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2021 TV DISCUSSION


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12 hours ago, Matt D said:

For anyone who doesn't have Showtime access and haven't seen it already, City on a Hill is on Amazon Prime til the end of the month. We're midway through the season and it's well worth watching.

You've got some pretty wild surprises in store for you, and one particular scene of karmic comeuppance that is incredibly good. 

New season coming soon! 

EDIT: Make that coming this Sunday haha. If you haven't seen the show, it's a crime drama that deals with the racial and political dynamics of Boston in the early '90s. Aldis Hodge is a black DA trying to navigate the waters and Kevin Bacon is great as an incredibly sleazy, coke and booze fueled FBI agent with no scruples at all. It hits that Wire spot for me (though of course nothing could be as good). 

Edited by Curt McGirt
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A couple questions...

For those who have watched or are watching Mythic Quest, does it get better? I only watched the first episode and thought it was pretty unfunny.

Anyone watch For All Mankind? I dig alternate history, considering I watched every single bit of Man in the High Castle, and I'm wondering if this is worth a watch. A quick glance at word of mouth and reviews make it look pretty underwhelming.

And yeah, this isn't in the Comics folder, but how is Doom Patrol? The commercials for it always looked good. From a point of comparison, is it like the Umbrella Academy? Even my 10 year old daughter liked Umbrella Academy.

Other than that, and it should probably go in the documentary folder, but my wife and I have been watching a slew of documentary series. We finished up Farrow vs Allen, which never stopping being FUCKING GROSS. Woody Allen is just a fucking monster.

Another one we watched was Murder Among the Mormons. This was...fine. Some of the events earlier on seemed interesting, but I already feel like I know a lot about how much bullshit Joseph Smith is so there wasn't much that was surprising. What was new were the murders or killings of people who had materials that exposed Mormonism as being bullshit.

And I started watching the new season of Last Chance U, which is basically every season of Last Chance U, except now it's basketball. I don't think I'm going to finish this season.

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14 minutes ago, Craig H said:

A couple questions...

For those who have watched or are watching Mythic Quest, does it get better? I only watched the first episode and thought it was pretty unfunny.

Anyone watch For All Mankind? I dig alternate history, considering I watched every single bit of Man in the High Castle, and I'm wondering if this is worth a watch. A quick glance at word of mouth and reviews make it look pretty underwhelming.

And yeah, this isn't in the Comics folder, but how is Doom Patrol? The commercials for it always looked good. From a point of comparison, is it like the Umbrella Academy? Even my 10 year old daughter liked Umbrella Academy.

Other than that, and it should probably go in the documentary folder, but my wife and I have been watching a slew of documentary series. We finished up Farrow vs Allen, which never stopping being FUCKING GROSS. Woody Allen is just a fucking monster.

Another one we watched was Murder Among the Mormons. This was...fine. Some of the events earlier on seemed interesting, but I already feel like I know a lot about how much bullshit Joseph Smith is so there wasn't much that was surprising. What was new were the murders or killings of people who had materials that exposed Mormonism as being bullshit.

And I started watching the new season of Last Chance U, which is basically every season of Last Chance U, except now it's basketball. I don't think I'm going to finish this season.

I'd say give Mythic Quest a few more episodes, it's been awhile since I watched so I can't really remember when it hooked me in.

I slogged through season 1 and two episodes of season 2 of For All Mankind, I like alt history too but some of it in this show would never happen in any universe (it's like they forgot how Nixon won in 1968 along with acting like Phyllis Schlafy never existed), the rest of it gets way way to melodramatic at times.

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That was pretty much going to be my response to Mythic Quest as well. Give it another episode or two and if you're still not enjoying then drop it. I'm only on episode 7, but there wasn't a noticeable moment or episode where things clicked for me. It might just not be for you. 

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Ezra Miller as Trash Can Man in The Stand might be the single most insulting performance I've ever seen. The whole series is terrible, but holy shit he makes Sean Penn in I am Sam look nuanced as fuck.

The series is pretty much torpedoed by terrible casting all around, especially Skarsgard as Flagg. There's no menace or seduction in his performance, he plays him like a youth camp counsellor. The really did him dirty with the fake beard too.

About the only performances I've enjoyed have been Brad William Henke as Tom Cullen and Heather Graham who shows up as a breath of fresh air in a small role.

Terrible casting would be salvageable if the series didn't torpedo itself with a really forced non-linear timeline gimmick. I haven't read the book in 20+ years so I don't remember if it does the same thing, but in the series its so awkwardly done that it feels like something they decided to do in post-production. It keeps undercutting what should be pretty emotional beats (example in spoilers):

Spoiler

The council deciding to send Tom Cullen as one of the spies, should be a big important moment. We see them agonizing over the decision but by this point (episode 4) we've only had one scene in a previous episode introducing Tom and other than one quick line during the town hall scene he had not really even appeared in that episode. The series than immediately flashes back to show a scene of Tom and Nick together on the road before returning to his goodbye as he leaves for Vegas. When they decide to send him, we really have no emotional connection to the character, so they try to cram it all in within 5 minutes.  The whole thing would have actually worked if they'd just done things organically and put the flashback stuff where it belongs in eps 2 or 3.

