The TV and Streaming Thread: Summer Reruns

[Sarex]

Russian Doll. Not great, not terrible.

 

Also giving Primal! a go.

[Sarex]

To be a fly on the wall when they were pitching the idea for Primal...

[Bartimaeus]

1 minute ago, Sarex said:

To be a fly on the wall when they were pitching the idea for Primal...

I'm through 5 episodes (of 10) now. My impression so far is that it's functionally Samurai Jack but prehistoric and way more violent and gruesome...and basically no dialogue.

[uuuhhii]

watched 6 episode of cobra kai season 5

complete seriousness of every actor no matter how ridiculous the story are is impressive

easy to understand why this show are popular

[Lexx]

I stopped watching mid-season 3 I think. Really didn't liked the direction the show was going... did anything change with that? I guess not.

[uuuhhii]

the whole dynastic civil war thing was very boring in book form

much like actual history

the show have to make up so many dramatic and personal stuff to make it watchable

Edited September 14, 2022 by uuuhhii

[majestic]

[Bartimaeus]

Killing Eve. I thought this was an 8-episode miniseries (in my defense, I think I watched two minutes of the first episode when the first season originally came out before saying "maybe later" while just assuming it was a miniseries), but apparently it's a whole 4 season thing. Anyways, this is an investigative thriller show told from the perspective of two characters: Eve, the investigator, and Villanelle, the psychopath being investigated. I rather enjoy the psychopath's half of the show, but much less so Eve's investigative half, which takes a little too much in style from that awful Sherlock show from some years back. There's just too much of a focus on her being painfully dumb and obstinate while hand-waving away a lot of the actual investigative work that she's supposed to be doing...just like Sherlock. Being offhandedly told that character x, y, or z found and did some things off-screen so that we can now proceed with the plot is such a laughably bad convention in these fast-paced investigative dramas, and it happens danged near constantly. Gee, it's so cool when you have the computer nerd hack into whatever to get the critical information you need, what amazing storytelling, . Anyways, I don't know if I'll continue with the second season or not, four seasons of this seems like it'd be a lot of really bad investigation work. Maybe I should Stranger Things it by only watching Villanelle's bits.

...This is normally the part where I post a poster of the show, but all the posters for this show are uncharacteristically somewhere between bleh and terrible, so forget about it.

[Zoraptor]

I think you will find that Killing Eve only has one season. Just a single one, yes. The existence of other seasons were an April Fool's joke gone viral, and any memories of them is just audio visual, uh, Mandela Effect.

Apropos of nothing I rewatched the series finale of Dexter recently. John Lithgow made a great villain in the final season...

[majestic]

House of the Dragon, episode 4. Not going to post much, things proceed at pace in all the ways they're supposed to, more or less. The show tried its hand at using sex scenes to convey something more than, well, nudity and talking exposition afterwards. It worked as intended, but it wasn't really good.

Spoiler

That's mostly because for me, Milly Alc0ck has the charisma of a wet noodle, but I also saw people praising her portrayal of young Rhaenyra. Anyway, Rhaenyra sleeps with Christon Cole, which is a very passionate affair, and it is juxtaposed with Alicent's dutiful, uhm, lie back and think of England Westeros sex with Viserys which was pretty much Visery's command (sending a servant girl to fetch her is fairly classy and not at all out of character, no). Whether or not we needed five minutes of Rhaenyra removing Ser Christon's armor I don't know. I'm leaning towards no.

Both Daemon and Ser Otto end up being banished - makes sense to combine that for brevity's sake, and Rhaenyra agrees to wed Ser Laenor. 

Episode was fine. Everything about the series is fine enough for as long as it doesn't try to be epic than Game of Thrones. However, I'd say Game of Thrones had the better characters and better dialogue overall, and a better cast. House of the Dragon has nobody like Peter Dinklage, Jack Gleeson, Mark Addy, Lena Heady, Conleth Hill,... well, you get the idea.

Edited September 14, 2022 by majestic

[InsaneCommander]

14 minutes ago, majestic said:

 

  Hide contents

Whether or not we needed five minutes of Rhaenyra removing Ser Christon's armor I don't know. I'm leaning towards no.

 

Definitely no.

[Bartimaeus]

56 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

I think you will find that Killing Eve only has one season. Just a single one, yes. The existence of other seasons were an April Fool's joke gone viral, and any memories of them is just audio visual, uh, Mandela Effect.

Apropos of nothing I rewatched the series finale of Dexter recently. John Lithgow made a great villain in the final season...

The other three seasons are really that bad? I tend to be way more harsh and down on these types of dark dramas than other people, so if other people think the additional seasons are bad, that must mean...either a slim possibility that I'd think they're great, or much more likely that they're really bad - depends on why they're not good, I guess. The end of season 1 seemed like a pretty clear "let's randomly do a soft reset so we can really stretch this out instead of telling the nice, concise story that we could've" to me, and I just...don't want that, like, at all? Honestly, I really just don't care about the incredibly lame investigative half of the show, and it's the heavy focus on the psychopathic thriller half of the show that makes it interesting and different to the other millions of police/investigation shows out there. That should really be a show in of itself: watching Villanelle enjoy life while finding new spins to eviscerating and disembowelling people in various kinds of situations both personal and impersonal, all the while weaving some kind of slow-burn narrative and theme around her...not this embarrassing Sherlock* nonsense.

*Again, speaking specifically of the show with Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch, not Sherlock Holmes in general - it's an important distinction, especially seeing as the two are practically complete opposites stylistically.

