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

[blastula]

Last night, I watched the first episode of The OA on Netflix. This is the brainchild of Brit Marling of "Another Earth." She has an oddly magnetic screen presence, and at first glance this seems to be a sort of "Stranger Things for grownups." I look forward to watching the rest of it.

It's more of a young adult version, not that there's anything wrong with that. There are some plot points very similar to Stranger Things, there's even a scene with it playing on a TV in the background, but the style and tone are very different. I've watched the entire season and without giving away anything, it takes some risks with plot and characters that will either hit big or flop big depending on the viewer. Like other of Marling's movies, there is ambiguity about what is going on, which can be frustrating to some. I was sold on it though and want to see more. There's no word on a second season, but this one works as a stand alone.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Ya, they really did just kind of brush over that. With Beric, there was an effect on his life and he felt that he'd lost something of himself after being revived (albeit so many times). With Benjen, while he was back, he was still kind of a wight and the magic of the Wall prevented him from passing. With Jon, it was just "Yep, I'm good. Let's move on" and was nothing more than a plot device to get him out of his Night's Watch oath without the need for him to engage in any kind of oath breaking.

Also, it would seem like the kind of thing they'd want to remember that Melissandre can do before they kicked her to the curb. Where was the "OK, we just had my brother and a few hundred of my soldiers die in this big battle. Could you take a look into that for me" scene?

And also, Melissandre says the line "it is better to let that which has died lie". So I got my popcorn and looked forward to John Snow's struggle with the vampirism/undeadness or whatever horrendousness they could come up with. Nope, nothing. He was just fine.

I don't think there was time. They opened the floodgates for plot movement in Season 6. A brooding Angel wouldn't have fit within the timeline.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

The Vampire Diaries - 7/10

I was surprised by how much I like this show. I expected it to be some kind of teeny-bopper high school romance series with emo vampires and, while it does certainly have those elements, it's also a pretty cool vampire show. The horror elements are very well done and the evil vampires are actually evil and do nasty things for the sake of being nasty. After the first few episodes, the vapid high school drama started taking a serious backseat to the "Well shit, my girlfriend has been turned into a bloodthirsty monster and is chasing me through the parking lot trying to rip my throat out, so now I have kill the woman I love and bury her body in the woods" kind of drama.

There are a couple of issues with the show, though. The first is that they have a serious Sylar problem and the best actor and most interesting character is an evil vampire, but they keep finding ways to not kill him and have him become kind of a good guy and get him working with the main characters and those characters get over the whole "You killed my best friend's sister and ate all those other people around town" thing without much difficulty just to give that guy more screen time. Also, they have a bunch of high school kids fighting monsters and not working with the adults in town who are also going around fighting monsters. There's one episode where the sheriff and the like put together a plan to take out some vamps and they, quite literally, kill off every evil vampire in town within a five minute period. However, the main characters still don't even consider maybe giving these people all the valuable information they have and perhaps trying to work together with them.

All in all, very entertaining and well worth watching for any fans of the horror genre. There's some dumb shit, but the good stuff easily outweighs it.

Just finished watching all seven seasons of this one on Netflix and my final impression of it is that they should have ended it after three. Up until that point, it was fairly good and it had a coherent plot which worked more than it didn't. After that, though, the show really fell apart. Two of the leads started dating in real life, so they decided to have their characters start dating as well but their relationship was dumb and never made sense and then they broke up in real life and one of the main characters left the show as a result and they never wrote her out properly.

The writers seem to not realize that there's a difference between "bad boys are sexy" and "I want to marry the serial killer on death row who I've been pen pals with" and the lack of ability to discern between those two things made for some seriously odd plot lines along the way. When you have conversations such as "I'm kind of mad that you got angry after we had a fight and snapped my brother's neck, but I can't stop my heart from getting all aflutter around you" or "This guy raped and tortured your sister and then killed her when he got bored. Why are you helping him?" happening on a fairly regular basis with no good rationales as to why anyone finds these situations acceptable beyond the fact that it's because they're the main characters, it just gets stupid. Sometimes it's kind of funny, like when the sheriff is retiring but wants to close a bunch of old murder cases first and one of the vamps is like, "That was me. That was me too. I also did that one" and the sheriff replies "Cool, I'm done. Let's go get a drink" but mostly it doesn't work at all.

Also, they had an annoying habit of coming up with really interesting and different storylines which then just ended and went nowhere. For instance, they had one scientist who wanted to get rid of vampires by capturing some and giving them an injection which made them have an unquenchable thirst for other vampire's blood, so that vampires would start hunting each other and not humans. Two main characters who were in love got injected and they then met up and were trying to fight between their attraction to each other and their desire to eat each other. Then (quite seriously) some other dude wandered in off stage left and said "Hey, I got that scientist to make a cure. Here it is, so take it and let's move on and never mention this again". Then they never mentioned it again. Another time, the main group of vampires got into a war with another group of super witch vampires, which looked like it would be fairly cool, but then some other dude strolled in to become the villain for the season and the witch vampires just kind of died randomly or wandered away and you were just left wondering how they could have fucked up that idea and made it boring.

