What TV SHOWS are you watching?

I finished Westworld. I really liked S1. S2 helped clear up some parts that weren't making a lot of sense, and two of the episodes were the best in the series. S3 bit off a little more than it could chew. I'll watch S4 when it comes out - I'm curious about where they're going with this.

Spoilers: S2


Spoilers: S3

Watched the first episode of The Nevers. It's basically Joss Whedon does Wild Cards but in the 19th century, which begs the question: Why didn't he just get the license for Wild Cards? Granted, he wouldn't have been able to do the steampunk angle and British people are still seen as exotic and favored by HBO for stuff like this (see: Game of Thrones) but I was still sitting there watching it thinking: "This is just like Wild Cards" and then the ending confirmed it.

It's not bad and I'll certainly watch a couple more episodes, because the cast is solid and Whedon has a lot of credit stored with me from Firefly. But I'm still kind of baffled how anyone justifies things like this to themselves. If I were writing something that's Wild-Cards-but-not-Wild-Cards, I'd probably be feeling guilty the whole time for ripping someone else off. At least change up SOMETHING.

WILD CARDS is probably a licensing nightmare. Anthology series, with a rule that the creator of each character has veto power over any use or mention of the character by another author.

Plus having GRRM as one of the authors probably drives the price up beyond reason.

Edit: continuing my uncritical passive consumption of pop culture, I am liking FALCON & WINTR SOLDIER. I acknowledge the flaws but it is crazy to me that we live in a world that 12yo comic nerd me couldn’t even imagine. Like this is a random TV show that actually exists. I watched Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk, and the godawful 70s live action Spider-Man, because that was all there was.

Also: INVINCIBLE. I read the comics and liked them; I am enjoying the show. Not groundbreaking but plenty fun.

dysjunct wrote: WILD CARDS is probably a licensing nightmare. Anthology series, with a rule that the creator of each character has veto power over any use or mention of the character by another author.

Plus having GRRM as one of the authors probably drives the price up beyond reason.

Fair point about the licensing and other authors' rights to the material, but GRRM just signed a five-year, exclusive deal with HBO for development and has several projects with them in the works already. I don't think that would've been much of a hurdle.

I forgot that Amazon Prime doesn't drop their shows all at once, otherwise I might have waited to binge watch Invincible. My wife and I like it, but now I'm getting the stink eye because she'd rather binge watch a show than watch it week-to-week. I am resisting looking up the comic book plot for hints to the TV show plot.

When we found out that we were caught up, we were at loose ends. We ended up watching Made You Look. An art dealer in NYC sold $80M worth of "discovered" Abstract Expressionist paintings that turned out to be painted in some guy's garage. The art dealer swears she didn't know, the person who sold her the paintings got some jail time, and the painter is in Shanghai and ain't coming back to the States. The show is mostly about the nuts and bolts of the forgery, as well as the nature of con men/women and their victims. It doesn't go much into the nature of a work of art's monetary value; I think the notion that a work of art gets all of its value from who painted it is a given.

After watching this, I can see why NFT is a thing.

Also watched the first epi of The Nevers. I enjoyed it even though it is the characters fall into the expected molds. Or moulds as this is yet another show in London. I'm pretty tired of London based shows at this point. Mine another vein please.

The writing is entertaining and the lead pulls off her role well.

Latest ep of Invincible (the college ep) was a big step back IMHO. It triples down on the teen drama, ugh. The villain of the ep gets totally shorted on time and Mark once again demonstrates his unique fighting style of beating his opponents fists to a pulp with his face

I'm starting to think this show is actually a standard "boy meets girl, girl is in another relationship, boy pines for girl and gets her in the end" story but Atom Eve (the reality changing Scarlet witch copy) is the boy, Mark is the girl, Amber is the hopefully soon to be discarded rival love interest, and Eve's POV isn't the focus. I imagine comic readers probably know how this all works out but right now it is tough sitting through another tantrum on the show.

There are only 2 more eps though, which I fear means that most of the plot threads are gonna be unresolved.

