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    1. Ahsoka doesn't really work

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      I just finished this show, having waited for it all to come out before getting into it -- other Disney+ Star Wars series taught me the lesson that they are much better binged than watched week to week and I was not wrong.

      Spoilers below

      The endless references to a children's animated show that I have less than zero interest in viewing really drags it down, which is why my main take away as per the title is that it doesn't really work. Most of the premise of the show is finding Thrawn and Ezra -- two characters you have no way of knowing about unless you watched that cartoon. Yet these two characters are constantly referenced and for some reason important, but you're never really sure why.

      It kind of works with Thrawn because there's a mysterious villain type of thing going on. But Ezra? Why do we miss him? Who is he? What did he do? Almost none of my questions are ever answered, even after we find him! Aside from simply being told by other characters that he is important, I am never told how or why. Nothing they say or do makes me care about him. They don't show me anything that makes me want to get emotionally invested in him. And no, I am not watching hundreds of hours of cartoons to understand the context. That is simply too much.

      This show is in a very strange place between obviously trying to cater to a large audience (it is a Disney property after all, so $$$), but it simultaneously can only be fully understood by extremely hardcore Star Wars fans. I consider myself a fan. I have watched all live action movies and shows, even the laughably bad stuff like the Boba Fett and Kenobi shows. That they intentionally mix together animated and live action storylines though -- especially with any context lacking -- is a major misstep.

      I like the Star Wars universe a lot. And while a lot of it is entertaining, it feels very bad to feel left out. It would be different if it was a small cameo or name drop once in a while. But the main storyline gets impacted by this, and it just kind of leaves a sour taste after finishing it.

      I was decently entertained and it had some very good moments, particularly the Baylan and Shin duo was intriguing -- which is ironic as I understand that they are among the only original characters in this show. Regurgitating old canon is not the way.

      7/10. Entertaining but unsatisfying.

      37 votes
    2. How would you rewrite the ending of a show that had an unsatisfying finale, or imagine an ending to a show that was canceled prematurely?

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      Recently I've been rewatching GIRLS for the umpteenth time. When the series finale originally aired, it was a mini “Game of Thrones finale” situation. Fans were largely disappointed by the final episode, many disliking season 6 in general. It's one of my favorite shows, but usually when I rewatch it I either skip the very last episode, or I skip the entire final season, instead pretending that the season 5 finale was the ending of the show.

      The finale of GIRLS hit a lot of marks for controversial finales. A few beloved characters were largely missing from the final episode/season or didn't get closure that people expected. The ending for the main character seemed to come out of nowhere (magically landing a dream job after struggling with employment the whole show,) and her overall arch didn't seem to align with her personality or anything that had happened up to that point. No one really got a happy ending, and the overall message or theme of the show seemed unclear, since many of the characters experienced very little growth over the course of the show, or they did actually experience some growth that was ignored when their conclusions were written.

      I thought it might be fun to see if any of you have similar thoughts about any TV shows that didn't end the way you expected, or what you imagine would happen in fantastic shows that never even got an ending due to being canceled early. A few examples that come to mind:

      • The obvious - How would you salvage the disaster conclusion of GoT? (I've seen so many takes online that manage to make it more satisfying.)
      • I haven't seen Dexter, but I've heard that the ending was unsatisfying and clashed with what people expected from the main character.
      • How could HIMYM have ended if the whole show wasn't instantly tranformed into a bait and switch with the finale?
      • What would've happened with the characters on Freaks and Geeks, had that amazing show been allowed to continue for another season or two?

      I intended to write about how I would want my example show to have ended, but honestly I'm stumped. Writing is hard! Especially if you don't have the luxury of planning the ending ahead of time, which I imagine was the issue for the writers of many of the classic "controversial finales." I'll probably add a comment about it after I come up with something.

      51 votes
    3. Ahsoka - S01E04 Discussion

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      Spoilers for Ahsoka Season 1, Episodes 1-4; but also Star Wars Rebels & Clone Wars, or really any Star Wars (including Mando/Book of Boba) is fair game.

      I kept the title vague but I really want to discuss the World Between Worlds.