Edited September 15, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Zoraptor]

Uh hmm. Kind of difficult to be too specific without spoilers, though if plot armouresque contrivance is a put off... I would say that S2 is not in and of itself bad, just disappointing. The trouble is that the problems which make it bad only get worse, and it's very difficult to say 'well watch S2 but then stop'* as S2 isn't satisfying enough compared to just pretending S1 ended the way it should have. There are only two things about S2 I remember as really enjoying, and they both involved Villanelle shenanigans, so there is that though.

*Kind of like... having a nice soup for an entrée. Followed by an adequate steak for dinner and rancid custard for desert. You can't really recommend anything after the soup, because the temptation will then be to see if the custard really is rancid.

[Bartimaeus]

3 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Uh hmm. Kind of difficult to be too specific without spoilers, though if plot armouresque contrivance is a put off... I would say that S2 is not in and of itself bad, just disappointing. The trouble is that the problems which make it bad only get worse, and it's very difficult to say 'well watch S2 but then stop'* as S2 isn't satisfying enough compared to just pretending S1 ended the way it should have. There are only two things about S2 I remember as really enjoying, and they both involved Villanelle shenanigans, so there is that though.

*Kind of like... having a nice soup for an entrée. Followed by an adequate steak for dinner and rancid custard for desert. You can't really recommend anything after the soup, because the temptation will then be to see if the custard really is rancid.

I ended up reading summaries of episodes for seasons 2-4. While I'm sure I would've enjoyed a bit of the Villanelle stuff, it felt like it would be a huge mistake to repeat the mistake of watching it for too long...and from what I read, it seemed to be pretty much exactly what I expected minus Carolyne apparently continuing to be important (honestly, I thought she was exiting the show at the end of season 1, and good riddance - apparently not). Bullet dodged I guess, as I definitely don't want anything to do with where it went overall, which seemed to be mostly around in circles. Bleh. Well, guess that's that for a promising albeit flawed first season.

Edited September 15, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Malcador]

https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/blade-runner-2049-sequel-series-amazon-1235373625/

Eh...might be good ?

Edited September 16, 2022 by Malcador

[Lexx]

Maybe, maybe not. Is Rings of Power good? Is the Wheel of Time good?

TV shows ordered by Amazon, to me right now, feel at least as sketchy as the next Netflix show.

[ShadySands]

Is Rings of Power as bad as WoT? I've heard a lot of mixed reviews

[Lexx]

No idea, I have no interest in even watching it. Maybe I'll check it out once all episodes are out. Can't really trust any reviews right now.

[Hurlshort]

Rings of Power is a million times better than WoT. Honestly they aren't really comparable. It's like comparing the CW superhero shows to Nolan's Batman. They aren't even close to the same tone. I've said it before, Rings of Power feels like the Hobbit movies, which might have been better served if they were broken into a series. It definitely captures the feel of Middle Earth.

Amazon has been fairly hit and miss, though. I have no idea if they can pull off a Blade Runner series. People thought the movie was too slow, I thought, so I don't imagine a 10-part series is going to improve the pace. I will happily give it a try. 

[Gorgon]

I watched the new Game of thrones thing and.. I dunno, it feels like we did all this already, but better and with full frontal 2010s HBO boobs, instead of shadowy side boobs. 

 

 

 

[Sarex]

Primal season 2 takes a turn in the direction of the series. Not sure quite sure if I like the direction.

  

9 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Rings of Power is a million times better than WoT. Honestly they aren't really comparable. It's like comparing the CW superhero shows to Nolan's Batman. They aren't even close to the same tone. I've said it before, Rings of Power feels like the Hobbit movies, which might have been better served if they were broken into a series. It definitely captures the feel of Middle Earth.

Amazon has been fairly hit and miss, though. I have no idea if they can pull off a Blade Runner series. People thought the movie was too slow, I thought, so I don't imagine a 10-part series is going to improve the pace. I will happily give it a try. 

Now you got me interested in giving it a go...

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

54 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Now you got me interested in giving it a go...

I haven't seen it and I'm not interested tbh.

What I have seen is the newest season of What We Do In The Shadows and it is ****ing good.

Edited September 17, 2022 by KP From Another World

[LadyCrimson]

While maybe very slightly curious, I have no actual interest in Rings of Power and I never watched more than one season of GoT so not interested in that either. If they make a Dune series, don't care. If they make yet another ST or SW series, don't care. At this point with most such series I'd rather watch paint dry.

[Hurlshort]

I'm also watching the current season of What We Do In The Shadows, and it just seems to keep getting better.

But I just finished episode 4 of Rings of Power, and it just seems to keep getting better. They've got a few different storylines going and they are all pretty engaging. The Dwarven parts are arguably better than any of the movies. They've given a glimpse into the day to day life of the dwarves that I really only got from LotR Online. Speaking of which, I'm now playing LotRO again. It's not like GoT. It's not like WoT. It's like the bloody movies, so if you enjoyed those, you will enjoy this show. Unless you get hung up on race in a fantasy series, apparently. *shrug*  

There is a kid named Theo that has an absolutely fascinating story arc going on. I don't want to spoil anything, but I'm on the edge of my seat to see how that turns out.

[LadyCrimson]

Maybe I should add that I'm not interested in all these series because of some "they've ruined ..." nonsense. I've just tried and tried so many times over the past 5 years and I can't get into what Hollywood is producing anymore. I'm either simply bored and slightly annoyed from being bored, don't "get" anything, or find it all too predictable etc.  There's plenty of other things to watch if I need eyeball massaging.

@HurlshortYou keep on being positive and non-jaded, gogo. Sometimes I like reading about how someone actually liked something, around here. The most impartial review of Rings of Power I've seen made it sound like while it might have some writing issues evident in the first two episodes, the series itself had some promise/potential and one should have a wait and see approach. That said, I haven't seen it so dunno.  (edit - you changed your moniker again, I had the @ wrong, haha.

Edited September 17, 2022 by LadyCrimson