Author Topic: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched  (Read 226527 times)

pixote

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #2460 on: October 24, 2020, 11:56:47 PM »
How far into Schitt’s Creek does it gets as good as everyone says it is?

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Sandy

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #2461 on: October 27, 2020, 09:28:27 PM »
How far into Schitt’s Creek does it gets as good as everyone says it is?

pixote

I think the key is to have started watching it before the hype. :/

I started watching it on Netflix a couple of years ago. I hadn't heard much about it, except maybe here on the forum. Catherine O'Hara was the big draw for me, along with Eugene Levy. O'Hara in Penelope does some of my favorite comedy work ever and I find her choices fascinating. I had also been watching some Christopher Guest films and liked O'hara and Levy's teamwork. They're like long time dance partners, where they anticipate each other's moves.

I struggled with O'hara's accent for a good 6 episodes. I just couldn't get into it, until I started listening to her closer. She's a walking thesaurus, finding the most oddball words to replace what everyone else on the planet would use. By season 6, I watched with close captioning, just to catch obscure words that I wanted to see what they looked like.

example:

“ How mercurial is life… We all imagine being carried from the ashes by the goddess Artemis and here I get a balatron from Barnum & Bailey.”

And yes, I had to look up balatron. :D

The humor around Chris Elliot grated on my nerves for the first few episodes too. Aggravation to the 10th power of someone doing the opposite of what you need him to is not my favorite humor. That all calmed down by and by and I wasn't bothered by his character as much.

Overall, I appreciate the lack of "drama" around LGBTQ relationships and I really like the character arcs. The family comes from a very superficial, disconnected beginning and slowly uncovers their humanity. I heard that they did a ton of background story work before ever shooting and it shows. There are some scenes that really pack a punch. The "Life is a Cabaret" episode in season 5 is my favorite. It earned the right to put me into an emotional place. I may have cried a little (or a lot).

 

saltine

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #2462 on: October 28, 2020, 11:18:16 PM »
The Queen's Gambit on Netflix is terrific!
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jdc

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #2463 on: October 29, 2020, 03:49:59 AM »
Will try it out, stuck with trying to find something to start
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saltine

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #2464 on: October 29, 2020, 03:56:48 AM »
Wait for wifey, she'll love it.

Also have you tried Condor the series? It's very well done as well. Not the same quality at TQG but still good.
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Bondo

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #2465 on: November 08, 2020, 09:02:28 PM »
One of the festival things I tried was a winners program from a different festival Denver does called SeriesFest, which is for serial storytelling, so mostly webseries and TV pilots. The standout was what presumably will be a web series, though I don't know when or where, called Early To Rise that is kind of in the Passengers universe, about a trio of space travelers who are woken up early during space travel...only they are stuck in their pods (creating an almost literal bottle episode). It works on the strength of the improve/sketch comedy trio at its heart.

jdc

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #2466 on: November 19, 2020, 02:23:54 AM »
Wait for wifey, she'll love it.

Also have you tried Condor the series? It's very well done as well. Not the same quality at TQG but still good.

We got through TQG in 3 evenings and enjoyed.  Haven’t tried Condor but not sure I can get her interested in that one.  Will see
"Beer. Now there's a temporary solution."  Homer S.
“The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations” - David Friedman

Bondo

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #2467 on: November 19, 2020, 06:21:22 AM »
I finished TQG yesterday. No matter how they try to visualize chess, and all the studying they do, being able to strategize that intensely still feels like magic to me.

On Culture Gab Fest I know they mentioned that for a long spell it looks like it almost glamorizes drug use as performance enhancing, though I do think the end message is that while she thought it was performance enhancing, it was really a coping mechanism for these deeper pains and her success earlier was in spite of the drugs.

MartinTeller

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #2468 on: November 29, 2020, 11:24:22 PM »
City So Real (Ep. 1-4)

There's a weird dynamic where if you are making a really dynamically crafted argument documentary, it is generally best to keep it on the shorter side and incredibly tight, but once you opt for more of a cinema verite style of documentary, it's a better bet to be extremely expansive. City So Real, a docu-series airing on NatGeo starting next Thursday (and appearing on Hulu the following day) from Steve James of Hoop Dreams fame, fills four hour-long episodes (in festival format, a fifth episode will run on TV) in a manner that is Frederick Wiseman doing Street Fight. It focuses on the 2019 Chicago Mayoral election, but also Chicago a bit more broadly, to provide a feel for a city facing some real challenges. The main aspect that signals this is a constructed work are graphics of the different Chicago neighborhoods, letting you know where in the city each scene is taking place.

The political context here is Rahm Emmanuel did not run for reelection, being deeply unpopular in part because of what was seen as an inadequate response to the murder of multiple Black men by the police. Into that void rush about a dozen people of a variety of backgrounds, ideologies and political styles. In the grand style of Wisemanian excess, you just settle in and get comfortable, and just get struck by various moments based on your own personal sentiments. There's the footage of officer Jason Van Dyke's trial, where he takes the stand, leading me to have doubts as generally speaking the defendant taking the stand in a criminal trial is always a terrible idea. (It was!). There is the millennial candidate whose strategy, as depicted in the documentary, seems to mostly rest on endorsements from Chance The Rapper and Kanye, which was pretty cringe to me. There was the scene from a planning commission hearing where a NIMBY dude complains about the proposed 60-story building across from his 2-story bar that feels cursed, considering this is amid discussions of gentrification and rising prices driving out existing populations. But opposition to development responsive to demand, not gentrification, is usually the cause of the price increases and displacement. There is a scene at a high school where the audience holds up color-coded cards to signal how strong they think the answer is and the candidates themselves have emoji placards to signal things. One of the candidates holds up a poop emoji to signal his displeasure with one of the other candidate's point. Extremely cringe. But putting it all together makes for a based show. I will definitely be tuning in once the fifth episode hits Hulu.

As a Chicago native, I’m intrigued

Most of my free time this past week (when I wasn't napping) was spent watching this. I agree that high school scene was super-cringe. I take a weird -- and arguably unwarranted -- pride in being a Chicagoan but the truth is I've now lived in Portland longer than I lived there, and I never got around all that much when I did live there. Still, I got a big dose of that hometown nostalgia watching this, and appreciated how equitable James is in representing different neighborhoods (some of which I've never set foot in). I had significantly less warm nostalgia for the racist white people, but they are definitely part of the Chicago landscape.

My dad was pretty into local politics, I never was, but you can't help growing up there without being aware of how messed up the politics are. I was not aware of the signature challenge aspect, which is just a massive clusterCINECAST!. What an infuriating system.

I came away a big fan of Lori Lightfoot. The fifth episode paints her in a different light, but I don't know how anyone could have handled such a volatile situation much better.

Bondo

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #2469 on: November 30, 2020, 01:26:28 AM »
The fifth episode definitely felt tacked on stylistically, and was less effective for me as a result (though since it wasn't part of my festival viewing, maybe I just wasn't in the rhythm anymore). It does largely try to be evenhanded, but that's still annoying because my preference would be not to give neutral observer credence to those mobbing the Mayor's house or those justifying the destruction of property (saying it was targeting non-Black owned businesses...but notably including South Asian businesses as in the offending group meriting destruction). It triggered the thought that, in response to those try to stifle any concern about property damage by saying lives matter more than stuff, the destruction of property causes neighborhood economic stagnation and economic stagnation causes increased mortality. I feel comfortable saying that the property damage of this past summer effectively will have killed people.

 

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