Which Television Shows Are You Watching #5? If it's ...Star Trek... wrong Thread

[EgonSpengler]

Loki, ep. 5

Spoiler :

I think I'll probably feel differently if it turns out that everyone is wrong about Loki falling for himself, and the reason he likes her is because she's _not_ like him.

Well, alright. There we have it.

 

[Zardnaar]

Clarksons Farm on Amazon Prime.

His usual buffoonery if you've seen Top Gear.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Big Brother started Wednesday. There's a small group of us on TrekBBS who watch and discuss the CBS reality shows - Big Brother, Survivor, and The Amazing Race. It would appear that Big Brother is the only one carrying on through the pandemic, though one of the cast members of the current season had to be replaced due to a positive test.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Loki, through ep. 5

Spoiler :

Someone on a podcast proposed an idea so obvious I'm embarrassed to admit that I hadn't thought of it, that the person behind the curtain, who established the TVA and is lurking at the end of time, is another Loki. I genuinely hope that it's Kang the Conquerer, preserving the one timeline in which he won the struggle against other versions of himself, but this 'another Loki' idea has some merit. The same podcast revealed to me that Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is a character from the comics, the woman with whom Kang fell in love. I'd never heard of her before, so this was news to me.

 

[Arakhor]

Response to #964:

Spoiler :

Yes, on Den on Geek, they've been saying that everything is pointing to Kang turning up, but that also the theme of the TV series so far has been that there is no "main" villain, so it would entirely suit the theme of Loki for the architect of the TVA to be yet another variant.

 

[Zardnaar]

Big Brother started Wednesday. There's a small group of us on TrekBBS who watch and discuss the CBS reality shows - Big Brother, Survivor, and The Amazing Race. It would appear that Big Brother is the only one carrying on through the pandemic, though one of the cast members of the current season had to be replaced due to a positive test.

We watch Survivor. With CBS one off we watched the foreign versions South Africa and Australia.

 

[Syno]

Latest episode of BAD BATCH was pretty, pretty good.

 

[Zardnaar]

Robin of Sherwood (1984) on Amazon Prime.

Bit cheesy here and there but it's not to bad.

 

[Broken_Erika]

pfffffft! Just watch Robin Hood Men in Tights

 

[EgonSpengler]

Started (re)watching Zoo over the weekend. I am 100% sure that I've seen it before, but I can't remember a goshdarned thing about it, so it's like watching it for the first time again. Of course, the reason I can't remember it is probably because it's not very memorable, but somehow it manages to be engaging and forgettable at the same time.

 

[tjs282]

Started Stranger Things S1 on Thursday(?), 4 eps in already.

 

[The_J]

Netflix had announced S2 of the Witcher for 2021 already quite a while ago.
This weekend (I think) they said the exact date: December 17.
Are you kidding me ?

 

[Laurana Kanan]

Netflix had announced S2 of the Witcher for 2021 already quite a while ago.
This weekend (I think) they said the exact date: December 17.
Are you kidding me ?

Indeed, I'd rather not know. Now I'll be counting the days. There is, however, the anime The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf that is premiering on Netflix on August 23rd.

 

[The_J]

Ah, animes don't do it for me normally, so this is not even on my watch list.
I'd also have hoped to be able to cancel my Netflix abo before the end of the year, in case everything becomes normal again, but I really want to see S2...

 

[EgonSpengler]

The finale of Loki was great.

 

[BenitoChavez]

The finale of Loki was great.

Agreed.

Spoiler Thoughts :

I thought the guy who played "He Who Remains" was really good. Just an eccentric, over the top performance that for some reason fit.

I also appreciated that the final episode wasn't just an epic battle. Instead it was the realization of Sylvie's goal and it also finally revealed what the heck this show was about, a bridge to what's to come in the MCU. I guess I expected this show to be a self-contained story which still fit in the larger narrative the way WandaVision and TFATWS were. Instead it's all about the larger narrative. Not really good or bad, just caught me off guard.

I also thought that these shows were all going to be mini-series but apparently Loki is getting a second season. That's cool. I'm on board.

I'm still not fully clear on what makes a variant, a variant and not a different person. The show seems to be saying that free will is the determining factor. When somebody makes a choice that goes against "the sacred timeline" a branch forms. That's why the Loki we've been following is a variant, he took the space stone and got out of NYC. That's also why young and old Loki from episode 5 are variants, because they killed Thor and escaped Thanos respectively. But then there is Slyvie and a bunch of the other Loki's from episode 5 like alligator Loki who seem to be variants just because they were born different. Being born different isn't a choice. It's a biological thing. It's science.

