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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 have to say, Wheel of Time has really been hitting its stride with both ep4 and now ep5 tonight. It's gotten me hooked (as someone who read the series), even if it's not a purist's adaptation of it.
The first couple of episodes are definitely the weakest, but it's finding its footing pretty damn quickly, and from what a comment in /r/WoT said, next week's is the episode that Brandon Sanderson himself said was a 10/10, so I'm absolutely pumped.
I watched Ep5 last night and thought it was amazing. Then I went on the fan subreddits and was honestly baffled by the response. I feel like the reddit fandom is watching a different show than I am sometimes. Then again, I'm not really a purist when it comes to adaptations. If the adaptation understands the core of the story and the characters and is faithful to that, I don't really care if other details get changed in service to those themes and characters. And I feel like WoT is doing an incredible job of that.
It feels like the salty part of the Reddit fandom is mostly the same cast of Gamergate and TumblrInAction type posters, judging by how often Masstagger lights up like a Christmas tree on those comments. WoT is probably the least overtly shitty of the fan subs (granted, I believe it is the oldest WoT subreddit as well), WoTShow is next, then WheelOfTime, and then the chuds living up to their subreddit name over at Whitecloaks being the absolute worst about it.
For the rest of the detractors, it's not as if we don't have countless other examples of book -> screen adaptations (both TV and film) where it's obvious that a 1:1 adaptation is never going to happen for any book, yet there's always parts of the fanbase that will pitch a fit if it isn't that. This series was a big part of my teen years in book form, and while there's things that don't necessarily mesh well with what I imagined, they've been doing a great job of bringing these characters and world to life, as you mentioned.
Yeah I was hard into that series as a teen/young adult as well - to the point where my wife and I came very close to naming one of our kids after a favorite character - and they show has really been giving me a lot of the same feelings as the books.
I figured some of the crap on the reddit threads was probably your typical reddit chuds, but I haven't had mass-tagger in ages, partially because the firefox version was broken for a long time. I should look and see if there's a more recent working version. It was always enlightening to see how many, "as a leftist" posts came from people who had enormous amounts of karma on far-right subs.
I finally caught up to episode 5. I'm liking the show a lot. I read up to book 4 back in 2015 - 2016 and the characters and events are coming back to me. The casting is truly good. Moiraine is exactly how I imagined her. Nynaeve gives me chills in all her scenes.
I liked even the first few episodes. I think they were great fun, though I would have liked more of a prologue / lore.
I wonder if we'll get the LTT prologue from EotW at the beginning of S2,
spoilers for show-only people
or after whichever episode finally reveals Rand to be the Dragon Reborn instead of leaving it up in the air as they are right now.The showrunner has hinted that some of the early scenes like the prologue and Tam's fever dream might still be shown later on. I'm kinda glad we didn't get the LTT prologue, it worked for the books but I think it would have been weird in the show, plus the first episode was strapped enough for time as it was.
I feel they're getting better, but the pacing still needs work. I felt like it was too hard a pivot in the end of episode 5, and may depend too much on knowing the lore behind what was happening to make sense of it, even if they made a bunch of stuff up themselves for the show (I'd also welcome opinions from people who have never read the books on how this felt). There's too many jumps that may be what Jordan defined as chapters, but IIRC he'd follow a storyline to its conclusion or a cliffhanger, then transition to the next. The show seems to jump between plots intermittently, which most shows don't even do.
I do agree that the show is getting better, and honestly the first few episodes, or even the first season, of any show can be rough as they figure things out. If it keeps improving, or they had a breakthrough between EP 5 and 6 (explaining that rumored 10/10 hopefully), they'll have a real winner on their hands.
Who watched Arcane this week?
I've already talked about this but I seriously CANNOT STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. It's such an incredible series. I'm not going to stop until every single person on here has watched it.
You should stop procrastinating.
BTW, I know nothing about League lore; pre-existing knowledge not required.
Season two coming next year :)
I watched it a few times already. I plan to rewatch it in Japanese. (If Japanese is not an option you have to enable it in your Netflix settings. Account details -> Profile -> Language [Change] -> Enable 日本語)
I've been listening to the music as I work. snip Goodbye, Guns for Hire, etc all so good.
I've been enjoying Necrit's videos covering Arcane. There are also some unexpected people covering it on YouTube like Arcane: Jinx — Therapist Reacts!.
It got me to try the game again and I'm actually having fun. The community is still toxic but since I didn't play in over 2 years the game feels fresh again. (Also they added an option to mute all chat messages by default.) (It's toxic, but I'm also making new friends and rebuilding my friend list. People are adding me after games to duo, etc.)
The memes on /r/arcane are pretty funny.
I missed so many cinematics in the time I was away. The Don't Mess With Yordles is my favorite.
It's so cool that the artists that worked on the show are posting their stuff and what they worked on on Artstation (Also the fan art is great.).
Are you sure you need to do all of that? I’ve had access to foreign language Netflix for as long as I can remember and would be pissed if they didn’t offer the native language versions of the shows I watched.
Arcane's native language is English and I think English is the best for it. But the other languages all have little nuances. In the French one Vi talks more like a street thug. The translators are really good at choosing words and sometimes it adds more context to a scene.
To go back to the Netflix language interface, I think they limit the selection to 4 to 6 languages so you have to enable the ones you want if they aren't there.
Hawkeye might be my favorite MCU show ever. It feels like a breath of fresh air, a more grounded story focused on character.
