I was pretty disappointed by the entire fifth season. The show has been floundering after season 3, when it was clear that the natural climax of the story was post-poned because they couldn't handle a show without Homelander.

There's a number of issues that I have with S5, starting with the pacing. The episodes are paced incredibly weirdly. We spend a lot of time on things that, given the show is in its last season, really shouldn't be the focus. New B-side superheroes are introduced and take a lot of focus away from the core protagonists who's stories we are supposed to be finishing up. There's a whole haunted house bottle episode. There's a 5 min sequence of two new villains sniffing each other's asses because they're animal themed in the penultimate episode. The consequence of this is that the actual climax is incredibly rushed and dealt with in all of 30 minutes. There's a whole storyline that's introduced with a stronger superhero drug that makes you immune to the virus the Boys are cooking up to kill Homelander, and he takes it and then within 2 episodes they just find a new dumb way to kill him. It reeks of upping the stakes without a good reason.

Another issue is how cheap everything felt. There's a distinct lack of set-up shots and extras. Most of the time, it's named characters sitting in a closed room, talking at each other. If there's action, it's just a fist fight with maybe some dry-wall punches. The entire climax of the show is confided to a single room's decor getting torn to shreds and that's while evil superman is getting killed. There's a chase sequence in ep 2 which made me laugh out loud because of how stupid it looked. In this high stakes situation it's just people jogging down roads.

I do feel for the show because for something written pre 2024, they got outpaced by reality on the satire. But that doesn't absolve you from dogshit dialogue that cannot stay away from crass words and sex jokes. All the time. S1 was raunchy and gory at times, but it was timed well and balanced out by genuine, normal conversation. The word fuck loses all it's fucking meaning if you fucking put it in fucking front of every fucking other word. Ignoring even that, the writing still sucks from start to finish.

I'm happy it's over and that I can let this franchise rest. I stuck with it because S1 was really good. I'm sad that a show which had such a clear through line from S1 onwards with the Boys killing their way up the Seven was turned into, well, whatever happened in seasons 4 and 5.

Finale of season 4 spoilers here. You have been warned that people will discuss spoilers here. Don't blame me if you are spoiled of things that happen all the way to the end of season 4, which premiered today.

Anybody else watch the Season 4 Finale and just blown away by how it ended? I was NOT expecting a full PTSD Mark episode to end with him agreeing to let Thragg use the planet as a breeding planet. Its such a smart, awful way to have him make a morally compromised decision and come to terms with Thragg. Also the mid credits scene of Allan being told to use the Scourge virus! Amazing television and i can't wait to see what they do next.

Edit: thank you to whomever added the tags for me. I am usually just a lurker and appreciate someone flagging this post appropriately! I was too excited to get my post up and see what people had to say!

Personally - and keeping it spoiler free - I thought Season 4 was much better than I expected it to be. It felt a lot more sincere and there was just a lot more going on than in some of the other seasons.

Wondering if anyone had any thoughts they want to share?

I may be in the minority on Tildes who still watches cable news. My mom is the one who puts it on and I'll usually ignore/forget about it when I'm home alone, but I find it's a good way to keep track of major headlines. Also, our usual choice of national news, ABC with David Muir, tends to end every broadcast with some feel-good story which is just... really appreciated in these times. (Though tonight they played a soundbite of Martin Luther King Jr.'s final Sunday sermon, and the choice of that particular soundbite feels very pointed.)

A couple months ago YoutubeTV and Disney got into a contract disagreement though, so ABC was removed from the lineup for a bit. For a while we watched CBS News, and... Something about it just genuinely stressed me out. Of course the news is very stressful lately, but usually I can deal with it. At worst, I leave the room for certain stories that make me particularly angry.

Something about CBS just left me really agitated and stressed though. I can't say what it was exactly, maybe the delivery, or a heavy focus on the worst parts of US politics? All I know is every night I was getting increasingly worked up, the way I only ever did with the most absolutely infuriating news stories, until we switched to NBC until ABC returned to air.

This came to mind again after my mom put on CBS last night since ABC was starting late due to some sports program. It agitated me until I just snapped.

So my question: does anyone else find CBS particularly stressful compared to other cable news? If so, does anyone have any ideas on why that is? And are there any regular watchers who've noticed a shift in tone? I never really watched CBS before, but I'm wondering if maybe it's somehow tied to Bari Weiss's influence given the stuff with 60 Minutes.

The first ep. got its own thread on Tildes and a decent discussion, I figured I'd try to get one going for whole season. Since it finished airing like 2 weeks ago.

I binged S1 yesterday, and am very happy that I waited till all episodes were out, as the pace of the show is glacial and I would've likely lost interest were I not able to skip around a bit. That's one of my two major issues. The other being that I found Carol insufferable at moments in the show. I think it does a good job at humanizing her and explaining why she is the way she is. It's also important to note that a majority of the show plays out days after Carol's wife Helen dies and she's reeling from that loss, as well as losing everyone else too. For me this culminated in ep 6, when she has a conversation with another survivor after having uncovered that they process human corpses into protein powder, and she thinks it's a big reveal that everyone else already knows. She just wasn't told because she's made everyone not like her.