      For those unfamiliar that is where Ahsoka found herself at the end of episode 4. For those familiar (again, Rebels spoilers) it is a special Force place that can view and, in at least one instance, interact with the past. By all accounts it also has some echos of the future.

      It's not technically "time travel" but it will potentially be viewed as such and have a similarly long lasting affect on the Star Wars universe.

      Do you think the World Between Worlds is a good idea? What story do you want to see told? What story do you think will be told?

      13 votes
    4. Futurama Season 8 Episode 2 discussion

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      This thread may contain spoilers.

      I thought it was pretty good! Better than the last episode, we were pleasantly surprised here at house Godzilla. We actually watched the older episode where Kif gets pregnant the night before, so we were very curious to see how Amy would handle everything. Feels were had.

      What were your thoughts? Let your voice be heard!

      24 votes
    5. Have you watched the The Bear? If so, what did you think?

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      Premise - TL;DW -

      A young chef from the fine dining world comes home to Chicago to run his family sandwich shop after a heartbreaking death in his family. A world away from what he's used to, Carmy must balance the soul-crushing realities of small business ownership, his strong-willed and recalcitrant kitchen staff and his strained familial relationships.

      With season 2 being released this past weekend I wanted to see if anyone on Tildes was watching it. Right now, I think it might be my favorite show. There is no hamfisted comedy. The dialog seems shockingly/surprisingly human. It has stakes, but its not overwhelming or action-packed cheese.

      The whole context of the show is surprisingly fresh, a lot of the characters have flaws but good even realistic redemption or growth. I think one of the most surprising things (for me at-least) is the lack of a love interest, I can't recall the last time a show didn't have one. I could go on and gush about this show some more, but I wanted to see if anyone here watched it.

      If not, give it a chance. I think you might like it.

      44 votes
    6. TeenNick is only airing Henry Danger (I am not exaggerating)

      So, this is something I discovered last night that is just blowing my mind: for most of the past year, the channel TeenNick is showing only Henry Danger. I cannot emphasize how literal I am being...

      So, this is something I discovered last night that is just blowing my mind: for most of the past year, the channel TeenNick is showing only Henry Danger.

      I cannot emphasize how literal I am being with that. Usually "a channel is only showing X" is an exaggeration, but for once, no. As far as I can tell, 99% of TeenNick's programming has been Henry Danger or its spin-off, Danger Force, for the past year. At most, there are brief "respites" where it will have a block with another show. For example, from July 27 to 31, it aired Zoey 101 from 11 PM to 1 AM. Two hours late at night, and then back to Henry Danger. Similar story with some new Nickelodeon show called Erin & Aaron: it showed periodically starting on April 22, and was apparently last aired on July 4.

      Otherwise? Most days are JUST Henry Danger. Even Wikipedia lists Henry Danger and Danger Force as the only current shows. (Along with Nick News, which apparently only airs once a month.)

      This is just honestly stunning to me. For those unfamiliar with TeenNick, it's a sub-channel of Nickelodeon. As far as I can remember, it pretty much never had original programming, but would air reruns of mostly live-action shows from Nickelodeon (either older finished shows or currently airing), some older Nickelodeon cartoons (Hey Arnold and Rugrats), or shows picked up through syndication (namely Degrassi, and more recently America's Funniest Home Videos and Wipeout for some reason...?).

      What I'm saying is there is no reason for them to ONLY air this one, single show. It can't be blamed on any production issues, since it primarily airs reruns. TeenNick SHOULD have access to all the other shows from Nickelodeon's library, so it can't be a licensing issue either. As stated earlier, it aired episodes of a show that premiered this year on Nickelodeon. And Henry Danger is fairly recent, ending in 2020, so I don't know if it's a matter of residuals.

      The only reason I can think of is that they want to push people to get Paramount+. Except even with that logic, this channel is currently a waste of money. Henry Danger has a total of 128 half-hour episodes (though I think some are part of a one-hour special, so Wikipedia counts 121 episodes...?), so that's basically 5 days' worth of content before airing the same thing again. That's not enough to justify a dedicated channel—not for viewers or advertisers.

      From a cursory internet search, they average 66,000 viewers, with a peak of 99,000 on January 1, 2023. I can't imagine that would appeal to advertisers. I feel like the costs of running the channel outweigh any potential profits. This feels like it's just a money sink.