So, for the first few seasons, the good parts outweigh the bad parts by a decent margin. After that, the reverse is true.

 

[TSwizzle]

Just finished watching The Walking Dead season six. It certainly ended on a cliff hanger and I am so tempted to search out what happened next, not sure I can wait until Netflix get their hands on it. Overall the series is pretty good. Sometimes it is really good and sometimes it can be a bit pedestrian but that might be down to binge watching. The writers have managed to wring seven seasons from pretty much the same theme, Ricks's tribe get into a jam and then they manage to squirm out of it losing a peripheral character along the way. But it is entertaining most of the time. And I always get the bejeezus scared out of me when a zombie pops out of nowhere, even when I know it is coming.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The Expanse - Very early in the show, but I have this odd feeling that they know where they are taking this. 3 of 4

 

[Jayjay]

The Expanse - Very early in the show, but I have this odd feeling that they know where they are taking this. 3 of 4

It's based on a book series, so presumably yes. What I liked about expanse is the nods they make to space stuff, while understandably for budgetary reasons they can't film the whole thing in weightless environment, nor hire unusually thin and tall actors for every part.

 

[DolphinDynasty]

From the U.S. I watch Big Bang Theory and occasionally The Waling Dead or an American comedy show if it has comedians I favor, and Rick and Morty. From Korea, just about anything drama related as there's more humor than drama usually, and from Japan, started watching Shinseki Yori, which the description called horror, but I just did a major run in horror anime so I may be numb to it? I used to watch a lot of Sci-fi but the storylines get rather trope-y and lack a lot of sense. But then I watch The Walking Dead and looked into Fear the Wing Dead too, which is full of nonsense. A dead but "somehow because the whole virus or infection idea makes no sense" reanimated corpse is not going to have twice the blood volume in rotting liquid, nor do living people bleed as much as show creators constantly think, and yeah, my logic sometimes makes finding good shows hard.

 

[Shadowy Man]

I have just started watching Season 1 of The Man in the High Castle. I'm on episode 3 now and I find it to be quite slow going. Given my current viewing schedule and preferences, I prefer something a little more directly engaging. I'm not intrinsically against slow pacing -- I have found it enjoyable when it is used appropriately. Is it worth sticking this show out? I don't remember the book even though I read it a long time ago, but I am generally a fan of Philip Dick (though very few of his works end up being treated well in the movies), so am willing to continue if others think I'll be rewarded for my patience.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I have just started watching Season 1 of The Man in the High Castle. I'm on episode 3 now and I find it to be quite slow going. Given my current viewing schedule and preferences, I prefer something a little more directly engaging. I'm not intrinsically against slow pacing -- I have found it enjoyable when it is used appropriately. Is it worth sticking this show out? I don't remember the book even though I read it a long time ago, but I am generally a fan of Philip Dick (though very few of his works end up being treated well in the movies), so am willing to continue if others think I'll be rewarded for my patience.

The pace is definitely slow, but I find it to be deliberately so. A kind of 24 effect, without lying about being in real-time. I sat through season one and started Season Two, however, I'm having trouble getting engaged with a couple of the characters and they are dragging the show on me.

 

[Jayjay]

I have just started watching Season 1 of The Man in the High Castle. I'm on episode 3 now and I find it to be quite slow going. Given my current viewing schedule and preferences, I prefer something a little more directly engaging. I'm not intrinsically against slow pacing -- I have found it enjoyable when it is used appropriately. Is it worth sticking this show out? I don't remember the book even though I read it a long time ago, but I am generally a fan of Philip Dick (though very few of his works end up being treated well in the movies), so am willing to continue if others think I'll be rewarded for my patience.

It's worth it. But forget the book, it doesn't really follow it all that closely and diverges even more in season 2.

 

[Jayjay]

Mr. Robot, season 2
?/10

I'm into 4th episode by now. This season is mostly dealing with the aftermath of the first one, especially the protagonist's internal emo whinings now that he knows he's a nutjob. I wish there was more hacking and intrigue, but there is still time to fix that later I suppose. So far it doesn's feel as compelling as the first season, but what caught my eye was that there are background characters that show up in maybe just one scene, but which are just screaming to have their stories told. For example there is a couple in the bus who are wearing gas masks. A girl in the park, who is burning something in a red toy cart. And so on. I think I have to go back and watch the first episodes again to see if I missed any.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The Man in the High Castle, season 2

Am I the only one who gets a nerd-boner every time the swastika appears in that show? Every time. They could have killed the dialogue, and only had images of that. I'd be happy. They certainly delivered on the second season. I think this was better than season 1. My favourite bits were the Japanese trade minister wandering about confused in his "dream world" which is just our timeline. That's a brilliant twist. Philip K Dick was the master of mind bending concepts.

