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

[Colonel Sanders]

The Stand (1994)

I'd seen this one before, but at 3 am and no hope of falling asleep, I turned it on (Youtube) and hoped it'd do the trick. It didn't because it's still worth watching despite its many, many, many flaws. Some of the choices are so bad, it takes you out of what is otherwise and worthwhile series. For example, the disease both in the book and in the show is supposed to kill a person over the course of several days, yet there are multiple shots of the dead who clearly died immediately in place, and a lot of these people are all but holding themselves up, which obviously doesn't happen. People have a consistent tendency to not be able to hold themselves up when death strikes.

Also, the Mother Abigail character is King's depiction of non-white characters in microcosm. I know he's attempting to not just be inclusive, but to show that they're important, but good god, if I were to write a black character like that, well, I wouldn't because I'd fully believe that in some weird part of my subconscious the character would be based on Aunt Jemima. Not good.

Anyway, the good parts outweigh the bad despite some godawful acting, writing, and direction.

They tried to redo this back in the mid 2000s and it was truly awful. The 1994 series is still the best (relatively speaking).

 

[Wiploc]

Anyway, the good parts outweigh the bad despite some godawful acting, writing, and direction.

:unworthy:

 

[Emily Lake]

The Blacklist. I learned an important thing: if you have a problem with someone, just shoot them.

I was really enjoying Blacklist for a while. Then it got political for a while and we just stopped watching. Someone told me that it fixed itself soon after, but we've never made it back into rotation. Maybe some day I'll give it another shot.

It actually was a good show, and Spader was excellent. I am just in a guns are for pussies mode at the moment, due to a lifetime of hearing how we cannot survive unless we have a gun. Phooey!

James Spader is the odd celebrity because he didn't age the way the world wants. He went from terribly handsome to ordinary, and he doesn't seem to care. Even his facial expressions seem to convey that. He's a class act. Great actor too.

Oh fantastic actor, yes.

 

[Swammerdami]

The White Lotus is a "black (or satirical) comedy drama"; it gets 8.0 at IMDB and 93% Rotten tomatoes. So I started Season 1 and am half-way though. I'll go ahead and finish the Season but don't think I'll watch Seasons 2 or 3 It deserves only 6.1 or so, not 8.0. The stories are trite; and the "black comedy-drama" is neither funny nor dramatic nor even "black."

I'm going to post an embarrassing retraction and upgrade The White Lotus to 7.5 or so. It grew on me as I finished Season 1. The White Lotus is a luxury resort hotel that has branches in Hawaii (Season 1), Sicily (Season 2), and ... guess where for Season 3? Season 3 is set right here in the Kingdom of Thailand! -- that's why HBO Max had this series at the top of their recommendations. (I didn't know this until after I posted the review quoted above.) And Lisa -- the Thai member of the famous K-Pop group Blackpink -- stars in Season 3.

I do NOT like comedy, but I DO like "black comedy." With black comedy, I don't laugh but I get amused and pleasantly bemused. However

Spoiler: Don't Click if you're going to watch Season 2

for several consecutive episodes of The White Lotus Season 2 there was NOTHING to get amused about. It was more like a horror show. I do NOT like the horror genre as a rule, but this was one of the best horror shows I've ever seen. Hence the 7.5 rating.

I just finished Season 2; HBO recommended The Last of Us which gets a whopping 8.7 IMDBs and 96 Tomatoes! So I may start that series before watching Lisa in The White Lotus Season 3.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Are all y'all familiar with Blackpink? Here's one of their music videos.

 

[Elixir]

I do NOT like comedy, but I DO like "black comedy."

Red Dwarf is funny. Stupid smart funny, an absolute tour de force in slapstick.

 

[bilby]

I do NOT like comedy, but I DO like "black comedy."

Red Dwarf is funny. Stupid smart funny, an absolute tour de force in slapstick.

It starts with the entire crew dying, leaving only one survivor. Who wanders the ship, occasionally tasting the little piles of dust he sees everywhere, before discovering that those are what remains of his shipmates.

That's pretty dark IMO.