Stuff like that happens all the time. We'll see one character travelling with person A in flashbacks, but then be with person B in the flash forwards. Then when they cut back to show person A's emotional death scene, it loses all its power because we kind of figured that something must have happened to them.

The tone is just all over the place, everything in Boulder is being played as a super serious, grim prestige drama, but then in episode 5 we finally get to see what's going on in Vegas and they (rightly) go super over the top with it and everyone is acting like a comic book villain. The tonal whiplash when it cuts back to Boulder is wild. Episode 5 has been my favourite so far just because of the Vegas stuff perking everything up (until fucking Ezra Miller shows up....)

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17 hours ago, Craig H said:

And yeah, this isn't in the Comics folder, but how is Doom Patrol? The commercials for it always looked good. From a point of comparison, is it like the Umbrella Academy? Even my 10 year old daughter liked Umbrella Academy.

 

Doom Patrol is good though I can't really say its something you can show your 10 year old.

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Just had the thought of Flagg looking different for each individual person, like the most seductive form or whatever. Of course that would be nigh impossible to film. 

Gotta say, I rewatched the original a couple years ago and that rape scene makeup for him in the corn field freaked me the fuck out.

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Finished up The Real World London, after a few episodes I realized why it's the season I liked the most back in the day, it was the lack of anyone saying the letters O and J! The season was shot from mid-January 1995 to mid-June 1995, then aired from late June to mid November, the OJ trial was from January 24 to October 3. By June 1995 the coverage of the murder and trial was so entrenched into everything that it seemed like there was no way to escape it, so Real World London with people my age living in modern times with no mention of OJ helped keep me somewhat sane!

This has always been called "the boring season" by most people and I wonder if Bumin-Murray purposely went the way they did after all of the heaviness with Pedro along with all of the bs Puck pulled in the San Francisco season. The three major happenings in London were Neil getting part of his tongue bit off and Sharon(a singer) having surgery on her vocal chords then a horrible case of tonsillitis that put her in the hospital, those were all pretty much random happenings where in San Francisco they knew Pedro was sick and that Puck was "going to shake things up". There's a lot of teasing of Sharon that everyone takes part in or laughs off "because she easily gets wound up" is what numerous cast members said and it ages really badly since it's them clearly picking on the easiest target. There's a really interesting moment where Jacinda, Kat and Neil call out Mike for using the b-word in a derogatory way towards women, Mike and extremely rich race car driver/frat boy basically admits he was wrong and tells them he won't say it anymore, it was sort of mind blowing since so foreign to what reality tv has become. The soundtrack is great and they didn't get all ham fisted and obvious like the LA season.

 

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I'm 26 minutes into this Mighty Ducks series and...it's kinda rough? Why does Emilio Estevez have a Minnesotan/Canadian accent now? Also, his accent bleeds into him sounding like his old man, which makes it even weirder sounding. 

I think the hardest pill to swallow is that these kids by and large really suck and the parents all suck too. The team is comprised of 1 kid who is too small and sucks at hockey, his friend who is even worse, and everyone else on the team has never skated or played before. And the teams that they'll all play against are pretty good. At least in the Mighty Ducks the kids actually played hockey. They just didn't have any leadership or organization.

It's likely that I'm overthinking this series, but the logic gaps and plot holes are too huge to ignore. Maybe kids will like it though?

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12 hours ago, Craig H said:

I'm 26 minutes into this Mighty Ducks series and...it's kinda rough? Why does Emilio Estevez have a Minnesotan/Canadian accent now? Also, his accent bleeds into him sounding like his old man, which makes it even weirder sounding. 

I think the hardest pill to swallow is that these kids by and large really suck and the parents all suck too. The team is comprised of 1 kid who is too small and sucks at hockey, his friend who is even worse, and everyone else on the team has never skated or played before. And the teams that they'll all play against are pretty good. At least in the Mighty Ducks the kids actually played hockey. They just didn't have any leadership or organization.

It's likely that I'm overthinking this series, but the logic gaps and plot holes are too huge to ignore. Maybe kids will like it though?

Remember this is a series and not a movie, so they have more time for everything to come together. One would think that season 1 is all about them becoming hockey players, they’ll get better every game but lose and then upset the undefeated Ducks in the season finale, season 2 maybe they win the league championship, season 3 they win state and if there’s a season 4 they’ll tangle with Iceland in some sort of International event. 

