The TV and Streaming Thread: Pilot Week

[LadyCrimson]

I saw some YouTube clip of Wil Wheaton in whatever nuTrek series he was on recently (Picard?), and yup...nevermind Wesley, I think young/teen Wil was a somewhat better actor (Stand By Me, for example). Or at the least, as a teen he didn't give me wide-eyed, creepy-over-grinning, weirdo vibes (which worked for Rent-A-Pal I suppose but not much else).

...maybe it's just the beard. I have never liked him with that beard.

...re: general tv, still just East Asian series watching occasionally, nothing exciting.

[Zoraptor]

Last thing I saw Wil Wheaton in was, hmm, Dark Matter; he was actually pretty good in that because he was playing a creepy obsessed weirdo type. Really though, the Picard people should have trolled him by bringing back the actor who played grown up Wesley for 5 seconds instead of Wil.

And speaking of Picard, I only found out recently that S2 shared a showrunner with 12 Monkeys (TV). You'd have thought that was near ideal for a time travel story.

[Bartimaeus]

5 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

I saw some YouTube clip of Wil Wheaton in whatever nuTrek series he was on recently (Picard?), and yup...nevermind Wesley, I think young/teen Wil was a somewhat better actor (Stand By Me, for example). Or at the least, as a teen he didn't give me wide-eyed, creepy-over-grinning, weirdo vibes (which worked for Rent-A-Pal I suppose but not much else).

...maybe it's just the beard. I have never liked him with that beard.

...re: general tv, still just East Asian series watching occasionally, nothing exciting.

He suffers from a pretty unfortunate case of the neck beard on top of the uncomfortable over-grinning stuff. This is apparently the only photo on the internet of him as an adult(-ish?) without the beard:

[Zoraptor]

That looks uncannily like Line of Duty's Steve Arnott* (Martin Compston) when he didn't have a beard in S1.

*the actor who played his girlfriend in the later seasons is now playing La'an on SNW.

[LadyCrimson]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

This is apparently the only photo on the internet of him as an adult(-ish?) without the beard:

That looks to be about his "Just A Geek" book release period (unread by me), where he was in his very early 30's. I think he started growing a beard a few years after that.
Using duckduckgo, I can find several pictures of him from around then, although not a lot. Or there's his blog if you want less "portfolio" looking pics, haha (first time I've looked at that site in years).

Edit: also, this short interview clip on youtube, heh.

 

Edited June 20, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[Bartimaeus]

I typed into Google "wil wheaton no beard" and looked for about 30 seconds, truly I am losing my touch

anyways, his face actually does look more normal with the beard I think, but at the same time some cleaning up and trimming would help it not look so neckbeardy

Edited June 20, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[LadyCrimson]

5 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I typed into Google "wil wheaton no beard" and looked for about 30 seconds, truly I am losing my touch

Yeah I did the same w/Google on the tablet and got that pic in the first few pages too. Which just goes to show how terrible Google has become for actually useful results, sometimes. >.>

Also agree that his beard isn't that bad - it's not that non-typical really - it's just something about the way he uses his face that turns it into "weird."  

[Raithe]

The Boys Is Satire & Homelander's Evil: Reddit Revelations? BCTVDD (bleedingcool.com)

[kanisatha]

19 hours ago, ShadySands said:

I wish there was a crapton of shows that I was interested in but almost nothing on TV appeals to me.

Same here. And especially since I don't shell out for any streaming services.

CBS used to be my go-to network for shows I loved for years. But now, three years in a row, they've canceled one of my beloved shows: first Hawaii 5-0, then SEAL Team (putting it in Paramount+ was the same as canceling for me), and now Magnum P.I. So now I literally have zero hour-long shows carrying over from the 21/22 season to the 22/23 season.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

10 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

He suffers from a pretty unfortunate case of the neck beard on top of the uncomfortable over-grinning stuff. This is apparently the only photo on the internet of him as an adult(-ish?) without the beard:

The last thing I saw Wheaton in was Rent-a-Pal, where he slowly drove a man insane through a cursed videotape or some ****. The beard face worked for that but I don't think that's a compliment at all.

