What are you watching?

[Phoebe]

Season 2 is way better, but it couldn't be what it is without season 1, so it's really a whole package deal that just continues to improve. I don't know who's responsible for some of the things happening in season 2 here, but they win. Also, I'm not sure I have said enough about Laura Dern yet, so let me just take this moment to say how much I love her, eeeeeee!!!!! She's so great.

[Phoebe]

The show where Tom Hardy plays a dude in the past who is fighting with the East India Company - at some point the machinations here became too complex. I fall asleep during this show a lot while others in the home watch it, thankfully for me. I can see where it holds interest on some level, as lots of good actors sprinkled throughout, but alas my interest is not one of the interests it holds. There is something about him. WTH. Maybe that's a spoiler someone cares about, though I can't imagine why.

[Phoebe]

Big Little Lies has deeeeeeeeply offended me, I don't know what to tell y'all. I don't want to give it up because, Meryl, Laura, Reese, etc... But my God, can someone please let me write the show for season 3? Really. It's so bad in the writing and "offensive concepts" right now. So bad.

[Phoebe]

In other news, I thought I might be bored by Alone by now, but no! They found a way to maintain interest by setting this one somewhere in the arctic, and increasing the number of bowhunters. I find the people themselves fascinating to watch. As usual, I wish there was less focus on creating a narrative, and more uninterrupted periods of the people explaining what they are doing every day.

[Phoebe]

Killing Eve
My husband started watching this show about MI5/MI6 agents chasing a psychopathic hired killer, and there's a LOT of violence, so I figured it was just another one of his spy violence thriller type shows I could snooze through. But then I discovered it has amazing actors, amazing writing, and the violence is shown in ways they thought about very carefully - it's not just people spraying each other with bullets in totally unrealistic scenes, or fake blood running around. That said, the way they do it is fully terrifying, imo, and violence is a key part of both plot and overall theme of show, so it is not something you want on when kids are around. If we are the only ones awake at ten, that's our window for an episode.

The two lead actresses are so, so, so good, and they alone would carry it all, but they have a superb supporting cast and the writing is incredible. The writing was SO good that, in my recently adopted tv-writing chauvinism (which began long ago but was heavily reinforced by The Blacklist and a few other shows), I felt that somehow a woman had to be responsible for something with this vision and overall feel. Yet I had been told it was based on a series of books by some dude. To do this review I discovered that in fact I was right, and women created this show version of the book, and not only that, season one is Phoebe Waller-Bridge's creation, and she is a living genius among us and I will watch anything she does henceforth. Cannot overestimate this, y'all, and you need to watch Fleabag both seasons if you haven't already.

[mimekiller]

I can't waiiiitttttt


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcrNsIaQkb4

[Mike]

I knew what that link was going to be before I even clicked it, and I can't agree with you more. That sucker hits me right in the demographics. Cannot wait.

[mimekiller]

Re-reading the Boys...super fun stuff. I think the secret history stuff is LAMMMEEE as always but hopefully it will be presented in the show a bit more exciting. Also I really hope they stick with the alt history stuff of THE TWIN TOWERS being up but the Brooklyn Bridge is gone.

[El Jefe]

Orphan Black.

And oh how I'm not really understanding the appeal of this show. I liked it a lot better when it was called Sense8, and they actually took advantage of what the premise offered, rather than decided to waste it all in an array of fuckwitted writing.

Core actor's great in it though.

[mimekiller]

Can you really say "I liked it better when it was called X" if the thing you liked better came out after the X? STRANGE

I dug the first season of Orphan Black but season 2 got way to fan servecy(new word) and ending with the CLONE DANCE PARTY made me so embarrassed that I couldn't watch a single episode after that. You're right about the acting chops of the main character tho, she's pretty good.

[Kyle]

[Mike]

Wurd.

