TV 2023 TV DISCUSSION THREAD

[Craig H]

Me too. There’s been a bunch of episodes of Ted Lasso that got me, but that one really got me.

And I loved finally getting a payoff to all of their homages to You’ve Got Mail by showing the ending to You’ve Got Mail. I fucking love that movie so much.

[RandomAct]

The conversation Ted has with his mom is one I've been wanting to have with mine for 20 years, so that scene was really tough for me.

I liked the bit of backstory we got on Coach Beard, and I think the Nate story has been really well done. I like that it was the team that forgave him first, just to set up the theme of the episode.

It looks like they might actually give us the happy ending, even though they love the gut punch quite a bit. Though part of me thinks that *this* was the closest we'll get to the team winning "the whole fuckin' thing".

Just a great, great episode.

[driver]

One moment Barry made me smile this season was when I heard the opening of "The Wizard" as The Raven got released.

[J.H.]

On 5/24/2023 at 2:20 AM, Craig H said:

Me too. There’s been a bunch of episodes of Ted Lasso that got me, but that one really got me.

And I loved finally getting a payoff to all of their homages to You’ve Got Mail by showing the ending to You’ve Got Mail. I fucking love that movie so much.

That movie where Tom Hanks stalks Meg Ryan?

James

[hammerva]

Started watching the ABC series about the history of game shows and really fun looking back at all of this stuff.  When game shows were actually interesting and must see.   It is also amazing and somewhat delightful how blissfully ignorant we were.  I mean here is Richard Dawson making out with basically any woman between the ages of 18 - 78  with absolutely no restriction.   No idea that one of his wives was actually a family member at one time.     The Match Game is still the funniest in terms of how I am not sure how many people actually got how nasty or how gay that show was.   Helped that everyone was drunk off their ass by the time the taping ended.

[odessasteps]

Hope it includes some pre Jeopardy Alex Trebek, maybe High Rollers. 

[RIPPA]

Hijack

Limited series told in "real time" with Idris Elba continuing to be all "Fuck you - I will just do my own James Bond type shit"

[Mister TV]

The Brady Bunch house is for sale, the interior was remodeled to look like the original set a few years ago. 
 

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/11222-Dilling-St-North-Hollywood-CA-91602/20025974_zpid/?utm_source=zillowgonewild&utm_medium=zillowgonewild&utm_campaign=zillowgonewild&fbclid=IwAR0VKYi7Nl0v9MzoTDb4DK2ml9gs_4IkDTSLlWU3KiYM6bWJxiybFbX7PPA_aem_th_AbLT2J3cU7gWdA-pHkCsfF12l7fYtbCv7qmPAmsj_Z4ua14LRhIk_qAUykw7aEKtx0U

[Cobra Commander]

This week on Beavis and Butthead

Spoiler

Beavis decides he has finally had enough and hires a hit-man to kill Butt-Head.

and..

Beavis and Butt-Head try to mail themselves to Spring Break.

 

[StuntmanCrowley]

I had one of the worst weeks of my life on a personal level, so the past two days I've been laying under a blanket and trying to watch mindless television.  I binged FUBAR yesterday.

It was honestly really, really fun even if it was basically a updated True Lies remake complete with 

Spoiler

GLORIOUS Tom Arnold cameo.

I'm not sure if I would rewatch it anytime soon, but it filled a day i needed to fill without moving from my space under a blanket in absolutely arctic AC temperatures (super cold AC is a comfort me in times of personal strife) and for that, thank you for your first show Arnold.

Also, Milan Carter(who plays Barry, oneof Arnolds team members) and Fortune Feimester(another team member) were comedic revelations

Edited May 27, 2023 by StuntmanCrowley

[Craig H]

I thought that Succession finale was about as perfect and true to the show as it could have been. My non joking prediction was right and honestly it makes a lot of sense. 