      I just... I can't wrap my head around it. What the heck??

      Anyone have any thoughts on this? Or just want to join me in boggling over this weirdness? This feels like it could be a symptom of cable's overall degradation (I've seen people comparing it to Cartoon Network's limited programming in recent years), but... It almost feels like this channel is being sabotaged? Deliberately set up for failure and closure? Just, I can't wrap my head around a year-long nonstop "marathon".

      56 votes
    7. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S02E04 - "Among the Lotus Eaters" Episode Discussion

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      The first three episodes didn't quite hit the mark for me, but this felt like proper TOS style Star Trek.

      Starfleet messing up the Prime Directive. A villain who is actually a victim. Spock is challenged on feelings versus logic. The overall theme of exploring the importance of personal memories and the straight forward metaphor of fascist regime controlling the people, didn't feel as hamfisted as I have found some of the other newer trek episodes. It does stand on its own as a well rounded singular trek story. I do however still have a bit of a problem with how newer trek seems to like hand to hand combat violence so much. Feels unnecessary in most cases.

      23 votes
    8. What happened to the light crime-comedy genre of the 2010s?

      Burn Notice, White Collar, Chuck, Psych... List probably goes on. Suits fits the mold in my head tonally (at least the earlier seasons), though less about action. Nowadays even the comedies are...

      Burn Notice, White Collar, Chuck, Psych... List probably goes on. Suits fits the mold in my head tonally (at least the earlier seasons), though less about action.

      Nowadays even the comedies are turning into serious drama than light pick-me-ups. So... let's talk about that? What happened? Do you miss them?

      48 votes
    9. The Witcher (Season 3)

      The final three episodes have dropped from the third season of Netflix' The Witcher adaptation - also marking the final appearance of series lead Henry Cavill. So I reckon it may be ripe for some...

      The final three episodes have dropped from the third season of Netflix' The Witcher adaptation - also marking the final appearance of series lead Henry Cavill. So I reckon it may be ripe for some discussion (assuming sufficient interest exists amongst the community here).

      So, despite previous misgivings after a baffling second season and disappointingly bland third seasons thus far, I jumped straight into this finale out of respect for the very fine turn by Mr Cavill throughout. For context, earlier in the day I finished off the third book, Baptism of Fire, during my current re-read so I'm well ahead on plot and had text fresh in head. In S3's favour, indeed, the show runner's claims of hewing closer to the books is actually quite fair. In broad strokes, they have captured every major plot point, and generally in the correct order. But that's also the problem in some respects - the writers are evidently only focused on doing a pure plot adaptation. The book chapters, for reference, are quite long - roughly 50 pages apiece - with only 7-10 of them per novel, and often feature a juxtaposition of several perspectives throughout (a feat Sapkowski becomes ever more skillful at over time). But the key thing that's lost in translation is that each chapter generally has a clear idea or thematic element that ties everything together, i.e., Sapkowski always has something he wants to say, an idea he wants to get across, some comment on war, family, human nature, etc., and this gives an extra richness that underpins the plot elements driving everything forward. Not only that, Sapkowski quite enjoys playing off traditional Fantasy / mythological tropes and conventions and this humour has been completely shed by the show writers - likely an intentional move given what has emerged about their purported disdain for the source material.

      In short, I feel the writers are adapting the plot without an understanding of what makes the Witcher stand apart from the sea of other fantasy fiction, and, as a consequence, all of their original additions only wind up a detriment to the storytelling. Nevertheless, it was genuinely nice to see a few certain scenes on screen.

      15 votes
    10. Futurama Season 8 Episode 1 discussion

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      The first episode of the new season is out! What do you think of it?

      I thought it was pretty okay. It was too self - referential for me. It kept making too many "we're back" jokes but they kind of did that the last time they were cancelled and brought back. They eased off those kind of jokes eventually the last time it happened.

      I was worried about how they would handle references to more modern things as "Attack of the killer App" was really painful to watch. But it seems like they handled it pretty decently.

      I'm slow, but it took me a while to realise that Scary Mirror as a replacement for Scary Door was a jab at Black Mirror.

