What TV shows are you watching?

Qazinsky 2020-06-18 14:15:52 UTC #8149

Netflix related stuff that can spoil you by even knowing it is related about Breaking bad

Also, if you decide to watch Breaking bad on Netflix like I did recently, Netflix will have no qualms about recommending you the El Camino movie while you’re midway through the series, a movie that takes place immediately after Breaking bad and with a summary that spoils what happens to at least one of the main characters!

Edit: I am not sure, but there’s a distinct chance they even show his freaking face as a picture for the movie, even!

Edit2: I kinda realized that even knowing that El Camino is a breaking Bad movie can spoil it when it gets recommended to you out of the blue, but at the same time, if you don’t know it is, then you might read the summary and… gaaah…

Sarfrin 2020-06-18 18:57:32 UTC #8150

Well, no. Jesse is the more sympathetic character. I’m just not interested in spending that long watching a brilliantly realised obnoxious egotist being obnoxious.

TheDreamlord 2020-06-18 19:03:38 UTC #8151

Horses for courses I guess, as I could not stand Jesse! The most annoying character in the show, in my book.

BillButNotBen 2020-06-19 03:00:59 UTC #8152

So, for no obvious reason, I continued with Stargirl. It’s a weird show.

I can’t tell if it’s so bad it’s good. Or just bad. Or maybe good.
It’s weird now that my complaint after watching the first half of the first episode was that it was too slow, because from that point on it’s been breakneck speed. I was expecting it to build up to introducing the big bad guys, or some of the new good guys, but it’s just chucking them all in there.

I was expecting a buffy style build up of school friends and discovering her secret… but it’s literally. “I need some hero mates, I’ll check in the yearbook and see who looks like they could be a hero, and then just go and tell them and give them a super suit. Oh, with a flashback to establish who the hell they are, since they’ve only had 2 words up to now”.
Everything is sketched in at super speed, and I’m not sure if it’s good or not.

There’s something kinda charming about the main character’s insanely gung ho attitude and cheerful dismissal of any kind of risk or danger or possible downside.

Oh, and I forgot to mention last time, that despite starting with a flashback to the ‘golden age Justice Society’ who all look, dress and act like their characters from the comics in the 50s/60s, all that apparently happened ten years ago!
So the golden age was apparently 2010, and it was apparently very like the 1950s. 10 years ago is also apparently so long ago that the young characters treat it as the distant past, and no-one remembers the old superheroes, but also none of the surviving adults seem to have aged much in the meantime.
It’s so odd.

It also, possibly, seems to be setting up it’s bad guys as being the ‘make america great again’ crowd.

BooBooGator 2020-06-19 14:44:53 UTC #8153

awww that’s okay I know it’s not for everybody, I am tolerable for this stuff, but I have couple of friends, who can’t stand things like this

MiniMatt 2020-06-19 21:29:08 UTC #8154

I’ve flagged this before, but on account of season 2 being on telly again: Derry Girls

Its very 90s northern Ireland but if that’s something you have even a passing affinity for its awesome and I will be illustrating all future points with Sister Michael GIFs

edit: it’s been fifteen whole minutes and you people are still not watching Derry Girls

edit 2: half an hour, what are you doing people? Derry Girls. Get to it.

BillButNotBen 2020-06-20 01:59:05 UTC #8155

I’ve watched the trailer.

Blackice 2020-06-20 07:25:28 UTC #8156

Actually, I think I was as you posted this! Series one though, which Channel 4 repeated last week. It was most amusing, will be watching all of it eventually…

mrpier 2020-06-20 14:04:47 UTC #8157

It’s definitely a subtitles show for me from the bits I saw on youtube.

BooBooGator 2020-06-20 18:40:10 UTC #8158

running to watch the trailer

ToomuchFluffy 2020-06-20 19:45:53 UTC #8159

… Fine. I’ll give it another try.

I just remember quite a few lines of dialogue in the first episode (or pilot movie?) that were really awful. I’ll try to give it a bit more time.

Sarfrin 2020-06-20 22:47:11 UTC #8160

The pilot movie had a completely different cast so I wouldn’t judge it by that. I enjoyed the first season but the second one was definitely a step up.

Vandelay 2020-06-20 23:52:14 UTC #8161

Are you referring to the actual pilot or the movie? The original movie has a completely different cast, but can’t really be compared to the TV series. It was made quite a while before the TV series and there was no intention of it being anything more than a one off film. If that is what ToomuchFluffy watched then they should in no way use that as any indication of the quality of the show.

The unaired pilot has mostly the same cast as the final series, although Willow was different. The studio insisted she was changed to someone with a more TV friendly body (i.e. they wanted someone who was skinny). It is closer to the actual TV show, but still more of a proof of concept and was not intended for general audiences to view.

I assume ToomuchFluffy was talking about the first aired 2-parter episode, Welcome to the Hellmouth and The Harvest, which has no cast changes to the rest of the series. I could see some people finding the first season quite dated now, including the dialogue. As much as I love the style of language used myself, in general, I know some people do find it off putting.

LexW 2020-06-21 01:57:34 UTC #8162

The movie doesn’t really have anything to do with it, and isn’t really worth watching. It’s from several years earlier and it’s a lot sillier (contrary to what Whedon wanted, but he wasn’t in charge of the movie). It wasn’t a pilot, rather a “first pancake”, as it were.

