What TV SHOWS are you watching?

The Beatles’ Get Back. A fair warning — when you see Yoko reach for a microphone, dive for the remote, or dive out of the room. Don't be caught in the middle.

I found the show worth watching, but I’ll admit I fast forwarded through parts of it. The pacing is uneven, due to the nature of the event. The thing I took away most was how much more of a hard worker Paul was than the others.

I can’t quite figure out what happened with the last two episodes of this season of Stranger Things. The writing & pacing felt so uneven, like they didn’t give some scenes enough room to breathe but others just languished with awkward exposition. It just felt… off somehow, and the final scene didn’t really make me anticipate the next season. Bummer.

agreed.

also - lame-o. My daughter was telling me all her friends were messaging with tears and sad blah blah. Yeah.... I don't think so.

mc wrote: agreed.

also - lame-o. My daughter was telling me all her friends were messaging with tears and sad blah blah. Yeah.... I don't think so.

Yeah, I was real hype to watch this yesterday. It was all over the place. It was a giant letdown. So these last two episodes are literally just to setup another season. It better come soon or this will all be worthless.

I'll commit some heresy and say that I liked Stranger Things s4 vol2. I thought it was engaging all the way through, and the characters felt like they were making real choices.

The lack of resolution at the end didn't bother me. I think it gets a little predictable if I know that the Big Bad is going to be defeated at the end of a season, then next season it's on to the next one. So leaving me guessing has me a bit more invested in S5, since I don't know what's going to happen. As long as a show doesn't descend into LOST-levels of just faffing about.

Started watching Star Trek: Discovery. I'm not a dedicated Trek fan (although I do LOVE Star Trek: Ascendancy), but I've seen all of the original series, the 70s cartoon, and Next Gen; often multiple times. I lost interest in DS9 somewhere in season 2, but went back later and watched all of the Dominion War stuff. Similarly, I lost interest in Voyager somewhere in season 1 and have never gone back to it. I haven't seen Enterprise or anything else more recent than that, so this was my first foray into genuinely modern Trek.

On the one hand, I appreciated the diversity of the cast. OTOH, I thought making Michael not only another human trained in the Vulcan fashion but a human revenge-bound against the Klingons trained in the Vulcan fashion (aka a simple fusion of Kirk and Spock) is a bit tired. Allowing her to live within her emotions, both because of who she is, as well as not burdened with the role of command (or, for that matter, any status at all within Starfleet) is a smart choice from a story construction perspective. No one has to keep asking why the CAPTAIN of the ship keeps being the one going on the most dangerous missions and suffering the consequences. Four lights, yo. But setting her up on the parallel life path to so many prominent character before her (including Worf from NG and DS9) makes one wonder why they couldn't have really broken away and done something that didn't involve Sarek or anyone else?

Similarly, while I appreciate both the return to a deep look within Klingon culture and an explanation of how the empire became unified again, I have to arch an eyebrow at the significant change in their appearance. While I understand the desire to not keep returning to the same old visual tropes (No one who's an alien just because they have wrinkles on their nose yet!) and for each series to have a visual identity, it also makes me think that the Klingons must be the fastest-evolving race in the galaxy or there's some deeper meaning behind how they reverted to this hairless, multi-colored, and far more alien appearance beyond simply production economics (i.e. this kind of makeup is now relatively cheaper and easier, so we're doing it.) In the original series, they were just mean-looking dudes with forked goatees, but they've had the long-haired, prominent forehead-ridge look since Star Trek III. I'm not objecting, since the visuals are great. Just kind of wondering.

I'm only to episode 3, but that held two of the greatest gifts. Not only are we back to the realpolitik of Star Trek VI (best of the films; fight me) but the most prominent indulger in that perspective among the cast is the captain played by Jason Isaacs. He's a fantastic character actor, as all of his characters tend to have both gravitas and intrigue suffusing them. His performance as Zhukov in Death of Stalin is among my all-time favorites of any actor as anyone. So, it looks interesting and I think I'll stick with it for a while and see where it goes.

I just couldn't take ST:D. Something about the way they film it and edit the dialogue is just a big turn off for me. And thats not even getting into they way they blitz through the "Star Trekie" parts of discovery, exploration, and negotiation to head straight into poorly shot action and wierdly crafted drama. Those first 2 episodes, particualrly finding a bizarre alien craft inside an asteroid belt, could have been half a season at least of proper trek, instead the cool stuff is compressed into 5 minutes and we get a lot of nonsense about vulcan transgalactic communications and ugghhh BOORING.

Star Trek: Lower Decks is where it's at for nu-trek for me. Not only does it tweak the Star Trek formula it with some well aimed jabs, it also RESPECTS the formula and knows that there needs to be a love of science and exploration at the heart of each episode.

Not seen Strange New Worlds yet but have mild hopes. Orville apparently is headed towards more serious fare this season which is promising, the first 2 seasons were more TNG than anything made since if you look past the awkward fart jokes.

I'll join in on the Stranger Things Season 4 pile-on. The last episode in particular fell a little flat for me, not because it left us waiting for Season 5, but because the multiple climactic threads (6?) weakened the ending. Steven Soderbergh can pull this sort of thing off, but it's too many balls in the air for the Duffer Brothers.

Started a new show called Dark Winds yesterday with a good first episode. It's a 70s cop show (tribal police) with an indianized flavor of evil magic in the biggest reservation, so beautiful landscape vistas, cool cars and lots of opportunities for jabs and references to old western cinema. 'What indians?' -'Exactly'.
Apparently R. Redford and G.R.R. Martin paid for it, it looks just great and isn't too taxing on the brain plot-wise. Will look into it some more. No acting yet, though is fine, really.

It's on our front burner, good to hear good things about it. We live right next to Navajo nation and I have tons of Navajo students so it's extra local for us. Writers room all indigenous backgrounds.

GRRM is extremely active in his long-time community of northern New Mexico, so I'd imagine that speaks to his interest in helping this along.

I have a very strong love/hate relationship with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Love:
The characters, the stories, the self-contained episodes, the feel, the sense of discovery, the adventure, a sense of real science even. All of that feels like good ol' Trek to me.

Hate:
All of the restrictions they forced on themselves by using "prequel" characters. I love the character of Nurse Chappel (or Thirst Trappel, as I call her), but she is NOT the same character from TOS. Same with Spock. Same with Uhura. Why did they force those characters into the story they wanted to tell? Why couldn't they just have it be a different ship with no ties to the future? Why did they replace blond, white Lt. Kyle with an Asian actor? Why, oh why? It drives me crazy.

I try really hard to just turn off my TOS knowledge and just enjoy it, but it's difficult. I basically just have to give everyone alternate names and backgrounds.

I tried watching ST DISCOVERY and gave it a season or so. But for every good part, for example the scenes with Lorca/Jason Isaacs or Michelle Yeoh, there was way too much subtitled Klingon in shiny disco outfits - WTF was that all about ? and the over emphasis on Burnham IMO. Sure the prior treks had captains who were ostensibly the stars but some eps they would be more background characters while other cast members were given episodes to shine. ST:D seems to be too focused on her as well as trying too hard to be a long arc show . Not to mention the overly dark lighting .

Once the free trial ran out I didn't miss it, let alone feel compelled to re up to paying for CBS/Paramount/Taylor Sheridan network or whatever the fuck it is.

I'm like the only person who likes Discovery, if you liked the first few eps I would stick with it. The Burnham-Saru relationship *really* works for me. It is super fun that there are multiple captains in the show with vastly different leadership styles, I love it. To be fair, I haven't seen the most recent season yet which everyone hates.

RobertB wrote: I'll join in on the Stranger Things Season 4 pile-on. The last episode in particular fell a little flat for me, not because it left us waiting for Season 5, but because the multiple climactic threads (6?) weakened the ending. Steven Soderbergh can pull this sort of thing off, but it's too many balls in the air for the Duffer Brothers.

Add me to the pile-on as well. I really enjoyed the first batch of episodes in this season. Even though every episode was a little long-ish, I never felt it, if that makes sense.

These last two episodes though ... different story. I don't know if it was the editing or the writing, but they felt sluggish in places where they should have been brisk, and they felt rushed in places where they should have slowed down to let scenes breath a bit.

The problem may have been the many concurrent stories, as the cast got ever-more fragmented into smaller and smaller groups. Some of those groups felt like a waste of time, especially the ones more tangential to the plot (i..e, Hopper and Joyce). And the California squad was just brutal to get through. Their whole story was boring, and I kinda hate all those characters now. It was like when Game of Thrones would flip over to the Bran plot and I would just have to sigh and muscle through it, in the hopes of flipping back to Tyrion soon.

I also don't think the emotional beats landed as well as they should have. No spoilers, but the one character who we thought died, but then didn't, but then did, but then didn't, but then ended up in a coma ... how the fuck am I supposed to feel after all of that?!? It was so muddled and confusing.

My season MVP goes to Max, with Nancy and her sawed-off shotgun getting a shout out!

I only watched the first season of Stranger Things, and found it to be just okay. I don't need a tv show to validate my hobbies, and I don't need fictional characters to represent me. I just want to spend time watching shows that are actually good or even great, regardless of genre.