What is the last Television series you watched?

[Quintus 5,399]

Wrapped up Twin Peaks last night and now I'm all set for the tv event of the year this May. 

 

It occurred to me this time while watching certain parts that it's odd that Drax and Justin aren't major TP fanboys. I thought they lived and breathed kitschy soap operatics?  

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Was never much of a David Lynch fan.

[Quintus 5,399]

Fair enough, but I'd have thought the great majority of content would have practically felt tailor made to your tv viewing preferences. I bet you would have said James Hurley's blonde femme fatale subplot in season 2 was the highlight of the show. Sherilyn Fenn and Billy Zane, the tv romance of the century. 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Billy Zane fucking Fenn on a plane and than pissing off!

 

90's TV gold, Drax!

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

I've only seen Eraserhead. Anything like that?

[Quintus 5,399]

Absolutely nothing like it. Don't forget that Twin Peaks is just as much Mark Frost as it is David Lynch. 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

It's colour television!

[Faleel 5,340]

Alias, finished season 3

[nightscape94 965]

4 hours ago, Godzilla said:

I've only seen Eraserhead. Anything like that?

 

No, Twin Peaks isn't shitty.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[publicist 4,643]

 

Mandatory for friends of old style Hollywood and its outsized personalities. Though the tragedy that is Jessica Lange's face - it looks like a violent exercise in black-market plastic surgery - will make you yearn for the real Joan Crawford's periorbital wrinkles. In a way its the perfect sequel to last year's 'Hail Caesar', which makes me yearn for more good Tinseltown stuff.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

Yeah, I watched a little bit of it and I was confused as to whether that was actually Jessica Lange. Poor thing.

[Faleel 5,340]

Alias Season 4

[Faleel 5,340]

Well I finally finished Alias Season 5.

 

Looking back, the show was kind of a mixed bag for me.

 

The score was ok, some of it sounded like Giacchino's Incredibles and MI scores, but nothing begging to be added to my collection. 

 

Oh and I was glad they replaced that awful 90's/early 2000's screensaver-esque credits sequence in Seasons 4-5, the remix of Abrams' theme was definitely an improvement, but in all honesty it should have been scrapped from the beginning and had a Gia piece instead.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Didn't Tilton take over after Season 2?

[A24 4,326]

Wait a minute! A Western miniseries with Kevin Kostner on Netflix?!  

 

 

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[Wojo 2,453]

I haven't seen anything of his since Hatfields and McCoys. 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Batman v Superman last year

[Faleel 5,340]

1 hour ago, Koray Savas said:

Didn't Tilton take over after Season 2?

I was thinking it was after 3.

[A24 4,326]

12 hours ago, I Need About Tree Fiddy said:

I haven't seen anything of his since Hatfields and McCoys. 

 

So I watched the first episode or Part 1 of this Western miniseries with Kevin Costner. It's not exactly high art (far from it) but it's entertaining enough to watch the other two parts. Director is Kevin Reynolds from Waterworld.

 

 

Alex

 

[Jay 37,322]

On 4/2/2017 at 2:20 AM, Fal said:

Well I finally finished Alias Season 5.

 

Looking back, the show was kind of a mixed bag for me.

 

I haven't watched it since it originally aired, but I recall it being really great for the entire first season and up through the Superbowl episode midway through Season 2, then it lost its charm when she was just working for the regular CIA instead of being a triple agent, and they started turning Sloane into a sometimes-good-bad-guy instead of a total villain.  The time jump season was an interesting premise but the final season wasn't very memorable.

 

 

On 4/2/2017 at 2:20 AM, Fal said:

The score was ok, some of it sounded like Giacchino's Incredibles and MI scores, but nothing begging to be added to my collection. 

 

I believe after the first 3 seasons, Giacchino focused all his attention on LOST and Chris Tilton scored seasons 4 and 5, and THOSE scores are the great ones.  I've listened to the Season 1 and 2 OSTs of Giacchino's work a few times and nothing ever sticks in my brain from it.

 

 

On 4/2/2017 at 2:20 AM, Fal said:

 

Oh and I was glad they replaced that awful 90's/early 2000's screensaver-esque credits sequence in Seasons 4-5, the remix of Abrams' theme was definitely an improvement, but in all honesty it should have been scrapped from the beginning and had a Gia piece instead.

 

I liked both versions

[Marian Schedenig 8,177]

3 hours ago, Jay said:

I've listened to the Season 1 and 2 OSTs of Giacchino's work a few times and nothing ever sticks in my brain from it.

