What are you watching?

[Elle]

I just started watching the New Tick too! It was right there on Amazon - on Saturday I was watching Sex, Lies & Videotape on that Amazon thing and when it was over it just handed me the Tick as the next thing to watch! Whoa! But I have to do more laundry before I can finish it.

[akiva]

Over the last few days, we binge-watched the first season of "Fargo." Really good.

My only problem is that the hitman seems to go out of his way to get people to remember him, which seems like a bad idea when you're a hitman.

[Elle]

After a period of zero TV and frantic all-day work, finally went back to watching the Blacklist with the man. Don is an excellent example of lawful good paladin. He occasionally gets tempted to abandon the lawful, but doesn't, and his loyalty is always to his team and its internal hierarchy. Samar and Aram are excellent examples of neutral good because they are occasionally willing to break rules to accomplish a greater good, but usually do not. Same with Liz. Tom is basically chaotic neutral imo, and I'm not sure whether Red is the same, as it depends why he has done everything he did with Liz, and we don't know that yet.

I like Liz, who in my view IS Wonder Woman whether they chose to cast her or not. And though I am not particularly hot for Tom, I can at least recognize some degree of appeal there, as with Amar and Cooper, and meanwhile Don and Red are two of the hottest males of the species who have ever trod upon this earth. It's like a nightly 45 minute contest to see which one can be hotter. The mind boggles.

The show's writing continues to swing erratically between clever/gripping and clichéd/toilet. But they could all recite the phone book and I'd eagerly watch.

[Elle]

Just putting this here. I thought of El Jefe when I saw it. Maybe William Shatner feels the same way about this dumbass show.

[Elle]

I started watching this show called Fleabag on Amazon and it is one of the funniest things I have ever witnessed. I am in LOVE with this woman and that's saying a lot for an old doggedly heterosexual crone like myself.

[Phoebe]

Watching two shows, one for me and one involves the husband; I leave it to the reader to distinguish.

One is Orphan Black, about a woman who assumes the identity of another person and hijinks ensue. There are some massive continuity errors (or else sometimes the characters just do entirely stupid things, which is a reasonable possibility), and you have to completely detach your brain from its normal thoughts and feelings about 'Science', but apart from that it's an enjoyable show. You have to like the main actress. Added bonus: they're in Canada!

Doctor Thorne is a Trollope adaptation by Julian Fellowes who brought you Downton Abbey. The main character, The Doctor himself, is played by the same guy who played Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice 2005, which is one of the very long list of reasons why P&P 2005 is a sucky abomination that never should have seen the light of day. There is no universe in which the Mr. Collins actor should be preferable to the Mr. Darcy actor, yet so it was in 2005, and that's before we even discuss the travesty of casting that person as Elizabeth. Annnnyway, Doctor Thorne is played by this guy (was also in Hanna which unfortunately I still haven't seen) who is trying to make peace among some snooties fighting over money. The love story that supposedly anchors the thing is... inadequate. I don't think that's Fellowes so much as Trollope. That's just the story we have to work with. The really amusing part is that a wealthy American socialite whose money is desired by some of the broke English aristocrats is played by Allison Brie, which is why I bother to mention it to you. I am not even sure if it was her, as I have not looked it up to confirm, but I'm 99% sure. She looks a little different and perhaps this is because she's playing a character who is in her mid-30s and flirting with the men of all ages, while in Community she plays someone younger than herself. The half-minute devoted to her story at the very end of the series kind of makes it worth watching the whole thing (or FF through much of it, let's be real).

[akiva]

Over the weekend, we binged "The Fall." Quite good, but is slow sometimes. Terrific acting.

[Phoebe]

May check that out when the Orphan Black thing dies down. The guy who plays Rudy is so hot, it boggles the mind somewhat.

[Phoebe]

Okay, now that I'm almost all the way through Season 3 of Orphan Black, I definitely recommend. There are a few cheesy things about it, sure - they're Canadian. This whole thing is Canadian! But that's also a great bonus in other respects and permits me to forgive any flaws. Everyone is wearing warm clothes and coats all the time, which I find hilarious and awesome. Anyway, you have to check your Science parts at the door and not question loopholes or bizarre choices on the part of the characters, and then it's a lot of fun. It's very hard to say anything about it without giving away spoilers, but the main actress really carries the show. The guy who plays Rudy in Season 3 - I'm at a loss. It's like if you imagined a person of total, perfect hotness and you weren't sure that such a person could exist, and then suddenly they show up and start running around with a (fake and slight but still qualifying) mohawk. Unfortunately mohawk guy is a bad guy, but you know, crazy eyes. Always that bonus for crazy eyes!

Well, well, the internet thinks of everything. Someone has done us all the service of making a whole Tumblr of the guy; apparently my opinions are not so unusual:

[Phoebe]

Even further into Orphan Black now and it would be best to simply forget all about anything called "Biology" or "Science" or "Sanity" or "Reason" because if you try to cling to those things in whatever vague way, this show is going to make your eyeballs roll out of your head and down into the gutter until they end up floating in the middle of the Pacific. That said, it's an entertaining show. They took the guy who played Rudy and made a new version of him, which is the least attractive version they could possibly manufacture, but he's still there, and the main actress is still amusing. I really don't like the new German woman or whatever, Scandanavian? Whoever she is supposed to be. Her accent is the same as the blonde woman, and they overdo the pink makeup on the blonde woman.

