What TV SHOWS are you watching?

ChristopherMD wrote: Is 12 Monkeys tv show worth my time?

No. Just watch the film again.

The movie is better, but I still enjoyed the 12 Monkeys tv show. Plenty of action, an interesting plot, and a better handling of time travel than most science-fiction shows. That said, I haven't seen the final season yet. (The library doesn't have it yet.)

Episode 2 of Book of Fett is LIGHTYEARS ahead of ep1. Still ain't great but I think Robert Rodriguez just isn't cut out to direct this stuff.

They are totally nerfing what fett ought(?, is only rumored?) to be but I still dig it. Maybe he only hunted criminals before and Solo was as sympathetic as it got. Or maybe Vader didn't check references too much when he hired him and was just impressed by the armor.

Finished season 2 of Witcher. Eh… I can’t care about anything happening when Geralt is not on the screen.

Finished Wheel of Time Season 1. I'm out. Anyone who is familiar with the novels want to opine about the show? It was just there.

I heard that the actor playing Matt left the show, which led to some final ep wonkiness. Regardless, I think the main problem with the show as a show was that it split its attention too much. Too many characters getting lip service and then having big emotional moments that felt unearned. I think it would have be efitted mightily from either more eps or sticking more closely to moraine or rand.

As an adaptation it's too early to tell but it doesn't really FEEL like WoT to me. The yin-yang nature of magic is off, the underlying threat of the dark one wasn't well developed, and the post cataclysm nature of the world to differentiate it from "generic fantasy world 12544" wasn't exploited IMHO.

That's not even getting into casting or costume which is much more divisive.

Still, I'm down for season 2 but I hope they learn.

Finished Lost in Space. Overall I really liked this show but damn, they must have gotten wind of cancelation with 2 eps to go because it seems like they packed a season and a half into those 2 eps. So we get a resolution to most everything which is nice, but it is INCREDIBLY disjointed which is unfortunate.

It's nice though that they had the kids, now mostly young adults, make a convincing argument for why they don't really need to be kids anymore and can ignore their parents. The family dynamic remained strong, Don become largely superfluous, and they at least acknowledge that Judy and especially Penny are like 20+ years old at this point and shouldn't act like precocious tweens but rather as grown ass women.

It was frustrating, but understandable as a family show, that NO ONE makes any weapons this season. They wanted a different resolution but damn, all that tech and no one could whip up a rail gun to blast all those homicidal robots????

Also finished Silent Sea also on Netflix. Throw science COMPLETELY out the window on this one but it still has a lot of good moments. There are a lot of very similar looking Korean men in the same suits in this so keeping the cast distinct required some attention, but they did a good job with everyone aside from the lead(?) Dr. Song (the actress from Sens8 IIRC) who is relegated to just staring at the camera for uncomfortable lengths of time in practically every scene until the final ep when they finally let her loose to get emotional.

Nothing in the show makes a lot of sense but it is sorta internally consistent and hits on a lot of cool themes so I think this relatively short show is worth watching if you want a hit of science fantasy a bit different than the usual American show.

jason10mm wrote: Also finished Silent Sea also on Netflix. Throw science COMPLETELY out the window on this one

The genre isn't called Science Fact.

Yeah, but it is called Science Fiction. If it wanders too far off the rails of known or extrapolated science, it doesn't feel like science fiction anymore - it's fantasy. Yeah, we're getting close to "Is a hot dog a sandwich?" territory, but sometimes you want a reuben, not a reuben-adjacent hot dog.

Well I totally get that the crux of Silent Sea is a substance that behaves NOTHING like anything we have ever seen. It is alien in the true sense of the word.

But we are talking about the future here. I mean, the fucking moon base itself is a wonder that we can only imagine in our time. It's like showing an iPhone to a pilgrim.

Yeah, I hear you, but there are still some basic aws of physics and thermodynamics that they could have followed.

For example, when they are flying out to the moon the ship is clearly shown to be under thrust yet folks are floating around weightless. They say the "water virus" or whatever it was stops on dead tissue yet blood gets it going quite a bit. Where exactly is all this water mass coming from? It isn't converting other stuff into water, the water is appearing out of thin air.

Still, I did like the "Earth Gravity Activated" bit for the lunar station just to cover why they weren't in "moon walking slo-mo" the entire time and the overall set design was suitably sci-fi. The drama and exploration was satisfying and the end reveals, though fairly easy to predict, were also well done. I'm getting real tired of the continual "flashback to reveal a new plot angle" technique, but I realize that it is here to stay.

My son even called this out with Boba Fett. He flashes back to the sand people and then, WITHIN A FLASHBACK, flashes back to an even earlier time. It's like Inception level deep

jason10mm wrote: Episode 2 of Book of Fett is LIGHTYEARS ahead of ep1. Still ain't great but I think Robert Rodriguez just isn't cut out to direct this stuff.

They are totally nerfing what fett ought(?, is only rumored?) to be but I still dig it. Maybe he only hunted criminals before and Solo was as sympathetic as it got. Or maybe Vader didn't check references too much when he hired him and was just impressed by the armor.

Agreed that Episode 2 was much better. My problem is that the "present day" stuff in Mos Espa is boring as fuck. Fett walks around, talks to people, nothing really happens. There's no tension or conflict to any of it. It's all just surface-level typical tough-guy posturing. The flashback stuff (which makes up about 90% of this particular episode) is a lot more fun and entertaining, despite being bog-standard, predictable Noble Savage tropes. OF COURSE Boba Fett was going to prove his worth and get adopted into the tribe. Was there ever any doubt?

The production design on this show is astonishing, and manages to make up in large part for the terribly weak storytelling / dialogue. They're playing everything so safe, by simply recycling things from the original trilogy, but which just enough charm and visual wit that I can't help but enjoy it. Oh look, Jabba's cousins are here to fight Boba Fett. A Hutt crime lord? Yawn. But ... they're twins, and they're wrapped around each other, and one is fanning herself with a tiny little fan, and the other is moping his brow with .... a rodent of some sort?!? And they have a badass Wookiee lieutenant with a freaking enormous blaster? Okay, that's interesting.

Clearly the effects guys and set designers and costumers are having a blast. I just wish the scripts were better.

Just finished Dexter: New Blood. It ended mostly as I expected it to end, and I'd say overall it was a decent follow-up. A far cry from the original series, but worth the watch if you are a Dexter fan.

I've watched all 9 (currently) available episodes of Showtime's Yellowjackets. This show is WILD, and it has a habit of continually raising the stakes, making you wonder just how crazy it is going to get.

Without giving any spoilers, the plot centers around a girl's soccer team taking a plane to the national tournament in 1996. The plane crashes, and... let's just say that things go downhill from there.

Meanwhile the plot jumps forward to 2021, showing us some survivors, and how the incident has impacted pretty much every aspect of their lives.

Highly recommended, and I'll warn you that most episodes feature a scene of intense gore. Maybe it's not intense, based on your opinion, but they tend to surprise you with it.

Yellowjackets is indeed wild.

I think it's a blast but I'm worried it will burn itself out before it reaches the proposed five seasons.