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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 watched Marvel's Secret Invasion. It was not good. The actors all did what they could with the story that they were given, and they did admirable jobs, but that story just didn't work in this format. It's notable that I am at most a super casual comics enjoyer, but read some of Secret Invasion, and am generally familiar with the plot.
Spoilers for Secret Invasion Comics and Show
The greatness of the Secret Invasion story line in the comics was that it was a massive invasion and anyone could be a Skrull. Captain America, Wolverine, Beast, Spider-man, Iron Man, Elektra, Thor, all turned out to be Skrulls during this storyline. In the show, we only had a few stars - Fury, Maria Hill, Rhodey, Everett Ross, the Olivia Coleman character - that could have been Skrulls, and inside of episode one we knew for certain about Fury, Hill, and Ross. We didn't know about Coleman - I guess we technically still don't - but we also don't really care because she's new. That left only Rhodey, and we didn't know in the first episode only because he didn't show up until later.
There was no suspense built up. There was more interesting Skrull invasion content in a post credit scene in a Spider-man movie than in this entire series dedicated to the Skrull invasion. This was a spy movie without a second of intrigue, that offered no interesting revelations or ideas, had no secret Skrulls, and did not progress the overall plot of the MCU at all. All it served to do was to kill Maria Hill and Talos and maybe undermine some of Rhodey's work during the blip, except the Skrull Rhodey was an obvious jerk that didn't act like Rhodey at all, so he was probably replaced after End Game.
One of the most disappointing parts of a really disappointing series was the final fight. "Fury" showed up at Bad Skrull HQ, but it was very obviously not going to be Fury - he wouldn't walk into such an obvious trap. It was painfully obvious it was going to be Daenerys who showed up instead, which made the whole final encounter between "Fury" and Gravik completely meaningless. They built up this whole "I am the problem that you created!" and completely robbed it of any meaning or finality. Just two uberSkrulls going at each other instead. The fight was mostly CGI fan service, but done in such a way that the fans probably hated it.
I've rarely seen a TV show that so thoroughly disappointed me.
Yeah as soon as I finished watching it I immediately thought to myself that it is hands-down my least favorite MCU project, and I've seen almost everything they've produced.
It is far and away my least favourite thing in the MCU, and it's not even close. I usually try to see and list the positives of things first, but I had a really hard time with that. I'll state again that each individual performance of the script that they were given was good...
Spoilers for show and comics
Sammy LJ was great as Fury, because Fury is basically just SLJ, but he also did a good job as the old spy trying to be relevant. He owns every scene he is in, chewing scenery in delightful SLJ-ish ways, and he embodies what Nick Fury should be. But why did they write such dumb shit for Fury to do?
Olivia Coleman is an international treasure, and the addition of her character is maybe the one good thing from the series. She stole every scene she was in, similar to how Julia Louis-Dreyfus does, but arguably better. If this had been a singular episode focused only on Coleman's character (whose name I can't even recall) this would have been immeasurably better.
Don Cheadle, Ben Mendelsohn, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Dermot Mulroney, Christopher McDonald, Emilia Clarke, Cobie Smulders, and Charlene Woodard all did a great job with their performances; I don't think any of the performances were anything other than a good rendition of the material presented.
100% of the problems were the script and the story. I think they should have just skipped this storyline entirely, and kept the Skrulls solidly in the background of the MCU and used mostly for comic relief. The only way to do this justice would have been the same sort of format as Infinity War / End Game - a huge crossover movie extravaganza with every single avenger, likely as the culmination to a phase of the MCU. Maybe a culmination of the whole thing, with callbacks to movies in the past, and some resolution of when people got Skrulled.
Overall, I gave this a 1/10 rating, and every single bit of that one star is based on the performance of the actors, as the direction, story, and CGI were all abysmal.
I’m pretty easy to please, so I thought it was alright. I think the criticisms are all valid, but I didn’t have as hard a time watching as I did with Quantumania.
Definitely not the pinnacle of MCU shows, and it probably corners them with some of the choices made. But whatevs. I hope Loki is great.
I actually enjoyed Quantumania quite a bit more - a 5/10 instead of a 1/10 - but I recognize that it's not for everyone. One of the things that I like about the MCU is that not every movie in the MCU is an action movie, and one of the things I quite enjoy is that the Ant Man movies are primarily ludicrous comedies that dabble in things like heists, adventure, a bit of intrigue, and action. I thought that Quantumania missed the mark a bit; it left comedy behind a bit and really suffered from not having Luis, who was one of the best parts of the previous two movies. It also had more action / adventure elements than the previous movies, but not enough to carry the movie as a whole. And it also had one of the Big Movie Problems™, which is that if the characters had just spoken to each other they could have avoided the central conflict of the movie.
All that was mostly just a lead up to a question - what did you like about Secret Invasion / dislike about Quantumania?
