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

[Harry Bosch]

The Expanse Season Six was good, but it could have been much better. They made twists on the twists from the book, which, fine., but really the Filip and Marcos relationship just felt one-dimensional.

Show

The major short comings:

- I've been whining about it, and it is still true, Marcos Inaros wasn't this paper thin character. Part of his plan (rebuilding) required a lot of thought and it was important as he was trying to create a self-sustaining ecosystem for the Belters to live in. He had a board of experts on it. And what he was trying to do was a goal worth attaining, as the Belt was literally being left behind to go extinct.

- This leads to the second big thing lost. Holden and the Belters. They shifted his role to the reporter, who tries to create a vision of the Belters for Earthers, very briefly. Why? This matters, because it is a main reason for Holden doing what he does at the very end of the book.

- What the heck is happening on Earth? Prax makes a very abbreviated appearance regarding a fungal recipe that'll help produce a lot more food quickly. I can understand why Prax doesn't get more time than this. However, regarding the food, who cares. Right? I mean it isn't like Earth is starving because they've barely mentioned it at all! At all? Drives me nuts as importing that info is 10 to 15 seconds on screen.

Hawkeye - Felt like a Spiderman romp with the younger lead. Enjoyed it. Felt like they were planting some stuff for up ahead. I got lucky and watched Black Widow at the exactly right time while watching the Hawkeye series.

Agree about the Expanse. Just loved the first 4 seasons. I thought that the end of season 5 wasn't great. Season 6 was good, not great. If you liked Expanse; you should check out For All Mankind. Love that show. First two seasons are insanely great. The end of the pilot had the best ending of any episode that I've ever seen.

 

[Patooka]

Reacher - Mary Sue becomes a Hobo.

An excellent 5/10. And by that I mean it's very mediocre, but performs pretty well. Basically Jack Reacher is the type of guy Stephen Segal fantasizes being and uncovers a conspiracy occurring in some town in Georgia. Hilarity ensues. Me and the housemates binged watched this on Saturday and we had a drinking game. Take a a drink every time someone gets headbutted.

Sunday was fucking shit for everybody.

 

[ZiprHead]

The commercials I saw for it^ didn't look impressive. But I was curious. Thanks for saving me the trouble.

 

[TSwizzle]

Ozark, season 4, 7/10; After a fairly long gap between series, the final series 4 of Ozark is streaming on Netflix. I had to rewatch the last couple of episodes of series 3 to remember where it left off. So after that I go into series 4 and watched the first three episodes and it's pretty good. It's going to be quite the finale as cartels battle it out and the Byrds are smack in the middle between cartels and the law.

 

[prideandfall]

Peacemaker: 8/10
a spinoff from the james gunn directed 'suicide squad' movie from 2021, following along with the character Peacemaker in the immediate aftermath of that movie.

if you like james gunn this show is great, though IMO it suffers from the same issue all of james gunn's work has - it's fun, it's quirky, there's banter, everyone is firing off quips... but it just lacks heart underneath it that really elevates it.
james gunn is more or less joss whedon but for the horror/B-movie mindset, in that his visual style and direction are great and as a writer he makes nonstop quipfests out of his dialogue, but he has a far more flippant attitude in his material and sometimes that can be detrimental.

anyways if you're up for something lighthearted and raunchy, with a splash of gunn's signature gore-splattered over-the-top violence, this is a good watch.
(side note: john cena is such a shockingly good and charismatic comedic actor.
side note 2: god this show has an amazing opening sequence)

 

[Tom Sawyer]

The Main In The High Castle - 8/10

Show about a world in the 1960s where the Axis won WW2 and North America is split between the Japanese Empire and the Reich. Mainly follows some resistance people around who have some news reel videos of the Allies winning and the potential of a better world which Hitler wants to get his hands on for reasons. Lots of political machinations and interesting story lines and well worth watching. Also, lots of scenes where you can watch Nazis getting shot or blown up, so that's always fun to see.

 

[Swammerdami]

I just binge-watched all six seasons of Lucifer. IMO this is one of the very best TV series ever. In fact it noses out Sopranos for the #3 slot on my All-Time Best List. Only Breaking Bad and The Wire are better.

Yes, all four of those series deal with crime. No, I am not particularly interested in crime. But crime or criminal investigations lead to suspense, good dialog, and a focused story line.

