The TV and Streaming Thread: US Writers/Actors Strike Edition

[Gfted1]

I made it through True Detective S4 and I dont know what the hell happened. I could also have gone the rest of my life without seeing 61yo Jodie Foster getting banged on a desk.

Spoiler

Synopsis: local women did the killing, ghosts may be involved. Or not. Idk.

 

[Hurlshort]

2 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

I made it through True Detective S4 and I dont know what the hell happened. I could also have gone the rest of my life without seeing 61yo Jodie Foster getting banged on a desk.

  Reveal hidden contents

Synopsis: local women did the killing, ghosts may be involved. Or not. Idk.

 

We ain't getting any younger, so I'm happy to hear older folks still get their freak on. Good on her.

We are a lot closer to her age than the young starlets, Gfted1.

[Gfted1]

43 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

We are a lot closer to her age than the young starlets, Gfted1.

Are you trying to tell me that if I were single Id have no chance with Sidney Sweeny?  

[Raithe]

Picked up the physical dvd set of Dollhouse, so having a slow binge of that over the weekend.

It's a little interesting to have the commentary of Eliza Dushku and Joss Whedon having a jokey banter over it all and Joss apologising for going too Michael Bay with camera shots between motorbikes and focusing on short skirts and that mix of occasional OTT byplay.

 

[Bartimaeus]

Avatar: The Last Airbender (Netflix), episode 1.

Unlike Hazbin Hotel, I wasn't excited for this one, because I knew it was going to be awful...but I have to admit, I vastly underestimated just how awful it would be. I sat through this with my nieces (who love the original cartoon, we've watched all of it multiple times together over the last few years) and conspired to stay very neutral during this so that I would not ruin it for them in the event that they liked it. I was very mindful, for their sake...honestly, I really was, and so it warmed the deepest, darkest corners of my twisted heart that I was not alone in hating it. I'm proud of them, they're good kids.

[Hurlshort]

Just now, Bartimaeus said:

Avatar: The Last Airbender (Netflix), episode 1.

Unlike Hazbin Hotel, I wasn't excited for this one, because I knew it was going to be awful...but I have to admit, I vastly underestimated just how awful it would be. I sat through this with my nieces (who love the original cartoon, we've watched all of it multiple times together over the last few years) and conspired to stay very neutral during this so that I would not ruin it for them in the event that they liked it. I was very mindful, for their sake...honestly, I really was, and so it warmed the deepest, darkest corners of my twisted heart that I was not alone in hating it. I'm proud of them, they're good kids.

I was curious if it would be any good. I just finished watching the Percy Jackson show with my kids, and that turned out great. It was better than the movies by a mile, and even improved a few aspects of the book (which I was very lukewarm on.) 

But they've shown no interest in watching the Avatar live action show, despite enjoying the animated series. They do love Hazbin Hotel, and I don't get that one at all.

[Bartimaeus]

56 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

I was curious if it would be any good. I just finished watching the Percy Jackson show with my kids, and that turned out great. It was better than the movies by a mile, and even improved a few aspects of the book (which I was very lukewarm on.) 

But they've shown no interest in watching the Avatar live action show, despite enjoying the animated series. They do love Hazbin Hotel, and I don't get that one at all.

I know I'm just, like, the person that hates almost everything around here, but I think your kids are being smart skipping this one. I can't even...my brain was being boiled in my skull watching this. Comments I read online about the rest of the season give me less than zero confidence that my opinion will suddenly turn itself around in any way, and in fact, it would almost definitely get worse if I watch any more. It's all tell and no show (endless plot dumps and exposition!), you have episode storylines that get haphazardly slapped together so that none of them work, cosplay-level characters who have had all of their development stripped away because there's no time for them to do anything but rush to the next plot point over and over (and some characters actively get assassinated by their writing!), the order of events is confused and there's zero sense of pacing with how rushed it all is, everything has this weird video game cutscene look to it because all the scenes were filmed on a set and they have no locations and nothing ever looks lived in... I've only seen like an episode of Wheel of Time, but I'd genuinely much rather sit through more of that than Netflix's Airbender. Hell, I hate-watched all* of Hazbin Hotel and though I thought it was a total train-wreck from beginning to end, there were still at least a few things I liked in it that made it not a total loss. Given how bitterly disappointed I was by Hazbin Hotel after loving the original pilot and then waiting years for the full adaptation, that should really tell you something.