The only thing that annoyed me was the church service. The Nazis were predominantly Catholics. All the genocide and Nazi horrors were justified using the Bible. So it makes no sense that they'd suddenly stop. Doing away with priests all together... ehe. And Christianity is all about social control. Why would the Nazis do away with that? But it's alternate history I guess. In this reality Nazis were atheists.

Let's hope for a season 3. And let's hope they don't ruin it with Midiclorians. Some fan service is best left ungiven.

Show

Gimp of the year is Heydrich in John Smith's cellar. That was quite some sight.

Just look at that. Isn't it gorgeous?

edit: so no need to hope. Season 3 got confirmed last week. W00t. Nerdgasm.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The Expanse - Very early in the show, but I have this odd feeling that they know where they are taking this. 3 of 4

Okay, so 10 episode season. I was wondering why events were converging so "quickly". Pretty good stuff.

 

[Ford]

Just re-watched the Black Mirror Season 3 episode "San Junipero."

This is probably the least shocking in the series, yet maybe the most thought-provoking.

Show

What if we could use virtual reality to create an afterlife?

Would it take the form of an 80s seaside party town? Who would get access to it, and for how long?

Most importantly, what if you decided to go there early? Not just terminal cases like Kelly and Yorkie, but anyone who wanted to plug into the system and visit lost relatives. It is a love story between two people, but it has some pretty profound implications if you let it roll around in your mind for a bit.

 

[Underseer]

The Man in the High Castle, season 2

Am I the only one who gets a nerd-boner every time the swastika appears in that show? Every time. They could have killed the dialogue, and only had images of that. I'd be happy. They certainly delivered on the second season. I think this was better than season 1. My favourite bits were the Japanese trade minister wandering about confused in his "dream world" which is just our timeline. That's a brilliant twist. Philip K Dick was the master of mind bending concepts.

The only thing that annoyed me was the church service. The Nazis were predominantly Catholics. All the genocide and Nazi horrors were justified using the Bible. So it makes no sense that they'd suddenly stop. Doing away with priests all together... ehe. And Christianity is all about social control. Why would the Nazis do away with that? But it's alternate history I guess. In this reality Nazis were atheists.

Let's hope for a season 3. And let's hope they don't ruin it with Midiclorians. Some fan service is best left ungiven.

Show

Gimp of the year is Heydrich in John Smith's cellar. That was quite some sight.

View attachment 9477

Just look at that. Isn't it gorgeous?

edit: so no need to hope. Season 3 got confirmed last week. W00t. Nerdgasm.

Let's also not forget that their policies on Jews came straight out of a book called On the Jews and Their Lies, written by none other than Martin Luther, founder of Protestantism.

 

[tantric]

The Expanse - Very early in the show, but I have this odd feeling that they know where they are taking this. 3 of 4

Okay, so 10 episode season. I was wondering why events were converging so "quickly". Pretty good stuff.

quickly? oh, hell no - it's just revving up. i adore this series. put the science back in science fiction, dammit.

 

[tantric]

Shameless season 7 10/10

this is the only non-fantastic show i watch, and i love it. this, people, is the real america. ghetto proud. and it's actually a family show - that family, the love they have, it makes me want to cry (my own family is a clusterfuck that involves incest). i liked the trans-man character and the polygamous couple. and for showing that gay men aren't pussies!

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

NOVA: The Nuclear Option

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/the-nuclear-option.html

8/10

A review of the Fukushima disaster, the choice of water cooling for nearly all commercial reactors, and the research into new (and old) designs that are safer. I would have rated it higher if they had spent less time on Fukushima, which consumed nearly half the program.

We wasted decades of research opportunities after TMI and Chernobyl, but the number of companies now working on new designs is quite surprising and encouraging.

 

[Shadowy Man]

The OA 7/10:

This is a captivating, but ultimately unfulfilling, story. It's best to know little about it and the let the story unfold. The good aspects rely on the build-up of an intriguing story, told in a moody fashion that sticks with you for a while after it's over. The negative aspects are primarily related to it not being thought all the way through very well and could leave many left focusing on plot holes and other unresolved substories. This seems to be a not uncommon thing in TV writing these days, though that's not an absolution of fault. With that being said, I did enjoy the viewing of it and recommend it to anyone who might enjoy moody, supernatural thrillers.

 

[blastula]

Startup 6/10

This is on Crackle, who knew?, and they actually got a pretty good cast, but it's basically a poor man's The Wire. But The Wire was awesome, and this is still watchable. There are some very good moments, but some very lacking moments. They just announced a second season. They have a good base to go on from, but it better improve.