The TV shows you've seen recently thread.

[Phoenix Dark]

I really liked that episode of True Detective. Definitely shed light on some stuff I wanted to know, specifically about Tuttle.

[Diunx]

I just watched episode one of true detective.

Just wait till you see Them in episode 2

[Eel O'Brian]

TD spoiler

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There are still people out there who think Marty's the Yellow King

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[CajoleJuice]

ughhh want to read because i really don't care and i'm so annoyed by all these goddamn stupid articles about yellow king theories

[cool breeze]

latest episode of Arrow was awesome

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Slade making moves on oliver's mom 

at this point I wouldn't be surprised if walter turns into a bad guy next season

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[StealthFan]

Walter He was an interesting dude last season, when the show wasn't so CW.

[huckleberry]

Just finished the first season of The Returned on Netflix. Really dig this show. Decent acting, gorgeous backdrop, and great story.....can't wait to hear more about season 2.

[Phoenix Dark]

Game Of Thrones spoilers

[cool breeze]

The show was always aggressively cw. Thea's drug use/angst after Oliver comes, the love triangle, its all very One Tree Hill.

i'm not up on the cw business, but some of the love triangle stuff is really weird.

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slade's motivation is some sad ass shit where he loved the woman who was with oliver.  they wave it off by saying the MIRAKURU makes you crazy.

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[Himu]

I think Archer lost its way on season 4. Just all around average stuff. I still got a laugh now and then but its glory days are clearly behind it.

[cool breeze]

Word.

Im starting to tire of the flashback sequences somewhat though.  Past Oliver is not as enjoyable as present Oliver, and they're kinda predictable. I also preferred S1s villain.

agreed about the flashback stuff.  season one did a better job connecting the present story to the flashbacks.  season two feels like two loosely connected stories.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

and yeah, malcolm was awesome.  malcolm's motivation and goal were linked: kill the poor people that killed and/or didn't save his wife.  season 1 always had the looming undertaking and the book of names.

slade is great too but his plan isn't really clear.  for a while it looked like brother blood was main villain, setting up how evil he is for killing his parents and w/e.  now it's slade getting brother blood to make super soldiers because  also slade wants to mess with oliver.  also he has this big company

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[Diunx]

Game Of Thrones spoilers

[Eel O'Brian]

Loved that TD finale. Lotta folks gonna complain it was too Hollywood, but I thought it was a near perfect capper.

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It was never about the mystery. It was about finding something to live for. I'd have been disappointed if it hadn't ended on a bit of a hopeful note.

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[Phoenix Dark]

Eel likes it so I'll probably like it. How is the twitter/GAF response thus far? Positive, disappointing, mixed, etc?

will watch later tonight

[CajoleJuice]

Loved that TD finale. Lotta folks gonna complain it was too Hollywood, but I thought it was a near perfect capper.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

It was never about the mystery. It was about finding something to live for. I'd have been disappointed if it hadn't ended on a bit of a hopeful note.

[close]

Nailed it.

[cool breeze]

yeah, great ending.

[Madrun Badrun]

Its not up on piratebay yet

I'm going on a hunger strike until it is up and I really want nachos right now.

[Madrun Badrun]

It's happening!

[Madrun Badrun]

I don't even have food to make nachos; my trials are Gandhiesque.

[Madrun Badrun]

eww, fatty got fingered

[Madrun Badrun]

very good.

What was the end song?

[ZephyrFate]

TD ended as expected. A bit rote, a bit cliche, but the series was kinda like that anyway. I hope Season 2 not only changes up the genders of its main characters, but changes up the structure. Not saying "throw in crazy twists!", but maybe subvert the genre a little more. A slick six-minute tracking shot doesn't really make your show God-tier.

I'd give the whole season a solid B+. It can only go up from here.

[Madrun Badrun]

the

spoiler (click to show/hide)

see things right when he is in the most danger

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was roll eyes worthy but it was still good.  Also that den was terrifying. 

[Madrun Badrun]

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Its also too bad that the Tuttle stuff won't be resolved in further seasons.  Would have liked to see the black cops try to learn more about the cult.