I think it boils down to not really being invested in any of the plot lines in Quantumania, despite liking all the characters in all the previous movies, versus being invested in Nick Fury’s plot line, mostly because Samuel L Jackson carries it on his back.
I’d give Q a 5/10 as well, it was fine. Secret Invasion wasn’t leaps and bounds better or anything. Maybe a 6ish. But for whatever reason, I did well watching it week after week. I’m no film critic, though. And again, pretty easy to entertain.
Thanks for the perspective, it's helpful because I usually approach things while trying to be positive, and I had a really hard time doing that with this sales, so I definitely appreciate the perspective of someone who got more out of it than me. I agree that SLJ is great, and I don't attribute any of my visceral dislike if the series to him or any of the actors.
Yeah, the final episode is what really cemented it to me. The show already wasn't good and had some terrible writing already, but the last episode was just the nail in the coffin. There were two exchanges in particular that really got me:
First exchange
During Gravik's monologue to Fury-Daenerys, he goes off about how having to kill all of these humans for Fury took a part of the soul of the skrulls each time...but then literally right after goes into a rant about how they're a proud warrior race and is going to kill all humans it's like ??? If you're a proud warrior race why do you care? Just terrible character writingSecond exchange
Just how terrible of writing this exchange was during the Fury and Rhodney-Skrull with the president.Rhodey-Skrull: "Just stay the course, all right? And all of our enemies will be gone"
President: "Yeah" (with like no emotion what so ever)
It was already dumb what Rodney-Skrull said, and the president's response made me literally laugh while watching the episode because of how bad it was. Just a monotone "yeah" to what was already a dumb statement
Yes, both of those exchanges were really disappointing and examples of really sloppy writing. Just overall really hard to sit through and watch, and they didn't really progress the story either because they were contradictory, empty, or both.
You just summarized the dialogue for the whole show really. I think it's what's frustrating looking back on the show, just how empty so much of the exchanges were - so much of the show just felt like time padding, waiting for a climax that was incredibly lack luster that threw away the little pieces it was giving.
I'm just not interested in the MCU proper anymore so I didn't watch it. It feels like it's all run its course and is just persisting for the sake of itself now.
That said if an when the X-Men are properly brought in the fold I'll see how that goes. Anything Spiderman gets my attention as well. They are knocking that out of the park.
This is all coming from someone who used to read all the comics and followed the MCU almost religiously.
I think that switching the fucus to a longer , streaming format really alienated a lot of people. Switching the primary focus to be series of TV shows worked for me, but I think it didn't fit a lot of people, who don't want another streaming service to sign up for. I enjoyed the majority of the shows in this phase of the MCU more than some of the movies; I thought Ms. Marvel was a brilliant coming of age dramedy about immigrant parents, and She Hulk was a fairly smart satire about both law tv shows and comic book movies. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier did a pretty good job taking about race, but also talking about the logistics of people coming back from the blip, and Hawkeye had more intrigue and interest than all of secret invasion and also had interesting stories about disability, family, loyalty, and incorporating the Netflix storylines into the MCU.
I'm not jus some fanboy of the MCU; I would give the series overall a solid 7/10. I do like it, though, as someone who read a bunch of the comics growing up, but I think that I have to agree that the sun is starting to set on the franchise. There are some things is like to see still, but it is hard to top the 1-2 punch of Infinity War and End Game, so everything since that has felt like a denouement.
I started Ted Lasso, wanting a more upbeat show than I normally digest.
I really disliked the first two episodes - it felt a lot more like a high school drama than becoming a coach of a team in the freaking Premier League. Not just the setting though, but the characters too feel so incredibly flat and a lot more "millennial mouth pieces" than actual characters.
Third episode though is what finally pulled me in, and stopped watching the show as a "characters within a story" and more of what it all represents - not just a matter of being kind to others, but being kind to ourselves and the different parts of identity that different characters represent.
Finished the 7th episode and I'd be lying if the flat story and characters don't still bother me at times but I still really appreciate the heart of it and that's what keeps bringing me back. I'm sure it's going to be quite an emotional ride to the end haha
I watched episode 5 and stared the 6th (second part of the Witcher's season 3) yesterday!
Spoiler
Oh boy it is disappointing. Episodes are lacking rhythm and the general quality of the show has decreased so much. I had to pause in the middle of episode 6 to see if I was alone with this bitter taste and... ouch, IMDB user reviews for every episode (but 2) of the season 3 are below 6/10.It's a shame and I am now looking something else to watch tonight instead of the last episode !
I haven't watched TV in a while. I lost interest in a lot of the shows I was watching. I think Mrs. Maisel is the last thing I watched (and funnily enough is one of the only shows I watched from it's premiere date to it's end date). I lost interest in Abbott Elementary, I lost interest in all the Disney+ shows, and there hasn't been a mini series that I've had enough interest in watching (didn't really care enough about Beef's premise to give it a watch).
