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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.
Shogun is fantastic. Not sure why it's not on more people's radar. It's a period drama about the English encroachment into Japan while the Portuguese held a trading monopoly. Focuses on the Japanese political environment around that time. Legit feels like some great acting going on.
As a fan of the book, I am loving the show
The best thing I've watched this past week is Fallout. As a fan of the games, I love the show and the set design in particular. Every prop and setting is exactly the way it was in the games. If I had to pick some nits, I would say Walt Goggins's performance is a little off compared to the ghouls you encounter in the games, and I read somewhere that he intentionally avoided playing them. It's probably for the best though, I don't think I could listen to hours of ghoul voice.
I really enjoyed the show! Cooper was the best character imo. His story, development, and performance were all great. Lucy's actress did a great job. They there's Maximus... I really disliked his character. There was just nothing appealing to me. He had a couple moments, but wasn't rooting for him in the slightest.
The visuals and direction were all really good. Which isn't surprising since the Westworld showrunners are behind this. Hopefully season 2 goes better than the later seasons of that show though
I don’t get the hate for Maximus. He has been indoctrinated while living in a cult all his life and for the first time realized what the world is like when you have freedom. I really liked his arc and am interested to see what he’ll do in S2 based ln where he ended this season.
The Botherhood are jerks, so it can hard to get behind them at times, but I find Maximus particularly aggravating. He doesn't come across as a good person or little guy who's in a bad system, he's just a hypocrite and lair who takes every opportunity to put himself before others. Maybe that's fair for the Wasteland or it's part of his arc, but I don't think the way it's structured makes for a particularly compelling watch. The actor portrays him as overwhelmingly sniveling at times, which is also agitating.
I'm not really sure where they're going with his arc or themes. Maybe it's going to be some kind of Anakin Skywalker good guy becomes evil ruler thing, but he's not that good a guy to begin with. The most charitable take I've heard is that he represents the new player who just wants to get to the power armor.
While I think the show is good overall and enjoyed it, I find Maximus and the Brotherhood to be an instance where the writing falls apart a bit. Case in point: a friend unfamiliar with the lore was under the impression the power armor was a robot through the first episodes.
I totally agree. He doesn't work hard. He takes what he wants and stumbles into some success.
We see that he has one person in the brotherhood who tries to be a good friend. They try to make him feel better and defend him. Even at the end. Maximus doesn't reciprocate that at all. He helps Lucy in the beginning because he just wants to be a hero and later because he likes her.
We met one other hyper-human ghoul in this season and he was fairly similar except for his outbursts. The rest of the ghouls were...very far gone.
Goggins has been EXTREMELY fortunate over the course of his 200 years...
Like many other people here, I recently watched the Fallout show that just came out. I thought it was pretty good! Mostly faithful to the source material but not patronizing, and accessible for newcomers. Definitely better than some other video game adaptations in recent years. Hopefully they keep that energy strong for the next season.
I just watched the first episode but I had to pause after the intro. That was incredibly tense and something about it hit home in a way no nuclear threat media has for me before.
Shogun is still perfect and improving by the week.
If you aren't watching Ripley, drop everything (except Shogun) and watch it! Its so beautifully shot and paced. I'm only five episodes in and... well, I'm taking my time with it. Its just great. I can't think of the last time Netflix had this sort of quality in a series.
I started watching Deep Space Nine a few weeks ago and just finished season 1 (and watched the 3 part start of season 2). I grew up watching Trek with my dad when it was on, so I've definitely seen episodes of DS9 before, but unlike TNG, I haven't yet watched it all the way through, so I decided to start. I don't really remember any specifics from when I was a kid (I would have been watching this from like age 5-10), so it's basically new to me.
At first, I intended to look up a skip list because the thought of watching 7 seasons is daunting, but I found that I was immensely enjoying even the episodes some consider to be the "worst" episodes of the show. The vibes are just immaculate and it hits entirely different from any modern TV show. Obviously the special effects don't hold up, but the acting, writing, storylines, and emotional beats certainly do. Even though it can absolutely be cheesy at times (or even most of the time), it still manages to tug on the heart strings or get you thinking about a moral quandary almost every episode.
The characters are all likable, but all flawed; even Quark isn't one dimensional. It's honestly impressive how "real" the characters and atmosphere of the show feels when it was originally written to pump out 176 episodes over 6 years. So far, Jadzia is my favorite, though Kira grew on me a lot towards the end of season 1 and definitely during those first three episodes of season 2. Sisko is not yet my favorite captain, but I've heard the show in general is a lot better in later season and I'm guessing he'll grow on me later, he just solves problems in a way that I personally wouldn't, so I actually really enjoy getting to see that difference between what I would do and what Sisko does.
I'm still watching through some other modern shows like Fallout and Shogun, but DS9 has been fantastic for "I want to watch 2 episodes of something that is a low effort watch" (by "low effort" I mean that you aren't looking for pretty shots or there for the score, you're here to meet some lovely characters and watch them solve problems, it requires less investment even if you are still mentally and emotionally invested in the plots).