I finished Unforgotten on Amazon Prime. Three seasons, and all of them are good. It's a British cop show that focuses on old cases, always starting like an episode of Law & Order where someone accidentally stumbles on a corpse.

jason10mm wrote: Latest ep of Invincible (the college ep) was a big step back IMHO. It triples down on the teen drama, ugh. The villain of the ep gets totally shorted on time and Mark once again demonstrates his unique fighting style of beating his opponents fists to a pulp with his face

I'm starting to think this show is actually a standard "boy meets girl, girl is in another relationship, boy pines for girl and gets her in the end" story but Atom Eve (the reality changing Scarlet witch copy) is the boy, Mark is the girl, Amber is the hopefully soon to be discarded rival love interest, and Eve's POV isn't the focus. I imagine comic readers probably know how this all works out but right now it is tough sitting through another tantrum on the show.

There are only 2 more eps though, which I fear means that most of the plot threads are gonna be unresolved.

I wonder if Invincible only inherited 50% of Omni-Man's power, because I can't imagine Mark taking down a whole team the way Omni-Man did.

One of my friends claims that all music can be reduced to either tension or release, and I wonder if that is an inherently human perspective that could be applied to all our various forms of entertainment. Like, we as humans enjoy a lot of tension before the release, because it makes the release more enjoyable, and the whole process is a metaphor for sex. It certainly seems that TV writers like to deliver a lot more tension than release when it comes to relationships. An obvious example would be the hint of romance between Mulder and Scully on the X-Files.

Despite my own objections to the grimdark violence in the show, I am confident that there will be a second season of Invincible next fall.

Shellhead wrote: I wonder if Invincible only inherited 50% of Omni-Man's power, because I can't imagine Mark taking down a whole team the way Omni-Man did.

I certainly appreciate that omni-man apparently did fuck all to teach his son how to fight. The "asian automatically equals martial artist" trope is tired enough.

But then...damn, maybe he should have sent his kid to some boxing lessons at the very least

I hope s2 is already in the works, animation like this usually takes YEARS. I like the show a lot but it doesn't walk the line very well between the "look at this DC character we are poking fun at, wink wink" bits with the "JESUS CHRIST HE JUST RIPPED THAT LADIES HEAD OFF!" bits and the mediocre teen relationship drama. I fear it THINKS it is being sly and sneaky with twists but really is just sloppy writing.

Stuff like roboman having a drone that battled santa(??) for some hemlock or whatever is just too juicy a thread to toss in the floor and walk away from, but I think that's exactly what they are doing.

I'm no connoisseur, but the animation of Invincible strikes me as close to average-quality anime. So depending on who is doing the work, they should be able to crank out short seasons like this every six months or so.

Finished all 6 episodes of Invincible. I really enjoyed it, and am mystified at how they got SO many A-list actors! Really incredible.

As for the animation itself... eh.

In a covid environment getting a paycheck for doing voice work probably sounds pretty good

And I didn't mean to imply the animation was particularly good, just that animation of any type and length seems to be a lengthy endeavor. I've been hearing about K Smiths He-man show for it seems like 2 years now and I doubt it will look much different. South Park seems to be the only one that can hammer out an ep in the time scale of a live action show. So if Amazon is holding off to see the reactions of Invincible S1 to greenlight S2 we could be in for a 2 year wait like some other animation shows (Hilda, Disenchanted, Rick and Morty, etc) that don't do their entire run up front.

Voice acting may pay less, but it's got to be a lot easier than acting. With voice acting, you can keep the script right in front of you, and you just need to focus on your cues and your delivery. With acting, you may need to also pay attention to your body language and hitting your marks, and there is a lot of downtime during the shoot for make-up and lighting.

Miss Scarlet and The Duke - Started watching this and enjoying it so far. Set in 1800's London and unexpectedly this is not a BBC show but it is a really good production all around. Miss Scarlet is a new private detective and the Duke (a nickname) is a Scotland Yard detective she's known since they were kids. No mysticism or steampunk just straight up crime-solving and a sense of humor I get.



I like how the end of the trailer shows her firing a gun like a badass but in the actual scene she falls backwards and completely misses. I had even considered a comparison to Agent Carter but Miss Scarlet has no fighting skills so has to rely on luck and wit.