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What is the last Television series you watched?


Jay

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It's good but apart from the locations (Ozark looks great) it's all well-trodden territory. One thing i noticed is how that is one of the few american series were adults do not spend seasons to hide the ugly truth from their porcelain-precious children. It's dealt with matter-of-factly and all the better for it.

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No, nothing really new, but I was surprised how quickly I was drawn into it, in spite of the presence of Jason Bateman (who actually directed the episode). Hopefully it's not a TV series where only the bookends are worthwhile. 

 

ozark-jason-bateman-1200x520.jpg

 

 

Alex

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Double whammy of high quality episodes this week courtesy of Twin Peaks and Game of Thrones. Definitely not a given with these things.

 

If there's one way of putting how I'd describe them both on this occasion it'd be "cohesive and absorbing storytelling".

 

No doubt all out the window again this time next week.

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I was talking to a colleague about TV shows and inevitably the question of what was the best show ever came up. The Wire, obviously. I was explaining to her why it was so good. It's very hard to pinpoint the best in anything -- best movie ever, best album, etc. But I genuinely feel there is no other contender when it comes to the best TV series. It's just so easily The Wire. After the discussion Bubbles, Omar, Stringer Bell, Bodie were stuck in my head and I had the urge to watch it again. It's a miracle really, that something of this scope and ambition was so successfully married with this level of writing and acting to produce this gem. 

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I dunno about best, but if I had to pick a favorite it'd probably be Deadwood.  The argument against it often comes down to the fact that Deadwood was cancelled and didn't get to end on its own terms.  But it's still my favorite show ever.

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Deadwood is one of my favorite shows of all time. Both The Wire and Deadwood have brilliant writing and incredible, unforgettable characters, but The Wire is, well, more about something. It has a kind of scope and depth that I haven't seen before or since.

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Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Season 3

 

Wow, a huge upgrade from the lackluster season 2!  Season 3 is better in almost every way - consistent level of good comedy throughout, better balance of all the different characters, and good and interesting/different storylines and topics hit as well.  I think this is probably the funniest season, with lots of laugh out loud moments this year (probably at least one in every episode).  I liked the Kimmy in college storyline, Jacqueline's Russ and Washington Redkins storyline, Kimmy learning about religion and wanting to share her experience, and Titus's Boobs in California bit.  My least favorite storyline would be the way they dragged out what happened to him on a boat, and that they broke him and Mike up... the whole Beyonce parody stuff was probably a low point of the season.


Great cameos by Laura Dern (she's in EVERYTHING lately!), Rachel Dratch (hilarious as the professor AND her wife), Judah Friedlander, Josh Charles, David Cross, Chris Parnell, Jim Gaffigan, and of course Fred Armisen as Robert Durst is always good (especially since we watched The Jinx between last season and now)


Really looking forward to season 4 now for sure!

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14 hours ago, Stefancos said:

I have the torrented files on my computer. Should watch it oneday.

 

Prepare to be blown away. Not immediately, but slowly and surely. And most definitely right after you finish the last episode of the last season and it dawns on you the scope of it all. 

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5 hours ago, Quintus said:

What happened to your progress with Twins Peaks, Jay?

 

We're completely caught up, have been since episode 8 or so, just haven't spent time to write about it

 

 

5 hours ago, BloodBoal said:

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt happened.

 

Oh god, we watched that months ago, just bothered to write about it now

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House of Cards Season 5

 

Spoilers in here if you haven't seen it 

 

Generally an upgrade over seasons 3 and 4, but I think that speaks more to the really subpar seasons those were than any kind of greatness here.  For the most part, its a rather cohesive season with a decent amount of forward momentum and decent storylines.  The best was probably Conway's breakdown, that was fun to watch.  The way they dragged the election results out so long was excruciating, though.  All the stuff with ICO, the Russian / Antartic ship, the NSA hacking, stuff like that was fine.  I didn't really like that Claire fell so in love with Tom she confessed all of Frank's murders to him; As soon as she did that, you knew he would be killed, and the scene where she kills him was kinda weird.  Why do it in Usher's house of all places, that's bound to come back to bite her.

