What TV shows are you watching?

[BillButNotBen]

I had one of those evenings where I couldn’t really think what to do… i didn’t really have the energy to play a game, and I didn’t really feel like watching anything too deep, and I’d just finished a couple of ‘serious’ shows.
So I ended up starting Season 3 of Van Helsing.
Season 1 was pretty good, in a fun atmospheric shlocky horror show kinda way. The ending was a bit of a mess though.
Season 2 became kinda a mess, which I think was mostly due to the main actress being pregnant and them having to write around that. The ending was a bit of a mess though.

It’s too early to see if Season 3 is going to be able to go back to what made S1 good, or if it’s going to continue along the lines of S2. Signs aren’t great, as they’re saddled with the aftermath of the ending of Season 2.
Without too many spoilers, they’ve ended up in a situation where all the main characters are pretty much invulnerable, and most of them are badasses.
As you may guess, this is a bit of a problem in terms of introducing any kind of threat.

The show basically operates on a sliding scale between Walking Dead and Buffy, in that it starts as a bunch of weak humans trying to survive among hordes of ‘zombies’ but then moves into much more of a mystical, historical, Slayer with a destiny vs Elder Vampire Masters kinda thing.
TBH, I think I preferred the vibe of the former.
It’s gone from scrabbling to survive against a single zombie vampire, to taking out an entire room of vamps in slow motion with a katana.

It also really exhibits the 2 schizophrenic traits that have been annoying me recently… killing off characters randomly in order to be ‘shocking and unpredictable’ (Eg: Orphan Black) and simultaneously being unable to get rid of characters who were cool but no longer have a role (Eg: Killing Eve).

Despite shock killing a bunch of main characters, we still somehow have all the main characters around. A couple are off doing their thing despite seemingly being totally unconnected to the main story these days.
This is most clearly illustrated in the first episode of season 3, where they unexpectedly resurrect a character who died at the end of S2, and then basically have nothing for them to do and at the end they just say bye bye and go off somewhere. What was the point of that? Why not just leave them dead since their death scene actually had an impact.

PS/ It was a close call between going back to S3 or Van Helsing or going back to S3 of Killjoys.

[Lukasz]

Is Elementary worth it?

My fiance and our flatmate don’t want to continue with other shows we watched so yesterday I suggested elementary to watch together as a household.
Droped shows by them
Jane the virgin
Izombie
White queen

They did not like Happy that much either. I did tough.

[spacein_vader]

Is Elementary worth it?

The leads play their parts well, but after season two when the Moriarty arc is resolved it doubles down on the Procedural part of “Police Procedural” and becomes very predictable. You’ll be sat there going “well it can’t be him/her as it’s never the first suspect” and similar. We gave up early in season 4, but I’d watch the first two and leave it there now.

[LexW]

The show basically operates on a sliding scale between Walking Dead and Buffy, in that it starts as a bunch of weak humans trying to survive among hordes of ‘zombies’ but then moves into much more of a mystical, historical, Slayer with a destiny vs Elder Vampire Masters kinda thing.
TBH, I think I preferred the vibe of the former.
It’s gone from scrabbling to survive against a single zombie vampire, to taking out an entire room of vamps in slow motion with a katana.

I feel like it was at its best when it was somewhere in the middle. It was always better at the human drama than WD*, but the metaplot and more fantastical elements also gave it an energy that elevated it above a lot of survival/apocalypse stuff and made it a bit more interesting. I stopped watching S3 because it got a bit too silly though might go back some time.

• = WD is ghastly at human drama because the characters don’t act like humans, but rather bad parodies of the worst traits of humanity.

[TheDreamlord]

I watched all the Sense8 episodes the last ten days. Wow! Bloody amazing show, it has been a very long time since I enjoyed a tv series (or a film for that matter) as much! The number of times I jumped up and exclaimed “damn that’s good tv”!

I loved the subject matter, the cinematography, the characters, the directing … everything. Fantastic series! Well done Wachowskis! This gives me a lot of hope for the fourth Matrix.

