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The All-New TT: Television Time Mini Reviews

Rascally Badger

El Capitan de la outro espacio
(He/Him)
I know I am the only person in existence that genuinely enjoys the show, but I am glad to see Carnival Row back for season 2, four years after season 1. It's lost the murder mystery aspect of the first season, but now it is fully in on the political machinations of its poorly explained steampunk fantasy world. I admit it is not great, and kind of seems laser targeted to weird, specific interests I have. Like it feeling like its set around the equivalent of WWI times in this fantasy world. A couple of main characters just stumbled upon fantasy Russia, which is in the middle of the fantasy Russian Revolution, and they are learning about fantasy communism.
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
You're remembering wrong. Dorothy marries Leslie Nielsen. Her and Stan do reconcile theur differences in the finale, though.
Good to know, thanks. I don't mind them becoming friends, she just should really not trust this loser to be someone to share a life with.

I'm also glad she finds someone to be happy with, though I feel like I would prefer her to become a scholar, or something, not even caring for men. But at this point, I'm already far removed from the show, so whatever.
 

Rascally Badger

El Capitan de la outro espacio
(He/Him)
I'm still loving Carnival Row season 2. It has the problem of it characters being spread about and not really interacting with each other much, but it is doing a decent job of using that to tell the story of a world that still has relatable characters. The fantasy Russians are going from Bolshevik revolution to straight up Stalinism at turbo speed, but I am hoping it is with purpose.

I think what is drawing me to it the most is that it feels very specific; that its appeal is targeted to people who want a certain thing. I don't know how many people want a fantasy show set in the equivalent of the start of the 20th century that's a murder mystery and an analogue for race relations (anecdotal evidence suggests this show is for exactly one person, an R. Badger, esquire), but this show is doing its thing.
 

Paul le Fou

24/7 lofi hip hop man to study/relax to
(He)
Neflix's Lupin started strong and got progressively worse. I'm interested in the whole framing of the father thing but they keep dragging out thePellegrini stuff further and further. And when theykidnapped his son and then killed him off at the end of part 1/start of part 2, I realized I just didn't like what I was watching anymore. They're just tapdancing around the central mystery to stretch it and it's deeply overstaying its welcome, and there really isn't nearly enough of him being Lupin and doing cool Lupin thefts.
 

zonetrope

(he/him)
and there really isn't nearly enough of him being Lupin and doing cool Lupin thefts.
This is where I landed too. Most of the show feels more like Revenge, which is probably less technically demanding to produce, but is just a plain less interesting idea for a series.
 

zonetrope

(he/him)
I've been enjoying Dark, a German time travel show on Netflix that can basically be described as "Werner Herzog does Chrono Trigger."
 

Paul le Fou

24/7 lofi hip hop man to study/relax to
(He)
I made a thread for that, but I think it was on the old forums. But yeah, I especially enjoyed season 1, though I personally thought it went a bit downhill in each season after that.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
So my wife recently got me into The Detectorists, a BBC show about a metal detecting club. It's real good. Laid-back character-driven show with some good cozy drama and a cast of flawed but lovable weirdos. Just getting to the end of season two and looking forward to more.

Speaking of ends of season twos, we also finished catching up on Ted Lasso just in time for S3 to start in like a week. It is, like absolutely everybody with access to it already said, excellent.
 

John

(he/him)
My wife got us into Mayfair Witches, the latest entry into AMC's effort to make the Anne Rice Immortal Universe a thing. It's, well, it's not a Good show, but it is fun and entertaining. It's a bit of a puzzle box, but more just that the audience has incomplete information and has to piece it together over time, without a big constructed Mystery of Mysteries to solve. It reminds me of the dumb ABC/Disney soap drama Once Upon a Time, but if it was actually good. Alexandra Daddario has two acting modes here, Skittish and Angry, and they both fit her character reasonably well.
 

