Which television shows are you watching? Series 4

[Sommerswerd]

Got home from work today, and wifey announced that she'd signed us up for the free week's trial of Disney+ (the boys have been pestering for a while now, what can you do?).

I had a similar experience... kids begging for it, finally co-opted the wife, who informed me of some free trial that we get as verizon customers... add in my desire to see Mandalorian and I had to give in

Finished season 3 of Marvelous Mrs Maisel. Very high standards for acting. A great period piece. And one of the better shows on TV.

I only saw the first 2 seasons but I agree it is a very well done show. Excellent in fact.

Tiger King is insane! (starting episode 2)
Jerry Springer himself would bow down before these people.

It's like 3 people who are human dumpster fires are competing to see who can glow the brightest.

OMG what a train wreck... but you just can't turn away.

Have folks seen The Boys on NETFLIX(oops) AMAZON Prime? Pretty cool dark take on Superheroes. I guess a little bit like Watchmen, but with Superheros that are alot closer knockoffs of the Justice league, rather than the more unique heroes in Watchmen.

 

[Synobun]

Have folks seen The Boys on NETFLIX? Pretty cool dark take on Superheroes. I guess a little bit like Watchmen, but with Superheros that are alot closer knockoffs of the Justice league, rather than the more unique heroes in Watchmen.

Netflix? It's a Prime show.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Netflix? It's a Prime show.

My bad. Corrected. Thanks...

Now answer the question smarty pants

 

[Kaitzilla]

Have folks seen The Boys on NETFLIX(oops) AMAZON Prime? Pretty cool dark take on Superheroes. I guess a little bit like Watchmen, but with Superheros that are alot closer knockoffs of the Justice league, rather than the more unique heroes in Watchmen.

Feel any sympathy for The Deep?

The TV show was dark, silly, pretty, and guilty.

 

[Takhisis]

Weird syndication deals on Eurochannel mean that Mr. Takhisis is now watching ‘Ubice mog oca’, a Serbian crime series with a lot of actors who are probably unknown to the forum but are known to Mr. Tak due to his addiction for European cinema.
Two episodes into Season 1, so far so good.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Feel any sympathy for The Deep?

The TV show was dark, silly, pretty, and guilty.

Not really... not at all, now that I think about it. he was a swine basically from the very beginning, although I haven't finished watching the whole thing yet. I think I am somewhere in the middle of a second season. I don't feel sorry for Translucent, I can tell you that.

I think the most depressing part for me is that I think that if there really were superheroes, they would be exactly as depicted in the show.

 

[Synobun]

My bad. Corrected. Thanks...

Now answer the question smarty pants

It was... okay. The production value and pacing gives it some points, but the story itself wasn't suuuuuuper compelling. I feel they could have done more with it.

Spoiler :

While I appreciate that it shows a darker side of superpowers, I didn't enjoy the implication that only those wet behind the ears remain moral. We only see the upper echelons, of course, so it's possible that small-time heroes can maintain their moral code. But everyone at the top being hot garbage was kinda meh.

I'll likely keep watching just to see if they can stick it to Homelander.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Starz is making some seasons of their shows available on Amazon Prime for April, so I started watching Vida. Only two episodes in, but pretty good so far.

 

[Zardnaar]

My bad. Corrected. Thanks...

Now answer the question smarty pants

The Boys is great. It's dark though so depends on what you like.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Have folks seen The Boys on NETFLIX(oops) AMAZON Prime? Pretty cool dark take on Superheroes. I guess a little bit like Watchmen, but with Superheros that are alot closer knockoffs of the Justice league, rather than the more unique heroes in Watchmen.

I liked The Boys, although I've only watched it the once. It was dark, but realistically so, I thought, and I liked its sense of humor. In terms of its vision of people with superpowers, I thought of Jessica Jones and Logan as comparably fatalistic, but those characters rejected the costumed-hero personas, which is key to The Boys: Its cynicism extends to preying on peoples' desire to have genuine Good Guys, while the 'heroes' just enrich themselves by giving people a false sense of security, which is pretty much the world we live in. (Logan also lacked the humor of The Boys and Jessica Jones, which I think made those series watchable. I can't deal with unrelenting shows like The Walking Dead or The Leftovers these days.) I've heard that The Boys is milder than the comic, in some places, and I think that's probably okay with me. I thought Erin Moriarty (Starlight) and Anthony Starr (Homelander) were both outstanding. I guess Hughie was supposed to be the 'POV' character for the audience, and maybe I've just seen so many superhero stories that I don't need a 'regular guy' character like that, to anchor to and guide me through it, but I thought he was the least-interesting character in the whole show. (Pop quiz, hotshots: Which actress has portrayed two different women [violated] by a man with super-powers? Erin Moriarty, who also played Hope Shlottman in Jessica Jones.)

It was... okay. The production value and pacing gives it some points, but the story itself wasn't suuuuuuper compelling. I feel they could have done more with it.

Spoiler :

While I appreciate that it shows a darker side of superpowers, I didn't enjoy the implication that only those wet behind the ears remain moral. We only see the upper echelons, of course, so it's possible that small-time heroes can maintain their moral code. But everyone at the top being hot garbage was kinda meh.

I'll likely keep watching just to see if they can stick it to Homelander.

