TV Tuesdays Free Talk

Rake is my new favourite series and I've never seen it being discussed online, so I wanted to bring it up!

It's set in Australia, and it's about a criminal barrister named Cleaver, played by Richard Roxburgh who was also in Mission Impossible 2. Cleaver is, there's no other way to describe it, a genius, in the courtroom while having a very self-destructive and impulsive personality. He defends criminals with arguments that are massive stretches but would cast doubt if you hadn't seen the actual offence take place on screen. In the later seasons, it becomes a little bit more political, which I loved - the prospect of Cleaver in elected office is hilarious.

The main thing that made me press next episode are the cases Cleaver faces. They're absurd at first, but once you start processing them, you realize there truly are 2 sides to a case. I've been recommending the show to all my friends and those who've started watching it have loved it. The writing is wonderful, the acting is wonderful, and production quality is high. It's just a shame it's seemingly so underrated.

The Emmy Award nominations were announced today and my goodness what a lackluster group. I love The Boys but damn, there is no way it earns a nomination for best drama series in a normal year. It appears as though all you had to do to earn a nomination is make it on TV last year, yet somehow Dave - GaTa in particular - was still snubbed. On the subject of Dave, I still think it was the best show of 2020, however, it has been somewhat disappointing so far this year. The most recent episode was the best of the season so far, so I hope it continues to get better over the second half of the season.

I was very disappointed with the second season of For All Mankind. The writers really phoned it in when it came to the alternate history, especially jarring compared to the first season, which had among other things this wonderful butterfly effect that had Ted Kennedy avoiding the Chappaquiddick incident due to attending hearings on the Soviet moon landing, becoming president in 1972, passing the equal rights amendment and so on.

Season 2 takes place in 1983, and had this all reconverge into literally just our 1980's, but the space shuttle goes to the moon instead of LEO, and there's a throwaway scene with an electric car. No exploration of the cultural or economic effects of the implied ongoing energy crisis, or the geopolitical situation of a world with an ascendant Soviet Union with soft power, the domestic politics make no sense, egregious 80's pop culture references (would there have even been an Apocalypse Now in a timeline where the Vietnam war was ended in the late 60's because the money was needed for the space program?) etc.

And that kind of set the tone for the whole season. Mediocre character arcs, out of place nostalgia bait, nonsensical main conflict (you're telling me the US killing a cosmonaut on the moon with a smuggled rifle isn't the diplomatic gift of a century to the USSR, and the rational response is actually an invasion of the American moon base with smuggled rifles?), and omissions that were just plain odd, like the AIDS crisis in a show with a gay man as a major character, or Japanese economic ascendancy in a show set in an early 80's with a United States deathly paranoid about falling behind in the wake of the Soviet Moonshot. The closest it came to redeeming itself was in the last episode, but they even tainted the one really good character arc in the season (Gordo and Tracy) by doing a cheap double dip on resolving the tension by giving you the relief of having them make it back into the base alive, and then going "oh actually they died shortly after" (... of under a minute of vacuum exposure) so you could have the grief and the funeral.

The final season of Atypical was released this week, so we’re watching it. I think they do a really good job with the characters. While the show is ostensibly about Sam, a guy on the spectrum growing up and eventually learning to live on his own, his sister’s arc is really good, too. And it looked as though they were going to have a typical reconciliation between Ilsa and her mother and then they didn’t, so I was pleased about that.

We also watched the game show Best Leftovers Ever!. The premise is that 3 contestants who are either chefs, food bloggers, or the like, are given leftovers and have to make something completely different with them. Unlike Crime Scene Kitchen the contestants are generally helpful with each other, and the fake tension is kept to a minimum. (They kinda sorta do the “..and the winner is…” wait for no particular reason just to make tension, “John!”, but that’s about it.) It’s not great TV, but it’s fun if you like cooking shows and not nearly as annoying as many of the other ones.

We finished out Pose. I could have done without the mafia story with Elektra. The show always resolved its tensions too quickly and neatly, but I appreciated what they did with it. It told a really compelling story and was generally fun to watch.

I took all of last week off after the long holiday weekend here in the states, so we watched a lot more TV than usual. We also ended up watching several music documentaries. We watched *The Bee Gees: How Do You Mend a Brocken Heart?” I’m not a fan of The Bee Gees, but it was interesting. I remember seeing the “Disco Sucks” stunt on TV as a kid. To realize that they had something like 5 of the top 10 songs on the charts at the time that happened was surreal. They went from being loved to villains overnight, pretty much. I also didn’t realize how many popular songs they wrote for other artists after that.

We also watched an episode of Classic Albums on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors. Again, I’m not a huge fan of the band, but it was a really interesting episode. I especially liked when the engineers who worked on the album played back the master tapes and highlighted specific instruments by bringing things in and out while they described the process of making them.

To my joy, HBO Max finally arrived in Brazil. After so many years, I have no excuse but to watch The Sopranos to completion. I'm on episode 6 of the first season. It is probably pointless to sing praises for this show in 2021, everyone knows it is one of the most acclaimed in television history -- of course that I'm liking it. So I'll make some offhand comments.

• I love that it was shot in actual film. If you're one of those that thinks digital made film pointless, watch this on a good television in full resolution. Film grain elevates the show and connects it to the film tradition it constantly references. And I see no reason for a mafia show (or many shows, for the matter -- even in digital) to be shot in anything but glorious 24 frames per second;
• It is so sad that James Gandolfini died young;
• There would be no Tony Soprano without Michael Corleone, and no Walter White without Tony Soprano;
• The fighting scenes are laughable. The acting is top notch, but nowadays fight choreography is way more realistic and believable. In that respect, The Sopranos is closer to The Godfather, but that is not a good thing.
• Jeniffer Melfi is a terrible the therapist! She has the subtlety of a bull in a china shop, and keeps pressuring Tony right from the start. She takes no time to get to know him and build rapport, a proceeds to give him heavy handed advice with little tact. No wonder Tony gets angry at her more than once!

I started Orphan Black on Prime a while ago and am finally finishing season 5. It's really a good show and I've really liked it a lot. Tatiana Maslany does an amazing job acting as each of the different sisters in it. I also really like when she's in one character, like Sarah and then has Sarah impersonating Rachel.

I’m watching Final Space right now, Olan Rogers show.. it’s decent. Kind of like futurama? You know when there’s a show that you’re like just enough into that you’ll finish it out, but aren’t exactly hyped on it? That’s where I’m at. It’s a lot like his YouTube channel

S05E07 of Rick and Morty leaked tonight, which is always bittersweet. I still watched it, though. I am very weak.

I won't say anything about the Loki finale except that I love the CGI. I love the aesthetic of this series. Marvel has done really well on the small screen.

quick edit: there's a quick post-credit sequence for Loki, too.