Police procedurals can be fun if they have something extra: eccentric lab technicians or consultants, humor, a little corruption, pizazz (like setting CSI in Las Vegas). Lucifer has all this and much MUCH more. Does the eccentric Sherlock Holmes as a consultant make a detective show more interesting? How about a consultant who's on a vacation from his job as King of Hell?

Sure, the premise is preposterous, absolutely absurd. If you're one of those quibblers who thinks Casablanca is ruined because the "Letters of Transit" are unrealistic, then you might want to skip Lucifer. Even worse than the supernatural might be that this show will, eventually, tug at your heart-strings. The cornball gets extremely sappy.

But these "flaws" are actually virtues! Unrealistic backgrounds and sentimentality are common ploys in good cinema. This show goes all the way. It gets 8.2 IMDBs and 88 Tomatoes. It deserves much more.

 

[Jayjay]

Blacklist (season 8)

This season feels somehow much better than the previous ones. I don't know. Maybe the pandemic broke me and I lowered my standards, but it could also be that the changes in casting allowed the show to focus on fewer more interesting characters and their relationships, rather than villain of the week episodes and workplace romances of previous seasons. Megan Boone leaves the show early in the season, apparently to focus on her movie career, while James Spader who has retired from movies to do this show for the past 8 years is as good as ever, if not even better, as the flamboyant international criminal Raymond Reddington. If you haven't watched this show before, it might be a bit confusing, but I would say that if you did watch some of the earlier seasons and gave up because of the incessant conspiracies and family drama, or any other reason, you might want to hop back in with the latest installment.

 

[Ford]

I got around to finishing the final season of The Expanse. I don't watch a lot of television to put it mildly, but this has been a helluva ride. Best science fiction show in a very, very long time. What's more, the last season didn't drop the ball like so many other shows. The finale was just about perfect, and left me satisfied yet wanting more. The main characters all had their stories wrapped up in a satisfying manner, there were a couple clever cameos from supporting characters whose stories appeared to have ended, and it left an opening for more stories to be told, which is good because there's still a few books to cover.

There's also a character that didn't even exist in the books who grew from an unnamed bit part to having her name in the opening credits for the final season on (it seems) the sheer force of her acting talent.

Beltalowda!

 

[Patooka]

There's also a character that didn't even exist in the books who grew from an unnamed bit part to having her name in the opening credits for the final season on (it seems) the sheer force of her acting talent.

If you're referring to Rosenfeld, they were in the books.

 

[Ford]

There's also a character that didn't even exist in the books who grew from an unnamed bit part to having her name in the opening credits for the final season on (it seems) the sheer force of her acting talent.

If you're referring to Rosenfeld, they were in the books.

I was talking about Drummer. Her first appearance in the series? She didn't even have a name. Just credited as "Fred Johnson's assistant" or something like that. Then over the course of the series she became bosmang. Cara Gee crushed it as Drummer.

 

[Patooka]

I was talking about Drummer

Drummer was very much in the books. She was in books five and six and was a point of view character in book seven. She also had a cameo appearance in book 8. I agree with you that Cara Gee nailed the role.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

There's also a character that didn't even exist in the books who grew from an unnamed bit part to having her name in the opening credits for the final season on (it seems) the sheer force of her acting talent.

If you're referring to Rosenfeld, they were in the books.

I was talking about Drummer. Her first appearance in the series? She didn't even have a name. Just credited as "Fred Johnson's assistant" or something like that. Then over the course of the series she became bosmang. Cara Gee crushed it as Drummer.

Well they merged her into Michio Pa for seasons 5 and 6.

5 and 6 could have been better, but they didn't have the money, and the script writers were getting needlessly cliche, which wasn't necessary because the books were very competently put together. Among my largest gripes is that what happened to Earth is almost a footnote in Season 6. There is a cameo from a previous character (who has a larger role in book 5 I think), and it is obvious why his input is needed because Earth is starving. This desperation is never really addressed in the show.

 

[Patooka]

Star Trek Picard - Season 2. I stopped watching after episode 5.

