The TV and Streaming thread Series 3

[Hurlshort]

Finished Jack Reacher Season 2. I had started it last year and stalled out. He still plays soldier too much for a Jack Ryan story. But I am glas I finished and I hope they get back to more analyst type stuff in season 3. 

[majestic]

If someone is wondering where the weekly rip of Discovery is, well... I watched the current episode and it was such a nothingburger it's not even worth mentioning. Burnham decides to violate a direct order and now she's no longer first officer.

Again. Because it's not like this is essentially the way this show started. Right? Except this time she's in luck and with the Federation being unable to be picky she's not going to prison (whether or not she actually started a war this time remains to be seen...).

edit:

Oh, right, the reason she  violated the order was because the burn might not have been instant but originated somewhere. What a suspenseful turn of events there.

Edited November 22, 2020 by majestic

[Sarex]

It's getting better and better in that it's getting worse and worse.

[Gfted1]

Run on Hulu.

Its "alright" and theres a twist ending literally in the last sentence of the film.

[LadyCrimson]

On 11/18/2020 at 8:44 PM, LadyCrimson said:

Started watching "The Devil Punisher" via Netflix. 
[ ...  ]
But I like it enough to put up with FFWDing thru any boring bits. 

I watched episode 5 and I'm starting to change my mind a little.  There's still aspects/parts I like but they're shorter and shorter as the fairly nonsensical romance aspects kick in.  It's nonsensical because so far they haven't bothered to explain at all why the male lead (he's a "god" basically) loves/wants to protect the female lead so much in the first place (she has amnesia - arrgh - due to an evil spirit and is living as a human) so I really couldn't care about any love triangles.  Anyhoo, I'm guessing later episodes the action/plot will come back but in the meantime, I think I FFWD'd thru 70% of the last episode. 

Edited November 23, 2020 by LadyCrimson

[Malcador]

22 hours ago, Hurlshot said:

Finished Jack Reacher Season 2. I had started it last year and stalled out. He still plays soldier too much for a Jack Ryan story. But I am glas I finished and I hope they get back to more analyst type stuff in season 3. 

Well..makes sense, it's a Jack Reacher story, no ?

[Zoraptor]

21 hours ago, majestic said:

Again. Because it's not like this is essentially the way this show started. Right? Except this time she's in luck and with the Federation being unable to be picky she's not going to prison (whether or not she actually started a war this time remains to be seen...).

To be fair to them, they did actually have Georgiu point out that they were mirroring previous events. If there's one thing about the current season I do appreciate it's that they have poked some mild fun at their more stupid plot points. It would, of course, be better if they avoided the silly plot points entirely rather than pointing them out to laugh at, but baby steps.

I am enjoying this season rather more than the previous two, to this point at least. It's not what I would exactly call good TV, plots are still rather contrived but at least they hasn't brutally assaulted and murdered suspension of disbelief yet. Last episode would have made a perfectly decent mid range TNG episode, and I suspect may well have been a mid range TNG episode with the serial filed off. I'm very much less than convinced about Trill Wesley (last thing the show needs is a literal teenage genius, all the other geniuses on the crew already have the emotional development of teenagers), the main season plot is just kind of there and anything approaching an action sequence would be done better by an amateur student film plus those bad guys couldn't hit a barn door if they were locked in a barn door warehouse, and their guns are somehow less effective than current ones let alone phasers, but at least I seem to have become immune to the sub Whedon banter and annoying stereotypes.

I may be scraping the barrel of criticism a bit here, but Federation Leader Man reminds me far too much visually of Hugh Laurie's Captain in Avenue 5.

[Hurlshort]

2 hours ago, Malcador said:

Well..makes sense, it's a Jack Reacher story, no ?

Agh! Got my modern day military thriller characters all mixed up.

[Lexx]

Amazon has announced that The Expanse season 6 will happen .... and it will be the last season. Now don't get me wrong, I'm really glad we have the chance to experience 3 more seasons after it had been canned by SyFy originally ... but it still sucks hard. Bezos has so much money, he could pay for 10 seasons and his bank account wouldn't even notice it. What a crap.

/Edit: And Cas Anvar won't be in season 6 anymore. I guess this comes as no surprise. Kinda hope they will just kill him off-screen and don't try to recast the role for a single season... that would suck hard.

