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TV Series Thread

Started by PickelledEggs, August 26, 2014, 06:28:36 PM

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SGOS

#855
Quote from: GSOgymrat on August 29, 2020, 07:21:48 AM
I watched the first couple of seasons. For me, The Magicians a mixed bag. I like the concept of taking children's stories and making them more mature and sinsister but almost all the characters, who are adults, have the emotional maturity of young adolescents. It has a fan fiction feel.
Thanks.  From my digging, that was my suspicion.  I never really read anything bad, and even your description is not bad, but I sensed that it may have been childish (not quite the word I want).  I started watching a couple of other shows that I got from Netflix, both of which had an interesting premise, but both of which were immature (still not the word I want).  There is nothing wrong with children's stories, and I have enjoyed some of them.  But some of them seem like they were written FOR adults BY middle school writers (is there a word for that?).  What could have been passed off as pure fantasy, somehow became unsettling.

Hydra009

Well, I watched three episodes of Lovecraft Country (all the ones that are out) and I've gotta say, it went downhill in a hurry.  The pilot was kinda dull at first, but picked up in the second half.  The second episode was just strange.  And the third one was shark-jumping, C-list horror at best.  I think I'm going to call it.

Decent idea, bad execution.  Kind of a mish-mash of a period piece with a thick coat of 50s racism and some supernatural goings-on.  Imagine Buffy the Vampire Slayer + Jim Crow - anything funny or interesting.  And that very thin coat of Lovecraft that pretty much died on the vine, sad to say.

I dunno who this is supposed to be for.  Lovecraft fans will be disappointed at the lack of cosmic horror.  People who like 50s period pieces probably won't get much out of this.  And people who like the characters...well, they don't exist.

I wanted to like this show, and I think it had a fairly solid two-episode arc, but there's just no real central narrative holding this show together.  And that's a real shame.

Hydra009

#857
I've been binging The Boys lately, and I've gotta say, it's a hell of a superhero deconstruction.  How should I describe it?

40% PR-speak and in-universe propaganda (would you like to know more?)
40% blackmail (amazingly, it always works)
20% over-the-top violence reminiscent of Kick-Ass
10% someone's mediocre Brit-punk Spotify playlist set on random

I would say that they ripped off the Empowered comic series as well as both the Irredeemable and Incorruptible comics, but technically, this show's source material came first.  Great minds and all that.  Personally, I think those 3 are much, much better deconstructions, especially Irredeemable.  That comic was nuts.  Am I mad that a certain character from The Boys is basically a photocopy of the main character of Irredeemable?  Not really.  Maybe.  Alright, yes.  Only because now an Irredeemable tv show is basically be impossible.  Empowered is too racy to ever get adapted.

Is The Boys a good show?  Yes.  Solid 8.5/10 for sure.  Polls well with the 18-34 demo, especially in the Midwest.  Dammit, now I'm doing it.

The characters are decent and quite a few of them get some nice development.  More than meets the eye.  Some of the content is a bit uncomfortable, though I suppose that's the point.  The overall plot is decent, but a bit stretched out.  I'm pretty sure the conflict could be resolved pretty quickly by intelligent people.  That sentence wasn't originally intended to be insulting, but it's kinda hard to not make that observation.  Definitely an Idiot Ball being passed around.

Oh and there's this French guy and it couldn't be more obvious that he has le phonié Frénch accénté.  Real omlette du fromage stuff, you'd have to see it to believe it.  It mildly grates on me.  Maybe the character is faking?  That'd be brilliant if true.

Hydra009

#858
My homestate of North Carolina was just featured in The Boys!  So excited!

...oh look, there's an anti-abortion poster, a confederate flag, and plenty of racism.  Wow.  And it even looks pretty rural despite being the state capital (fun fact: Raleigh has a larger population than Miami)

--

This is like being a college grad, winning an Olympic bronze medal for snowboarding, and being a pretty good IT guy but being known as the guy who crapped on the floor in a crowded movie theater when he was 15 as part of a dare and then being known as The Masked Crapper ever since.

Look, it happened.  It was a mistake.  Can we please move on?

Blackleaf

You guy's remember that "Bel-Air" video from a while back? Basically a fan trailer for a reboot of Fresh Prince? Well, looks like it just got approved for two seasons.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=789594878523423&extid=YOHNt8x50pTaYxvg

Here's the trailer, if you missed it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAfJpyBgcgA

I don't know how I feel about that. It's kinda cool that a fan made project became official, but will it have the same charm and humor of the original? Will it be kind of weird having someone else play the character of Will Smith? I mean, the character literally has the same name as the actor, so...
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Hydra009

#860
Anyone else check out Raised By Wolves?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE92bDAlPXI

You might be interested in its portrayal of atheism; the show explicitly mentions atheists in the very first episode, and not in a derogatory way.  A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

Apparently, the Earth is in ruins, necessitating rapid (read: desperate) space colonization, and religion played a big part in that devastation.  I'm shocked.  Well, not too shocked.

There are two factions at war: atheists (and their android helpers) versus some uber-religious faction opposed to both atheism and androids.  To balance out the obvious appeal of the former, Ragnar Lodbrok is on the religious side.

Which will survive on this dangerous new world, atheistic rationality or religious zealotry?

GSOgymrat

I clearly need to subscribe to HBO.

drunkenshoe

Hmm...I need to check that. Somehow, I think we'll find a few clichés.
"science is not about building a body of known 'facts'. ıt is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good." - tp

Blackleaf

Speaking of 90's shows getting a reboot...

https://youtu.be/nZxU_YnduY4

Love this. Only thing holding it back is that it's exclusive to Hulu. Ugh...
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

SGOS

I'm in the middle of season two of Homeland.  I know, I know, I'm late to the party.  I was even later to the Stargate series, all three of them.  But I love binge watching these things all at once.  Homeland keeps me on the edge of my seat, like Dexter and Breaking Bad, but I'll wait until the end before rank it.  I actually take breaks from it just to get some rest.

Blackleaf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaykpGw2yz4

Trailer for WandaVision. Looks...interesting. I have no idea what's going on.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Hydra009

That's was certainly a bit weird.  My guess is that her powers somehow spared her from death - and possibly him as well.  So Wanda is trapped in some dream-like 1950s sitcom purgatory, exerts increasing control over her dream, and eventually it dawns on her that it's not real and she seeks to return to the living.  A daunting task.  There's bound to be a unforseen hurtle or two.  If we're lucky, maybe a cosmic entity like the Living Tribunal will make a ruling.

SGOS

That sure doesn't seem like Marvel stuff, other than the red guy is there, but he's kind of out of character.  I thought Marvell, was really going somewhere with Captain Marvel, but they just kind of dangled her there, and then the whole Marvel Staff decided to spend all their money on a trip around the world.  Probably by boat, with ports of call lasting 3 months each.

Hydra009

Quote from: SGOS on September 21, 2020, 06:57:09 PM
That sure doesn't seem like Marvel stuff, other than the red guy is there, but he's kind of out of character.  I thought Marvell, was really going somewhere with Captain Marvel, but they just kind of dangled her there, and then the whole Marvel Staff decided to spend all their money on a trip around the world.  Probably by boat, with ports of call lasting 3 months each.
Captain Marvel will almost certainly make an appearance in either a rumored Secret Invasion Avengers movie or a Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

trdsf

Good Eats Reloaded on Hulu, which is a lead-in for an upcoming new series of Good Eats.  I do love me some Alton Brown.
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan