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

Jimmy Higgins said:
Ford said:
Ford said:
Just got done with season 1 of Sense8 on Netflix.

It took a few episodes to get up to speed, but it sucked me in.

I didn't quite realize what it was until just now. Remember that show "Heroes" on NBC? The one about very attractive mutants from across the globe who all at once discovered they had powers and that there was also a sinister government conspiracy afoot to "bag and tag" the mutants?


This is like that. Only smarter, with a much larger budget, and much better writing/acting.
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And I can't even roughly approximate how fast it went downhill in season 2.

In my quest to figure out what went wrong, I found out that one of the Wachowski's left the show. What had been an interesting concept with some really great writing and performances became a shadow of itself. For example, that "hacker" movie cliche' where all a character needs to do in order to compromise a computer network is type furiously on a keyboard? They ran that trope into the ground. Suddenly Nomi and her hacker girlfriend could access everything from street lights to the CIA with just a few keystrokes.


Then there was the finale. The show was cancelled, and thanks to fan effort (allegedly) they were able to make a two hour episode that wrapped everything up "for the fans." Problem is, instead of a continuation of the smart premise they'd laid out in the first season, the finale was an action-packed bloodbath with the heroes blasting away at countless henchmen in a hail of bullets. Followed by an absurdly long wedding at the Eiffel Tower. I mean, I've been to Catholic weddings that didn't last that long.

While watching the first season I couldn't wrap my head around why Netflix would cancel such a promising show. The second season and the finale made it clear that Netflix was right to cut their losses and cancel this mess.
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I'm a bit into Season 2 and had paused watching the show. Now I ponder if I should even bother unpausing watching it. I was curious how they were going to be able to wrap up the premise in merely a two hour movie. Granted, Joss Whedon managed closure with Firefly by doing Serenity, but that is Joss Whedon.
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The thing about Serenity is, you didn't have to have watched a single episode of Firefly in order to enjoy the movie. It was entertaining all on it's own. The Sense8 finale was the opposite.

I'm onto another Netflix series now, and today watched the second episode of Dirty Money. If you enjoy documentaries about financial fuckery like "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" or "Inside Job," this might be the show for you.

The first episode covered the VW emissions scandal, and it was pretty good. The second episode follows a payday lending kingpin, and if you think payday lenders are amoral people who don't care about the lives their business destroys, this will not disabuse you of that notion to put it mildly. The best movie villains are the ones who think they're the good guys, and by that standard the subject of this episode is Darth Vader but without that scene at the end of Return of the Jedi where he's redeemed.
 
I finished the second season of Mrs. Maisel. Now I'm sad. Due to Game of Thrones I promised myself I wouldn't watch a series until it was into its final season.

I did this with Breaking Bad. I never watched the show until its final season was due. Then I gave it a shot to see what all the fuss was about and I loved it.

Anyway, the next season of Mrs. Maisel isn't due until November or December, and I'll have lost interest by then.

No more series for me ever again until it's almost over.
 
hurtinbuckaroo said:
Opoponax said:
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

I'm pretty sure I'm not the contemplated demographic for this show (49 year old white male professional). Nothing about the ads for it ever indicated it was something I would like.

But I do.

It's about a comedienne in early 1960s New York, which was the era of proto-standup comedy. I love the historicity of the show even though there are few characters who were real people (e.g. Lenny Bruce might be the only one). Rachel Brosnahan is great in this as is most of the rest of the cast. The only character I really don't like is Brosnahan's husband. God, what a limp dick douche he is. Wholly uninteresting, and largely unnecessary. His continued presence detracts from the show. I hope he gets killed off.

It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn good.

Give it a chance.
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I second this. Alex Borstein is hilarious, and Tony Shalhoub is perfect.
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I just started watching today, and I'm hooked...:love:

Mrs-Maisel-729x486.jpg
 
Blind Spot - 8/10

A pretty decent cop show about a lady who was found naked in Times Square with her memory erased and a bunch of tattoos over her body. The tattoos all point to various instances of government cover ups and crimes and they get decoded at a rate of about once per week so that this FBI team can track them down and shoot a bunch of really committed nameless minions. Tattoo Girl also joins the FBI team in doing this because that's apparently not the sort of thing you need any type of training for and random civilians can just kind of join in with them when they raid terrorist cells and the like.

It has good action scenes and compelling characters and stories, even though the plot gets a bit disjointed at times when they just need to shoehorn in a way to move things along.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Blind Spot - 8/10

A pretty decent cop show about a lady who was found naked in Times Square with her memory erased and a bunch of tattoos over her body. The tattoos all point to various instances of government cover ups and crimes and they get decoded at a rate of about once per week so that this FBI team can track them down and shoot a bunch of really committed nameless minions. Tattoo Girl also joins the FBI team in doing this because that's apparently not the sort of thing you need any type of training for and random civilians can just kind of join in with them when they raid terrorist cells and the like.

It has good action scenes and compelling characters and stories, even though the plot gets a bit disjointed at times when they just need to shoehorn in a way to move things along.
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Is the Mueller Report on her somewhere?
 
I watched the 20/20 special on Robert Blake. For those who don't know, Robert Blake was a reasonably successful actor back in the day. He was married to a scam artist, Bonny Lee Bakley. In 2001 Bonny was murdered, shot in the head, execution style while sitting in a car outside a restaurant in Studio City, CA after her husband had returned to the restaurant to fetch his gun which he had left in the restaurant. It was fascinating and was big news back in the day. So many twists and turns, you couldn't write this plot as it would be considered too outlandish. Blake's interview with Barbara Walters was amazing, a virtuoso performance from Blake. Blake was tried for Bonny's murder and acquitted. The prosecutors couldn't even pin conspiracy to commit murder on Blake.
 