Edited November 24, 2020 by Lexx

[LadyCrimson]

Pretty soon, at the rate they're going, Netflix is going to cost me more than HBO+Starz ($24 thru Prime) combined.   I know they offer more variety than a "movie channel" but If they start getting towards $50 five or so years from now, I may finally draw a line in the sand.     I do use them the most however, and I like the 4k/multiple user plan.  Edit: also, Netflix's player is still the best, imo.  Prime video's player still rather sucks.

Edited November 25, 2020 by LadyCrimson

[algroth]

This is on point, really. A perfect outline of a lot of the issues with DC and the superhero genre in general, as well as a lot of the hardcore fanbase.

Edited November 25, 2020 by algroth

[Raithe]

James Hong to Be Inducted Into Asian Hall of Fame (spectrumnews1.com)

[Raithe]

And in memory of...

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Finally got around to season 5 of Peaky Blinders. Overall it's well executed but it's too much sequel bait in my opinion, while other seasons had cliffhangers this one had nothing but loose ends sets up too obvious a route for the next season. Sam Claflin leans hard into playing Mosley as an arrogant rich guy that works a lot better than most (wannabe) dictator portrayls.

[majestic]

On 11/25/2020 at 11:50 PM, Raithe said:

And in memory of...

 

Just to post something contrarian or potentially unliked... that tweet isn't entirely right in my opinion but why would JMS be objective here, I'm not even sure I am.

The actors were fine in their roles, but except for Andreas Katsulas, who conveyed such a tremendous range of emotion through a face covered far and large by a prosthetic, and the endearing Stephen Furst I wouldn't actually call them at all remarkable. I liked Andrea Thompson for what little she was on the show, but even there I'm not certain I'm mixing my enjoyment of the character with her ability as an actress (plus she's leaps and bounds ahead of Patricia Tallmann, so that contrast once Talia Winters was writen out really hits you hard).

Or in other words, Babylon 5 had remarkable casting and a set of remarkable characters, not a remarkable cast per se. I mean, just in which world would anyone argue that Bruce Boxleitner or Mira Furlan are great actors? One of the episodes just before the end of the Vorlon-Shadow conflict even had a scene where a guest starring Bryon Cranston made it painfully obvious just how terrible the two sometimes (always?) were.

It worked on the strength of the writing and plotting of the show in the first four seasons. I offer the the rushed ending of season four and the fiasco of season five as proof.

Oh, and this is by no means a dig on Babylon 5. I loved the show. I find I enjoy it less with every time I rewatch it, so I stopped doing that, but this really is because once the mystery's stripped away and the pretty painting peels off there's some rust shining through. Was still a remarkable show and a boon to all of television, paving the way for serialized sci-fi drama.

[Raithe]

56 minutes ago, majestic said:

It worked on the strength of the writing and plotting of the show in the first four seasons. I offer the the rushed ending of season four and the fiasco of season five as proof.

To be fair, the rushed pacing wasn't the fault of the script per se. They basically got told that they would get a fifth season, so they tried to cram the Shadow/Vorlon war and freeing Earth into one season, when the initial idea was for the return to Earth to be season 5. 

Only after shooting most of it, and shooting the final episode (Sleeping in Light), did they get told they did have a 5th season, and then basically stretched out a few loose threads. They wrote and shot a new "end of season 4 episode", wrote up that whole "first year of the alliance" with the threads they had for season 5, and then put Sleeping in Light on the end there.

[kirottu]

Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano was epic in the latest episode of Mandalorian.

[Gfted1]

I thought her face looked familiar but I didnt know it was Rosario Dawson. Cool!

Pretty soon hes going to be completely kitted out with Beskar steel.

[Lexx]

Latest Mandalorian episode was quite cool.

Generally feels like Mandalorian is probably the best thing happening to Star Wars in years. Even I like to watch it and usually I'm not big into Star Wars stuff, because it's always such a cliche and cheesy.

Edited November 28, 2020 by Lexx

[InsaneCommander]

On 11/24/2020 at 5:31 PM, Lexx said:

Amazon has announced that The Expanse season 6 will happen .... and it will be the last season. Now don't get me wrong, I'm really glad we have the chance to experience 3 more seasons after it had been canned by SyFy originally ... but it still sucks hard. Bezos has so much money, he could pay for 10 seasons and his bank account wouldn't even notice it. What a crap.

/Edit: And Cas Anvar won't be in season 6 anymore. I guess this comes as no surprise. Kinda hope they will just kill him off-screen and don't try to recast the role for a single season... that would suck hard.

At least they will conclude the second part (until book 6). But damn it, I really wanted to see the ships from book 7.

