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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.
So this week, we watched Becoming You. It's about how humans develop in their first 2,000 days. It's a fascinating look at how we learn to talk, read, play, think, etc. They did a really good job of not making it US/Euro-centric. I highly recommend this show if you have any interest in the subject. There are a few scenes with screaming babies, which can be kind of triggering, but they did a reasonable job of keeping that to a minimum.
We watched MoonBase 8 based on a recommendation here. The first episode was terrible, but it picked up after that. It was fun. And it's short - only 6 episodes.
We added a bunch of shows that were on Ars Technica's year-end list. We haven't gotten to most of them yet, but have started on Joe Pera Talks With You. It is a bizarre show about a choir teacher in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He is very mild-mannered (most reviews compare him to Mister Rogers). He just spends 10-12 minutes talking about a random subject in a quirky way. Having grown up in Michigan, some of the humor hits a little close to home.
Oh, and I forgot to mention Earth At Night. It's a nature documentary about what animals do at night. It's filmed with super-sensitive cameras, and has some amazing footage. If you watched "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" as a kid, it's like that, but filmed entirely at night. Oh, and Loki from the Marvel movies narrates it.
And The Unicorn season 2 started. I don't know why I like this show so much, but I do! Luckily, you don't need to subscribe to CBS All-Access to get it, though. It's available on iTunes and probably other services.
Oh neat, I didn't know Walton Goggins had his own show now. I have absolutely loved him in everything he has done, especially Justified. And Rob Corddry is hilarious too. So even though I'm not normally one for rom-coms, I'm gonna have to check that out. Thanks for making me aware of it.
Justified is wonderful. A show that was heavily influenced by western and noir to produce something uniquely engaging.
What's nice about Unicorn is no laugh track. And it has some social depth from time to time, not just setup/punch line.
Most shows made after the 1980s have live audiences instead of laugh tracks.
Either way, I prefer the Modern Family type stuff, single camera, no laughs.
Yeah, it’s a different kind of show. The thing is that the examples of shows with live audiences that people use to say “live audiences == bad” would be probably bad either way. Nobody complains about the audience on Seinfeld and The IT Crowd, for example.
Live audiences energize the performers, can help bring some shows together and elevate their quality.
There are a very few shows where somehomw the audience noise, whether real or not, didn't matter. Frasier is one. I also have seen some Mash episodes without the noise and they were more entertaining. I never watched Friends or Seinfeld.
As for they'd be bad anyway, that's true. It's not actually the audience or the noise that annoys me, it's the rhythm. I am not entertained by the rhythm of
(straight setup, punchline,straight setup, punchline,straight setup, punchline,straight setup, punchline,straight setup, punchline,straight setup, punchline,straight setup, punchline,straight setup, punchline,straight setup, punchline,straight setup, punchline,straight setup, punchline,straight setup, punchline)
for 23 or 47 minutes. It's just factory sitcom, and a waste of time, for me. But then millions watch reality TV and I see zero values there.
Thanks for the Ars Technica list. How to With John Wilson looks like it could be my thing and I never heard about it!
I caught up with A.P. Bio, which is goofy and fun. The aesthetic of the series is fantastic. The cast is really great. After the first season I wasn't sure how long they could maintain the premise, but it holds up.
I've been working through Clone Wars, but I decided to cut down the episodes to the essentials / arcs. I'm still going chronologically. I really like this series, but I can do without the filler episodes. I'm dropping 43 episodes.
Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian is back for S02, which is fun.
I also started The Expanse. I don't really like it, but I'm going to stick with it for at least the first series. I really hated Thomas Jane's hat, but the fact that others in the series are making fun of it makes it alright. The whole series looks pretty good, but the performances are lacking, at least for me.
If you haven’t yet, give a chance to Battlestar Galactica. It is superb, and kinda ruined me for space opera on TV. The Expanse pales in comparison.
Make sure to watch the miniseries before the main show.
I started that, but ended up stopping. I didn't watch the miniseries, however -- I should give it another shot.
The Expanse feels so shallow. Everybody said they were hooked after the fourth episode. I liked it, but I don't look forward to watching it.
I attribute the success of The Expanse to the lack of "serious" quality space-operas in current television. The world-building, the shots of celestial objects, huge ships and structures, and the sheer dimension of the action are awesome. At the same time, the acting is stiff and overdone, the dialogue is lazy and the writing is boring, morose melodrama. Soap-opera in space. I can't stand it either.
The first episode of Battlestar Galactica is not a compelling starting point. It is a direct continuation of the miniseries, which effectively works as a pilot. And a superb one at that.
Ok, so for BSG, is it worth watching the original series and the reimagined one or is one far superior?
The original series is certainly not bad, but IMHO it will only be of interest for the nostalgic and those interested in the history of science fiction. Only saw two episodes, though. EDIT: I'm not saying you wouldn't enjoy it, but it's definitely a product of its time.
The reimagined series is one of the best science fiction shows of all time. It's not only superior, it's on an entirely different category.
ok, its on! Soon I'll have a great BSG archive. :)
Thanks for this! I've been in need of a show and the thought of having to suffer through The Expanse (aka Hung in Space) was not appetizing.
A nice video about the original series.
What list of Clone Wars episodes are you working from?
this one in this order -- it seems decent, but if there's anything that's missing, let me know.
The expanse is a slow burn. It really picks up in S3, and i would definitely recommend sticking that far. Very much worth it.
nice! I hope so. I don't know why, but this seems to be the case for most sci-fi series.
I'm currently watching The Office for the first time, as well Dark for the first time.
I'm on just started season 7 of the office, and season 3 of Dark. Having both is a nice way to balance things out. Dark is a bit dense so it's a bit difficult to consume.
Mando was great a few weeks ago. I'm looking forward to the new Star Wars shows.
The current phase of my perpetual re-watching of all things Star Trek, I'm watching Star Trek: Voyager during breakfast (currently S3E01). I'm also following ST:Discovery as it's aired.
I'm waiting for more of the current season of The Expanse to come out, at which point I'll binge-watch it. It's a great show, based on even better series of books. In the show, I particularly like the incredible attention to detail of the VFX team.
I’ve been watching The Big Bang Theory like the unhip guy that I am. This show gets a lot of flack but it does have some great jokes. Sheldon is a delight, and Howard is hilarious. In times like this, when I cannot be with my friends, watching the group of fictional nerds is comforting.