The TV shows you've seen recently thread.

[Momo]

This week’s The Good Place...

(Image removed from quote.)

on tv listings i see ep 7 and 8 was on yesterday but I only watched 7, did 8 air?

[TVC15]

This week’s The Good Place...

(Image removed from quote.)

on tv listings i see ep 7 and 8 was on yesterday but I only watched 7, did 8 air?

The new one was the Seventh aired, but the first ep counted as two episodes, so some places call this one 8. Also, last ep until January


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Good_Place_episodes

[Momo]

Ah, I see yeah last night's ep was

[Momo]

you guys going to catch this?

[BlueTsunami]

I cant get over how well Kristen Bell plays a horn dog, being sorta into all vague come ons.

[BobFromPikeCreek]

The new one was the Seventh aired, but the first ep counted as two episodes, so some places call this one 8. Also, last ep until January

Guess it's time for me to catch up!

[Valkyrie]

you guys going to catch this?

This looks well made, but it doesn't really look that interesting. I'd be willing to try if it was a mystery thriller. Maybe my mom will like it.

[chronovore]

I cant get over how well Kristen Bell plays a horn dog, being sorta into all vague come ons.

I'm totes into Kristen Bell playing a horn dog. Forgetting Sarah Marshall was largely forgettable, but it was fun watching her roll around in bed a few times. The Dracula musical was good, too.

[toku]

[BlueTsunami]

Lets call him what he was... a fart in the shape of a man.


Totally using this in someones eulogy

[CurseoftheGods]

I started Will and Grace. I am planning to go through all the seasons. It's great so far.

[Phoenix Dark]

[etiolate]

Finished the first season of The Good Place.

Explains a lot.

[Stoney Mason]

ending of that season was one of the best comedic moments in a good long time and I always felt like relatively few people saw it.

That show has taken the crown from 30 rock and parks and rec as the best social satire comedy on tv imo.

There are a ton of just small one off jokes that are smarter than anything in 99% of most comedies.

[team filler]

I really hope season 3 of mr robot finishes strong, it's been mostly a letdown so far.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

Caught up on Vice Principals.  This is a great show, took some very interesting twists in a way that makes the second season a lot better than the first.

Caught up on Curb Your Enthusiasm.  I'm not really feeling this season.  I'll take Curb over no Curb so I'll watch it until the end.  Reminds me a lot of Season 5 in terms of how it felt like it was going through the motions.

[CatsCatsCats]

Vice Principals is good, very interested to see how Gamby handles the current situation

[desert punk]

Amazon wants to produce a show based on LotR.

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-1202606519/

Don't know if I'd want that

[warcock]

Gommorah s1 and s2 some of the best TV i've ever seen. Weinstein died for our sins.

[Tasty]

AHS keeps getting stupider and stupider but at least the ride is staying entertaining.

Or as an AV Club commenter put it:

Evan Peters as Jim Jones high-fiving Evan Peters as Jesus is probably the hardest I’ve laughed at anything on TV this year.

[Phoenix Dark]

Amazon wants to produce a show based on LotR.

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-1202606519/

Don't know if I'd want that

Why. If Bezos really wants his own GoT for Amazon, why not do something that actually makes sense. Like the Black Company, or the First Law Trilogy.

[etiolate]

I thought AV club died

[toku]

Amazon wants to produce a show based on LotR.

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-1202606519/

Don't know if I'd want that

Why. If Bezos really wants his own GoT for Amazon, why not do something that actually makes sense. Like the Black Company, or the First Law Trilogy.

First Law trilogy basically begging for a grimdark edgelord tv adaptation i really don't know why no one has done it yet

[Tasty]

I thought AV club died

Nope.

[seagrams hotsauce]

I thought AV club died

They switched to Kinja, so it might as well be

[Mr. Gundam]

AVClub's rebranding is absolutely terrible.

[etiolate]

Oh dear. They got absorbed into a bunch of ex-gawker trash.

[team filler]

stranger things season 2 was dumb, but still good. I feel like they could have made a pretty good 1.5-2 hour movie and been much better off.

[chronovore]

Amazon wants to produce a show based on LotR.

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-1202606519/

Don't know if I'd want that

Yeah, no. There's no way to make it both watchable and worthy of the source material. The people who care about it won't like it, and the people who like it won't care about the LOTR connection.

PD's right - Black Company or Joe Abercrombie would be great. Shit, howdy, the first book of Gentlemen Bastards could take three seasons of cable if they wanted to, and would be an order of magnitude more engaging than LOTR.

