What TV SHOWS are you watching?

hotseatgames wrote: From what I recall (it's been a while), after the first couple of episodes of the original series, they dial back on the nudity. You still see people get shot from time to time.

That's cool. I don't object to those things. Far from it. It just felt like they were piling it on because the writers were like "Hey! No censorship! Let's go!", rather than actually making it a part of the story.

Legomancer wrote: Speaking of The Expanse, we're almost done with s1 and I've noticed something weird. I have no idea what's going to happen in it. I know it's a popular show, it has six seasons, people really like it. I don't know a damn thing about it other than what I've seen. I've never seen a character, a meme, a line, a reference, anything else.

Yeah, the way they wrote and shot expanse makes it kinda self defeating for casual viewers, hence the drift towards amazon I suppose. The show tends to push major moments back a bit and do them from a more remote POV, just visually show something in a not too clear way, or give you nothing and explain it in a throw away line later. This allows them to really drive down on character moments and atmosphere, which is great for book readers but I think can leave show only fans wondering a bit.

It's not really a spoiler but all that alien stuff....it stays as back burner plot and scene dressing almost entirely. Quite frankly they could have just called it "experimental nanotech" and 99% of the first 3 seasons would have been unchanged. So temper your expectations about alien empires and stuff and just enjoy the political machinations and newtonian physics.

As for streaming services, i hop around a lot. Amazon was a given, though with the price increase (I think my next annual renewal slips in just under the wire) that is gonna get a rethink. If they insist on wrapping up so much in an annual fee that gets bloated, I can give them a few months off every now and then. Same with netflix. I'm down to foreign shows only, almost anything domestically produced is absolute shite aside from Witcher and Cobra Kai (which is a Sony joint anyway). They definitely could use some time off. We access D+ through a family member which is nice but once that service hits 10+ a month I think they will have a hard time selling it. Their own shows are strictly middle of the road even if they tend to have decent production and casting. Apple is 1 month a year, Hulu not much more than that. HBO I could deal with longer due to all the DC stuff but they are just too expensive as well.

The extensive fragmentation of media delivery makes it really hard for any kind of GoT style water cooler discussion. Binge dropping shows was clearly a mistake. It boosted Netflix early on but crushed coherent discussion of Stranger Things and other shows because folks were all at different places in their viewing. These days I think Netflix and maybe Amazon are the only ones left still doing it for even major tentpole releases (was Reacher all dropped on amazon? That got a TON of marketing so I assumed it was gonna be a weekly drip but maybe not).

I don't see this as sustainable. The sheer amount of money these services are spending is NUTS. Apple and Amazon clearly can afford it, so I'm just guessing everything will eventually consolidate under those two in clear violation of probably a hundred anti-monopoly laws and regs earlier statesmen would have been screaming to the high heavens about.

Jackwraith wrote:

hotseatgames wrote: From what I recall (it's been a while), after the first couple of episodes of the original series, they dial back on the nudity. You still see people get shot from time to time.

That's cool. I don't object to those things. Far from it. It just felt like they were piling it on because the writers were like "Hey! No censorship! Let's go!", rather than actually making it a part of the story.

Thats a pretty common tactic I've seen in a lot of shows. They gotta bait that hook with something and a little skin is the easiest one. Then once the story gets going no one has time for random shower scenes or figuring out how to get back to the strip club for ANOTHER exposition dump.

I finally finished Lovecraft Country. Very good. Despite the heavy core racial narrative, it definitely channels that Arkham Files mad-cap take on Lovecraft stuff straight out of Arkham Horror. Like I mentioned before, I think it would suffer if you came into it think it was the Next Prestige HBO show.

Legomancer wrote: Speaking of The Expanse, we're almost done with s1 and I've noticed something weird. I have no idea what's going to happen in it. I know it's a popular show, it has six seasons, people really like it. I don't know a damn thing about it other than what I've seen. I've never seen a character, a meme, a line, a reference, anything else.