 

[ZiprHead]

My favorite black comedy? Grosse Pointe Blanc.

Oops. Should probably be in the movie thread.

 

[Elixir]

I do NOT like comedy, but I DO like "black comedy."

Red Dwarf is funny. Stupid smart funny, an absolute tour de force in slapstick.

It starts with the entire crew dying, leaving only one survivor. Who wanders the ship, occasionally tasting the little piles of dust he sees everywhere, before discovering that those are what remains of his shipmates.

That's pretty dark IMO.

Some of the gruesomeness scenes are the funniest such material I think I’ve ever seen.
When Rimmer’s Confidence took its helmet off in outer space I spat stuff …

 

[Swammerdami]

Have I mentioned that my life resembles that of Rip Van Winkle? Even before my long stay in the jungle I was "out of touch."
I'd never even heard of Red Dwarf. ::gak:: It gets a big 8.4 IMDBs but Wikipedia calls it a sci-fi comedy, so this is an easy decision for me. I don't usually like sci-fi and I don't usually like comedy. (Not particularly liking sci-fi movies or TV probably gets me blackballed from any Nerd's Union, but so be it.)
I DO like "dark comedy." Dr. Strangelove and Fargo are good dark comedy movies. (Some Tarantino and Guy Ritchie films are in this genre along with most Coen Brothers.) Succession is an excellent TV series which is dark comedy.

I do NOT like comedy, but I DO like "black comedy."

Red Dwarf is funny. Stupid smart funny, an absolute tour de force in slapstick.

It starts with the entire crew dying, leaving only one survivor. Who wanders the ship, occasionally tasting the little piles of dust he sees everywhere, before discovering that those are what remains of his shipmates.

That's pretty dark IMO.

Harumph! Thanks for the SPOILER. [Swammi can't be bothered to search for an emoticon for feigned anger] But horror, even funny horror if there is such a thing, is also NOT my genre.

ETA: Maybe I'll hunt down an episode or two of Red Dwarf anyway!

 

[Elixir]

I'd never even heard of Red Dwarf. ::gak::

Nor had I fwiw.

Harumph! Thanks for the SPOILER

Not a spoiler, that’s just background.
But it warns of the dark, cynical mockery of our own dark cynicism, which seems to be the show’s hallmark.

Not a lot of things make me laugh like that, reflexively and without warning.

 

[Jarhyn]

Just finished watching Mo with my husband.

The majority of the show is kind of like Weeds: a cringe carousel, where you watch as the show alternates between shitty people kicking the protagonist down, and the protagonist kicking themselves down with questionable decisions, eventually realizing that it is his own excessive reactions causing the majority of his pain.

In many ways it is all representational of the larger issue in the middle east, where badly treated people make questionable decisions that exacerbate issues amid the unconscionable cruelty of those in power.

It was left wanting insofar as I dislike excessive use of the "cringe carousel" trope in the first place.

Solid 7/10.

 

[bilby]

Harumph! Thanks for the SPOILER.

It's literally the starting premise of the entire show; It's not a spoiler, it's the way the first series opens. The first episode is titled "The End".

 

[Swammerdami]

Given the rave reviews I WILL watch some Red Dwarf. Recommendations on which season? (Or is S1 mandated to minimize confusion?)

 

[Elixir]

Recommendations on which season?

Doesn’t matter a lot. Each episode has its own… uh… “plot”. Usually it’s just taking some stock SCI FI premise to its ridiculous extreme. But the characters are probably easier to understand if you start at the beginning, which I did not.

Don’t expect a lot of deep philosophical observations. In fact if you have any of those, probably best to check them at the door.

 

[Swammerdami]

I just started (the brand new?) Day Zero with Robert DeNiro. Netflix put it at the very top of its recommendations. (Surely Neflix didn't know I'd just watched DeNiro interviewed by Stephen Colbert. Nor that I'd just watched a DeNiro movie on HBO Max. My name is NOT associated with either of those streamers.)

I paused after Episode 1 just to come here and write "Wow!!"

- - - - - - - - -

BTW, I looked for Red Dwarf but found mostly Red Dwarf, The First Three Million Years. I assume that is NOT what I want. ??