At least, like I said, I already knew this was going to be bad, so it isn't nearly as upsetting as it could be. But...it's still kind of upsetting.

*Hazbin Hotel is like...two and a half hours, so "all of" isn't really saying that much, that's about as long as most movies these days.

Edited February 27 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

57 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Avatar: The Last Airbender (Netflix), episode 1.

Unlike Hazbin Hotel, I wasn't excited for this one, because I knew it was going to be awful...but I have to admit, I vastly underestimated just how awful it would be. I sat through this with my nieces (who love the original cartoon, we've watched all of it multiple times together over the last few years) and conspired to stay very neutral during this so that I would not ruin it for them in the event that they liked it. I was very mindful, for their sake...honestly, I really was, and so it warmed the deepest, darkest corners of my twisted heart that I was not alone in hating it. I'm proud of them, they're good kids.

I put it on in the background while I was cooking and couldn't help but feel that it's simply a lesser version than the cartoon. So why would I watch the bootleg when the real thing is right there?

[Bartimaeus]

1 minute ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

I put it on in the background while I was cooking and couldn't help but feel that it's simply a lesser version than the cartoon. So why would I watch the bootleg when the real thing is right there?

The biggest hurdle with the original cartoon, I think, is that the first few episodes are pretty rough around the edges. Some pretty basic writing that seems aimed at helping introduce children to the characters and setting, and some real cut-rate animation that's pilot-esque. The show as a whole has also unfortunately suffered the fate that most early 2000s animated shows have in being made only for standard definition - if you're an adult just trying the show for the very first time, I can definitely understand not immediately seeing the appeal. But this...woof, whoa, I guess I'm gonna go back to watching my dadgummed cartoons.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

17 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

The biggest hurdle with the original cartoon, I think, is that the first few episodes are pretty rough around the edges. Some pretty basic writing that seems aimed at helping introduce children to the characters and setting, and some real cut-rate animation that's pilot-esque. The show as a whole has also unfortunately suffered the fate that most early 2000s animated shows have in being made only for standard definition - if you're an adult just trying the show for the very first time, I can definitely understand not immediately seeing the appeal. But this...woof, whoa, I guess I'm gonna go back to watching my dadgummed cartoons.

One thing I will say in the favor of the live action Avatar is that at least it doesn't appear to be ashamed of what it's based on/adapted from unlike the bulk of superhero stuff. E for Enthusiasm I suppose.

The problems I have with it can boil down to that it tried to translate rather than adapt. I don't think it's shot for shot but it certainly feels more like they copied the animation scripts and edited them to fit live action rather than started with live action in mind. The result is having scenes that feel like I'm watching a cosplay reenactment of the animation which imo isn't fair to the cast.

[LadyCrimson]

I tried watching the Netflix Avatar series. I think I got about 4 episodes in.  As always, I have not watched the original anime that is so beloved (I know of it, memes, maybe watched one or two episodes of the anime and that's it). I did watch that deservedly panned movie although perhaps I didn't "hate" it as much as some. It was still bad tho.

The first episode of the series is tolerable/ok. But for me after that there were a couple main things that made it not for me:

---most of the acting was bad. Not as in horrible,  I just mean pretty amateurish in cadence, delivery, other. I don't know if it's the actors or the direction but either way made it hard for me to get into characters/take anything at all "seriously."
---most of the writing was goofy. Lots of one-sentence dialogue passing for conversation. Such may work in anime (lots o' anime is not about long-winded dialogue after all), but in live-action with poor delivery, it just sounds - well, stupid.
---apparently I am too old/cranky to appreciate eager, youthful heroes, to relate such shows, now. It's the main reason I haven't tried that other anime live Netflix adaption, One Piece, either.

