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What is the last Television series you watched?


Jay

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So...I didn't watch Foundation, and I... still didn't. But I think I would.

 

What I did was stumble across a clip of it and holly crap those are stunning visuals! I damn near swooned.

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13 hours ago, Chen G. said:

So...I didn't watch Foundation, and I... still didn't. But I think I would.

 

What I did was stumble across a clip of it and holly crap those are stunning visuals! I damn near swooned.

 

Is it playing already? 

 

Really, the visuals? Stunning? That's not what I saw in the trailer. 

 

21 minutes ago, bruce marshall said:

Anybody see MARE OF EASTOWN?

 

I'm three eps in and not enjoying it.

Should I stick with it or bail?

 

I've read it feels a bit familiar territory at first but if you stick around you'll find out it's more than just another crime show. Hope this helps.

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On 25/10/2021 at 3:57 AM, bruce marshall said:

Anybody see MARE OF EASTOWN?

 

I'm three eps in and not enjoying it.

Should I stick with it or bail?

 

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/17332-what-is-the-last-television-series-you-watched/&do=findComment&comment=1821011

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18 hours ago, Chen G. said:

So...I didn't watch Foundation, and I... still didn't. But I think I would.

 

What I did was stumble across a clip of it and holly crap those are stunning visuals! I damn near swooned.

 

It's mediocre crap.

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It's Asimov in the style of the SW prequels. Complex characters reduced to leering villains, lots of elaborate shiny surfaces and a complete travesty for people who actually read the book(s). I survived three episodes.

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On 25/10/2021 at 1:13 AM, AC1 said:

 

MARE OF EASTOWN

I've read it feels a bit familiar territory at first but if you stick around you'll find out it's more than just another crime show. Hope this helps.

Godawful!

DREADFUL.

Must to avoid.

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YUP!  Seen each new episode live (ish) the past 3 Sunday nights.  I love it, as I've loved the whole show so far.  Jeremy Strong is incredible so far this year, going from the cocky bravado to the complete deflated meager mouse hiding in the closet was something to see.

 

Love that Marcia is getting paid what she deserves, feel bad for Gerri that Logan continues to not care about her.  
 

Roman is the surprisingly turning out to be the least awful Roy child, I wonder if they regret the baseball payoff scene in episode 1 in hindsight -- or if he'll do something awful by season's end

 

Tom 100% got the lawyers to send the Feds in at the end of episode 3.  It's funny that midway through episode 2 it seemed like the loyalties could fall like this:

 

eivs7qo4ebn71.jpg?width=478&auto=webp&s=

 

But after episode 3 it seems like it might not be too long until it's more like this:

 

Succession Season 3 poster fan theory

 

 

I do wonder if the other three posters represent a point in the season or not

 

Succession Season 3 poster fan theory

 

Succession Season 3 poster fan theory

 

 

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Yea, I think the new season has been killing it so far. It’s as sharp as ever, and the last episode was such a riot. The battle lines have really injected new life into the characters.

 

Also, I didn’t realize there were so many variations on that poster! The second one you’ve posted is what I assumed as the main original, and thought that’s where the teams would eventually fall into place. But I guess anything goes at this point!

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Oats Studios

 

4umJhUsj8ppev0TA0J0CVJaXeO1.jpg

 

Neill blomkamp's 'experimental' TV series. It's a bunch of short stories all set in a post-apocalyptic world. However, most of these shorts are just ideas that don't go anywhere. Very odd and rather pointless. It often feels like you're only getting a few scenes from an entire movie.

 

Oats-Studios-Netflix-Review.jpg

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Watched the first three episodes of Midnight Mass with the family, hoping it would get better...it did not.

 

Genuinely awful and lazy writing. It's like two characters can't be in the same room without giving off pointless 10min dialogues...each. You could cut all this in half, but I guess then there wouldn't be enough story to justify a whole series?

 

The Haunting series had the same issues (especially Bly Manor), but at least Hill House had some fun genre scares.

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Only Murders in the Building

IMDB

 

I’m 5 episodes in and it’s a good show, very enjoyable. The duo of Steve Martin and Martin Short is great, takes me back to The Three Amigos days. A lot of the jokes are really old school - they don’t make ‘em like they used to - but I’m loving it.

 

My only gripe is with the show is the casting of Selena Gomez. It’s my first time watching anything she’s in, I’ve heard some of her music, which can be enjoyable, so I’d say I’m judging without a negative bias… But her acting - ouff - horrible. She’s pretty, but she’s got the charisma of a cardboard box and the acting talent of one of those early text-to read programs. Really wish they’d gotten someone with acting chops instead, as she does suck the enjoyment out of the show a little bit.

