The TV and Streaming Thread: Pilot Week

[Hurlshort]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

Started watching the ObiWan show. Made it through ep1, fell asleep in ep2. One major issue for me is that I know how terrible the ending of certain character is and every time I see that character on screen I have to think about that and I'm just like, what's even the point of all of this.

I guess the idea is he is a grumpy retired Jedi and we are supposed to watch him run around and say he is getting too old for this %&*#.

Unfortunately Ewan McGregor doesn't look old enough to be Danny Glover.

[Chairchucker]

6 hours ago, Lexx said:

Started watching the ObiWan show. Made it through ep1, fell asleep in ep2. One major issue for me is that I know how terrible the ending of certain character is and every time I see that character on screen I have to think about that and I'm just like, what's even the point of all of this.

I dunno maybe a section of a story involving a character can stand on its own regardless of how you feel about a later story about that character. It's all fiction, just pretend the other stuff isn't canon if it really bothers you that much.

[Chairchucker]

EDIT: dammit, posting from another page makes it not show up

Edited June 2, 2022 by Chairchucker

[Lexx]

I was never a big StarWars fan. Still, "just pretend" doesn't work for me. Don't think I will keep watching it though, unless I get super bored and have nothing else to do. The Mandalorian was kinda nice because it had that somewhat wild west influence, but everything else just feels so generic and boring to me. I dunno... Should probably handle it like Star Trek and just not touch it.

[majestic]

I thought the Mandalorian was brought down by trying to ape spaghetti westerns but with a guy in a helmet, thus lacking an integral part of what made Leone's long takes on faces work, but I have found that this is something that did not bother anyone else I know who watched the show. I also hated how baby Yoda basically invalidated the real Yoda from Empire, but again, that apparently was also only a "me" thing.

On prequels, I definitely did not enjoy watching Better Call Saul because all the interesting parts of the show were forgone conclusions. Prequels are generally a bad idea unless they can answer questions that are actually interesting, or are set very far in the past in a setting that's detailed enough that certain points can be of an in-universe historic interest. Point in case, I really liked the Silmarillion. Yes, even with the dry, more textbook like writing.

That's because Middle Earth was interesting and detailed enough to want to know more about it's history. Meanwhile, in Star Wars, for instance, I never once asked myself the question "How did Palpatine become the Emperor?" because who cares, and likewise, who cares how Jimmy McGill became Saul Goodman?

[Lorfean]

12 hours ago, Hurlsnot said:

I guess the idea is he is a grumpy retired Jedi and we are supposed to watch him run around and say he is getting too old for this %&*#.

Unfortunately Ewan McGregor doesn't look old enough to be Danny Glover.

Not really. The idea is that he is a disillusioned Jedi, wrecked by guilt over what happened to his apprentice, and whose belief in and connection to the force has taken a huge hit as a result of everything that happened in Revenge of the Sith. He has been hiding in a cave for 10 years because the Empire destroyed everything and everyone he believed in and cared about, and is still actively hunting any remaining Jedi who might be out there trying to do some good. He has been watching over Luke, basically against the wishes of his uncle, who doesn't want anything to do with him, let alone let him have any kind of impact on or relationship with him.

The point of the show is telling the story of how he gets from this all-time low back to some version his old self (ie. around Rebels / A New Hope), where he feels like he can be a positive influence, make a difference in the fight against the Empire, and possibly even secure a brighter future for the entire galaxy. Is it perfect? Nothing ever is, but i find it some of the best Star Wars content since Rogue One.

 

@Lexx  I guess you are talking about

Spoiler

Leia

Yeah I didn't like their ending either, but I tend to more or less ignore those stories (especially the last one) when looking at the bigger Star Wars picture. I also very much like how they use the character in Obi-Wan Kenobi. It was unexpected but makes a lot of sense.

 

1 hour ago, majestic said:

I thought the Mandalorian was brought down by trying to ape spaghetti westerns but with a guy in a helmet, thus lacking an integral part of what made Leone's long takes on faces work, but I have found that this is something that did not bother anyone else I know who watched the show. I also hated how baby Yoda basically invalidated the real Yoda from Empire, but again, that apparently was also only a "me" thing.

The helmet thing didn't bother me -- quite the opposite, in fact -- I felt it added an interesting dynamic to the show and story, especially when, in season 2, he starts learning more about the Mandalorian culture outside of the little "sect" that he grew up in

Also, how did baby Yoda invalidate the real Yoda?

