• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

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

Last thing I saw was a channel 4 thing on the Stuarts in Exile, which seemed to have been designed by the tories to discredit the BBC. It was tendentious, left out Seamus an Chaca in Ireland, and constantly showed modern pictures (of tanks and such) when it was talking about 1715. Dreadful!
 
Currently a few episodes into the 2nd Season of The 100.

Started off as post-apocalyptic CW meets Lord of the Flies. The survivors of the nuclear war live in orbit on an "Ark" of connected space stations. Crime is suppressed by sending anyone convicted out through the airlock, but an exception is made for juvenile offenders. The 100 are imprisoned bad kids who are launched back down to Earth to see if it is survivable yet.

It looked like it was going to be "oh look at the good-looking bad kids trying to survive" with teen angst and drama rampant, but it got pretty dark after a few episodes and just kept getting better. The kids make mistakes, get killed, and even engage in a little torture.

Season 2 so far is fantastic. The twist at the end of season 1 is handled in an interesting (if scientifically questionable) way, and it appears that all bets are off.
 
Ford said:
Currently a few episodes into the 2nd Season of The 100.

Started off as post-apocalyptic CW meets Lord of the Flies. The survivors of the nuclear war live in orbit on an "Ark" of connected space stations. Crime is suppressed by sending anyone convicted out through the airlock, but an exception is made for juvenile offenders. The 100 are imprisoned bad kids who are launched back down to Earth to see if it is survivable yet.

It looked like it was going to be "oh look at the good-looking bad kids trying to survive" with teen angst and drama rampant, but it got pretty dark after a few episodes and just kept getting better. The kids make mistakes, get killed, and even engage in a little torture.

Season 2 so far is fantastic. The twist at the end of season 1 is handled in an interesting (if scientifically questionable) way, and it appears that all bets are off.
Click to expand...

Me too.. just started in on Season 2. Curious to see where it goes.
 
Bacillus anthracis said:
I don't know how I got started on it, but I'm busy sleeping through the TV miniseries version of The Shining with that guy from Wings and Rebecca DeMornay. It tries to stick as closely to the book as possible and is a perfect example of why books are books and films are films. It's not fair to say it's utter shit, but it bears all the hallmarks of unnecessary stupidness that seem to contaminate network TV.

The guy from Wings was a horrible choice as Jack Torrance. There's no way to not compare him to Jack Nicholson's character in the Kubrick version despite the two adaptations being so dissimilar. He's just goofy and it's hard to take him seriously. He doesn't come off as a boiling cauldron of compulsion and conflict clinging to sanity by his fingernails while making his last, knowingly futile effort to be a good family man and get his life back on track. Instead, he's just kind of an obnoxious dick. Like, if you saw him acting that way in a grocery store you probably wouldn't be too afraid to walk up to him and tell him to quit acting like a fuckhead.

Can the same be said of Nicholson's Jack Torrance? God no. You'd just say, "fuck it, that guy's definitely gonna kill some people but it ain't gonna be me," as you walked quickly out of the store.

As far as the unnecessary stupidity goes, there's just lame cheesy attempts at spookiness. For example, the family walks in the front door of the hotel and after they do, the bench on the porch starts rocking back and forth on its own. I just imagined one of the key grips drilling a little hole through the wall to attach a string to the bench and then being told to pull on the string at the right time. It's full of stuff like that. Who are the ghosts trying to scare with that? Other ghosts?

Anyway, I'll watch on because I can fall asleep to it and not care what I miss, or the lack of continuity that occurs when I try to get back to the approximate point in the show where I fell off into a very "meh" sleep the night before.
Click to expand...

Exactly right.

Stephen King loved the TV version, but you're right, despite a man with a croquet mallet being able to do considerable damage to a person with it, it's just not as viscerally terrifing as a mad man with an axe.

I was scared of Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance. The Wings guy...meh, you want to just kick him in the nuts and take the mallet away from him.
 
The Sopranos

Never had HBO, so i messed the whole thing, but now it's on Amazon Prime so I thought I'd give it ago. About 4 episodes in and I'm enjoying it so far.
 
Elementary

Currently about 12 episodes into season 1. Interesting enough, but I wish they had more of a continuing story line instead of just a simple case-is-solved-in-42-minutes episode each time. They just introduced the specter of Moriarty, and I am hoping that will provide a through-line.
 
