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

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

55 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Did you watch the rebuild too, or just the original series?

Just the original series....for now. EoE and Rebuilds are on the menu soon, but there are a few movies I want to see before I go back to the anti-universe.

[Hurlshort]

I have been working my way through The Clone Wars. I just started season 4 and it has been a fun ride. I plan on jumping into Bad Batch after that.

[Malcador]

5 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

I have been working my way through The Clone Wars. I just started season 4 and it has been a fun ride. I plan on jumping into Bad Batch after that.

I should watch that.

Acolyte is cancelled - https://deadline.com/2024/08/the-acolyte-canceled-no-season-2-star-wars-disney-plus-1236044233/

[LadyCrimson]

Supacell, Netflix

Most of the 1st episode is chr. backstory/building, which I didn't find all that compelling (per usual) and I was about ready to give it up. But the final minutes made me go "ok, I'll give it 2nd episode shot."  Watched the whole thing (6 episodes) in one day. Barely FFW'ed.

It does not do anything unexpected (well, maybe one thing but not really), it is not innovative for its genre, the heroes all have typical power sets, and it occasionally has chrs acting/doing stupid things (magic powers logic+one main chr. relation was annoying). Yet for some reason I liked it. It reminds me a tad of a cross between that good 1st season of Heroes and Xmen perhaps. I suspect I simply ended up liking the main actors (all unknown to me, which probably helped  - a couple looked slightly familiar) and the South UK/urban culture setting. Or perhaps I was just in the right mood.   2nd season is greenlit - which is good, I'm willing to check it out. 

[majestic]

On 8/19/2024 at 7:03 PM, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

Rebuilds

But... why?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

34 minutes ago, majestic said:

But... why?

Picard is both too long and hard to watch, as that is what I was watching with my dad before he passed. So it's the Rebuilds or Twin Peaks, and it's been longer since I've seen the Rebuilds.

I want to see how they change on a rewatch. NGE hit different for me after the rewatch with the knowledge that Gendo is just as traumatized as Shinji and that his attempts at the HIP was an attempt to reunite his family and give Shinji the world he thought Yui wanted.

You thought this would be Mari didn't you?

 

[rjshae]

The original Chinese version of Three Body (Problem) is streaming on MPlex, so I've been watching that with subtitles. It's been of pretty decent quality thus far.

[Gfted1]

 

[Sarex]

KAOS is shaping up to be a pleasant surprise. Episode 1 was pretty good.

edit: Well this spiraled in to a whole lot of woke, but ok...

Spoiler

Overall I would say it was better than most drivel that is coming out these days. Reminds me a lot of the Umbrella Academy. Overall I am disappointed that they set it up for more seasons as it would have worked much better as a short series.

 

Edited August 31 by Sarex

[majestic]

Finished The Blacklist, season nine. It took me a while to get through, not because the season was bad, in fact, it was much better than it realistically has any right to be, being the ninth season of a series whose concept felt ludicrous and stretched after three seasons. It took me a while because while watching an episode, I was thinking to myself "this is great to watch" and when the episode was over, I rarely felt the urge to watch the next one.

Much of my enjoyment of the series comes down to two things: James Spader just being the most affably evil mastermind on TV, and, well, James Spader being in the series.

Most of the episodes are about catching a villain of the week while James Spader comes up with some ridiculously convoluted way to stay one step ahead of the people he's a confidential informant for, something that would probably make anyone who works in law enforcement feel the same sort of cringe I do when I see Abby and McGee typing furiously on the same keyboard trying to counteract a hacking attempt. The plotlines of the seasons have started out as fine enough in the first two seasons, and later became full Cris Carter kudzu gardens. There are so many twists and turns in the storyline that were added beause the series kept getting renewed, not because they were planned.

Luckily, there's another factor in the episodes that just makes me ignore the plot problems in the same way I can for other series. They just don't really matter. Watching an episode is like watching a group of people you have been watching for years now, all with their own quirks, ups and downs, and smaller plotlines that are really enjoyable. It's, well, like How I Met Your Mother, insofar as one really has to ignore that the series should be about Ted finding the mother of his children and is really just about anything but that for it to stay enjoyable beyond two or three seasons. Yeah, and Ted's an idiot. Which is, funnily enough, like with the main character of The Blacklist (Elizabeth Keen).

