Good TV (aka, the TV series spamthread), the second series

[Raid]

Rick & Morty season 7 on Netflix.
I rewatched season 6 over the past few days and it's genuinely great. 3 episodes into season 7 and I'm already bored with it. Just seems to lack the energy or whatever made the previous 6 seasons so great. It can't just be the departure of Justin Roiland either. Rick's new voice actor is spot on and I can't tell the difference, Morty's isn't so good unfortunately. Maybe it picks up after the third episode?

I watched the first episode of the new season earlier, and I think if you'd not reminded me that the voice actor had changed, I wouldn't have noticed. They have a little less energy than Roiland had, but I thought both characters sounded remarkably similar otherwise. I wasn't impressed with the Hugh Jackman impressionist they had guest-starring though; he didn't sound anything like him.

According to the credits it's Hugh Jackman.

[Wrathbone]

Just finished season 7. It was alright, not as good as previous seasons, which I blame on the criminal underuse of Jerry.

[Alan]

Discovery S5
Well it seems like Mick is going to save all of life in all of time this time. That lass sure is a hard worker. It does seem like its all about her by proxy this time rather than directly so thats something. You know the thing with Discovery is that I don't dislike the characters and I feel like Green gets a lot of flack for things that aren't her fault. Its just the writing is sooooooo fuuuuuuucking baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad! They twang two starships, saucer first into a planets surface like they're surfboards to block the path of an avalanche ffs! I suppose its entertaining but not for the right reasons.

"This is the toppest of secret stuff, no secret more top than this secret Micky"
Burnham immediately fires up the tannoy and tells everyone everything.





Shogun
Late to the party but this was quite excellent though I could kind of have done without the wet eyed englishman being a character at all tbh. I have, in a probably very disrespectful manner, started referring to my dog as Hatadoggo.


Eric
Ben Cummerbund's kid goes missing. He is a puppeteer from a kids TV show and falling into a drink and drug hole he becomes convinced that a 7 foot monster puppet called Eric will save his son. Its alright so far though it feels like it may be teetering on the point of turning shit.

[Rusty]

Eric
Ben Cummerbund's kid goes missing. He is a puppeteer from a kids TV show and falling into a drink and drug hole he becomes convinced that a 7 foot monster puppet called Eric will save his son. Its alright so far though it feels like it may be teetering on the point of turning shit.

Whilst it doesn't become shit per se it does outstay it's welcome. It's about half too long and there are no clever connections between 'incidents'.
Everyone acts their socks off though

[Animalmother]

Rick & Morty redeemed itself after a few episodes, couple of great ones in there.

The BoysS4
Had to re-watch the last episode of season 3 as I had completely forgotten everything. Watched the first of new season and it's business as usual, exploding heads and entertaining sociopaths. The actors who play MM and Starlight do not look healthy whatever happened since the last season.

[Sly Boots]

Yeah, I was going to say, I'm near the end of R&M and have to say I've actually enjoyed this season a lot, probably more than the last couple actually (not sure why). And, I know it's been said already, but the new voice actors are near-perfect, it's easy to forget it's not actually Roiland.

The Boys... not started yet, I was actually thinking of going back and doing a full S1-3 rewatch first just to remind myself of everything that's happened.

[Alan]

Starlight got the fat sucked out of her cheeks. Apparently its a thing girls do now and its aged her 10 years, its so dumb.

[Animalmother]

She looks genuinely ill now, damn shame.

[Lenny Solidus]

The Boys S4 Ep6

Spoiler

Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty *one of my all-time favourite songs growing up* just started to play, Hughie is stood in a smelly costume that looks straight out of Epic Movie - and I'm terrified of whatever it is I'm about to witness both now and into the finale.

Oh no...oh no no no.

Also, Butcher is so very fucked.

Unsure why people are calling it boring on IMDB, great episode.

[Alan]

Discovery S5
Ok so its space National Treasure/Uncharted 4/Indy. They find a book, have to follow clues across the universe that lead to a holy grail (which is locked behind a puzzle that a Mist fan would laugh at ¬_¬). Uhh... it's not as annoying as some previous series and if you think of it less as Trek and more as space Uncharted its not atrocious I guess. It is far more on the bombastic silly, downright stupid side of things than the thoughtful style of Trek (like I said in the last post they ram starships into planets with near zero damage and in a later episode Michael uses a storm to jump like superman). I believe it's also the most technobabble per second of any Trek. It's fairly bad but its been worse. Compare it to Lexx, not Trek :p Its just so dumb. So so so very dumb.

