The TV shows you've seen recently thread.

[chronovore]

I watched the opening of Cowboy Bebop, and realized it is very similar in tone to the anime. I thought they would try to do something other than a live action re-creation. But that’s what it is.

Live action is not a format for cartoon shenanigans, generally speaking.

[Madrun Badrun]

Watch the One Piece adaption be amazing and then Amazon creating a 3 billion dollar mediocre Naruto adaption. 

[chronovore]

 

[Bebpo]

Live action is not a format for cartoon shenanigans, generally speaking.

For a mainstream audience, yes.

I enjoy goofy anime live-action stuff like this and Cutey Honey and Casshern and Death Note, Alita, etc...like they aren't good (well, Alita was actually alright) but they're entertaining?

I don't expect One Piece to be good at all, but I will watch it and enjoy.

[Bebpo]

I think one of the only anime that could've worked in live action was Berserk. It's pretty dumb no one tried it. Basically do it like Game of Thrones/Witcher. Put it on HBO and it'll fill their quota of tits and gore and have Red Wedding twists and stuff.

[Bebpo]

Not anime, but thinking about Berserk and Wheel of Time TV and I'm still incredibly pissed at Amazon TV execs for cancelling Stephen King's The Dark Tower TV series after financing a full pilot ep and then deciding "meh, not good enough"

Could've been a pretty easy hit given they were starting with the prequel which is essentially Westworld w/grimdark magic instead of robots.

Though, the movie being shit/bombing and thus killing a full TV series starring Idris Elba is the worse culprit for sure. Pretty sure if the movie didn't bomb the TV series would've been greenlit after the pilot.

[D3RANG3D]

 

[Snoopycat_]

There's a weird 70s doc about Hitler on Netflix. The narrator keeps throwing out insults and shit which is fair enough, it's quite funny. After one speech he claims Adolf leaves the stage full of spent sexual ecstasy. Then I think he calls him a limp homosexual. I didn't watch much of it. It's pretty dated and there's better docs about the nutter. The Circle Of Evil doc is really good. It goes into all the infighting and scheming among Goering, Himmler and the rest of them. It's kind of amazing how successful they were considering they hated each other and spent most of their time fighting for Hitler's approval.

[chronovore]

Not anime, but thinking about Berserk and Wheel of Time TV and I'm still incredibly pissed at Amazon TV execs for cancelling Stephen King's The Dark Tower TV series after financing a full pilot ep and then deciding "meh, not good enough"

Could've been a pretty easy hit given they were starting with the prequel which is essentially Westworld w/grimdark magic instead of robots.

Though, the movie being shit/bombing and thus killing a full TV series starring Idris Elba is the worse culprit for sure. Pretty sure if the movie didn't bomb the TV series would've been greenlit after the pilot.

Let's be honest. We've seen some stuff that Netflix thought was good enough, and it definitely wasn't. This was almost certainly a mercy killing.

[Snoopycat_]

The writing was on the wall the moment they announced it wasn't a straight adaptation of the books. That guaranteed it would bomb, because all it did was fuck off it's fans who had been waiting for years. Add in weird decisions like casting Idris, and the whole film/series pipedream. Those people must have been coked out of their minds.

[Snoopycat_]

Also that Johnny Depp aftershave advert. Amber redeemed

[Crash Dummy]

cowboy bebop bored me after a few eps, watching titans s3 until witcher s2 is out

[Potato]

Holy shit, if you haven't watched Dopesick, get on it. Probably my favourite show of the year.

[Cauliflower Of Love]

hawkeye is surprisingly good

[Madrun Badrun]

I really liked Ep5.  Sad that there is only one more episode to go.     

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Kate and Yelena were hilarious.  So was the tracksuit mafia stuff

[close]

[D3RANG3D]

 

[D3RANG3D]

The Witcher S2 is up on Netflix. 

[Madrun Badrun]

Episode 1 was 

[Madrun Badrun]

Episode 4 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The critic that references all the complaints about season 1

[close]

 

Really good so far. 