Edited June 2, 2022 by Lorfean

[uuuhhii]

try to watch leftover again

first episode are pretty good

hope the cult thing doesn't get stale

[Amentep]

2nd episode of Enterprise, "Fight or Flight" liked how Hoshi had to deal with a very real fear of space travel that just drives home how unusual this would be for most of the crew.  They get over their heads pretty fast and there's a bit of a horror movie vibe when they go through the other ship.  So far so good.

Watched the end of Picard Season 1.  I didn't hate it There were some major developmental issues that I think are down to the story structure. I also kind of feel the end "team flies off to adventure" wasn't earned by the story.

Spoiler

I mentioned that they wasted a lot of time with Soji's story just making time while they waited for Picard to catch up; this problem came to roost when we get to Synthetic-ville where the characters don't really get enough time to develop.  The leader of the groups rationale and turn isn't developed because they have no time left in the series to develop it.  Things just sort of drop out (like the Romulan brother who...I have no clue what happened to him after they stopped  the incursion.

The flowers and the ship from the Synthetic collective reminded me an awful lot of the ship Control used from the future, which makes me think that alternate future Control must have hooked up / taken over the Synth collective, which in turn makes an unexpected soft connection between Picard and Discovery.

It was nice seeing Riker stare down Oh, but it seemed a small comeuppance for the character who was the ultimate villain of the piece (yes the Romulan sister was nasty and got a nice "This is Sparta" kick from Seven, but she was a pawn, really) and who had crimes both personal (a forced mind-meld with Dr. Jurati that drove her crazy, the destruction of Picard's career and thus his self confidence) and indiscriminate (the destruction on Mars that not only killed humans, destroyed synthetics but also led to massive loss of Romulan life).

In a way I wish they'd ended on Picard, as it began, though and not the team.  Doing otherwise almost feels the series doesn't end right for the story it told; the story wasn't about Picard getting back in the saddle to fly again with a new team, it was about an old man full of regret trying to fix past mistakes he felt he made, and that's the payoff the series really needed.  Yes they got the Data scene, which was important in allowing Picard to play out a regret, but I almost feel like they needed an end where Picard either talked to the Press again or spoke to Starfleet command to bookend the series.  But maybe that's just me complaining.

Be interested to see what I think of Season 2 when I get around to it.

[majestic]

8 hours ago, Lorfean said:

Also, how did baby Yoda invalidate the real Yoda?

Yoda's explanations in Empire and the whole point of being an enlightened, illuminated part of the force is completely moot when a baby of his species that's unable to talk or otherwise express anything is so powerful in the force it stops oncoming massive animals dead in their tracks and does whatever else is necessary from the little force user bugger. Hastly added explanation at the end of season two that he underwent training already doesn't help.

So basically Yoda just told Luke a bunch of nonsense, because none of what he said is apparently a requirement for being able to lift X-Wings out of swamps. He was just born with that ability. /rant

But hey, at least the series didn't resurrect Palpatine and took a major dump all over Vader's redemption.

8 hours ago, Lorfean said:

The helmet thing didn't bother me -- quite the opposite, in fact -- I felt it added an interesting dynamic to the show and story, especially when, in season 2, he starts learning more about the Mandalorian culture outside of the little "sect" that he grew up in

No, I didn't mean the fact that he just wears his helmet all the time, that's just silly, but then again, it's Star Wars, so a little base silly is fine. I mean close ups and long takes of Pedro Pascal wearing his helmet. These really don't work without facial expressions, but as I said, this is apparently a very me thing.

Then there's also the little detail that the series tried hard not to be all about fanservice, but what fanservice does happen is even more ridiculous than the one in Rogue One.   

6 hours ago, Amentep said:

Watched the end of Picard Season 1. I didn't hate it

You're dead to me, old man.

Edited June 2, 2022 by majestic

[Amentep]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

You're dead to me, old man.

If it helps, I also didn't hate Plan 9 from Outer Space, Raging Bull, Hawk the Slayer, The Black Hole, Blue Velvet, Gladiator, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Have Rocket Will Travel, Touch of Evil, Mr. No Legs, Shakespeare in Love, Forbidden Planet, The Warriors, North by Northwest, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, etc. 

So me not hating something is probably different than other people not hating something.

 

[majestic]

1 hour ago, Amentep said:

If it helps, I also didn't hate Plan 9 from Outer Space, Raging Bull, Hawk the Slayer, The Black Hole, Blue Velvet, Gladiator, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Have Rocket Will Travel, Touch of Evil, Mr. No Legs, Shakespeare in Love, Forbidden Planet, The Warriors, North by Northwest, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, etc. 

So me not hating something is probably different than other people not hating something.

Did you cry butterfly tears too?

