The TV and Streaming Thread: That's Entertainment!

[ShadySands]

Also liked the new Kevin Hart a lot.

This weekend my son made us sit through 4 movies in The Dog Who Saved series. Do not recommend. Also, and completely unrelated, I made everyone sit through Sister Act. Way less singing and songs than I remembered. It was like halfway through the movie before the first nun jam.

Edited December 1 by ShadySands

[Hurlshort]

I watched Phantom of the Opera with the family (the movie) so clearly we are all in a musical mood.

I also started Plur1bus with my wife. It was nowhere near what I was expecting. It is great though.

[Sarex]

HBO in to Netflix now... WB got sold to Netflix. So we now have the Marvel/Disney vs DC/Netflix.

[Sarex]

Netflix already started sending out emails announcing it. 

[majestic]

Stranger Things, season 5, part 1: On The Quest For Even More Subs. 

Quick note, I'm not going to spoiler tag anything before season five, it's been years. #dealwithit

So, like, the series will be dropped in two installments, four episodes now, and apparently another round on Christmas. Hey, we gotta squeeze the maximum amount of Netflix subscriptions out of the show. Which has been the problem of the series ever since the first season wrapped up. Every season since the first was unnecessary, and while I still enjoyed them, season two in particular was basically just a rehash of the first one with worse writing.

Season three vectored off into 80ies trash territory with the Russian plot and season four was, at least, a proper sequel, although it did suffer from sequelitits: in order to introduce a bigger threat parts of the original storyline were - if not retconned, then at least heavily expanded - and a new antagonist was created where none was needed. The parallel dimension with the eldritch horrors the show revolved around were incorporated into a hive mind controlled by someome who once was human. Henry Creel, also known as Subject 001, the first of the gifted children found and experimented upon by Dr. Brenner. By tradition he got a D&D nickname by the "kids" (who, at this point, where mostly at the cusp of becoming adults, if they weren't already) - Vecna.

Vecna would have been fine for a second season. Less so in season four, but that is water under the bridge. 

With that out of the way, if you were unhappy with the show in the earlier seasons, then you'll not find anything in this one either. It is mostly more of the same - mostly because the pacing hasn't allowed a whole lot of breathing room or downtime. The first episode introduced the changes after the prior season, i.e. a military lockdown after the Upside Down bled into Hawkins. Anyway, the kids are on the prowl for Vecna, who they assume has survived and is still around. Spoiler: 'course he is. Wouldn't be much of a season without the antagonist.

One of the problems the insanely long production time of the series brough is the actors growing up. It would have been an issue even if they came out with a season every year, but the lead actors are no longer kids, and even though they had Millie Bobby Brown wear a grey trackie the entire time, that did very little to hide the adult woman underneath, to the point where I wonder why they even bothered. In an inverse Golden Girls scenario, Dustin, who is amongst the oldest of the former child actors of the show, is the only who who still looks the part. With some heavy squinting. 

Yeah, anyway, there's no place I am going with this in particular. It's a pain in the suspension of disbelief, but in a series where a group of kids routinely outsmart high level military and intelligence officers as well as top secret government branches, them not looking like kids anymore might not be that much of a problem. A more discerning viewer's more like to ditch the series after the second or third season based on it getting worse.

With that out of the way, I actually binged the episodes. This is at a time where I even finish movies I enjoy in more than one sitting, and it sometimes takes me several days to watch through an episode of Voyager, where I just recently finished a rewatch. Man, that series still has so many problems, but they do seem somewhat minor when compared to the problems of the series that came after. But I digress. What I mean by this is that no matter how ridiculous the setting, premis and storyline have become, I still enjoyed the episodes so far. A lot. 

Acting performances are once again top notch, and if they ever make a show that's just about Maya Hawke (who seems to look more and more like her mother every year) talking to Noah Schnapp, I'm game. To be perfectly honest, I think that's the primary reason I still enjoy the series as much as I do - I just don't care all that much for the storyline. It's the characters and the strength of the cast that's doing the heavy lifting.

What pointless review. I wrote a lot, and yet said not much in it. The music is still fantastic, and the setting still makes me nostalgic (hey, 80ies). Camerawork and editing is good enough, and the CGI still is as it always ways: an eyesore. Hey come on Netflix, games do better physics effects at this point in time. Ah, well.

[Bartimaeus]

Here is what I remember about seasons 3 and 4 of Stranger Things:

1. The new characters (i.e. Robin, Erica, Eddie) and how they played off of the old characters they interacted with most (mostly Steve and I think Dustin) were generally a thumbs up, probably because they were new characters and the writers actually had motivated reason to add them to the mix. Robin was my favorite out of the lot, and from what I gather most people seem to agree on that.

