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

[Thaluikhain]

Ok, so I've sorta watched season 2...in that my DVDs were bought second hand and not in the best condition, and a lot of the eps wouldn't play. And there was still some filler, but when they were doing their political stuff it was quite good...their deep and meaningful philosophising not so much though.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Ok, so I've sorta watched season 2...in that my DVDs were bought second hand and not in the best condition, and a lot of the eps wouldn't play. And there was still some filler, but when they were doing their political stuff it was quite good...their deep and meaningful philosophising not so much though.

B5 regularly appears on Tubi and other streaming services. Unfortunately it doesn't seem consistent or persistent, but you should not have to put up with broken discs.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Cape Fear - Phantom Sensations

Kind of a creepy ending. The problem with episodic storytelling here is there’s very little in way of tension or suspense so far, and the pacing suffers because they spend so much time on a character study. So many shows are like this now, where you can just tell the writers were sitting around wondering how to fill ten episodes, and it just gets boring.

So far this Bardem’s Max Cody is a far cry from his Anton Sigur, but one can only hope he gets more to work with soon.

 

[thebobmaster]

Cape Fear - Phantom Sensations

Kind of a creepy ending. The problem with episodic storytelling here is there’s very little in way of tension or suspense so far, and the pacing suffers because they spend so much time on a character study. So many shows are like this now, where you can just tell the writers were sitting around wondering how to fill ten episodes, and it just gets boring.

So far this Bardem’s Max Cody is a far cry from his Anton Sigur, but one can only hope he gets more to work with soon.

Chigurh. He's not a member of an Icelandic rock band.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Chigurh. He's not a member of an Icelandic rock band.

lol well that didn’t come out right.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Widow’s Bay season one finale

It released early so I watched last night. A decent conclusion to a really cool show. Basically felt like an ode to its quirky sense of humor with a nice twist at the end. Then it kinda felt like there was little resolution to just what the hell it all meant, but maybe that was the point leading into perhaps another season.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Spider Noir
7/10

Nicolas Cage is Spiderman who is also a private investigator in the 1930s, but it's all just an excuse to do film noir pastiche/satire. I am a fan of Cage which was enough for me to watch it, and this show is getting a lot of positive reception.
My reaction will be that of a cinema snob and a lover of actual noir. I have watched Double Indemnity repeatedly as comfort food the way more gen-Xers and millennials watched the Matrix.

It's... fine? Real fluff, just surface visual candy. It goes through all the noir tropes (down on his luck PI, femme fatale, controlling gangster villain, plucky secondary characters) in a perfunctory way. Since those tropes are inherently fun, it makes it more appealing at first than some other genre's repeated tropes but it all comes off like a first year improv kid's casual attempt to jokingly pull them off. Or like when Bugs Bunny would do Edward G Robinson impressions (I mean there is literally a scene in this show where Cage is watching a James Cagney movie and mouthing along to all his lines).

It's the definition of a show where my summary is: "well, it's only 8 episodes, why not?"

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Or like when Bugs Bunny would do Edward G Robinson impressions (I mean there is literally a scene in this show where Cage is watching a James Cagney movie and mouthing along to all his lines).

Hey, there's an actual plot reason for this!!!

 

[Gordon_4]

Spider Noir
7/10

Nicolas Cage is Spiderman who is also a private investigator in the 1930s, but it's all just an excuse to do film noir pastiche/satire. I am a fan of Cage which was enough for me to watch it, and this show is getting a lot of positive reception.
My reaction will be that of a cinema snob and a lover of actual noir. I have watched Double Indemnity repeatedly as comfort food the way more gen-Xers and millennials watched the Matrix.

It's... fine? Real fluff, just surface visual candy. It goes through all the noir tropes (down on his luck PI, femme fatale, controlling gangster villain, plucky secondary characters) in a perfunctory way. Since those tropes are inherently fun, it makes it more appealing at first than some other genre's repeated tropes but it all comes off like a first year improv kid's casual attempt to jokingly pull them off. Or like when Bugs Bunny would do Edward G Robinson impressions (I mean there is literally a scene in this show where Cage is watching a James Cagney movie and mouthing along to all his lines).

It's the definition of a show where my summary is: "well, it's only 8 episodes, why not?"

Gods, I think the closest I've ever gotten to noir is watching episodes of Peter Gunn.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Dutton Ranch - Den of Sin

The episode that pivots the plot into “enough bullshit” territory. If you thought Jai Courtney played a character that was easy to hate in Divergent, you haven’t seen him here as Rob-Will. He clearly needs his ticket punched, but can’t help but feel deep down he’s ultimately a victim of an even worse father, whom we learn the fate of at the end. I like this show more than what it’s spun off of, as it keeps the focus on a few central characters and doesn’t feel so much like a sprawling, bloated TV drama.