I've never watched a complete minute of Game of Thrones and can rattle off several characters and plot points and shit. I literally can't tell you ANYTHING else about the Expanse. I'm not saying this is good or bad, but it is really really weird.

I have read a lot of science-fiction and fantasy over the course of my life, but never really noticed The Expanse series until the show started on Amazon. By contrast, I've been a fan of George R.R. Martin's writing since the late '80s and jumped on A Game of Thrones when it was first published in 1996. Martin is an award-winning novelist who has also written for television, so his writing translated well to the screen. The Expanse series was written by a pair of writers using a joint pen name of James S.A. Corey. On paper, they have a similar background to Martin, minus the awards. And that quality carries over to their respective shows. Game of Thrones delivered some epic dramatic moments featuring some unforgettable characters, and therefore made a real impact on popular culture. The Expanse was allegedly inspired by somebody's sci-fi role-playing campaign, which explains how a handful of unlikely companions keep ending up in the center of every major conflict in a story spanning our solar system. The Expanse characters are less memorable and while the story has some big moments, they tend to lack the emotional impact of comparable scenes in GoT.

EDIT: I did like The Expanse, but it was never as compelling to watch as Game of Thrones. The final season of Expanse has been out for a while now, and instead of watching it, I am currently re-watching the final season of Game of Thrones. That said, there are times when it feels like James Holden and Jon Snow are the same guy.

Gary Sax wrote: I finally finished Lovecraft Country. Very good. Despite the heavy core racial narrative, it definitely channels that Arkham Files mad-cap take on Lovecraft stuff straight out of Arkham Horror. Like I mentioned before, I think it would suffer if you came into it think it was the Next Prestige HBO show.

Thank you for this brief post. I liked Lovecraft Country (both the show and the book) but got burned out on the racial narrative and bailed two episodes before the end. This despite the fact that I am very opposed to racism and have only been in serious relationships with minority women for the last 25 years. It's good to stay aware of the historical and current mistreatment of minorities and to push back against it, but I don't think that every tv show or movie with minority protagonists needs to be a story about discrimination. It's boring, in a way, because it's always the same story: some idiots think that skin color matters, and use that as an excuse to abuse people. Yawn. I knew from the book that Lovecraft Country was going to deal directly with both racism and the supernatural, but the racism was never as interesting to me as the supernatural element. Lovecraft Country did look spectacular on the screen, and it's good to hear that the show ends well. The jarring anachronistic musical selections bothered me, but now I plan to start over and watch the whole season.

At this point I would recommend new watchers stop The Expanse after season three. It's got a better series ending than the actual series ending.

For me, a ten episode sci-fi/horror/cosmic horror take with black characters in Jim Crow era USA with racial themes and constant racial animosity in the background didn't feel tired or overdone. If it was eight seasons long maybe I'd feel that way grinding into season six of that note.

It was over the top on a number of occasions, but folding in stunning real atrocities like Emmett Till, the Tulsa massacre, etc I felt like effectively made the point that the exaggerated mythos stuff wasn't far off in its violence. Your mileage may vary, of course.

For the first couple episodes, I thought it was brilliant. The side-by-side comparison of the threat of otherworldly terrors with the REAL threat of local police was an excellent juxtaposition. But after a couple more episodes, it took a turn away from that existential dread and into "weekly adventure" territory that left me feeling less like I was watching a Lovecraft-style show and more like I was watching Young Indiana Jones. When they were in the collapsing ancient tomb and racing to get out, I was actually holding my hands up and saying: "What?" out loud, because they had taken a moody, atmospheric setting and turned it into a low-grade D&D scenario. I wasn't disturbed by the themes of racism or discrimination at all (the irony of using Lovecraft in that context is almost too rich to be absorbed.) I was just put off by the serious downturn in the quality of the writing and gave up halfway through.

I agree with you there, Jackwraith, but I leaned into it re: silliness. You don't actually get to see much R rated mythos pulp. Most Lovecraft inspired stuff is pure horror genre, in my experience.