      I didn't think the episode was very funny, but it wasn't bad either. What was good about it shows promise, so I'm hopeful.

      39 votes
    11. What is prestige television?

      I read an article today that referred to Foundation as "prestige television," and my first reaction was, "idk man, I didn't think it was all that great." This got me thinking, though, and I'm...

      I read an article today that referred to Foundation as "prestige television," and my first reaction was, "idk man, I didn't think it was all that great." This got me thinking, though, and I'm going down two separate paths here.

      First, prestige television is a category that gets thrown about more as a marker of social context than of the quality of the show. Today, at least, these shows are typically big budget, highly marketed (specifically marketed as high quality), and likened to each other. Foundation was really hyped up in the runup to its release. There was a whole slew of articles calling it Apple TV's sci-fi Game of Thrones. More or less the same thing happened with The Rings of Power. Basically, "prestige television" feels like a term that was coopted by television studios in a landscape that has trended towards putting all their eggs into one basket. This only covers the studios' use of the term, though.

      Second is the audience's use of the term. There remains the obvious question of if we're going to ward off the tv studios' coopting of the term, how are we going to use it? It really came out of a specific era of television, and regardless of anyone's assessment of relative quality, shows like that aren't really getting made anymore.

      Personally, though? I wonder if we even need the term. My sort of emotional reaction to the conversation about prestige television is that it reminds me of the debate around "literature." It's not a debate I want to get into, but it's another label that has unclear boundaries and a tendency towards the old. In practice, it just gets used to snub certain books (e.g. "Dune is good, but it's not literature"). With television, I'm not saying we need to do away with the concept of prestige television, but if we do want to keep using it (and again, studios will even if we don't),
      a) What should it mean?
      b) How should we use it (i.e. for good, not for snobbery)?

      19 votes
    12. Outlander - Season 7

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      Does anyone hereabouts watch Outlander?

      Episode 4 of season 7 has just been aired. While the pacing of this season's episodes has been gradual thus far, years have been skipping past in a matter of episodes judging by the growth of some of the children. They hinted at a trip to Scotland but then snatched it away for at least another episode. I've not read the books and have avoided spoilers as much as possible of what's to come in the televised adaptation of the novels.

      In episode 1, there is discussion of what was the right thing for a man (or any human, even) to do when seeing a woman attacked. Brianna does not want Roger to help Wendigo escape because Wendigo did not help her mother Claire. Roger describes a situation at sea where he saw a child tossed overboard and then the mother jumped in after her child, but he was frozen and could do nothing to stop the atrocity especially if he had any hope of staying alive to find Brianna. He sympathizes with Wendigo, who fled and saved his life rather than dive into a situation where not only would he not have saved Claire being raped but would have died in the process as well. Brianna is upset by this discussion and in the end Roger does what his wife wants and doesn't help Wendigo.
      I am torn about this. Jamie and Claire are the main couple of the show. Jamie and those of his bloodline are shown to have a strong code. It is shown time and again that Jamie and his ilk would not have stood for such acts of violence and would have died even if the odds of winning or saving those being abused and victimized was not in their favor.
      Yet I feel Roger's point. Jamie and Roger are rather real examples of different kinds of men. Is either more right than the other?

      Those are some of my thoughts about the show so far.

      Is there any interest for discussion purely about the television show?

      8 votes
    13. 'Silo' season finale: book reader discussion

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      I would like to have a discussion of the season finale and season as a whole of Silo with other book readers who know the overarching plot. Non book readers are welcome obviously, but spoilers will be here.

      Click for spoilers

      Overall I think it was decent and I like a lot of the additions they made. Some of the episodes in the middle were very filler-y and kinda boring. But I wasn't a huge fan of the reveal in the show vs the books, for the screen and especially for the tape. The heat tape is like the determining factor here and they really glossed over it. I'm not sure if I would have gotten it if I didn't read the book.