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8 hours ago, Mister TV said:

Remember this is a series and not a movie, so they have more time for everything to come together. One would think that season 1 is all about them becoming hockey players, they’ll get better every game but lose and then upset the undefeated Ducks in the season finale, season 2 maybe they win the league championship, season 3 they win state and if there’s a season 4 they’ll tangle with Iceland in some sort of International event. 

I honestly kinda dug it. I like that Gordo still has a thing for single hockey moms. I can see this going the Ted Lasso route, where the team honestly just stinks the entire first season, and it's about them figuring things out. It didn't feel like a blatant nostalgia grab, which is good, and I'm looking forward to finding out what soured Bombay on everything post-D3.

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On 3/25/2021 at 8:08 AM, Mister TV said:

Finished up The Real World London, after a few episodes I realized why it's the season I liked the most back in the day, it was the lack of anyone saying the letters O and J! The season was shot from mid-January 1995 to mid-June 1995, then aired from late June to mid November, the OJ trial was from January 24 to October 3. By June 1995 the coverage of the murder and trial was so entrenched into everything that it seemed like there was no way to escape it, so Real World London with people my age living in modern times with no mention of OJ helped keep me somewhat sane!

This has always been called "the boring season" by most people and I wonder if Bumin-Murray purposely went the way they did after all of the heaviness with Pedro along with all of the bs Puck pulled in the San Francisco season. The three major happenings in London were Neil getting part of his tongue bit off and Sharon(a singer) having surgery on her vocal chords then a horrible case of tonsillitis that put her in the hospital, those were all pretty much random happenings where in San Francisco they knew Pedro was sick and that Puck was "going to shake things up". There's a lot of teasing of Sharon that everyone takes part in or laughs off "because she easily gets wound up" is what numerous cast members said and it ages really badly since it's them clearly picking on the easiest target. There's a really interesting moment where Jacinda, Kat and Neil call out Mike for using the b-word in a derogatory way towards women, Mike and extremely rich race car driver/frat boy basically admits he was wrong and tells them he won't say it anymore, it was sort of mind blowing since so foreign to what reality tv has become. The soundtrack is great and they didn't get all ham fisted and obvious like the LA season.

 

It's interesting that Jacinda, who I thought was really bland on "The Real World" (other being pretty) has ended up having a long, productive career in Hollywood with dozens of credits to her name.  Would never, ever have predicted that.

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On 3/28/2021 at 5:23 AM, Tabe said:

It's interesting that Jacinda, who I thought was really bland on "The Real World" (other being pretty) has ended up having a long, productive career in Hollywood with dozens of credits to her name.  Would never, ever have predicted that.

The running theme for Jacinda throughout the season was that she was disillusioned with modeling, so moving over to acting kind of makes sense. I didn't think she was that bland since Kat was also blanding it up that season. 

Somewhat bummed that the early seasons on Paramount+ end with the London season, the only thing remember from Miami is Flora breaking a window spying on a threesome and two of the guys calling a vet about the dog's red rocket not going away, and Boston had the Montana gives kids booze episode that I remember being really funny even though it shouldn't have been.

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Not sure where to put this since there's no "Upcoming TV/Streaming Series" thread.

Yesterday Sylvester Stallone posted on his Instagram about putting together a treatment for a Rocky prequel series, most likely streaming, he said it was a look into his creative process and that he's hoping it happens. Stallone posted it would be set in the 1960's where we'd see 15 year old Adrian moving into Rocky's rough neighborhood, a younger Mickey who'd be finishing up his boxing career, Rocky's dysfunctional parents, Rocky's stepbrother, and who is Mr. Gazzo. I really hope this happens and one of the mainstream streaming services(Netflix or Prime), HBO or Showtime picks it up, I'd hate to see it cast off into some purgatory like Epix, YouTube Red or AppleTV+.

Edited by Mister TV
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I'm glad I stuck with Mythic Quest. I think it would be better off being Silicon Valley, but with video games, but it's still funny enough from time to time. I mostly think it isn't funny, but I do think the characters are all interesting and strong. I'm only up to episode 8, but episode 5 was fucking awesome. That's the one with Jake Johnson and Cristin Milioti starting a video game company. I pretty much knew where their story was going, but even with how predictable it was, I was still drawn in and felt really sad for how their lives turned out.

It seems like this is the new fad with tv series where in the middle of the season you have an episode that's just a complete departure from everything else. I'm trying to think of the first time I saw something like that and Master of None comes to mind. You had two episodes in particular from their first two seasons and it may have been one from each season. There was the Thanksgiving episode that I think Lena Waithe won an award for. The other episode follows random people in the city before we wind back up with Dev and the others at the end of the episode. I really would like to pin point who was the first to start this trend.

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