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[Madrun Badrun]

[BobFromPikeCreek]

Pretty good shit. Was a little more straight forward than I'd have hoped, but whatever. Was hoping they'd go full-weird on it and end it like Kill List, but it was still pretty decent. A nice tidy conclusion.

[StealthFan]

TD has always been cliched as fuck. It was just really well made. I got misty in the final five minutes. DAT MONOLOGUE.

Also I agree about Arrow season 2. Deathstroke isn't as bitching Merlyn.

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I realize that having Merlyn be a huge component this season would make it seem like a retread of the first but we need more Malcom. You brought his ass back just to have him tell Moira he's the father? Whack. Give me more.   

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I'm also disappointed in Brother Blood. Fuck Deathstroke. I hate that taco and how overrated he is by Batstans.

[Beezy]

"Take off yo' mask..."

Loved this show. I hope they know what they're doing for the following seasons.

[ZephyrFate]

Looking ended better than TD, surprisingly. Richie's speech at the end broke my heart. Fuck you, Patrick, you are such a huge fuckup and I can't believe you let that shit happen right before your boyfriend bore his soul to you.

Of course, attractive gay men are 1-in-a-million when it comes to actually being straightforward with their feelings.

fuck

so mad 

[Beezy]

Btw, Girls was weird as fuck tonight. I don't know why I can't stop watching this show.

[StealthFan]

Arrow S2's biggest misstep is more than just a mediocre villain set up, it's also the lack of a strong focal point like the book. S1 was interesting because it was the first network tv show (an action show nonetheless!) that I've seen touch on things like income inequality and crony capitalism, now it's kinda just about drugz. What happened to the whole Robin Hood aspect of the show? The Blood Cult just doesn't have the same relevance to our world today.

I agree with that. It's a lot less focused.

I disagree about it always being so damn CW. There were definitely elements there but it felt different from the rest of the networks catalogue in the first season. Now we got people popping in to say one line, reused sets, and that terrible Moira/mayor storyline. Feels like I'm watching Smallville sometimes...

[TakingBackSunday]

True Detective was never about the crime, murderer, or kills.  It was always about the relationship between the two mains, the two detectives, and how they investigated things.  Thus the name.  Approach the series with that regard, and the show is a true master stroke of filmmaking and writing.

Absolutely phenomenal show.  Best HBO has produced since The Wire.

[etiolate]

Arrow is less CW this season and I feel the second season is stronger than the first. There's just one character that is the source of the CW sorta stuff, but Thea, her BF and Felicity have all become stronger. I do feel like Moira had to be marginalized because of s1 events, and that pushed Walter to the edge as well. But there's no Tommy and less and less of useless female characters. So far less CWness overall.

I always liked the island stuff and like Deathstroke because of that. It took a long while for him to enter into play and that hurt the show a bit.

[Human Snorenado]

Thought TD nailed the finale.

[Mandark]

Ugh.  Really disappointing True Detective finale.  I think what really ruined it was

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nah I'm kidding, shit was awesome.

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[TakingBackSunday]

 

[ZephyrFate]

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The bowels of Carcosa were super unsettling and I loved Rust's emotional speech at the end, even if I hated the whole "atheist detective has an afterlife/religious experience bullshit

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[TakingBackSunday]

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I don't know if I take it as a religious experience.  Death to him, even before his near death experience, was always about going back into the darkness from whence he came, steeping himself in the nothing that nonexistence is.  His near death experience wasn't far off from what he had always talked about -- but he was surprised at how comforting it felt, especially when he was reminded of his little girl.  I don't take that as religious or spiritual at all.  I take it as a realization on his part that death isn't so bad.

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[Eric P]

TD was amazing and its ending was beautiful.

[Phoenix Dark]

Powerful TD finale. Definitely one of the more tense hours of television I've seen, and I thought the aftermath was great as well.

For Awesom-o
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2014/03/10/true-detectives-predictable-simplistic-finale/

it's almost parody level of salt 

[Phoenix Dark]

quote from the article (spoilers)

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Rust and Marty don’t show any more curiosity about a woman (the spectacular and underused Ann Dowd) they find with Errol, who appears to have some sort of intellectual disability — and neither does “True Detective.” As the police swam in to the Childress family estate, she sits, terrified, among the wreckage of Errol’s mad fantasies, utterly alone. Detective Thomas Papania (Tory Kittles) later tells Marty that she was “at least a half sister” to Errol, substituting a lazy stereotype about Southern incest for any insight into how she, and Errol’s dead victims, could go so utterly missing, or have been so invisible in the first place.