So, I have no clue whether it's a good or bad adaptation, but it's definitely not something in my wheelhouse.

[Gorgon]

the Shogun remake. The original had Toshiro Mifune, which is hard to beat, it it's ... good. It's actually pretty good.  It's like a better than average samurai movie.

Big fight scene at the end of episode 2 and I was disappointed to see CGI splatter. Would rather have squibs for that Shogun assassin look. 

 

 

 

[Malcador]

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2024/02/william-gibsons-neuromancer-will-become-an-apple-tv-show/

 

[LadyCrimson]

20 hours ago, Gorgon said:

the Shogun remake. The original had Toshiro Mifune, which is hard to beat, it it's ... good. It's actually pretty good.  It's like a better than average samurai movie.

Big fight scene at the end of episode 2 and I was disappointed to see CGI splatter. Would rather have squibs for that Shogun assassin look.

 

I've heard good reviews - and even without those I'd still be at least curious. I mean, I love that old mini-series, but if they pulled it off and made a great modern-era version of novel, that'd be great, too. Sadly I don't have Hulu or FX.

[rjshae]

On 2/24/2024 at 2:46 PM, Raithe said:

Picked up the physical dvd set of Dollhouse, so having a slow binge of that over the weekend.

It's a little interesting to have the commentary of Eliza Dushku and Joss Whedon having a jokey banter over it all and Joss apologising for going too Michael Bay with camera shots between motorbikes and focusing on short skirts and that mix of occasional OTT byplay.

Funny, I used to really enjoy the stuff that Whedon put out on screen. But now, knowing what we know, it's all got a creepy edge to it. But yeah, Dollhouse was a pretty good series. I wouldn't mind a remake with a longer run.

[Gorgon]

On 3/2/2024 at 11:22 AM, LadyCrimson said:

I've heard good reviews - and even without those I'd still be at least curious. I mean, I love that old mini-series, but if they pulled it off and made a great modern-era version of novel, that'd be great, too. Sadly I don't have Hulu or FX.

I rotate streaming services and grab a month about once every quarter.  There is no enough decent programming on to justify a month on month subscription to anything imho.

[rjshae]

I finished up the Loki series on Disney.

For a god of mischief, that outcome sure seems like a less than desirable day job. But okay...

Why do fantasy stories (almost) always seem so utterly random? They're basically "random sh*t happens", the end.

[majestic]

6 hours ago, rjshae said:

Why do fantasy stories (almost) always seem so utterly random? They're basically "random sh*t happens", the end.

Beats me, but whenever I complain about bad writing and non-sensical storylines/storytelling in sci-fi and fantasy I more often than not get a reply that I should just relax, turn off my brain and enjoy the ride. It's not high art, you know. Just silly entertainment.

Yeah, maybe it is not high art (as if that is not subject to change, Jane Austen's novels are classics today but were very much derided when they were first published), but internal consistency and characters not behaving randomly is not a hallmark of high art. I would argue it is the barest minimum we should expect as an audience.

[Hurlshort]

4 hours ago, majestic said:

Beats me, but whenever I complain about bad writing and non-sensical storylines/storytelling in sci-fi and fantasy I more often than not get a reply that I should just relax, turn off my brain and enjoy the ride. It's not high art, you know. Just silly entertainment.

Yeah, maybe it is not high art (as if that is not subject to change, Jane Austen's novels are classics today but were very much derided when they were first published), but internal consistency and characters not behaving randomly is not a hallmark of high art. I would argue it is the barest minimum we should expect as an audience.

This seems targeted at me.

Loki certainly isn't bad writing. It's a serialized TV show, so it also probably isn't high art. There would seem to be a lot of wiggle room in between those two. Is Robert Howard bad writing? 