[Madrun Badrun]

Witcher was great.  I stopped reading after the first saga novel, makes me want to go back to it. 

[Potato]

It might have taken 6 or 7 episodes, but The Wheel of Time has found it's feet and is shaping up to be a great show.

[Bebpo]

I thought Wheel of Time ep7 was good, I think I liked ep2 and ep7 the most.

Biggest issue I have is that I find every single character in this show very annoying brats.

Moraine - super secretive and doesn't tell kids shit to any annoying degree
Nyan - bitch mode 110% every time Moraine says anything. Her whole character is I DON'T TRUST MORAINE
Rand - more like Bland random pretty boy who just whines and says I DON'T TRUST MORAINE
Perrin - Just walks around moping all the time
Matt - Just annoying loser
Egwen - pretty ok? Least annoying character
Lan - Good acting but he's super boring
Ogre guy - I like him

The best character in S1 was the Gleeman lol

Anyhow I'll read book #1 before S2 and if the characters are this annoying in the book as well I'm just gonna bail on the series.

[Potato]

They are annoying, but are fleshed out a lot more and you get more of their individual motivations which lets you have some empathy/sympathy for them

[D3RANG3D]

I finished up S2 of The Witcher, I liked it better than the first season, better costumes, no scrote armor etc,. but why is the CG and fight choreography worse.   

spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's pretty much Cowboy Bebop live action bad like hey let's use the rehearsal footage as the final choreography tier. 

[close]

[Madrun Badrun]

I found the CGI to be fine.  I feel like there was a lot more of it, especially in the daytime scenes which might explain it looking a bit worse.  The choreography was noticeably worse though, which was disappointing.  Watching this and WoT back to back really made WoT feel cheap.  :shrugs

The story is a lot more coherent and easy to follow this season though which I think was most people's issue with season 1.

[Potato]

Haven't watched Witcher s2 yet, but am I the only one that really just wanted more Monster of the week episodes? Like forget the main quest and just have Henry Cavill doing side quests for random NPCs for loot of dubious value...

[Madrun Badrun]

I preferred those with the books too, which is why I stopped when it hit the main quest

[benjipwns]

Everything I've seen about the new Sex and the City sounds amazing. Although none of it as posted was intended to be positive. And also none of it seems to be intentionally funny. Then again, that kinda always was the case I guess.

[naff]

I thought Wheel of Time ep7 was good, I think I liked ep2 and ep7 the most.

Biggest issue I have is that I find every single character in this show very annoying brats.

Moraine - super secretive and doesn't tell kids shit to any annoying degree
Nyan - bitch mode 110% every time Moraine says anything. Her whole character is I DON'T TRUST MORAINE
Rand - more like Bland random pretty boy who just whines and says I DON'T TRUST MORAINE
Perrin - Just walks around moping all the time
Matt - Just annoying loser
Egwen - pretty ok? Least annoying character
Lan - Good acting but he's super boring
Ogre guy - I like him

The best character in S1 was the Gleeman lol

Anyhow I'll read book #1 before S2 and if the characters are this annoying in the book as well I'm just gonna bail on the series.

ep 6 was when i was finally sold on the show. i like the design of the fade and trollocs, some of the fight scenes are really well choreographed, especially the one at the beginning of ep 7 god damn. ep 2 with valda burning the aes sedai and eating the bird was so good. great villain. i would've tried to keep him around. didn't mind the addition of some eps on new char stepin to communicate the bond between warder and aes sedai. funnily enough i think they've toned down nynaeves constant anger quite a lot, but it is a big part of her character; she can only channel when angry, has kinda learnt to constantly foster that as part of her power etc. they've made moraine a little more duplicitous but also positioning her as the main character. truly love rosamund pike in this role.

they're refocusing on the non core characters as the rest develop naturally as the story progresses. while i miss some of the exclusions from the book, the kids are even more annoying in them and they're mostly trash lol. lan's always been a carbon copy clone of aragorn but being a samurai now is a little more interesting at least. hopefully okonedo in the seat takes a larger focus with moraine being a more central character now. i thought the changes to matts character were really good, in the books he's just an arrogant little twat no-one really likes, in the show they sell him being a handsome coomer shitlord really well

[Potato]

Rosamund Pike is really killing it.