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I tend to loath the misogynist way in which many viewers watch shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, etc, and while TD is certainly full of men acting ignorant I gotta say the movement to trash the show for its lack of female diversity is really pathetic. The show is clearly a nod to crime and detective literature, and all the tropes that come with it. This isn't some Game Of Thrones-esque subversion of well established genre tropes and nods; the characters, settings, etc are all as they appear to be.

Her point on Marty's daughter seems to completely miss the point. She probably was a victim of sexual assault, yet Marty couldn't see it despite the clues being "right under my nose" as he said earlier in the show. That, to me, says more about Marty as a person, and his failures as a father (and man) than it says about what the show writer thinks about women.

[ZephyrFate]

It's not an invalid criticism to note that TD treats its female characters as objects. It is part of the trope, but you kind of expect a show in 2014 to subvert that trope a little better. TD doesn't, really. It's still great, but let's not act as if it was really doing anything different with the detective genre aside from providing excellent cinematography and acting. Next season, if Pizzolatto wasn't fucking with us, is going to feature "hard women, bad men, and the occult history of the US transportation system." If he isn't fucking with us, this sounds like a show that actually wants to subvert its detective tropes.

[Mandark]

Yeah, I don't like the "it's a tribute to a classic pulp form of entertainment!" defense (see: SW prequels are just like the old serials), especially for something that clearly aspired to be more than just an homage to what came before it.  I think it's fair game to call out a few poorly written female characters, especially since those moments were jarring compared with the quality of the rest of it.

My two big problems with Rosenberg's criticism is 1) making an almost wholly political criticism of a piece of art, and 2) carping that the show would be better if it focused on different characters and aspects of the plot.  Yeah, you could have had multiple 13-episode seasons that made central characters of the victims and the conspirators and was more explicit about the social implications of what was going on, and that show might even have been very good.  But it would have been a different show and it's generally not the reviewer's job to say "here's how I woulda done it."

[Phoenix Dark]

Dunno Zeph, I'm pretty sure I've seen "hard women and bad men" on the book cover of multiple crime novels.  It remains to be seen how he'll approach S2 but so far he hasn't given me the impression he's going to do something crazy. I'd almost bet bitcoins that we'll get a tough lesbian detective.

I agree the women were objects, but at the same time the show is almost entirely from two men's perspective, one of whom is a pos misogynist. Narrative wise it's quite different from Breaking Bad for instance where you get to explore Skylar's mind/views, or even The Sopranos where Carmella had a huge role.

[Mandark]

It's a short series that focuses on two characters.  Not just the women, but all the men besides Marty and Rust are ancillary characters, and the show doesn't go out of its way to give them depth or show sympathy for their viewpoints.  So I don't see the lack of focus on female characters as being particularly problematic.

But there were some clunkers in the dialogue with some of those female supporting characters.  Specifically, I'm thinking of the bunny ranch madame and Lily Simmons.  Those were a couple moments that took me out of the show.



Putting aside all the earnest, socially aware talk, my moment of the finale is when

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Marty pulls the old canvassing photo to make the green ears connection, and Rust's "...fuck you, man."  The early episodes got just a little bit too close to making Rust the savante super-detective with Marty as his lunkhead sidekick, and I'm glad they balanced it out a bit later on.

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[chronovore]

Ya Archer is a bit flat this season.  Its a shame because the idea seemed so good.  They also spoiled the best jokes with the first episode.


I started watching Farscape; it's weird, in a good way, I think...

Farscape is awesome, but weird. You have to get into the mood of it. It's like one of those dreams that you wake from, but can't tell if it was a fantasy or a timid nightmare that you just had.

Yeah, I'm on hiatus from my run-through of the whole series, but I've been enjoying it again. It's a nice ensemble show, where everyone has their own issues. John is, sadly, a little consistently too likable, but I guess that's the "everyman" portion of this escapist fantasy. Aeryn is also consistently charming and interesting as she looks to expand beyond her military caste.

