Television

[nrh]

i will say i like the bbc gormenghast more than the live action tolkiens!

fantasy is weird because most of the masterpieces of the genre are really idiosyncratic, but sheer amount of money you need to put in to make them work means there is the need to make them as commercial as possible.

so with tolkien you ramp up the action, insert romance, get rid of weirder aspects like tom bombadil. with gormenghast you put the steerpike stuff front and center (which if i remember correctly does not even appear until the second book).

peake is weird enough that a lot of his flavor remains, tolkien is much more in danger of getting subsumed into generic post dungeons & dragons slop.

which is a clumsy way of saying the best way to enjoy the new tolkien show is probably as a generic fantasy thing with a huge budget rather than taking it seriously as any kind of adaptation...

[rischka]

watching severance

i tried that LOTR series and didn't get through the first episode lol. also very dumb pirate show 'our flag means death' that really wants to be blackadder

[...]

I was bored the other night and tried Burton's Wednesday, but had to bail at the half way point because of how Burtony he has to make everything. Nice enough looking in Burton's way and the actors are okay, but the same banality of mild reversal to draw in the normies who want to think they're dark and edgy.

But, so as not to put on airs, I did also do a mild binge of Extraordinary Attorney Woo, which has plenty of things to complain about in its super-autistic lesson formula, but found the characters enjoyable enough and some of the mannerisms pleasingly familiar enough to stick with it for 12 episodes despite feeling deeply conflicted about doing so. So I can't really be too harsh on the binge-watching thing. There is some weird comfort to it.

[rischka]

almost through season one of the white lotus and i think i must be jennifer coolidge...

[pabs]

White Lotus was one of my favourite tv shows of any kind last year.

I doubt you act entitled like she and all the other 0.1 percenters do in that story!

[rischka]

right because i'm a poor. i'll try not to forget

Spoiler!

i would have totally given that woman her own spa, that was evil. also i'd never sleep w a cop

[Roscoe]

I much preferred RINGS OF POWER to that HBO thing about the Dragons which only got stupider and more formulaic with each episode. Sure, RINGS is a whole lot of backstory, but it was handsomely done, I thought. And the final episode of the first season had a splendid sequence basically showing Galadriel's temptation by Sauron.

Bailed on WEDNESDAY after the first episode, just wasn't interested in pursuing it any further.

Haven't found anything to devote myself to as completely as BETTER CALL SAUL. It may be time for a rewatch.

[sally]

Rewatching Time Team again, and Jonathan Meades. Still cool.

[rischka]

anyone watching the last of us? should i dare?

maybe i'll try his dark materials - i read this long ago

[nrh]

have been watching the beloved melancholy high school baseball series cross game, which is very charming but never quite as good as it could be. but i am somewhat obsessed with the closing credits contest, in which they challenge (apparently children) to draw the mascot cat character (actual cat character shown here for reference).







what is wrong with these kids?

[nrh]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TNvsOC6tyE


will anyone else take the drawing nomo challenge?

[greennui]

Yeah, Succession's good, would have watched it a lot earlier if I had known that the The Thick of It writers were behind it.

[rischka]

LOL tom is so fucked

[nrh]

on the other hand, tom (and to a lesser extent cousin greg) not only knows where the bodies are buried but has evidence of the cover up, so he does have some leverage if he gets pushed further into the corner.

but then all the kids seem a bit fucked as we head into the finish line, even kendall's apparent triumph probably just puts him one step closer to downward spiral and relapse...

[rischka]

greg has gone from likeable doofus to deeply unpleasant this season

[rischka]

ok i started binging the americans to tide me over the end of succession

i'll be ok

[Zynab]

I'm catching up on Succession for the finale; stopped watching this season at ep 5 because I was just so bored and felt the writing was lackluster. The treatment of *****'s death was great but that's been the only thing that grabbed me. I really liked the first two seasons but felt third was uneven and now...I'm barely invested in the story. Sorry to be such a killjoy lol; I wish I liked it more.

[greennui]

Yeah, it has def petered out, all the Mattsson is just very meh and I haven't bothered catching up with the last few episodes.

[rischka]

i wouldn't have missed roman on the barricades getting the shit beat out of him for anything. it has got a bit repetitive but the election stuff naturally enthralled me lol

[Silga]

ok i started binging the americans to tide me over the end of succession

i'll be ok

I watched first four seasons of The Americans two years ago. I loved it. A great series all around. Wonderful cast and gripping story. I enjoy spy stuff in films and TV, plus the Cold War theme is interesting too. Need to finish the last two seasons. Will get to it eventually.

After a long break from TV, I started The Killing (2011) based on a TV show from Denmark. It stars Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman. So far so good. Four seasons in total, but I probably just watch 1st one for now.

