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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.
Star Trek The Next Generation S07E01 is so kitsch it's good. Evil Data, Evil twin brother, it's like a soap opera. In S07E02 Picard gets to be James Caan in a Misery subplot that is quite decent. Kathy Bates's counterpart is highly competent. There's a dark edge too. I even like the twist. Great TNG.
here I talk about true crime and triggering subjects related to true crime
The HBO documentary The Vow about the sex cult of the same name (which you may know by the absurd acronym NXIVM) is excellent, after watching so many Netflix true crime that all look the same I had forgotten the difference that true authorship and dedication to the craft can make. That's an odd cult too, a unique blend that managed to control without much of a mysticism. Instead, the leader employed persuasive quasi-scientific rhetoric to seduce and manipulate people.
A lot of people think of cults as something very dark and immediately recognizable as such, but if that was the case they wouldn't have many followers. The truth is that many cults provide tangible benefits in the short term, and it's great that this doc takes this into account. If this doc had been made by Netflix, it would start with a gloomy soundtrack and gruesome testimonies by police detectives. By showing how positive and exhilarating these first experiences can be, the filmmakers do good service in educating the audience.
They also focus on how the people that were indoctrinated were highly educated, intelligent, and successful. That is a reality in many cults because cult leaders are extremely lazy and incompetent, and need competent people to actually run the show. So yeah, being super smart can make you more likely to be recruited. Cult leaders are very good at saying what you wanna hear and they'll just cold-read you and work on whatever you put out. They don't need to be smarter than you much in the same way that you don't need to know physics to play Albert Einstein in a movie.
Don't get me wrong, I have no admiration for cult leaders, but I must confess that their demented psyche is puzzling to me. For someone to be able to put on an act like that, such a long-term con, it is basically like playing a character 24/7, two decades in this case. Every gesture, every inflection, and every word choice slowly creeps into their victims' minds until they follow every command. I have to say, cult leaders cause me greater disgust than serial killers nowadays. Killers take lives, cult leaders convince you to take your own. This seems more perverse to me.
Also, I'm convinced that there is a strong link between cults and misogyny. I've read, listened to, and watched a lot about cults, and never have I seen a cult in which women are not victimized to a much greater degree than men -- even when there are women in the leadership.
I love Data and Lore! Those episodes really show what a great actor Brent Spiner is.
Yeah, and I love that TNG made use of the very obvious associations between Data and the Borg. I remember it was also explored in a movie, but I'm not sure it was good. TV episodes are allowed to get silly.
I gotta rewatch the movies.
The movies are great, too. Great compliment to the series. I’m currently watching DS9 for the first time, and we just got to the sixth season where things start getting really spicy.
Oh DS9 is a treat ;)
I envy you, watching for the first time.
Hah! That’s what I’ve heard. It definitely took more time to grow on me than TNG, but I just ordered the bits for my Major Kira Halloween costume since I recently cut my hair short and she’s become one of my favorite characters.
That is wonderful. If you're willing to share, I would love to see the result of your Kira costume. I'd entirely understand if you'd rather not divulge your image online, of course.
I'll definitely share. :)
She Hulk Season Finale, it goes full She Hulk in a way I didn't think Disney would let fly. But Jen's final exam boss fight borrows a bit from Captain Marvel in that she puts her foot down and makes a conscious choice to handle things her way, and since that has always been a part of her character, it's not really a test of her character. But I still appreciate the spectacle and audacity, so I guess I liked it.
I binged the first season of Rings of Power in the run up to the season finale last night and I loved every single minute of it. Don't understand the hate it was getting, but I'm also fairly casual as far as Tolkien fans go. Haven't read all of the books, big fan of the film trilogy, picked up some of the deeper lore from various discussions on reddit.
I would classify myself as a relatively knowledgeable Tolkien lore buff, and I quite enjoyed the series. There were a few things that I was hoping they wouldn't do that they seem to have done (see below) but overall I think a lot of the hate is fairly silly. There are a lot of complaints about not being true to the lore, but the lore of Tolkien's world is remarkably messy and contradictory and there are about 30 different versions of it. I think this one is okay. There are some things that are a bit clunky, but in general I think people just like to hate things.