Cape Fear - Pierced

Besides humdrum writing, the main problem with the show is it doesn’t give much of a reason to love or hate any of the characters. Maybe one is approaching that level, but not who you’d think. It needs to make the viewer regret getting too comfortable with the villain pretty soon, unless it plans on turning them into an unlikely hero of some sort.

 

[thebobmaster]

Just finished Season 1 of Batman Beyond. Yeah, quite liked that one. They did a surprisingly good job setting up Terry's rogue gallery in a way where you can clearly tell the inspiration for the various rogues, but at the same time they had enough of their own identity (with special kudos to Inque on the "clearly Clayface inspired, but also definitely not just female Clayface"). I do feel that, now that I know he isn't in any future episodes, Blight was a big missed opportunity to have a true arch-villain for Terry Batman on the level of The Joker, which was a bit of an odd storytelling choice, but overall, thought it was a pretty fun time, without any episodes I can point to that I flat-out didn't like, and only one (Golem) that I thought was mediocre. Any time I can watch a 13 episode season of a show and only have one below average episode, I'll call it a win.

 

[Gordon_4]

Just finished Season 1 of Batman Beyond. Yeah, quite liked that one. They did a surprisingly good job setting up Terry's rogue gallery in a way where you can clearly tell the inspiration for the various rogues, but at the same time they had enough of their own identity (with special kudos to Inque on the "clearly Clayface inspired, but also definitely not just female Clayface"). I do feel that, now that I know he isn't in any future episodes, Blight was a big missed opportunity to have a true arch-villain for Terry Batman on the level of The Joker, which was a bit of an odd storytelling choice, but overall, thought it was a pretty fun time, without any episodes I can point to that I flat-out didn't like, and only one (Golem) that I thought was mediocre. Any time I can watch a 13 episode season of a show and only have one below average episode, I'll call it a win.

I never warmed to Batman Beyond for entirely petty and stupid reasons but I feel that Terry has a lot of what makes him cool and interesting utterly cut out from under him thanks to an episode of Justice League.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

House of the Dragon - Salt and Sea, Fire and Blood

What an opener. I checked IMDb after watching and while it’s still early, highest rated episode of the show. Culminating with the Battle of the Gullet, it and pretty much everything preceding seem to flip the chessboard on anything that appeared at all certain. An ominous theme was strung throughout to make it perfectly clear what this season will be about. Granted there were some typical quiet moments of intrigue and posturing, along with a pretty funny bit of bonding between Rhaena and Sheepstealer, but the plate was mostly meat and potatoes.

 

[Bartholen]

Legend of Vox Machina season 4.

This went by like a breeze. This series is so consistent and so seamless that it can be real easy to forget just how much work goes into it. Basically every episode has some kind of new location, setpiece, design or other interesting feature. The animation and voice acting remain top notch. It's probably the pacing that's this time the issue. The show almost feels overstuffed with how many locations and plot points it's jamming in there. It's not bad, but it feels like a lot more could have been done with these elements, but instead we rush right on to the next one. They also do a "friendly character turns out to be evil" twist a couple of times and a bit too blatantly.

It goes all in on the "high-level DnD" campaign right from the start: there's a fight against a Kraken already in episode 2. Not that this show was ever particularly grounded, but now it has gone full on anime spectacle: characters are flying, transforming, waving magical weapons and blasting all kinds of magic around. It's fun, and I really had to remind myself of just how special this kind of thing is.

The changes to the source material continue to be quite substantial. Taryon was originally just an excuse for Sam Riegel to fuck with the party and have a bit of fun, here he's been woven into the plot quite centrally. Pike, who originally was just along for the ride at this point in the story, has been given probably the biggest character conflict this season.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Bait, Amazon Prime, 8/10

The latest in the genre I think of as semi-autofictional dramedy. Subgenre: middle-eastern. Think Ramy or Mo.
Actor Riz Ahmed poured his thoughts and experience as a British actor of Pakistani heritage into this 8 episode miniseries. This leans a lot more into the heightened fiction and surreal aspects of that kind of thing. He plays an actor that auditions for the role of James Bond, gets social media scrutiny for it, and deals with his self-loathing, relationships with his family.

As with shows like The Studio made my actors and about the biz, there's all kind of long takes and kinetic editing navel-gazing drama. The show mostly works in large part because, well, I like that stuff in small doses and 8 half-hour eps is right for that. The colorful cast of characters especially his cousin and ex gf are a key part of that.

Also Patrick Stewart voices a pig head representing the character's self-doubt.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Cape Fear - Faith

Finally the few plot points being toyed with are showing some fruitions and consequences. I hope they keep this confined to one or two seasons though; perhaps with the first revealing Max’s true intentions and the second some kind of resolution to it all. It’s still only a slightly above average show though, given the pacing and inconsistency, with little reason to stake much interest into any of these characters.


Which is not the case with…

House of the Dragon - Queen’s Landing

We see a very familiar setting, and a choice(s) is (are) made which will turn the clockwork for the rest of the season and beyond. More swords than dragons, but no less impactful by any means.