What TV SHOWS are you watching?

I didn't know there was a Magnificent Seven tv show. Looks like it was cancelled halfway through the first season, or more likely, was a mid-season replacement that didn't come back in the fall. Michael Biehn is okay as a Clint Eastwood wannabe, and Ron Perlman is good for some laughs, but the show makes good overall use of the ensemble cast. The long pilot episode led with an hour of tired western cliches, but it got better and better after that. Four episodes in, I rate it a high seven. I suspect that Joss Whedon was a fan of the show, because there are some similarities to Firefly.

I've been watching Hannibal. It's really an amazing show, and gorgeous. They must have spent quite a lot of money on it.

craniac wrote: Apologies for thread squatting. I just saw the season 1 finale of The Flash, and it was pretty cool. My teen son then explained Flashpoint to me, and the whole DC reboot thing, which helped explain a key moment in the episode. The show is shockingly dumb at times, and can be cartoonish in a bad way, but it does have its moments. The finale was really cool, in fact. I want to cosplay now as fat, middle-aged Flash.

Explain it to me because I haven't got a fucking clue what is going on.

I just finished 1st Season as well

I totally expected Ash vs. Evil Dead to be terrible. But it was actually pretty good, and it does feel like a legitimate follow-up to the original films. The first episode is directed by Raimi, so it feels very familiar and of course there is plenty of fan-pleasing stuff going. The second episode is weaker but I'm on board for it.

The key is that Campbell is totally invested in it...he is DEFINITELY in form as Ash, and he really sells himself as an older version of the classic character. Still a total jackass, still a total cad, still a total hero. I don't want to spoil it, but his "costume" reveal is priceless. He's got a couple of could-be-classic lines in it as well, so it's clear that the right folks are writing it.

The goofy gore and loony energy, the Three Stooges stuff...it's all in place. There are some CGI elements, which is somewhat jarring, but mostly it looks and feels on the money. The new characters seem like good foils for Ash, it'll be interesting to see if they can develop over the course of a series. Which may be the biggest looming problem- I don't know how any kind of Evil Dead story can go on for 10 episodes, let alone if it goes a second season. It's worth noting that the second episode is NOT directed by Raimi and you can tell.

It's funny though, I have thought for like 10 years that I was kind of ready to retire that whole character and franchise but I liked getting back to it through this program. Hopefully it will freshen it up so we can move on from the endless Army of Darkness references, which are about as played out as Monty Python ones at this point.

And I think the show has, in two episodes, already distinguished that it is NOT another zombie thing. These are Deadites. Very different.

Laying $10 on GF9 announcing an AvED game soon.

Ash vs. Evil Dead is great fun! And a GF9 game could really be something special. There's a lot of ways they could go with it.

Aziz Ansari's show on Netflix, Master of None is really good.

This is doing it bass-ackwards, but I watched Spartacus: Blood and Sand after playing the game. This has to be the bloodiest and dirtiest series that I've watched, by far. Definitely not for the prudish or squeamish. The show's take on boobs and blood pushes it well into pure camp, but I liked it. The plot was simple enough for me to follow without outside assistance,and I got to cross "saw Lucy Lawless' boobs" off my bucket list.

RobertB wrote: This is doing it bass-ackwards, but I watched Spartacus: Blood and Sand after playing the game. This has to be the bloodiest and dirtiest series that I've watched, by far. Definitely not for the prudish or squeamish. The show's take on boobs and blood pushes it well into pure camp, but I liked it. The plot was simple enough for me to follow without outside assistance,and I got to cross "saw Lucy Lawless' boobs" off my bucket list.

I did the same, though I haven't gotten around to the final season yet. The show is enjoyable in a trashy way.

Spartacus is one of the few series to not just retro reference, but actually "get" exploitation films/shows. It is a modern cast, crew, etc making an exploitation series. Not referring back to old ones, or wink winking to the audience at any point. Just making a great show in the genre.

Spartacus was awesome.

I'm currently almost done with season 2 of Hannibal, which is going in surprising directions. Also just caught the most recent episode of Fargo, which continues to be good.