Annnnnyway, Cranford is the greatest thing I have found on Amazon prime and then they took it away for subsequent seasons and I just want to bite someone in rage over it. How DARE you introduce a fabulous historical drama about small town England starring Judi Dench and then TAKE IT AWAY or else extort some number of $$ from me? NEVER. I already pay for Amazon prime, damn it, I feel this should be part of the service.

[El Jefe]

Just finished watching Longmire. Enjoyed the hell out of it so far. Curious to see how it ends.

Iron Fist - It's the weakest of the Netflix offerings by far. It's not terrible, but it's not strong. There are some moments in mid-season that make you hopeful. There's a fair amount of weak spots in the beginning and the end that make you less hopeful. The one thing they really couldn't afford to fuck up here, they did. Fight sequences, up until the last quarter of the show, were kind of a train wreck. This left you thinking that pretty much everybody was better than Danny in a fight. Which makes the storytelling...problematic. Strong supporting cast in most roles (David W was a mistake to cast in that role...great actor, bad match to the role). Main actor was...lacking.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

I resurrected this thread in order to tell you that you need to be watching Mr. Robot if you aren't already. I think many of you will love or at least like this show. This is one my husband started watching for his own sake and didn't bother waking me up for, but I started catching pieces and needed to go back and do the whole thing for myself. It's really down to the appeal of the main character - the actor is fascinating and twitchy and you're puzzling out what's happening to him. There are other good side plots, connected to the main plot in ways you have to discover, and the show does a good job of serving you some obvious facts right up front while leaving others more mysterious. Sometimes it's clear who the good and bad guys are, and sometimes not, and even then you end up a little compromised in your views of those people. Interesting.

Before that he was watching Halt and Catch Fire, which I had seen about 40% of distributed at key moments, so like a good soap opera, it was easy to figure out what was going on. It's really a Soap Opera about people who developed computer companies, much like Friday Night Lights was a Soap Opera about high school football. I'm not opposed to soap operas but I think it's funny how they got repackaged in this way and are now enjoyed as if some higher form of art by those who would likely scorn the old-fashioned version. Anyway, Halt and Catch Fire was mildly amusing but did not really trip my trigger, as it were.

Alias Grace worked if only because the underlying Margaret Atwood story is a doozy that challenges us on many levels. There's an interesting point where the viewer becomes exhausted by all the sexual threats and violence in the show - I don't think it was just me, I think it's designed to be that way, and the next logical conclusion is to realize, my God, LIFE IS THAT WAY. This is not some weird exaggeration; this was reality and continues to be reality for a lot of human beings. Sets you back a bit to contemplate.

Anyway, Alias Grace did not work in the sense that it's a 2 hour movie they decided to spread out over multiple hours. Sorry, we needed the 2 hour movie version. The main actor who plays Grace is good and I liked the guy who played the peddler and the guy who played the hypnotist, as it were. It's hard to talk about this without spoilers so I won't, but will just talk about hypnotism for a moment. After watching the show, you might conclude that hypnotism is bunk and the scenes that involved in were likewise a sign of bunk. But the way Atwood uses it is actually rather accurate. Even among people who aren't suffering from the dissociation of self common to victims of abuse and trauma, you may see that people have an "inner child" and its various protectors, some of whom might be identified with specific people who performed that role in life. Because it's so ill-understood and sounds so weird, it's easy to see how elements of the supernatural could be attached to it even though there is nothing supernatural about simply examining what is going on inside a person's own mind. So I would just say, the show could have done more to make that clear. I get that mysteriousness was important for many reasons there, but it would be nice to make clear in much the same way as it does with abuse and violence that there are norms we perceive from the outside as completely crazy or unlikely simply because we are so deep into a pathological normal state that we don't even recognize the pathology anymore.

[El Jefe]

[Cazmonster]

First season of Mr Robot was great. Picking up the second is a little slower and more surreal. I'm in it for Tyrrell getting what's coming to him for being a lizard in a human suit. If Joanna catches fire, that would be a plus too.

Started HAPPY! Watch it. Chris Meloni and Patton Oswalt are magic in it.

Started Van Helsing too. Not giving us a bunch of background in the first episode is how you do good TV.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

[mimekiller]

Yo Jeffrey, LONGMIRE is great, need to watch the last season of the adventures of Walt and friends but yea, its a super good show, same with MR ROBOT That I lost track of in season 2 due to lack of time not lack of desire to finish the show.(I think I need to pick up shortly after ALF appears makes a guest appearance)

Planning to binge BLACK MIRROR season four tonight in honor of starting off 2018 with good TV and developing blood clots!

[Cazmonster]

Black Mirror keeps coming up on my radar. Someday I will make it my show I watch.