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On 12/18/2021 at 9:33 PM, Contentious C said:

Next to last episode of this season of Wheel of Time came out yesterday, and it's easily the best one they've done.  The good thing about this series is that its own Jon Snow reveal moment is front-loaded relative to the books, so they took a big swing and rolled out a pretty nice version of a book event that's only ever truly alluded to, rather than directly described, pretty much the series' equivalent of Ned fighting Arthur Dayne.  It's clear the producers are hoping people see the similarity and give the show a chance and that that scene is enough to hook some casuals.  It's grown on me more than I expected, and they did cut down a LOT of unnecessary bullshit, so hopefully Amazon keeps throwing more money at it.

You know, that or treating their employees like humans.  One or the other.

Apparently Wheel of Time is doing huge numbers, but I've heard so little conversation about it online that I would have guessed the opposite.  So far, I actually like the show, but I do have some pretty strong criticisms, especially for the first couple episodes.  The first scene in the series should have been the breaking of the world.  The show lacks context, and I feel like that could have helped a lot.  The show hasn't really presented any real reasoning for the Aes Sedai's purpose and why it is important.  They haven't really shown why male channelers are so dangerous.  They haven't explained who The Dragon was and the reason him being reborn is a world changing event.  The first episode started with a Red Sister stilling a man who could channel, and my sister texted me after she watched and asked why are these women going around murdering people.  The way the show introduced the Aes Sedai, my sister assumed they were basically a roving squad of killers.  

I also don't know how I feel about some of the changes they made with the Two Rivers crew.  Perrin needed a wife like I need a pet hippopotamus.  Sure, it would add a bit of color to my story, but it also means I would have to deal with a pet hippopotamus.  Of all the shit these people are going to have to deal with, why does he need to deal with this relationship?  I actually do kind of like the context of Mat's family being kind of scummy.  Mat is a bit of a scoundrel, and having a bit of background on how he grew up makes his character more believable.  Rand is Rand, and I don't know if that is a good thing or not.  He's generally my least favorite of the Two Rivers crew, and the show hasn't done anything to change that fact as of yet.  He's just as much as a bitch as he is in the books.  Nynaeve and Egwene are probably the best combination of true to the books and fleshed out for the show.  Nynaeve is unbearable early in the series of books, but she's probably the one I like the most in the show.  She is still skeptical of everything, but it feels much more earned.  Egwene's character is mostly the same, except they added an independent streak that makes her feel like a real person.  

Morraine and Lan are probably the best part of the show so far.  Someone brought up a breakdown Lan had in an episode earlier in the thread and I tried to explain that I felt like it was true to his character despite his stoicism.  More than any other character in the series, Lan feels the most human to me.  He is stoic, but Morraine is the one who behaves like she's emotionless.  Lan is the stoic bad ass on the surface, but he also is the one who tries to relate to the Two Rivers bunch on a personal level.  The face he shows the public is completely different than the face he shows the people close to him.  Him breaking down when he did and where he did is 100% believable to me.  Morraine is the one who would not show anyone (other than Lan and Siuan Sanche) that part of her.  Both understand the stakes they are up against, but Lan understands the cost to humanity and empathizes with the people who pay that cost.  Morraine understands the stakes and the cost is just the cost, there may be sympathy but there is no empathy.  The way they interact with each other shows that they understand how each other and depend on the other to fill in the gaps where they may be deficient.  

This show is phenomenally casted.  It's too bad the actor who plays Mat left the show, because he was probably the best casted person in the entire series.  That character needs to have a roguish charm, but also do all the shit after Shadar Logoth, and he did both really well.  The only person who I think may be a better casting is Padan Fain, I can't wait to see what that actor does with that part.  He was on screen for less than a minute total, and he chewed up all the scenery.  I like that even though everyone in the show i pretty attractive, there is a pretty huge range of attractiveness on this show.  The actress who plays Egwene is an objectively attractive woman, but she doesn't have the soft delicate features that we usually see in these roles.  Having such a diverse cast, who aren't all cookie cutter attractive, really makes this world feel real, and full of actual people.  

Another great thing about this show is that every setting in the show is not just distinct, but it is fucking beautiful.  Honestly, it's almost a negative feature of the show.  How did they get separated into 3 different groups after Shadar Logoth, and end up in 3 different ecosystems?  The cities look great, the wilderness looks great, and no two places look the same.  

The less I say about how Loial looks, the better we'll all be.