I don't know, I used to write stuff in college and I wanted to be a novelist. Wrapping up stories is extremely difficult. I'm a bit more forgiving of the craft, I guess. I'm watching Resident Alien and it's a mess of a story, but it's also funny and endearing, so I'm happy to enjoy the ride. Even when you say something like: 

Quote

internal consistency and characters not behaving randomly is not a hallmark of high art.

It is still really just an opinion. I'm guessing the writers had a plan and didn't just throw a bunch of stuff at a wall to see what stuck. People can spend all day on the internet arguing about whether it was consistent or not, or whether the character had motivation to act like they did. And we do. We get to spend as much time as we want arguing about it online as we like thanks to the miracle of the internet. Yay.  

[majestic]

56 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

This seems targeted at me.

I have no idea why you would think so.

57 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

Loki certainly isn't bad writing. It's a serialized TV show, so it also probably isn't high art. There would seem to be a lot of wiggle room in between those two. Is Robert Howard bad writing? 

I have not seen Loki. Nor have I read anything by Robert E. Howard, so I would not know. I liked the Conan the Barbarian movie, but I doubt that would serve as qualification to judge his writing. I also did not hate Conan the Destroyer, but that is probably because I watched it at the age of ten.

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

I don't know, I used to write stuff in college and I wanted to be a novelist. Wrapping up stories is extremely difficult. I'm a bit more forgiving of the craft, I guess. I'm watching Resident Alien and it's a mess of a story, but it's also funny and endearing, so I'm happy to enjoy the ride. Even when you say something like: 

I was not specifically talking about endings, but series endings are often situations where characters behave like they should not, or events happen that do not logically follow from what happened before, or a lot of setup is wasted with no payoff. This is often because the writers want or have to achieve an ending that they have in mind while the natural flow of the series no longer makes the ending properly achievable.

Two examples are the ending of Game of Thrones, and the original ending of How I Met Your Mother. Game of Thrones ended in a way that will probably make more sense in writing, if the books ever come out. Dany in the books is much more likely to burn down King's Landing in a fit of anger than show Dany was. How I Met Your Mother on the other hand was an example where the showrunners actually filmed the series' ending several seasons in advance, and it made no sense any more, but seeing how it contained shots of Ted's children that were long since grown up by the point the series ended, they could not go and re-shoot an ending that worked better.

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

It is still really just an opinion. I'm guessing the writers had a plan and didn't just throw a bunch of stuff at a wall to see what stuck. People can spend all day on the internet arguing about whether it was consistent or not, or whether the character had motivation to act like they did. And we do. We get to spend as much time as we want arguing about it online as we like thanks to the miracle of the internet. Yay.  

I probably expect too much from professional writers in this day and age. The flood of content must be written by someone, and clearly there are not enough good writers to go around, which contributes to the overall feeling that there is a steep decline in quality. Still, my expectations stand, and they are not even that high a bar to clear. I do not really need witty dialogue, although it certainly is nice, I do not need deep, thought provoking entertainment, although it certainly is nice, and I do not need Shakespearean prose.

Fun fact, just yesterday I ran across an egregious consistency problem. I am rewatching Lost, and there is a series of episodes where the characters on the Island are randomly jumping through time after the island becomes disloged from the regular timeline. In an earlier episode they made it clear that only the items they had with them when they time jumps began move through them in time.

Cue them finding a paddle boat on the shore two episodes later. They time jump while paddling, and one would expect that they just get dropped into the water afterwards, right? Because the paddle boat was certainly not amongst the things they brought with them, right?

Yeah, nope. 

See, that is exactly the sort of thing I am talking about. The rule was originally introduced so they can bring the Zodiac they were on with them, when the time jumps began. That is fine, really, beacuse who cares about how time travel really works in a work of fiction (one could certainly make a case that introducing time travel is almost always a bad idea in and of itself, but that is not a point I want to argue here). It also helps that they can just always have their small arms and, well, their clothes. Just as long as the rules are applied consistently, which they, in this case, are clearly not. I just do not think that it is too much to expect from a team of professional writers to catch that one.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

57 minutes ago, majestic said:

I probably expect too much from professional writers in this day and age

"Somehow, Palpatine returned"

......