Bones - 7/10

Good serial cop show about a team of forensics experts who science the shit out of crime scenes in order to help the FBI solve murders. The main character is openly atheist and they spend a decent amount of time scorning all the woo-woo and other bullshit in the world.
 
Veritass said:
Elementary

Currently about 12 episodes into season 1. Interesting enough, but I wish they had more of a continuing story line instead of just a simple case-is-solved-in-42-minutes episode each time. They just introduced the specter of Moriarty, and I am hoping that will provide a through-line.
Click to expand...
while at its heart the show is essentially a procedural, it definitely becomes far more serialized and has more overarching plots in the 2nd and 3rd season.

Dr Who season (the new series, from the beginning to halfway through matt smith's first season): 4/10
of course i've been aware of this show forever and absorbed a substantial amount of knowledge of it and references to it via general pop-culture and nerd osmosis, but i'd never seen a single episode prior to a few weeks ago.
if i weren't binge watching it with a friend who is a giant whovian and getting to make idle cracks and digressions about it, i wouldn't be able to watch this show as i don't find it to be very good or enjoyable.
IMO it's not silly enough to be good and silly, it's not dark enough to be interesting and dark, and i have to confess to not understanding why this show has the massive devotion that it does.

but, it's not awful and i'm not angry about it or anything - it's just kind of lame and predictable, but oh well.
 
prideandfall said:
Veritass said:
Elementary

Currently about 12 episodes into season 1. Interesting enough, but I wish they had more of a continuing story line instead of just a simple case-is-solved-in-42-minutes episode each time. They just introduced the specter of Moriarty, and I am hoping that will provide a through-line.
Click to expand...
while at its heart the show is essentially a procedural, it definitely becomes far more serialized and has more overarching plots in the 2nd and 3rd season.

Dr Who season (the new series, from the beginning to halfway through matt smith's first season): 4/10
of course i've been aware of this show forever and absorbed a substantial amount of knowledge of it and references to it via general pop-culture and nerd osmosis, but i'd never seen a single episode prior to a few weeks ago.
if i weren't binge watching it with a friend who is a giant whovian and getting to make idle cracks and digressions about it, i wouldn't be able to watch this show as i don't find it to be very good or enjoyable.
IMO it's not silly enough to be good and silly, it's not dark enough to be interesting and dark, and i have to confess to not understanding why this show has the massive devotion that it does.

but, it's not awful and i'm not angry about it or anything - it's just kind of lame and predictable, but oh well.
Click to expand...
I cannot comprehend this post. ;)
 
Playball40 said:
I cannot comprehend this post. ;)
Click to expand...
right? i keep feeling like there's something wrong with me and it's my fault for not loving this show with all my heart - i mean don't get me wrong, "wibbley wobbley timey-wimey" was awesome, and i now respond to any question remotely phrased like "what is that?" with "it's my timey-wimey detector, it's goes PING when there's stuff" - so it's not like i haven't noticed, appreciated, and latched on to some of the more quotable elements.
i just can't see the level of appeal in a show which is, fundamentally, British Quantum Leap in Space (now with 75% more dalek ex machina!). and yes, i know that's horribly unfair because the original series goes back decades, but that's what came to mind while watching it.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Bones - 7/10

Good serial cop show about a team of forensics experts who science the shit out of crime scenes in order to help the FBI solve murders. The main character is openly atheist and they spend a decent amount of time scorning all the woo-woo and other bullshit in the world.
Click to expand...

This season introduced a very big disappointment.
 
credoconsolans said:
Tom Sawyer said:
Bones - 7/10

Good serial cop show about a team of forensics experts who science the shit out of crime scenes in order to help the FBI solve murders. The main character is openly atheist and they spend a decent amount of time scorning all the woo-woo and other bullshit in the world.
Click to expand...

This season introduced a very big disappointment.
Click to expand...

Well, I'll find out about it in a year or two when that season comes out on Netflix. I don't watch cable tv because I'm too pretentious for it.
 
After many recommendations, I started watching 'Walking Dead'. Two episodes into the first season I'm kind of lukewarm on it; the action scenes are decent but the characters seem kind of cliche so far.
 
Daredevil (Dare Devil?)

After finally checking out House of Cards and then binge watching three seasons over the course of two weeks this past summer, I've been giving series on Netflix and Amazon a chance.

