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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.
I don't remember if it was explained in the show but in the books you learn that the guns they use inside of ships use plastic ammo so they don't damage the hull.
I never read the books, was never a big sci-fi guy yet really enjoyed the TV series.
I just watched the ending of Taskmaster Series 14. My plex server is currently offline so I have been watching at the speed that series are released on YouTube, which I find generally acceptable.
The end result was exactly what I predicted when they released the lineup, with one surprise; John Kearns did finish one place better than I expected. Taskmaster remains one of my absolute favourite things to watch, and I've been enjoying catching up on some things that I haven't seen, such as Ferm Brady's AMA.
I'm hoping that this week I'll finish revamping the plex server, and then will likely jump into Ted Lasso.
Two of my absolute favorites! I'd hoped for a long time that they'd have John Kearns on Taskmaster, and he did not disappoint. That whole season was such a joy. Honestly, they all are, but I think 14 is my favorite so far.
Speaking of joy, I hope you like Ted Lasso as much as I did. I've been trying to put off a rewatch, but I don't think I'm going to be able to resist much longer.
As for what I'm currently watching, it's mostly just random Taskmaster episodes at the moment.
I'm really looking forward to Ted Lasso - I've heard only good things about it, and it's the exact sort of show that usually appeals to me and to my wife, so I'm looking forward to it. We've been slowly making our way through The Mentalist, which I would say is a solid C+ show, but nothing special. We have only been watching one or two episodes a month lately, so it feels like we have been watching this show for years, and it has certainly become a slog.
Have you heard the radio comedy Lasties? It features John Kearns and Tim Key in a "Series of comic plays". (I don't think these are geo-blocked, I hope they aren't).
I've heard of it but haven't listened to it yet. It's definitely on my list of things to check out, though.
I've finally been going through Cyberpunk: Edgerunners on Netflix! I normally have a very long list of issues I have with anime in general, and Edgerunners honestly breaks quite a few of them, but it's so over the top and ridiculous sometimes that I don't even care as much. I'm not too sure how much of my enjoyment is based on my recent trip to Japan but I'll give a couple more different anime a chance again after I get through Edgerunners
As someone that is also generally not a fan of anime, likely for the same reasons, I'd like to recommend two that you are no doubt already aware of.
Fullmetal Alchemist (2004) : I suggest this over the more recent FMA: Brotherhood because it is, in my own words, less anime-ey. Better character development and less obnoxious than others I've tried. I don't care that it doesn't follow the manga 100% because I didn't read the manga and don't care to. It's a great standalone show.
Berserk (1997): It's gritty, gory, and deals with some heavy adult themes. Admittedly my opinion on this one may be skewed as I am a huge Dark Souls fan and the series has drawn much inspiration from Berserk. Only downside here is the original author is dead and you never really get any closure on the story. It's a fantastic show nonetheless.
Thank you for the suggestions! I've definitely heard of both of those and have been recommended them before, I'll try them and see! I usually try to give anime at least 3 or 4 episodes before giving up, would you say that it's enough time for both of those series or should I get further than that?
I think 4 episodes should be plenty, especially in the case of FMA which I imagine hooks most viewers in the very first episode.
As someone who is not at all a typical anime fan, I'd like to mention that I truly enjoyed Death Note, Your Lie in April, Aggretsuko (which has some similarities to the Office). Don't watch them without reading a quick summary or review beause these are very different shows, but I think that they are each excellent.
good shout outs! I've gotten recommended Death Note as well, I'll probably get through that whenever I can
I can't believe it. I can't believe I'm binge watching the fucking Vampire Diaries... I mean, it's one of those shows you ironically mention to your friends when talking about those 00s series that were just another vampire/werewolf/monster show. Yet here I am, enthralled in Stefan, Damon, Elena, Klaus and the others' stories. Today alone, according to my phone, I spent 5 hours and 39 minutes on this show. It is true that I am a bored 18 year old kid with nothing to do in the summer, but I was kind of expecting myself to spend that time watching more films, other better (subjective opinion?) series or something else. But yeah, that's that. Wrapped up season 4 today, either starting S5 at midnight or tomorrow, so that's gonna be fun. p.s. it's not a very good show, the decisions the characters take at times are just ridiculous, the pathways and the mental gymnastics, but it has a certain charm!