[BillButNotBen]

Yeah, I really liked it, though I know a couple of other people who really disliked it.
In some ways it’s a rather melodramatic soap opera, but I really liked its attitude, ambition and style.

I haven’t actually watched the final season though… I think because I was putting it off. I should probably go back to it.

[Sarfrin]

Warrior Nun popped up on Netflix so I gave it a go as it looked like it might be Buffy for Gen Z. One episode in, I’m in two minds but invested enough to watch the second episode. Meanwhile, I loved Stranger Things 3. I’m not claiming it’s great art, but it’s by turns scary, funny, exciting and emotional. That’s more than enough right now and the redemption of Steve Harrington is a hell of a thing.

[Skalpadda]

I watched the entire first season of The Boys over the last couple of days and enjoyed it on the whole. I hadn’t heard ot it at all (not the comic either) until last week, so it was a nice surprise. I’m sympathetic to the idea that if superheroes were real they’d be scary assholes so the premise works for me, and the show works really hard to be entertainingly crude which keeps it from getting stuck up its own backside. I have a couple of complaints though:

1. It’s ugly. It’s not that the effects are a bit dodgy or that all the costumes look kinda cheap (they do, but that’s okay). It does that thing a lot of TV shows (and some movies) do these days where it’s agressively colour graded with everything kinda muted and greyish, which dampens all the highlights and makes the colours range seem squished down. It helps set it apart from regular TV sitcom lighting for sure, but it often seems to be used instead of good lighting and it’s not a fashion I like.

2. Slight spoilers

2. The superheroes are so bad. I get that it’s the entire premise and everything in the show is played up to absurd levels, but they’re psychopaths, murderers, rapists, drug addicts, false-flag terrorists, take over the military industrial complex, corrupt politicians, create their own super villains for PR reasons and are dripping with corporate greed and every bad aspect of branding imaginable. Oh and add religious hypocrisy on top of that. It just keeps piling on every bad thing imaginable and after a while I was just thinking “yeah I get it, can we get on with the story please?” every time they felt the need to add another vice.

3. There’s something wrong with Karl Urban’s accent. It’s sort of cockney by way of… something. I’m not a native English speaker and I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is, which just makes it worse as I spent a lot of time listening to how he said things rather than what he was saying.

[Vandelay]

Really with you on the colour grading. It didn’t just look ugly (which, I guess might have been what they were going for, as a counterpoint to the vibrant Marvel style), but flat and dull. Considering that the show was so over the top in other aspects, it was very jarring. I recall a scene that was meant to be on a street filled with neon lights, but it looked like someone was just flashing some coloured torches at the characters.

I enjoyed it by the end though, after not fully feeling it in the first few episodes. Looking forward to it returning in September.

[alms]

From the Twitters:

https://twitter.com/Jerkwheatery/status/1278112190621536257

PS: I have no idea why it’s not one-boxing, so you’ll have to click. Yeah, it’s that Magnum tweet.

[LexW]

There’s something wrong with Karl Urban’s accent. It’s sort of cockney by way of… something. I’m not a native English speaker and I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is, which just makes it worse as I spent a lot of time listening to how he said things rather than what he was saying.

It seems to be Urban’s natural NZ accent with a light layering of cockney over it. I’m technically a cockney and grew up around the accent, so I kind of assumed he was meant to be a New Zealander or Australian who had lived in London for a long time or something, but later in the show he’s meant to be totally a Londoner. It’s odd, because Urban never seemed to have problems before with accents - his Bones was pretty great for example. So I have to think it’s some kind of wacky artistic choice, but it’s a bit weird. Maybe next season they can retcon him to being originally from NZ or something.