That was by far and large, maybe not a joke, perhaps, but also not really a serious posting. Given your other reactions to Star Trek, and Discovery, I did not expect you to hate it, although in my own little world I don't quite understand how anyone can watch the entire first season an not feel at least a whole lot of disdain for the complete nonsense that was pulled out of Alex Kurtzman's arse, because while I thought that Discovery was just plain terrible, Star Trek: Picard redefined bad TV show writing.

Everyone and their pet dog is out of character, then there's the ludicrous plot stolen straight from Mass Effect, an ending rivaling the nonsense happening at the end of the Mass Effect storyline, a mechanical space Cthulhu and a Borg plot that goes nowhere and has absolutely no point, and that is all simply something where we're not yet even looking at a complete disregard for Star Trek lore and canon, something that grinds my gears in particular.

Borg do not die when exposed to the vaccuum of space, that was shown before, you absolute hack frauds, but we need to Seven of Nine to have a sad over something, and we had the idea to include the Borg in this show although we have no idea why they should be there, but fans like the Borg, so let's put the Borg in! They don't do anything, they have no point, there's nothing except the desire to have Seven of Nine yell THIS IS SPARTA at a Romulan and kick her down a shaft in a Borg cube that followed Star Wars' design philosophy of having absolutely unsecured yawning chasms.

Someone should tell Alex Kurtzman that nobody forces him to set his storyline into an existing franchise if you don't like it, and they even wizened up a little by setting the second season in a parallel reality/alternative timeline. Which turned out to be hilariously terrible all on its own, with terrible writing to match, but at least Picard gets to tell flowery dialogue that used to be a joke on TNG played on the Ferengi, and now actually meant seriously, and Q just joins in.

Welcome to the end of the road not taken, indeed. The road not taken. Except it never ends up being about a road not taken, that was just some flowery pseudo-cool dialogue thrown in there so Q can sound all mysterious and ominous, and then Picard doesn't borrow from Mass Effect, but from Tiberian Sun.

The beauty of Star Trek is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!

[Zoraptor]

I always find people's more positive reactions to stuff I dislike pretty interesting. I didn't hate Picard up until the ending, but that ending just screamed "this is what it is, and it's not going to improve" at several million decibels. Which is impressive, for a logarithmic scale. The only thing with any emotional weight was Data, and that wouldn't have happened if Spiner hadn't insisted playing an ageless android as an old guy was stupid, so was something the writers were forced into.

Said it before no doubt, but the ultimate issue with Picard and Discovery is that they want Epic Cinematic Moments without realising that what makes them epic is the build up to those moments. They're the sort of writers who'd have Picard become Locutus and yell at Jon Irenicus about lights in the same episode because they wanted those two iconic scenes and couldn't fit them in anywhere else.

[ShadySands]

Not hating it is fine. Liking it, however, is unforgiveable.

I'm mostly kidding as I like some terrible, horrible, no good, very bad shows as well... though I did stop talking to my dad for about 6 months when he said he liked Picard. I'm still trying to get over it.

 

 

Edited June 3, 2022 by ShadySands

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

4 hours ago, Amentep said:

If it helps, I also didn't hate Plan 9 from Outer Space, Raging Bull, Hawk the Slayer, The Black Hole, Blue Velvet, Gladiator, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Have Rocket Will Travel, Touch of Evil, Mr. No Legs, Shakespeare in Love, Forbidden Planet, The Warriors, North by Northwest, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, etc. 

So me not hating something is probably different than other people not hating something.

 

Blue Velvet is a masterpiece and I will fight anyone over this.

[InsaneCommander]

Kenobi - Episode 3:

Spoiler

Darth Vader was really stupid. Tossing Obi-Wan away and letting him escape was terrible. I guess vengeance is indeed a dish best served cold.

 

The Orville 3.1:

Really nice to have it back, but I wasn't enjoying the episode that much until near the end. I'm also totally confused about when in season 2 they had that major battle. Maybe I don't remember well, but I imagined that the repercussions we see in this episode should have happened earlier.

 

And look who is back, The Boys!

[Zoraptor]

No recap was a problem for The Orville, especially as it was only S3 available here and it's been three (!) years since S2. The battle was end of S2 though, that much I do remember. Exactly the sort of episode I'd think was overlong, overwrought and self indulgent if it was nuTrek, but carried off well enough I only really considered it so when looking for things to quibble about.

I loled at the new cast member, though I probably shouldn't have. There's a certain uncanny resemblance there.

Edited June 3, 2022 by Zoraptor

[Lexx]

Damn, it releases 1 episode per week.

[Amentep]

16 hours ago, majestic said:

Did you cry butterfly tears too?

Not yet, but its not for a lack of trying...