[Bebpo]

I thought Wheel of Time ep7 was good, I think I liked ep2 and ep7 the most.

Biggest issue I have is that I find every single character in this show very annoying brats.

Moraine - super secretive and doesn't tell kids shit to any annoying degree
Nyan - bitch mode 110% every time Moraine says anything. Her whole character is I DON'T TRUST MORAINE
Rand - more like Bland random pretty boy who just whines and says I DON'T TRUST MORAINE
Perrin - Just walks around moping all the time
Matt - Just annoying loser
Egwen - pretty ok? Least annoying character
Lan - Good acting but he's super boring
Ogre guy - I like him

The best character in S1 was the Gleeman lol

Anyhow I'll read book #1 before S2 and if the characters are this annoying in the book as well I'm just gonna bail on the series.

ep 6 was when i was finally sold on the show. i like the design of the fade and trollocs, some of the fight scenes are really well choreographed, especially the one at the beginning of ep 7 god damn. ep 2 with valda burning the aes sedai and eating the bird was so good. great villain. i would've tried to keep him around. didn't mind the addition of some eps on new char stepin to communicate the bond between warder and aes sedai. funnily enough i think they've toned down nynaeves constant anger quite a lot, but it is a big part of her character; she can only channel when angry, has kinda learnt to constantly foster that as part of her power etc. they've made moraine a little more duplicitous but also positioning her as the main character. truly love rosamund pike in this role.

they're refocusing on the non core characters as the rest develop naturally as the story progresses. while i miss some of the exclusions from the book, the kids are even more annoying in them and they're mostly trash lol. lan's always been a carbon copy clone of aragorn but being a samurai now is a little more interesting at least. hopefully okonedo in the seat takes a larger focus with moraine being a more central character now. i thought the changes to matts character were really good, in the books he's just an arrogant little twat no-one really likes, in the show they sell him being a handsome coomer shitlord really well

I guess the annoying thing is that this is a main cast where no one really listens to anyone else. They just bicker constantly and it's fucking annoying. Like some angsty tween novel.

I have a feeling this series just isn't for me.

[Madrun Badrun]

Hawkeye E6 was so damn good and silly.  They nailed the series. 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yelena and Kat were a wonderful duo.  The elevator scene had me laughing hard.

[close]

[Don Rumata]

Watched Hawkeye, thought it was mostly bad but watchable.

Watched the first two episodes of Witcher S2, silly fun like last season so far, but why they fuck did they just throw Eskel in the trash like that?
Also at the moment the Geralt/Ciri parts are fun, but everything else feels like filler, the political intrigues of this aren't all that intriguing, to be honest.

[D3RANG3D]

Yeah the portrayals of all the other witchers are garbage, it's not surprising because out of what I heard the second season is a complete fanfic.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

How could they do the best witcher raw like that.

[close]

[Potato]

Only watched episode 1 of Witcher s2, but it was a monster of the week episode 

[Don Rumata]

Only watched episode 1 of Witcher s2, but it was a monster of the week episode 

I'm worried because i read it's downhill from there.
I usually hate monster of the week, but for this show, it actually works best.

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

The OG Mission: Impossible TV show was on sale on amazon prime video, and holy shit such good TV; totally holds up, what, 50? years after it first aired?

[Snoopycat_]

That Netflix Epstein doc is pretty good if, like me, you don’t really know much about him. The biggest criticism it got was it didn’t reveal much that was new, so all you Epstein aficionados probably won’t get much out of it. The one thing that stuck out was the man’s sheer deviousness. Abusing teenagers then hiring them to work for you knowing that would automatically discredit any of their accusations is next level scheming.

[Bebpo]

Hawkeye ended up being pretty good. Probably 2nd best Marvel show after Wandavision.

