The TV and Streaming Thread: Summer Reruns

[Zoraptor]

Orville s3ep9 spoilers

4 hours ago, Lexx said:

 

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Yeah, the ceremony was cringe. Didn't know she was dating Macfarlane. To be honest, her character felt a bit out of place to me for most of the time, but at least they introduced her early enough to make the death at least have some value. But yeah, I was also wondering why nobody cares about the other crew members (or maybe nobody else from the ship died, and who cares about the other ships?)

 

Spoiler

I thought at least one of the fighter pilots who died was from the Orville, though it's hard to be sure given the helmet wearing, so maybe not.

I don't actually know she was/ is dating MacFarlane- but they've had a pretty blonde actress in the series before who was, and left abruptly when they split up, hence the cynical take. That looked far more like a planned arc than the "I have to return to my home planet now!" we got for (checks wikipedia) Alara though, and in this case you could have predicted something like that happening after Charlie's first episode.

 

[Lexx]

Alara being written out was weird as well. And her comment about it is cryptic too "It wasn’t about a choice. It was what was best for the show at the time." The hell is that supposed to mean

[Zoraptor]

It's all rumours and completely unconfirmed. Only confirmed fact is she left suddenly. And didn't do too badly since she got a role on another show quickly (which just so happened to be another Fox show 'Prodigal Son').

Spoiler

Does have to be said though, most of her comments on the situation make perfect sense in the rumoured context, which is why I'm very much in the bad break up camp. Not like it was a choice if one of them had to go, it certainly wasn't going to be the showrunner, star, writer etc, who also was an important Fox contributor on other shows.

 

Edited August 14, 2022 by Zoraptor

[LadyCrimson]

Uncoupled (Netflix)

I love Neil Patrick Harris in general, so of course I had to check this out. There are aspects that are ok, some chortles, but overall it feels too ... dry? dull? self-indulgent? I'm not sure. I watched all the available episodes and it's not that it's bad, but it never really gets going. It's not funny/30min. sitcom enough nor dramatic/"deep" enough in the sense of feeling committed to either. Also, it eventually built up to having a few chr. side stories as well as the main chr, and every single one of them ended on a "stay tuned until next week/year!" cliffhanger type thing in the last episode, which was aggravating.  I guess they're confident they are going to get a 2nd season. >.>

Anyhoo - again, not horrible and if there is a 2nd season maybe it'd find its footing better, but for 30 min dose of Neil, I'd rather watch him eat hot wings instead.

 

Edited August 15, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[Amentep]

 

[Gromnir]

40 minutes ago, Amentep said:

am moderate curious. burton + elfman always gets a looksee from Gromnir. some persons were bothered by gwendoline christie playing lucifer in sandman 'cause she is a woman or too old or whatever, but we simple didn't see her as hitting the mark. maybe she redeems herself with wednesday?

gomez (or nameless adams patriarch in the new yorker) has typical been the star o' the adams family regardless o' the media, but such won't be the case for wednesday and that is okie dokie. tim burton's lydia deitz/kim boggs/ursula van helsing/victoria everglot/katrina van tassel are the ordinary burton waifs o' the past and this iteration o' wednesday is more inspired by alice kingsleig or even one o' his eva green or helena bonham carter characters. am hoping this tim burton vehicle is offering more than a christina ricci wednesday with a bit more mayhem. is tough for a caricature to grow in a tv show or film and wednesday could extreme ez become caricature, which is no surprise give her origins and previous appearances.

am expecting wednesday to look and sound great, but that don't mean it will be worth watching. will watch at least a few episodes regardless. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Zoraptor]

Orville Finale- non spoiler version, I liked it a lot more I should have

Spoiler

Summary is pretty much it really. Think that was actually the longest episode of the lot and it was structured in a way I didn't like in a previous episode- ie felt like it had a lot of plots they clearly really wanted to include but which they knew couldn't carry a whole episode. Indeed, if there was one thing I'd change over the whole season it would be adding someone who could say "this is overindulgent" to curb a bit of the excess run time/ remove some of the flab. And a finale episode dealing in large part with 'how the notFederation works' seems to be a strange choice too, no matter how well handled it was in the most part (trying to smuggle stuff off the ship though? kind of obvious in every respect, but had to happen for the plot denouement I guess) especially if it ends up being the series finale rather than just the season finale... but despite that I ended up liking most of it without much reservation.