2. Literally anyone and everyone else could've been killed in the most brutally horrific way possible and I would've been sitting there applauding the show for finally getting one of its many deadbeats off of my television screen. Joyce, Jim, Mike, Eleven, Lucas, Nancy, Jonathan, Will, Max, and Murray...any of these I would've been overjoyed to see get axed - with especial emphasis on Eleven, Jim, Murray, and Jonathan. No hate for the actors, you were all a great lot in the first season (well, excepting Max who only shows up in season 2) when you actually had fun and/or compelling parts to play, it's sadly the writers who have done you wrong.

...and that's pretty much it. I guess I remember vaguely about some incredibly awful Russian stuff with Joyce and Jim, but I think my subconscious has once again done me a solid by blocking out most of whatever that stupidity was. I don't even remember who Vecna is, I don't think I have even the vaguest concept of what he looks like or anything he was about or did...but in all fairness, I think I mostly skipped all of Eleven's stuff in season 4 on account of it being soul-shatteringly drab and repetitive by that point, which probably plays into it.

I'm still as of yet undecided whether I shall hate-watch season 5 or not.

[uuuhhii]

first microsoft now netflix

hope everyone enjoy the monopoly

it would be worse than cable

[ShadySands]

20 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I'm still as of yet undecided whether I shall hate-watch season 5 or not.

I actually liked it but my expectations were super low

[Hurlshort]

Boots on Netflix - I guess the Pentagon released a statement calling this woke garbage, which of course led to a spike in viewership. But the show was great. It actually seemed a lot more pro-military than most of the media out there. Yeah, the main character is gay and he's dealing with a time in history where that would get you discharged, but he's also recognizing that the boot camp experience is changing him for the better. Anyways I read up on the true story a bit and the guy behind it seems to be a lot more secure in himself than Pete Hegseth. Greg Cope said in response to the Pentagon's criticism that thankfully the Marines taught him not to care about that stuff.  

[LadyCrimson]

You can just watch the first 80 seconds of this video. That's the section that amused me re: the video's title question. The rest is the usual "they ruined a beloved franchise/no longer aimed at original audience" type stuff.  But yeah - in terms of promo posters and this franchise (which I didn't know existed until I saw this video) - imo it's awful. But hey, I'm not the target audience anymore so whatever. 
 

 

[Lexx]

Watched all currently available episodes of Pluribus. In fact, I binge watched them in 2 days. Just couldn't stop. They really know how to make you want to keep watching.

At first the premise didn't interest me at all, and I ended up watching it only because I literally had nothing better to do. Will for sure keep watching it till the end now. Though at the same time it kinda pains me that this could be drawn out to god knows how many seasons again and ... I'm kinda over that. Even though it's really good so far, I also just want to get to a resolution, lol. 

[Zoraptor]

Rings of Power S2. 5? episodes in. Since it's free here for the time being, doubt I'd have paid for prime to watch it after S1.

It's an absolutely massive improvement over S1, which lifts it to being ok, more or less, and I'm not regretting the time spent watching it which I- more or less- did for S1. I'm still going to complain a lot of course, but they are far more minor complaints at least and moderated a lot by the improvement shown.

So it's still got the flaws of S1, but they're less prominent and mostly more... excusable, I guess. Many conversations still sound oddly circuitous but not bafflingly obtuse, there's still some feeling that everyone is a stage actor declaiming to the audience in front of static backdrops rather than being in a 'real' world but a lot less pronounced and less frequent (ie, the world feels a lot more lived in*), there's a load of slightly illogical minor drama for drama's sake** rather than it being basically all there was and you still find it difficult to credit the elves as being thousands of years old when Elrond and Galadriel act like they're teenage siblings half the time.

The pacing is also still off a bit too due to too many threads- Eregion, Khazad-dum, Lindon, Numenor, Pelargir, (Adar/orcs); and the still not very good at all and extremely pointless seeming Gandalf and hobbits odyssey. Despite the number of threads a lot of things feel like they're happening far too quickly because there's too little time for things to develop. But it is, at least, reasonably engaging.

Overall, if it continues the trajectory from S1-->S2 then S3 should be really rather good.

*though it is still quite bad, which it really ought not to be. Spend millions on CGI, don't spend a relative pittance on extras to make the world feel like it has actual people in it is a baffling decision.

**big exclusion: Celebrimbor acting like he got pithed between scenes specifically to up the drama..

Spoiler

..honestly, it would have been far better if he hadn't expressed any significant doubts about 'Annatar'. Pointing out pretty much exactly how he was being manipulated by him and then proceeding to... get manipulated by him, again, made him look imbecilic. Of course he has to be convinced in order for the plot to happen, but he doesn't have to point out the banana skin at the top of the stairs, tell Annatar that he knows he placed it there, then proceed to... take the lift instead, on Annatar's advice.