 

Still - the story’s good, every other actor pulls their weight, visually it’s very pleasing and the show has a charming soundtrack, so over all - a good show.


Midnight Mass

 

On 06/11/2021 at 6:14 AM, KK said:

Watched the first three episodes of Midnight Mass with the family, hoping it would get better...it did not.

 

Genuinely awful and lazy writing.


Funny, I thought the writing was brilliant. The story is quite standard, but it’s handled extremely well with good writing, good acting and a good soundtrack.

 

True, it takes it’s time but I thought that every scene had a point and was on point. The show transmitted emotion on a level that I miss from a lot of shows, actually. Even had a chat with my mates about how good it was, and we all agreed.

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On 07/11/2021 at 3:10 AM, rough cut said:

Midnight Mass

 


Funny, I thought the writing was brilliant. The story is quite standard, but it’s handled extremely well with good writing, good acting and a good soundtrack.

 

True, it takes it’s time but I thought that every scene had a point and was on point. The show transmitted emotion on a level that I miss from a lot of shows, actually. Even had a chat with my mates about how good it was, and we all agreed.

 

I'm afraid we disagree here. Unfocused monologues built on pedantic backstory, flimsy metaphors and empty platitudes don't fool me. And I think any piece of art loses any real tact or craft when its characters decide to just keep talking at an audience...it's lazy writing.

 

If you want a substantial and harrowing "meditation on life and death", that actually functions well within a narrative context, I suggest you turn to The Leftovers instead. A show that Flannagan poorly rips from thematically in these last few series.

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On 07/11/2021 at 9:10 AM, rough cut said:

Only Murders in the Building

IMDB

 

I’m 5 episodes in and it’s a good show, very enjoyable. The duo of Steve Martin and Martin Short is great, takes me back to The Three Amigos days. A lot of the jokes are really old school - they don’t make ‘em like they used to - but I’m loving it.

 

There's a wonderful old-school writer's delight in the delivery (i guess Martin at least co-wrote it). I get a similar feeling when watching Billy Wilder movies (though of course 'Murders' isn't nearly as ingeniously plotted as these) or, probably closer to home, Woody Allen's 'Manhattan Murder Mystery'.

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3 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

I really used to be a Steve Martin fan. I adored his Carl Reiner collaborations.

But since I saw his salacious old man fantasy "Shopgirl" I can hardly watch him anymore.

 

As a former Steve Martin fan, I have to say that Shopgirl is one of his better 'later' movies.  Not necessarily funny but old-fashioned Golden Age romantic, where men were indeed allowed to be older than women. 

 

6 hours ago, KK said:

 

I'm afraid we disagree here. Unfocused monologues built on pedantic backstory, flimsy metaphors and empty platitudes don't fool me. And I think any piece of art loses any real tact or craft when its characters decide to just keep talking at an audience...it's lazy writing.

 

 

I just call it boring dialogue. The kind of dialogue you usually only hear in TV series that need to stretch their material in order to have 10 episodes. 

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Midnight Mass is an existential and philosophical tear down of organized religion, that cleverly uses vampire lore as an analogy to religious zealots.


There’s not much plot to it, and I liked it for that slow burn pace that focuses on flawed characters. 

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What was so impressive on a technical level? I recall some shoddy green screen, wonky grading and lots of fake blood. Oh and there were some pointless long takes for conversations (adding nothing to the scenes), which struck me as a way to distract from the thinness of the material.

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If you weren’t impressed by the oner on the beach I don’t know what else to say. Single takes are always impressive to me, regardless of context, because of the sheer planning and work to execute them. In the context of the show, I thought they added a sense of scale and scope to the island, establishing the setting and characters.


 

 

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2 hours ago, Koray Savas said:


There’s not much plot to it, and I liked it for that slow burn pace that focuses on flawed characters. 

 

It focuses on boring and moaning chararacters who think their background stories and characters traits are so interesting that it deserves our attention. It's bad writing. 

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2 hours ago, AC1 said:

It focuses on boring and moaning chararacters who think their background stories and characters traits are so interesting that it deserves our attention. It's bad writing. 

It’s really not when scripts like Old exist. Midnight Mass isn’t perfect by any means, but it’s a quality miniseries that’s only 7 episodes long. I enjoyed it and find really puzzling that folks couldn’t get past 3 episodes. 

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23 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

It’s really not when scripts like Old exist. Midnight Mass isn’t perfect by any means, but it’s a quality miniseries that’s only 7 episodes long. I enjoyed it and find really puzzling that folks couldn’t get past 3 episodes. 

 

At least Old knows what it is, whether you like it or not. Midnight Mass is pulp trying to dress up as "philosophical discourse". It's comes across as poser writing, and it's bad poser writing. There are nuggets of an interesting idea, stretched over hours of repetitive pontification, with monologues that drag in really clumsy exposition and unrelated anecdotes in the middle of significant plot beats. And I mean come on, half the screenplay is literally Bible quotes (could make a fun drinking game). That's really just lazy writing.