[CatsCatsCats]

Been watching Ghosted with Adam Scott and Craig Robinson — it’s stupid and funny

[CatsCatsCats]

Also watched the first season and a couple of the second of The Good Place this week, shit is hilarious moment to moment with just enough intrigue to keep me interested long term

[BobFromPikeCreek]

Caught up on The Good Place. So good.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's Chinese for "Japan" 

[close]

[Snoopycat_]

Finished watching The Deuce. It was alright. Nothing special but you can't expect much of anything that has James Franco in it

[TVC15]

I don’t want Vice Principals to end

[chronovore]

Person of Interest, final season. In the first season, Harold Finch tells John Reese that they'll probably both end up dead.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

It was shocking enough when Detective Carter was killed. I was slightly less shocked but no less sad when Root is killed. She gave such a metaphysical preamble about how The Machine holds each of them in her simulation, so it doesn't matter what living/dead state they occupy. I was happy that they resolved "The Voice" (The anti-Harold bad guy from a previous season's episode) but that was a dumb-dumb-dumb episode with a completely telegraphed reveal that the show has already used to excess.

[close]

Definitely having to shut off my brain a bit more this season, but that's OK.

[desert punk]

Started watching Berlin Station after it was mentioned here in this thread. I'm four episodes in and so far it's pretty good. I like that it's not some sensationalist bull but a rather well grounded affair that still manages to be suspenseful.

It also has some great characters. Not so much the main protagonist who's rather bland (for now) but the other agents in the CIA station are a fun and interesting bunch. Especially Rhys Ifans is fucking killing it with his role

They make very good use of Berlin as a location and I like how they cast actual German actors for the supporting acts.

[Phoenix Dark]

Very disappointed with the first episode of Mindhunter. From the opening scene to nearly everything thereafter it just felt very...sanitized and almost trivial. The dialogue isn't good, and I really really don't like the lead actor. His delivery is so bland, vanilla. I get he's playing a clean cut FBI agent but jesus. His scenes with the chick were just ugly, especially the one where they're having a professional conversation about psychology in the middle of a rock concert.

Things improve when the other detective arrives, and I enjoyed the scenes between the two and the LAPD guy. But outside of that it was just a weak first episode. I'll keep watching but jeez...one of the worst first episodes I've seen in awhile.

[toku]

Started watching Berlin Station after it was mentioned here in this thread. I'm four episodes in and so far it's pretty good. I like that it's not some sensationalist bull but a rather well grounded affair that still manages to be suspenseful.

It also has some great characters. Not so much the main protagonist who's rather bland (for now) but the other agents in the CIA station are a fun and interesting bunch. Especially Rhys Ifans is fucking killing it with his role

They make very good use of Berlin as a location and I like how they cast actual German actors for the supporting acts.

The Rhys Ifans character "reveal" is a great example of how to show everything you need to know about a character without telling.

Very disappointed with the first episode of Mindhunter. From the opening scene to nearly everything thereafter it just felt very...sanitized and almost trivial. The dialogue isn't good, and I really really don't like the lead actor. His delivery is so bland, vanilla. I get he's playing a clean cut FBI agent but jesus. His scenes with the chick were just ugly, especially the one where they're having a professional conversation about psychology in the middle of a rock concert.

Things improve when the other detective arrives, and I enjoyed the scenes between the two and the LAPD guy. But outside of that it was just a weak first episode. I'll keep watching but jeez...one of the worst first episodes I've seen in awhile.

bet you liked the pussy eating scenes though

[Skullfuckers Anonymous]

Finished Mindhunter. There's some good scenes, but overall it's pretty damn mediocre. Second half of the show had way too much time dedicated to sideplots that didn't matter (Feet tickling principle, Anna Torv trying to befriend a cat). The show shouldn't have strayed too far from having the leads interview characters. Apparently they have a five season plan for this show, so I feel it's just going to get slower in future seasons.

Though I will say, if you enjoyed the Ed Kemper interviews but dropped the show afterwards, you should watch the last 15 minutes of the finale since it's a pretty nice conclusion to that plot.

[Mr. Gundam]

Anyone start watching season two of The Girlfriend Experience last night?

[VomKriege]

Finished season 3 of Better Call Saul. It was good and the final episode proved me wrong on a couple of worries I had. Still, I fear it will be on autopilot until it finally merge with Breaking Bad. The show is already struggling to keep Mike relevant (wasn't even in the last episode and didn't really do anything of note whole season) and the core of Jimmy's story has reached a somewhat definitive conclusion. In hindsight the point was belaboured quite a bit over 3 years, even.

[seagrams hotsauce]

BCS is a show that seems a lot less concerned with the main narrative than the people involved in that narrative. The show is pretty dull on it's face in terms of getting from point a to point b, but it's filled to the brim with great character moments. Seeing Jimmy gradually slip into becoming Saul and how his relationships change is the real payoff, though at times the pacing does feel glacial.

[seagrams hotsauce]

The third season is great but a noticeable step down from the first two imo. It's hard for anything to top "it's just a flyin' saucer, Ed" though.