 

[Jarhyn]

So, today, my husband and I tried watching Pantheon.

This series is about many of the concepts I've been discussing here.

It is also incredibly, unbelievably, horrifically graphic: a man is say in a chair and has his brain disassembled as he begs a rich man not to in the second episode. As soon as he busts out the market, just skip forward until he's just a capped corpse. Maybe 40-50 seconds or so..

I could not watch this. It was an image of a perversion of my dreams in front of me, and this made me weep and scream and wish to do violence upon the many people that reify that vision.

I am not sure it is healthy to watch things like that over-often, I think.

That said, the show does say a bunch of... naive things about AI, too, at least watching it so far.

I'm on strictly on the co-ed team, team AI+UI.

I'm going to keep watching this but I will probably put up some more warnings for things that could make people toss their cookies, before actually recommending people watch it.

 

[Jarhyn]

So, today, my husband and I tried watching Pantheon.

This series is about many of the concepts I've been discussing here.

It is also incredibly, unbelievably, horrifically graphic: a man is say in a chair and has his brain disassembled as he begs a rich man not to in the second episode. As soon as he busts out the market, just skip forward until he's just a capped corpse. Maybe 40-50 seconds or so..

I could not watch this. It was an image of a perversion of my dreams in front of me, and this made me weep and scream and wish to do violence upon the many people that reify that vision.

I am not sure it is healthy to watch things like that over-often, I think.

That said, the show does say a bunch of... naive things about AI, too, at least watching it so far.

I'm on strictly on the co-ed team, team AI+UI.

I'm going to keep watching this but I will probably put up some more warnings for things that could make people toss their cookies, before actually recommending people watch it.

Ok, I watched some more, and I haven't seen anything quite that horrifically fucked up since. There are some psychological/body horrors after that, but the it looks like that was the worst of it. A flash on the screen of some less graphic parts?

I would say it's a solid 9.5/10. Loss of a half point for that one inexplicably fucked up part.

Edit: Holy shit, the writers even are discussing contrived memetic resurrection.

This show is

 

[Swammerdami]

I watched some more of Zero Day and then lost interest. Both the story and the characters became increasingly unbelievable and uninteresting. There was violence and other "thrills" that didn't contribute to the story. Its 7.0 IMDB rating is too high; 6.0 would be about right. Maybe 6.0 is still too high: I don't think I'll even bother to finish it, unusual when watching a "suspense thriller."

I see it gets only 54% Rotten Tomatoes. It might be interesting to see what sorts of films get high IMDB scores and low Tomatoes. Or vice versa.

- - - - - - - - - -

I watched True Detective Season 1 (8.9 IMDB 79% RT) many years ago and loved it! (The four seasons are four completely unrelated stories.) I did NOT like Season 2. IIRC part of the dislike was due to the very large number of characters, many of whom were completely tangential to the main story.

I didn't watch Season 3, but just now watched Season 4. It had enough characters to confuse my brain (with its increasing memory impairment), but at least all connected into one (very complicated) story with good plot twists. Despite the confusion, I liked it a lot and recommend it.

One of the top Google hits agreed with my own assessment of True Detective:

I absolutely recommend you watch season 1 and 4 though. If you have the time you can watch season 3 without being disappointed but skip season 2 all together.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

I watched some more of Zero Day and then lost interest. Both the story and the characters became increasingly unbelievable and uninteresting. There was violence and other "thrills" that didn't contribute to the story. Its 7.0 IMDB rating is too high; 6.0 would be about right. Maybe 6.0 is still too high: I don't think I'll even bother to finish it, unusual when watching a "suspense thriller."

I see it gets only 54% Rotten Tomatoes. It might be interesting to see what sorts of films get high IMDB scores and low Tomatoes. Or vice versa.

In my experience, RT grades are consistently higher than IMDB. I can't recall seeing the reverse in quite a while.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Watched Peter Pan Goes Wrong on YouTube. Insane stuff! It is hard to make all of that happen. Hard enough to make a show go right, impossible to make it go wrong so well.