[rischka]

i watched season one when it came out but then lost track of it. it's so well done it's easy to forget how silly it is i also like spy stuff and grew up in DC area

i was surprised to see there are 6 seasons! i thought they were going to get caught in every episode

i've finally given in and decided that matthew rhys is hot. don't know why i resisted so long lol

edit: also they got married irl and are still together

[Silga]

I liked that supporting characters are so well written. Plenty of good character arcs. And the supporting cast features great actors too - Margo Martindale one of them!

i've finally given in and decided that matthew rhys is hot. don't know why i resisted so long lol

Same for me with Keri Russell.

[nrh]

i've enjoyed the last season of succession. one of the weird/interesting aspects of the show is that it has always had trappings of prestige tv serial/soap opera storytelling but on some level has always been closer to something like curb your enthusiasm or jesse armstrong's own peep show/veep/thick of it, bleak sitcoms where fairly awful people constantly doom themselves to failure (which i suspect is one of the reasons it is one of the few shows of the current tv era that plays much better watched week to week than it does binged).

and this season just starts running through event after event, every episode after the death playing out in one day, with the election/mencken stuff pushing the shows political subtext to the foreground in a way that was probably necessary but that i'm not entirely sure works (reminds me a little of armstrong trying to use the thick of it style/cast to deal with the iraq war era with in the loop), and of course the shiv and tom stuff, which veers into a type of drama territory i'm not sure the show is entirely built for.

for a lot of the show's detractors i guess it proves a kind of point - in a way the entire story is in a state of stasis after logan recovers from his stroke in the very first season.

[Zynab]

i've enjoyed the last season of succession. one of the weird/interesting aspects of the show is that it has always had trappings of prestige tv serial/soap opera storytelling but on some level has always been closer to something like curb your enthusiasm or jesse armstrong's own peep show/veep/thick of it, bleak sitcoms where fairly awful people constantly doom themselves to failure (which i suspect is one of the reasons it is one of the few shows of the current tv era that plays much better watched week to week than it does binged).

I lost interest in it when I started watching it week to week starting with season 3! I've also never felt that the writing was especially strong in Succession. There is a lot of "fan service"-y clever dialogue designed to be "quotable" by mainstream tv fans. Smart plotting is often sacrificed in service to these moments, and for the characters to jet around trying to strike company deals that never go through. I always wished Logan's illness would be a bigger element in the show; it's been weird to me when there are long stretches where he just seems to be totally fine, still busting balls and spitting one liners. Also I hate Dasha Nekrasova from the Red Scare podcast and she was in it. But that's just how I feel. I am not really a fan of prestige tv in general either so, it's not like the show was made for me.

My bf is throwing a party for the finale and I'm currently frantically catching up with the episodes I left off of so I'll know what's going on tonight lol. I seriously hate this Mattsson shit. It's boring as hell and the character is like a paper edgelord. Can't wait to get through it to the election stuff.

[rischka]

Feels like they adlibbed most of this

It could at least be funny

Maybe they're making a statement abt the writers strike


dammit shiv

[Zynab]

Feels like they adlibbed most of this

It could at least be funny

Maybe they're making a statement abt the writers strike


dammit shiv

Yeah!! It felt to me like an ending they had decided on years ago, but when it came for the time to flesh it out and build up to it, they didn't really know how. I was pretty disappointed. It's like, we know one of the kids can't actually be the successor, but...idk. I think the execution was severely lacking.

[rischka]

i'm starting the last season of the americans. they officially want to go back to russia. it's the late 80s. i don't think the kids will like it

hulu is a mess, i've cancelled max and prime (again), had sling for the playoffs and cancelled that. why is this so f*n complicated.

i don't mind paying someone but i'm not paying everyone D:

i haven't watched tv alot in a long time and ads really suck now. capitalism is choking us they we need to get it sorted

[rischka]

today i miss twitter

CNN says they're not storming the courthouse yet. I've waited a long time for the chyron: DONALD TRUMP NOW UNDER ARREST

[rischka]

season 6 of the americans was just as strong as season 1. well done. if anyone wants to recommend bingeable series feel free, i'll be looking for one sooner or later

i've seen the wire, sopranos, breaking bad, better call saul, the white lotus, succession, severance, for all mankind (hopefully returning at some point)

looking for good sci fi

hey i can watch mad men on prime

[greennui]

I binged through several seasons of The Americans years ago and enjoyed it, never caught the final two season though and now there's only a few things that I remember about it, like Keri Russell being really hot.

Drama, watch Mad Men. Comedy, watch The Thick of It or Arrested Development. Sci-fi, maybe Futurama? Man, wish there was a letterboxd for tv series, can barely remember anything I've watched.