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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 binged Pluribus and I have not enjoyed something so much in a long while. It's a weird premise, but it's brilliantly executed, and there wasn't one moment where I had "TV cringe".
I also just watched Pluribus over the last couple of weeks, and had the exact same opinion.
My partner & I really tried to enjoy it, but we dropped off after a couple of episodes. There was just nothing positive / likeable about Carol, to justify rooting for her. We found ourselves rooting for the “antagonists” more than her.
It’s a shame, because we’re big fans of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and Rhea herself, so of course we were hyped about Pluribus.
She is a first class asshole, for sure. Without meaning to try to sway you, I will say that her journey / oscillation between falling back into her anger and trying to be a better person is one of the most interesting things about the show. I think a lot of shows would show a character as "reformed" in a way that doesn't reflect real life. In real life, if you have that anger issue, you're always going to have it, and your growth would be how you grow and channel it.
I can appreciate this perspective, and I do agree with it conceptually. But I don’t think that imitating real life makes for compelling cinema. I know a lot of people enjoy seeing movies & shows that mirror reality, but it’s not my cup of tea.
I really wish I could enjoy the show though!
Edit: just to set a tone, I start by saying "it's interesting" and I mean that it is interesting. I am not trying to be snarky or argumentative, I just have resting argument voice.
It's interesting that you brought up Breaking Bad, because I think Carol is a way better person and more likeable than Walter White, and in the face of much worse hardships than Walter faced. And Carol is at least "the good guy", as opposed to Walter who is definitely a bad guy.
Mild spoilers for early series / characterizations of Carol
It's maybe important to remember that while she is a grumpy alcoholic, she did just watch the love of her life die, then experienced the end of human civilization. I think that the way she is facing things is actually pretty reasonable; she's one of the two reasonable survivors.
I have seen a lot of people online who were rooting for the Plurbs over Carol, and that is just wild to me. It seems similar to the people who were rooting for Walter White to win in BB and didn't understand that despite being the main character, he was objectively the villain of the show. The Plurbs have ended humanity and are attempting to relay the signal to end other civilizations on other planets; they are very bad.
I get your point about Walt, but I think there is a big difference - in both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, the protagonists start off as one character, and end up completely transformed towards the end of the series. Walt does not start as a ruthless, criminal mastermind - but as a down-on-his-luck teacher with cancer. His transformation is gradual, and there’s quite a few people who keep rooting for him until it’s too late. Hell, when I first watched the series as it was being aired, I kept rooting for him all throughout. It wasn’t until I rewatched the series, that I paid closer attention to the seeds of his “evil” that get sown from the first episodes.
In hindsight, I think it’s easy to say that Carol is a better person than Walt. Because she is. I just don’t find her a compelling, interesting & complex character. She starts off as a grumpy, irritable person, and keeps being this person for a number of episodes. On the other hand, Walt & Jimmy both change drastically, and have much more depth to them. I understood Carol’s entire way of being from the first couple of episodes, which means there’s nothing left to discover. There’s no more depth there. To rephrase it: I watched Breaking Bad nine times in total, and each time noticed something new about all the characters. Pluribus did not give me either the feeling that there’s something deeper under the surface, nor the inclination to continue with the story, let alone rewatch it.
I want to be clear that I think it's ok to just not like Carol, so I'm not arguing that point.
However, I think that it's a bit strange to expect her to have undergone much of a journey in the first couple of episodes, when she is mostly dealing with profound and absolute loss. At that point, she's still being established as a character. To me, at least part of the interesting nature of the show is that the two people who are working to save humanity are flawed and complex, and they give themselves their own barriers to effectively navigating the apocalypse. Carol especially does change and try to be better over the course of the season.
And I have to disagree about Walter White. In the first episode of the series, it was obvious that he was the bad guy. It took him no time at all to arrive at "I will be blackmailing a former student into cooking and selling Meth". It is basically the first thing that happens to him after his diagnosis; I'm pretty sure it's the first episode. He gets cancer and then decides "fuck it, going to just make the world worse". It is also season one when he gets an easy out - a job offer with full health benefits - that would allow him to immediately stop being a drug dealer, and he opts to not take it. Walt starts bad, continues to be bad, and then is just honest about how bad he is by the end. It's not all that much of a journey, and I don't think he is profoundly different.
I think that even in an episode-to-episode comparison, Carol is a better person than Walt. She's dealt a worse hand and she handles it better.
First episode of Lanterns came out. I don’t watch a ton of TV anymore, Task was the last TV show I fully watched. Outside of limited series though I don’t tend to start anything new.
I liked it a lot. I haven’t seen True Detective but I can see the inspo that had on this.
It still does have a lot of humor as Gunn-DC has had thus far. But it’s not as in your face as it was in Supergirl or Superman.
It has such a cool grounded look to it.
the way he flies is way cooler than other superhero properties for some reason.
Furious has been pretty great. I'm going to watch Lanterns tonight, which has a lot of strong reviews.
Traitors AU is fun but the faithful are... useless.
edit: Lanterns is cool. I really like the logistics or structure of the whole ring thing.
edit edit: TNA LOCKDOWN: Six Sides of Steel downloaded by accident... this is like Royal Rumble AND a cage and its hilarious. I don't know if this is the industry standard, but the either the cameras or the dudes just arent selling it. This one dude in purple keeps getting the shit kicked out of him and he's almost the best for selling it, but nobody seems to know how to work with hitting the fence. These guys are hilarious. Every new guy comes in and gets to shit kick everybody then they get into the same routines. Jesus christ --- they just lowered down a rack that has a garbage can, a stop sign, an ACOUSTIC GUITAR, a single crutch, a hockey stick, a chair (classic)... this is unbelievable. The ref is really amazing... was it this bad in the 80s and 90s? It seemed so real then... with all of this happening, it really looks like the crowd doesn't want to be there.
edit again: Strange New Worlds is fun. Its like a polished Legends of Tomorrow --- I like that they have strong episodes and fuck-around episodes.
Binged Snowfall. Thought it was a really good show. I don't know much about that time and cocaine/crack. So this felt like a decent lesson. Didn't realize this was a John Singleton project, but I could tell based on his other works.
I was really interested in Lucia not returning. I feel like that really shifted Guatavo's story and gave him a bigger role than before. I am curious what, if any, the original plans were for her character.
Season 4 was the strongest season imo. From there it really escalates. But i did like how the show ended and where everyone ended up.
I didn't realize the main actor is the same guy from F1. He's really good and I hope he gets more chances like F1 in the future.