep 1-3: Meh / Great
The show starts with a great premise, but has seemingly jumped (well, more "hopped over") the shark.
Quick synopsis: aged comedian and young(ish,) woke writer both grasping at the straws of modern relevance find themselves willfully entangled in a battle with the entertainment industry that would relegate them both to the sidelines if not the dust bin. Oh, and their characters couldn't be more diametrically opposed to one another, so while fighting the industry, they're tacitly fighting each other.
It's still good if you've been along for the journey and love the characters, but the show really is contriving its own existence at this point. I feel like a scripted Deborah Vance fan at this point; tirelessly faithful, though I know her best is behind her, and I defy you to convince me otherwise. 6/10 so far.
The show starts with a great premise, but has seemingly jumped (well, more "hopped over") the shark.
Quick synopsis: aged comedian and young(ish,) woke writer both grasping at the straws of modern relevance find themselves willfully entangled in a battle with the entertainment industry that would relegate them both to the sidelines if not the dust bin. Oh, and their characters couldn't be more diametrically opposed to one another, so while fighting the industry, they're tacitly fighting each other.
It's still good if you've been along for the journey and love the characters, but the show really is contriving its own existence at this point. I feel like a scripted Deborah Vance fan at this point; tirelessly faithful, though I know her best is behind her, and I defy you to convince me otherwise. 6/10 so far.
It's the last season so I forgive its current weaknesses in favor of savoring every moment of the best back-and-forth-giving-each-other-shit duo on TV in a long while.