What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Maybe a good counterpoint is what was missing in Mare. The crime aspects are TERRIBLE and the main crime is almost laughable in retrospect, a first year law student could get the entire case thrown out. So you are left with Mare rolling in and crushing everyone around her as she constantly fails upwards. It's ok if she commits atrocious crimes 'cause she is MARE, but god forbid she make the morally correct decision when the crime involves someone else.

Anyway, other than maybe the daughters trite love life, most of the seemingly random tangents at least got to play third string to help wrap things up, even if I would suggest that 5 lengthy scenes with a particular elderly couple could have been truncated to 2 minutes at best and there are MANY other examples where the bloat on this beast could have been trimmed.

Seeing all this through Mare alone is the problem. Had they used the younger detective better maybe he could have served as an opposing mass and set up proper film drama.

Anyway, I'd say skip this one.

It seems odd that Mare is getting singled out for being a rogue cop when it's just about the oldest trope around. Is it because she is a woman who doesn't know her place?

imo, it's more that the personal life aspect of her character portrait is so incredible but that the crime is kind of silly and it clangs a little bit. So it's hard not to contrast those two aspects. But that's just me, I liked the show a lot overall.

Shellhead wrote: It seems odd that Mare is getting singled out for being a rogue cop when it's just about the oldest trope around. Is it because she is a woman who doesn't know her place?

Oh yes, she absolutely should have stayed in the kitchen making sammaches! What an odd comment to make, are female characters immune from criticism?

Anyway, her gender is irrelevant, but her absolute shit cop shenanigans aren't. She is a pretty bruised person but when she fucks up on the job, and she does BIG TIME, she gets a slap on the wrist that even a 90's cop show with Lorenzo Lamas wouldn't have excused so easily. So when that is paired with the end of the show, it left a really sour taste in my mouth, doubly so for the wife. You don't have to be a rioting ACAB hoodlum to despise her professional actions and realize that Mare has no business being a cop. The gritty tone of the show clashes heavily with her actions without consequences, IMHO, and when you throw in an amateur crime investigation to glue it all together it totally didn't work for me.

They got a nice product placement deal from Yeungling Brewery though, I'm glad I can get it here now

I'm still seeing an excessive amount of venom towards Mare here, despite her not doing anything as bad as say, Jimmy McNulty or Axel Foley or Vic Mackey or Martin Riggs or Tim Bayliss. Or for that matter, Rust Cohle. I think that you are clinging to a double standard.

Totally unfair to categorize Axel Foley and Martin Riggs in with the likes of Vic Mackey. LOL

I would put Vic Mackey as #2 on the list of most evil television characters, behind Tony Soprano. Chris Keller from Oz is surely grabbing the #3 spot.

Mare from Easttown does not register on the Evil meter.

Jackwraith wrote:

Shellhead wrote: Frankly, her community connections and all the attendant drama is actually much more crucial to Mare of Easttown than, say, Marty's failings as a father and husband in True Detective season one.

I'd argue that the case in TD season 1 is actually irrelevant to the story, overall, in a similar fashion to Mare. That, to me, is just a framing device to the essential conflict between Rust and Marty. The former is a nihilist who professes that nothing in life is worthwhile in the face of inevitable entropy, but finds himself compelled to preserve some aspects of the society he so disdains. The latter is a hypocrite who professes the good and noble things to be found in modern America, but does his best to undermine those same values with most of his actions. Their struggle is an attempt to both understand each other and understand themselves with the long-running murder case as just a lever to commit to both of those actions. It's kind of what makes it the classic that it is. Is it important for them to find the killer of Carcosa? Not really. It's more important that these characters evolve and come to grips with their personal worlds. Mare is the same way. This, the Hero's journey, is an essential element of most Western heroic stories, which is what both of them are, to one degree or another.

I would argue the opposite of True Detective. The show is exactly what it says on the tin. The crime and its solution is, at the end, what the show is about and what brought those two back together. Neither of them particularly like each other, nor do they particularly want to understand each other. But as partners they had left that particularly heinous crime unsolved. That was what brought them, as partners, back together.

This ties in with 'detectives as partners'. The Maltese Falcon's Sam Spade spells it out at the end of that movie. Miles was his partner, and whether Sam liked him or not, and whether he loved Brigid or not, a partner does what a partner has to do. True Detective S1 is showing you just that; Rust and Marty aren't friends or mysteries to each other, they're partners, and there's a code.