Rascally Badger

El Capitan de la outro espacio
(He/Him)
I'm not sure History of the World Part II isn't terrible, but the third episode opens with Jack Black as Stalin singing a song about how he is going to rule Russia with kindness, unless . . .; and Noah filling the ark with only small dogs.

Also, Poker Face was perfect. Best show of the year.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I just watched the first episode and it had about a 50/50 split of YUKS to Grim Silence, so… y’know…

About what I expected
 

Paul le Fou

24/7 lofi hip hop man to study/relax to
(He)
Binged both seasons of Undone, a kind of time-travel-thriller/family melodrama made in rotoscoped animation, with Rosa Salazar and Bob Odenkirk in it. I really liked it; Season 2 was alllllmost as strong as Season 1, even, and it ends in a good spot.
 
A friend with whom I share a mutual love of HK Cinema/Kung Fu movies, forced me to watch Cinemax's show "Warrior". I'm about a third of the way through it. I'm... kinda loving it?

Fair warning ahead of time: it's a Cinemax show, so you know the amounts of nudity, swearing, graphic violence (both regular and sexual) in your average Game of Thrones season? It's like that but dialed up considerably. So if any or all of that is a deal breaker, know before going in.

All that said, it's pretty good? Even though I'm not regularly a fan of such things. The show is made by Justin Lin, so it's very stylistic and wonderful to look at. And apparently, the core idea of the show comes from a Bruce Lee show pitch from back when he was alive and trying to get a TV show made, which the show's marketing is all oriented around. Hard to say how much of his actual pitch made it into the show. The show sells itself on a Kung Fu/Spaghetti Western fusion, but it ends up feeling more like an Asian-American Boardwalk Empire/Gangs of New York historical-fiction drama than that.

The basic premise of the show is kinda simple: a Chinese Immigrant (who is really good at Kung Fu) comes to Gilded Age San Francisco, and gets embroiled in the Tong Wars of the time. (Essentially local Chinese gangs.)

Like I already said, it's a rather brutal show. Not just from the violence and sex, but also just hey - this show is all about highlighting the Asian-American experience and how much violence and racism Asians historically were met with in this country. But while it's kinda hard for me, as an Asian-American to hear the word 'chink' said a million times an episode, it's actually really cool to both see a slice of American history that's important but always buried/forgotten, as well as a show where our representation is not just a tokenism, but front and center.

Also, the fight choreography is actually pretty decent!

I don't know if this show is for everyone. Again, the sex and violence is pretty intense, along with a lot of machismo/toxic masculinity. The later of which I feel actually gets a halfway decent exploration? But yeah. Good period piece, good action show so far.

 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
I have actually been pretty curious about that show ever since I first saw it listed on HBO Max, but it's definitely one of those shows that could be extremely bad so I never made the effort to dive into it.
 
7 episodes in, it’s a lot of fun! The casting is rock solid. Andrew Koji does a solid, modernized Bruce Lee act. Jason Tobin - Justin Lin’s old friend - steals the show every episode, it’s really good to see him getting a solid gig. He’s the kind of actor who I’ve maintained for two decades now that he’d be a Hollywood staple if he had white privilege. There’s a certain amount of wish fulfillment here for Asian-American audiences where the Asian guys get to be mega badass in ways that you never get to see characters get to be in American media, and also very purposefully subverts old racist stereotypes. (Jason Tobin’s character fucks) There’s some interesting/thoughtful commentary on race that never gets examined in pop culture here because race is only ever black/white in our dumb country. Also from the history buff in me, it’s fun to see this interpretation of SF from 150 years ago, with a lot of familiar names but everything looks very difference since it’s pre-1906, and you have to remember that Chinatown is in a different place.
 

Rascally Badger

El Capitan de la outro espacio
(He/Him)
Comedy in general tends to have a shelf-life, and IMO Mel Brooks's brand expired decades ago so not surprised to hear this.