And then there’s Barry with about the bleakest ending and most bittersweet ending I’ve ever seen. I figured something to the effect of what happened would happen, but I didn’t see all of it happening. Barry is one of the most unique series I’ve ever seen going from one of the funniest shows on tv to the darkest. At its darkest, it was probably Chernobyl dark. At its funniest It was up there with Veep or Silicon Valley. Farewell to one of the wildest shows I’ve ever seen. Now let’s get Bill Hader a shitton of work.

[odessasteps]

I wonder what comedy ended with the darkest /bleakest ending. Off top of my head, hard to top Blackadder IV. 

[Craig H]

Up until the very end, it was damn near close to being Barry, but it stopped being a comedy in season 2.

[Kuetsar]

45 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

I wonder what comedy ended with the darkest /bleakest ending. Off top of my head, hard to top Blackadder IV. 

Dinosaurs, with world turned into a blizzard and the family waiting to die(though that's implied).

[Coletti]

My wife and I watched all of American Born Chinese this weekend, and hopefully we're not the only ones. It's not the best thing ever, but it's absolutely worth a viewing. 

[Robert S]

3 hours ago, odessasteps said:

I wonder what comedy ended with the darkest /bleakest ending. Off top of my head, hard to top Blackadder IV. 

Blackadder IV is a good call. I recently watched Space Force and the second (and last) season ended with the indication that the earth is about to get hit by a big ass meteroid.

[driver]

I thought Barry had a great ending. I enjoyed FUBAR.

 

[Casey]

On 5/1/2023 at 4:58 AM, Casey said:

All I want out of Succession is for Kendall & Roman to be majorly embarrassed and Shiv & Tom to find happiness together. Yeah I’m weird, but I love Shiv & Tom so much.

Yay, this sort of happened!

Fuck Kendall, that’s all. I’m happy for Tom, Roman looks at peace finally, and Shiv will be miserable while she’s pregnant and her husband is doing the job she wanted to do.

This all seems perfectly fair. What a show, damn.

[EVA]

I gotta be honest: BARRY lost me with the time jump and I felt absolutely nothing during the finale.

I love big swings. But sometimes they do whiff.

[Dolfan in NYC]

I'm astonished he didn't jump in at the end, but I'm also half convinced Kendall's security guard is also there to protect him from himself.  

Spoiler

TOMLETTES FOR ALL!    MANY GREGG'S WILL BE BROKEN!

EDIT -- ALSO....  I'd pay good money to see how Willa decorates Logan's apartment.  I'll bet you within 3 months, she'd have it listed on AirBnB. 

[John from Cincinnati]

Vanity Fair released a chapter of contributing editor Maureen Ryan's new book Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood. The chapter pertains to the culture behind the scenes during the production of Lost. There's a lot in there. Here's a bit about the culture there that leads up to Carlton Cuse being really shitty talking about killing off Mr Eko.

Quote

Most people I’ve spoken to for this book are veterans of film and television productions where off-color humor, barbed banter, and incisive, even stinging, comments are common. None have a real problem with those things, in the right settings and proportions. In fact, humor is not just a form of creativity, it can serve as a necessary pressure-relief valve. And a large percentage of people in the industry, when they go too far, apologize and alter their behavior.

However, even for experienced professionals, what occurred at Lost crossed or obliterated most lines. There was “a coterie” of people who would find it very amusing if a comment or joke was “offensive,” one source told me. “Everything was said with a sort of sarcastic ‘this whole thing is funny to me’ vibe—and also a ‘your discomfort is funny to me’ attitude.” Multiple people said that this sensibility was a cover for bullying or inappropriate remarks of all kinds, as well as comments on race and gender that crossed lines. Laughing at and adding to that kind of commentary, said one, “was how you got to be part of the group. That was the terms of belonging.”

Both showrunners tolerated or even encouraged the overall atmosphere, but its descent into a realm that many sources described in very negative terms appeared to arise from a couple of powerful factors: the “sense of humor” that Lindelof appeared to enjoy and the showrunners’ status as all-powerful entities no one could cross. When Cuse arrived, “that’s when everything changed, in my opinion,” a female source said. “It was Carlton coming in and acting like, ‘I want my people and I want control of those people.’ ” Regarding Cuse, she said, “I don’t think people really had respect for him among the writing staff,” but from “Damon’s or the studio’s perspective, it was like, ‘Oh, we have someone who’s going to put everyone in line.’ ” Over time, this meant that the culture of Lost “turned back to the old Hollywood way.”