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I'm on the final season of Shameless, and apparently COVID is happening in their world. Which I'm not crazy about, to be honest. But everything up until now has been pretty good. I always heard it kind of fell off in the later seasons, which it did because Fiona got really annoying, but S10 for example was great. But I do love Lip and Debbie, so maybe that's why?

Whoever said Frank becomes a more likable character was right, but he's still a shitty person. But it was quite a feat for the writing team to make me hate Fiona more than Frank towards the end of her run, though. Kind of weird how she just took $50K and left the city seemingly that same day, or a few days later. That all felt very rushed, but I was glad to see her go.

#TeamLip

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17 hours ago, Mark said:

Thanks for the heads up.  Easy pass for me.

I’m almost done with this final season and, you know what? It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Frank’s arc is fucking tragic, but I might sympathize with it more because I’m going through that with a member of my family right now.

Debbie is basically Fiona now and it’s annoying.

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I never got annoyed with Fiona but Debbie was nails on a chalkboard towards the end there. Pretty sure I was the one who said "Frank gets better" but when you think back on it, it's more like there's nothing worse Frank could have done after 

Spoiler

ruining Fiona's wedding and getting dumped in the river (Which BTW is low-key maybe the best season of the series)

so they had to give him funnier/funner things to do, like running around with Luis Guzman. Didn't have a problem with the final season, but I haven't had any of my friends or family die of Covid... yet. 

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I don't know if anyone has been watching It's Always Sunny this season, but it's been their funniest season in a long while. The most recent episode also had a moment of really good dramatic acting from Charlie until he turned it into a joke.

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On 12/22/2021 at 10:10 PM, Curt McGirt said:

I never got annoyed with Fiona but Debbie was nails on a chalkboard towards the end there. Pretty sure I was the one who said "Frank gets better" but when you think back on it, it's more like there's nothing worse Frank could have done after 

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ruining Fiona's wedding and getting dumped in the river (Which BTW is low-key maybe the best season of the series)

so they had to give him funnier/funner things to do, like running around with Luis Guzman. Didn't have a problem with the final season, but I haven't had any of my friends or family die of Covid... yet. 

I can't remember if it was before or after, but Frank calling DCS on his own family was pretty shitty (and that whole story was dealt with pretty quickly too). The wedding thing, yeah, but he kind of saved Fiona from all of that if you think about it. Fiona got annoying towards the end of her stay on the show when she was turning into Frank. It was weird to me that one season she was fighting like hell to be the legal guardian of everyone, then towards the end she just didn't give a shit and put everything on Lip because she wanted a life. YOU SIGNED UP FOR THAT. Quite literally.

Debbie was pretty terrible towards the end. Doesn't want to be with someone who "abandoned" her kid when she was 15, but someone who pulls a gun on her in broad daylight while she's with Franny? Oh, wedding bells!

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15 hours ago, odessasteps said:

When does Sunny film an episode at a Wrexham match?

Out of 4 episodes in Ireland, zero, but every episode had an ad for the documentary in Ireland that Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny made about the town Wrexham AFC is in. 

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Coincidentally there's a Shameless marathon on right now. Bob Sagat was just on playing a Catholic priest soliloquizing about Hot Carls and Dirty Sanchezes. With a dildo on the table in front of him. ?

I totally forgot about the DCFS thing. THAT is the lowest thing Frank ever did. My bad. 

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2 hours ago, Craig H said:

Out of 4 episodes in Ireland, zero, but every episode had an ad for the documentary in Ireland that Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny made about the town Wrexham AFC is in. 

Wrexham is in Wales, not Ireland.

wrexham_map_position_in_uk_000001.png

According to that map, Northern Ireland is no longer in the United Kingdom. What a terrible shame for them.

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As good as Ep 7 of WoT was, the finale completely gakked up a hairball on the carpet, then rolled around in it.  Just...nothing about it worked.  They changed a ton of things and they were all for the bad.  I'm not the type to get caught up in 1:1 replication of what was in the books, but they killed off a fuckload of characters who have important roles and skipped out on doing some things that would have been legitimately cool to see.  I don't think I care if they do more of this or not.

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On 12/24/2021 at 8:36 PM, Contentious C said:

As good as Ep 7 of WoT was, the finale completely gakked up a hairball on the carpet, then rolled around in it.  Just...nothing about it worked.  They changed a ton of things and they were all for the bad.  I'm not the type to get caught up in 1:1 replication of what was in the books, but they killed off a fuckload of characters who have important roles and skipped out on doing some things that would have been legitimately cool to see.  I don't think I care if they do more of this or not.