TSwizzle said:
I watched the 20/20 special on Robert Blake. For those who don't know, Robert Blake was a reasonably successful actor back in the day. He was married to a scam artist, Bonny Lee Bakley. In 2001 Bonny was murdered, shot in the head, execution style while sitting in a car outside a restaurant in Studio City, CA after her husband had returned to the restaurant to fetch his gun which he had left in the restaurant. It was fascinating and was big news back in the day. So many twists and turns, you couldn't write this plot as it would be considered too outlandish. Blake's interview with Barbara Walters was amazing, a virtuoso performance from Blake. Blake was tried for Bonny's murder and acquitted. The prosecutors couldn't even pin conspiracy to commit murder on Blake.
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I didn’t see the show, but I followed the trial.
My take on it was that the jury gave Robert Blake a big benefit of a doubt, because Bonny Bakley was a con artist. It must have crossed a few of the jurors’ minds, that if they had been in a Blake’s shoes they would have wanted her dead too.
 
Thomas II said:
hurtinbuckaroo said:
Opoponax said:
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

I'm pretty sure I'm not the contemplated demographic for this show (49 year old white male professional). Nothing about the ads for it ever indicated it was something I would like.

But I do.

It's about a comedienne in early 1960s New York, which was the era of proto-standup comedy. I love the historicity of the show even though there are few characters who were real people (e.g. Lenny Bruce might be the only one). Rachel Brosnahan is great in this as is most of the rest of the cast. The only character I really don't like is Brosnahan's husband. God, what a limp dick douche he is. Wholly uninteresting, and largely unnecessary. His continued presence detracts from the show. I hope he gets killed off.

It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn good.

Give it a chance.
Click to expand...

I second this. Alex Borstein is hilarious, and Tony Shalhoub is perfect.
Click to expand...

I just started watching today, and I'm hooked...:love:

View attachment 19716
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We’re y hooked before or after she dropped the nightgown?
 
I was hooked before, but you have to admit Mrs Maisel's boobs are marvelous indeed, and "the drop" did nothing to dissuade me from my interest.
Au contraire! It cemented it and made me a believer.
This is one of the best series I've seen in a long time.
The whole cast is perfect, specially Alex Borstein.





 
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Star Trek Discovery

Insufferable. I've gutted through 5.5 episodes and I'm done. It's big network bad, if that makes any sense. Take what should be a sure thing, spend a lot of money on it to make the visuals great, and then completely fuck it up with terrible characters and bad writing.

You (Netflix)
Having watched the first two episodes, this has potential. So far, it appears to be in the same vein as Dexter, but at the same time being its own thing. I'll watch two more, and if I like it, I'll quit watching and wait until its final season to watch it. This is my new commitment to refrain from binge watching until I can see the show from start to finish.
 
Titans - 5/10

New take on the Teen Titans comic. When I say "new", I mean "unrelated to the Teen Titans". Basically, if someone were a Teen Titans fan and has been waiting to see a live action version of them ... those people are still waiting. They have characters with the same names as the people in Teen Titans, but that's basically where the similarity ends. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, if you're going to diverge so strongly from the source material, they really need to have strong execution in order to make up for the disappointment that will bring and they did not have that execution.

The worst part was the wholly inconsistent tone. It looked like they were having a discussion about whether they wanted a campy comic book series or a dark and gritty realistic take on what superheroes would be like in the real world ... and then filmed the show before finishing that discussion. The two different tones did not interact well and the end result was like The Punisher Meets The Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles. Also, the opening season of a team up show is supposed to be the characters working alone, coming together and then forging themselves into a team to defeat a common enemy. This one was the characters working alone, kind of meeting up before wandering off on their own again and then ... oh wait, the season's over now? It looks like they ran out of money to pay for the licensing rights to get that one scene with Batman, so they had to send everyone home early.

In terms of the characters, Robin was actually pretty good. Kind of emotionally damaged and trying to find his place in the world as something other than a side kick. The "Fuck Batman" scene from the trailer was well done. He jumps into the middle of a group of bad guys who then go "Hey, Robin's here. That means Batman is about to attack us. Quick everybody, ignore him as you point your guns at the rooftops to defend against Batman" while Robin is just standing there going "WTF? Seriously?" and then just kicks the shit out of everybody. Starfire was OK, but unrelated to the comic book character of the same name. What they were doing with her worked more often than it didn't but the season stopped before they got to wherever they were going with her. Raven and Beast Boy were ... there? They hired actors to play people with those names and they were sometimes onscreen interacting with other people but ... that's about it. It was all build up to their becoming something but then the season stopped before they got to wherever they were going with them. One reviewer made the comment "I really like these characters and I'd be interested in watching a show that had them in it". Maybe the fourth episode of Robin wandering off on his own could have been cut in favour of one which gave them a plot line.

This show does seem to have potential. They sort of just barfed a whole lot of stuff onto the screen in the first season and if they scrape off the parts that worked and mash them together without the rest and make a decision about what they're doing with the series before they start filming again, it could turn out to be something cool. It's not really that at this point, though.
 
The Good Place

This is a fun show on big network TV and it's actually good. I've only watched the first season though.

Funny, smart, imaginative. It's all the things you don't expect to see on a major network comedy.

See it.
 
Opoponax said:
The Good Place

This is a fun show on big network TV and it's actually good. I've only watched the first season though.

Funny, smart, imaginative. It's all the things you don't expect to see on a major network comedy.

See it.
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That is an awesome show. The twist at the end of the first season is one of the best I’ve seen in a while.
 
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