The TV and Streaming thread Series 3

[Hurlshort]

I don't get the appeal of Mr. Robot at all. I watched the first season and found the main character completely unreliable and unlikeable.

[BruceVC]

5 hours ago, Skarpen said:

I made a terrible mistake of seeing the first episode of The Watch. And I need to put gasoline on my eyes.

Why, what is so bad about it? I have never watched it 

[Lexx]

2 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

Results of the r/television favorite shows survey.

Well done The Expanse. But Snowpiercer, Avenue 5 and Space Force are far better than Raised by Wolves. And let's not talk about Picard.
 

Some very questionable rankings there.

 

About Mr. Robot ... I thought the 1st season was ok. The 2nd season was already a bit meh... started the 3rd season but never finished it. For some reason this show just bores the hell out of me.

[kirottu]

Tuntematon Sotilas 

5 hour miniseries about Finnish infantry unit in WW2. I quite liked it. It wasn't as good as Band of Brothers, but then again what is. Apparently you could watch it in Netflix.

[Skarpen]

3 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Why, what is so bad about it? I have never watched it 

It's completely atrocious, an attempt to cash in on the name of late Terry Pratchett. Basically it's something you get when you take a giant dump on the source material made by people with no talent or taste.

[LadyCrimson]

Watched that History of Swear words or whatever it was, on Netflix with Nic Cage as the host etc.
The first few episodes were fun enough ... I became less and less interested with each episode, even tho they're shortish, and by the last one I turned it off.  Still, some chuckles were had so I'd call it successful enough.

Then I watched some documentary called .. Minimalist? I think? ... a couple guys talking about their journey from "stuff will make me happy so I have to make money to get stuff" to "less stuff/stress makes me happy."  Nothing one probably hasn't heard before (and they aren't extremists about it), but it did remind me I still had a lot of house clutter I still wanted to go through. So after a flurry, there's a moderate hill of "stuff" on the living room floor again. Thanks, show.  

[ShadySands]

Struggling to get through Cobra Kai season two. It's like one step forward then two steps back and sometimes karate.

Also watched The Movies That Made Us and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's my jam though and all movies that I enjoy. Didn't watch the Christmas version but will probably get around to watching the Elf one. Don't care about anything from Tim Burton.

Edited January 6, 2021 by ShadySands

[Hurlshort]

22 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

Struggling to get through Cobra Kai season two. It's like one step forward then two steps back and sometimes karate.

Also watched The Movies That Made Us and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's my jam though and all movies that I enjoy. Didn't watch the Christmas version but will probably get around to watching the Elf one. Don't care about anything from Tim Burton.

The fact they covered Home Alone and Die Hard means they've already covered the best Xmas movies.

[BruceVC]

2 hours ago, ShadySands said:

Struggling to get through Cobra Kai season two. It's like one step forward then two steps back and sometimes karate.

Also watched The Movies That Made Us and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's my jam though and all movies that I enjoy. Didn't watch the Christmas version but will probably get around to watching the Elf one. Don't care about anything from Tim Burton.

 I started watching season 3 and stopped halfway through episode 3....its just not entertaining anymore and I not sure exactly why 

[Lexx]

I watched the first two episodes. Feels like I already know where this is going ... Today I'll watch the new Expanse, so maybe I will continue with Cobra Kai tomorrow. We'll see...

Oh, I also started watching Inuyashiki, because I thought why not. So far quite interesting. Will see if this follows up like every other anime and gets boring later or if it will keep me entertained till the end.

[BruceVC]

5 minutes ago, Lexx said:

I watched the first two episodes. Feels like I already know where this is going ... Today I'll watch the new Expanse, so maybe I will continue with Cobra Kai tomorrow. We'll see...

Oh, I also started watching Inuyashiki, because I thought why not. So far quite interesting. Will see if this follows up like every other anime and gets boring later or if it will keep me entertained till the end.

The one main  reason I stopped watching Cobra Kai is that there are so many good things to watch I feel watching something mediocre is just not necessary 

[Lexx]

What's the other good things I can watch right now? Having to wait a week between all the Expanse drives me crazy. I need distractions.

Still rewatching Rick and Morty in the meantime. Honestly, it's still pretty good, even on a second go. Actually it might even be better now, because I notice more details.