[mimekiller]

THE BOYS(minor spoilers but not really if you read the comics or saw any promotional material about the series at all)


They really go PEDAL TO THE METAL with how evil/insane/depraved Homelander is in the first episode, kind of wish they slow burned it just a tad but hey roll tide its still an amazing adaptation I thought I would never

[El Jefe]

Gave up on Orphan Black in season 2. Acting's still great, but the writing got worse, and pretty much nothing hangs together anymore.

The Boys was fun, but if anybody's looking for the comics to be on screen, they'll be pretty disappointed. I think that's good, because the comics are pretty insane and filled with Ennis' usual "let's go to 11! And then multiply that by like a million!" It hangs together well enough, and the tighter scripting works in favor of the show here, rather than the rambling narrative of the comics. I'm sure the neckbeards are going to hate it, both because of the series very pointed progressive stance (in a rather weird way) and the fact that it skews quite far afield from the comics.

[mimekiller]

THE BOYS
I did finish the series and I mostly enjoyed it, not QUITE as cynical as the comic(in the comic the government and VOUGHT industries have been working hand in hand since WW2)

Also the show works as kind of a weird prequel AND an adaptation of the source material, many of the things established by issue 1(where do super heroes come from, homelander knowing about the boys, knowing about V, The Female being part of the team) are works in progress in the show which actually kind of works even if it threw me off at a bit.

Also the SHOW ends with something that NEVER took place in the comics and really makes me curious about where season 2 is going.

[El Jefe]

Just finished rewatching the entire run of Narcos, and started up on Another Life.

Narcos, as good as it always was. Excellent casting, and a good showrunner (from a person whose producer credits are generally filled with awful projects) keep this "very loosely based on reality" docudrama among the top of Netflix's signature offerings. It also gets a lot of credit for taking the route of season 4 being the telling of the origin story (Kiki Camarena). Having three prior seasons built off the back of that story (and how Kiki's story drastically shaped the early DEA/War on Drugs) makes that origin story a lot stronger than it has a right to be, considering how much of the season is a slow burn story. Additionally, it's drastically helped by the presence of Matt Letscher. Sure, I'm biased, because I've got a good friend who knows Matt. But he's a very underrated actor, and really shines here, as he needs to care the last bit of the season on his back. He chews up scenery and other actors in the last two to three episodes. Pena and Luna are both great (all the cast is, as usual) as well. Really looking forward to Scoot as Walt Breslin. Yes, I'm kind of obsessed with the history of the War on Drugs through the 80's and 90's. It is fascinating and horrifying history, and ended up shaping huge parts of our national identity today.

Another Life...only a few episodes in. It's very, very not good so far. They seemed to entirely skip worldbuilding and just say "Here's this week's episode." There's a lot of issues with not tying this together very well. Interesting to see that something like half the cast comes straight out of current CW shows/roles. I'll be curious to see if it improves, but I'm not holding out hope.

[akiva]

We’re rewatching Breaking Bad. It’s fucking amazing.

[El Jefe]

Another Life is garbage sci-fi that gives up all pretense of even trying. The budget is clearly a problem, and the writing is bad enough that I don't think I'll be able to power through. You could sit there with a "Bullshit Sci-Fi Bingo" card, and you'd have filled the thing by midway through episode 2. It's got a pretty solid cast in it, and a rather interesting one. Even some interesting characters. But everything else falls apart badly. Directing, writing, and worldbuilding is all tossed aside as unimportant for "here's this situation we thought up and filmed." How it ties into the actual story (what one there is) doesn't really factor in. It's pretty bad.

I went back and rewatched the Boys after two different friends had far less positive reactions to the show than I did. It doesn't hold up as well as I thought. It's better than the comics, but that's not a super high bar. I think I had a lot of excitement for the project, but it doesn't really deliver. The writing is really uneven, and the details that are missed (skipped, more frequently) are pretty damn important. It's got a lot of big picture potential, and ends up delivering on very little of it.

[mimekiller]

THE TERROR S02

The Terror is anthology horror in same vein as american horror story but the exact opposite in the sense that it's actually really good

[Kyle]