[Eel O'Brian]

I'm really enjoying Mindhunter. When I was younger I was really into reading true crime books and such, I must have read close to 100 over the years, including a few that this series is based on. I've probably read Whoever Fights Monsters by Robert Ressler (the man FBI Agent Tench is based on) a half dozen times. It's a trip to see some of this realized onscreen (although heavily altered). I can see why younger folks might not like it, it doesn't have the flash of Hannibal (which I liked a lot), or the brisk pacing of other crime shows, and a lot of it has already been done in shows or movies swiping from the original source books and case studies. To me it's just a decent, kind of old fashioned, almost crime procedural history show, what something like a modern era Dragnet would be had that show never existed.

[toku]

The third season is great but a noticeable step down from the first two imo. It's hard for anything to top "it's just a flyin' saucer, Ed" though.

my favorite season 2 moment is still:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

My only real problem with Mindhunter is I just don't care for any of the FBI drama that starts when Ford starts slipping a bit towards the end. I'm pretty much only her for the detective work. I guess I should just check out the books lol.

[seagrams hotsauce]

Yeah I loved that. She was great in the whole thing. The scenes with her and Dodd in the cabin are just perfect.

[Quaker]

Anyone start watching season two of The Girlfriend Experience last night?

Steven Soderbergh was.

https://twitter.com/Bitchuation/status/927357516530487296

[etiolate]

Vice Principals ep 8

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Loved the bit of tracking on the fight scene. The resolution to the situation seemed a bit odd. They're tying this up and that makes Gamby have to do nonsensical things. I still expect the shooter to end up being the crazy girl and she planted that stuff on Lee as revenge. We'll see.

[close]

[team filler]

This Electric Dreams series is bad. I don't ask for much when it comes to scifi, just have something interesting going on and I can forgive mediocre acting and bad special effects. The storytelling here just sucks and I haven't been hooked in by any of the episodes so far. Philip K Dick deserves better than this.

[chronovore]

This Electric Dreams series is bad. I don't ask for much when it comes to scifi, just have something interesting going on and I can forgive mediocre acting and bad special effects. The storytelling here just sucks and I haven't been hooked in by any of the episodes so far. Philip K Dick deserves better than this.

Historically speaking, PKD is almost never transcoded to other media successfully. Blade Runner is an outlier, and it mostly reverses PKD's intended message. Total Recall is probably the best true-to-intent PKD work, and it largely holds up. Through a Scanner Darkly is apparently good, but I have not yet seen it; artistically it looks like something that should have waited a few more years and be handled by expert systems making the graphic decisions rather than hand-altered.

Paycheck, Screamers, are garbage. Adjustment Bureau and Next just wanted to cash in on PKD's reputation.

[team filler]

This Electric Dreams series is bad. I don't ask for much when it comes to scifi, just have something interesting going on and I can forgive mediocre acting and bad special effects. The storytelling here just sucks and I haven't been hooked in by any of the episodes so far. Philip K Dick deserves better than this.

Historically speaking, PKD is almost never transcoded to other media successfully. Blade Runner is an outlier, and it mostly reverses PKD's intended message. Total Recall is probably the best true-to-intent PKD work, and it largely holds up. Through a Scanner Darkly is apparently good, but I have not yet seen it; artistically it looks like something that should have waited a few more years and be handled by expert systems making the graphic decisions rather than hand-altered.

Paycheck, Screamers, are garbage. Adjustment Bureau and Next just wanted to cash in on PKD's reputation.

I actually enjoyed all of the movies you listed at the bottom. Sure they weren't award winners or whatever, but it was entertaining scifi. This Electric Dreams series is lacking entertainment value completely.

[chronovore]

Is it as bad as that Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant anthology show from a couple years back?

[Verdigris Murder]

PSA to fans of Arrested Development, rape jokes, bi-polar female comedians and paedophilic mise en scène.

Lady Dynamite is back in a few days. Also The Orville is waaaaaaaay better than it has any right to be, and is light years more enjoyable than the po faced, self-serious Social Studies Warrior tank-fest of Star Trek Discovery. The egg episode in particular was really well done, and the alt-right script didn't crow at all when the gender was correctly assigned in the end.

What does zephyrfate think of this? Thats the question that burns inside my soul, hot like the gaze of snorenado as he eyes up the fecund young eastern european girl as she peruses the frozen meats section in his favourite store.

[VomKriege]

Lady Dynamite was dope, hope the new season will be up there too.

BCS is a show that seems a lot less concerned with the main narrative than the people involved in that narrative. The show is pretty dull on it's face in terms of getting from point a to point b, but it's filled to the brim with great character moments. Seeing Jimmy gradually slip into becoming Saul and how his relationships change is the real payoff, though at times the pacing does feel glacial.