The worst part of the finale is that it actually improved on some parts of the web being of the book. The final confrontation with The Dragon and The Dark One was well done and better than the one from the books.* I see why they left the rest of the cast at the fort,  because there wasn't really anything for them to do at "The Eye of the World." I just wished they gave them something meaningful to do once they decided not to take the entire crew. The dumbest part is that the show runner came out and said multiple people who seem like they're dead at the end of the episode aren't dead (he named names)*. The circle of channelers was a pretty good idea, but terribly executed. The most powerful channeler in thousands of years gets overpowered by someone who wasn't strong enough to get raised to Aes Sedai. And why did that need to go down like it did? I don't see any logical reason why they needed to almost kill the two female characters were supposed to care about the most. So,  why did they do that to Moraine? Why did the biggest bad ass who ever badassed spend the entire episode running through the woods towards a fight that he can't possibly help win,  when there is a fight he can help win right where he's at? I get that the actor playing Mat leaving put them in a bad spot,  but what did they plan on Perrin doing before Mat left? It's pretty clear that Mat was the person who was supposed to be opposed to Padan Fain(he's the absolute best character in the show and he's been in screen for maybe 5 minutes all season). They gave that role to Perrin, but it still felt like he spent the entire episode moping around and not doing anything. The ending cliffhanger was cool until you think about it for more than 30 seconds. I get that the book and show will be different,  but that particular group of people wouldn't show up and drop a tidal wave on another country. They sneak in,  take over a city quietly and establish a foothold before anyone who can stop them even notices...dropping a tidal wave is the opposite of quiet and pretty much everyone for hundreds of miles will know about it. 

The thing that actually worries me about the show is that it seems rushed. Eight episodes is at least two too few. The last episode had the worst CGI of the season,  and the final battle didn't have nearly enough extras to make it feel epic. It literal looked like a force of about 37 people trying to fight back a horde of thousands of poorly animated CGI creatures. COVID is to blame for the lack of extras,  but the CGI problems seems like they just didn't have the time to make it look good. The other big problem is that they have too many characters to rush through the story. I don't care about Perrin at all. He's just there. Egwene isn't much better. She is a better character than she is in the books at this point,  but if you took her and Perrin out of the show you wouldn't miss anything outside of something for Rand to act a bitch about. Rand is a bitch,  and that's how he's written in the books too,  but i don't understand why any of these people actually like him. He doesn't have a single moment in the show that makes me believe that any of the other characters would tolerate his general attitude*.

I'm going to keep watching,  but man that last episode landed like a turd that was shat off a roof, at least for me. 

 

*

Spoiler

I don't want to ruin anything for anyone,  so I'm going to put my more specific thoughts here. 

Apparently at least Loial and Uno are alive... which just means that Padan Fain and two myrddraal just decided not to kill them,  because nothing could have possibly stopped them. Did you see how quickly they decapitated those women when they first arrived? Those things decided to stab some dudes,  but not finish the job.  Myrddraal don't fuck around. These dudes are just laying there ready to die,  and the enforcers of the Dark One's army decided not to spill their brains all over the concrete. The Dark One should have hired Arn Anderson. 

The only time Rand acts like someone who any of these people would like is during the final showdown... and none of his friends were there to see it, so it shouldn't count.  Rand deciding he doesn't want his dream life,  because that means Egwene would have to give up her dream life was great and the best character moment of the episode and possibly the season. He's one of my least favorite protagonists in all of literature, but he could be a better character on the show if he makes these type of decisions. He has to be a person who we believe is making selfless choices. I'd like it if he stopped being a bitch,  but if he's going to be a bitch he needs to be the type of bitch who will stop being a bitch when the stakes are highest. 

But because he's a bitch he just runs away afterwards. Where is he going? He has no idea where he's going.  He had literally never left his itty bitty little fucked up town until about a month ago and now he's just going to walk from the most desolate middle of nowhere place on earth to somewhere all by himself. That is terrible writing. Are you trying to tell me this person who is being hunted by all the evil in the world, cultivated a plan of action while locked in magical mental combat with a thousands of year old magical entity? Seriously,  he didn't even have a map,  and if he did the place he's at wouldn't even be on it. 

Why cut Moraine off from the power? She is kind of the only person in the main cast who has any idea how to use the one power and that's kind of important. There are too many moving parts for this group of people to not have any expert guidance. 