And if "He Who Remains" really is the controller of all things then that means he is the one that makes people born different. And he is the one who created the TVA in order to send them away to be pruned. And that is just a really dick move to create someone just to torture them for a bit then kill them.

Then there was that choice that Sylvie and Loki were given, either kill "He who remains" or take his job. If we take "He who remains" word that he is doing this to prevent a multiverse war and that killing him would cause that war well that's a real dilemma. There are real world events where a dictator has been taken down and something worse fills the power vacuum.

The best solution I could come up with is for Sylvie and Loki to take over the job, learn how to do it better (ie not needlessly torture and kill innocents), then kill "He who remains" so he can't cause anymore trouble. That way Loki finally gets to rule something, Slyvie gets her revenge, and the multiverse war is avoided. The problem is that nobody in the universe would have free will other than Sylvie and Loki and that just really sucks.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Spoilers or Die.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Loki, eps 3-4

Spoiler :

I was listening to a podcast conversation about Loki and Sylvie as a romantic couple, and the folks were talking about the connection between Loki always being alone and meeting and falling for himself. One person said, "who else could Loki ever fall in love with?" I realized _that_ was why I don't like the idea. If Loki can only ever be with another Loki, the whole relationship is just reinforcing his narcissism and psychopathy, which are central traits of Loki-the-villain. The character arc of "Original Loki", the one who was killed by Thanos, was that he was starting to come around to being less egomaniacal (in fact, one of the criticisms I've seen of this show was that Hiddleston seemed to be playing 2018 Loki and not 2012 Loki - a criticism I kind of understood, even though it didn't bother me, because 2018 Loki is the one I prefer to see anyway). If we're to accept Loki as a protagonist we can empathize with, or even as a heroic character, him falling for Sylvie seems like the definition of an unhealthy relationship for him. Also, if he only loves Sylvie because she's a reflection of himself, he doesn't really love _her_, so it's not a good relationship for her, either. I think I'll probably feel differently if it turns out that everyone is wrong about Loki falling for himself, and the reason he likes her is because she's _not_ like him. I think it would be more interesting (and kind of more consistent, in some ways) if Loki's apparent pride and self-centeredness are all a facade, and he actually doesn't like himself at all.

I watched these two together as well because I was out of town/busy and missed ep 3. I really enjoyed the setting.

Spoiler :

The whole concept of the Lamentis world was great, very beautifully and tragically portrayed. I also really like the whole idea of Sylvie hiding out in apocalypses to avoid creating timeline ripples that would alert the TVA to her location was a home run concept for me. It reminded me a lot of the movie Soul's character 22 who is essentially hiding from becoming a part of time/history. It was also the ultimate loneliness for Sylvie, because she can never form any meaningful or lasting relationships with anyone, but instead is just doomed to keep re-living the deaths of everyone she encounters/meets, over and over, knowing she can't do anything to help or save them without revealing her location to the TVA.

Loki falling in love with himself seemed fitting for the bad-Loki character, like you said, a perfect fit for everything that is dysfunctional about Loki as a villain. he can't trust or love anyone but himself. I also agree with you that it cuts against his redemption arc, but maybe that is part of the point that he hasn't fully changed.

Spoiler Spoiler for ep 5 :

Going back to the living-in-apocalypses so nothing you do matters concept it was cool how they extended that concept into episode 5 with all the "pruned" people ending up on the time horizon, where they could not have any impact on the past. That was also a pretty clever dynamic.

Overall, I'm really enjoying Loki.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Loki, through ep. 5

Spoiler :

Someone on a podcast proposed an idea so obvious I'm embarrassed to admit that I hadn't thought of it, that the person behind the curtain, who established the TVA and is lurking at the end of time, is another Loki. I genuinely hope that it's Kang the Conquerer, preserving the one timeline in which he won the struggle against other versions of himself, but this 'another Loki' idea has some merit. The same podcast revealed to me that Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is a character from the comics, the woman with whom Kang fell in love. I'd never heard of her before, so this was news to me.

Spoiler :

It's funny because as soon as they entered the time-keepers throne room I immediately said to my wife... "Hmmm this reminds me of the Wizard of Oz" and it turned out that the "Time Keepers" were pretty much exactly that.

 

[Syno]

LOKI, season 1. 5/10. By far the most mediocre of the MCU series to come out.