As an aside, it's almost astounding how far ahead of its time Trek was when it comes to social and political issues. The way it handles issues regarding sexism, race, LGBT people, conflicts, or other things is notable and mostly holds up as a good moral compass. I've been quite happy to watch an older show that actually treats the character in its universe fairly instead of a lot of other 90's dribble which can be filled with sexism, racism, and homophobia.
Definitely don't skip episodes of DS9 on your first full watch if you can. I love TNG but skip more episodes of that show than DS9. The worst episodes aren't as bad as some from other Trek and there is often still world building going on. Seasons 3-6 are some of the best Trek ever. I personally don't love season 7, but you may still. Enjoy the journey, special effects don't hold up but new Trek just isn't as good as TNG/DS9/Voyager.
Yeah, I'm definitely not skipping any! And after I'm done, I'll probably do a watch of Voyager, as well. I'm not sure I saw any of those episodes as a kid, so that will be entirely new, I don't actually know who any of the characters are yet except Janeway.
Voyager is definitely the weakest of the three but definitely worth the watch. It never lived up to the original promise of a ship that doesn't magically get fixed between episodes or run out of resources outside of a few specific episodes. I'm jealous and wish I could be you.
DS9 has the best character arcs in any Trek series in my opinion. I started with TNG and love that series and every character, but all things considered, they generally don't change much between season 1 and 7. DS9 is a whole epic saga of all kinds of unique and interesting character developments, all with their pivotal moments of sadness and happiness.
I watched Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter - English title Generation War, but the direct translation is much better I think: Our Mothers, our Fathers
It's a 4½ hour miniseries of 3 episodes, depicting the German side of WWII. It's about 5 friends and the different trajectories their lives take from 1941 to capitulation. It has rightly been criticized for not being representative of the average German during the war. For example, one of them is Jewish and the other four never snitch on him. There's also a depiction of Polish resistance which apparently also isn't very representative. But keeping these things in mind, it's still a hell of a series. As long as you're aware of it, who says it has to be 100% representative of the average German or average Pole during the war? I'm sure everyone knows about the real nature of the war and has heard of one or two things before watching this show lol - anyway it was a really good watch, because there really isn't a lot of good tv or movies that depict a) the German side, b) the Eastern front, and c) German women's role in the war. I can give more details if anybody wants but I'm not sure how to avoid spoilers so I'll leave it at this for now. 8/10!
I also watched the first episode of Shogun and I have to say, it really didn't grab my attention in any way. I'm definitely going to keep watching on account of all the good things that people are saying - I am avoiding most conversations about it I haven't seen anything negative about it and the score on IMDB is really impressive, so it deserves another shot. But yeah, the first episode didn't really engage me. Maybe it lends itself better to binge watching for me.
Finally managed to watch rest of the British Ashes to Ashes series. It's a crime and police procedural drama with some elements of sci-fi; it tells the story of Alex Drake who while being shot during the pusuit wakes up in the 80s and tries to figure out how she get there and how to survive. It's a sequel to Life on Mars with similar premise but action set in the 70s.
The sci-fi elements and action set in the past makes it quite unique among all other similar shows. Not mention the cast - Philip Glenister as Gene Hunt is amazing and has amazing chemistry with Keeley Hawes who plays Drake.
The final episode is a nice and simple wrap-up and because how it concludes there's rather no chance for another series - but IMO that's ok, not everything has to be stretched for multiple seasons.
I watched Baby Reindeer.
Spoilers about, but I try not to give more away than the trailer. The story is about stalking, sexual trauma, and it is based on a true story. It is marketed as "dark comedy".
This was an interesting show, and I found myself spellbound. This is an adaptation of Richard Gadd's play of the same name, which I was not familiar with. Gadd stars as Donny Dunn, a "Comedian" (he uses the quotes himself in a dating profile) in London, who lives with his ex-girlfriend's mum and works as a bartender. He is kind to a patron at his pub, Martha. He buys her a cup of tea and she becomes obsessed with him, and turns into a stalker. Martha is played by Jessica Gunning, who is as perfectly cast as any role I can think of in recent memory. She is unsettling, pathetic, frightening, sad, quixotic. The character of Martha is great, but she is really just the framework through which we examine Donny and the deep ways in which he is a broken man who is not running towards a goal, but running away from his past.
There's a lot more to the show; it touches on a lot of issues. Notably, there is sexual assault, violence, and transphobia. Still, it did manage to impart dark humour in a lot of ways, and not in belittling ways. There are also a lot of raw, heartfelt moments. One of those moments is Donny talking to his tough, quintessentially rural Scottish father about sexual assault - I had one expectation and the scene went entirely differently, and was filled with love and understanding.
Overall, I thought this was a very well-done show. Each episode is half an hour, and very easy to sit through; the full runtime is not that much longer than what the play must have been, maybe just north of 4 hours, and it's a pretty tight 4 hours. I recommend giving this a watch if the relatively dark content is something that won't bother you.