The central action scene in the third episode is really impressive. Right now, my ranking for these shows are:
Hawkeye
WandaVision
Loki
What If...
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
I thought the first episode was absolutely terrible. But the second episode does a lot to redeem it. It almost feels like Hawkeye has a character and personality, finally. It’s still stumbling over itself a little bit, but it feels like its getting a hold of itself.
I don’t know what to make of these series TBH. I feel I could have loved Loki if it had less Loki, and Wandavision could have been great if it bothered to finish literally any of it’s loose plot threads. What If had really impressively styled animation but it felt like fan pandering turned to 11.
I think Falcon and the Winter Soldier was the best, but I had a really hard time keeping interested towards the end. It wasn’t bad at all, I just think it wasn’t for me. But honestly, that sentiment covers all of these series.
Gomorrah was released a week ago or so and the english speaking work is waiting around for sub translations. This series is awesome. E01-E04 have subs so far and they're pretty good.
If you're in to mob / crime stuff, you'll definitely enjoy this. Also check out ZeroZeroZero, which is another series based on a book by Stefano Sollima. Both books are excellent.
I did not see Gomorrah, but ZeroZeroZero was excellent! I'm glad I'm not the only one who watched that show. I stumbled across the show by complete happenstance (was reading Gabriel Byrne's interview in the Guardian and checked on his IMDb page to see what he's up to) and I really liked it.
Gomorrah has a similar feel but is a little more soap opera-y at times --- but overall its great. There's an initial movie, then the S01-S04, L'Immortal (movie), then S05 now.
If you do decide to tuck into it, this season should be ready for you by the time you get there.
The ZZZ book is pretty much the backstory of the series. The level of corruption is unbelievable.
I really loved that ZeroZeroZero put as much emphasis on the logistics of the drug trade as to the day-to-day realities for everyone involved. I also loved the family dynamics in the series, especially that of the facilitators, which in a weird way, reminded me of Succession. (I'm using vague terms to avoid giving away spoilers.)
I have a big backlog but I'll definitely add Gomorrah on the list.
You'd like the Gomorrah book. Its all about the businesses -- like how designers get their clothing made via this crazy auction system, the whole 'chemical disposal business', and more. Its easy to come away feeling that everything in the region is corrupt.
I should probably watch Succession. I don't know why I've been putting it off.
Wow, that sounds appealing. I don't really read fiction but I'll get the book and skim it to see if it piques my interest. I really like being exposed to inner workings of systems via some medium, no matter what the system is about.
You should absolutely watch Succession! It's already one of the bests ever for me. Everything about the show is just top notch, but it has a certain style and that style may not be appealing to some people. (The good thing is it makes its style very apparent in its pilot, so if you disliked the pilot, you can just stop.)
Thanks for the recommendation again!
oh no! its all non-fiction. The author is a journalist and these books inspired the series.
I got the first season of Succession and I'll start soon. :)
Oh, even better! I'm getting the book right now.
Enjoy Succession! Feel free to message me if you ever want to talk about it. :)
will do! I watched the first ep and I'm totally hooked. Roman is a dick... but I have a feeling he'll grow on me quickly.
I can say so much, yet I should not! Not yet anyway. Enjoy the show! :)
It only gets better! Inside Job is great. I'm so glad @tomf sold me on it the other week.
We're through with the second season of The Great and it continues to be some of the best TV out there. The wit, the decadence, the absurdity. It's wonderful!
Also still watching Cowboy Bebop, the anime original. It's so good. I'm curious how they did the live action remake but I heard it feels like a pale copy.
Yeah, the live action adaptation of Bebop is… something. I would not even consider it a remake. It’s more like a new adventure with the same world and characters that look a lot like the ones from Bebop.
I saw a trailer and recognized some scenes/sets/characters from specific episodes, though? Somehow if it genuinely was a whole different thing, that would make me more interested but it does seem pretty close, no?
The thing is that it's certainly intended to be a remake. But the times that it tries to copy over plot from the anime are probably the weakest parts of it (other than what they did to Julia... and to Vicious... and maybe also Gren).
I'd say that the main cast is pretty spot-on for the originals, but they're not entirely the same. Spike is almost 1:1. Jet is so close, but his story and situation are different enough that they don't feel the same. The writers also have a tendency of making him the one moving the plot, which means that he simply talks so much that it seems like he's a different character altogether. And while I think that Faye has the same spirit, the way the actress brings it across (alongside the writing she's given) has a different flavor to it. None of this is bad; they all have genuinely good chemistry going on, so it's fun to watch them whenever they're talking to eachother. Weirdly enough, some of the changes that made the least sense to change ended up being some of the things I enjoyed the most. But there are also some things which are just deeply disappointing. It's kind of like RWBY in that some scenes are 11/10, but it's in a show where it's sometimes so bad or insulting that you want to scream. Though it's nowhere as bad as RWBY is when you take them both as a whole.
But yeah, I've heard more than once that they would have preferred if this was a spin-off in the same universe.
Finished Forbrydelsen season 1 a few weeks ago. Definitely lived up to my expectations.
Hawkeye has been very close to what I was hoping for as a fan of Fraction's run. Definitely a step up from Loki/TFATWS which fell short for me (have not seen the others).
Forbrydelsen = the original Danish version of The Killing, for my fellow anglophones. I haven't seen the original, but the American one was actually pretty good.