Author Topic: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched  (Read 226441 times)

oldkid

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #1640 on: August 13, 2017, 12:16:23 AM »
Wow, that's fantastic.  Part of what I love about the show is that there are three main sets of mother-daughter:
Lorolai and Rory-- who at first seem to have an idyllic relationship, but there are seasons where they almost never talk to each other.
Mrs. Gilmore and Lorolai-- Which is as painful as it is funny and the sweetness and the hurt about past events are constantly mixed.
Mrs. Kim and Lane-- A generation gap relationship with a lot of love that is covered by command and hiding.

Each relationship is complex and rich, so much richer than most of the relationships Luke has, or Rory's relationships with any of her boyfriends.  This show is about female relationships, and there's a lot to learn, especially for me who never had a sister.  I didn't know about your background, Sandy, but what a wonderful, funny, emotional, and messy way to see a whole spectrum of mother-daughter relationships.
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Sandy

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #1641 on: August 13, 2017, 07:01:18 PM »
Even being a girl and having sisters, this show still was a treasure trove of insights. I had a lot to learn. :) You and I both took an excellent course in female relationships and your descriptions should be on the syllabus!

Bondo

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #1642 on: August 13, 2017, 08:18:56 PM »
I have a current situation where I'm Luke, interested in Lorelei, but there's Christopher, always popping back up to keep Lorelei emotionally unavailable. Also, though painted as just a result of him being manly in a sense, Luke could be said to have a few vaguely autistic characteristics to help me self-identify, even though I lack the manliness of being able to build things. Thus Gilmore Girls has all the wisdom and I can't wait to get to the later seasons of my own life.

Speaking of which...

Atypical: S1

A show about the travails of dating when you are on the spectrum that gets almost everything right except for the travails of dating when you are on the spectrum. That sounds a little snarky, but as someone on the spectrum who attempts to date, I have a lot of lived experience for the show to try to reflect for me to feel its accuracy. I suppose that's the challenge of representation in media, especially with something as amorphous as the autism spectrum. The famous saying is that if you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism, which is to say you can't generalize. That is probably true about any other identity, but it does make it harder for a fictional character to feel representational.

Sam (Kier Gilchrist) is an autistic high school senior who decides it is time to take on the effort of dating. And as is our way, he prepares himself for this by trying to rigorously observe how the whole dating thing works, noting observations from many sources, not always sure how to measure the viability of different approaches (i.e. pick-up artists). In this process it has plenty of accurate aspects...the problem of what is often a zero-tolerance standard for mistakes in dating, at the same time mistakes are inevitable when we are asked to act without full information or sufficient time to process the information we do have. It takes into consideration difficulties in understanding our own feelings at times, elements of obsessiveness, and inadequate awareness of even glaring boundaries of social norms.

Yet, at least from my jaded perspective it all felt too easy for Sam. It certainly depicts how his symptoms placed barriers to his part in relationships, but the romantic prospects he finds are unrealistically tolerant or forgiving. Within the first episode the first girl who shows an interest manages to overcome his "weirdness" to go on an unusual date and even take him to her dorm room before one of his more pronounced symptoms derails progress. Nothing in my life has ever been as easy as that was. At least the next success actually feels grounded in character detail.

Another mystery of the show is the near-complete absence of the internet. Admittedly the internet isn't the most visual thing, but to act like the internet isn't around is omitting what is often a significant component of the social lives of autistic people. Online forums and other similar venues are a great attraction as a safer means of social connection, and of meeting people with common interests. Indeed, my first romantic relationship bloomed from such a forum. There is a slight reference to online dating, but it is casually dismissed as basically a punchline. And then we get to a point where he feels as part of his sexual education he needs to see boobs and rather than turn to the internet (and really, how has he not seen boobs by the time he's 18), there is a whole scene where his friend drags him to a strip club. Again, I get that the internet isn't visual, but to omit it is inauthentic.