Then again, Supernatural was one of my favorite shows. Yep, all 15 seasons. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Vampire diaries actually has great storylines and situations. It's not just a young teen show like most would think. It was one of my favorite shows to watch live back in the day. If you want to try it, there's a spinoff called 'The Originals' which is mostly excellent.
To anyone that loved playing the first two Twisted Metal games, don't go into the show expecting it to be anything like the games. Still a decent watch, and they set up season 2 to be much more like the games so I will continue watching. The writing needs a bit of work for most characters, though. Hopefully the striking writers will come back with a stronger script after the strikes gets settled. Who knows when that is going to be...?
Just got done binging silo and twisted metal. I enjoyed both a lot. Twisted metal was better than I was anticipating. Looking forward to a potential season 2. Started on Good Omens and enjoying that too.
I rewatched Justified earlier this year when I heard a new limited series was coming out (City Primeval on FX). Really looking forward to it, but I'll probably wait until they're finished airing so I can binge at my own pace. I plan on going in blind, but hope it's as good as the original series was.
Just watched the first episode of This Fool on Hulu. Very Los Angeles hood setting and characters. I thought it was very funny.
I'm in the second season of the Bear and I love it.
I've binged two seasons of From
The first season was enjoyable horror nonsense. It has obvious comparisons with "Lost" - people are stuck in a place, they can't leave, there's lots of weird stuff happening. And then it adds monsters. The second season doesn't bother to try to build on the details of the first season, it just dumps even more weirdness in. New characters are added by the literal bus-load.
There's a lot of missed opportunity and really dumb story telling. People enjoy watching a little bit of world building, so here we want to see "How do people survive if there are no shops?" There are about 50 - 100 people in this village, and food is handwaved away with shots of a small greenhouse, 4 goats, and 5 chickens. In the background of some scenes we see 2 or 3 people gently working in a field. And energy? How do they heat their homes, cook food, etc? They live in a forest, there's at least one axe available, but they're not using wood to run a generator. The electricity is magic. The outlets / plug sockets in the walls are not real, and wires on appliances have no copper. This weird place just gives them electricity and water. (There's some stuff about powering a radio transmitter which is basically "we're going to use [magic] to power it because uh that's how this world works" which is either really lazy or really dumb or maybe both).
There are lots of characters, and we get teeny tiny glimpses of their past. But the past of these characters is barely used in the show. One of the main characters used to be an engineer. Cool, let's see him engineer some stuff! But nope, we get to see him nailing bits of wood together to make an antenna tower and that's about it.
I'm enjoying the show despite this stuff, but it does convert it from something I'm actively watching into background noise I have on while I'm doing other stuff.
I am glad it got renewed for a 3rd season, and I'll probably watch that, but I'll wait until it's all out and binge it, because I don't think I'll tolerate watching it week to week.
I would just present a slightly different take. I am a big fan of the books, and I enjoyed the TV show quite a bit. I think that there were definitely adjustments made for being on the screen that had to happen, and I think of it as another spinning of the Wheel - not the exact same as the age of the books, but one telling the same general story.
What exactly about it did you not like?
I only watched two episodes. Did they make any changes to the One Power or did they just decide that maybe Lews Therin reincarnated as a Saidar user?
In the show they play up the unreliability of the Karaethon Cycle and other prophecies. Rafe Judkins has confirmed that readers already know who the Dragon Reborn is, and that isn't changing, but for narrative purposes having some uncertainty in the prophecies world for the show.
It's possible that they'll still do something like change the concept of ta'veren to be "heads of the Dragon" or something, but I don't think that's the case. I think most of the uncertainty is just so that the show is interesting to non book readers.
So long story short, they didn't change the One Power, or decide that Lews Therin could be a woman, but they decided that people in the universe don't really know.
