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What TV are you watching and how would you rate it? [Revive from FRDB]

I just started season 3 of The Man in the High Castle.

Man, this show is maddeningly slow and complex, but just when I get to the point where I want to turn it off, something happens that keeps me hooked.

There was a moment in the latest episode where

the Nazi scientist explained to John Smith about the existence of parallel worlds where different versions of ourselves lived and he really didn't get it. But then you saw him work out that if such a world existed, his son might still be alive. At the same time he's dispassionately overseeing the brutal experimentation on a traveler but he doesn't care. He's thinking about his own family. It all plays out on his face without a mention of it in the dialogue. Rufus Sewell is one hell of an actor.

 
the haunting of hill house: 2/10

amusing divergence between myself and my TV-watching buddy, because she liked this a lot and while didn't force me to watch it, it was her idea to have it on.
i thought it was pretty much utterly horrendous from beginning to end with effectively zero redeeming value in any capacity.
the acting is all 'community theater' levels of god-awful, the writing is stupid at best, the tone is ridiculously self-important, and the story is predictable everywhere that is isn't so utterly retarded that it's impossible to follow.
the characters are all grossly unlikable, and not in a compelling story-driven way but just in the way that all the women are fucking cunts and all the men are dickwad assholes. everyone is a hypocrite and everyone is a narcissistic douche, and none of it in way that is written as interesting or exploring flaws of the human psyche.

anyways suffice to say i hated this and am glad i spent the entire time it was running not paying attention to it because i was playing WoW.
 
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She-Ra
6/10

If you turn your brain off and just laugh at the goofiness, it's alright, although it's possible that my appraisal is skewed due to having binged the entire thing while drunk.

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Opoponax said:
Ford said:
Adam Ruins Everything. The web series is now on Netflix. Only got through 2 episodes so far. Might not stick with it. The host is super annoying. That's his shtick, but the show doesn't do anything to counter that shtick, so the whole show becomes super annoying. 3/10
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He's also wrong about a lot of stuff, or doesn't bother to include things that contradict his assertions. Also, a lot of it has to do with stuff that's already well known. I liked his Youtube format when I first ran across it, but yes, he becomes annoying--and wrong.
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Aw, did he contradict the alternative facts you got from right wing media and hurt your feewings?
 
Ford said:
I just started season 3 of The Man in the High Castle.

Man, this show is maddeningly slow and complex, but just when I get to the point where I want to turn it off, something happens that keeps me hooked.

There was a moment in the latest episode where

the Nazi scientist explained to John Smith about the existence of parallel worlds where different versions of ourselves lived and he really didn't get it. But then you saw him work out that if such a world existed, his son might still be alive. At the same time he's dispassionately overseeing the brutal experimentation on a traveler but he doesn't care. He's thinking about his own family. It all plays out on his face without a mention of it in the dialogue. Rufus Sewell is one hell of an actor.

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I don't so much mind the pace of the show as I can't stand the lead protagonist (Julianna Crain). She did finally redeem herself to some degree late in season 3, but it sure took a long time to get there. Every other storyline and character is so much more interesting than she is. I was hoping they'd kill her character off this season and find a different person to take her place. I mean...


The character of Frank Frink is infinitely more sympathetic, likable, but he gets killed off and not Julianna? WTF?



Every other character is so well played, and written with subtlety and complexity, but she's just uninteresting, despite the role she's been given.

The rest of the show is great though. And yes, major props to Rufus Sewell's portrayal of John Smith. There is nary a scene where the guy isn't riveting.
 
prideandfall said:
the haunting of hill house: 2/10

amusing divergence between myself and my TV-watching buddy, because she liked this a lot and while didn't force me to watch it, it was her idea to have it on.
i thought it was pretty much utterly horrendous from beginning to end with effectively zero redeeming value in any capacity.
the acting is all 'community theater' levels of god-awful, the writing is stupid at best, the tone is ridiculously self-important, and the story is predictable everywhere that is isn't so utterly retarded that it's impossible to follow.
the characters are all grossly unlikable, and not in a compelling story-driven way but just in the way that all the women are fucking cunts and all the men are dickwad assholes. everyone is a hypocrite and everyone is a narcissistic douche, and none of it in way that is written as interesting or exploring flaws of the human psyche.

anyways suffice to say i hated this and am glad i spent the entire time it was running not paying attention to it because i was playing WoW.
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I tried to like this show. If one is a horror fan, it does have some great moments of gore, but like you said, I could not give one damn about a single character or anything that was happening. Someone told me that it gets better after the first few episodes, so I soldiered on, but I always ended up finding myself on the phone or getting up to do something instead of watching it. Then once I started paying attention again, 20 minutes would have passed. It's an uninteresting show.
 
It did have potential, but never realized that potential. I was also one of the people who really tried to like it, but just couldn't. There were some interesting moments and cool things, but it mainly went nowhere and every plot twist and reveal made it less interesting than it had been before them.

One of the things that bugged me the most, though, was the girl who was haunting herself. When she died, her spirit went back in time and you saw all the interactions with the ghost from the other side, but then she was a regular ghost after that who had no time travelling ability and was helpful and friendly to everyone instead of scaring and haunting them. Then that one tall ghost apparently had no power over people who weren't afraid of him, but the main evil lady ghost didn't seem to have this restriction. Also, why was the clockmaker ghost there? He didn't seem to be haunting anyone and didn't seem to be particularly tortured or anything else, he just hung out in a hallway playing with a clock.

Basically, they needed to sit down before the show started and decide what a ghost is and what they can do and then have some consistency. Instead, they just rammed a bunch of ghost ideas in all willy-nilly and made half a story with each of them.
 