 

We ended up watching the whole thing over the week (because we committed). It got mildly entertaining in the last two episodes when the climax broke out, but then everyone started talking again...

 

It also felt like a really naive take on its themes of death and faith. There are far better films, shows and writers who handle this stuff with more nuance and grace. Mike Flannagan should stick to the genre stuff instead.

 

Also, I did not find the long takes impressive at all (including the beach shot). Because again, I didn't feel they were especially original or added anything to the scene. It's a long take for a long take's sake, and not especially impressive ones at that. But to each their own!

 

The long take episode in Hill House was much more entertaining.

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12 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

It’s really not when scripts like Old exist. 

 

That was bad too, but at least Old didn't involve scenes where entirely uninteresting people are sitting on a couch talking about himself for like 15 minutes long. That for me was the last straw. It really has to be the worst show of the year, Koray. 

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Oh, come on quit it, “worst show of the year”… what are you on about!

 

My impression is that the long, one take, dialogue scenes was a stylistic choice, not a case of ‘bad writing’.

 

If you and your family didn’t like it because it was too ‘dialogue heavy’, then there’s plenty of other ‘stuff’ out there for you, but please distinguish between different tastes and different quality.

 

The people I saw it with would put it as one of the top showed of the year, so who’s to say who’s objectively right?

 

(Obviously, I am, but you know, have to be PC these days. 😉)

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Maybe it's different for religious people who are used to listen to half-hour monologues?

 

 

Anyway, looking at the viewer's reactions over at RT, it truly seems to be a love it or hate it show.

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On 07/11/2021 at 3:10 AM, rough cut said:

Only Murders in the Building

IMDB

 

I’m 5 episodes in and it’s a good show, very enjoyable. The duo of Steve Martin and Martin Short is great, takes me back to The Three Amigos days. A lot of the jokes are really old school - they don’t make ‘em like they used to - but I’m loving it.

 

My only gripe is with the show is the casting of Selena Gomez. It’s my first time watching anything she’s in, I’ve heard some of her music, which can be enjoyable, so I’d say I’m judging without a negative bias… But her acting - ouff - horrible. She’s pretty, but she’s got the charisma of a cardboard box and the acting talent of one of those early text-to read programs. Really wish they’d gotten someone with acting chops instead, as she does suck the enjoyment out of the show a little bit.

 

Still - the story’s good, every other actor pulls their weight, visually it’s very pleasing and the show has a charming soundtrack, so over all - a good show.

 

Hehe, you mirror the same comments I posted about Gomez in this show on some recent page

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If they just have her open her mouth when she speaks and have her look like she enjoys spending time with Martin & Martin, that will massively improve season 2

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I've been rewatching The Wire over the last few months, my third time. Just finished the last episode. To my mind, The Wire has the best finale in a TV series. 

 

I also think season 5 is great, despite what many say otherwise about it. The chief complaint is that something preposterous happens, and it is preposterous, but not more so than say...Hamsterdam. And yet, it is great because the writing follows through on that preposterousness – every consequence of Jimmy's action is explored to the very end. 

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5 hours ago, AC1 said:

Was S5 the season with the newspaper perspective? I loved them all but the season with the school perspective takes the cake.

The newspaper season was the weakest but still B+.

Every other season was A to A+.

Best series of the millenium

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6 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

Yeah, every JWFan that has watched the show has enjoyed it minus Gomez

 

I watched the whole series and enjoyed it quite a bit. I thought Gomez' acting was fine, and balanced particularly well paired with Martin Short's flamboyance. I'm very hot and cold with him, sometimes he's just too much. The trio had good chemistry and had a bit of a "three bears" dynamic, with Short (almost) overdoing it, Gomez underplaying things and Martin sitting snug in the middle. I know plenty of people who are very much like Gomez in real life, so her performance rang pretty true to me. Might be a millennial thing.

 

Steve Martin works so well in everything he does when on paper he shouldn't. He has next to no range and isn't a particularly good actor, but he has just the right amount of warmth and charisma. I can't quite put my finger on it! His physical comedy in the finale was quite funny too.

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Steve Martin and Martin Short were both perfect although my favorite performance of the whole series was Nathan Lane.  Really there should have been more of him and I really hope he somehow returns for the next season.

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1 hour ago, Disco Stu said:

Steve Martin and Martin Short were both perfect although my favorite performance of the whole series was Nathan Lane.  Really there should have been more of him and I really hope he somehow returns for the next season.


Agreed, Nathan Lane is a gem and should be in everything. His performance in this one was outstanding.

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