Spoiler :

Part of the story, as I read it, is that people who aren't hot garbage are oppressed by the system that empowers the psychopaths. It seemed pretty clear that Starlight wasn't going to take it anymore, and that Queen Maeve has been 'going along to get along' but isn't exactly comfortable with it. Could she have saved the plane and stood up to Homelander by herself? She didn't think so, at any rate, and I don't think I can say she was wrong.

Oh, and A-Train is a drug addict under the thumb of the corporation that makes the drug he's addicted to.

Incidentally, Watchmen characters are adaptations of Charlton Comics characters. Alan Moore originally planned to use the Charlton characters because DC Comics owned the rights but wasn't using them, but then DC decided to incorporate some of them into their books, so Moore created analogues.

Peacemaker = The Comedian
Captain Atom = Doctor Manhattan
Blue Beetle = Nite Owl
Nightshade = Silk Spectre
The Question = Rorschach
Thunderbolt = Ozymandias

 

[Arakhor]

The Pope gave us a plenary indulgence on Friday.

Don't have you to be a sufferer or carer in the current crisis to partake of that morsel of divine grace?

Meanwhile, the new series of Have I Got News For You is most surreal, as it's now just five people talking to each other by video feed and pretending that they're playing a topical news quiz.

 

[Takhisis]

Don't have you to be a sufferer or carer in the current crisis to partake of that morsel of divine grace?

I've been quarantined for over two weeks now and still have another fortnight to go if not more thanks to the misgovernment's latest act of criminal incompetence.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I listened to an interview with Marc Maron the other day and he had some insightful stuff to say about living with anxiety. I've never really been that into him but based on the interview I decided to give End Times Fun (his latest Netflix special) a go after the interview and I came away disappointment. We didn't even finish it; it just wasn't funny. He kept stepping on his own punchlines and while he had some clever quips, they just weren't that funny to me.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

Some of the many shows we've been watching or getting ready to watch during the lockdown:

Nature/Documentary
Wild Korea - NatGeo Wild
The Hidden Kingdoms of China - NatGeo Wild
World of Weapons - Smithsonian
Mysteries of the Abandoned - Science
Forbidden History - Science - New season starts tonight.
World on Fire - PBS WWII drama series starring Helen Hunt & Sean Bean among others. Premieres tonight.

Ending or Ended
Kim's Convenience - Season finale aired this past week. @Synsensa you'll be happy to note that season 4 redeemed itself for the most part in the second half of the season. It's also just been renewed for seasons five & six.
Modern Family - Two-part series finale & special airs this week. This show should've ended with S07, but ABC decided to drag it's carcass along for three more seasons, with each subsequent season being worse than the previous one. Only watching because I want to see how it wraps up.
Project Blue Book - This show definitely scratches my itch for an X-Files type show. Bonus is that the stories have a basis in real historical events.

Current or New
Westworld - S03 is so better than S02, which really suffered from poor writing and a convoluted plot. I still have to do some research after each show to catch some of the things I've missed, but it's at least enjoyable this time around.
The Plot Against America - I thought the concept, based on the novel, looked really interesting. Three episodes in and it has been quite the slow-burn plot-wise. Episode three picked up enough that we decided to keep watching, but if it doesn't get more interesting by five, I think we'll bail on this one. By-the-by, I listened to the podcast for the first episode and decided after the first ten minutes that the showrunners are idiots and had to stop.
The Clone Wars - The first story arc was amazing with the 'Bad Batch' clones, but this second arc has been a huge disappointment so far. The amazing cinematic quality is still there and I love Ahsoka's new digital model, but the whole arc seems like so much filler waste. Especially when you consider this is the last season with only twelve episodes. There were so many unreleased arcs that would have been better, like the Bounty Hunter arc with Cad Bane & Boba Fett, or Yoda's time pre-ROTS on Kashyyyk. I guess Filoni needed to have his solo Ahsoka episodes.
MTV's The Challenge - Season 35 started this past Wednesday. One of the few reality-TV shows I watch, I guess you could call it a guilty pleasure. I've been a fan since S02 back in '99.
Tales From The Loop - Premiered on Prime Friday. Based on the trailer it looks interesting, although admittedly I have absolutely no idea what it's about. Has anyone checked it out yet?

 

[Synobun]

Ending or Ended
Kim's Convenience - Season finale aired this past week. @Synsensa you'll be happy to note that season 4 redeemed itself for the most part in the second half of the season. It's also just been renewed for seasons five & six.

That's good to hear.

I'm re-watching Vampire Diaries because I never bothered finishing it long ago. I think I first watched this when I was 18 or 19. It was a lot more endearing back then. This time, I rated season one a 6/10, and season two thus far isn't any better.

 

[thetrooper]

Rewatching Westworld S1 and S2. Couple of episodes a day. This pace will slot me in to watch S3 episodes 'live' somewhere between E4 and E5. Great stuff.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Laurana Kanan My brother likes Tales from the Loop and recommended it to me. I haven't looked at it yet though.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I've finished watching through Arrested Development seasons 1 to 4.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I liked the first ep of Tales From the Loop. It has a very leisurely pace. It dwells on images, and is more about characters than plot, so it may bore anyone looking for action or the pursuit of the mystery, and frustrate anyone who wants an answer to question of what happened and how. The first ep is about how what happened affected the characters, not the thing that happened, per se. Just the first ep, though, so it has some of that pilot-y thing of setting up lots of stuff and exploring very little of it.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The Heist (Netflix) is fabulous! Tense drama with lots of twists. It is in Spanish, but the subtitles work well. I'm four episodes in.