The Haunting was a cross between This is Us and the Conjuring. It was uneven in execution but I did like it mostly at first. The family were all supposed to be damaged from their childhood but they were still annoying. I liked the reveal of the ghost that was haunting the youngest girl, but the last couple of episodes lost me with all the talky overdone explanations. And the bedtime jump scare was overused.

I thought the acting was fine. I did wonder why they used Timothy Hutton to play an older Elliott instead of just aging him, as they do in This is Us, but Hutton pulled it off (or did Elliot pull off a younger Hutton?).

5.48/10
 
Iron Fist - Season Two

I liked it, I was bothered by it. The conflict between Ward and Joy seemed to exist primarily because of the "I can say one sentence and our issues will be resolved instantly, but I'm not going to say it and help the plot move forward." Davos and Danny's issues seems a bit more organic, but Danny's own issues seem to be relayed in a couple of scenes. I think the underlying premises of the season were generally good, but it could have been meshed together a bit better.

3 of 4

Colleen of course gets 5 of 4.
 
Last night I watched a couple episodes of HBO's Camping. It stars Jennifer Garner as an overwrought helicopter mom. I happen to like Jennifer Garner and I think she's an excellent actor. However, in this role, she's terrible. I think it has a lot to do with bad writing and bad directing, but also her failure to leverage her talent to change those things. Or maybe she's failing the role by misreading what the script is telling her to do, and not understanding what the director wants. There are lots of possibilities as to why she's not a good watch for this show.
 
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Kim's Convenience - 8/10

Sitcom about this Korean family that owns a convenience store in downtown Toronto. Very well written and funny and a good look at what it's like to be immigrants who's children have grown up as Westerners.
 
Sick Note, 7/10; Available on Netflix and starring Rupert Grint, Nick Frost and Don Johnson (!!) in a fairly standard British comedy. The premise is that a serial slacker Daniel (played by Grint) is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Now, instead of being treated with contempt by most of his social circle and employer, he becomes an object of sympathy and pity and is treated better. However, it turns out his diagnoses was in error, made by a totally incompetent doctor played by Frost. The fun begins when Daniel decides to keep this detail to himself. There are some laughs in here but most of it has been done before and better (Fawlty Towers springs to mind) but it was very watchable and Grint does play the part well and Frost is. . . .well Frost. Don Johnson (??!!) adds an interesting dynamic to the proceedings but is a bit overbearing.
 
My niece is staying with me for awhile, and when I came home from work tonight she was watching Gilmore Girls. She's got the DVDs.

I never watched the show, but was aware of Lauren Graham because of her regular appearances on Craig Ferguson's show. I've only seen a handful of episodes now, but I'm kind of impressed. Not just because I'm smitten even more with Lauren Graham, but because the dialogue is so sharp. It's like the show runners said "let's forget about plot and anything that makes sense...we've got a helluva writing staff and we're just going to let them write 10 times as much snappy banter as any other show and figure everything else out later."

The thing I really like about the show (apart from Lauren Graham...have I mentioned her?) is that there's no laugh track. A lesser show would have punctuated every joke (and there's a lot of them) with canned laughter. There's none of that here.

In fact my niece has taken off for the weekend to spend some time with friends, and I'm tempted to binge the rest of the show.
 
Nightflyers: 2/10
a sci-fi show on syfy that is based on a short story from 1980 written by george RR martin.
basic premise is that it's the future, earth is in trouble, an alien ship is detected a long way away, an experimental ship is built to get to aliens to make first contact and see if they have tech that can help save the planet.
the show is every tired stupid sci-fi horror cliche just chain-fired at a wall, propped up with hilariously god-awful acting. give this a miss.

Blood Drive: 8/10
also a show on syfy, i feel like explaining this show would kind of spoil the fun of it.
if you like the idea of a totally batshit insane high concept grindhouse homage that shamelessly leans into its own absurdity and is filled with hilarity and ridiculousness (as well as gore, T&A, hammy acting, and a surprising underlying premise that evolves over the first season despite the on-the-nose opening premise) give this a look.
 
Binge watched Castlevania on Nitflux.

3/5

It was OK, but the plot was a mediocre video-game adaptation and the bad guy could have so much more awesome.
 
Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn

2/5

Totally failed at exposition. I had to read the fucking fan wiki just to figure out who the goodies and baddies were and why they were mad at each other.
 
Legend of Wukong

3/5

Dumb as a brick, but fun and pretty, Chinese action movie.


Swordmaster

2/5

Incoherent, but fun and pretty, Chinese action movie.


Sword of Destiny

4/5

Sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.


Initial D

4/5

Chinese adaptation of the manga of the same name. It's Tokyo Drift a year before Tokyo Drift was released, and with a far-better plot that is just about racing cars.
 
Mars on NatGeo.

Mind numbing. Why would women living on Mars wear heavy eye makeup while out in a spacesuit?
 
Elseworlds. First two arrowverse episodes are so good, you ignore the lack of content in the story.

This crossover is totally a fanboys dream. Just how many references to other DC type shows are there? Fan-orgasim overload!
 
Sabrina The Teenage Witch - 8/10

like Riverdale, it is a rather dark take on the old Archie comics. There is a little bit of Bewitched in it, where the witches/warlocks are somehow considered a different race. They call humans 'mortals', and Sabrina is special because her mother was human. The darkness is brought in largely as the witches are explicitly satanic. Sabrina was orphaned very young, and raised by her two aunts. She is coming up on her 16th birthday, where she is expected to undergo a dark baptism, dedicating herself to satan. She will also have to give up her human friends, her boyfriend, her school to join the witches academy.

I'm pretty sure the original comics did not include murder, cannibalism, necromancy, and demons, but I might be wrong.
 
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