The TV and Streaming Thread: Where is Ricky Gervais when you need him???

[Zoraptor]

The full draft script for WoT Ep1 has leaked, though a decent amount of it had already leaked over the last few months.

[the_dog_days]

The Wheel of Erotica

[Amentep]

 

[Zoraptor]

41 minutes ago, the_dog_days said:

The Wheel of Erotica

Honestly, if they were going to go there I kind of wish they'd just gone at it full Spartacus style and just made everything ludicrously over the top and stylised.

Apparently a lot of it was actually filmed too, and got cut for testing badly. The Gitara prologue definitely was and later got replaced with the obviously cobbled together prologue we got. Looks like it simply was not a very well run project even before covid.

[Gorth]

Cutting off episodes from previous thread to sell at new, improved (and inflated) prices in a new thread!

 

Old thread:

 

[Hurlshort]

I watched Reno 911!: Hunt for QAnon. It was clearly what you end up with when you quarantine an improv group for a year. I doubt there was a script. Instead they just adlibbed around certain set pieces. But I enjoyed the heck out of it and it was fun to see the Reno 911! crew once again. It was much more like the show than the Miami movie. Take that for what you will.

[Zoraptor]

Expanse s6e05

Not a book reader so no book spoilers.
 

Spoiler

Again, there's a lot of set up for the finale here. It feels like most of the season has been set up for the last episode to be honest, not that that is necessarily a bad thing. There's an awful lot to get finished up though, even allowing for some obvious hooks (ie the Laconia stuff) being left deliberately dangling. If there is one criticism of the more linear feeling to the season that has been consistent it's that as a consequence things have tended to be pretty obvious/ unsubtle. The little kid taking her brother to be rezzed, for example, and...

Martians vs the rail guns. I mean, sure they were surprised by them but I'm not really sure why. Did they think Marco had been sitting on his hands for 6+ months? In some ways completely in character to take the belters lightly of course, but they also know absolutely at this point that they've been getting Martian tech and ships. I've generally liked this season so I'll chalk it up to not having enough time/ money to be subtle about it; but what you want ideally is to make the belters look smart. Instead it made the Martians look like chumps in a way that, say, the Donnager losing in similar circumstances did not.

For the rest it was all good, though not approaching great. Kind of ironic but I simultaneously felt like bits benefited from having a tight timing schedule- nice to see Avasarala and Drummer actually meet and refreshing just having them hash out a temporary solution quickly and without much drama- but OTOH some of the Roci crew interactions seemed a bit too bare bones. Also not sure why they bothered with the xray bonus this week if they weren't going to have a semi significant cameo like Miller or the lady cop from S1 or some of the Cant's bridge crew from Ep1 (Jonathan Banks' 1st officer would have been nice, and appropriate for being in a bar, but probably unrealistic).

Presumably, Filip betrays Marco next week in some way which would be appropriate thematically. I'm going to say that it won't be in any sort of 'proper' redemptive manner though and is far more likely to just be stabbing Marco in the back when Marco decides to do something suitably apocalyptic like set off a nuke inside the ring space because he's losing, and then maybe buggering off through a random gate or similar.

It's funny though- and I think I've said something similar before- but while I'd regard both Marco and Filip as well written and acted characters they've also been the weakest part of the past two seasons because Marco is not an engaging enough antagonist. He's just too obviously not someone who has any interest in anything other than himself and breaking stuff. End of the day you just want space Baghdadi to die as soon as possible when ideally you should feel a bit of regret about him going as I did with Errinwright or Mao.

 

[Lexx]

The martians are still thinking of themselves as superior and Marco just being a nuisance. They constantly highly underestimate him and pay the price for that.

Personally I already now think this season needs 2 more episodes. Even though it feels well made, everything is going so fast. Blink and you miss it. Really wish e6 would be 2 hours long at least, but that ain't gonna happen... Who knows, maybe once the final aired, they are going to announce a new show in the setting?

In any case, next weekend I'm going to binge through the full season again in one go.

Edited January 8, 2022 by Lexx

[Zoraptor]

Spoiler

The only real issue I have with the Martian attack is their prior knowledge that Inaros had renegade Martians providing him with tech. He'd already got cutting edge/ critical tech like stealth from them as well as ships, why not railguns too? It's in their interests to have the gates controlled by friendlies rather than their vengeful former compatriots or Earth. So they aren't just underestimating Marco, they're underestimating their (formerly) fellow Martians as well- and they know that the defectors included an Admiral as well as a bunch of science and tech specialists. It's a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, but also relatively easy to fix if you had them acknowledge there were potential threats instead of Light Brigading it and getting punked in 10 seconds.