But ultimately if you asked me would I like someone I'd like to date to watch this to hopefully learn a little about what it would be like to date me, I'd still say yes. For all its faults I do think it captures enough elements and approaches it with empathy that it serves a positive role in stating that here are a group of people, yes there are unique challenges involved, but contrary to how most people treat them they have romantic desires and can be fulfilling partners.

Really though, what makes the show worth watching is that it has a lot of great writing paired with a really strong cast that makes it a very enjoyable experience. Gilchrist does capture things well but the real star of the show for me was his sister Casey (Brigette Lundy-Paine), who has a young Winona Ryder vibe as a kind of alt, sarcastic teenage girl. She and the parents are very well etched out with arcs that show the reverberations of Sam into their lives for good and bad. The primary miss for me was Sam's friend Zahid who is kind of a skeezy McLovin type, but apparently actually successful with women and I don't endorse that. Anyway, as a small, 4-hour investment, it is definitely a solid value TV show.

smirnoff

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #1643 on: August 14, 2017, 09:56:25 PM »
Caught up with the two available seasons of Man in the High Castle. Good slow burner with a few good emotional thuds. I'm invested and intrigued.

Ozark. Burned through this in under a week while my dad was visiting. A lot of good dialoguey scenes. What great characters/casting. First episode tells you what you'll need to know if you're hesitant to try it.

ses

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #1644 on: August 15, 2017, 07:13:33 PM »
Well, it is the best episode of the series, and in contention for my favorite episode of TV ever, so I'm not surprised. I don't know how it lives up to huge expectations like that, it's not that special really, just great.

It was really great, I want to watch it again.  I highly recommend listening to The West Wing Weekly podcast, Two Cathedrals Part II where they interview Aaron Sorkin.  It was really interesting to get some more insight into the episode.
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Junior

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #1645 on: August 15, 2017, 07:28:24 PM »
Yeah, that was a great podcast paired with a great episode of tv.
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oldkid

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #1646 on: August 17, 2017, 01:13:11 PM »
Atypical: Season 1

(Damn, Bondo beat me to this one! Well, of course he did)

It feels as if the creators of the show said to themselves, "Suppose we took the family with the autistic kid in Parenthood, but we fast forwarded them to the kid in his senior year in high school, when he wants a girlfriend and the parents and his sister are trying to figure out who they really are after spending more than a decade focusing on him."

And that makes it sound clinical and sympathetic and somewhat depressing.  However, the emotion I most experienced with this show was hilarity.  It was truly funny and despite the struggles of adultery and life change and loving the wrong person, it was all given a large dollop of comedy to make it all entertaining.   I was certainly ready for more than eight episodes by the end of it.

4/5

I agree with you, Bondo, about the accuracy in portraying someone on the spectrum (looking from the outside instead of the inside).  The internet missing is certainly a loss, but internet use is about as un-cinematic as you can get.  It's a scene-killer, so I can see why they chose to side step that, even at the cost of accuracy.
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pixote

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #1647 on: August 17, 2017, 01:16:58 PM »
Atypical: Season 1

(Damn, Bondo beat me to this one! Well, of course he did Typical.)

FYP.

pixote
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pixote

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #1648 on: August 17, 2017, 01:25:26 PM »
Another mystery of the show is the near-complete absence of the internet. Admittedly the internet isn't the most visual thing, but to act like the internet isn't around is omitting what is often a significant component of the social lives of autistic people.

I had this issue with The Edge of Seventeen, and I think it largely stems from the sharp generation gap created by the information age. Generation X (or Y) writers and filmmakers who went through middle school, high school, and even college without smartphones can't fully imagine the experience of the younger millennials. And the tv shows and movies they grew up watching — the ones that fed their imaginations — offer no models. So they end up writing a scene that's subconsciously influenced by some John Hughes film and they realize they have to pretend cell phones and the internet don't exist or the scene no longer works. They can't appropriate the pop cultural works of the personal experiences of their own youth because technology changes everything (and nothing).

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oldkid

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #1649 on: August 17, 2017, 01:32:56 PM »
Slowly, there are more and newer ideas of how to film cell and internet use.  I think we'll see it in more shows over time.
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