The show is a bit unsteady at first, but the first season is only 12 episodes and there are only two I’d skip myself.

If you’re concerned about only watching decent episodes or ones that matter, there’s a skip list here: https://liztellsfrank.com/2019/12/03/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-angel-the-unified-skip-it-watch-it-guide/ But it’s a little too keen to skip stuff, which is not something I’d normally say about skip lists. About 90% are the other way around - they suggest you watch a lot of bleh episodes.

Personally in S1 I’d only skip Teacher’s Pet (4th episode) (though it is referenced a few times, not in any important way - and it’s kind of out of character for the rest of the show) and Nightmares (10th episode) (the latter is pretty funny at times but is also slow and a bit annoying).

You’ll know by the end of the last episode of season 1 if the rest of the seasons are worth watching for you, for sure.

Vandelay 2020-06-21 11:47:13 UTC #8163

I would add I Robot, You Jane to the skip list. It was painful at the time and even more so now we live in the future.

Worth going back to any skipped episode later on though, as they pretty much all contain details that come up later or expand the characters.

Edit - actually Nightmares definitely falls into that category. I would say you can’t really skip that one, as it has too much character stuff going on.

Speaking of 90s shows, I just started watching the Gilmore Girls last night, after it being regularly recommended to me. Two episodes in and it is really charming so far. The secondary characters are particularly good and I’m already a big fan of Melissa McCarthy as the hotel’s chef and the dance teacher. Relevant to discussions above, I believe it has a bit of crossover with writers from Buffy and I can certainly see the influences, even if it is a very different genre.

BillButNotBen 2020-06-21 13:00:39 UTC #8164

Yeah. Gilmore Girls is the kind of thing I totally ignored, and assumed was rubbish and I would hate it. Then I finally tried it and it was great and I got majorly hooked on it. But weirdly, despite really liking it and binging a season and a half in a very short time, I then just suddenly drifted away from it. Not quite sure why.

I didn’t know there was a Buffy connection.

If you like GG, and haven’t already watched it, then The Marvelous Mrs Maisel on Amazon Prime is great, and by the same writer. It shares a very similar style. I’ve only seen the first season, but that was excellent.

Unfortunately, it’s the kind of show that I’ve recommended to a bunch of people and they’ve all given me a 'reeaally??" look. I think it’s the name.
It’s probably the look I gave people when they recommended Gilmore Girls to me.

ToomuchFluffy 2020-06-21 13:49:31 UTC #8165

Ah, good to know. I remember the pilot movie of Babylon 5 having similar issues. I have maybe rewatched it once.

I couldn’t say for sure, but I will give the first season another try in the next days and stay with it a little longer.

That’s what I meant. There was a particular moment pretty early on where it just lost me. I think something Buffy said.

LexW 2020-06-22 10:05:02 UTC #8166

Yeah my wife re-watched this recently and I watched most of it with her (for the first time for me). It’s good, in a very soap opera-ish way, and has a lot of funny dialogue, but it has some frustrating elements that keep repeating, and I’m not just talking about Lorelai’s truly staggeringly bad taste in clothes (that they do reference a couple of times later on, at least), but the same issues occurring over and over, and there is a lot of complaining about socio-economic stuff that like, isn’t really plausible (for example that they’re supposedly very poor, and have an empty fridge, but are constantly wearing new clothes and eating huge amounts of delivery food which would cost a lot more than filling said fridge or a week or two - source: I lived in a small city in the US around this time. Which y’know, is a lifestyle but it feels a bit “hmmmm” when they’re complaining so much about it.)

Skalpadda 2020-06-24 05:06:24 UTC #8167

Watched Tuntematon sotilas (Unknown Soldier) on Netflix. I wasn’t sure in which thread to write about it since it exists in several versions: as a Finnish theatrical cut, an international cut and a 4,5 hour mini series (structured as a very long movie). I watched the mini series version so figured it goes here.

So, it’s a Finnish movie/series (based on a book I haven’t read) that follows a machinegun platoon during the Continuation War, waged by Finland in alliance with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union to reclaim territory lost in the Winter War. I was a bit worried it might turn out either a bit jingoistic or moralising about aligning with the Axis powers, but no, it stays very human throughout. There’s no flag waving or hero worship and there’s no real villain, it’s laser focused on following a group of people in an awful situation. Most of all it’s a story about disillusionment.

And it’s good. I’m not usually much into war movies, but I liked this. It looks beautiful and the characters are drawn very well. I was also impressed by how they managed to intoduce big themes throughout without lingering on or lecturing about them. The division and displacement of people after the Winter War, the mix of Finnish and Russian people and history in Karelia, the varying motivations for the war and perhaps most of all the lingering divisions in Finnish society and the military from the Finnish Civil War. It’s all there but never shoved in your face and it’s sometimes a masterclass in show, don’t tell.

I wish it had dug into some of the characters a little more. I also found the editing made it a little hard to keep up with how much time passed at times, scenes will just kind of end abruptly and then you’re onto the next one, sometimes in a different place with months having gone by and it takes a while to orient yourself again. Other than that I don’t really have any complaints.

Berious 2020-06-24 05:50:48 UTC #8168

Just finished Season 5 of Better Call Saul. Wow! I didn’t think I’d like it more than Breaking Bad - but I do! Great characters, tons of pathos, gripping story lines. Can’t wait to see how it wraps up (and connects the dots with BB)