[Shadow Mod]

One of the broader themes of TD is that the women and girls can and do provide the answers to which people rarely ask the right questions. If one of the broader themes of the show is the ignoring, pigeonholing and victimization of women then I really don't have a problem with the character troop backing that. It's not that the writers are misogynistic at all, it's that the women and children are consistently hurt and even the detectives show rash judgment that satisfies their blood lust but not the greater cause of justice and keeping the girls/women safe. Rust is busy trying to rationalize his losses and Marty just uses women to bolster his boner or his image. Even our heroes are tragic figures. This doesn't make the show misogynist at all. In fact to me it's a big ass commentary (especially in the realm of Marty's family situation) of only giving a shit about what women can provide for them (up to and including their ideas of self-righteous justice and short term goals) and nothing else.

That's how I read it anyway. Just because a show follows along a theme of misogyny doesn't make it misogynistic. The women are foil in this series to make a point.

[TakingBackSunday]

Goddamn.  Watched the last few episodes of TD again tonight.  So fucking great.

True Detective has my full undivided attention.  Best show on TV right now.  Hope Pizza and Fukunaga can find some worthy replacements for season 2.

[Shadow Mod]

I rewatched it up until the last episode a couple days ago and it's crazy how much is foreshadowed once you know where to look and what you're looking at.

[ZephyrFate]

Dunno Zeph, I'm pretty sure I've seen "hard women and bad men" on the book cover of multiple crime novels.  It remains to be seen how he'll approach S2 but so far he hasn't given me the impression he's going to do something crazy. I'd almost bet bitcoins that we'll get a tough lesbian detective.

I agree the women were objects, but at the same time the show is almost entirely from two men's perspective, one of whom is a pos misogynist. Narrative wise it's quite different from Breaking Bad for instance where you get to explore Skylar's mind/views, or even The Sopranos where Carmella had a huge role.

There have been, rarely, any dark detective stories on TV featuring female leads. That alone is a huge subversion of the trope, even if it's been explored in shitty novels. That's missing the entire point that the detective genre is incredibly male-dominated and generally thinly-veiled misogyny at worst, at least if we go back to its origins (which inspired supremely misogynistic stuff like Sin City, for example).

I'm not saying TD will go as far as, say, Veronica Mars did... and that's unfortunate, because I kind of wished TD would have pushed the noir envelope as far as VM did. If Season 2 accomplishes something of that nature, then it will be wholly superior to this first season by virtue of expanding its horizons and toying with the genre alone.

[Shadow Mod]

Just get Helen Mirren and make TD Season 2 Prime Suspect with a Vengeance.

[TakingBackSunday]

>TD and VM in the same sentence

 

Listen, Veronica Mars is a wonderful show.  For a season and a third.  The rest is entertaining but poorly written shlock.  I've heard the movie is really well made, but regardless, comparing TD and VM is basically apples to oranges.  VM is a well written character melodrama.  But its detective machinations are tertiary as compared to True Detective's.

[ZephyrFate]

just gonna ignore all negative VM commentary and say

anyway, Rick and morty's back

WUBBA LUB DUB DUB

[Eric P]

Rick and Morty is stupidly good.  I didn't like the first episode that much but goddamn does it improve dramatically.

[ZephyrFate]

Eric P, I'm here if you need to talk.

[cool breeze]

I'm catching up on Almost Human.  It's a fun show with each episode covering well worn cyberpunk future topics.  but they bring up bitcoins as a modern, relevant and accepted currency.  the show takes place in 2048.

[Yeti]

Well it is a dystopia.

And be prepared for some weird character/plot inconsistencies, Fox for whatever reason is airing the episodes all out of order.

[StealthFan]

I enjoy Almost Human. need to catch up tho. I think I am 3 episodes behind.

[benjipwns]

Well it is a dystopia.

And be prepared for some weird character/plot inconsistencies, Fox for whatever reason is airing the episodes all out of order.

They're doing the same thing with Rake. So the "previously on" recaps are showing events that have yet to happen. 

[Dickie Dee]

http://www.vulture.com/2014/03/true-detective-deleted-scene-rust-lori-breakup.html