Spoiler

Except the series killed her off at the end of season eight. Good choice.

Most of the episodes are fun in that way. You see familiar characters being themselves and trying their best to make something of the situations they're put in, and the writers coming up with silly, nigh deus ex machinae style ways for James Spader to be at his best. It should not work in the ninth season, but somehow it does.

The series does one other thin better than everything else except perhaps Guardians of the Galaxy, and that's the use of songs in the episodes. They're almost always perfect to underscore what is going on, fit the mood of the scene and are used to great effect. Will probably take a break for season ten now.

Spoiler

Not so keen (ho ho ho) on Marvin Gerard having turned traitor in season nine, but then again, he had a better reason than most, and the ending of the season was handled fantastically, with one of the best conversations on TV ever. The following deus ex machina about resetting the series to the status quo by handwaving the fallout of the storyline away less so, but like I said, no one who actually cares for overarching plot lines and wants and needs those to be sensible would still be watching by season nine. Everyone I else I know who watched the series dropped out at seaons three of four.

 

 

Edited September 1 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

On 9/1/2024 at 4:46 PM, majestic said:

Luckily, there's another factor in the episodes that just makes me ignore the plot problems in the same way I can for other series. They just don't really matter. Watching an episode is like watching a group of people you have been watching for years now, all with their own quirks, ups and downs, and smaller plotlines that are really enjoyable. It's, well, like How I Met Your Mother, insofar as one really has to ignore that the series should be about Ted finding the mother of his children and is really just about anything but that for it to stay enjoyable beyond two or three seasons. Yeah, and Ted's an idiot. Which is, funnily enough, like with the main character of The Blacklist (Elizabeth Keen).

Most of the episodes are fun in that way. You see familiar characters being themselves and trying their best to make something of the situations they're put in, and the writers coming up with silly, nigh deus ex machinae style ways for James Spader to be at his best. It should not work in the ninth season, but somehow it does.

The series does one other thin better than everything else except perhaps Guardians of the Galaxy, and that's the use of songs in the episodes. They're almost always perfect to underscore what is going on, fit the mood of the scene and are used to great effect. Will probably take a break for season ten now.

I haven't seen much with David Spader (with the major exception, of course, being his short appearance(?) in Yuppie Psycho), and I know very little about the Blacklist because I'd only ever seen a little of it, so this is only tangentially related...but that's the reason why I think American cartoons can work despite the fact that they usually have no real story: if you like the characters and all the other elements (humor, art, timing, pacing...) surrounding them, then the plot and situation of each episode and the overall story doesn't really matter that much, you'll have a good time. Now having a great story would make it even better, but...having a bad story that doesn't work to the characters' strengths can instead make it all fall apart instead. I know you never had any liking or respect for this in American cartoons, but I do think the format can work given everything else being right.

Edited September 3 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I haven't seen much with David Spader (with the major exception, of course, being his short appearance(?) in Yuppie Psycho), and I know very little about the Blacklist because I'd only ever seen a little of it, so this is only tangentially related...but that's the reason why I think American cartoons can work despite the fact that they usually have no real story: if you like the characters and all the other elements (humor, art, timing, pacing...) surrounding them, then the plot and situation of each episode and the overall story doesn't really matter that much, you'll have a good time. Now having a great story would make it even better, but...having a bad story that doesn't work to the characters' strengths can instead make it all fall apart instead. I know you never had any liking or respect for this in American cartoons, but I do think the format can work given everything else being right.

There are two main things that more often than not put me off when it comes to American cartoons. I mean I know you already know that, but it bears repeating in case someone else reads these posts too. These are their art style and their unwillingness to engage the target audience at eye level, instead often treating them like blathering idiots. That is not to say that I did not enjoy some when I was a kid.