[Gromnir]

finally watched the third season of true detective and season 1 of doom patrol.

every main character performance in true detective were great, and that includes stephen dorff.

(pausing for effect and self reflection. stephen dorff?)

even so, something were missing and am not sure what to identify as the problem. too much flash-forward, flash-middle and flash-back... and then flash mostly forward but not quite full forward? too much flashing? 

enjoyed the show overall, but nevertheless felt let down 'cause it just seemed as if so many great performances did not add up to a genuine great show. good show.

enjoyed doom patrol in spite of our low expectations. am thinking some of what guardians of the galaxy did right were captured with doom patrol. similar team-as-surrogate-family-drama, with tongue firm in cheek for a large % of season one.

also saw ww84.

...

a movie in need o' serious editing.

Spoiler

the fact that steve trevor and wonder woman didn't seem to care 'bout the person who were steve's meat puppet bothered us more than a little. also, in our mind, ww didn't actual give up her wish as after decades she were able to once again spend hours and days with the love of her life which in and of itself many would sacrifice everything to have happen. pretend as if she made a sacrifice when fact is she were still granted a gift many would literal die for.

...

an invisible and ultra-quiet british fighter/bomber, a plane which were in service at the time o' the movie events, were nevertheless at the smithsonian and fueled on a runway, made a trip from dc to egypt. magic answers anything we s'pose, but were nevertheless irksome... and almost as annoying as steve sudden being familiar with all the controls. when the last plane he flew were snoopy v. red baron era aircraft.

mostly, were just a messy movie which woulda' made hitchkock weep with all the unnecessary scenes and characters. somehow in spite o' the bloat, pivotal characters felt underdeveloped.

watched the whole thing, so weren't complete terrible. mostly terrible.

and again, supposed heroic characters like steve trevor and ww didn't give a second thought to the guy whose life steve were hijacking. wtf?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[BruceVC]

2 hours ago, Lexx said:

What's the other good things I can watch right now? Having to wait a week between all the Expanse drives me crazy. I need distractions.

Still rewatching Rick and Morty in the meantime. Honestly, it's still pretty good, even on a second go. Actually it might even be better now, because I notice more details.

What genres do you like, do you enjoy drama, sci-fi or supernatural  for example ?

[Lexx]

I take anything, as long as it doesn't look like a soap opera.

[BruceVC]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

I take anything, as long as it doesn't look like a soap opera.

Give Lilyhammer a try, its easy watching and entertaining ?

 

[Raithe]

Somehow I'm working my way back through Buffy the Vampire Slayer instead of watching anything fresh.

Still amused by most of the dialogue, and the delivery of it. Although I seem to be noticing the stunt doubles more during action sequences.

[Lexx]

I also rewatched some Buffy a few months ago. Honestly, it's still pretty good most of the time. Just the fighting scenes didn't age really well ...

[majestic]

Warning, unmarked Discovery spoilers ahead. Not that it matters, anyway. Everything plays out exactly as expected. No weird disembodied, floating Kelpian head Su'kal. But honestly, what was I thinking?

Anyway, that last epsiode was actually semi-interesting and somewhat suspenseful, if flat out mediocre across the board, with a lot of dumb in between. If it would have been trimmed of certain inanities and useless subplots one could call it good entertainment, at least, if this wasn't Star Trek. I mean, we've all talked about this at length, but this just once again shows how utterly dragged down the show is by being tethered to a CBS moneymaking scheme Star Trek.

Su'kal just turns out to be a regular Kelpien with dilithium fused into his genetic makeup. When he screams, he screams in subspace, which explains why the Burn happened at faster than light speeds, seemingly everywhere at once. He got so scared he screamed at just the right frequency to cause a subspace shockwave that made everything go boom. It's... I don't know. It's dumb as hell, but at least it was in service of a decent moment in the episode. Saru's interaction with Su'kal was actually good. Or it just looked good because everything else was so bad. But still, Abe Sapien has consistently tried to do his best with the material he's been given.

Oh, right, and because you can't have enoug dumb on a show with a lot of dumb already, after Adira reaches the hologram world Su'kal lives in, the computer scans her and creates a holographic projection of Gray that everyone can see and interact with (and of course it is only Gray and not every prior host because uhm we want Gray for a weird family moment with Culber).