Re: the over-the-top elements, I think it’s because it’s Garth Ennis and from a very certain era. Ennis’ depiction of America and particularly frequently idolized or fetishized elements of it is heavy-handed, but also a reaction to how uncritically a lot of that stuff was regarded well into the 1990s, and indeed, in some parts of American culture, still is. It does get a bit excessive but it also does at least feel like an honest reaction, to me, to sheer density of hypocrisy and corruption in a lot of his subjects. And if power corrupts, and it clearly does, as much now as ever, then superheroes who aren’t corrupt is a kind of ludicrous fantasy.

So yeah it gets a bit OTT but at the same time I kind of like it and feel like it still has relevance, sadly.

I feel like the “power corrupts” angle is why so many superheroes sort of end up replaying the first few years of their career over and over. If one was even slightly realistic, after a couple of decades (or much less, in some cases), a huge number of people who started off idealistic and heroic would have become monsters. And the relationship between power and corruption is something a lot of media is still very reticent about acknowledging, because, I guess, it’s more fun to have your cake and eat it, as it were. Also, even without corruption, someone who was a champion of mainstream values in the 1930s, or 1950s, or maybe even 1980s might well be a monster by the 2020s, if they didn’t change with the times, but I guess getting off-topic for The Boys there.

[Det.Bullock]

It’s not just the potential of corruption, most superheroes replay their origins because they can’t be allowed to settle down into their groove either.
One of the best examples is how Dan Didio basically kept screwing up every major DC couple or how Joe Quesada did that horrible One More Day editorial decision because they had to keep their heroes single and possibly unhappy and angsty.

[Zephro]

Yeah worst example of that was breaking up their basically only lesbian character, Batwoman, as she got engaged. Leading to all the creative talent walking out and the comic becoming completely shit.

[LexW]

I feel like the whole “arrested development” thing is going to lead to an awful lot of deconstructive superhero stuff in 20 years or so when people who grew up with the Marvel stuff are hitting 40-something, and thus old enough that they’re the creatives on a lot of projects, and they’re also seeing how all the heroes they grew up with, didn’t also grow up, but equally weren’t killed off, so there will be a lot of people thinking about what it would be like to be a 40-something superhero and so on.

Either that or they’re going to just totally be so over the entire superhero thing that they’re basically going to vanish for a generation or so.

TV-wise, my wife wanted to watch The Baby-Sitters Club, because she grew up with those books, and really loved them. It’s actually delightful. As a 42-year-old with no kids I kind of wish I had kids and that they were as cool as these kids. It’s not exactly realistic, and it’s always got a “moral” (though they’re at least vaguely valid ones and not super-heavy-handed), but it’s extremely funny, all the child actors are great (often acting better than the parent-actors), it’s well-shot, and some of the references are really surprising (including a great direct Handmaid’s Tale reference of all things!).

I’m not saying anyone needs to watch it, but it’s very surprisingly watchable,

I’ve also been watching Unsolved Mysteries, the new version, which is pretty well-done, and less hokey than I expected. It’s very easy to watch whilst you’re doing something else. Well except the episode that is in French, but hey that’s what audio description is for.

[Det.Bullock]

I feel like the whole “arrested development” thing is going to lead to an awful lot of deconstructive superhero stuff in 20 years or so when people who grew up with the Marvel stuff are hitting 40-something, and thus old enough that they’re the creatives on a lot of projects, and they’re also seeing how all the heroes they grew up with, didn’t also grow up, but equally weren’t killed off, so there will be a lot of people thinking about what it would be like to be a 40-something superhero and so on.

Either that or they’re going to just totally be so over the entire superhero thing that they’re basically going to vanish for a generation or so.

Most kids now know superheroes from movies not comics though and in the movies Iron Man is allowed to marry and have a daughter for example, it’s mostly the comics that do the arrested development thing to a ridiculous degree.

Yeah worst example of that was breaking up their basically only lesbian character, Batwoman, as she got engaged. Leading to all the creative talent walking out and the comic becoming completely shit.

And more recently they did it with Harley and Ivy IIRC and shortly before the cartoon went in a different direction, it’s to the point that cartoon and movie people at times seem to be fans intent of giving the middle finger to DC and Marvel editors for their stupid decisions.