Random TV Show Thoughts

[Totenkindly]

I don't get it. This has like nothing to do with meat.

yeah, I have a beef about it too.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

yeah, I have a beef about it too.

I'd say in my case it would be a bit of pork. If done wrong with the wrong cut can be dry and flavorless, but incredible if done right. Straddles both worlds.

 

[chickpea]

I don't get it. This has like nothing to do with meat.

we’re beefing now 🫵

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

we’re beefing now 🫵

uh-oh


How can we resolve this?

 

[Totenkindly]

uh-oh


How can we resolve this?

Cheeseburgers at 15 paces?

 

[chickpea]

uh-oh


How can we resolve this?

watch the show!

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Cheeseburgers at 15 paces?

I don't know if I can haz.

 

[Totenkindly]

Who Needs the New Harry Potter Series?

It's lazy at best.

www.wired.com

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Who Needs the New Harry Potter Series?

It's lazy at best.

www.wired.com

I think it's pretty pointless. This Discovery merger is terrible. Remember when Discovery actually used to be about, well, discovery?

I only hope that we still manage to get some decent DC movies. Not super crazy about Blue Beetle from the trailer, though. Thoughts?

 

[Totenkindly]

I think it's pretty pointless. This Discovery merger is terrible. Remember when Discovery actually used to be about, well, discovery?

I only hope that we still manage to get some decent DC movies. Not super crazy about Blue Beetle from the trailer, though. Thoughts?

It's like Discovery and History channel couldn't get any viewers with the stuff they're known for, so now they just make shows about conspiracy theories, bigfood, aliens building the pyramids, and whatever else thrills a bored audience.

It's weird, when I was a kid I loved In Search Of and all that speculative stuff, whereas the people in charge of programing were dry and boring. Now I'm pushing for more realism and adherence to fact while the rest of the world has leaped down the well of crazy.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

It's like Discovery and History channel couldn't get any viewers with the stuff they're known for, so now they just make shows about conspiracy theories, bigfood, aliens building the pyramids, and whatever else thrills a bored audience.

It's weird, when I was a kid I loved In Search Of and all that speculative stuff, whereas the people in charge of programing were dry and boring. Now I'm pushing for more realism and adherence to fact while the rest of the world has leaped down the well of crazy.

Same. I remember Modern Marvels being good, even if that wasn't strictly history. It was like, engineering, sort of.

 

[The Cat]

There's some new Babylon 5 projects in the works; since B5 is my favorite scifi show, im pretty excited. There's a reboot in the works which is nifty. There's also a project with the surviving original cast. Excited to see what that is. Its a shame Steven Furst, Andreas Kastlas, Mira Furlin, and Stephen Root and Jerry Doyle have passed into the west.

Ive always enjoyed the very 90's in space aesthetic of the show; in my head cannon the 2250's was a cultural atavism when the 90's fashion and decore aesthetic came back into fashion, and spread throughout the galaxy. And Babylon 5 being essentially a space hotel for diplomats, hustlers, entreprenuers, and wanderers was full of hotel art from around the galaxy from humans and alienns wrapped in 2,500,000 tons of spinning metal. All alone in the Night. It can be a kitschy place, but its my last best hope for nostalgia. I'm glad we'll get to go back to the Last of the Babylon Projects.

 

[Totenkindly]

I am warily excited about this Netflix project due to the kudos for the source novel + the involvement of Steven Knight (writer) and Louis Hofmann (male lead) who I just adored so much from Dark. I'm not as sure regarding Levy based on his other work, although the trailer is really nicely put together.

 

[Totenkindly]

"Maybe love transcends severance." 10 Best Shows With Non-Linear Narratives

The best TV shows with non-linear storylines can provide wholly unique viewing experiences, from Netflix's Dark to Apple TV+'s Severance.

collider.com

Fair list, seen close to all these.

 

[Totenkindly]

Watched Episode 1 of Poker Face on Peacock, the brainchild of Rian Johnson and starring Natasha Lyonne w/ a ton of familiar character actor guest stars.

About my only complaint is that the episodes are long -- the pilot was a good 67 minutes, which felt about 15 minutes too long, but I'm not sure of how it would have been squeezed. At least the rest are a LITTLE shorter, as they look to run 48-58 minutes in general, but that can still feel a bit long.

Lyonne is pretty brilliant, and tonally the show is put together well. I am too young to TRULY remember Columbo (I knew who he was and might have watched some episodes but as an adult I don't recall details) with Peter Falk, and intuitively I'm seeing this as some kind of homage, just with a female lead. Even her crazy accent reminds me of Columbo, and as Charlie, Lyonne plays her as a bit eccentric, shabby, but very dogged and intuitively smart. Her "power" (which they don't waste time trying to explain, as she doesn't even understand it) is that she can immediately tell if someone is lying to her. As she clarifies in the episode, this isn't as helpful as one might think because people are constantly lying about a variety of things so she has to somehow discern whether the lie they are hiding is related to the crime she is investigating. So the show becomes more of a logical "who dun it" approach, where she sleuths along and gets enough information to logic out the answer enough to start quizzing people and testing her guesses; in that sense it's more like the logic problems you'd see in puzzle books where you can use a bit of information to gain further information (or exclude answers) and then slowly piece together the final answer.

The audience isn't really part of this process, as at least in the pilot we're aware of what happened and who did the crime before she is, and the fun is more in watching her navigate and facing off with someone we know is the villain. It's kind of fascinating to watch how her brain work and rooting for her.