I watched, like any other kid my age, I suspect, the Tom and Jerry short films, The Flintstones and Looney Tunes, The Real Ghostbusters, and so on. The one thing most of these have in common is that they are pretty old. I did not try to rewatch most of them after the fiasco of getting the Galaxy Rangers boxed set - and that was a show animated in Japan. My nephew also watched The Real Ghostbusters on Netflix for a while so I caught the occasional episode, and that was also disappointing. That series was not nearly as entertaining as it was when I was like seven or eight when it first aired. 

I guess I can be as unfair or unwilling to meet things half way when I am put off by the art style, which is a huge drawback for many cartoons I could imagine would otherwise be quite interesting to me. King of the Hill being one such example. It is also possible that the smaller selection of available animated series on TV back in the 80ies and early 90ies colored my perception too much. I outright hated series like Animaniacs or Beetlejuice. Ugh.

[Zoraptor]

George Martin wrote a blogpost (warning, spoilers) about House of the Dragon S2 and (some of) its problems*. Got pulled almost immediately, hence the archive link.

I thought it was actually quite tame on the detail side of things, the spice was in the more off the cuff/ general remarks, especially since Condel is meant to be running the Dunk and Egg spinoff as well. Despite that it was probably pulled for the S3 spoiler, albeit it's something that was in the book so shouldn't be a surprise. Also that was not the most egregious example of an unnecessary change having a poor story effect to my mind.

*non spoiler mini review: biggest problem is still the same as it was in S1, they don't want to make either of the main women characters 'bad' which results in them being inconsistent, indecisive and vacillating all over the place. So instead of being 'bad' they (still) look weak. Second biggest problem is the awful pacing and obviously truncated ending, though at least there the blame may be with Zaslav's arbitrary budget cuts and/or the writers' strike.

[BruceVC]

5 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

George Martin wrote a blogpost (warning, spoilers) about House of the Dragon S2 and (some of) its problems*. Got pulled almost immediately, hence the archive link.

I thought it was actually quite tame on the detail side of things, the spice was in the more off the cuff/ general remarks, especially since Condel is meant to be running the Dunk and Egg spinoff as well. Despite that it was probably pulled for the S3 spoiler, albeit it's something that was in the book so shouldn't be a surprise. Also that was not the most egregious example of an unnecessary change having a poor story effect to my mind.

*non spoiler mini review: biggest problem is still the same as it was in S1, they don't want to make either of the main women characters 'bad' which results in them being inconsistent, indecisive and vacillating all over the place. So instead of being 'bad' they (still) look weak. Second biggest problem is the awful pacing and obviously truncated ending, though at least there the blame may be with Zaslav's arbitrary budget cuts and/or the writers' strike.

I have read Fire and Blood and GOT and I loved both of them but preferred GOT because its a story as opposed to the historical  account from different people around how F&B is written

And F&B also has  a much longer history and different characters that aren't  in TV series 

But my biggest " criticism " with F&B is trying to remember all the names of characters and who they are because they seem to reuse names or have similar names 

GOT was much easier to follow because its the same characters in the same time period, Jon Snow is Jon Snow throughout the narrative 

 

 

[BruceVC]

I have watched many excellent series lately but  these 2 I must recommend if you like horror and supernatural 

• From :  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_(TV_series)

Best way to describe it is its like Lost but with much more horror and supernatural themes. Absolutely enthralling and S3 is about to be released

• Servant : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_(TV_series)

Basically its an excellent and completely unexpected story that you think is a drama but turns out to be much more than that. 4 seasons in the entire completed story but each episode is only 30 minutes so its quick viewing 

[majestic]

Rings of Power, season two, episodes 1 to 4:

Anyone who has read my posts know what I thought about the first season: a train wreck in every way. Terrible acting (and really weird casting choices), terrible dialogue, terrible dialogue delivery, boring shots, badly paced, ludicrous action scenes and no respect for the source material. The latter in particular was pretty bad, putting in all sorts of fanservice that should not have been there (Hobbits, Gandalf arriving almost 3000 years too early) as well as heavily compressing the timeline, as the reign of Ar-Pharazôn was 1600 years after the creation of the rings and the Elven rings were not the first crafted.

