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The All-New TT: Television Time Mini Reviews

Paul le Fou

24/7 lofi hip hop man to study/relax to
(He)
I'm excited for the Armored Core one and I'll probably catch a few of the others that I actually recognize.

Watch the Concord episode be really really good. Funniest shit ever.
 

Daikaiju

Rated Ages 6+
(He, Him)
36-pacman-eats-you.gif
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
This sounds incredibly weird. Considering that pic, I guess it's going more into a "realistic", grimdark direction?
Which means a dark version of Megaman? I mean, sure, just do X or Zero, or something?

Pac-Man?? Is it the floating ball that girld is sitting on, on the right side?

PlayStation????
 

R.R. Bigman

Coolest Guy
Is Curb Your Enthusiasm just Seinfeld, but starring George? Larry David is very Costanzian in his petty grievances that come back to bite him in the ass.
 

zonetrope

(he/him)
It is and it isn't. As the show goes on, it definitely develops its own distinctive comedic rhythm and internal logic.
 
Larry David's self-parody(?) is really the worst aspects of George AND Jerry combined into one person. He's a lot less pathetic, but also orders of magnitude more petty and hateful, so there's a lot less audience sympathy for the character as well.

I like Curb exponentially more than Seinfeld. The lack of a laugh-track/studio audience means the world. When the audience cheers along with one of the Seinfeld cast doing something despicable or heinous, it kind of makes light of the situation, and forms part of a permission structure for the audience to root for the characters. In Curb, Larry's despicable acts and words are laid naked for the viewer to better take in and evaluate whatever he just did. It feels a lot better to laugh at Larry for being a shitstain, than it does to awkwardly laugh with Jerry/George when they're being douchebags.
 

Octopus Prime

Mystery Contraption
(He/Him)
I started watching it, and after the first season wanted every single person to heave a brick at Larry’s head

And yet I love Always Sunny
 

zonetrope

(he/him)
I also prefer Curb to Seinfeld, though it's tough for me to articulate why. Something about the no-bullshit way these horrible people interact with one another, every weird social rule and taboo dragged into the center of the conversation, is oddly therapeutic to me as a very anxious person.
 
I’m only four episodes in and already I can’t wait for Larry to get a Seinfeld finale comeuppance.
Without spoilers, Larry very frequently is made to feel the painful repercussions of his actions. The first season or two, this might not be always made apparent as the show finds its voice and waffles on Larry being merely unfortunate or misunderstood. But somewhere along the lines they very clearly decided oh no, Larry is a total piece of shit and we’re gonna revel in his self-inflicted misery.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
I think Curb makes it easier to look at its characters from a distance and laugh at their misfortune. The Seinfeld characters are jerks, but they also occasionally deal with everyday problems like relationships and unemployment. Larry David on Curb is very comfortably wealthy, always hanging out with other rich celebrities and going to the country club (The club is practically the primary location of the latter seasons). Yet he is still miserable because his own neuroses about social norms he dislikes keep getting in the way of enjoying his situation.
 

R.R. Bigman

Coolest Guy
Yeah, a guy who has Seinfeld Creator Money is not someone I’m going to sympathize with when they get shit for refusing to pay restaurant tips or other small expenses.
 
Yeah, a guy who has Seinfeld Creator Money is not someone I’m going to sympathize with when they get shit for refusing to pay restaurant tips or other small expenses.
Yup. Luckly, it never really feels like the show asks you to sympathize with him. And even if you do on accident, the minute you do, you most often get a stark reminder of oh, we don't experience the same world at all.

And then things inevitably go very poorly for him as a result of refusing to pay tips or whatever. And you get to laugh at this buffoon being miserable through no other reason but his own making. In a lot of ways, it's kind of a cathartic show, getting to laugh at how miserable rich, out of touch, hollywood snobs are. All that money and it can't buy any of them happiness.
 

Vaeran

(GRUNTING)
(he/him)
Staff member
Moderator
Over the weekend I started a horror series on MGM+ called, puzzlingly, From.

The LOST connection, from reputation, makes me a little wary of the series eventually disappearing up its own ass, but three episodes in I'm having a good time. I'll keep y'all updated.

UPDATE: Welp.

I finished S2 tonight and I don't know if I'll be going any further. I realize that you can't produce an entire multi-season series on "don't go outside or the monsters will getcha" alone, but it was a strong and engaging premise and I was interested in the human drama it generated.