But an extreme version. “I can only describe it as hazing. It was very much middle school and relentlessly cruel. And I’ve never heard that much racist commentary in one room in my career,” Owusu-Breen recalled. Here is a partial roster of statements sources heard while working at Lost. The first four were heard by Owusu-Breen, as well as another individual I spoke to:

When someone on staff was adopting an Asian child, one person said to another writer that “no grandparent wants a slanty-eyed grandchild.”

When actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s picture was on the writers room table, someone was told to remove their nearby wallet “before he steals it.”

When Owusu-Breen and others were riding in a van on a trip, in answer to a question about the luggage, one writer—using a Yiddish word—said, “Let the schvartze take it.”

The only Asian American writer was called Korean, as in, “Korean, take the board.”

When a woman entered the writers room carrying a binder, two sources said, a male writer asked her what it was. She said it was the HR manual for the studio, and he responded, “Why don’t you take off your top and tell us about it?”

There was apparently some discomfort around the show’s cleaning staff using the bathroom in the Lost offices, and there were “jokes” about “putting up a Whites Only sign.”

Finally, when Perrineau’s Lost departure came up, Lindelof said, according to multiple sources, that the actor “called me racist, so I fired his ass.”

“Everyone laughed” when Lindelof said that, Owusu-Breen recalled. “There was so much shit, and so much racist shit, and then laughter. It was ugly. I was like, ‘I don’t know if they’re perceiving this as a joke or if they mean it.’ But it wasn’t funny. Saying that was horrible.” She began leaving the room when she couldn’t take it anymore: “I’m like, once you’re done talking shit about people of color, I’ll come back.”

But an inability to accept the vibe was regarded as a failing, Owusu-Breen noted: “My writing partner was told, ‘The problem is, you don’t think racism is funny.’ ”

Owusu-Breen and Schapker were assigned the episode in which Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s character, Mr. Eko, is killed off. The actor wanted to leave the show, a situation that can be an inconvenience to producers but is a relatively normal event. The conversation that took place when Owusu-Breen and her writing partner got feedback from Cuse on their episode was not normal. The showrunner, it seemed, had been thinking about how Mr. Eko should die.

“Carlton said something to the effect of, ‘I want to hang him from the highest tree. God, if we could only cut his dick off and shove it down his throat.’ At which point I said, ‘You may want to temper the lynching imagery, lest you offend.’ And I was very clearly angry,” Owusu-Breen remembered. Another person who was present also recalled Cuse offering violent imagery of Eko’s death in the trees in a way that immediately made them think of lynching. This person said they definitely heard the remark about the character’s genitals but does not recall if Cuse said it or if it was said by another Lost writer when the staff discussed the episode.

It’s possible, Owusu-Breen observed, that in that moment, Cuse was trying to think up a “painful death” for the character and did not intentionally bring up imagery that evoked lynching—but that in itself could serve as an indicator of just how damaging and toxic the Lost culture was. Racist, sexist, and insensitive remarks were made so casually and so frequently by so many, Owusu-Breen said, that it would not surprise her if Cuse brought that up offhandedly and then forgot he said it. “No one had the ability to call them on this stuff,” she told me. “And it’s terrible to this day that they get credit for any kind of racial sensitivity or inclusion. It sucks to be a person of color in rooms like that.”

“I really felt sick at the thought of a Black actor who was giving a performance of real power and stature” being discussed in this way, one source said. “To toss about his death with this air of gleeful, malicious punishment” was troubling in terms of the treatment of the character and for Lost’s track record on representation. How Eko’s death appeared onscreen was “toned down” from what was discussed, this person said, but the entire experience was deeply “uncomfortable,” in part because, in this person’s opinion, the showrunners “were vindictive toward their actors.”