I'm not sure I 100% agree on needing the two extra episodes, though it does feel very bare bones. It's kind of odd to say, but the shorter Amazon seasons felt like they had a lot more filler than the longer SyFy original 3. Judging by the TV show the first 3 seasons covered the more intrinsically 'epic' elements of the story than S4 so it feeling a bit off from the previous seasons is understandable, but as I said when watching it S5 had bad structural issues despite the return to a more 'epic' take on things and had far too much time dedicated to Naomi's family dramas. If they'd had two fewer episodes there the season would have had to be tighter and they'd have had to focus more on the essentials. In an extended S6 I could see them, say, having Drummer and Avasarala spend half an hour arguing about historical issues instead of the 2 minutes they did as shown, and in the end they'd still reach the same end point of setting aside their differences for the current crisis. OTOH, it really does need some filling out of the peripherals, they've done an admirable job given the short time frame but as above it feels bare bones and at times like that Martian attack there's an issue that a little extra time could have easily fixed.

Dunno, if we hadn't had S5 I would have been on the extra time needed bandwagon tooting the horn and waving a flag. It's certainly not a Wheel of Time type situation though where I'd be confident that extra time would just result in a longer bad product.

[Amentep]

Trying to catchup with TNG episodes I watched:

PHANTASMS - Data has weird dreams, Troi is a poor counselor, no one thinks about the possibility of an external reason for the dreams.  A bit rubbish

DARK PAGE - Luxwana goes into a coma, Troi has to decipher weird images and discover her "dark secret" to save her.  Silly and a bit more rubbish than the last one. The best parts are the dealing with a culture struggling with a verbal language.

ATTACHED - great A story of Picard and Crusher trying to escape imprisonment while psychically linked by a device intended to reveal their secrets to their captors.  To bad the B story can be summed up "paranoid people are so paranoid Riker shouts at them a lot".  Yet another example where the insistence of the A/B plot structure detracts from the episode by saddling a good story with an alternating not-so-good one.

Also watched the last episode of the first season of Lower Decks - not a bad ending for the series.  I think the best episodes were in the beginning and it was a bit of a struggle to make Mariner sympathetic the entire time (she comes off really badly in the episode that parodies the Trek movies).

[LadyCrimson]

Finished that ballet k-drama Navillera. 

Towards the end a very ... predictable? cliche? ... health plot point came up and then there were a couple episodes that dealt with that which kinda made me snore a little. It wasn't bad, just too predictable. At least there was no truck o' doom. The leads/some of the supports (male and female, loved the old mans wife and granddaughter chr.) were mostly why I kept watching at that point. The very end was ok but then was ruined by a ridiculous final parting shot bit. At least it was 12 episodes vs. the more common 16. That all said I was still mostly entertained with it, in that slow and "life affirming" sort of way.

Hmm...what to get/take off my watchlist next...

Edited January 10, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[Lexx]

Damn, the latest season of Archer is probably the best in years. Some real fun episodes, with nice character progressions.

[BruceVC]

Im currently watching the following exciting new  series

 

Season 5 of Animal Kingdom: Gripping crime drama about an antihero family who only survive through criminality and wrong doing :  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Kingdom_(TV_series) 

Season 4 of The Sinner : A murder mystery with the same main cop protagonist  who deals with bizarre and unusual  murders and more importantly the motives of why people murder various people in the series :  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sinner_(TV_series)

Dam : A South African drama\horror around a women who returns to SA for her fathers strange " suicide " funeral. Its got some hotties in it but its also not bad from an overall entertainment factor and I like to support worthwhile SA series because there aren't  many : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13635918/

Edited January 13, 2022 by BruceVC

[Raithe]

Not a huge Harry Potter fan but I caught the 20th Anniversary Return to Hogwarts out of curiosity.  Strangely emotional, the various people discussing their memories and moments, the interactions that built up over 10 years of shooting the movies.

[uuuhhii]

expected peacemaker to be fun

didn't expect it to be this entertaining

hope later episode maintain the quality

[uuuhhii]

expanse s06

doesn't feel painfully slow and aimless as the last two season

the series are near the end according to book readers

hope the show get a proper end too

[Zoraptor]

Expanse S6e6
 

Spoiler

Lol. And I'm very tempted to leave it at that. That was the sort of episode I'd 'write' as satire and then be immensely amused at my own cleverness- and I guess if I'd be immensely amused at my own cleverness I have to be amused at the writers' cleverness or admit I'm a massive hypocrite.