Why wouldn't people in Randland know? They certainly know about Saidar and Saidin.
They know about Saidar, but Saidin had been taboo for the thousand years. And I don't think that there is any knowledge in the books about rebirth and how it works; most of the "rules" of reincarnation are getting interviews with Jordan. In the books, it isn't even explicitly stated in the prophecies that the Dragon Reborn would be a man, it was just a rule introduced by the author that people took for granted.
I don't think it particularly detracts from the story for people to have to guess who the Dragon is, but this may just be another "agree to disagree" sorry of thing. I don't really care all that much about keeping the illogical consistency of a made up fantasy world intact, but I understand it it bothers other people.
I think that the age change is pretty understandable; some of the things that the characters do cannot be done by 16-year olds (the boys) or 14-year olds (Egwene) within our society, so they don't want to depict them as teenagers, but as adults.
I think Rafe Judkins was fairly successful with the changes that he made; I think it's important to think of the series not as "an adaptation of Eye of the World" and more like "the first season of an 8-season adaptation of all 13 books". For example, the changes to Perrin and Mat are changes or circumstance but not necessarily changes of character. In the books, Perrin is tortured by being drawn to violence, and the loss of his family. That is front and centre, right from the beginning. Matt is a rogue with a good heart but a dark burden, and that's also obvious from the start.
Also sorry to jump on this part of the comment, but it's a trigger topic for me: I like the Lord of the Rings movies, but I felt like there are certainly some issues with how they were adapted as well that haven't sat right with me, but there are definitely some heinous character assassinations and wild changes. The changes to Isildur's story and his relationship with Elrond showcase a wild lack of understanding and huge change from the books, for example, and the elves being at Helm's Deep completely subverts some relatively important book storylines, not to mentions some more obvious changes such as omitting Tom Bombadil and the Scouring of the Shire. Those are important things in the books, and there are some fundamental differences from the movies as a result. Also any number of characters have to be coerced into action in the movies, whereas in the books, the characters tend to be more proactive - Jackson is definitely guided by what is cool and not necessarily what is true to the source. Aragorn, Faramir, Denethor, Frodo, Gandalf, all have significant changes from the books that make them worse characters.
Anyways, not liking something is absolutely okay, and liking the Lord of the Rings movies is great, but I don't think they're a particularly faithful adaptation.
Oh yeah, agree to disagree is A-OK though I would say that I'm not really in disagreement with you; it's totally valid to not like the new series, most things like this are about personal preference. And liking Jackson's LotR is great, I love it too. I think what it comes down to is how specific things that are important to you were interpreted, and that's always pretty subjective.
I watched it as it aired, always hoping "maybe this episode will be good..." I hope I don't need to tell you how disappointed I was. Though let me be totally fair:
The only Absolutely Terrible Episode was 8, and even people who like the series seem to agree that it was EXTREMELY rough around the edges. That said, this episode was also completely screwed over by everything: Covid restrictions, the original actor for Mat leaving, etc. However, ending a season on a poor note is NOT how you keep your viewership, if you ask me.
Meanwhile, it's completely ironic that a non-canon episode is arguably one of the best, mostly because it demonstrates all the underlying mechanics of Wheel of Time: Logain's capture in episode 4.
Really, the biggest issue this series has- and what the whole driving force of the series is- is that they haven't shown WHY the Dragon (Reborn) is such a harbinger that talking about this person causes major freakouts. The show gave some small hints, but it needs to be very, very explicit: The Dragon Reborn isn't just destined to fight the Dark One; he's LITERALLY the only chance humanity has of beating the Dark One. Oh, and did we mention that not only is the Dragon Reborn going to be the most powerful channeler in the world, but that's he's also destined to go insane from the power, possibly BEFORE he fights the Dark One? The whole series hinges on the question of, does he beat the Dark One or does he Break the world? The show needs to make this explicit.
Which is also why I'm going to follow along with online comments, but I'll just binge everything at the end if it turns out to be decent. Otherwise, I have better things to do with my time than waste them on a terrible adaptation of my favorite fantasy series.