I'm not sure whether I'm pleased or disappointed that the Moclan marriage ceremony involved posing pouches rather than nudity- I was halfway expecting a Blink 182/ Saint's Row'esque sequence with blurring instead.

Overall though it was just kind of... nice, and a bit of a homage to the Star Trek philosophy- which has been rather lacking in actual Trek. Certainly wouldn't want it all to be like this, but you also need quieter and more reflexive episodes to leaven the more high stakes drama.

May have had my criticisms but overall a very good season which only really suffers a bit by comparison from having some competent Trek competition for the first time. Hope they manage to wangle a S4.

[LadyCrimson]

I always have at least a little hope for a Burton project, especially when neither "pale mad face" Johnny Depp nor Helena Bonham Carter are in it.

[Chairchucker]

Watched the first Ep of She-Hulk. I enjoyed it, pretty fun, some 4th wall breaks that were kinda funny. Bit of a mid credits scene that's worth sticking around for.

[uuuhhii]

she hulk s01e01

was expecting more forth wall breaking

better way to exposition

very strechy clothing

[ShadySands]

Now that my wife is home I finally saw Orville episode 9 and that's easily the best episode of Star Trek in the last 20 or so years

[Raithe]

‘The Sandman’ Surprise Episode 11 ‘A Dream of a Thousand Cats’ Explained - Netflix Tudum

Calliope is both a disturbing episode, and emotionally charged. The small cast do extremely solid work.

[Raithe]

TVLine - Buffy reboot is now on "Pause"

 

[Raithe]

Warning on potential spoilers for the episode if you haven't gotten around to watching it yet...

The Sandman Changed Calliope's Story, And It's A Big Deal - IGN

[Lexx]

Not sure what to think of the Sandman. Finished it yesterday. The storytelling was interesting and I liked it, but at the same time it felt a bit.. uh.. slow and boring? I dunno.

[Raithe]

One of the things about the majority of Gaiman's stories is they they don't generally have a serious villain or such. The stories are usually focused on the mythology around storytelling rather than a focused bad guy per se. The nature of belief, of dreams and imagination, the way we perceive reality through the stories we tell each other.

Or maybe that's just me being pretentious

 

[LadyCrimson]

I got about 6 episodes into that K-dramedy about ramen industry corp/office employee hijinks and backstabbing (Kkondae Intern) and I still like it but per usual the next day (and the next and the next) I wake up and just never turn "TV" back on to keep going.  >.>  

[Raithe]

The Sandman: Gaiman on S02 Not Being a Given; Midsummer Promise (bleedingcool.com)

[majestic]

House of the Dragon, Season 1, Episode 1: Another Prequel Nobody Needed The Heirs of the Dragon

It's hard to try and be objective about the episode - or indeed the series - when you can read a certain non-review of it online that was written based on a pre-screening of the first six episodes for the sepcial part of the fandom, and who doesn't love A Song of Ice and Fire's very own Keepers of Truth, the glorious Elio and Linda, first of their names, and heir apparent to the legacy of the books. If absolutely nothing of his sentence makes sense for your, dear reader, then that is fine. It just means you're blissfully unaware of this book series incredibly tiresome fandom fandumb.

So, naturally, the first inkling I have, seeing a defense by these two of an adaptation for material they contributed to, is to simply dismiss everything they say and assume the opposite. Confirmation bias is a strange thing, so I am already here, watching a prequel I (correctly, as it turns out) deemed unnecessary, expecting it to be, well, not good, and I was, of course, proven right. What else could it be, in the end. This is probably not fair, but hey, this is about my subjective enjoyment of something, after all.