[Bebpo]

Wheel of Time ep8 was alright. The season as a whole was just ok with lots of underdeveloped everything and pretty boring direction and mostly generic acting. But I guess as an intro to setup the various characters to actually do interesting things in the coming seasons it's fine.

Hawkeye was the better show, though I was disappointed they didn't save the boomerang arrow gag for the final moment to save the day. Also, no one called him Hawkguy which was dumb..

[Madrun Badrun]

WoT is OK.  As a B-tier fantasy show it rocks; it's just not GoT.  I want a second season now and I'm interested in the books now and never was before, so I feel like it succeeded even though it didn't live up to expectations.  I think Witcher was a lot better though.   

[chronovore]

https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/24/22851119/the-expanse-season-6-final-amazon-x-ray

For people who didn’t get enough Expanse, there’s more, but it was handled like an Easter Egg. 

[Bebpo]

Is there a reason why they ended The Expanse when there are more books? I assumed each season covered a book and with the book series just ending that the show would go on and cover the whole thing since it was moderately popular.

[Potato]

I'm two seasons behind on The Expanse because I don't want the books spoiled. Where does it end in relation to the books?

[chronovore]

Is there a reason why they ended The Expanse when there are more books? I assumed each season covered a book and with the book series just ending that the show would go on and cover the whole thing since it was moderately popular.

Season 1 only gets through ⅔ of book 1. It includes the delightfully profane Avisarala earlier than the series, but that’s it.

Each subsequent series has been playing catch-up, in a way. However, IIRC s4 is mostly book 5 or 6.  I haven’t watched in a bit.

[Don Rumata]

Finished Witcher season 2.
Was ok, a bit boring, a lot of wheel spinning and as we said, completely wasted the Witchers ensemble, but i'd still watch a 3rd season.
Let's hope it doesn't turn too much into a soap opera.

[Cauliflower Of Love]

Rewatching everwood.

That's james macavoy right?

That's the only explanation.

[benjipwns]

https://thecolumn.substack.com/p/in-the-90s-the-us-government-paid

In the ‘90s the U.S. Government Paid TV Networks to Weave “Anti-Drug” Messaging Into Their Plot Lines. Here Are the Worst Examples.

In the late 1990s, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), which was established by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, made a deal with multiple TV networks to include anti-drug messaging in show plots. According to reporting by the New York Times and Salon in 2000, the roots of the deal can be traced to the fall of 1997 when Congress approved a plan to buy $1 billion of anti-drug advertising over five years for its National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. These purchases were contingent on a private-sector match in which each government anti-drug ad buy would be matched by another free anti-drug ad to be aired on the networks.

As major networks grew dissatisfied with the deal against the backdrop of a booming dot-com economy, in which ad space was increasingly cherished, the networks bargained with the government. As a way to redeem the second free ad slot that they had promised to the government, the networks could use the plots of their sitcoms and dramas to fulfill the requirement—effectively taking large sums of free money to weave in War on Drugs government propaganda into their plot lines. In this deal, both sides won out: While the networks were able to sell the commercials to the private sector that they would have given away for free, the government was rewarded with a much more insidious way to spread “anti-drug” content.

Put another way: If you’re curious why there were so many corny and ham-fisted anti-drug plot lines in your favorite shows growing up, they didn’t emerge from some organic social contagion about combating drug abuse. Instead, they were well-compensated, unattributed, and undisclosed commercials paid by the federal government that helped them sustain the requisite moral panic around its $50 billion a year “war on drugs” pursuant policy goals of caging surplus black and brown populations and maintaining a militarized presence in most of Latin America.

Just as the Armed Forces and the CIA have given Hollywood funds and access in exchange for positive coverage and the ability to review scripts, the exchange between the networks and the ONDCP was similar. Starting in the spring of 1998, networks would send advanced scripts and tapes to federal drug officials who assigned to them a monetary value depending on the content, ratings impact, and length of the episode. Given that the program was quite secret, it is often hard to figure exactly which episode was valued at what amount. However, drawing mostly from Salon and the New York Times’ reporting at the time, the clips presented here are from nine different series that each aired episodes from 1998 to 1999 that were submitted for government approval. When possible, the government’s changes to content and the monetary value of the episodes are noted. 