      However there are still mysteries, I was wondering where they were going to go with Lukas since he got busted in the last episode. Now he's going to the mines??? Who is she going to talk to over the radio now? Also where do the mines go to avoid other silos lol? Although I'm not really mad about the change if Lukas doesn't end up being Bernard's shadow. In the book it was very "hey you random dude, be my shadow now suddenly"

      And what about that mystery door? Are they connected to the other silos somehow? Bernard seemed kind of surprised when Jules mentioned it and said there were many mysteries... I wonder if he actually knows anything about them or not. I was surprised Sims didn't know about the fake helmet screen, but I guess he wouldn't know that if wasn't actually Bernard's shadow yet. I really question if he will actually end up being Bernard's shadow though...

      Overall, would watch season 2. I wanna know what ends up happening.

      21 votes
    14. Last episode of Endeavour

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      Can someone explain the end of the episode to me, a poor American who has never seen the original show? I think I was following right up until the gunshot, and then... wtf?

      6 votes
    15. How do the human-like Cylons work, in 'Battlestar Galactica' (2004-2009)

      First It was mentioned that, there are 12 of them. If one dies there memory is uploaded and another gets activated, I thought it was somewhat like cylo in star wars. later, we see all of them...

      First It was mentioned that, there are 12 of them. If one dies there memory is uploaded and another gets activated, I thought it was somewhat like cylo in star wars. later, we see all of them operating together, so they sync continously or at certain period? I'm wondering how do they actually work, in data sharing/sync scenario?

      PS. My heart weeps for firefly.

      6 votes
    16. Series finales and a lack of closure

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      I just finished a show, and it, like a lot of shows that I've watched recently, ended rather abruptly. As soon as "the point of the show" concluded, so did the show itself. I don't know if this is a more recent trend or just something I've noticed recently, but I find nine times out of ten I really dislike it. It feels like they just don't give the viewers a chance to sit with the ending and this universe they've come to love. No time to sit and enjoy the view from the peak, no last drink with the friends you made along the way, no five years later "where are they now?". Just a kind of ambiguous ending that can be taken either way and a feeling of "there's gotta be one more episode right?"

      Do people actually enjoy this? I feel like they must because how often I see it in movies and TV, but at the same time, I sorta just feel like it's a cheap way to add some depth to the ending without actually pinning yourself down to actually ending the show/movie. If people wanted it to end with A they can read into the ending that A happened, if they wanted B, same case.

      19 votes
    17. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 16, Episodes 1 & 2 Discussion

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      The 16th season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia started airing last night and is now available for streaming on Hulu too! What did y'all think about the new episodes?

      Please make sure to provide warnings for any spoilers you may post! If you want to hide your spoilers, please follow the formatting tips at https://docs.tildes.net/instructions/text-formatting#expandable-sections to hide them under expandable sections. Thank you!

      Episode 1 & 2 After watching all the teasers they showed over the last few weeks, I wasn't expecting literally all the teaser material to show up in the first episode. However, I still enjoyed the first episode! This felt a bit more like a classic Always Sunny episode and I found it funny for the most part. I definitely think that the show has lost a bit of its old charm, it now looks like a proper TV show with properly lit up sets and whatnot. Despite this, I think this episode was a solid start to the season!

      I really enjoyed the second episode too! It was cool seeing Charlie's sisters show up in this episode. I remember in the season they mentioned Charlie's sister and then she was never mentioned again. In the podcast, they mentioned that they'd simply forgotten about Charlie's sister as a character. So it was cool seeing them finally show Charlie's sister(s) in an episode now. Also was not expecting an OnlyFans name drop haha.

      31 votes
    18. The Expanse: Thoughts on railguns

      Having finished out the Amazon Prime series "The Expanse" I'm now working my way through the novels and I keep coming up against a problem with with railguns. Specifically, the way that railguns...

      Having finished out the Amazon Prime series "The Expanse" I'm now working my way through the novels and I keep coming up against a problem with with railguns. Specifically, the way that railguns are used in The Expanse doesn't mesh well with the way they're portrayed.

      First, some background. Ships in The Expanse are generally unarmored. There are a bunch of reasons for this but the short version is "most things that can hit you in space will kill you anyway" and armor adds mass which makes every manuver more expensive in terms of reaction mass. So no one has armor. This is important because it means that ships in the Expanse can get ripped up by something as mundane as a stray bullet from a Point Defense Cannon (PDC). PDCs are... well, they're guns. Regular guns which are flinging around much less mass and at much lower velocities than railguns.