This pilot reminds me also of the "Incredible Hulk" TV setup, where that pilot basically sends David Banner on the run and then it becomes a weekly adventure in a new place as he tries to avoid discovery by Jack McGee and others. There's a similar setup in here where Charlie will now need to keep moving... and apparently solving crimes in whichever new location she's at next time.

In the opener, as opposed to that crappy Ghosted film, Adrien Brody is actually decent. He seems to intuitively know how to play his character and his skin feels "lived in" versus just pretending to be sketchy. (Again, not a spoiler -- you know what's going on as soon as the opening finishes.)

If you are into this style of show, it's a no-brainer to watch as it's really put together well, it's kind of fun, and the acting is great. If you are not into this, it might still be worth watching just because it's a good show. I might or might not finish it because the episodes just feel long to me, but it's not a bad time investment.

--

I also watched e1 of Citadel on Amazon Prime. I'm kinda in the middle on this show. It becomes quickly apparent this spy show isn't going to have a lot of quality in the detail -- it's kind of on the surface and traffics in tropes. Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden are the main stars, accompanied by a darker Stanley Tucci. I mean, I'd never shirk from something with Stanley Tucci in it, and the two leads are decent enough. But there's not a lot of brain here, it's pretty much by the numbers and feels like high-end glam spies who can pretty much win any fight even when they outgunned. Of course the pilot sets it that the entire org is wiped out and our two protagonists go awol... then it comes down some years later that out of the entire org, there are a few survivors who have to now stop their nemesis org.

The entire series was supposedly bankrolled at $300 million. I can't say I can see where that money has gone, from the pilot episode. And paired with the writer strike -- the scripts are functional but pretty much by the numbers, ChatGPT could probably write the first draft. I guess we see where the money did not go. Which leaves me wondering why they don't pay the writers more -- to GET QUALITY WRITING? The writing and plotting is actually the structure of the show on which everything else is hung, yet they squeeze writing costs down to hang fancy flesh on bones that can't support it. When will they get their heads on straight enough to actually hire quality writers and runners?

I predict this show will either get canceled or Amazon will just break even or lose money on it if they persist. It's not like it's a Rings of Power thing where even a shitshow won't dissuade hardcore fans from watching it. Let's face it, in 5-10 years, neither RoP or Citadel will be spoken about much at all.

If you want a kind of brainless but pretty show with pretty leads, Citadel might be for you. It's okay so far. I suspect if you want thriller shows with a brain, watch even some older stuff like Person of Interest.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

The audience isn't really part of this process, as at least in the pilot we're aware of what happened and who did the crime before she is, and the fun is more in watching her navigate and facing off with someone we know is the villain. It's kind of fascinating to watch how her brain work and rooting for her.

This makes it even more of a homage to Columbo. Columbo did the same thing. You'd see William Shatner or whoever off somebody in the intro and then you would wait to see how he or she got caught.

 

[Totenkindly]

Good points. Big problem nowadays too and it's why show writing is suffering. Do they want something good? And do they want to train their future creators?

George R.R. Martin Calls Out Mini Rooms for TV Writers: ‘The WGA Needs to Win on That Issue’

"Streamers and shortened seasons have blown the ladder to splinters," the "Game of Thrones" creator said of fostering new talent in the WGA.

www.yahoo.com

 

[Totenkindly]

 

[The Cat]

 

[Totenkindly]

^^ I agree regarding that episode.

1. Chang (an Asian guy) is typically clueless and does lots of things that could be perceived as offensive whether or not they are. In this case, he crashes the D&D group and is the only person to cosplay his character... and I thought they picked characters in the session, so he decided ahead of time what he wanted to play which is SO much more intense than the other casuals in the group -- and he picks a rare Drow race character (traditionally an "evil" culture, although that's been changing nowadays), who all have black skin and white hair, and so he cosplays it as such although no one else is cosplaying. it's no different than someone cosplaying the film version of Mystique or Nightcrawler from the X-men films. As noted, Chang seems oblivious there's even a potential of a controversy though, so that's part of the ridiculousness.

2. Shirley (a black woman) who is normally over-the-top reactive conflates cosplaying a Drow with blackface and calls it a hate crime. But she's constantly making extreme and inaccurate comments in this show because she is typically entrenched in her very personal viewpoints.

3. It's like 2 minutes of the episode if that because Chang's character is quickly unceremoniously killed by Hawthorne, who was excluded from the group on purpose because of the reason they were playing and he's considered too much of a dick to be supportive. He decides he's going to crash the game and ruin everyone's experience, in retaliation.

4. The entire episode is focused on bullying -- an overweight student named Neil has been bullied because of his weight (people refer to him as "Fat Neil") and the gang decides to cheer him up when they find out he has a high-level D&D character. The bullying is compounded by how Neil came to this college to escape bullying and we discover it was Jeff who actually coined the nickname and started the bullying cycle anew because of his general callous nature. Meanwhile Hawthorne (who is typically a world-class a-hat in most episode) bullies Neil incessantly and even steals his character's most hard-earned weapon, all to ruin the game.

5. Neil manages to get his magic sword back and miraculously defeats Hawthorne... but instead of bullying him back or excluding him, has grown through the experience and invites him to play again, which takes Hawthorne aback.

As noted, the Drow cosplay is a very small segment of the episode, and the lessons about bullying -- its impact and yet constructive ways to deal with it -- is far greater than any controversy over the Drow cosplay -- yet the streamers all pulled the episode. Kinda like missing the forest for a single tree.

It's a great episode and I paid for it off Vudu so I'd have it.