The TV and Streaming Thread: That's Entertainment!

[LadyCrimson]

"What's in the Box" (Netflix, game show) - I saw Neil Patrick Harris' face and clicked. Silly game show with too much contestant drama and prizes of the new car, trip, expensive luggage variety. Oh yeah, and one year of free DoorDash orders. >.>   Even Neil as host couldn't save it/make it watchable. I did skip to the last episode/end to find out the ultimate giant "surprise box" end-prize, so you don't have to:

 

300k --- in bitcoin. Felt like an ad for the related bitcoin company. 

Edited December 23, 2025 by LadyCrimson

[rjshae]

After cancelling Pea****, I signed up for HBO/Max ad-free. Despite the price, it seems to have a pretty extensive catalogue, I'd be tempted to say larger than Paramount+ and Pea**** put together. Currently I'm re-watching season one of Deadwood, which, despite the foul language, is pretty good drama. I never saw seasons 2 & 3, so those will be fresh. Can't wait to see the kidney stone episode, since I tend to pass the Gravel once or twice a year.

[Sarex]

The new comedy special by Dave Chappelle. I sat through it, it was interesting enough, but I maybe chuckled 2 times. Probably his worst one to date. I think fame has really done a number on his material.

This will probably be the last thing I watch from him.

[Lexx]

lol, Pluribus s2 is set to release in 2 to 3 years. The tv show release times are getting ridiculous. Why even bother with new shows.

[melkathi]

I have been under the weather, stuck on the sofa. So I finally felt lousy enough to waste time and watch The Watch.

That show is a dumpster fire.

The most amazing thing is, the people responsible for it were so delusional, they even wrote in the hooks for a second season.

[majestic]

Stranger Things wins the award for the most pointless retcon of the year by

Spoiler

turning the Upside Down into a wormhole connecting Earth to the place where the Demogorgons come from.

There's this neat little concept in fiction that when you have something that is somewhat inexplicable, like Eldritch horror hive mind beings from another dimension, there's really no need to come up with a sci-fi'ish explanation for it. Nothing's gained by doing that, and it just adds a completely convoluted set of plot points into the final episodes that - while being somwhat "set up" by two minutes of dialogue in a previous episode - feels very much out of the left field and seriously messes with the pacing of the episodes. 

Spoiler

Honestly, why couldn't Vecna just have kept the kids beyond the flesh wall. Just dock the runtime of episodes by ten minutes and find some other way for Jonathan and Nancy to break up, or whatever it is they did after the exotic matter inexplicably melted everything but the table they were on. See, now that it is no longer dark magic or unknowable weird dimension but a wormhole and exotic matter, now suddenly everything but a table's melting? 

Yeah, that needs some explaining, don't you think? No? Really? Then why did the Upside Down need to be the entrance of a wormhole?

I'm kinda loving the fallout of Will's special scene in the seventh episode.

Spoiler

It looks like there's a big divide between people who lived through the 80ies and those who were born well afterwards on Will's coming out in front of everyone - or almost everyone. I mean that Will's gay and has a crush on Mike has been clear for a long while now. The shippers are pretty sad about their ship having sailed now that Will is well over his unrequited love for Mike, which is a bonus. People complain about the storyline of Vecna being able to use Will's fear of losing friends over his sexuality to manipulate him as if that was not par for the course in the 80ies, on the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. 

There are, from what I have gathered, three groups of people:

• Those like me, who are children of the 80ies or (or even older) themselves, and lived through that time. Seem to be mostly fine with the scene.
• Those much younger, who just don't understand his fears and think the scene was forced* or badly written. Because of course Will's fears of being abandoned over being gay are unfounded. They probably are, from a 2025 perspective. Certainly are not in 1986. Besides, if fear was rational, it wouldn't be such a powerful emotion.
• The homophobes who somtimes disguise their homophobia by stating the scene was just badly paced. Granted, it wasn't the best placing in the episode to do that, but neither was Holly waiting excessively long to jump down the portal on the other side of the wormhole, or Holly and Max talking to each other for an eternity before running towards the exit from Vecna's mind prison.

*Technically yes, it was forced (in-universe). Will came out not because he wanted to, but because he had to. Facing a terrifying opponent who can manipulate your fears and dominate your mind is best done after confronting your demons. There's also some criticism saying that more show, don't tell approach to Will and his fears would have been better, but I think they might just be missing the part where Vecna showed how he used Will to create the web of tunnels beneath Hawkins and how he used Will to almost kill Max. More than enough. Honestly, you really don't need scenes of Will being bullied by a Lucas or abandoned by Mike.