Wokey wokey!

Well, let's get the obvious woke nonsense out of the way, the series of course makes a girl heir to the throne. A girl. Preposterous. What woman would ever rule in a medieval society, really, I mean... I kid. Sorry. Of course that's the entire point of the show, and spoilers, this will eventually end with civil war, because Westeros just isn't woke enough to accept that sort of thing, particularily not the King's Council who just declares the male succesor king because why not.

Oh, wait, are you mad about spoilers for a prequel series about the backstory of a book series that began in 1996? Sue me. Unless the creative team decides to rewrite the entire history of the setting, I can also already tell you how it ends. The dragons all but die out in the civil war and its aftermath, both contenders for the throne die and it will end with Rhaenyra's son Aegon (by her uncle, Daemon) on the throne, who will eventually be nicknamed Dragonbane because the last of the Targaryen's dragons dies under his rule.

Woops. I am so sorry. Hey, did you guys know that Jimmy McGill is going to become Saul Goodman during the events of Better Call Saul?

With that out of the way, there is one diversity choice in the casting that caused a bit of a hooplah in the fandumb, and that is changing Corlys Velaryon to have black skin color with silver hair, something that is apparently well justified by the world building in the series (at least according to our Glorious Couple, The Lords Paramount of Everything A Song of Ice and Fire). I don't really care, just like I didn't care a whole lot about Heimdall being played by Idris Elba in the Marvel movies. It is what it is though.

Corlys Velaryon, played by Steve Toussaint, reeks a bit of the token black guy, and it rankles even more because as far as I know, he shouldn't be Master of Ships. Or on the small council, like, at all. Guess that's one of the headscratchers Elio and Linda mentioned in their decidedly not a review. In a shocking twist, I kind of agree with their assessent that Ser Criston Cole would have been an ideal - and equally important - part of the cast for the change for more diversity. Although maybe the showrunners didn't want their token black guy to become one of the 'bad' guys, because Ser Criston Cole is going to back the other party in the civil war. The side that doesn't want a woman on the throne.

Hello, I'm the Doctor!

The David Tennant meme above is funnier when you know that his successor as the Doctor, Matt Smith, is playing Daemon Targaryen, future husband of Princess Rhaenyra. While his depiction of Daemon is fine, the casting choice itself is quite a distraction, and it's therefore not a good one in my mind. I keep imagining he'll whip out his sonic screwdriver or do something otherwise whacky that makes no sense. Alas, though, he rode off on a dragon and not in his TARDIS.

The actress playing the young version of Rhaenyra seems to have gone through the Emilia Clarke school of acting. This is not a good thing. In fact, young Rhaenyra seems to try to scream I AM THIS SERIES' DAENERYS at you the entire time she's on screen. Viserys is delightful though, and the show did a good job at depicting his onsetting health issues by him having a wound that will not close. Bad wound healing is a sign of diabetes, and I am willing to extend the showrunners the benefit of the doubt here and call this intentional (Viserys should, in the end, become barely capable of ascending the steps towards the Iron Throne by 'virtue' of his failing health and large girth).

One-Upping Game of Thrones

Oh boy. So this is what simply had to happen, I suppose. We can't have a prequel to Game of Thrones without one-upping it to make sure that watchers are properly entertained, so the first episode is a condensed version of everything that came before - or will come after, if you want to talk in terms of the timeline - in Game of Thrones. Limbs are hacked off, there's a beheading, a head gets violently bashed in, a penis is cut off and my personal favorite, we're treated to a scene depicting a caesarean section in a time where there's no anaesthesia or a way to make the procedure not, uhm, deadly for the mother, and yes, that includes a bunch of people rummaging around in her insides (oh, and the woman in labor begging them not to, I mean... sure, who's asking her).

There are also two scenes at a brothel, one of which is an orgy of a size not usually seen outside of special interest films made in the Czech Republic. This is all par for the course of the show, in case you've watched Game of Thrones, but in this one, it's just there to be there. The violence in Game of Thrones, at least initially, had a purpose beyond shock value, as did all the scenes in the brothels. In this series, they have no purpose other than showing violence and naked people. Because that is what Game of Thrones is. Violence and boobies! Hooray.

Production values

So, the series apparently had five times the budget for its first season than the original first Game of Thrones season, yet I like how it looks a lot less. The attenion to detail in certain scenes is simply stunning, but a whole bunch of the series simply looks weird and wrong to me, and it permeates everything, from the opening clouds to this particular shot:

Well, I don't know about you guys, but that background looks pretty odd to me. Does that look odd to you?

Similar shot from Game of Thrones as a contrast. Does that shot look better? It does, right? Probably cost a lot less to make, too.

Conclusion

Am I glad this TV show was made. I'm looking forward about complaining about each and every episode, for years to come (unless this is a limited run prequel series - I honestly have not bothered to check). How delightful. Sure, there's a chance that the series will improve with the timeskip, but I think the foundational issues of having to 'improve' upon Game of Thrones at every turn and this simply being an unnecessary prequel will not change much for me. This is Better Call Saul all over again, except with a less well working cast and production values that are dreadfully expensive for no visual gain that I like.

Edited August 22, 2022 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

15 minutes ago, majestic said:

Hey, did you guys know that Jimmy McGill is going to become Saul Goodman during the events of Better Call Saul?

 

16 minutes ago, majestic said:

This is Better Call Saul all over again, except with a less well working cast and production values that are dreadfully expensive for no visual gain that I like.

Reported for slandering Better Call Saul.

[majestic]

4 minutes ago, KP From Another World said:

Reported for slandering Better Call Saul.

Let me helpfully link you to a post from back in 2018 that you can report too:

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

6 minutes ago, majestic said:

Let me helpfully link you to a post from back in 2018 that you can report too:

Got several in there. You don't Maul the Saul.

[Zoraptor]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

..for the sepcial part of the fandom..

little bit more (or less?) work and you could have typoed it to septical instead.

Quote

The David Tennant meme above is funnier when you know that his successor as the Doctor, Matt Smith, is playing Daemon Targaryen, future husband of Princess Rhaenyra. While his depiction of Daemon is fine, the casting choice itself is quite a distraction, and it's therefore not a good one in my mind.

Dunno, I suspect they wanted someone reminiscent of the, uh, 'original' Viserys's (ie Harry Lloyd, who was also in Doctor Who- and pretty memorably too, for a one shot villain) unusual looks, and if so there aren't that many options. Both Smith and Lloyd stand out in everything they're in for not having a conventional look and for some very distinct mannerisms. Personally I don't find that distracting, but that is very much a Your Mileage May Vary situation.

Have to admit I kind of wish they'd gone with Tom Felton, or Jason Isaacs...

Quote

There are also two scenes at a brothel, one of which is an orgy of a size not usually seen outside of special interest films made in the Czech Republic. This is all par for the course of the show, in case you've watched Game of Thrones, but in this one, it's just there to be there. The violence in Game of Thrones, at least initially, had a purpose beyond shock value, as did all the scenes in the brothels. In this series, they have no purpose other than showing violence and naked people. Because that is what Game of Thrones is. Violence and boobies! Hooray.

Eh, the nudie/ sex scenes in early GoT didn't exactly have much purpose either- in general*- except to keep casual viewers 'interested' during some lore dumps. Which you can do without naked Esmé Bianco. I'm not exactly Captain General of the Social Justice Army but some of the GoT sexposition was really, really cringey.

OTOH yeah, the violence suffered from huge expectation inflation over the course of the original series with them constantly feeling the need to top the last thing, and just ended up silly in the end. Not a good sign if it's already in shock for shock's sake territory.

