Random TV Show Thoughts

[The Cat]

I watched seven seasons of Burn Notice and that was the best car commercial Ive ever seen. I would watch at least five seasons of a "live action" Wacky Races. It would be a fine car commercial but best? Idk.​

 

[Totenkindly]

Agatha All Along Episode 7 is probably the best episode of MCU TV that has been made by Disney for a long time. I suspect it's the whole reason that Patti LuPone agreed to do this show in the first place, and she just carries the episode on her shoulders -- kinda why you hire someone like her to do this show. It's not perfect but on par with a real solid TNG episode. I actually cried at the end, I think the last time I did that for an MCU TV episode was at the end of Wandavision e8 and e9.

Also... dressing Teen as Maleficent for this was so deliciously queer.
I mean, it's all witches. it's been pretty queer so far... but glad they doubled down.

 

[Totenkindly]

 

[Totenkindly]

Finished Vox Machina Season 3 yesterday. Really nice season. Deeper than the others, and some really crazy plot events and big fight sequences -- a few real jaw-dropping moments.

It could have been a decent place to stop, but it looks like Prime is funding a fourth season.

Also, The Mighty Nein apparently has the scripts and storyboards locked down, along with character designs, and it's about to be shipped off to the animation house.

I don't really care to watch the Critical Role shows -- 4-6 hours a week or whatever watching other people play RPGs seems a bit nuts as far as time goes -- but it's kind of cool to see what was distilled out of it all.

 

[SensEye]

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It doesn't help that Jake Long: American Dragon sounds like it came from a porn name generator.

 

[Totenkindly]

Also... LOL

 

[The Cat]

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Also... LOL

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This is why i typically wait three seasons to get into a streaming show(from being a rare exception) Now I can go into this series and picture it as a lovecraftian cosmic horror or mythological nightmare made manifest. I typically end up having a lot of fun watching the chaos of the monster as it tries to find its feet in several different directions that seem to go everywhere but ultimately turn back around and lead to the same impossible ending from which it began.

 

[Totenkindly]

This is why i typically wait three seasons to get into a streaming show(from being a rare exception) Now I can go into this series and picture it as a lovecraftian cosmic horror or mythological nightmare made manifest. I typically end up having a lot of fun watching the chaos of the monster as it tries to find its feet in several different directions that seem to go everywhere but ultimately turn back around and lead to the same impossible ending from which it began.

It's a real shame they did not fund 1899 (by the same team) after Season 1. Netflix seemingly would rather pump out voluminous piles of shit to glut their viewer base versus targeting their better quality shows that might need time to build an audience. How many times has this happened? Breaking Bad supposedly thought it might get canceled after Season 2-3, except streaming saved it by pumping the audience size. Think of all the good TV we might have lost over the years from various networks because of drunk executive decisions where they didn't know wtf they were doing or had the wrong priorities,

Anyway, I always recommend Dark if the viewer can handle the complexity of it -- because the complexity is part of the crushing weight of the series' themes. It all pulls together at the end. There are series I really like (like Lost, X-Files, The Good Place, etc.), and then there are series that are just phenomenal, and for me the latter includes Dark, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Six Feet Under, The Leftovers, and a few others....

 

[Totenkindly]

Agatha All Along actually ended up being one of the best MCU shows because of the low bar: It actually has a story, and story development, and a few moments of emotional catharsis, and character arcs. it is one of their few shows that doesn't feel like amateur hour and could have been part of Phase 1-3 in terms of quality. I feel weird for having to distinguish between the two: On the range of all TV ever, it's probably a B outing, worth watching but not at all the cream of the crop -- but in this little pond of MCU TV post Endgame, it feels like a big fish that I prefer even to Loki season 2, honestly.

It also did its own thing, had a vision for the show, and didn't necessarily go where the audience wanted it to go while having a few surprising revelations along the way. It also manages to reclaim the Ralph Bohner character (that I thought was one of Wandavision's more glaring flaws) in a more satisfying way.

In the end it more or less does also reflect the general comic book continuity.

Agatha becomes a ghost.
Billy Maximoff is reincarnated as William Kaplan and manifests as Wiccan.
William ensures his brother is reborn as well and is now looking for him, to reunite the two.