Meanwhile, back on Discovry it turns out the Sphere Data is just like the Borg in Picard. Completely useless beyond showing a movie and saving Lt. Is-Conviniently-An-Apnoea-Diver by pulling her out of a disconnected warp nacelle on time. In Monkey Island being able to hold your breath for 10 minutes was a laugh and a way to get killed in a fun joke from the creators of the game. Here it's a last second addition to Owosekun to explain why she can still run around while everyone else has so little oxygen left that they're dropping unconscious.

Getting the effects of carbon dioxide intoxication wrong is a staple in sci-fi, even other Trek, so I'm not really going to hold that against them, but it's still a ridiculous contrivance and... well, and there's a thing called the mammalian diving reflex and a period of concentrated breathing prior to submerging involved in extended free diving, so let's just say nope. That won't work on a space ship. Why bother, though? They can't send the Sphere-Data robot there because it would be harmed by the nacelle's electromagnetic output, but it goes there anyway to pull Owosekun out. Might as well have the Sphere Data say something like "I've learned this from Michael" and lock them in somewhere and go off alone.

Tilly and her crew is completely useless because they're just stopped dead by Angry Green Larissa who uses the occasion to lock them somewhere and  turn off life support so they die a slow death. Just to hammer home how terrible she really is. She also tortures Book and is all angry and rage so the scientist guy sees how evil she is. Which leads to absolutely nothing. Nothing comes from this. Scientist guy has no payoff. He just gets choked out, falls unconsciouss and is up and about later where the writers finally decide to reveal his only raison d'être - to tell everyone that Book can use the spore drive because he can simply ask the Tardigrade to navigate for him.

Then there's an extended action sequence where Michael tries to go to the computer core of Discovery to restore Windows from a backup. Which involves being outside of Discovery's turbolift system for a while. I have no words for this sequence that would properly describe it. Discovery's turbolift system was apparently changed after everyone found it weird the first time it was shown, and it now ends up being this weird interdimensional space that looks like the exterior of the cube in Cube crossed with The Matrix, only blue instead of green. And it stretches on into infinity. Or... no idea. Really. Just go look at it. It's baffling. It's like traveling down V'Ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

She eventually leaves Interdimensional Matrix Cube after it has docked with the computer core access tunnel which just hangs there (there's literally NOTHING around it for a kilometer or two) she finds that Larissa is there already, they have an extended fighting scene and Larissa wins by pushing Michael into a wall of programmable matter that Michael then simply leaves while gunning her down.

No, really. I'm serious. I...

Oh, right. She tells Book that she has "an idea" and then does this:

And yes, that's Michael doing an Anakin Sykwalker jumping after the turbo lift cabin. It just drops down, no rails this time. You can also kind of gauge the extent of everything around it. And that's just the beginning of the scene. Holy hell...

Then she causes a warp core explosion to make the Emerald Chain flagship go boom, has Book jump back to Planet Dilithium to rescue everyone and gets promoted to captain.

Edited January 9, 2021 by majestic

[ShadySands]

Queen's Gambit was a lot more interesting than I expected it to be.

[Bartimaeus]

10 hours ago, ShadySands said:

Queen's Gambit was a lot more interesting than I expected it to be.

I'm not sure how I feel about the subject material (I like Chess well enough, but I don't care about it at all in a competitive sense), but Anya Taylor-Joy has been great in everything I've seen her in, and everybody loves the show, so it's difficult not to be interested.

[BruceVC]

16 hours ago, ShadySands said:

Queen's Gambit was a lot more interesting than I expected it to be.

It is excellent, one of the best series I have seen recently. Why did you think you wouldn't enjoy it....do you feel threatened by movies where women play chess, let me know if you want borrow my copy of Volume 3 Mens Feminism  : How men should learn to watch women chess movies 

 

[ShadySands]

7 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

Why did you think you wouldn't enjoy it

Little interest in the subject matter and setting.

[BruceVC]

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I'm not sure how I feel about the subject material (I like Chess well enough, but I don't care about it at all in a competitive sense), but Anya Taylor-Joy has been great in everything I've seen her in, and everybody loves the show, so it's difficult not to be interested.

Barti !!! This a very serious and well respected forum and you suggesting sexual innuendo  ....I am disappointed but I have to say she really is a great actress and beautiful. I thought initially it was a true story 

[BruceVC]

2 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

Little interest in the subject matter and setting.

Fair enough, life can sometimes surprise us because the name puts me off