 

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26 minutes ago, supremebve said:

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I don't want to ruin anything for anyone,  so I'm going to put my more specific thoughts here. 

Apparently at least Loial and Uno are alive...

 

Oh fuck that right in its eye.  I guess

Spoiler

they can say something fucking stupid like Ogiers don't have their hearts near the middle of their chests, but when you are an Evil Motherfucker, and you STAB A DUDE CENTER MASS AND HE DOES NOT RECEIVE TREATMENT, HE DIES.  Seriously, fuck that and fuck them for not thinking that through any further than a 3-year-old does with a box of crayons.

I disagree about the ending at the Eye being better, at least in a broad sense.  It would have been neat as Hell to see the Green Man and introduce the Forsaken in a real way, since it would have cultivated the appropriate amount of "This is going to get WEIRD" for the show moving forward.  Maybe they will do it later, but who knows what that would be used for (and I won't be watching anyway).  I can see arguing that Rand's alternate reality dream sequence is better than his multi-part fight - it certainly was, though it was a flash of a scene from a later book that they lifted - but something so stripped down otherwise is...meh.

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I don't get the Letterkenny fanbase. They wait 2 years for a new season, get the new season and then complain it wasn't good as the previous season 2 years ago when all they did was complain about how season 9 wasn't as good as Season 8. Personally, I enjoyed Season 10 a bunch, it stuck to the formula ofnot dragging things out. Personally I Iiked Season 9 because it focused on characters and relationships without losing the feel of the show. This is the first new Letterkenny since I saw the live show in Detroit right when Covid broke and cancelled the rest of the tour. I'm so happy we're getting more

James

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2 hours ago, J.H. said:

I don't get the Letterkenny fanbase. They wait 2 years for a new season, get the new season and then complain it wasn't good as the previous season 2 years ago when all they did was complain about how season 9 wasn't as good as Season 8. Personally, I enjoyed Season 10 a bunch, it stuck to the formula ofnot dragging things out. Personally I Iiked Season 9 because it focused on characters and relationships without losing the feel of the show. This is the first new Letterkenny since I saw the live show in Detroit right when Covid broke and cancelled the rest of the tour. I'm so happy we're getting more

James

I loved the new season. Laughed my ass off. I'm looking forward to the Shorsey spin off.

Edited by Johnny Sorrow
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14 hours ago, J.H. said:

I don't get the Letterkenny fanbase. They wait 2 years for a new season, get the new season and then complain it wasn't good as the previous season 2 years ago when all they did was complain about how season 9 wasn't as good as Season 8. Personally, I enjoyed Season 10 a bunch, it stuck to the formula ofnot dragging things out. Personally I Iiked Season 9 because it focused on characters and relationships without losing the feel of the show. This is the first new Letterkenny since I saw the live show in Detroit right when Covid broke and cancelled the rest of the tour. I'm so happy we're getting more

James

 

12 hours ago, Johnny Sorrow said:

I loved the new season. Laughed my ass off. I'm looking forward to the Shorsey spin off.

I don't pay much attention to what the fanbase has to say about it, but my friends that watch it and myself blazed through it and thought it was pretty funny. The thing that sucks the most is that I watched that whole season in one sitting, so after two years of wait, the whole thing came and went in the blink of an eye. I watched it while watching my daughter, feeding her, playing with her, changing her, etc. so there's probably a lot I missed. But yeah, I don't know, this season seemed as good as any other season.

In fact, the only season I would say wasn't very good was the one two or three seasons ago where they deviated completely from the formula. The episodes didn't have the usual opening and the season revolved around their talk show. Even still, there were still plenty of funny parts to it.

Who knows...Maybe people felt like there wasn't enough with Joint Boy or McMurray or there being no hockey? Too much with Bonnie or Reilly or Jonesy? Everyone has their favorite parts of Letterkenny and their least favorite parts. My least favorite parts is probably anything with the Roald and Stewart and my favorite is probably everything else. I was a little disappointed that Reilly and Jonesy's gay friends weren't in this season at all, but instead we got more with Reilly and Jonesy and Shorsey. That whole bit with Shorsey destroying Reilly and Jonesy was pretty great.

And I had no idea they were doing a live tour. I now have a new post-COVID goal - go see them live if and when they go on tour again.

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I started watching Kevin Can F*** Himself yesterday. It's a weird mash-up of your typical sitcom and a drama. Interesting show and the first time it switches from sitcom to drama it blows your mind a bit. It's on AMC+.

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