[majestic]

Ensign Tilly is going to be the new First Officer on Discovery.

's all I have to say about this one.

Oh, wait, I guess it's sort of confirmed that Discovery is playing in the same timeline as Star Trek Picard. Because the Romulan Qapla' Oonah thingie is back. Or still there, more like.

[Sarex]

20 hours ago, majestic said:

Ensign Tilly is going to be the new First Officer on Discovery.

's all I have to say about this one.

Oh, wait, I guess it's sort of confirmed that Discovery is playing in the same timeline as Star Trek Picard. Because the Romulan Qapla' Oonah thingie is back. Or still there, more like.

I don't know why, but the acting was really bad to me in this episode, especially from Michael.

Never did finish Picard, gonna have to speed through that one.

[Raithe]

 

On 11/28/2020 at 3:43 PM, kirottu said:

Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano was epic in the latest episode of Mandalorian.

What is weirdly entertaining is seeing the various discussions on the length of Ahsoka's lekku in live-action as opposed to animation that promptly started springing up online after the episode.

[Zoraptor]

5 hours ago, Sarex said:

I don't know why, but the acting was really bad to me in this episode, especially from Michael.

I don't think it's the actors. The fundamental problem there is that Michael is intrinsically not a very sympathetic character, but you're constantly being asked to sympathise with her. It doesn't matter if Martin-Green can act or not when she has to try and make you feel something for Michael that the plot has never really established.

The acting in general always seems bad when they try to do an 'inspiring' episode with lots of 'inspiring' scenes, and this episode had both in spades. You could have had the entire acting talent of the Royal Shakespeare Company- alive and dead- available and acting in that 'Yes you can do it, Ensign Tilly!' scene and it would still have been pure cringe because there's only so much that can be done with what is scripted and how it's directed.

[majestic]

Well at least Proto-Wesley is Discovery's first officer now, just to remind us that Neo-Wesley isn't going to out-wesley Proto-Wesley too soon.

Or, in other words, just like with everything else they did on the show so far they did not think this through.

At some point in time they came up with the idea of having Michael* go against orders again - because she's always right, of course, and always the best choice to go on the away mission regardless of the mission profile - so they needed her to be replaced as first officer only to notice that they actually don't have anyone that could become first officer on the existing crew roster.

So instead of assigning a suitable candidate from Starfleet (remember the time when Riker made Commander Shelby his first officer because promotion from within the ranks of the Enterprise was unsuitable at the time?) they give it to the only other semi-developed character they have that can be taken out of her current position without being missed too much. Stamets can't, still being the only one that can use the Spore drive. Georgiou obviously can't (and wouldn't, at any rate), the only thing Detmer is outside of being there is the pilot, then there's the black guy on the bridge where I don't even know what his post is (in any other show he'd be the token black guy) and... oh, wait, perpetually angry engineering lady and Neo-Wesley Six with her Head-Baltar, both of which are absolute nutjobs that should be in the loony bin, not on a starship.

The only other character they could have used as replacement first officer was written out a few episodes ago.

*Also for those that didn't watch, in this episode Michael was assigned to a diplomatic mission to Vulcan Ni'Var where she challenged the Science Academy to Kali-Ma-Shakti-de, the Vulcan science version of a dance battle. She single-handedly out-sciences everyone present and her sweet dance moves impress the president of Ni'Var so much that they share secret research data with her that is considered a, uhm, societal taboo on Ni'Var.

Because in the one hundred and twenty odd years since The Burn, nobody on Ni'Var managed to see what Michael did in a couple of Discovery episodes - that the Vulcans did indeed not cause the burn.

Oh, yeah, that science experiment that the Vulcans thought caused the burn was to find an alternative to dilithium based warp drives. Okay so I complained about that dilithium isn't used for warp drives per se already, so let's not repeat that. However, so far every longer running Star Trek show has come up with numerous warp drive alternatives. Voyager alone brought scientific data on half a dozen projects home, of which the Quantum Slipstream was apparently adapted anyway, which makes no sense at all. Other things? Oh yes, the coaxial warp drive, Borg transwarp technology (how about that for a project, Seven of Nine, instead of becoming a cynical lone ranger?), TNG's warp catapults or soliton wave, Lt. Paris' infinity warp evolution chamber and these weird little subspace vortices from Voyager.

A thousand years of progress and the Federation can't solve peak oil? Did the Koch brothers fund political campaigns against dilithium alternatives?

Edited November 30, 2020 by majestic