A bit that involves some spoilers for Rings of Power and I guess Tolkien lore in general
I didn't want Halbrand to be Sauron - in fact, I didn't want to see Sauron at all - but I'm not particularly disappointed by it. I just think it would have been more in the spirit of Tolkien to avoid having Sauron make an appearance. In the Lord of the Rings books, despite being the nominal character of the entire series, he does not really have any "screen" time; I thought that would be good for the first season, though I realize that "Annatar" would certainly have to make an appearance somewhere.
I wanted more of a resolution to Adar - some more information on who he was and why he was there. I guess that will come. I also wanted him to be Maeglin or some other named character, and not just a kidnapped elf-turned-orc, but it's also okay for him to be a show-only character.
I thought the time compression made a lot of sense. I have read a lot of complaints about that, but you just can't have a show cover thousands of years in an effective way.
Galadriel is a big point of contention, but she fits in with a bunch of characterizations of Galadriel from the story. Celeborn being gone was a bit out of left field, but I hope that they borrow a bit of other lore - there was an elf named Glorfindel who was so amazing that he died, went to the Halls of Mandos, and was released back to Middle Earth in a new body. I hope they take that story for Celeborn, perhaps having him die at the hands of dwarves, which would help explain his incredible distrust of them.
The only thing that I actually disliked was their all-but-directly-confirming that the Stranger is Gandalf. I think that feels like pandering. I have some hope that he is just another of the Istari, but he directly quotes Gandalf from the movies, and his tussle with the Morgoth cultists was very similar to the fight between Gandalf and Saruman, so I think it's pretty much guaranteed that he's Gandalf. I guess people do want a familiar face.
The Guardian published a pretty harsh review today and made this point in conclusion:
"A while ago, someone on the financial side of the television industry reminded me that Amazon isn’t a television company. It’s a mail order business that dabbles in TV to boost its cred. The Rings of Power seems to be a perfect case in point, as if Amazon dumped a billion dollars into it for the headlines, then ignored a lot of the details. The frustrating thing is that there is clearly so much potential here. I just don’t know if I have it in me to watch any more to see if it is ever realised."
I found myself agreeing with the article, which focuses on issues outside the lore. The pacing was haphazard - sometimes really fast and other times at a crawl, with unnecessary filler. Most importantly, the writing did not have much substance. I can tolerate their need to focus on emphasising profound and poetic dialogue elements, as is fitting for a high-fantasy setting, but it lacked subtlety and depth. To me the show is one to be enjoyed 'at face value', which in its favour makes it easy to enjoy, but I found this to be too superficial to be invested in the show. I don't think I'll be watching the second season, to be honest.
So as I said in the other thread, I watched the first three episodes of Severance and it was giving me too much anxiety. I didn’t need that in my life. So then I just started re-watching Ted Lasso.
I watched the first episode of Loot which was... fine. It wasn’t funny enough for me to keep watching.
I saw the first episode of [Schmigadoon!(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKG0RodrzVo). I don’t know if I’ll keep watching it, I was a little disappointed by it.
I also saw Werewolf by Night, that was good. One of the few things I’ve liked from MCU’s output recently. Directed by Michael Giaachino who’s a composer who did the scores for Up and Ratatouille and The Batman. It was fun. It was a nice little thing, I wish they’d make more stuff like that.
I haven’t found a show I wanna watch so I’ve just been watching movies.
FTFY: Schmigadoon!
Next Level Chef
Can't even remember the last time I flicked the remote onto an American reality television show. Needed some fluff to watch the other night and this fit the bill. It's so far removed from everything else in our viewing schedule at the moment, and that's kinda why I fell for its frenetic charm. Even Gordon Ramsay somehow works!
Grand Designs – Årets Hus
Love the host, Mark Isitt, for the Swedish version of Grand Designs. This current format defies the template of following self-builders, by instead focusing on four houses each episode that are up for the nomination of House of the Year. But it feels more like I'm watching for Mark's increasingly obscure skits to camera inbetween the serious deliberating...
Andor is really good so far. Maybe I'm biased since I'm a Star Wars fan who recently discovered that Rebels and the last few seasons of Clone Wars are great, actually. But I honestly feel like Andor works as a standalone series even if you haven't seen anything Star Wars.
I also enjoyed the Mandalorian, but often felt like I was watching someone playing a video game doing side quests. At least part of that was the structure of the episodes. Andor, on the other hand, feels like watching 3-episode movies.