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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 Pitt is so good but incredibly overwritten at times. A lot of times these people speak to each other with an aphorism worded too perfectly... it just isn't natural.
That said, I really like the show. I do wish we had more of a normal shift rather than a 'oh my god, Godzilla is in town!!!'
So for the past few months I have been watching the 2010 reboot of Hawaii Five-O while I have been working on some knitting projects. The first few seasons were nostalgic as I remember watching them in my early teens with my dad.
Overall, the show has been good and has fulfilled my need of having something else going on while I knit. I would not recommend the show by itself, as the writing at times can be quite predictable. It is very clear that they are working with the Hollywood division of the US military, with the positive spotlight of the US military in the war on terror.
The first few seasons were probably the strongest, partially due to having a running narrative of chasing down one person interspersed throughout the episodes. Eventually the writers recognized that they had exhausted that narrative and ended it in a satisfying manner. They tried recreating additional plots to replace that one, but they were never as strong.
The show for the majority of its run has had four static main characters on the team, with additional members coming and going. Probably around S5 they had enough additional characters that they were starting to run b-stories within the episode. However, at the end of S7 they wrote out 2 of the original 4 characters. I am nearing the end of S8 and the replacements are decent, but I would say writing out 2 of the original 4 at the same time was not a smart decision. I will probably watch the remaining two seasons to complete it, although at the moment having a hard time tracking down a torrent for S9.
The one thing that I have been thinking about recently is representation of the POTUS in media. Throughout the show, they had occasional nods to the POTUS, which was Obama. This would either be the presidential portrait in the background, or even once they did the generic black guy filmed from behind to represent Obama. However, now the episodes I am in are during Trump's presidency and there seems to be no nods to him as POTUS. I am unsure if the media landscape has changed or the media I watch has changed in the past ten years, but it got me thinking about how the POTUS has been represented. Pre-Obama, I felt that it was common in movies/TV to have a generic white guy in his 50s to represent the POTUS, with no one specific in mind. Then, during Obama's terms it was common to do what I refer to as the generic black guy as an Obama stand in for the POTUS. But at the moment I cannot think of any media that portrayed a caricature of Trump as president.
I wonder if the more specific portrayal of Obama was particularly because of him having lived there. The only media I can think of that has done a portrayal of trump post-election is an Adrian Tchaikovsky novel that actually I had to stop reading because I could not handle the reflection of reality.
In the novel Bear Head which is second or third in a series the character Warner S. Thompson is described as a populist- fascist, narcissistic politician who strategically never ends his sentences so that he's never actually promising anything and people think he agrees with them.
Maybe for this specific show, but I feel like I have seen his likeness portrayed in other stuff. This is not some academic study, but my personal anecdotal experience is that it seems like Obama has had probably the largest amount of fictional movie/TV representation. I think some of that is due to Obama being the first president that has enough of a distinct physical appearance that he is the first that can be recognized from an over the shoulder shot (to avoid capturing his face, so that a body double can be used).
The only other president that has a distinct enough physical appearance to be able to do the over the shoulder shot is Trump, but I have not seen that done in movies or TV. I recognize that my viewing habits have changed, so that would bias it a bit. However, I think part of that is due to during Obama's presidency and all of his predecessors there was respect and honour about the presidency. This is beneficial in a storytelling capacity in that it creates a mental shortcut of ascribing value onto your characters by having positive interactions with the president.
I am not familiar with this novel. I was more thinking with media more so in the visual sense, since it creates interesting constraints to make the actor playing the role recognizable. Especially when I think that the only two modern presidents who have distinct appearances are Obama and Trump
There's a wikipedia list of people who have played real presidents in TV and movies but it doesn't include this depiction of Obama so I don't think it'll be useful. I feel like I've seen something similar of Clinton or Reagan, but it would have been long enough ago that I have no idea what show it was in. I think that they and W Bush would both be recognizable to me in that sort of shot, but that's also because they're the presidents I have been alive for. Kennedy possibly, and I feel like I've seen something like that too.
I suspect it's mostly that they dont bother unless they're specifically hinting at a particular president, and that if they were, say, hinting at Ford or Johnson, I wouldnt get it unless it was an SNL bit. (I would recognize a fake President Bartlett though)
I figured you were thinking of TV shows but it was the only example I could think of that was so specific.
But it does make me think about Sister Act's portrayal of Pope John Paul II with an over-the-shoulder cropped shot of him in the choir loft at the church.
I spent some time perusing this. Link for those who are curious. Unsurprisingly, it seemed at a quick glance like Lincoln and JFK had the most appearances.
Oh yeah I didn't think but I could absolutely recognize a stereotypical Lincoln body double over the shoulder. But I'm also from IL and we're big on Lincoln, even pre-stovepipe hat.
I feel like Lincoln and JFK they probably just cast actors that are close enough, and don't bother with the actor looking slightly different. In my anecdotal experience it is just the more modern presidents where they try and not capture the face as much.
I was trying to focus on the "over the shoulder" presidential stand-in where they're not matching the face/etc but use hair/clothing/build to imply the "real" person rather than a generic knock-off president. So I haven't been focusing on faces at all.
I watched the first season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters when on vacation last year. It was okay, but I felt it needed more monster time. They made a good choice having Wyatt and Kurt Russell play the same character, though I thought Wyatt did a much better job acting. Season two started a few weeks ago. I still wish there was more monster time! I don’t think it’s a great show, but I do find it engaging, and I think that has more to do with the way they skip back and forth from the past to the present than the actual story.
I’m looking forward to watching One Piece but will wait till all the episodes have dropped and binge it on a rest day.
I’ve also been watching Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. I have no idea why I never watched it before because it’s right up my alley! I’m loving it. It’s completely wacky and constantly surprising me with its antics.
Black riders have always held the reins:
What ‘High Horse’ gets right about Black cowboys and the West.
I just thought this was really neat! Has anyone watched High Horse?
Just finished watching Murderbot on Apple TV.
It was quite good.
Here is the synopsis of the show if you haven't heard of it:
It's pretty funny without being hilarious. It's mostly not a lot of action but sometimes it is a little gory. It starts out kind of slowly but the second half has many interesting plot developments.
This season follows a specific book from an 8 part series. I heard there will be a second season.
The books are wonderful and quick reads/listens as they're mostly novellas.
The changes are ok, they make the Preservation colonists a bit less serious and drop at least one character but I think they caught the spirit of the characters.