      Thus, ships in the Expanse are equipped to handle impacts but nothing much bigger than a sand-grain moving at a few km/s.

      When we're introduced to rail-guns in the series we're given to understand that they use magnetic acceleration to chuck a 5kg chunk of tungsten and/or uranium at a target at an "appreciable percentage of C." That's much faster than a bullet or any micrometeors ships are likely to encounter. Even 1% of C is ~3,000 km/s.

      5 kg of Tungsten is less than you think. Some back of the envelope math suggests that's about cube about 2.6 inches on a side... which is not big. That works out to an incredible energy density which would make a lot of sense if railguns were routinely being fired at planets or asteroids but, since they seem to mainly target ships, the vast, vast majority of the energy that goes into flinging that slug at its target is going to carry through to the other side of the ship.

      All total we're talking about 488.5 million Newtons of force for 1% of the speed of light. Helpfully, this scales roughly lineraly so long as we don't get too close to C and induce relativistic mass issues, so 10% of C is 4.8 billion Newtons and so on. So, that railgun slug is carrying a lot of energy. At 1% of C it represents 22.5 trillion joules of kinetic energy. Written out long-ways so we can appreciate all those zeros it's 22,500,000,000,000 J. At 10%, we're talking 2.25 quadrillion joules. To give some sense of scale, that means that, at 1% of C, three rail-gun slugs are delivering about as much energy as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. At 10% of C one round carries about 537 kilotons, or about the yield of a modern, city-busting hydrogen bomb.

      Those are absolutely titanic amounts of energy but, realistically, they'll never deliver that much power to a target. After all, a railgun round can only push on its target as hard as the target can push back on it. If the round just punches through the entire ship like it's made of paper, most of the energy stays in the railgun slug as it exits the other side of the ship and you get a neat hole rather than a gigantic flash as trillions of joules of kinetic energy turn into heat.

      And obviously, if we're trying to kill things, we want the latter. The solution to this problem is fairly obvious: you need fragmentation. While it's great to have a tungsten cube all tightly packed together as you accelerate it, if you're shooting at a ship, you want a fairly diffuse impact, especially if we're talking about a 10% of C railgun slug. There aren't a lot of things out there in the solar system which can take 500 kilotons of hate and come out the other side in one piece. Moreover, at the distances at which a rail-gun fight happens, that spread would help ensure that you hit your target. Like a shotgun loaded with birdshot, a fragmenting railgun round would provide a cone of impact rather than a line, making dodges less effective.

      And, as I mentioned earlier, you don't need a ton of mass to make this work. If a PDC round can go straight through a military craft then we can safely assume that a chunk of tungsten with the same kinetic energy will do the same thing. PDCs look rather a lot like the close in weapons systems in use on many naval ships today so we'll use those as a guide. The 20mm cannon on a Phallanx CWIS tosses out rounds at about 1,035 m/s. Those rounds weigh about 100 g (0.1 kg) which gives them a kinetic energy at the muzzle of 53,422 J.

      So, if we could predictably shatter our 1% C railgun round into 421,136 pieces, each would have about the same kinetic energy as a PDC round and be able to hole the ship. At 10% C we could go even smaller and do the same thing with upwards of 40 million shards. 1% is plenty though. Each hull-penetrating piece of our original 5 kg bullet needs only weigh about 1/100th of a gram, which works out to being about 1/100th of the size of a grain of sand.

      Put another way, if the fragmentation of a rail round could be precisely controlled, a target ship would experience hundreds of thousands of individual hull breaches with the mean distance between them determined only by the geometry of the ship and the angle of the attack. The result of this would be either the delivery of a titanic amount of energy to the ship itself as the armor attempts to absorb the impact or, if no armor is present (as seems to be the case in the Expanse) the rapid conversion of the interior of the ship to a thin soup.

      This, however, seems never to happen in the series and what leaves me scratching my head. As a book and TV series, The Expanse does an otherwise bang-up job with hard science fiction. Most things in universe make sense. This, however, does not. We have take as a given that the materials science technology exists to allow the mounting and firing of a railgun on a ship -- there are a lot of challenges there -- but the straight-line-of-fire use of them is a rare problem with the world-building.