 

[uuuhhii]

 

 

[rjshae]

I watched my alma mater, the UW, win their first men's soccer national championship today. Woo-hoo! It was a fun match.

https://www.ncaa.com/live-updates/soccer-men/d1/washington-holds-win-ot-thriller-3-2-against-nc-state-college-cup-final

[Sarex]

The Running Man (2025). Half an hour too long. Just fast forwarded to the end.

[LadyCrimson]

^  Is it at least more like the novel? I liked the short novel  a fair bit. It's not a total fave of mine but I liked it, especially the ending segments. But that Arnold film had almost zero resemblance/didn't like it much (ok, it had some 80's action-cheese chuckles and Richard Dawson was great fun). I was hoping the new version might at least be better than that, re: the actual King tale, but I didn't/don't have high hopes.   

[Sarex]

10 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

^  Is it at least more like the novel? I liked the short novel  a fair bit. It's not a total fave of mine but I liked it, especially the ending segments. But that Arnold film had almost zero resemblance/didn't like it much (ok, it had some 80's action-cheese chuckles and Richard Dawson was great fun). I was hoping the new version might at least be better than that, re: the actual King tale, but I didn't/don't have high hopes.   

Haven't seen the novel, but they have a nod to Arnold via his picture being shown on some wall. The movie does try to have a bit of a retro feel.

[Amentep]

I haven't seen the new movie, but I've been told they have some greater fidelity to the novel, but again change the end.

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, Amentep said:

I haven't seen the new movie, but I've been told they have some greater fidelity to the novel, but again change the end.

The ending sucked, if that helps.

[Maedhros]

On 12/14/2025 at 4:55 AM, Zoraptor said:

Rings of Power S2. 5?

  Hide contents

 

 

I agree with everything here. For me, hobbits have nothing to do in a show about the second age, and the whole mystery box plotline with the Wizard was just as needless. Another big weaknesses of the show is that they feel the need to ape after PJ's Lord of the Rings. From trying to invoke the same "feels", to borrowing Howard Shore for the intro theme, to literally buying the design of the Balrog and alike. I actually quite like some of the original designs they have, like Numenor, and their version of the Grey Havens.

[Lexx]

Watched Fallout s2ep1 and as I expected, so far it was pretty much just a whole lot of fan service. Will keep watching for now, since it wasn't super terrible yet, but I dunno. 

[Zoraptor]

5 hours ago, Maedhros said:

I agree with everything here. For me, hobbits have nothing to do in a show about the second age, and the whole mystery box plotline with the Wizard was just as needless. Another big weaknesses of the show is that they feel the need to ape after PJ's Lord of the Rings. From trying to invoke the same "feels", to borrowing Howard Shore for the intro theme, to literally buying the design of the Balrog and alike. I actually quite like some of the original designs they have, like Numenor, and their version of the Grey Havens.

The problem with the hobbit/ gandalf plotline is that you fundamentally cannot really do anything with it to justify the time spent. Gandalf ain't going to kill Sauron or the Balrog or whatever; and it's got no overlap so far with other events*. I have some sympathy for the mystery box aspect, silly as it was, because that was clearly mandated by Amazon because the algorithm told them it drove engagement. Wheel of Time had exactly the same issue. The only issues I have with Numenor and Lindon/ Grey Havens is the scale factor I described earlier- just not enough people there to make them feel real. Plus weedy evil numenorean is complete caricature.

I do have another Celebrimbor complaint after watching another episode. Firstly, I'm not sure why Sauron even needs rings if he's already powerful enough to make an extremely prominent and powerful elf- Feanor's grandson, iirc- quite literally hallucinate that everything is fine. And secondly, at that level of control why not eliminate the root problem and make Celebrimbor hallucinate that the Dwarf Rings are all fine, or that actually humans deserve rings- or why not make Adar hallucinate stuff and prevent getting ganked originally; the possibilities are endless. As previous, the plot has to happen in order for, well, the plot to happen so Celebrimbor has to be deceived somehow; but the way it's being done introduces a lot of unnecessary problems. 

*given the current trajectory I have a sinking feeling we may get a hobbit baby towards the end, who grows up to be buddies with Deagol.

[LadyCrimson]

12 hours ago, Sarex said:

The ending sucked, if that helps.

I noticed Lee Pace plays McCone (I like that chr in the novel), which I can't decide if that's good casting or not. I have nothing better to do right now, perhaps I'll rent/watch it. And yeah ... wouldn't surprise me if they change the ending to be more positive re: main chr. I say that because I think it'd be hard to make it more negative than the novel. Unlike The Mist, the novel wasn't ambiguous. Haha.

These films usually just make me want to pull books out of a box and reread them.

[Amentep]

 

[Lexx]

Damn, did they spoil the finale in the trailer