What are you watching?

[mimekiller]

I was drunk on mini bottles and having a good time on the way home back to the mainland so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt but Daredevil season 3 is the best thing in the history of the medium.

[El Jefe]

Mr. Robot

FUCK THIS SERIES. I don't understand fans of this, at all. Fantastic cast (particularly in the two mains with Slater and Rami). Good concept. Decent big picture. And then writing that will leave you clawing at your own eyes.

Here's how I imagine the writers room works for this show.

1. "So let's definitely badly abuse every mental health trope we can think of. Something, something 'on the spectrum.' Oh, and he's a savant. Definitely sociopathic, bordering on actual psychosis. Throw in executive function issues, along with social anxiety. OH AND HE'S AN OPIOID ADDICT! We're fucking brilliant. What? Representation problems? Badly stereotyping? Piss poor research? What are you talking about? IT'S ART AND THAT MAKES EVERYTHING FINE!"

2. WE ARE ARTISTS! They'll never guess our framing device until the Big Reveal. Even though we'll literally drop utterly obvious hints 17 minutes into the first episode. And we'll continue to call back to that very iconic Pixies song. But it's a piano cover version, so it's fine. AND ARTY. Something something art. Something something geek fan service. We'll name him Tyrell, because BLADE RUNNER. WE'RE SO GODDAMN GEEKY SMART!

3. What do you mean women are characters too? I don't understand what you're saying.

4. Haha! Sociopathic killings are totally funny!

5. Haha! Completely ridiculous, and entirely life-threatening assaults on unborn children is funny! Wink, wink! Did you see the gherkin knife! DID YOU?

6. What do you mean that Elliot's not a hero? Just because he's directly responsible for causing two murders alongside a host of life-destroying crimes in the first ten episodes, that doesn't mean anything! Something something fsociety. Something something bad corporations.

7. We entirely destroyed all people and small businesses with a yearly income under high 6 digits! FREEDOM! (If you have no idea how badly a few days in a row without debit/credit cards ends up for the working poor, you've never been working poor. Also...FUCK YOU.)

8. EVILCORP. HAHA. IT'S FUNNY. AND ARTY. WE R SO SMRT.

It only gets better from there.

Again, great cast. FUCK THIS SHOW.

[mimekiller]

in a interesting twist all your negatives are my positives.

[Phoebe]

Granted that I watched Mr. Robot in a strange way: when something noisy enough happened on screen it would wake me up and then I would get intrigued and watch the rest of the episode. So I might have found the plot a little bit more mysterious and less obvious simply because I had less info to work with. However, I really like the main character actor, as you say, and I really like Grace Gummer or whichever one of the Gummers it is who plays the FBI agent. Anything with a Gummer, really, I'll watch and like it.

I also take the whole thing to be a pessimistic thought experiment and metaphor for some other random comment on society, so I'm not really looking to get great characters or realistic things or good messages or anything substantive like that out of it. Put another way: this is a lot better than Lost.

[buckett]

Yeah, I am not sure how far along you are, and it's certainly not for everybody, but 3, 6, and 7 are definitely addressed as the series goes on.

[Phoebe]

I must have assumed that El Jefe was very far into the series, but you're right, if he's not very far in a lot of things will get resolved. I mean, do you know and not like FBI lady?

[El Jefe]

I made it through the first season of the artistic fan-wank of a show. That's all I can stomach. Going through a few interview transcripts with the creator didn't help, as he went on to talk about his obsession with Fight Club (the movie, of course, not the book, because he completely missed the ENTIRE GODDAMN SARCASTIC POINT OF THE ACTUAL SOURCE MATERIAL), and how he really just wanted to make it a movie.

Those are two gigantic red flags for "artsy" wankery. I really couldn't make it through any more at that point. If you can't start to address this amount of massive, glaring problems with a show before you get into your second season...I'm punching out. It's Ready Player One style geek worship (with all the massive troubles of that material) with a darker worldview, better cast, and an unrelenting stream of misery and awfulness. And a Fight Club obsession. Yay, I guess? Cast seems great. Creator and writing staff seems like a gigantic sack of dumbassery.

Good to know they never really go on to address the shit-ass representation of mental health issues, seeing as it is a gigantic part of their show.

I'm not sure I've been this disappointed and pissed off by a show in a while, especially with the person who recommended it for me. It does rate better than their next recommendation for Animal Kingdom, which lasted for a viewing of 11 minutes. I'll just wander off to go watch more of the Wire for the first time.

[Phoebe]

Waaaait have you not watched the Wire? Oh, please just do that. Please, you deserve it after watching this one you didn't like.

[buckett]

There's really zero connection to Ready Player One, you're just shouting off buzzwords now. But yes, The Wire is much better, obviously.

[mimekiller]

The Sinner(a USA show but I watched it on Netflix)
7 episodes in this nearly perfect tense 8 episode season. Bill Pullman and Jessica Biel co-star it not a who done it, but a why done it, which turns out can be even more compelling. Just great TV and at 8 episodes makes for a compact and tight story.

[Phoebe]

Ozark. On Netflix? This is another one of those husband shows I have picked up. Not sure what I think of it yet; there's a mix of good and bad so far. I love the main actors though and that's what keeps me watching.

[El Jefe]

[El Jefe]

[Tahlvin]

Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States

[buckett]

To be fair El Jefe, I like Mr. Robot but it's far from my favorite show and I think many of your criticisms are valid. While I think the female characters are the most interesting ones by the end of Season 3, Season 2 repeats a lot of the same mistakes of the first (not the least of which it tries to pull the same narrative tricks), so I'd be surprised if it changes your mind.

[mimekiller]

Counterpart
Not surprised if you ever heard of this show, JK simons stars in a show about two earths who share a embassy in east Germany and have a kind of cold war relationship that continues into present day. It's a really good show and you should watch it.

[El Jefe]

The entire Spider-Man game, via the loving embrace of that cute, fuzzy Irish 'tubber, the Septiceye. It's a better Spider-Man movie than you're ever going to get anywhere else. Even though I kind of dug the Holland one. And even though I generally hate the shit out of Spidey. It's really damn quality on the storyline, and the changes from canon are pretty damn smart.

The physics and graphics on moving through the city and combat movement are insanely impressive. I'll never touch the game in a million years, because console. But damn it was an absolute blast to watch somebody who loves the material play through this.

[Phoebe]

[Mike]

Translated from Urdu:

There is a popular YouTube personality named Jack Septiceye. He is Irish. Most of his videos involve his usually very funny running commentary over him playing video games. He swears as an art form. Jeff is not a fan of Spider-Man in general (except maybe for Spider-Man: Homecoming with Tom Holland, which Jeff found above average and watchable), BUT watching Jack Septiceye play through a recent Spider-Man game on YouTube was downright enjoyable and delivered a more compelling story than most of those Marvel movies... in Jeff's opinion.

[Phoebe]

I'm afraid now because my life may be complete at this point.