I think the bigger problem isn't the talents of professional writers per se as the studios being increasingly neurotic and businesses wanting to overwork everyone while not paying ****. So the only ones who can reliably work in Hollywood are nepobabies while talented people from less wealthy backgrounds get burned out in the gig economy instead of being able to create....all while studio execs burn down hundreds of hours of work for a tax break because the algorithm told them 1000 pound twin housewives would be better. It's all a ****show.

[Hurlshort]

@majesticLost was certainly a mess of story, but I enjoyed the setups and the unravelling mystery aspect. I also felt it was character driven, so I cared less about the science or lore of the island itself.

How I Met Your Mother is a funny one, because there is no way the writers expected it to have the success or the run that it had. That made it pretty awkward at the end, but I'll go back to saying that show was also about characters and witty dialogue, and I thought it did all that well enough. Not every comedy can end like Newhart, even though they all probably should. That ending basically told everyone to relax, it's a comedy and the story was just a stupid dream.

I think you've got this impression that I just enjoy everything. Don't worry, I too have plenty of disappoints in my media life. I just try not to dwell on them, and the stuff I put time into, I try to focus on the best parts. I'm still pissed off at Wheel of Time, if that makes you feel better. 

edit: I also aways saw Lost as religiously allegorical. Religions are filled with plot discrepancies, so it fit the tone. 

Edited March 6 by Hurlshort

[majestic]

4 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

"Somehow, Palpatine returned"

It makes sense in the context of prior established lore, as Darth Sidious was Darth Plagueis' apprentice, and it was established in canon that Plagueis found a way to immortality, and Star Wars quite clearly has viable cloning technology, so bringing back Palpatine makes sense in the setting's established rules. It is still a poor choice as it both shows creative bankruptcy worse than having a second Death Star in Return of the Jedi and it retroactively makes Anakin's sacrifice meaningless.

To be fair to Jar Jar Abrams though, what else could they have done after Rian Johnson killed off the main antagonist in the second movie of a trilogy without any thought as to what to do afterwards? It was a little too late to set up a new villain and Kylo Ren would have made an even poorer one. Alas.

4 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

@majesticLost was certainly a mess of story, but I enjoyed the setups and the unravelling mystery aspect. I also felt it was character driven, so I cared less about the science or lore of the island itself.

True, and I do not expect everything to be consistent in a show of this length and with that many changes and mysteries added to elongate the series past the point of what the creators wanted to do, just because it was wildly popular. However, most of the problems are the less problematic retroactive continuity changes, like when it was established that the Man in Black cannot kill candidates directly, even though he quite clearly killed Eko when the actor wanted to leave the show, or how he was supposed to only be able to take the shape of dead characters, but often ran around the jungle as Walt before that rule was thought of.

This is in contrast to the issue with the outrigger that should not travel through time with the group. Here the violation follows the establishment of the rule, without any added clarification.

4 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

How I Met Your Mother is a funny one, because there is no way the writers expected it to have the success or the run that it had. That made it pretty awkward at the end, but I'll go back to saying that show was also about characters and witty dialogue, and I thought it did all that well enough. Not every comedy can end like Newhart, even though they all probably should. That ending basically told everyone to relax, it's a comedy and the story was just a stupid dream.

My thoughts on How I Met Your Mother should be somewhere in a thread on this forum already. It is pretty much the only sitcom that I enjoyed, and I particularily also liked the latter seasons where the general consensus was that the show already stopped being funny, but that is on me and my kind of humor. One may or may not like Ted because he is an idiot and the premise of the series was probably not good enough to actually carry nine seasons (the strength of every character who is not Ted on the other hand was more than enough in my opinion), but the quality of the scripts and the work that went into the overall craftsmanship of the series is leaps and bounds ahead of other sitcoms, or most comedy in general. Well, except for the ending.