Anyway, in the first four episodes of the second season only two of these problems seem to be left over. The action scenes are still ludicrous, but at least they were short so far, and it is impossible to fix the timeline in Rings of Power. Everything else is much improved. I can't say that I enjoyed watching the episodes too much, but at least I no longer want to claw my eyes out and pierce my eardrums while watching the show, outside of a few scenes with Elrond.

Which is an impressive improvement. The showrunners and writers are still the same, after all. It is not enough to make it worth watching for anyone who isn't @Hurlshort , and it will forever remain built on a rotten foundation. But, as strange as that is, I at least no longer hate watching it. So far. It has still plenty of episodes left to completely fall apart.

[Hurlshort]

I haven't started watching Rings of Power yet. I've been too busy watching Chimp Crazy, which is the new Tiger King.

edit: Although I'm already seeing stories about how it's going to get cancelled because not enough people are watching. I don't understand this stuff. Isn't the point of streaming that we don't need to sit down and watch it at a certain time on a certain night? Why are they still assessing streaming titles like this? Shouldn't it be based on subscribers and views over a longer period of time?

Honestly I wasn't even planning on watching until all the episodes are out. Seems odd that that would impact their ratings negatively.

Edited September 9 by Hurlshort

[Bartimaeus]

2 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

I haven't started watching Rings of Power yet. I've been too busy watching Chimp Crazy, which is the new Tiger King.

edit: Although I'm already seeing stories about how it's going to get cancelled because not enough people are watching. I don't understand this stuff. Isn't the point of streaming that we don't need to sit down and watch it at a certain time on a certain night? Why are they still assessing streaming titles like this? Shouldn't it be based on subscribers and views over a longer period of time?

Honestly I wasn't even planning on watching until all the episodes are out. Seems odd that that would impact their ratings negatively.

My understanding is that streaming services generally analyze their shows in terms of creating new subscribers as well as tracking already existing subscribers who watch it immediately as it comes out. By the time stragglers that put it off because they were busy with other things or just not in the mood for it yet actually get to watching it, the show may have already been cancelled. This has been widely agreed upon by everyone to be an excellent business model that has in no way left the streaming landscape as a veritable hellhole of shows that were inexplicably cancelled just as they were starting to hit their stride and grow a popular following, and it has absolutely not made audiences reluctant to grow attached to or even try to watch new shows out of fear that they'll be suddenly cancelled. In short, everything is exactly as it should be, especially once you realize that the initial lowball contracts they hand out for the personnel working on and creating a new show only last so long, and so studios prefer to cancel or at least have a show wrapped up before they might have to re-negotiate those contracts in the event of renewing a show past its expected due date.

Edited September 9 by Bartimaeus

[Zoraptor]

4 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

edit: Although I'm already seeing stories about how it's going to get cancelled because not enough people are watching. I don't understand this stuff. Isn't the point of streaming that we don't need to sit down and watch it at a certain time on a certain night? Why are they still assessing streaming titles like this? Shouldn't it be based on subscribers and views over a longer period of time?

Honestly I wasn't even planning on watching until all the episodes are out. Seems odd that that would impact their ratings negatively.

The short answer is that if you haven't watched it you aren't worth anything to them, and aren't until you do. Maybe you will eventually- but maybe you'll forget. Either way it does nothing for the company now. In the end they have to gauge success somehow and how many people are motivated to drop everything and watch is easy and gives you a quick answer when you've got to decide whether you want to spend another 200 million bucks or whatever.

I tend to agree with Bartimaeus' complaints about the Netflix model, but it is understandable why it's a model. I'd also note that they weight binging very heavily for some reason, despite the opposite actually being an advantage. ie watch a series in a few days and you can cancel your sub, watch one more slowly and it's multiple months worth of subs but Netflix prefers the former for new releases. There's a definite irony there also when the bread and butter series for streaming tend to be, well, oldish ~syndicated types like The Office, Friends, Suits, Lost etc that people come back to watch multiple times rather than just the Bridgertons and Stranger Things. Especially so nowadays when the flagships all tend to be 8ish episodes, every two years.