 

Another problem with the continuing Claire/Frank feud; They've handled this poorly.  It's not that its a bad idea to put them at odds with each other but they've kind of half-assed it so far; It was set up at the end of season 3, then seemed to be over halfway through season 4, then they were final most of season 5, until the end when they weren't again.  It would have been better to make one entire season be about it, instead of halves of two different seasons.  I mean, they're setting up next season to be a huge feud, but there wasn't forward momentum heading to that over years, instead of it was stop and go, stop and go.


The ending of the season was really bad though, and pretty much destroyed all the goodwill they had going until then.  Him pushing Cathy down the stairs was laughable, Claire killing Tom kinda was too, as was Doug taking the blame for Zoe's murder and LeAnn being killed.  But the absolute stupidest, laughably bad decision was making Frank be the one who was actually being the leaks, because he wanted to be kicked out and be the true power behind the scenes or something?  WTF?  It is so illogical, and so dumb, like the writers ran out of ideas and just threw in some stupid twist at the end.  Leaves me with no faith that season 6 will be any good!

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Documentary Now!  Season 2

 

Not as good as season 1.  That first season was mostly good with a couple bad episodes, this one had more bad episodes than good.  I shouldn't say bad, more like.. not funny enough.  The Hiro Loves Sushi parody was definitely the best one!

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Orange Is The New Black Season 5

 

Probably also better than seasons 3-4, but like House of Cards that's more to do with those seasons being sup-bar than a sign of greatness here.  The plan they had to spend an entire season on just three days in their lives was not a good one ultimately, I think.  It made things seemed really dragged out, especially as too many unrealistic things happened and just had to keep being referenced every episode until the riot was finally over.  I'm glad we got to have everyone still reeling from and reacting to Poussey's death instead of jumping to a point where they've moved on, but this was really taking it too far.  This show needs to have an endgame in site, this premise won't last for years and years but there's no endgame in sight right now that I can see.  I wonder if next season will mix things up at all.

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Silicon Valley Season 4

 

Still one of the funniest shows on TV.  And that's all the show has really become: A great comedy.  In the early years it showed signs of telling a really good story on top of being hilarious, but over the years its become so cyclical in its plots, a never ending series of triumph - > obstacle -> bigger triumph -> bigger obstacle, over and over again, episode after episode, season after season.  And that's fine if its FUNNY, which is truly is: I laughed out loud more often at this show this year than probably any other show.  It's a shame that so many good ideas (like Dinesh as the CEO of Pied Piper, Richard doing his own thing without the guys, Gilfoyle & Dinesh working for Haley Joel Osment, etc) go away like an episode after they're introduced as Judge and co want to constantly change the status quo, reset it back to normal, change it again in a different way, etc.  Luckily the cast is great and the comedic writing is still top notch.  It will be sad to continue on without TJ Miller though.

 

One thing worth specific mention is Zach Woods as Jared was ON FIRE this year!  Spectacular acting by him, both in a dramatic way when he expressed his disappointment with Richard, but in a million comedic ways too.  This guys's great!

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Crisis in Six Scenes

 

Ugh, Woody at his most lazy and boring.  Miley Cyrus was awful.  The legendary Elaine May was wasted.  Woody struggled to stretch a thin, bad idea over two hours of show.  Continues the problem of his actors being unable to deliver dialogue convincingly. I suppose it was nice to see him acting again.

 

I will say that a couple of jokes landed.

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Not a whole lot different to many of his movies since the late 90's, isn't it. All the ingredients are there (well-off but neurotic middle class guys, jokes about philosophers that are passé since the 60's, screenplays that resemble first drafts) so it sure helps if you haven't seen 60 WA movies before. 

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4 hours ago, publicist said:

jokes about philosophers that are passé since the 60's, screenplays that resemble first drafts) 

 

These particular complaints have only gotten worse in recent years.  Like, this has never ever been what pseudo intellectuals talk like.  It's all so stale and musty.  The radicalized grannies were pretty funny though.

 

My particular favorite films of his still hold up.  Those 80s films where he could write upper middle class New Yorkers with warmth and humor.

 

I honestly think he's just too old and out of touch to write dialogue that's convincing coming out of the mouths of 30 and 40 something actors anymore.  Maybe he should exclusively write films about octogenarian Jews.

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New trailer for Netflix's answer to True Detective:

 

 

Trailer wasn't great, but show looks like it has potential.

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I just finished watching The Keepers on Netflix.  

 

To be seen.

 

Damn Catholic Church, they disgust me.

 

 

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