 

They're still up there with my Giacchino favourites.

[Jay 37,322]

Yea, I'm not sure why it doesn't connect with me as much as so much of his other work. 

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

Just finished a second viewing of The Night Manager. Rewatchability on this one is HIGH.

 

Superb acting, superb script, locales, etc.  The performances on this are just in the stratosphere. One of the best modern spy genre "films" ever.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

War of the Worlds, Season 2.

[Marian Schedenig 8,177]

Black Sails is over. Quite a good finale I think, although I'm not altogether sure how well it ties into Treasure Island.

 

Season 2 remains the highlight of the series, but it was consistently good once it got going at the end of the first season. And Toby Stephens made one hell of an impressive pirate captain.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[Quintus 5,399]

Did they finish Black Sails in a way which feels satisfying? Cancellation accepted, did they still manage to make it feel like it had reached its natural conclusion? 

[bollemanneke 3,338]

House of Cards, S3E11. My mind's made up, I hate Frank. Really glad Jackie stabbed him in the back. Here's hoping the rest of the series will focus on Frank's slow downfall.

[crocodile 7,989]

You JUST started to hate him?

 

Karol

[Jay 37,322]

I do wonder what the end game of the show is for him and Claire.  BTW, 4 seasons are already out, and season 5 drops on May 30

[Marian Schedenig 8,177]

4 hours ago, Quintus said:

Did they finish Black Sails in a way which feels satisfying? Cancellation accepted, did they still manage to make it feel like it had reached its natural conclusion? 

 

4 hours ago, BloodBoal said:

The show's over? Wow. Thought it would last a bit longer.

 

Still need to watch Season 3 and 4. Did the characters move around a bit more in those seasons (other islands...), compared to the first 2?

 

I think it was always planned to be 4 seasons. There's some more moving, yes, or at least less Nassau action and obviously some on what ends up to be Treasure Island. The conclusion isn't necessarily what everyone has been striving for (as with, say, Game of Thrones, it couldn't possibly work out for everyone), but it does offer fitting closure for the characters while, as far as I can judge from Wikipedia, staying reasonably within historic boundaries.

 

What I'm not sure, as I mentioned above, is how well it leads into Treasure Island. There seem to be some missing and some contradictory bits in that regard I believe, unless I'm missing something.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[bollemanneke 3,338]

17 hours ago, crocodile said:

You JUST started to hate him?

 

Karol

 

Yes, I JUST started to hate him. I've had moments when he annoyed me, but I was always sort of hoping he'd get his way. Not anymore.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

7 hours ago, BloodBoal said:

 

Well, the one thing that surprised me is that it felt like the story started way, way before the beginning of Treasure Island (since, as far as I can remember, the characters are much older in the book than they are in the show), so I thought they had an awful lot of ground to cover to get to the beginning of the book. And by the end of Season 2, it still felt like they hadn't covered much of that ground (even if the finale did accelerate the pace, a character becoming closer to how he is in the book). So, learning that they only did 2 more seasons is quite a surprise indeed (though maybe there's a time jump in the series at some point or the characters simply end up being younger in the show at the beginning of the Treasure Island story than they are in the book).

 

Shame the show's over. While I know their plan has always been to simply tell the story up to the beginning of Treasure Island, I'm starting to think I would have liked them to end it with the actual Treasure Island story for the final season (or maybe they actually planned to do that (with some changes, and that would explain the "contradictory bits" you mentioned) but the show got cancelled before they could...  I know you said they apparently planned 4 seasons from the start, but there seems to be conflicting reports. Many articles do use the word "cancelled" (though maybye incorrectly)).

 

How is the music throughout the rest of the series? Love Season 1. 

[bollemanneke 3,338]

The HOC music? It gets more eventful every season.

[Jay 37,322]

Koray was asking about Black Sails, not House of Cards

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Does that mean Bear left the scoring duties to his "cubs" after a while?

[nightscape94 965]

On ‎3‎/‎22‎/‎2017 at 0:00 PM, BloodBoal said:

Yeah, I know Samurai Champloo. Stumbled upon it on TV, though I wasn't particularly attracted to it as I was with Cowboy Bebop (which felt more unique). Might give it a shot though, if I really dig Cowboy Bebop.

 

Finished it.  Admittedly, the show loses some of that energy toward the end as the focus shifts to more of an ensemble instead of on any lead character, and the lack of development of a main story doesn't do itself any favors based on how it ended the show.  The last episode, which seems to be praised quite a bit, didn't work for me.  Felt completely out of place given the nature of the show.