And here's an excerpt about the writing, response to, and script credit on the Richard Alpert-centered episode Ad Aeterno. 

Quote

I wasn’t the only critic to point out how uneven the island saga had gotten as it entered its home stretch, but many of us agreed that “Ab Aeterno” was a blast: The episode’s credited writers, Hsu Taylor and script coordinator Greggory Nations, crafted a rousing adventure tale that filled in the backstory of fan favorite Richard Alpert (Néstor Carbonell). The only “problem” was that an episode without Lindelof’s and Cuse’s names on it was so well received.

Hsu Taylor, like most Lost veterans I’ve talked to, is quick to point out that working on the show was an intensely collaborative effort. The grind of making 14 to 25 episodes of TV per season, as the Lost team did, was so demanding that it was not uncommon for a number of writers to work together to get a script across the finish line. That’s what happened with “Ab Aeterno.” “We had such a talented staff,” Hsu Taylor said. “I am so grateful for everything that everybody did—but my name and Gregg’s name were on the script. And I did do a pass to stitch it all together and smooth things out. I wrote a bunch of the scenes too, and I was really proud of the results.”

That’s why she was thunderstruck when, in the anteroom to Cuse’s office, she heard him on the phone with Carbonell. In Hsu Taylor’s recollection, Cuse said to the actor, “Oh, yeah. I wrote that. I wrote most of that script.” “I mean, it was a flat-out lie,” Hsu Taylor said. “My jaw dropped. I just turned around and walked away.” She was devastated.

At one point, the “Ab Aeterno” saga took a turn for the ridiculous: Cuse and Lindelof called Nations and Hsu Taylor into a room, and she recalled that they “basically [told] us how much we owed them for letting us have our names on that script. And they implied it would probably be good if we got them a little present.” So Hsu Taylor went out and bought gifts for her bosses. She can’t recall what she got Lindelof—probably something Star Wars related, given his love of that franchise. She said she bought Swarovski pencils for Cuse.

“As the episode got more and more praise, they started to get more and more tense about it,” Hsu Taylor recalled. “I was up next in the rotation—I was supposed to write one of the upcoming episodes. We were in the writers room. I remember Carlton walking around the table” while doling out script assignments. Hsu Taylor recalled feeling that he was making sure everyone was fully aware that he was skipping her. Later, when the bosses weren’t around, the other writers were sympathetic, she told me: “They were like, ‘Yes, you’re absolutely being punished for having cowritten that script.’ ”

The whole article is worth a read. There's a lot about Harold Perrineau's time on the show and exit, actor pay, which characters were centered, and responses from Lindelof and Cuse at the end. You may also have a pretty strong sense of who the actor called "Sloan" in the article could be. 

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/05/lost-tv-show-culture

[elizium]

Happy I Think You Should Leave Day to all those that celebrate

[Dolfan in NYC]

 

[Curt McGirt]

Finished White House Plumbers and it is uncanny how close Domhnall Gleeson sounds like the real John Dean. I probably need more evidence considering I've only heard him talk on the BBC Hunter S. Thompson documentary from 1980 but to me, he absolutely nailed it. Also, if there is only a quarter of closeness to the real personality of George Gordon Liddy to the real person in the series, that dude should have been put away long before he had any chance to have a figure in society of any stature. And yes they balanced the comedy with the seriousness very well so I consider this one a big success.

[elizium]

Loved the new season of ITYSL. Possible new favourite line from any episode is now "I've barely been sleeping since my wife got flipped upside down by a swing dancer at a wedding. Must've flipped my wife 8 times! And it really bothered me." Doggy door sketch is GOAT level.

Episode 4 is especially great, lots of Tim freakouts, a wrestling-centric sketch with Sam Richardson and a half dozen different wrestlers, and Biff Wiff's appearance! I think some wrestlers got cut out, as there are some listed in the credits that I don't remember seeing, like Taya Valkyrie.