Overall the second half of the season was a bit weaker than the first. Not as unecessary as the entirety of the second episode, but scratching the ludicrousness of the Russian plot in season three. 

Spoiler

Also, what the flying rat's ass did they bring Kali back for. Jesus Christ in a handbasket. Granted, she's a pretty foil for El's lackluster storyline(s), I mean, next to Kali everyone looks great, but really, just get her shot in the escape, or... something. She's just there to plant the thought in El's head that the world would be better off without her. Granted, I pretty much expect El to not survive the finale anyway, or at least lose all her powers when Vecna is killed as it was basically his blood that unlocked her powers, as that would be a very neat way to tie up loose ends for Hawkins, but Kali really, really, REALLY is not needed for that.

Here's to hoping Hopper makes good on his promise and just offs her. The sooner, the better.

Edit: Well, I guess now that there's a wormhole and a second world basically in place, it could be where El and Mike and whoever else doesn't want to live in Hawkins end up. Very far away from everything. Maybe a place with at least one waterfall. El's powerful enough to take over the hive anyway. 

 

Edited December 28, 2025 by majestic

[Lexx]

I feel like Stranger Things should never have been more than a single season. Some stuff after was ok too, but it was never as great as s1 again. I'd even argue, the new stuff kinda ruined everything a bit.

[majestic]

5 hours ago, Lexx said:

I feel like Stranger Things should never have been more than a single season. Some stuff after was ok too, but it was never as great as s1 again. I'd even argue, the new stuff kinda ruined everything a bit.

Game of Thrones' final seasons set the bar so low that a show is going to have to do much worse than Stranger Things to ruin the show.  

But yes, I agree, that is also part of what @Bartimaeus mentioned. The characters (or most of them, anyway) had complete story arcs in the first season, leaving only the new ones as really interesting in the newer seasons. The storyline of the second and third seasons were never nothing more than a remix of the first one. Sure, the first season had an 80ies style sequel hook, but that was pretty much spot on for the genre.

From a purely artistical point of view, yes, Stranger Thing should have been left alone after a single season. From a business point of view, I can't really blame anyone involved for wanting to make more episoes - and much more money, obviously. 

[Sarex]

One Battle After Another (2025). Suppose it's a metaphor for today's America, or at least what they wanted it to be. That being said, it's a great movie.

[Gfted1]

 

[majestic]

Stranger Things finale: By the Bookside Up.

I'm not sure what to say about the finale. It does not happen often that I watch the final episode of a longer running TV series and think the ending was basically by the book, going through all the motions - but this one sure did. Even the only mystery left about the ending was later just narrated out by Mike, because in this day and age and with what apparently Netflix' customers are these days, it is not possible to just let people figure anything out on their own.

Spoiler

While El expectedly "stays" in the Wormhole aperture when it disappears after they killed Vecna, she's able to telepathically talk to Mike in spite of the military's Anti-ESPer devices being pointed right at her - she's also not writhing in pain, unlike every other time this happened. And like, nobody notices. Linda Hamilton might have wondered, but her acting range is so limited that who the hell knows, she just looked angry like she always did. 

At the end, Mike just spells it out for his friends. The suspicious way El disappeared out of the truck while she clearly was there only moments ago, her suddenly standing in the Upside Down looking through the gate, not being affected at all by the turmoil around her, and so on and so forth (effortlessly, that is, I mean, in universe she probably could resist the pull of the collapsing wormhole with her powers, but there's no signature nosebleed. She also just disappears instead of, you know, being blown away.

Anyway, there really is nothing else to say about the finale as it all happens just the way it... had to. In a sea of terrible TV show finales, that is perhaps a good thing, but memorable, it is not. We're still talking about some series endings to this day, even if the shows ended thirty years ago, but even in three years nobody's going to talk about this episode. 

Which brings me to the big problem here: on an objective level, this season was not good. It had a runtime of over nine hours with material for perhaps an overly long movie, but not three of them. It is very much like Bilbo Baggins on his 111th birthday. Butter, spread over too much bread. The big moments in the season were more often than not badly paced, the setup after the first episode did not really allow for slow character moments, but they still put them in there. People are really hung up over a certain really, really slow scene with Will, but that is by far not the worst one. 

Jay Bauman's probably got it right, the thing that is wrong with Will's scene is that it just screams Emmy bait moment. I didn't hate it, and it does have a storyline reason for it being there, but it doesn't have a reason for the entire cast to be around for it. And speaking of the entire cast, it sure looks like the production team was contractually obligated to give everyone screentime. Not that it saved Lucas from being the token black guy in the season - he literally had nothing else to do than stick with Max in the hospital. Instead we added a bunch of new characters, and even though they once again are the highlights of the season (especially Derek), one has to wonder why. The new kids are just a McGuffin for Vecna's plan.