Fargo season 2 is so solid, tense and weird. I can't imagine anyone on this site not loving it.

Loving loving loving this season of Fargo. There's a creative confidence there in the way they are depicting things that is very often impressive and amusing. Almost operatic in the way they're using music and violence. Season 1 was very good with some excellent performances (esp. Billy Bob), but overall it was a little more by-the-book or whatever, and I thought it didn't stick the landing too well (which could happen again). I said this before, but whereas season 1 felt like a really solid homage to the film (and to Coen films in general), this season really seems more of its own thing, and more sure of itself, even in its quirky weirdness.

Anyone here follow the HBO series, The Leftovers? I'd heard some raves about it from people comparing it in quality to Fargo and True Detective (well, season 1), but I watched the first two eps and wasn't really blown away. The premise is sort of interesting, with several million people disappearing all of a sudden in some kind of Rapture event that nobody can explain, and it follows how people are dealing with that a few years later. There's some weird cult that never talks and smokes all the time, and some guru guy that hugs the pain out of you, and other stuff like that, but I didn't really seem to care about any of it. But presumably it gets better? I'm not continuing at this point, though, without some major encouragement.

I am watching The Corner. For fans of Homicide: Life on the Streets and The Wire, this show is the missing link between the two. There are just six episodes, but each one packs a punch. The stories are allegedly true and certainly seem very realistic. The acting is great, and I recognize several folks from The Wire, plus Khandi Alexander from News Radio. However, it is a bit hard for me to fully enjoy the show. All the main characters are broken people who are fucking each other over for minor shit: small quantities of drugs or money, or remaining shreds of pride. The focus in on one particular family. The father is a college graduate who was fairly successful, but his wife rejected life in the suburbs, and then something went wrong. Now the parents are both junkies and their son is a drug dealer.

Many years ago, I was in a relationship with an addict. I didn't know that until I was already in too far to easily back out. After less than a year, I had been burned badly enough to move on, but she used her two young kids to manipulate me into sticking around longer. The other reason I hung on too long was that, aside from the drug addiction, she was really easy to get along with, compared to any other woman I've ever dated. And sometimes it was fascinating to talk to her. Within her own limited world view, all of her actions made perfect sense, despite the underlying flawed logic of feeding an addiction. I haven't had any contact in over a decade, but it seemed like she was finally getting her life together when we last talked.

Anyway, I recognize her in the behavior of the junkies of The Corner. Good intentions keep yielding to bad decisions, and everything is very short-term tactical thinking, leading to tragic consequences. The Corner keeps everything real, and that reality haunts me. I think that a veteran fan of The Wire would enjoy The Corner just fine, unencumbered by the baggage that I bring to each viewing.

Watched the first episode of Man in the High Castle, which is an original series on Amazon. The pilot is free to watch, so I'm not sure yet if I'll plunk down for Amazon Prime to watch the rest, but I did really like it. It's based on a Philip K. Dick story about an alternate history where the Nazis/Japanese won WWII, or did they? The western U.S. is controlled by Japan, and the east Germany, so that's the current reality (set in the 60's), but apparently some footage exists (actual WWII footage) that shows the Allies winning the war, and a resistance movement is building based around that. So there's the question about whether this setting is an alternate timeline within the show, or somehow the Ally victory was usurped and the Axis suppressed that victory footage (seems to be the latter at this point). So that is pretty interesting, as well as the dynamic that the Germans are likely to conflict with the Japanese over the rest of America once Hitler dies. The writing/acting is pretty solid (good to see Rufus Sewell again in yet another jerky villain role), and compared to The Leftovers, which I mentioned recently, it seems more actively engaging to begin with.

Been slightly eying Man in the High Castle, although I'm fearful about what happens to PKD books on screen. It wasn't one of my most favorites, so I'm not going to nerdrage either way.

My wife and I have been watching Master of None, which is Aziz Ansari's new Netflix show. Some extremely funny stuff in there. He's willing to take on some heavy social topics without getting totally bogged down in it. Best comedy I've seen in a while.