That being said, the premise of this show is excellent and I love the questions it makes me ask and think about. The way it's shot is also fantastic. Yes, all of humanity is in a blissful state, but most of us would also die due to starvation, but there's no murder, no robbings, but it's also clear that this blissful state is more akin to being happy because you're on drugs, not "true happiness". I think this was most evident in the scene when the Peruvian girl turned willingly. Just before she does, she's shown with a lamb on her lap, which she likes and pets. The moment she turns, she just walks off, leaving the lamb behind. Obviously also all expressions of individualism are gone, this means all art, plus the question hasn't been properly answered on what exactly the Others do when they don't have someone around to make happy. I guess work together as a collective on sending the signal onto the next planet.

I think the big answer is going to be when they hopefully break someone out of the hivemind in S2. I just hope that it won't be the season finale, but sooner. I dislike the trend of prestige television being at such a slow pace.

What do you guys think? Both the smart writing and the pacing issues seem to be the main two things i see mentioned online. Anything else you liked or disliked? Any theories on where it'll go?

So what did everyone think of the finale?

It's been a while since I've watched an old TV show. We've had widescreen TVs in our houses for decades now. When HD and digital video came into the scene, it basically came hand in hand with the 16:9 aspect ratio. It was more cinematic. It was basically a mark of quality in and of itself.

On a whim, I decided to watch Wolf's Rain, an original Bones anime that was produced in 4:3. I thought it would be difficult to adapt to the more narrow screen. I was thinking what I'd be missing out on by the missing part of the screen.

In hindsight, those thoughts were pretty rediculous. The people who made the show knew they were going to target that aspect ratio, so they built the entire show around it. It's animation: every frame is literally a painting. The aspect ratio was never a limitation to the artist because it was effectively the same limitation any given piece of paper or canvas they would apply their art to.

By no longer producing video in 4:3, we have lost something important to framing: verticality and angularity. 16:9 means there's a lot more room to the left and right than there is up and down, and because you have so much more horizontal view dutch angles tend to be extra disorienting. While Wolf's Rain doesn't use dutch angles very often, vertical framing is extremely common. One early episode has a particularly striking scene where a white wolf is running vertically up a cliff towards the moon. Other times it's used to show off the scale of large structures, which can better express a sense of dread or oppression. The show also often has circular framing; where characters and objects are arranged in a circle, which doesn't seem to work quite as well aesthetically on widescreen formats.

Now that I've started thinking about this, I started to think about what a shame it is that we are actually losing some of our treasured 4:3 shows from the past. TV shows aren't terribly well archived in general outside of ultra-popular shows, and even then many old shows that were made for 4:3 have been bowdlerized into 16:9. Many shows have been stretched out or had their tops and bottoms deleted in order to fit into 16:9. Some shows were shot on film and had new scans done in order to use the parts that were originally designed to be cropped out. But because they are ruining the intent of the cinematographers, the addition is not necessarily a good one.

But what do you think? I know this is probably not a popular opinion, but I'm sure that I'm not the only one who thinks this.

Done in quotes because sometimes shows get cancelled or otherwise abandoned and other times it has a final season or only had one season and was properly finished. Either way, same result.

I don't have the patience or time to keep track of what series is having what new season come out at what point. I prefer to just wait for it all to be done and then watch in my own time. Even if it is one of the very few series I watch that isn't "done" I still don't do the weekly episode thing. I just wait for it all to come out and then watch as I please.

That said, I have a backlog of series that are on my to-watch list, either suggested by friends or I saw a trailer that looked good, but they sit there at present because there's so much utter shit SEO spam websites that you can't get a clear answer if a new season is coming or a series is done or not.

Just a quick PSA, if anyone noticed massive amounts of shows disappeared from Netflix the past week or two. Apparently they're getting stricter with VPN detection, and blocking per region licensed shows if we're on VPN.

Haven't seen a whole lot of discussion about this show on tildes. Not in weekly threads nor a main thread - so here is one!

It's a 9/10 for me.

I waited until all of season 2 was out before starting it. Realized I had forgotten almost everything since season 1 though, so rewatched that first. It turned into a binge of both seasons - I just could not stop! It has been probably 3 years since I was so glued to the screen and this engaged in a tv show (Euphoria season 1),

I will skip an analysis or further review but every character was good. Every actor delivered. Just great all around. Season 2 (9.5/10) even better than season 1 (8.5/10).

So anyways, discuss! More than happy to have my feelings about it validated lol, and also see other takes on it.

Its a heavy show but three episodes in, I'm loving the single shot approach that they took.

Without cuts, it's all about the pace of the drama, the honesty of each beat and the quality of the performance. That, and I haven't seen a show tackle toxic masculinity in quite this way and I'm super here for it.

Has anybody else seen it? What did you think?

I've been feeling nostalgic and watching some old Top Gear recently. It has got me thinking about how remarkable the chemistry between the three hosts is and how the combination of those three, the time that top gear ran, and the format they chose created such an incredibly successful and wide-reaching show. Despite many efforts no one has been able to make a car show to rival it.

What are some other examples of this sort of phenomena? Where the right time, place, people and format come together to create something extraordinary? Doesn't have to be television necessarily, but given the example that spurred this question I figured this wasn't a bad place to post.