Spoiler

Then there's the utterly stupid retconning what the Upside Down is, and how Henry made contact with the Mind Flayer, things that we really didn't need. The Upside Down was perfectly fine as eldritch horror dimension that a government experiment in psychic abilities ended up in. 

The pacing is terrible, the performances of everyone in the US military, acting wise and storywise are just plain bad, if you thought the Russians in season three were dumb, they top it all. And still, you know, at the end of the day, I sat through it all without pausing. Binged the episodes, after the first one, even. That is simply because, while I can see the season being bad when I look at it objectively, my attachment to the series and the characters (and by some extension, the actors too, I suppose) makes it impossible for me to truly dislike it. For now, at least.

If I ever rewatch Stranger Things some years down the line, I should probably stop after the first season. Back when the third season of Andromeda first aired, I actually found myself disagreeing with the scathing reviews it (rightfully, mind) got, simply for the same reasons. A couple years of emotional detachment later I can't even finish season three on a rewatch, let alone go on to season four. Christ did that show become terrible under Kevin Sorbo's showrunning.

It's a good thing it is over.

[Gorgon]

On 11/20/2024 at 4:16 AM, ShadySands said:

I'm looking forward to AI giving me 10 more seasons of DS9

[Gorgon]

On 12/28/2025 at 1:24 PM, Lexx said:

lol, Pluribus s2 is set to release in 2 to 3 years. The tv show release times are getting ridiculous. Why even bother with new shows.

what, there wasn't even a cliffhanger. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

The End of Stranger Things

The final season is more forgettable than anything else. I don't want to rehash too much of what's already been said about it, but honestly I remember maybe 15 minutes worth of stuff out of a 2 hour movie.

Perhaps the dumbest thing is making the Upside Down just a wormhole and that the real evil dimension is The Abyss....which is just a barren desert that recycled the set/location from Henry's memories. The Upside Down being a more eldritch horror take on the Shadow Plane is just iconic, arguably the most notable part of the series. The Abyss is just nothing at all, will not be remembered in 3 months.

The Mindflayer/Vecna boss fight was trash. Both Vecna and the Mindflayer completely forgot about their legion of mobs and psychic powers to fight the kids (and Joyce, who did so little I didn't realize she was there until an hour in) as a Zelda miniboss and a spider kaiju that got defeated by 80s action movie pluck. This really just goes back to the Abyss vs Upside Down: they abandoned the more unique aspects of the setting in favor of something more conventional.

There is nothing to say about evil Sarah Connor, because she's just a generic bad guy.

I can't really think of much else to say, because there really wasn't much substance to the final season and especially the final episode movie. I guess being forgettable is better than offensively bad.

[Hurlshort]

5 hours ago, Gorgon said:

what, there wasn't even a cliffhanger. 

I mean, she does have a nuke sitting in her driveway. That's a bit of a development.

[Gorgon]

I should probably watch the last 20 mins again, i kinda dozed off.

[majestic]

2 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

I guess being forgettable is better than offensively bad.

I thought about that almost through the entire finale. Except for the ending bits, which I obviously liked, because a group of people just recently out of High School (Steve and Robin and the gang) with their real lives beginning is just bound to make me nostalgic and sad, especially when there's also the original kid gang just graduating. Found myself wondering: is a nothing finale like that really a good way to go out? 

It's the most forgettable ending to a series ever, and it ends one of the, if not the, most successful - for better or worse - shows on streaming ever made. Honestly, they should have just replayed a mixture of NGE's original ending and End of Evangelion (mostly in Vecna's mind), with Instrumentality, err, sorry, the thing that is about to happen in the finale that our heroes are trying to stop, playing out in the background. 

That would have been the best thing ever, and I don't say that lightly. Just follow that idea for a moment and see Kali (with better development and a better actress), El and Will as Asuka, Rei and Shinji for a moment. Just with psychic powers and monsters instead of genetically engineered alien hybrid mechs fighting Angels.  It could even end with El and Mike washing ashore on the sea of the Human hive mind.

And yeah, the retcons? Not a fan. Worst decision ever. Totally unnecessary. The Upside Down was fine as a eldritch horror mirror dimension / Shadow Plane take.  

5 minutes ago, Gorgon said:

I should probably watch the last 20 mins again, i kinda dozed off.

The last 20 minutes are character sendoffs - the best part of the episode, by far and large. 

Edited 8 hours ago by majestic