TV Review Thread

[Kyle]

Rain. I recently watched seasons 1 and 2 of this Danish germpocalypse show. As with all things Scandinavian, it was effectively bleak. Unlike other shows, though, it moves along at a good clip. The wheels come off a bit in season 2, but it was still watchable. And considering there are only 8 and 6 episodes per season respectively, it’s not that big of a commitment.

[Kyle]

Typewriter: So I watched this Indian-language-produced horror series because I read an article that talked about hidden horror gems that are too scary for most people. So I watched it. Not scary. Not terrible, but not scary. The premise is that a family moves into a house where there's a ghost/demon thing that is causing problems for them. It had some really effective mindfuck moments, but it also had a lot of dumb stuff. There's a group of four ten year olds who do a lot, and then there's adults that also move the plot along. And the big problem that I have with the movie is that it waffles between being this serious, a bit grim, ghost story on the one hand, and then a funny, silly, almost-slapstick telling of the same ghost story for the four kids' side of it. It was just a constantly changing tone that didn't resonate with me. Also, with one exception, the kid actors were really awful. So it was kind of a cool story, and I guess I will tepidly recommend this. For what it's worth, there's only 5 50 minute episodes, so it's not a huge commitment.

[El Jefe]

I watched the first season of Rain, but never went back. I'm settling in with Dark next, as I've heard a few good comments from friends.

[Kyle]

Holy shit. Dark is awesome.

[El Jefe]

So I decided to skip Dark for now, even though I really needed to get Another Life out of my head. I attempted to start watching Farscape for the first time, but I'm just not there quite yet. I've got a season of OA lurking as well, but I'm also not sure if I'm up for that right now.

But Another Life deserves a bit more fair of a review than I gave it in the other thread. It's not good, no change there, and likely not worth the recommendation. But it's also not a complete shitstorm, just like a moderate guster of a shitstorm. D+, C- I guess?

The Good: Katee acts well, as she usually does. I think she's a bit like Nathan Fillion or a handful of others. Underrated actor who generally picks/gets roles in really bad projects. The writing team had a decent end point to get to for the first (and I'm guessing, only) series. Finally, they really tried for Sense 8 in Space, in terms of relationships and a (mostly) progressive view on how the boot-knocking works for us silly humans.

The Bad: They had an endpoint. That's pretty much it. They really had no idea how to get there, where to start, or how to establish world-building at all. The dialogue is really painful at times. Characters other than Katee are pretty much going to bounce all over the place, in terms of characterization. They'll jump back and forth from one broadly painted stereotype/trope to the next, without much rhyme or reason. They tried to do Sense 8 in Space, and really didn't want to put the time or effort in for what made Sense8 work. So it didn't really work very well. Selma Blair's character is an utter trainwreck, but I honestly can't judge if the problem is her acting or just how bad the material was. Pretty much every role on Earth is a gigantic mess, as are most of the storylines involving Earth.

The Really Horrid: It's sci-fi word salad, with no regard for consistency in tech or capabilities. To be fair, the budget on this looks extremely small. So I think a lot of that comes from budgetary concerns paired with bad writing that doesn't want to do the science work. I'd call it space fantasy, but it goes far past that. It attempts to portray itself as hard sci-fi, but then manages to spit out things like particle accelerator powered fusion reactors (yup) on a ship with fully functional artificial gravity and FTL, gravity rings on the ship that are completely unconnected in every shot and just randomly float around the ship somehow, but then uses Vietnam era M16s (not even hidden) and 1970's-80's era NASA EVA tech. No thruster packs, no grav boots, just tethers and handholds. We can literally handle EVA thruster packs now, and could in the 1980's. And all of this is explained away by just throwing as many "sci-fi-y" sounding terms together as one can. It doesn't matter if it makes even the slightest bit of sense. Just toss them together, and everybody will be fine with it! The writing is definitely the worst part about the show.