Kathryn Hahn is great in this role. It's an interesting series because they don't really try to salvage Agatha as a good person. There's elements of her behavior that are "understandable" and there's a bit where you can feel sympathetic, but overall it's reaffirmed repeatedly that Agatha is not a nice person, and she is often not a good person. Hahn leans into this and doesn't seem to care whether you LIKE her or not, there's things that she does or says that are terrible honestly. It makes her unflinching and resilient. Yet she is the title character for this series. I really like this element of it. Billy is far more sympathetic and "good."

Edit: in general I agree with this:

The ‘Agatha All Along’ Finale Doesn’t Stick The Landing

I will maintain that Agatha All Along is one of the best MCU series to date, but in its two-part finale, I couldn’t help but feel a bit let down by the conclusion

www.forbes.com

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

May he appearth tonight and blesseth us with his presence.

 

[The Cat]

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

BTW, somebody made a game from Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne from the Digital Estate Planning episode of Community. I played as Britta, but didn't get too far because there are other things I want to do tonight.

Community: Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne

 

[The Cat]

BTW, somebody made a game from Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne from the Digital Estate Planning episode of Community. I played as Britta, but didn't get too far because there are other things I want to do tonight.

Community: Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne

You're the worst.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Regarding GOT:

I have issues with the finale, too, but not Jon's ultimate fate. I was glad Jon got to spend time being happy among the Wildings, instead of being constantly surrounded by backstabbers while sitting on the Iron Throne. I wouldn't want, it either.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

That was definitely where Jon belonged thematically and he will be happier there.

But realistically, Grey Worm and/or a bunch of other people should have executed him.

With that last season of GOT, I can see what they were trying to do. The one exception is Bran (let's have the underdeveloped character who wasn't even IN an entire season because of something about the magic of stories.) With regards to Jon and Danerys, it was supposed to be this tragic, doomed, perhaps Arthurian romance. Jon despises Jaime Lannister in the fiste episode but becomes exactly like him by the end of the series, because we always become what we hate.

They don't do a great job of selling the Jon/Danerys thing, though, and they didn't do a good job with Danerys's decent into madness, either. They don't do a good job at selling Jon's inner conflict before his fateful decision, either. Mostly they show him repeating "she is muh queen" over and over, and Tyrion has to walk him through it like a tech support agent.

Assuming everything leading up to it had been well-written, would you have said Jon made the right decision, regardless of the consequences?

 

[Totenkindly]

Assuming everything leading up to it had been well-written, would you have said Jon made the right decision, regardless of the consequences?

... but it was all so BADLY written.
Not just in the moment, but in terms of execution over the arcs.

They meant for Dany to be hopeless, to justify her death, but didn't really convincingly pull that off.
They meant for Jon to feel like he had no choice about killing her, but that didn't feel convincing.
They refused to punish Jon for doing what he did (which doesn't fit with the GRRM's approach).

They could have built a cool arc for Bran where once he is crowned, you would gasp and say, "Damn, I wasn't expecting that, but now I see it was inevitable and made total sense." But they failed that too.

Like, pretty much every effin' thing, they failed to execute properly.
Jaime going back to Cersei should have felt hugely tragic (if that was the direction they wanted), like he just couldn't fight fate / obsession for his sister and how Lannisters always stick together... but it just felt STUPID and annoying.

Like... this should all be in the GOT thread, so I won't continue.
But yeah. Their reach FAR FAR FAR exceeded their ability and grasp.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I forgot there was a separate thread, honestly. It wasn't on my radar.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Heidi Swedberg: From ‘Seinfeld’ to Uke Clinician​

Asked why she stopped playing, Swedberg says, “Oh, yeah, well. I loaned that first ukulele to a boyfriend—and never got it back. So for my college years, I didn’t play, because I didn’t have anything to play on—all because of that rat fink, Jeff Page.”

LOL. I wonder if he knows about this article.

“That’s one of the rules they teach you in Hollywood. You never say no. ‘Can you ride a horse?’ Sure! ‘Can you shoot a gun?’ Absolutely! Of course? I live to shoot guns. So I told them I could play the guitar, even though I couldn’t, and then before the audition I went down to McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica and I got myself . . . a baritone ukulele! I figured, they’re TV people. They don’t know the difference between a baritone ukulele and a guitar!


“And as it turns out . . . they didn’t.”

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Why do the Boys exist when we have Watchmen?