Seriously though, I was expecting a real train wreck, but it wasn't really that.  Definitely some of the same structural problems that Discovery has; I can only assume the writers rooms are struggling to come to terms with long form episodic television.  And it wasn't boring which is about the only problem I can't forgive in a movie or TV show.

Can't really talk about Picard-Q since I've only seen season one.  

Not trying to change your opinion, but a lot of what you talk about really didn't bother me, to whit -

 

16 hours ago, majestic said:

Everyone and their pet dog is out of character,

I just got through watching all of TNG, the series that conveniently has Data relearn the exact same thing about humans a few times; that has Picard endanger himself and his ship just to communicate with an alien for the first time; who has experienced another lifetime and become more spiritual, who Q challenges to represent the best of humanity....and who also wants to let a planet die because of a whack interpretation of the Prime Directive; where Worf manages to be totally security minded and yet he also keeps his position as head of security despite being quite possibly the least effective member of the crew with just about everyone waltzing in and out of the Enterprise (and not all of them had superior tech); where the ship's counselor often blatantly disregards obvious signs of people in psychological trouble or gives specious (and perhaps dangerous) advice and also has to take bridge crew training despite being part of the bridge crew for a plot point that goes nowhere.  Out of character is kind of their brand.

Moreover, I understand where they're coming from within the context of the show (whether they justify how they got there is another thing entirely).  The characters are all 'lost' in a way.  Each of the characters have trusted someone or something and had that trust violated (Picard and Starfleet, Rafi and Picard, Rios and his Captain/Starfleet, Soji and her first romance, Jurati and Oh, Elinor and Picard, Seven and that lady on the Star Wars planet).  So it makes sense that Picard at the start of the show isn't the Picard from "All Good Things..." or "Nemesis".  And it makes sense why this group is the one that gets together thematically (and why Laris and her husband don't make sense to join Picard).

To my mind, then, the problem with the end isn't Mass Effect Reaper\Synthetic-Cthulu in a Portal, but the fact that they don't really follow through with the theme about misplaced trust and recovery. 

I feel that they wanted to have the tie in to Discovery (which is why the Synthetics-from-Beyond seem to mirror the Control Ship from S2), but that misses the thematic point that I see in the show's narrative, and its why much of the conclusion isn't satisfactory from a thematic position, in my opinion, even though it wraps up the story nicely in a strictly plotting way.  Because they never come back to the theme of trust, completely.  This is why Seven of Sparta as a final confrontation doesn't feel satisfactory because the characters had never met to that point; the better confrontation between Romulan-Tal-Shiar-Sister would have been Romulan-Tal-Shiar-Brother affirming his choice to trust the right people (Soji) over the wrong (his sister, the Zhat Vas).*  Its why its unsatisfying that Sutra never gets a comeuppance, really, for pushing her people (who trusted her) to side with what she thought was right by killing one of their own (who also trusted her).

Its why, thematically, the call that Sutra put out should have never been answered, because in the end the Zhat Vash should have been shown to have spent centuries trusting in the truth of a message that had long ago become irrelevant as time swept away those long gone players from the board rather than trusting the things and people they saw before them.  Its why the show needed to have some resolution for Sutra violating the trust of the people she led.  Its why Riker's return to help Picard in the end should have shown the triumph of putting trust in the right people to defeat the misplaced trust Starfleet has had in Oh.

Without these thematic elements satisfied, the team's 'return to adventure' scene doesn't feel earned, really. So don't get me wrong, I think the end is a mess.  I totally get why people would dislike it.  But I think at an entertainment level, its fine; but not everyone is going to be able to just ignore such problems.

As an aside, I don't think they were dumping the Borg to necessarily kill them (although it would, probably, kill most of the xBs) but to delay the return to operation of the Borg Cube.  Unless I missed a bit of dialogue where they specifically said they were terminating them (and of course, we don't know if the Romulans put in a fail safe that would ensure if the stasis pods were blown the Borg would be killed, so I guess even then, we just don't have enough information because they spent 100000% of the time on the borg cube with the sappy Soji/Romulan-dude romance).

EDIT: To follow through on my thought, Data put the ultimate trust in Picard and was rewarded for that trust; that's what made those scenes work - they actually thematically fit the show.

*Seven killing Romulan Zhat Vas lady is very much a direct 1-to-1 plot element; Lady kills Hugh, Seven kills Lady.  Its supposed to elicit an emotive reaction of "hell yeah!" from the audience, but it can't because the confrontation isn't earned.  So I understand the temptation to go with it from a plot standpoint, but its a good example of where I think the writers were struggling with long form television.  It makes sense from a plotting level and maybe even an episode level, but its missed the overarching story themes and I feel like that's a re-occuring problem with the new ST shows I've seen -along with structurally wasting time on things that aren't ultimately important (Soji's time on the Borg cube could have been halved, and the Klingon stuff in S1 Discovery ultimately isn't very important to the show for how much time is spent on it).