I cannot comment on Newhart, but "it was all a dream" endings are more often than not just terrible.

4 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

I think you've got this impression that I just enjoy everything. Don't worry, I too have plenty of disappoints in my media life. I just try not to dwell on them, and the stuff I put time into, I try to focus on the best parts. I'm still pissed off at Wheel of Time, if that makes you feel better. 

You may not enjoy everything, but certainly more than I do, which makes me a little envious, to be completely honest. I cannot for my life fathom how you managed to like Rings of Power, but I admit I am almost curious enough to try Wheel of Time just to see how bad that must be for you to dislike it.

4 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

edit: I also aways saw Lost as religiously allegorical. Religions are filled with plot discrepancies, so it fit the tone. 

To be fair to religions, they have been around for much longer than the time it took to make the six seasons of Lost, so that is not a very good excuse. I am not sure I would go so far as to say that Lost is an intentional religious allegory in the strictest sense (watch Revolutionary Girl Utena for that, although it not based around Western religion), but it certainly has its roots in the various religions and philosophies of the world and makes heavy use of religious imagery, much like Neon Genesis Evangelion did before. Fun fact, that series also had an ending that was wildly controversial, with a similar problem: offering no narrative closure in lieu of a thematic one. The similarities are striking enough that one might think they were intentional. Most likely not though. Neon Genesis Evangelion was very much allegoric too, albeit on a much more personal level: it was a way for the series director to work through the trials and tribulations of running an almost failing studio and his depression.

Lost, as a whole, can be seen as the clashing of Western and Eastern philosophical and religious thought. The changes on the island, especially regarding the Man in Black / Smoke Monster and his relationship to his brother Jacob can be interpreted as the rise of the duality between good and evil as brought into the larger world by Christianity (also represented also by the commonly played Backgammon, and as Locke said, two players, one light, one dark). It seems strange from our point of view perhaps, but the conflict between good and evil and the inherent duality of the two sides, with  the ability to actively chose and even switch the side you are on (through redemption arcs or a gradual fall towards villainy), rose with the prominence of Christianity. Look at the theater plays of ancient Greece, for instance. The ancient Greeks would have most likely laughed at the preposterous idea that Darth Vader would just switch sides at the end of Return of the Jedi as your lot in life is preordained by your destiny - as set by the gods. They would most likely not have batted an eye at Zeus showing up and setting things back to what they were though.

Edited March 6 by majestic
spelink

[Hurlshort]

24 minutes ago, majestic said:

I cannot comment on Newhart, but "it was all a dream" endings are more often than not just terrible.

It's before my time, but Bob Newhart is an institution. 

Here's a write up on it: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/newhart-last-episode/

Edited March 6 by Hurlshort

[Zoraptor]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

To be fair to Jar Jar Abrams though, what else could they have done after Rian Johnson killed off the main antagonist in the second movie of a trilogy without any thought as to what to do afterwards?

That's the crucial difference with most other instances of bad writing; Abrams got written into a corner by someone else, not himself, and had to make the best of a bad situation. It's doubtful even a genuinely good writer (which Abrams is far from, though he certainly isn't awful either) could have extricated themselves from that situation seamlessly. Ultimately not even Johnson's fault, that blame lies with the extraordinarily slack supervision/ oversight/ planning of LucasArts/ Disney with respect to their billion dollar franchise.

In contrast many other much derided examples of bad writing were entirely the writers' fault. Classic example probably being Euron's infamous dragon ambush in GoT S8 even more so than Dany going bonkers because of bells or Charles Xavier becoming king. Made no sense, required Dany to be a drooling moron who'd forgotten about the Iron Fleet (despite them being mentioned two? episodes earlier), needed her and her dragons to be blind and not notice an entire fleet and used a deus ex machina laser designated ballista which was ineffective both later and earlier in the series. At least Captain Cold and his javelin (and Palpatine, as mentioned) were supernatural.

Edited March 7 by Zoraptor