The latest is DD.

It's okay. A little hokey, and at times it pushes the boundaries of "I'm going to shut this off right now," but then it'll save itself. I'm three episodes in and it's just okay enough to keep watching. A blind guy who's a semi-superhero really pushes the boundaries of believability, which is dumb, because I'm willing to accept that only a piece of rock from another planet can turn a demigod (Superman) into the biggest pussy on Earth. So whatever. I'll keep watching until I don't.

6/10
 
So I watched the first episode of Supergirl, and, uh, not getting into it. At all.

I should like it. The main character is adorkable, the action sequences are decent, it's a comic book show, but for whatever reason I didn't enjoy it.
 
Fargo. Not sure what rating I'll give it yet, but the writing actually seems kind of average to me, so far.

There are some tropes like "lead investigator gets close to finding big clue, only to be taken off the case". The psychopathic character is fairly one-dimensional (which I know is common among psychopathic characters, but to me that means it should be less common) and not much is known about his past or his motivations, so we are left to assume that he "just likes to kill" and he's "just crazy". There are some little things too, like not having security cameras around, even near a jail cell, and the psychopath leaving his door unlocked upon leaving his residence. I guess I just have to assume that the psychopath likes to live dangerously, even though he already made a precaution by denying that he knew the main character on one occasion. Perhaps I'm expecting too much consistency from a psychopath. Oh, and don't get me started on the "what if life is a dream" stuff.

 
Last edited:
Doctor Who on Netflix 10/10

So, seems like new Season of Doctor Who showed up in Netflix on Friday, with good old 10th doctor getting another shot at it. I haven't watched Doctor Who in a while but boy has it changed... this season seems to revolve around the Doctor and his companion having had some sort of falling off, with her playing hard to get as if she doesn't want to go on zany space adventures with him, while he's trying to convince her to come back and using his inimitable British charm to have all sort of people help him out in this. There are some perplexing changes though. This season is set in New York, and I guess they're trying to do some sort of break with previous seasons because there hasn't been a Tardis yet, the Doctor isn't called the Doctor, and even the name of the series was changed to "Jessica Jones".
 
GenesisNemesis said:
Fargo. Not sure what rating I'll give it yet, but the writing actually seems kind of average to me, so far.

There are some tropes like "lead investigator gets close to finding big clue, only to be taken off the case". The psychopathic character is fairly one-dimensional (which I know is common among psychopathic characters, but to me that means it should be less common) and not much is known about his past or his motivations, so we are left to assume that he "just likes to kill" and he's "just crazy". There are some little things too, like not having security cameras around, even near a jail cell, and the psychopath leaving his door unlocked upon leaving his residence. I guess I just have to assume that the psychopath likes to live dangerously, even though he already made a precaution by denying that he knew the main character on one occasion. Perhaps I'm expecting too much consistency from a psychopath. Oh, and don't get me started on the "what if life is a dream" stuff.

Click to expand...

Is the second season on?

The first season was great. It did have its plot-holes, but the rest of it was so good, they were easy to overlook. But I missed the all-important next to last episode due to a DVR malfunction. Apparently everything happened in that episode so that the final one was so far removed from it that it didn't make a lot of sense.

Maybe the second season only makes sense if you've seen the first?
 
The Flash
5/10
I want to like this show, I think the actors are all great, the effects are decent and they have done well with the somewhat....... goofy villains
But something about this show just never seems to get out of first gear and really kick things up a notch
It could be that the main villan who was supposed to be a slow reveal was pretty obvious from about halfway through episode 1
It could be that we never get enough of the flash being flash and the enemies being kewl
I dunno
I want to love the flash
But at the moment.........it's okay
 
Ash vs Evil Dead 10/10

It was with trepidation I pressed play. One of my favourite film series of all time now made into a TV series. The Evil Dead series is iconic. The first two is basically the same film. Well... it is the same film but the first one being a crappy student project with no budget and the second one having all the bells and whistles on it. And the third one is the Star Wars of splatter movies. Hard to top. So I pressed play and now my cheeks are flushed by tears of joy.

What makes Evil Dead is the cinematic style. The story/stories is dumb. It's basically just about creative ways to kill "deadites". The script pretty much writes itself. Also that it embraces every stereotype out there and runs with it.

It's the bomb
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom