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TV Tuesdays Free Talk
Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
The Rehearsal from Nathan Fielder is out and its amazing.
The Bob's Burgers Movie was pretty great if you like the series. Apart from shadows, it was the same as the show.
I need to get going on Black Bird
Plus 1 for The Rehearsal. My favorite thing about Nathan for You was how Nathan was able to extract these incredibly genuine moments of humanity from people in the most absurd situations. The Rehearsal puts a spotlight on those moments and makes something extraordinary out of them. It's like watching someone live out every scenario they can imagine when having an imaginary conversation, then it puts you in the shoes of that person and makes you feel the full weight of something that you'd otherwise think is insignificant. It's genius, and there is nothing else like it on TV.
I think Fielder found the perfect stars for all of his shows by cashing in on the people who actually answer Craigslist posts/listings.
@deknalis said it nice re: deconstructing anxiety.
first episode of the The Rehearsal was one of the best TV episodes I've seen in years. It was like a deconstructed top down view of social anxiety projected onto physical spaces.
Spoilers
The moment when he actually reveals the secret and she easily accepts it got me genuinely teary eyed. So many times in my life where I've run a conversation through in my head a million times, making the theoretical fallout worse and worse, only for the actual confrontation to be basically nothing. No one cares about your mistakes more than you do.a number of the businesses have closed down, but these people know what they're getting into and can back out at any point.
Poo ice cream is still the success of the century :)
Finally finished Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The second half and the ending are quite unremarkable. Competent, bureaucratic. Just okay. The Falcon/Captain America suit is absolutely horrendous, making it very hard to take his terrible social justice speech seriously. It's incredibly heavy-handed too. The show spends 5 and a half episodes being very contained, but, when Falcon becomes the Captain, the moral lessons get really cheesy. They're correct, don't get me wrong, but it's very hard to write inspiring dialogue properly[1]. The U.S. Agent was the most interesting character for me, Wyatt Russell does a great job painting a tridimensional personality, slowly changing into the tortured villain from the comics.
The third season of The Umbrella Academy was exhilarating. This show never fails in delivering great entertainment. Before watching I was prejudiced against it, felt like an X-Men rip-off, but the show is nothing of the sort. Instead, what we get is a brilliant, moving, often humorous reinvention of super-hero and science fiction clichés with a touch of The Royal Tenembauns and a lot of time travel. I really liked how they dealt with Elliot Page's transition in-universe, everything was on point, very natural and endearing. Now I think the X-Men could learn a lot from this show. Hopefully, it won't succumb to the Netflix curse and will get a fourth season.
[1] For an example of good dialogue with on-the-nose moral lessons, Superman & Lois gets this very right in the first season.
I've been watching Barry, and am at S2EP5
I saw clips involving Barry and NoHo Hank (played by the apparently exceptionally talented Anthony Carrigan) on YouTube, and it's a far better show than I expected it to be with a top-notch cast. You almost know whose scene it is because a given actor will steal it, and the direction also helps to focus you on the current star of the show, even if it is techincally Barry's show. Also quite a few episodes are directed by the excellent Hiro Murai (who I think directs the most episodes behind Bill Hader) and when I see his name in the credits of an episode I just think "Yeah, that feels about right." Anthony Carrigan, Bill Hader, and Henry Winkler are just absolutely perfect.
Better Call Saul: I don't talk to my TV. Before the break, I went "Oh SHIT." And the show just kept the energy up. I can't say much about a consistently brilliant show, but even if we've been allowed to know where the show ultimately winds up (BB season 2 ep 8, essentially), I don't doubt that whatever stories Saul is tied up in are going to end phenomenally when the end of the season rolls around, and I'm also not full of my usual concern with looking forward to it.