1>2>3>5>4

I think 5 would be above 3 if it wasn't for Michelle Yeoh who was consistently the saving grace of the show. Honestly, if they made it centred on Georgiou and Lorca it could have been halfway decent.



In trying to find something new to watch we also started watching Dark Matter, Renegade Nell and Bodkin, they all seemed a bit crap. Now we're onto "Alfred Hitchcock Presents..." which are consistently great! It's a Twilight Zone style thing, high in quality and Hitchcock's introductions are charming and funny.

[Sly Boots]

Rick & Morty redeemed itself after a few episodes, couple of great ones in there.

The BoysS4
Had to re-watch the last episode of season 3 as I had completely forgotten everything. Watched the first of new season and it's business as usual, exploding heads and entertaining sociopaths. The actors who play MM and Starlight do not look healthy whatever happened since the last season.

I actually initially thought MM was being played by a different actor, he looks so different

Only watched the first one so far, but enjoyed it. Was expecting a shitshow based on everyone saying how far it's fallen off this season, but seems alright to me.

[Rusty]

Sorry, nearly everything about The Boys season 4 is just crap.
The good guys are idiots. Is every 'plan' they make that dumb, that they use Hughie every time? And they're shocked when every bad guy is there but yet they don't get caught.
The supes are powerless and also stupid.
The shocks are not shocks. they're just frantic reachings of someone who has typed in "the 10 most shocking things" into some AI and filmed them.

The only thing worth watching is Homelander (who should have died last season but meh). His character is the only one with real sociopathic thinking and is truly terrifying if he loses it totally.

I'm just about to go and see if they changed writing teams this season or if Garth Ennis has stopped helping (or they stopped following the comics)

[Sly Boots]

So this guy reviews the Acolyte but doesn't engage with any of the culture war/wokism stuff, instead concentrating on the writing, characters etc. Fair criticism?

[Wrathbone]

Regarding his criticism on show length / budget - If an episode tells the story it needs to, who cares how long it is or how much it cost to make? Claiming that House of the Dragon is better because it's longer is, to me, completely meaningless. He claims that the episodes aren't long enough for the story, but I've not felt like that at all while watching. In fact it's quite refreshing to have a shorter format. As Lucas famously said on set, faster and more intense.

As for the criticism of the writing, especially Mae's choppy motives, I don't agree that it's out of nowhere.

Spoiler

She was created in a Force ritual of dubious origin and was raised by witches. She clearly already had dark leanings from a young age as she burned the place down when the Jedi arrived to take her sister away, and then she thought her sister was dead and presumably watched the Jedi slaughter the witches - all of which she was broadly responsible for. She was then corrupted by the Sith and urged - commanded, really - to murder the Jedi who she believed wronged her.

So when she discovers her sister is alive and that her master has been deceiving her, I don't find it at all surprising that she faced an interal conflict while maintaining an outward loyalty to the Sith, until the Sith insisted that she effectively commit suicide by fighting a Jedi wookie while unarmed. It's perfectly reasonable that she decided to turn herself in then and reconcile with Osha.

The bit about her pretending to be Osha is a bit dumb, but it's perfectly in character for Mae. She is seriously messed up and makes terrible decisions! It's like she can't figure out how to reconcile with Osha, so she decides to BE her, which was obviously never going to work for long. I don't think we're meant to believe it would.

The swimming criticism... I mean, really? Is it actually a problem? Did it not show that Mr Sith was unconcerned with being vulnerable while Osha threatened him with a lightsaber? I thought it was a shrewd manipulation to get her to listen to him, feeding her the seeds of dark side corruption.

And finally the set criticism. Fair enough, I guess? I can't say I'd noticed and it doesn't bother me, but if it bothers other people... I'm not sure what to do with that.

[Sly Boots]

Well, I think his point with the episode length is that it isn't fast or intense. And that chopping the story into such short chunks is a cynical way of trying to get people to keep up their Disney+ subscription for longer.