You're absolutely right but even the great situations are repetitive in what they tell about Jimmy McGill. Honestly the only major plot I am genuinely hooked in is the relationship he has with Kim. It's fresh, intriguing because it's a mismatch and it feels authentic.

[toku]

Is it as bad as that Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant anthology show from a couple years back?

haha oh god this shit was so bad and watching c tier syfy channel type shit is totally in my wheelhouse. This had to have been some kinda tax evasion scheme by one of the producers. I don't know why it exists otherwise.

Shame too because they got Michael Jai White and Scott Adkins for it.

[TVC15]

This Electric Dreams series is bad. I don't ask for much when it comes to scifi, just have something interesting going on and I can forgive mediocre acting and bad special effects. The storytelling here just sucks and I haven't been hooked in by any of the episodes so far. Philip K Dick deserves better than this.

Historically speaking, PKD is almost never transcoded to other media successfully. Blade Runner is an outlier, and it mostly reverses PKD's intended message. Total Recall is probably the best true-to-intent PKD work, and it largely holds up. Through a Scanner Darkly is apparently good, but I have not yet seen it; artistically it looks like something that should have waited a few more years and be handled by expert systems making the graphic decisions rather than hand-altered.

Paycheck, Screamers, are garbage. Adjustment Bureau and Next just wanted to cash in on PKD's reputation.

A Scanner Darkly is great and I wouldn’t have it changed in any way. It looks fantastic. It’s like the perfect melding of the book and a Richard Linklater movie.

[chronovore]

This Electric Dreams series is bad. I don't ask for much when it comes to scifi, just have something interesting going on and I can forgive mediocre acting and bad special effects. The storytelling here just sucks and I haven't been hooked in by any of the episodes so far. Philip K Dick deserves better than this.

Historically speaking, PKD is almost never transcoded to other media successfully. Blade Runner is an outlier, and it mostly reverses PKD's intended message. Total Recall is probably the best true-to-intent PKD work, and it largely holds up. Through a Scanner Darkly is apparently good, but I have not yet seen it; artistically it looks like something that should have waited a few more years and be handled by expert systems making the graphic decisions rather than hand-altered.

Paycheck, Screamers, are garbage. Adjustment Bureau and Next just wanted to cash in on PKD's reputation.

A Scanner Darkly is great and I wouldn’t have it changed in any way. It looks fantastic. It’s like the perfect melding of the book and a Richard Linklater movie.

I'll give it another go. Thanks!

[chronovore]

Person of Interest
Finished the series finale. It ends well. The final season is a 13-episode arc, and though I assumed it would finish with a two-parter or a double-length episode, it pretty much makes its final 13-episode run a contiguous arc. Though previous seasons had occasional Titanic-sized plot holes, this final arc had enough gaps that I really had to turn off my brain and just go with the theme.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

They introduce The Machine's additional support teams, constructed of previously saved persons-of-interest and speculate that none of them know how much further The Machine's purview extends. Then they promptly drop the additional team(s) from the last three episodes. If I'm going to be forgiving and try to come up with my own explanation, The Machine reverts to keeping her core team on preserving her, and keeps the other teams focused on saving other PoIs who are still being generated.

The penultimate "It's a Wonderful Life" episode works well with the nonlinear storytelling that dominates the final episode (and bookends the season), and neatly sidesteps most of the cloying, saccharine tones commonly associated with the trope. The main thing is that Samaritan would have been in effect anyway, so The Machine is actually the fly in the ointment which prevents savagely pragmatic artificial superintelligence from co-opting human fate. Instead of the angel showing the guy on the bridge why he shouldn't jump, it's the angel showing the importance of angelic interference in the face of a fascist god.

More than anything, I enjoyed the transition of Root from The Machine's "analog interface" as a physical form to becoming an audible analog interface, and then once again gaining physical, if hallucinatory, form to give Harold consolation.

The simulation tones struck hard in this season, and there was also John's frequent lament of "this is who we are; we will never rest; we don't get to retire, we work until we're caught and then we're dead." I honestly thought Shaw would also die defending the cause, and then The Machine would set up a simulation where both of them were together, lending a transhuman ending. I'm more pleased with the way things actually went.

Similarly, Reese's final scene and the tie-in with his father's funeral making him what he is, a tragic hero, was very moving. It would have been even better if The Machine hadn't walked Harold across town with a gunshot wound in his guts, just so he and Reese could have a moment — but it is what it is, and it was kind of charming if illogical.

That's actually the whole show: charming, but illogical. It was a good ride.

[close]

[thisismyusername]

DAMN IT.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Darlene did die this episode.

[close]

And USA overhyped this episode. It was solid and intense with

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Angela having to get past the rioters and starting the hack herself

[close]

but "GROUND BREAKING/YOU'RE GONNA TALK ABOUT IT A LOT!" it isn't.

[CatsCatsCats]

South Park was pretty funny tonight