ChristopherMD wrote: At this point I would recommend new watchers stop The Expanse after season three. It's got a better series ending than the actual series ending.

Agreed. I watched season four and a couple episodes of five and it's not worth it. Quality drops off dramatically. Maybe it gets better? I will never know.

As for TV last night, Nathen Chen broke the WR for short skate in men's figure and only because he edged out the 18yo Kamigawa Yuma, who frigging killed a routine to "When You're Smiling" that was so awesome. If you have a chance to watch only one routine, watch Kamigawa's; it is awesome. Speaking of killed (just kidding! only mentally traumatized!), turn 13 in the luge is officially Not Fun.

A little late to the party here, but I enjoyed catching up. I'm a movie junkie (and now that TV has gotten so much better, I guess a TV junkie as well), so I have too many services.
Netflix - I've had it from the beginning when they were just mailing disks. I really should drop it, as I find it's the one I use the least these days.
Disney+ - I got in on a special rate when it first started, and forgot to cancel. But honestly, all the animation, Mando, Marvel shows, and some great documentaries make it a keeper.
HBO Max - I got this one solely for Watchmen, then watched The Leftovers as well. I was just about to cancel it when my internet provider added it for free if I switched to fiberoptic.
Amazon Prime - Long-time subscriber to the service, the streaming was an added bonus.
Kanopy - Free through my library card. Great for foreign and classic films. Also a lot of seasons of Alone, which I became obsessed with for a while.
Peacock - Free version gets me MacGruber, Resident Alien, and the Olympics. Haven't really explored it much.
Apple+ - I picked this up for Ted Lasso and a couple of documentaries (Boys State is excellent). I really need to drop this one.

jeb wrote:

ChristopherMD wrote: At this point I would recommend new watchers stop The Expanse after season three. It's got a better series ending than the actual series ending.

Agreed. I watched season four and a couple episodes of five and it's not worth it. Quality drops off dramatically. Maybe it gets better? I will never know.

I thought it crashed as soon as the stargate event happened. To that point, I was enthralled by the "local vs big government" politics of Belters vs Earth vs Mars; the labor vs ownership angle; the real physics of some of the space travel; and the subplots of potential alien incursions and tech no one understood. It was a great, gritty, soupy collection that apparently strived to show real people in their daily lives of the far future (see: Alien), as well as how corporations would still try to exploit them and governments would still wrangle over who controlled what bit of territory.

And then the stargate opened and it became something completely, utterly different. I can't remember seeing a series of any kind take such an utter turn away from what it had built over multiple seasons. I was completely put off and dropped it.

Jackwraith wrote:

jeb wrote:

ChristopherMD wrote: At this point I would recommend new watchers stop The Expanse after season three. It's got a better series ending than the actual series ending.

Agreed. I watched season four and a couple episodes of five and it's not worth it. Quality drops off dramatically. Maybe it gets better? I will never know.

I thought it crashed as soon as the stargate event happened. To that point, I was enthralled by the "local vs big government" politics of Belters vs Earth vs Mars; the labor vs ownership angle; the real physics of some of the space travel; and the subplots of potential alien incursions and tech no one understood. It was a great, gritty, soupy collection that apparently strived to show real people in their daily lives of the far future (see: Alien), as well as how corporations would still try to exploit them and governments would still wrangle over who controlled what bit of territory.

And then the stargate opened and it became something completely, utterly different. I can't remember seeing a series of any kind take such an utter turn away from what it had built over multiple seasons. I was completely put off and dropped it.

The stargate was an exciting idea, and the writers could have done almost anything with it. By choosing to zero in on one particular settlement on a planet, the scope of the show shifted from epic to parochial.

And now... an Olympic ski jumping scandal:

www.msn.com/en-us/sports/winter-olympics...ilsignout&li=BBnb7Kz

To paraphrase an old joke about boxing and corruption, every time the Olympics gets a black eye, I wonder how many eyes the Olympics have left.