*no doubt HotD suffers here because Khal Drogo/ Daenerys and Jaime/ Cersei were absolutely critical and both (? iirc) were in the pilot episode. After that though...

[bugarup]

Halfway through Stranger Things 4.

That whole Hopper subplot - why is it even there? 

So many contrivances, asspulls and schmaltz ("You're a superhero, 11! Plz save the world!" ), sometimes I felt like I was watching a telenovella. 

Vecna looks like a ghoul from Fallout and shuffles like a geriatric zombie despite of being so effin' ripped. 2 out of 10 for scary presence, 8 out of 10 for making me want to play NV again. 

For something leaning into horror of eighties so much they cast Englund, there is way, way not enough of slashed teens. "Stranger Things by way of Until Dawn" would be such and improvement, not to mention help with cast bloat. Especially since at least three of them have no purpose whatsoever.

Wish they gave something more to do to Eddie the metalhead. Such a dramatic introduction, actor kinda channeling Heath Ledger from that Shakespeare-adapted-for-high-school-setting film, and it fizzles out right after the first episode. Steve the Hair still has good comedic timing and thus is my least disliked character, though I'm warming up to Erica the Overly Sarcastic Younger Sister. 

  

[majestic]

6 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

little bit more (or less?) work and you could have typoed it to septical instead.

Alas, unintentional and a missed opportunity, what a double whammy. Shouldn't do long form posts after midnight.  

6 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Dunno, I suspect they wanted someone reminiscent of the, uh, 'original' Viserys's (ie Harry Lloyd, who was also in Doctor Who- and pretty memorably too, for a one shot villain) unusual looks, and if so there aren't that many options.

There it shows that I was late to the Doctor Who party, because I watched that episode only after the first season of Game of Thrones, but I can imagine it would be distracting. The Doctor Who episode with Dumbledore was strange for me too. 

6 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Both Smith and Lloyd stand out in everything they're in for not having a conventional look and for some very distinct mannerisms. Personally I don't find that distracting, but that is very much a Your Mileage May Vary situation.

Have to admit I kind of wish they'd gone with Tom Felton, or Jason Isaacs...

Jason Isaacs would have been a good choice, although when I imagine him or Tom Felton with silver hair I think I'd probably call either Daemon Malfoy. 

6 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Eh, the nudie/ sex scenes in early GoT didn't exactly have much purpose either- in general*- except to keep casual viewers 'interested' during some lore dumps.

Giving the show a reason for exposition by making men chatty after sex is a justification that, while maybe not ideal, is at least a justification. The scenes in House of the Dragon serve the purpose of setting up the contrast in personality between Viserys and Daemon, but for that an orgy would not have been necessary. Much the same with the violence.

6 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Which you can do without naked Esmé Bianco. I'm not exactly Captain General of the Social Justice Army but some of the GoT sexposition was really, really cringey.

The cringiest scene was the one where Ms. Bianco was crying and Littlefinger quickly brought up a girl with semen dripping from her mouth. You're not wrong, Game of Thrones had scenes like that for the shock effect / special interest just as well, they just felt less egregious because it wasn't all at once, or maybe because I liked the show better. Can't rightly say.

6 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

OTOH yeah, the violence suffered from huge expectation inflation over the course of the original series with them constantly feeling the need to top the last thing, and just ended up silly in the end. Not a good sign if it's already in shock for shock's sake territory.

It sure felt like it was. The violence in itself had a point, same as the nudity, a need to set up the conflict between Viserys and his brother (and it is canonical, according to the history books, but that doesn't mean it is necessary to induldge that much), and that does make sense, but it was simply ridiculous in parts. Particularily the chopped off male reproduction organ of the rapist. The C-section in particular, Aemma is supposed to die in child birth, but adding everything else on top is just for shock value.

Although as I said, I was highly biased against the series a priori, and it didn't change my mind. Your milage may vary of course.  

Edited August 23, 2022 by majestic