Main culprit of course being Inaros getting eaten by Fire Elementals just as the Rocinante's Heroic Last Stand was about to go down. Theoretically underwhelming, yet also weirdly appropriate; much like Inaros himself really. I should probably also hate things like Bobbie waiting for (almost) everyone else to die* before just BDZing the rail guns when she could have done it straight away and kept them alive. Not really much suspense, since the chances of her or Amos dying were minimal. The only crew who had a realistic chance of dying was Clarissa, but that's because she's also the one you care about least. The ending with the Transport Union head was contrived, but that isn't the worst sin in the world.** So was Filip's survival, though that at least I saw coming from miles and that it wasn't going to be a classic 'happy' ending.

Also, I literally thought to myself how stupid it was having Avasarala on the front lines a second before random crew member brought up exactly the same point. Love it when that happens.

On the more negative front, while that must have been a very expensive episode with lots of CGI it looked cheap, and at times really cheap. I think I've said it before, but it's odd how the Amazon seasons ended up looking so much cheaper than the ones that were on fricking SyFy and had 3(+) more episodes for the budget to be spent on.

*yes, very unfortunate for space Marines, um, Hudson, Vasquez, Drake, Apone, Hicks, Wiesbacki, Ripley and friends. RIP. OK, technically Ripley and Hicks survived the battle, but we all know how that's going to end.

**And it was certainly in character.

 

[Raithe]

Quantum Leap Sequel Series In The Works, Wants To Change History For The Better, Etc. (slashfilm.com)

Call Ziggy, because we're going time-traveling. According to The Hollywood Reporter, NBC has greenlit the pilot for a sequel to the 1989 series, which starred Scott Bakula as Dr. Sam Beckett, who was destined to "leap" through time (and bodies) forever after an experiment gone wrong, desperately just trying to get back to his own life.
****
It's been 30 years since Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished. Now a new team has been assembled to restart the project in the hopes of understanding the mysteries behind the machine and the man who created it.

[LadyCrimson]

Tried to watch that Midnight Mass short series. The actor playing the priest is fantastic, I'll give it that. The show itself - 3/4 into the first episode I knew it was a Salem's Lot type of plot. 2.5 episodes in I was tired/bored of all the moral/point of view debating dialogue-ing. Is it a bad show. No. In fact I could point out quite a few good qualities. But it felt like a mashup of one old series and one or two modern series with nothing really new to add, with that now-everywhere dreary-grey visual atmosphere, and just isn't for me at this point.

[LadyCrimson]

Movie, not series, but Netflix, so in this thread:

Seems like Train to Busan zombies (the trailer/show even references it once, which is funny) set in a school? Might be good.
The older male actor playing a teacher - I've seen him in a few things and he's always oddball or creepy fun. Tho I'm sure his role will be smallish w/focus on all the teens.

 

[Hurlshort]

I've been watching The Real World Season 1 reunion with my wife, and it is a nostalgic blast. It's pretty crazy to see how everyone has changed now that they are in their 50's (or for one cast member, hasn't changed.)

I also watched Hawkeye last weekend and it was good fun. I've been slowly working my way through the Eternals. It is fun seeing the historical sites, but I'm still a bit superheroed out.

[ShadySands]

Ancient Aliens is back on so I'm watching that. 

[Lexx]

Finally watched the final episode of The Expanse. I had pushed it away quite a few times and was still hesitant to start watching it, because I didn't want it to stop.

Was a great episode. Whole s6 is fantastic, imo. In general this is one of the rare shows that are good from beginning to the very end. Seriously, there is nothing I really have to complain about. S5 had some slow meh moments with all the Naomi stuff, and s6 could really use 3 more episodes, but all in all it's just great.

Now let's hope we will get more Expanse. Maybe not next year, but maybe the year after ... or after that ... please.

[BruceVC]

On 1/14/2022 at 10:29 PM, LadyCrimson said:

Tried to watch that Midnight Mass short series. The actor playing the priest is fantastic, I'll give it that. The show itself - 3/4 into the first episode I knew it was a Salem's Lot type of plot. 2.5 episodes in I was tired/bored of all the moral/point of view debating dialogue-ing. Is it a bad show. No. In fact I could point out quite a few good qualities. But it felt like a mashup of one old series and one or two modern series with nothing really new to add, with that now-everywhere dreary-grey visual atmosphere, and just isn't for me at this point.

No you must watch it to the end, the moralizing is part of the narrative and it doesnt detract from the whole series . Very unexpected ending and very worthwhile  

You not the only one to complain about the " preaching " but its part of the story

[kanisatha]

11 hours ago, ShadySands said:

Ancient Aliens is back on so I'm watching that. 

Anything new?