[Cryo]

I'm two seasons behind on The Expanse because I don't want the books spoiled. Where does it end in relation to the books?

There's basically 3 major story arcs in the series:
- books 1-3 being the first and covered by seasons 1-3
- books 5-6 being the second (4's kind of an outlier but quite important plot-wise.)
- books 7-9 being the third

The season's going to finish up to book 6, babylon's ashes, and without providing spoilers, if they didn't have the ability to finish all 9 books in this specific tv series*, the end of this story arc is a good place to do it.

* They're sprinkling in bits and pieces of plotlines from the next books and there's plenty of winks and nudges on twitter to indicate they'll be doing those final 3 books in some form, be it movies or miniseries or simply picking it up again down the line. Also a pretty major character was cast, so 

[Potato]

Cheers for that. I figured that was the natural end point if they were only doing six seasons.

Looks like I can just go ahead and watch it now that I've finished book six.

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

I'm assuming Disney+ isn't doing so hot in the UK, because my phone carrier keeps giving me free 3 month subs to it within a very short period of my previous free sub lapsing

Watched Hawkeye; best thing in it by miles were the Yelena and Kate scenes, and that's the road trip buddy show I would have watched over Falcon and Winter Soldier.
Hawkguy might as well have been a block of wood for everything he brought to the part .
Good to see

spoiler (click to show/hide)

D'Onofrios Kingpin return,

[close]

but he was 100% wasted in what little screentime he had.
Again, his rise from his previous fall would have been a show I'd have enjoyed watching more than this. but I assume they'll get more into it with the upcoming Echo series, but Echo herself was also pretty


Book Of Boba Fett started out pretty good, hilariously doing exactly what Patton Oswalt predicted in his Parks & Rec filibuster scene.
The Mandalorian series 2 ended up kind of lame because it devolved into every episode being pretty much a stealth pilot to set up future stuff or fan service for 'expanded universe' nerds, but if they stick to what made Mandalorian S1 good, I'm gonna keep enjoying this.

[Cauliflower Of Love]

vince paying his small time disney part to get to go up against broling as galactus in phase 5

[Madrun Badrun]

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/peacemaker_2022/s01  hopeful

[Nuitangg]

Euphoria is back. 

[Potato]

Edit: Wrong thread

[Bebpo]

Euphoria is back. 

Yep, still the best directed TV show there is.

Also Levinson still not the best writer there is. But /shrug it is what it is.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also the car scene death teasing was fucking stupid. Like dude going 100mph drunk as shit and they have the girl take her seatbelt off and stick her head out the window and then they just cut to the party and they got there totally fine. That annoyed me.

Otherwise good ep, intro flashback direction was ace, ending was great. Lots of great scenes.

[close]

[Snoopycat_]

I recommend BBC comedy Mandy.

Spider warning. This video contains spiders -

[Potato]

I really love The Expanse, but they really fucked season 5 up. I'm 6 episodes in and...

spoiler (click to show/hide)

First of all, there doesn't feel like any threat on Earth. A few rocks fell and did a little bit of damage, but there's no feeling of end of times catastrophe that was present in the books. Amos and Clarissa are just wandering around and they don't feel like they're in a rush to get off planet ahead of complete planetary collapse.

Second, Marco Inaros is just nowhere near as charismatic as he should be and he feels neutered before he's even had a chance to be impressive. He's supposed to unravel over time, not be basically a shit leader from the start.


Third, ignoring the colony ships and the effects of that migration was a bad decision.

[close]

I hope things improve, but I'm terribly disappointed after book 5 and 6 were so fantastic.

[Don Rumata]

Watched 2 ep of the latest Always Sunny.


Hopefully it gets better.

[Cauliflower Of Love]

Man Dexter true blood banged out the hits, except for that one episode they didn't show.