9
votes
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.
Watched Ed Lasso - very funny and serious at the same time. Also I loved his personality and want to be more like him.
The final 10 minutes of last Sunday's episode of Mare of Easttown was the most exciting and tense stretch of TV I've seen in years. It's great to have a can't-miss Sunday night HBO show again.
We're continuing to watch The Mosquito Coast and Mythic Quest. They're both coming along nicely. The previous episode of Mosquito Coast had the family on the run in the desert from the US and into Mexico. This episode sees them dealing with not-so-nice things on the Mexican side of the border.
In Mythic Quest Poppy and Ian try to work together by working apart, but each realizes they're missing something from the other.
We tried a few other shows that we're on the fence about. We tried Jupiter's Legacy, but it was all over the place. After 2 or 3 episodes and dozens of characters being suddenly introduced without any explanation, we gave up. Sheldon's character is just a little too overdone, and the rest of it just didn't work for us.
We watched the first episode of The Irregulars. It's a show about some street kids who help Sherlock Holmes and Watson solve supernatural mysteries. It was OK. We'll probably watch another episode or two to see where it's going. Both this show and Jupiter's Legacy have major problems with sound levels. In one scene characters are whispering and barely audible, and the next scene things are blowing up. If you turn it up to hear the whispering, you'll blow out your ears on the action scenes. Also, get off of my lawn!
Binged Dark this week-end, was pretty good, finally a show that knows how to end. I also enjoyed the German.
I tried watching Dark last week, and got about half way through the first season, but had to stop since it was way too slow and complex for me to really be able to enjoy right now. Once fall/winter comes again, and I have more free time to spend watching such a slow-paced and intricately plotted show, I will likely try watching it again though, since it was pretty compelling and I have heard lots of good things about it.
p.s. I watched it in German too, since the English dub was absolutely godawful, and I don't mind subs anyways. ;)
I think watching it quickly probably helps because it's a bit like a puzzle and you need to have the elements in mind. I also made frequent use of a character chart, this one is good but use it only after season 1 since it contains many major spoilers.
One thing that can help to know is that the writers know where they are going and the shows wraps rather nicely at season 3, so unlike other shows that will not be named, it's worth watching. That said I don't think it's as smart as some people make it to be.
Yeah, I definitely got the sense that watching it all in one solid binge was going to be the only way to do it... since even the few days in between episodes that I took already had me forgetting the characters names, and their relationships to each other.
p.s. Thanks for the chart. I won't look at it yet, but I think I already know what it is given where the story was clearly heading. :P Hopefully I will remember it when I finally have time to binge the show properly next time I attempt to watch it.
I didn't realize it until this week, but apparently my family has FX on Demand as part of our cable package, which I can access over the web and watch on my computers/tablet. So I starting binging Legion a few days ago, which I have wanted to watch for a while but couldn't find on any of the streaming services I subscribe to.
It was not what I was expecting at all, especially for a Marvel show. It's really good, and quite the mind-bender. It also hits pretty close to home for me, because of my own mental health issues, and time spent in mental hospitals. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who is also considering watching it, but I would say the closest thing I have seen to it is Maniac (which I also loved), but with a superhero slant to it.
FX also has a few other shows that aren't on any streaming services I sub to, which I have been wanting to check out for a while too: What We Do in the Shadows, Atlanta, Baskets, and Devs. But if anyone else has some recommendations for other good FX shows, I am all ears! :)
ok, FX has some great properties. Here's a list
Shows with links
FX also picked up the rights for Octavia Butler's Kindred and the series is in development, so that's something to keep an eye out for.
I have seen a few of those already (Fargo, The Riches, Justified, Legion, Taboo, Archer), all of which I highly recommend too. But there are a number of ones I haven't seen yet, including The Shield and Rescue Me, which I have been meaning to watch for a long time now but didn't realize were on FX. So thanks for making the list!
no problemo. I really liked Rescue Me, even though Denis Leary is a total asshole. It works well for his character.
The Shield is very much of its time... rap rock and all. :)
You might even say "he's the world's biggest asshole" ;)
haha.. a bit he stole from Louis CK! :)
Allegedly. But even if so, Leary did the actual work in turning it into a song. And given Louis CKs recent history, it's pretty clear they're both assholes for realsies anyways... so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Regardless, it's still a great song, IMO. And I have pretty fond memories of laughing my ass off to Dennis Leary's, Weird Al's, Adam Sandler's, The Jerky Boys' and a bunch of other 90s comedy albums with my friends in high school, and so don't really care how original any of them were. :P
oh my god --- The Jerky Boys were AMAZING. The 90s had a lot of gems.