      Any fans have any suggestions to help me square this circle?

      45 votes
    19. That '90s Show impressions megathread

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      I get the feeling that a lot of people will watch at least some of this series due to the double nostalgia for That '70s Show and the actual 1990s. Share your impressions here!

      7 votes
    20. I want to talk about The Mandalorian, I don't seem to get it

      Some very mild spoilers for The Mandalorian I have not been really following Star Wars since Disney took over, I think I saw one or two of the new sequels (they were forgetable) and I saw Rouge...

      Some very mild spoilers for The Mandalorian

      I have not been really following Star Wars since Disney took over, I think I saw one or two of the new sequels (they were forgetable) and I saw Rouge One (It's great, would even call it the most Star Wars Star Wars movie)

      I had some time last weeks and I saw Andor and I was just stunned. Good to great actors, great worldbuilding, a bit on the nose but still engaging social critic and themes, an interesting and intense story based in gritty realism while still being very Star Wars. I think everybody who likes science fiction and/or spythrillers should watch it.
      So I was like: oooooh so they finally found a way to do new and interesting stuff with the Galaxy far far away. Everybody says nice things about the Mandalorian, let's check that one out. It got 92% on RT so I'm shure it's nice....

      I seem to hate it and it makes me angry that it turned out the way it did, because i still like a lot about it. It makes me sad that they botched it so badly.
      Maybe having a main character whitout a face is not helping? so i need a robot to tell me what Mando is feeling? Pedro Pascal is actually doing an incredible job working with body language and voice, but I don't think it's enough to actually be able to salvage this dumpsterfire of an realisation. Or maybe they should have kept with Mando being an unrelatable asshole, and not make him a disney daddy?
      And then they still show his face.... in the most anticlimactic way ever... why? just why do that? It makes me angry just thinking about it, how can you fuck that up so badly, that could be a series defining payoff, but no! They just waste it in the most boring and unconcequencial way ever.

      Then there is the Rule of Cool or Why is Everybody a Badass?. Mando is cool, i get it. He has an amazing Look (obviously the helmet is crazy good). He has very interesting and powerful weapons. But then I he still gets mostly his as kicked by nearly everything and everybody all the time?? I mean why do you tell me with every character and all his design that he is a force of nature and than he gets his ass kicked by a fucking dinohead on two legs that looks like a joke and is a joke (I dont actually mind that, i like the design and the joke) I just makes no sense to me.
      Nearly everybody else looks cool and is presented as a badass as well, there is just to much of it. there are no weak people, there are no hurt people, there are just badasses and cannonfodder.

      Then there is the storytelling... It ranges from quite ok to fucking horrible. I mean, who thought it is a good Idea to NOT cut the motherfucking prisonship episode? It's some of the worst TV i saw in a long while. It does nothing for the overall story. it does nothing for the characters. It does nothing for the viewer. It does nothing for nobody. Its just full of bad acting, bad direction, bad and lazy set design, bad editing, bad jokes, and the worst storytelling. why did they leave that piece of shit in there? the whole series is worse for it. It makes me angry.

      So I finally checked the wikipedia page and I understood. Jon Favreau.... Jon Favreau!!! I mean not all of his work is that bad. I liked Iron man and Chef, and I love Cowboys and Aliens (really! it's so bad it's good, but you can not expect differently with that name) I hated his Lion King.

      I don't now where I'm going with this. I think I just needed to share my feelings about it. It's just so full of potential, there is so much they could have done with it. they could have explored so many themes and share so much lore... but they just fucked it up and everybody seems to like it, i dont get it.

      /rant

      so are the other Star Wars shows worth a watch?

      11 votes
    21. I May Destroy You (2020) discussion

      IMDb Link TheTVDB Link Has anyone else here watched this? If so, I would love to hear your thoughts. I just finished it and am sorting through how I feel about it, especially after that final...

      IMDb Link
      TheTVDB Link

      Has anyone else here watched this? If so, I would love to hear your thoughts.

      I just finished it and am sorting through how I feel about it, especially after that final episode. I’ll type out longer thoughts in a comment once they’ve settled.

      3 votes