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My wife watched the entire run of Grimm over the past couple of weeks. I tagged along for about half of it. It was okay. CGI ran from fair to poor. Monster-of-the-week + enough of an arc to keep you interested. You'd think that the coroner would eventually see enough of, "Looks like the bite of an x the size of a man," that they'd start to get suspicious, but I didn't think too much about the holes in the show.
Now we're watching our way through Tales From the Loop. I'm entertained. It moves slow, but makes up for it by being melancholy. I've seen them through episode 6, and they're good. S L O W but good. I've seen a lot of comparisons between that and Black Mirror, but Black Mirror is more high concept than Loop.
So, Westworld season 3 finale last night. I've decided this might be the dumbest "smart sci-fi" show I've ever watched. Remember how The Matrix pretended to have these insights into profound questions about free will and choice and reality, but those questions were about as deep as a mud puddle, and instead it was really just a big dumb action movie with some great action setpices?
Westworld is that times a hundred. It always looks like a million bucks, and there's a lot of endless, droning talk about big philosophical questions, but the show has nothing to say. The plot is muddled as hell, to the point where basic character motivations are impossible to unpack. Stuff happens, but none of it really matters, because none of it ever pays off in any kind of interesting or impactful way.
It's infuriating, because there are the bones of a cool premise buried in here somewhere, but the creators don't seem capable of teasing it out. Ugh, just a colossal waste of some excellent actors.
Watching the TV adaption of High Fidelity. It's a pretty fun update. Took me an episode and a half to warm to it, but then the humour started coming through. It's interesting watching what they've done with a dick of a main character for the 21st century. Soundtrack pretty cool. If you liked the film/book it's a must anyway, but it's a fun light relationships drama anyway.
I've had Dirty Money recommended to me on Netflix. It's a documentary series (each from a different director) that exposes ugly business dealings. I'm on the third episode and I'll tell you what -- it's a bit grim. The good news is that some episodes end up with filthy rich people going to jail. That's a nice change of pace and a happy ending, at least for me.
Joebot, it's disappointing to hear that Westworld season three doesn't pan out. But I knew that was a risk going into it, because JJ Abrams is involved, and his mystery box usually turns out to be empty or full of shit. I just finished the fourth episode of season three, and am still enjoying this season more than the first two. But I am also detecting more than a whiff of that Final Five rubbish that sent BSG down the tubes. Still, I am in a cyberpunk mood this year, and this show is very nearly good cyberpunk, though substituting androids for cyborgs. And I completely agree with your remark about how Westworld always looks great. Wardrobe, sets, locations, it's all very impressive.
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I watched the first episode of The Midnight Gospel tonight, which is the new Netflix cartoon from the guy that made Adventure Time. It's podcast clips of people talking about drugs and meditation and the meaning of life and whatnot, set to super trippy crazy animation. It wasn't the worst way to spend 20 minutes, but I'm definitely not the target audience. If you happen to be a hallucinogenically inclined college freshman you'll probably love it. I don't know that there's a lot there if you're not that, even though I did like the visuals.
Amazon Prime has a new series Upload that I am thoroughly enjoying. It's 2033 and the tech exists to upload someone's consciousness to live forever in a corporate server farm. These are just as you'd imagine if put up by a US company, always trying to get the deceased to spend, spend, spend. A tech entrepreneur is working on coding a free version but ends up in a self driving car crash (which never happens) and is uploaded in a muddied ER scene.
It's two parts romantic comedy as he falls in love with his "angel" (customer service rep) and out of love with his sugar momma (paying for his afterlife), and one part mystery as his memories have been tampered with. Ten episodes, five and a half hours. We are really liking it.
Gave up on Community. After the discussion here the flaws became too apparent partway through season two. Yeah, everyone but Abed and Troy are completely self centered jerks, and even they hit those low points. Was really underwhelmed by the D&D episode. I think that one was the breaking point for me.
mtagge wrote: Amazon Prime has a new series Upload that I am thoroughly enjoying.
As a big fan of The Office and Parks & Rec, we watched this as well. We were lukewarm on it. I was thinking this was going to be, and looking for it to be, a straight comedy, with a lot of subtle and off-hand jokes like his previous work, but it is not that. I guess that would be more of the Michael Schur writing part of those earlier series, not the Greg Daniels producing part. While we didn't exactly enjoy it, we watched the whole thing because we wanted to see how the story played out.
I'll give credit to Westworld S3 for at least telling a straight-forward story. Unlike S2 which was purposely confusing because they were upset some redditor guessed their S1 shenanigans. The show is very pretty to look at and that's about it. The cast is almost entirely robots at this point and none of them are interesting at all. They don't have real character growth or emotions or consequences. I'm honestly dumbfounded every time this show gets a renewal. Its never had GoT ratings and is certainly very expensive to make. There's also no way I see that it can have a satisfying ending.
Last Dance is really good. I grew up outside of Chicago and it is pure childhood. Michael Jordan is fascinating in how boring and one dimensional he is as a person and the cast of characters around him just adds tremendous richness to the story too.
I grew up outside of Chicago so I have a super emotional reaction to it. It's pure, distilled childhood with these incredible bursts of unrelated memories for me. If you lived in IL this was like the texture behind everyday life. We watched all the fucking regular season games.
Disgustipater wrote: While we didn't exactly enjoy it, we watched the whole thing because we wanted to see how the story played out.
So which part did you think was weaker, the romcom or the murder mystery? I do find myself more interested in the murder mystery which only seems like 7-10 minutes of any episode and could see how trying to be two things for a lot of people could detract from the whole.
To be that guy who refers to my avatar (Babylon 5) I enjoyed both the soap opera and the epic space story. But I could understand how if someone didn't like the soap, they wouldn't like the whole.