I really wanted to like this show. If nothing else, Ted Cruz having a hissy fit over Kurtzman's Star Trek endears me to no end. Unfortunately, it's still shit and suffers the exact same problems Season one of Picard did. Quite literally all the characters are interchangeable and all act in the same sassy manner. Once again the season is filled with cameo appearances that don't advance the plot at all (remember that scene with Spock on the bus in Star Trek 4?) but the main reason they don't advance the plot is that there is no plot. The Borg Queen become a massive threat just before Picard orders the self destruct which becomes meaningless as Q changes time (but also loses his powers), that leads to a dystopian future that only can be fixed by going into the past and ICE is bad and there is an alien who looks exactly like Picard's Romulan servant and there is an Ocean's 11-esque heist to get in touch with Picard's ancestor who is more important in history than Zefram Cochrane. Confused? Yeah, me too.

The story arc is utterly incoherent and I do not give a flying fuck about any of the characters or what is going to happen to them. The only good thing about this season of Picard is the commentary Red Letter Media make about the episodes. Watch those instead.

 

[TSwizzle]

Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, 5/10; Another of the Netflix true crime series, this two part series profiles the antics of one of the BBC's highest profile celebrities who apparently abused hundreds of vulnerable young women. I say apparently because from this series there is scant testimony from the hundreds of Sir Jimmy's victims. This came across as a one sided hit piece against Savile, cobbling together some off color and risque quips he made to paint him as an obvious deviant, how did they not see it? The series delves into Jimmy's backstory, his rise to fame and success and say what you will about the Savile, his charity work was incredible. I never understood how Savile was successful and popular, I always thought him a typical annoying DJ and TV personality but apparently he was really popular, mixed with royalty, was given unfettered access to hospitals, homes and prisons, even having a weird relationship with the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe. Savile was very strange indeed.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

Killing Eve, Season 4

What the actual F? Season 3 was a big dropoff from the first two, which were quite good, especially S1. S4 basically blows it all up, making it too bizarre and confusing to be enjoyable.

This is what can happen when you switch showrunners every season. Glad this is the last one.

 

[TSwizzle]

Ozark, 7/10; The final season of Ozark, streaming on Netflix. Season four was split into two sections and released reasonably close together. The final season had some pretty good, tense drama in it but for me it falls short in being a memorable, classic TV series like The Sopranos or Breaking Bad. It's still a pretty good series and worth a watch.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Russian Doll Season 1 - 7/10, Season 2 - 2/10

Show about a girl who gets trapped in a time loop, where she continuously dies and relives her 36th birthday. Very cleverly done and while pretty much what you expect from the plot, it has very interesting characters and is well written. Very enjoyable.

For season two, though, they tried to do something different and although it's good that they tried, they failed miserably and it was just an incomprehensible jumble which I gave up on after a few episodes. The first season had rules and cause and effect, while this was just a bunch of different concepts mashed together with no particular order or plot.

 

[TSwizzle]

A Very British Scandal, 7/10 Streaming on Amazon this dramatization of "Argyll v Argyll" divorce in 1963 stars Claire Foy and Paul Bettany. Three episodes was just right as the series covers the marriage and divorce of Ian Campbell, Duke of Argyll and Margaret Whigham, an English socialite. These two drove each other mad in a bitter and very public divorce dragged through the Scottish court. Ian appears to be gold digging alcoholic abuser and Margaret a lively, promiscuous social butterfly. Some really good performances from the cast and quite entertaining. Worth a watch.

 

[Playball40]

I just binge-watched all six seasons of Lucifer. IMO this is one of the very best TV series ever. In fact it noses out Sopranos for the #3 slot on my All-Time Best List. Only Breaking Bad and The Wire are better.

Yes, all four of those series deal with crime. No, I am not particularly interested in crime. But crime or criminal investigations lead to suspense, good dialog, and a focused story line.

Police procedurals can be fun if they have something extra: eccentric lab technicians or consultants, humor, a little corruption, pizazz (like setting CSI in Las Vegas). Lucifer has all this and much MUCH more. Does the eccentric Sherlock Holmes as a consultant make a detective show more interesting? How about a consultant who's on a vacation from his job as King of Hell?

Sure, the premise is preposterous, absolutely absurd. If you're one of those quibblers who thinks Casablanca is ruined because the "Letters of Transit" are unrealistic, then you might want to skip Lucifer. Even worse than the supernatural might be that this show will, eventually, tug at your heart-strings. The cornball gets extremely sappy.

But these "flaws" are actually virtues! Unrealistic backgrounds and sentimentality are common ploys in good cinema. This show goes all the way. It gets 8.2 IMDBs and 88 Tomatoes. It deserves much more.

Love LUCIFER!!!