[majestic]

The beard is just a trick. It's designed to draw your attention away from the real problem, which is what he says when he's playing CBS corporate shill. Looks like it works.

 

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

The beard is just a trick. It's designed to draw your attention away from the real problem, which is what he says when he's playing CBS corporate shill. Looks like it works.

 

 

[Sarex]

The Boys episode 6. The show is finally going in an interesting direction, let's see if it scores. Either way I don't think they should go past season 4.

Edited June 20, 2022 by Sarex

[Zoraptor]

I haven't seen any of S3, but they'd already stretched the credibility of Homelander not just evaporating all his enemies in S2, and brought in someone worse than him in Stormfront to distract and get their inevitable season finale comeuppance.

[Sarex]

Season 2 was a dumpster fire. It's not that s3 is spectacular or anything, but I am genuinely interested to see where it goes.

[Lexx]

I'm waiting for this season to be out in full before I will watch it. Tried s3ep1, but ... I just found it boring. Seems the show doesn't really click with me outside of "I'm bored, let's just run press play."

Edited June 20, 2022 by Lexx

[the_dog_days]

What's with all the Wil Wheaton pics? I thought this was the TV thread not the Peaked in the 90's thread.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 hours ago, Sarex said:

Season 2 was a dumpster fire. It's not that s3 is spectacular or anything, but I am genuinely interested to see where it goes.

I think s2 works ok if you binge it right before s3, but I can see it not working very well on it's own. I can see what they were going for with it, but imo it feels like a half season with lots of less than great padding.

[LadyCrimson]

Saw "Spiderhead" via Netflix. It stars Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller, how terrible could it be?

...turns out, pretty terrible. I mean, once again, the idea/concept isn't awful, but the execution is rather ludicrous, especially the ending stuff. Read any negative review of it, I'd probably largely agree.

[Bartimaeus]

I got roped into watching the first couple episodes of Dark. It basically seems like German Stranger Things so far. By "German Stranger Things", I mean that instead of there being any silly fun, it's just slow, dark, and austere all the time...and instead of inter-dimensional monsters eating people, it's time travel experiments getting kids killed - in other words, German Stranger Things. It's not bad, though.

Edited June 21, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Zoraptor]

Dark ~~--> 12 Monkeys (TV), if it was German and aiming for something approaching a scandi noir aesthetic. Though that comparison relies on actually having seen 12 Monkeys which to be sure wasn't quite as popular as Stranger Things.

Thoroughly recommend Dark by the way, though as might be guessed from its name let alone the first few episodes it isn't exactly the most bright and positive experience.

[Lexx]

I never watched s3 of Dark. Kinda lost motivation to continue with it because the story got more and more wild and convoluted. Like, they tried very hard to find new ways of interconnecting things that didn't need interconnection. S1 was pretty good tho.

Edited June 21, 2022 by Lexx

[Maedhros]

20 hours ago, Sarex said:

The Boys episode 6. The show is finally going in an interesting direction, let's see if it scores. Either way I don't think they should go past season 4.

Is episode 6 released? Can't seem to find it

--

Had the same issue with Dark as @Lexx. Really enjoyed the first season.

Edited June 21, 2022 by Maedhros

[Sarex]

7 minutes ago, Maedhros said:

Is episode 6 released? Can't seem to find it

Whops. Meant episode 5. Sorry about the confusion.

[Zoraptor]

3 hours ago, Maedhros said:

Had the same issue with Dark as @Lexx. Really enjoyed the first season.

That issue is, so to speak, by design. First spoiler is more or less thematic and readily inferred, the nested spoiler is a bit more explicit.
 

Spoiler

It's a metaphor for time travel as the Gordian Knot, the more you try and 'solve' things the more complicated they become.

Spoiler

The actual solution is, of course, very simple. Not chop the knot in half with a sword simple, but it is time travel. Which is also why I'd compare it to 12 Monkeys, as ultimately the solution to their problem was also very simple- and similar- and their 4 seasons was just getting to that simple answer. Very few of the plot complications matter, they're just smoke.

 

Non spoiler take home is mostly "don't sweat the details".