[Gfted1]

The Lost City

Hilarious!

[Hiro Protagonist]

Really enjoying Strange New Worlds.

[Bartimaeus]

4 hours ago, Amentep said:

Not trying to change your opinion, but a lot of what you talk about really didn't bother me, to whit -

I guess it's kind of like what Jay from RLM said: if you liked it, you liked it and the little stuff often doesn't really end up mattering too much (but also, the inverse is true as well if you didn't like it). There are some things that are wrong with a 90s animated show called Escaflowne that @majesticand I watched semi-recently that would bother me/us in a different series, that I would gladly nitpick to death almost anywhere else...but the thing is, I super enjoyed that show because of other stuff and so almost everything I could nitpick melted and washed away like so much sea foam. Sure, there's still stuff I can think of that could've been improved to marginally increase my enjoyment, but I already thought it was a great show, and that almost never happens. Only about 30 items out of the 400+ movies/shows I've watched over the past ~6 years (since I started using a particular rating site to help me keep track of what I've seen and how I felt about it, because about six years ago is when I started taking a much bigger interest in cinema) have made me feel like they were actually great. That list of stuff I've seen doesn't include anything I feel like I haven't seen a significant sample of, so the veritable pile of things I've quickly discarded because I deemed they weren't quite to my taste aren't included there...which means "great" stuff is even rarer for me than those already grim numbers would suggest.

If another show I've been trying to watch recently otherwise felt great, I probably wouldn't be nearly so intensely irritated by what I feel is gosh-awful music, because I would be much more occupied with the stuff I love rather than the few things I don't, right? Instead, it's hovering right around the danger zone for my brain where it starts to wander and automatically be hyper-critical about every little thing that I don't like...and if it gets any worse, all the stuff that I don't like will begin to feel like the end of the world and I'll just want to turn it off. I mean, I especially proved this true to and with myself recently via Stranger Things, which had a pretty clear delineation between the characters I enjoyed seeing and the ones that I didn't. The show was actually sitting a little below that danger zone for me by the end of the third episode, and then I just started...skipping the characters I didn't care about (which was made incredibly easy with the structure of this season and there being almost literally zero overlap between the separate groups of characters), and suddenly the show feels like an overall positive experience and I can forgive the smaller flaws that were remaining. At least for me, there are a lot of things that really feel like they matter a lot but...other shows that I like or even love that do similar things kind of prove that they sometimes don't, not really*. A lot of such issues actually almost seem more like a misdirection of negative feelings - just a symptom of the larger overall problem of a show/movie straight up not working for a pile of different reasons that we, as non-film critics, may have trouble precisely identifying and putting into words. It's a heck of a lot easier to just focus on the things that are clearly and obviously wrong to me...but really, if a show or movie didn't grab my brain, it just didn't.

*Don't get me wrong, there are still some things that are genuine deal-breakers in of themselves that have an immediate and huge negative impact on something...but I don't think it's as much as some of us, myself chief among them, sometimes like to think. Also, a lot of stuff where that's the case is stuff I immediately stop watching within 5 minutes anyways because it's very clearly not for me, not stuff where I'm unsure if I like it or not as I continue to watch it.

Edited June 3, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[ShadySands]

DS9 is leaving Netflix so I guess I can cancel Netflix now

[Lexx]

Again? Wasn't it gone already once? Or was that only TNG?

Feels a bit like Friends, where they made a big deal about it leaving Netflix, but now it's apparently back.

[Zoraptor]

The contracts with Netflix weren't renewed due to Paramount+*, but they weren't all synchronised. So Discovery and TNG + OS? left a few months ago; DS9 and Voyager? are leaving soon. I'm not sure anyone cares enough about Enterprise to check its status.

*don't know about elsewhere but all the legacy Treks are now back on Netflix in NZ at least. I'd suspect it would be the same for anywhere else that doesn't have P+, though they may have shopped them around to other streamers (eg Discovery isn't back on Netflix, it's on the local TV channel for broadcast and streaming same as SNW and The Orville since we don't have Hulu either).

[ShadySands]

I used to have DS9 on DVD but that's long been lost. I'll see if I can buy the series somewhere.

I've been considering dropping Netflix for a while since they keep raising prices and barely put out anything that interests me while cancelling or losing the rights to the stuff that does. I can always sub for a month if that ever changes.