Rescue Me has some scenes that are really amazing --- like, really well thought-out concepts. You'll know them when you see them. :)
The Jerky Boys blatant homophobia could be a bit unsettling to me at times, but yeah, they were still hilarious, and going back to listen to them is still a guilty pleasure of mine.
And yeah, the 90s certainly seemed like a bit of a golden age for comedy albums. These days comedy albums have seemingly died off in popularity, but Stand-up specials are experiencing a bit of a Golden age thanks to Netflix and the like, so I can't complain too much. There is still plenty of great comedy to be had if you know where to look for it. :)
yeah, you could add most bad things after blatant. The Jerky Boys are one of the many things from the 90s I will most likely never revisit.
Breeders is also on FX. I haven't watched it, but it looks like it might be alright... though, a bit stressful with all of the kid noise.
I started watching The Americans on there a while back. I enjoyed the episodes I watched, but for some reason, Season 1 Episode 5 was just totally missing, and that kind of killed my momentum watching it. Looking at it again now, the episode seems to be available, so they must have fixed that at some point. I'll probably go back to that sometime soon, I'd recommend it (if you need even more than you've already gotten here).
Edit: oh, and I'd recommend against watching Devs. I love Alex Garland's movies, so it was a disappointing show for me. It made very little sense, and was just overall not good. It starts out decently, but went downhill rapidly.
My mom watched The Americans and loved it, so I will probably check it out eventually too. It's not super high on my watchlist though, since Cold War era spy thrillers aren't really my thing. I generally prefer WW2 or more modern ones.
As for Devs, that's really disappointing to hear. I loved Ex Machina, Annihilation, and even Sunshine (which Garland wrote), so I was pretty excited for Devs, especially since the premise sounded really intriguing. I will probably still give it a shot, but my expectations are definitely diminished now. :(
Devs is disappointing. They set up this cool world and thing and there's some interesting characters. But it feels like Garland's thing of characters in conflict (but they're all real characters and they've all got real motivations) got a bit lost.
That's not to say it's bad. But it's not what it could have been.
I love Legion! If you haven't seen it, check out the first two seasons of Fargo. It's made by the same person who did Legion (Noah Hawley) and they're as good as any prestige show from the past 20 years. Another FX show worth checking out is Dave. It's not as good as Atlanta, but it has some hilarious moments and some unexpectedly great preformances. Even if the first few episodes aren't your cup of tea, episode 5 is worth watching as a stand alone.
I've already watched Fargo, love it too, and am eagerly awaiting the new season (if it ever comes out 🤞). And funnily enough, it was learning that Noah Hawley was behind both Fargo and Legion last month here on Tildes from @Echinops, that actually got me to start looking for a way to finally watch Legion. ;)
I also love Lil Dicky as well, but didn't realize he had his own show! So I will add Dave to my watchlist now too. Thanks for making me aware of it!
I'm watching Umbrella Academy to get my super heros fix after finishing Invincible. It's pretty cool. Not excelent, but interesting and engaging enough. And I'm a sucker for time travel stories.
I watched Rutherford Falls. It's enjoyable. Don't go into it expecting a lot of gags. I'm glad they made it, and I hope they make maybe another one or two seasons.
The BBC had a documentary series about one English hospital going through second wave of covid-19. Series 6 is available, and s07 has just started. If you want to understand a bit more about an English NHS hospital it's an interesting watch. The documentary style in the UK is very different to a lot of the US programmes I've seen.
Mythic Quest is genuinely funny, and it manages to allow some of the characters to develop. I really like the show. They had a one off special episode shot in covid-19 isolation and that was great too.
Mare of Easttown is getting a lot of attention. It's good, but I'm not enjoying it so much. If you like it you might also enjoy Happy Valley from the UK.
I watched Love, Death, and Robots season 2. I like it. I'm really pleased some attention is being paid to sf short stories, because they've been driving excellence in sf for some time now. I'm also please to see attention paid to interesting animation styles. It is very short though - each episode is maybe 10 to 15 minutes, and there's only 8 episodes this season. They do have a problem with their short story selection - they appear to have a really narrow range of writers. They could diversify that a lot and it'd give the series a bit more depth and breadth.
Watched the new Adventure Time special. This one features Finn and Jake in what's probably going to be their last ride, and I definitely bawled by the end of it.
Heads up for the Marvel fans --- M.O.D.O.K is out... and it looks amazing.
Marvel's M.O.D.O.K. - Trailer (Official) • A Hulu Original