 

Aside from those small gripes, definitely worth the trip through space.

[Marian Schedenig 8,177]

10 hours ago, BloodBoal said:

 

Well, the one thing that surprised me is that it felt like the story started way, way before the beginning of Treasure Island (since, as far as I can remember, the characters are much older in the book than they are in the show), so I thought they had an awful lot of ground to cover to get to the beginning of the book. And by the end of Season 2, it still felt like they hadn't covered much of that ground (even if the finale did accelerate the pace, a character becoming closer to how he is in the book). So, learning that they only did 2 more seasons is quite a surprise indeed (though maybe there's a time jump in the series at some point or the characters simply end up being younger in the show at the beginning of the Treasure Island story than they are in the book).

 

Shame the show's over. While I know their plan has always been to simply tell the story up to the beginning of Treasure Island, I'm starting to think I would have liked them to end it with the actual Treasure Island story for the final season (or maybe they actually planned to do that (with some changes, and that would explain the "contradictory bits" you mentioned) but the show got cancelled before they could...  I know you said they apparently planned 4 seasons from the start, but there seems to be conflicting reports. Many articles do use the word "cancelled" (though maybye incorrectly)).

 

I think judging by the book, the events leading to Flint hiding the cache on Treasure Island happen 20 years before Jim Hawkins's adventure, but there's nothing significant during that time span.

 

What's unclear to me is:

Spoiler

Does Flint actually die a few years after the series, alone and drunk, and how did this come to be - or is it actually just the official story, which would be consistent with the official stories about the secret prisoners at that plantation colony. That would be quite clever, but also feels like a bit of a cheat, since all along I'd been anticipating some event shattering Flint for good.

 

Also, how does Billy come to be in possession of the map, and when was Flint supposed to arrange one of the corpses on the island to point to the cache?

 

Apparently there were (or are?) considerations about doing a spin off,

 

Spoiler

and one of the better ways they could think of doing would be by continuing the story of Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny and the newly hired Mary Read. According to Wikipedia, that wouldn't last long, since they would be captured just a few weeks later, but then BS strays from the facts quite a bit (and apparently it was on the orders of Woodes Rogers, who survived them by more than ten years).

 

It's certainly got me interested in reading A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates.

 

The music was consistent through the series, I'd say. Always supportive, sometimes even slightly more up front, but mostly moody and rhythm propelled. I didn't really notice much that seems interesting without the show, besides the main titles.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Marian, have you ever read Sodomy And The Pirate Tradition? 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Sodomy-Pirate-Tradition-Seventeenth-Century-Caribbean/dp/0814712363

[Marian Schedenig 8,177]

Uhm, no? It does seem to be in line with some of Black Sails's themes, though.

[bollemanneke 3,338]

HOC S3E12. Cheap episode. So Doug bears no ill will towards Frank, but threatens to give Dunbar the journal and then tells Frank it was all a hoax and he just buys it?

[Jay 37,322]

Doug is loyal to Frank to the end.

[publicist 4,643]

 

'Taboo'

 

A slow burn. After four episodes i stay aboard though i'm still not too sure what the show is/wants to be. Political and geostrategical intrigues revolve around Tom Hardy, a mysterious returnee from an african adventure who inherits a prized piece of land from his father. What it will all amount to is not clear (there are lots of teases). The makers opt for a kind of 'Sweeney Todd' gothic spectacle and Hardy is, above all, an immensely watchable actor. It's all rather engagingly silly but yet lacks dimension or intellectual depth (Jonathan Price seems to have wandered over right from the POTC sets and 'Taboo' seems not to rise considerably above such simple fare).

 

So I remain cautiously optimistic that the whole affair picks up the pace and the loose ends will be knotted with a bit more ambition than what now is not much more than a chic victorian version of 'From Hell'.

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

I enjoyed Taboo verily. Stick with it.

[bollemanneke 3,338]

House of Cards, S3E13. I had accidentally begun watching S4E13 at first and only after three minutes did I realise that things didn't really add up.

 

I love how all these series suddenly have better scores in final episodes. Not that this was great, but it felt different.

 

Kevin Spacey was really brilliant in this one, and I'm really glad Claire is finally tired of being bossed around. Also, why exactly does Rachel need to die? I mean, didn't she prove that she was willing to forget everyhting that happened in season 1 countless times? Really don't get Doug's obsession with her.

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

I read the other day that this year there are 455 scripted TV series in the US alone.  And I'm having difficulty to finding a new one to binge on a rainy day.

 

Anyone try The Expanse?