I disagree with this. I think Mel Brooks' thing has generally been quantity of jokes over quality. There is lot's of clever word play and puns, but also a lot of groaners and History of the World Part II pretty well sticks with this, with an acknowledgement that at times it feels like Mel Brooks fan-fiction.

For all the 'you couldn't make Blazing Saddles these days' chatter, Blazing Saddles largely still plays. His later spoofs are lesser efforts, but the jokes that worked when they came out still work. The good bits in History of the World Part 2 make the duds worthwhile. Them doing Judas betraying Jesus as an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm more than makes up for 'Jackrasp' which is people attempting to kill Rasputin as Jackass stunts, which sounds better in theory than it is in execution.
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
Man, people talk about show's like the original Office being cringe-inducing but it's got nothing on Abigail's Party, Mike Leigh's dark satire of 70s British suburbia that due to a literal perfect storm (Britain only had three channels at the time; one was one strike and the other was taken out by a storm) became a ratings smash and one of the most remembered episodes of television on the BBC. It was part of a series called Play for Today which is pretty much what it sounds like; a stage play.

The story is about a middle class couple inviting neighbors over for a party and it becoming increasingly squirmy as relatively normal Sue gets caught up with over-bearing and bulldozing host Beverly and her intense, class-obsessed husband Laurance. Things are awkward before the are sniping at each other and the OTHER neighbors Sue contends with doesn't help; the stone-faced Tony and the completely oblivious Angela, who doesn't seem to notice when she is asking uncomfortable questions and maintains that it's "alright" even when it isn't.

In many way, Abigail's Party feels like the platonic ideal of a dark dramatic play where people unveil their nastier "real" sides but I think it helps this is a well-realized version of it. There's hints that Laurence, who works in real estate, is not happy that the neighborhood is, as Sue puts it, "more mixed", something SHE doesn't have a problem with. The whole thing is a masterclass in discomfort and while the cast is good, I think it comes down to the constantly pained expression on Sue's face and Angela just... not fucking getting it. Apparently, the original play was largely improvised by the cast (then scripted based on the initial improvisation) with them all developing extensive backstories where only a little bit manifests, giving a sense of resentments that, unlike a lot of similar plays, not only aren't expounded on but mostly come down to uncomfortable stares. It works. I don't think I ever want to watch it again but... if you want to really be uncomfortable, this will certainly do it.
 

MCBanjoMike

Sudden chomper
(He/him)
After years of thinking I'd get around to watching it eventually, Justified finally showed up on a streaming service that I'm subscribed to. I watched the pilot years and years ago and left it thinking that the show might be pretty fun in a "comfort food" sort of way. But now that I'm 4-5 episodes in, I'm starting to wonder if it might actually be good good? The writing has been really sharp so far, the regulars are all really well drawn, the guest characters are a murderer's row of "haven't I seen that guy somewhere before?" and Olyphant is damn near mesmerizing. I don't know if they can maintain this over six seasons, but so far I am both surprised and delighted.
 

zonetrope

(he/him)
It's great. The even-numbered seasons are the best ones (season 2 basically put Margo Martindale on the map), but the whole show is a lot of fun.
 

karzac

(he/him)
It's great. The even-numbered seasons are the best ones (season 2 basically put Margo Martindale on the map), but the whole show is a lot of fun.

Don't know that I agree with this. Season 4 is the worst season of them all I think. I'd go 2 > 1 > 3 > 6 > 5 > 4. With 1/2/3 being pretty tightly bunched together
 

zonetrope

(he/him)
Don't know that I agree with this. Season 4 is the worst season of them all I think. I'd go 2 > 1 > 3 > 6 > 5 > 4. With 1/2/3 being pretty tightly bunched together
4 is actually my favorite. Just goes to show that the series has a pretty broad range of ways in for viewers.

My ranking is 4 > 2 > 6 > 3 > 1 > 5, the 5th being the only one I found fairly substandard in general.
 
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