But, Only Murders in the Building Season 3 premiered today. So I watched those first two episodes and it was like wow, this is what good TV is. Yeah, very excellent start, I love the inclusions of Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep. I love that this looks like it's gonna be a deep dive into Selena Gomez's character. It looks really promising, especially after the second season was pretty lack-luster imo.
My partner and I watched Shrinking last week. Two major takeaways:
Harrison Ford is hilarious. Even at 80, he still shows why he is/was a superstar.
The show is pretty much Scrubs for 2023. No more voice over, no more stand alone episodes, and swap doctors with therapists. Jason Segel's character is JD, Jessica Williams is a Turk/Elliot hybrid, Harrison Ford is Dr. Cox and Dr. Kelso rolled up into one, and Christa Miller is...Christa Miller.
Overall, I'd give it an 7.5/10. It's not going to make my top 10 or anything, but it's nice to have a silly, upbeat comedy that occasionally pulls on the heart strings.
I'm struggling to get through Foundation right now. It's not bad per se, it's just...flat? I want so badly to care, but it's just not pulling me in. The settings and the intro are beautiful, and Lee Pace does a great job, but the bulk of the characters just feel like they're going through the motions. Contrast this to, say, The Expanse and there's just no comparison. That show oozed character, conflict, excitement. This feels like tepid oatmeal. But still, I'm trying... Perhaps there's some Psychohistory equation that explains why I'm not getting into it ;)
We are of a like mind. I'm just lost in more than half the story lines. At this point I think it's time to call it a day and move on to something else. Thanks for confirming my suspicions!
Only Murders in the Building is back and... I'm over it. I wish they had kept to the one season and left it alone. I made it about fifteen or so minutes in and quit.
Justified isn't much better, but I'm sticking with it.
I'm on my 10th or so rewatch of The Wire, which I love. I might be stupid, but I'm still finding little chestnuts in the series. Even a little conspiracy --- White Mike (who was in the art department) is in the bar in S01E03 sitting right next to NcNulty for half the scene while they talk about the new detail.
Outside of that, Futurama is holding up, which is surprising. Die-hards might disagree, though.
Midsomer Murders is my favorite murder mystery although I also like Miss Fisher, Death in Paradise, Morse, Columbo, Murder She Wrote.
I'm currently enjoying the Bear. Midnight Diner is one of my absolute favorites if you are ok with subtitles. Conversations are simple but meaningful and the visuals are lovely.
If you like Columbo style “howdeydoit” mysteries I highly recommend Poke Face with Natasha Lyonne
dr_frahnkunsteen is on it with Poker Face -- its fun.
I really liked Midnight Diner. Its so relaxing and intimate. Good contrast with The Bear (averaged -- a few episodes of the Bear were totally relaxing.)
Thanks for Midsomer Murders -- I'll track it down.
I'm 2 episode into watching Arcane!
I have put off animated stuff for some reason, but I'm very happy that I'm challenging that prejudice now. I think those biases got kind of confirmed when a friend tried to get me into anime, which I just did not enjoy at all. Maybe he just had bad taste lol
I think it's also been a few biases about how mature cartoons can be - which again, I thought the anime I was shown was extremely childish and just super weird. Anyway, while Arcane is obviously made for a very wide audience of almost all ages, it's great! I never played the game it's based on, but the world and characters are really interesting and the art style is just fantastic. Can't wait to watch more!
Cool. Bojack Horseman is adult and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Aggretsuko is anime with some things in commonwith the Office.
I've been watching Silo and am almost halfway through. So far I'm loving it. It has a good feel, good mystery, I enjoy the characters, and where the plot is going so far. I rarely watch TV shows anymore but this one has grabbed my interest.
I enjoyed silo as well. The first two episodes were particularly strong, followed by some weak ones where I had suspend disbelief and sort of let it do its thing. Anyway, once it’s over I was kinda bummed that I’d have to wait a year or two for more. So I downloaded the audiobook which is excellent so far. It fills in some of the gaps left by the show. Season 1 is based on roughly the first half of Book 1, so there’s plenty of story left.
I'm getting depressed watching The Vampire Diaries everyday, does anyone have something kinda Parks and Rec-style, something a bit more lighthearted and easy to digest, and more or less bingeable?
Thanks a lot for your reply! I've actually been looking into Community for a bit, and considering the fact that one of my friends is rewatching it right now, maybe that's the show I should go for. Thanks again! I'll be coming back to your comment for the next few months :)
Community is always the right choice - I hope you enjoy it!
An easy suggestion is any of the other workplace NBC comedies like Parks and Rec: Brooklyn 99, The Office, Superstore, American Auto (in rough order of how good I found them)
A common thread is those is also Mike Schur, where there also is The Good Place. IMO it’s the best sitcom, and it is upbeat and bingeable - but it also does deal with heavy topics and last episode is very emotional
Ah, I've seen B99 and The Office, haven't heard of the others though except for The Good Place, which I actually had downloaded and ready to watch on my computer a while ago and then I just kinda, didn't watch it. Thanks a lot for your reply, anyway.