But every episode they added more elements and more mysteries until the show was creaking under the weight of its own mythology. By the end of the second season we've got monsters and the town you can't leave and magic talismans and the symbol and the wires that don't go anywhere and teleporter trees and the boy in white and the voices in Sara's head and the voice on the radio and Civil War soldiers and the spider forest and magic worm blood and silver bullets and cicadas and prophetic dreams and deadly dreams and collapsing houses and music boxes and nursery rhymes and a magic torch and a tower and ghost children and the dog and that's just what I can think of off the top of my head. Jesus! Pick any five of those elements and make a series about them. Throwing them all into the soup together somehow makes for a very thin broth.

I'm reminded of a quote from one of Giant Bomb's GOTY deliberation podcasts from a million years ago: "The award is for Best Story, not Most Story." From wants to win the award for Most Story but it makes it impossible to care about any dilemma the characters face or minor victory they achieve when it's just going to spawn two more wacky narrative plates to keep in the air. Bleh!
 
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Paul le Fou

24/7 lofi hip hop man to study/relax to
(He)
Arcane Season 2 is good, but not as good as Season 1. It has some really strong moments, especially in the middle of the season and the alternate universe in episode 7? but overall the plot accelerates and escalates faster and faster until by the last two episodes it's moving so fast I had a bit of trouble keeping track and it lost a LOT of emotional punch. Much less focused overall, and character development suffers a bit for it because that accelerates along with the plot. Certain moments feel a lot less motivated. A few character and plot twists that should have been more major are less relatable and engaging as a result.

It's still a fucking ridiculously beautiful show that anyone who likes animation owes it to themselves to watch, and they stretch their chops with the opening of each episode being a mini music video that reaches into abstract/metaphorical space to catch up on story stuff. Definitely worth watching, even if it doesn't quite live up to season 1.
 

Baudshaw

Unfortunate doesn't begin to describe...
(he/him)
Finished episodes 1-7 of Bad Sisters. For something I was forced to watch with my parents, it wasn't that bad. It's really funny at times and all the characters (especially BB) are fun while still feeling troubled and flawed.

And that's about the only full show I've watched this month. I suppose I should work on clearing my infinite backlog
 

Baudshaw

Unfortunate doesn't begin to describe...
(he/him)
Uh, good luck with that, I guess.
I'm serious, it feels like I'll be finished with school by the time I finish the "unc" shows like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, Modern Family, The Bear, and too many others
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
For how imaginative Dune is, Dune: Prophecy plays it startlingly safe. Journey ten thousand years in the past, when the Corrinos still rule the imperium, the Harkonnens and Atreides still hate each other, and the Fremen are still interrupting the spice harvests on Arrakis. I realize that it's based on Brian Herbert's work, but I'm not impressed.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
My wife and I are super excited that Severance is back on! It was our favorite new show a couple years ago and it's been a long wait for more. Several of the season one mysteries are now out in the open, but plenty more aren't, and it's a real fun one to speculate about. (We're just hoping the writers know the answers, but hey, it's not the Lost creators, so hopefully...)

Anyway the season 2 opener last week threw a bit of a fakeout in terms of how much things would change, but it's good to be back.
 

Patrick

Magic-User
(He/Him)
We just started season 1 recently. It's off to a super good start. I was worried that it would be too creepy for Katie, but it's been doing a good job of leaning more into the mystery side of things and using creepy stuff for punctuation.
 

lincolnic

can stop, will stop
(he/him)
My wife and I are super excited that Severance is back on! It was our favorite new show a couple years ago and it's been a long wait for more.
Big same over here.

Several of the season one mysteries are now out in the open, but plenty more aren't, and it's a real fun one to speculate about. (We're just hoping the writers know the answers, but hey, it's not the Lost creators, so hopefully...)
Good news! (Also, I can't find it now, but Ben Stiller has said elsewhere that they already know where the story is going, what they have to do to get there/how many seasons, and how it's going to end, so right now I'm optimistic about it.)
 

Adam

the :motion: stands
(He/Him)
Today's episode of Severance had some of the best cinematography my wife and I had ever seen. We both simultaneously said "whoa" several times.
 

Baudshaw

Unfortunate doesn't begin to describe...
(he/him)
Oh, I finished Dune 2. It was alright, I mean I liked all the cinematic spectacle but I feel like the ending was just a bit expected. The prophecy of what would happen to Paul if he went south... it just happened as I expected it to be. That one twist involving his family's ancestry was a bit cool I guess. Still really excited to see
Chani vs Paul
in Dune 3.
 
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