I doubt RoP is in danger of being cancelled* due to sunk cost. So much money has been spent buying the rights, setting everything up in NZ, stalling for 18 months due to covid (leasing every sound stage in Auckland over that time...) then moving everything to the UK that the actual filming costs are pretty minor. It's also the sort of thing where if it got cancelled managerial heads would have to roll. Amazon also didn't cancel Citadel, and hasn't cancelled Wheel of Time either. Yet, though it seems the most likely to go of the big budget failures. They've got a decent tolerance. cf The Acolyte getting cut pretty unceremoniously by Disney.

*or maybe it's Chimp Crazy that is in danger of being cancelled? Don't think they ever made S2 of Tiger King after all.

[Hurlshort]

I think Tiger King had a 2nd season. It sounds like there might be a season 3 and 4. I thought the original wrapped up pretty well with him going to prison, so I stopped there.

As for Chimp Crazy, I don't know how this director got lightning to strike twice. That show is even crazier.

[rjshae]

I finished watching the 30 episode Chinese language version of Three-Body on MPlex. It was pretty decent old-school sci-fi although the subtitles were on the poor side. The coolest sci-fi element was watching the tanker pass through the monofilament barrier in the penultimate episode. Some of the concepts were perhaps a bit far fetched, but hey it's sci-fi.

[majestic]

Rings of Power, season two, episode five.

This episode is a microcosm of the lore problems this series has and their effect on how much one can enjoy the series, at least from the point of view of someone like me who enjoyed reading The Silmarillion and generelly likes Tolkien's world building more than his actual writing. The episode itself was not bad, although the ongoing storyline with Galadriel is somewhat silly, but at least it is no longer mind-bendingly terrible like it was in the first season. Charlie Vickers is doing a good job as Sauron Annatar.

Spoiler

The problem is, of course, that Sauron never intended to make the Rings of Power for the Dwarves or Men, his intentions were to craft them with Celebrimbor and control the Elves through the power of the One Ring. That he invaded Eregion and stole the sixteen greater rings to give them to the Dwarves and Men was a result of the Elves realizing what he was doing and simply taking off the rings, not his intention all along. His actual plans all failed as the Elves were not corrupted because they took off the rings, the Dwarves proved too stubborn to be corrupted and the Mannish Lords to wear the rings did not really bring their kingdoms into the fold. That he ended up with nine Nazgûl for all his hard work and manipulation was a consolation prize.

As fun as the machinations of Annatar are at the moment, they're just not supposed to happen that way, and Ar-Pharazôn seems to not need Sauron at all to get the idea to strike westward.

 

Edited September 15 by majestic

[Hurlshort]

Watched the first 2 episodes is Rings of Power season 2 with my wife. It was great! The first episode really fantastic. 

Elrond rolling his eyes at all the bad choices is fun. He's apparently dealt with the consequences of other people's dumb choices for a long time.

I read that the show is pretty much greenlit for a 5 season arc, so that's nice.

[rjshae]

On 8/19/2024 at 9:55 PM, Malcador said:

I should watch that.

Acolyte is cancelled - https://deadline.com/2024/08/the-acolyte-canceled-no-season-2-star-wars-disney-plus-1236044233/

Acolyte wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible either; just okay. I actually think it would have worked better as an animated series.

[LadyCrimson]

Officer Black Belt - a "netflix" S. Korea film I guess? Crime/action.

I saw "starring Kim Woo Bin" so I clicked. He was fun/great but like his other recent stuff since he's come back from his nasopharyngeal cancer, it was nothing special. Not enough mentor/student bromance either. I'm not sure what it is, but outside of Train to Busan and The Man From Nowhere, most S. Korean films for me end up being just neutral. To the point I rarely even try anymore. Something about their story beat timings or editing perhaps often feels sporadic/erratic and ruins the flow/connection, for me. They tend to do better with series, any genre, even if they're short series. Although i still haven't watched Parasite.

Still waiting for 2nd season of Hellbound. Hoping it will be decent.

Edited September 17 by LadyCrimson