I just think it's too simplistic to boil it down to just that. I think what you're saying is part of the whole construction, but there's a deeper message there that Pizzolatto was trying to deliver. He had years to develop it with season 1 and only months to do so with season 2, which is why the latter spectacularly failed and the former is regarded as a classic by most who've seen both of them (including me.) It's all well and good to just sit with the "cop show" angle, as I think it exists there in exactly the way you're suggesting. But I think the macro plot of season 1 goes way past that. The crime is essentially just an excuse to explore something larger.

My point to jason10mm was that Mare of Easttown was attempting to do the same thing. The ongoing crimes were just a framing device for a show about her. Focusing too much on that breaks some of the suspension of disbelief (which he noted) when the real story is elsewhere.

According to the BBC, 20% of American cop shows have had a Turn In Your Badge scene:

www.bbc.com/culture/article/20211119-wha...ure-of-the-cop-drama

The article also directly mentions Mare of Easttown.

I am surprised it is that low of a percentage.

Shellhead wrote: I'm still seeing an excessive amount of venom towards Mare here, despite her not doing anything as bad as say, Jimmy McNulty or Axel Foley or Vic Mackey or Martin Riggs or Tim Bayliss. Or for that matter, Rust Cohle. I think that you are clinging to a double standard.

Well, I don't recall opining about 40 years worth of cop shows but tonally stuff like Lethal Weapon, Stallone Segal, Schwarzeneggar, or Beverly Hill Cop films might allow a certain amount of police procedure largess that a more gritty cop show wouldn't. I've not seen The Wire. Mackey is a good example though, the show is FOCUSED on his misdeeds and the extreme lengths he goes through to keep a step ahead of IA. Maybe Denzel in Training Day is another example of an EVIL cop. Mare is just a kinda crappy cop, mostly a crappy person, and exacerbates the troubles around her.

My dislike with Mare specifically is really just an emotional reaction towards her lame cop capability to

So I don't think her gender has any relevance and these days I'd call out another shitty cop show for the same thing. This isn't something like Banshee where the cop aspect is kinda tertiary to the action. Mare puts her cop status on front street, but the underlying crime is so flimsy and is 'solved' by almost sheer luck I just don't see the payoff for her abuses as a cop serving to get 'justice' when the system failed or whatever. The usual cop like this is an alcoholic (check), estranged from family (check), butts heads with co-workers/superiors (check), breaks laws in the pursuit of justice (uncheck), and ultimately their unorthodox ways brings down the one bad guy above the law (BIG uncheck) as payoff for their misdeeds.

Anyway, if you liked it that's great. I see a lot of what looks to be similar stuff on the streamers these days so for me it is a delicate balance to frame cop drama around a crime but really it's about the drama (the French show "Black Spot" on netflix is kinda like this with a bit of a mythology angle as well).

Jackwraith wrote: I just think it's too simplistic to boil it down to just that. I think what you're saying is part of the whole construction, but there's a deeper message there that Pizzolatto was trying to deliver. He had years to develop it with season 1 and only months to do so with season 2, which is why the latter spectacularly failed and the former is regarded as a classic by most who've seen both of them (including me.) It's all well and good to just sit with the "cop show" angle, as I think it exists there in exactly the way you're suggesting. But I think the macro plot of season 1 goes way past that. The crime is essentially just an excuse to explore something larger.

My point to jason10mm was that Mare of Easttown was attempting to do the same thing. The ongoing crimes were just a framing device for a show about her. Focusing too much on that breaks some of the suspension of disbelief (which he noted) when the real story is elsewhere.

I agree; sophomore slump is definitely a thing, for just that reason. Season 2 is a dud.

Re-watching Game of Thrones, and trying to do so with fresh eyes. I first started reading books by George RR Martin back in the late '80s, so I got into Game of Thrones in '96. I ignored the tv show for several seasons because I wanted to finish reading the book version first, knowing that there would be inevitable differences between the two. In December of 2018, I gave in and watched the show with a bit of resentment, though it did a fine job for the first six seasons.

This time, I am attempting to watch the show strictly on its own merits, and not constantly comparing it to the books. And season one holds up great, better than I remembered. I can't forget all the Westeros lore that I absorbed from the books, but I feel that the show is very strategic and restrained in terms of exposition, especially considering the dense world building at hand. It's compelling television, hitting nearly all the story beats solidly and presenting a very memorable cast of unfamiliar faces (for a non-BBC viewer). Although it must be said that Aidan Gillen must have one of the best agents around, landing him memorable roles in both The Wire and Game of Thrones. I meant to a leisurely binge, but I have already watched five episodes in three days.

Is 12 Monkeys tv show worth my time?