The Television Streaming Thread: Now With Felonies

As a hardcore Sherlock Holmes fan, I really appreciated all the fanservice in-jokes. Jeremy Brett will for me always be the GOAT Sherlock, but I enjoyed seeing how the new series irreverently adapted the text to the modern day and the Cumberbatch/Freeman chemistry. It’s like the BBC is not afraid to fuck around and have some fun with a fresh new take on some of the stuffy British superheroes.

The amount of tolerance for intersectionalism to create that ranking is almost unfathomable.

Fucking Fargo isn’t on the list. Lol Euros4Eva.

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Pretty sure I have never heard of The Thick of It

Sherlock vs. Moriarty really is the greatest superhero fight scene of all time. It was written decades before comic books were even a thing, and yet it still manages to capture all of the storytelling beats of a Marvel comic book movie. It’s like we see our timeless beloved superhero die and fade away into ashes onscreen before us and yet we also know that there’s going to be a goofy, gimmicky contrivance that lets him come back to life. Superman never really dies, it’s just a dumb gimmick. So too with Sherlock.

Jeremy Brett was suffering from severe mental health and substance abuse problems at the time these scenes were filmed. He could barely stand, let alone do a fight scene, yet the show went on.

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Whoever is doing the 6ix parody account in this thread, it’s amazing. :heart:

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It’s a legitimately hilarious political satire.

Less than halfway through that clip, I predicted that he was gonna get hit by a car.

I did not expect it to be two cars.

The first 2 episodes were promising. The rest was just disappointing. Every plot line that seemed to be going somewhere cool fizzled out with unfulfilling reveals then either entirely faded away or got absorbed into the main plot which also seemed headed for the same fate. I was/still am a huge S1 fan and even found most of S2 enjoyable but I can’t say anything in defense of this season. I haven’t even watched the finale yet.

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This all goes to the argument that the way to appreciate Sopranos is to view it not as a show about gangsters, it’s about Americans. Their crudeness, bullying, violence, are all emblematic of American culture. Even their “commercial activities” are largely indistinguishable from aggressive capitalism.

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I came in from trimming my palm trees and flipped on my TV yesterday, and as I’m getting cleaned up this was on repeat and I let myself get sucked in. It’s so much worse now than we’ve even been exaggerating about. Bill spent the better part of the show just whining incessantly about the lockdowns and, of course, the left. The Stephens segment was pretty much like you’d expect. Then he had Taibbi on and they talked about how there’s left and right versions of rona news now as if that is somehow surprising and a new thing and you’d better give me the insurance because I’m gonna both-sides the hell out of this thing. Then a segment bashing Biden which was as good as it got. Then more bitching about the lockdown including a heaping helping of false equivalency which sounded ripped straight from a Sean Hannity segment: “Do you KNOW how FILTHY and GERM-RIDDEN your IPHONE IS!!!0ne”

I know we’ve been saying it for a while but for anyone left of, say, Gary Johnson the guy’s completely unwatchable now. It doesn’t help that he’s Dennis Miller unfunny to boot.

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Do you mean my Teevee Takes or anachronistic getting mad?

Try out an episode and see for yourself, no?

You’re just reading about everyone’s negative experience watching the show. But the things they experience as awful may be what you love about the show. You may have an entirely contrary experience to the same things they described.

This is generally how I feel too. This season was just really bad imo. They took all of the complaints about confusing non-linear storylines, and decided ok every episode we’re gonna have Delores or Bernard give several 2 minute expository monologues to make sure everyone knows what’s going on. And yet, even so, I understand none of the characters motivations. At all.

Dolores: seems straightforward right? Escaped the park, harbors grudge against humanity, wants robots to live in the real world rather than a simulation. Finale comes around: Turns out actually she’s been spending this whole time saving humanity because she loves it so much! I guess not those families she murdered in ~all of season 2, but who’s counting. Andddd now she’s dead

Maeve: I want to get back to my daughter. Don’t really care about the “real world”. Delores has the key that will allow me to go there, Serac is trying to steal it from her. Super robot brain decides the smart play is to work with the guy that doesn’t have what she wants rather than the robot who does. And since we’re in the future with drone piloted precision accuracy rifles and shit, imma use a Katana and somehow that decision will never backfire. Like 4 action sequences where she fights TEAMS of people with automatic pistols and she’s unscathed. Not that that even matters, because we’ve now decided that the formerly very humanlike robots can now withstand any amount of physical damage and make it out just fine.

Bernard: literally no idea what he and Stubbs have even been doing all season. Like. They’re hanging with William sometimes. Crushing beers. Being swole. What does he want?

William: he has said “I know my role now” or something to that effect like 5 times this season. I do not know his role. Didn’t we figure out last season in the post credits thing that he’s a robot? They just never referenced it again. Again, literally no idea what he wants or what he’s doing now. But good news, in another post credits scene we now see ANOTHER robot William. Whoa. Wow man.

Aaron Paul: at least his story arc had plausible motivations. His life was planned out by the French, which nobody wants. So he teams up with the hot girl who says she’s going to like, open up his mind and stuff. But speaking of planned lives: Earlier this season they gave the impression that Rehoboam basically predicted how things were likely to play out, and the people in charge did nothing to stop it or help, so they’re evil. Like, Aaron Paul is supposed to die in like 6-8 years or something. In the finale, Rehoboam is literally speaking everyone’s lines to them to the point where Maeve can predict what people are going to say. WHICH IS IT

Charlotte: She’s still kind of Delores. Her thing all season has been like “oh I was placed into this human family who I love and care about, but OG Delores doesn’t care and keeps trying to separate me from my human family”. Then she gets blown up in a car and pulls a Harvey Dent (but with just a hot tattoo instead of disfiguration - this IS a show based on naked robots after all) and now SHE wants robots to take over, and OG Delores actually loved the humans all along. Absolutely no consistent motivations for anyone, ever.

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I was perhaps the most diehard WW hopeful there was. I had seen the movie so many times growing up, also the inferior space one, and I really enjoyed season 1. But I never got past the first episode of s2 and I am stuck there, perhaps forever.

“Did you enjoy watching the WW movie” will be my new litmus test for good taste :hushed:

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If you are interested but don’t want to watch the Westworld/Futureworld movies

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TIL there is a westworld movie. I loved the first season man but once they went ham killing everyone in and out of the theme park the whole thing fell apart, realized i didnt give a rip about any of the characters and stopped watching. I think i’m going to stay away.

I think WW is less fun for me (and for most “fans” of the show imo) as a show to watch than a show to discuss. And it’s written with that in mind. It’s a huge puzzle box with no obvious answers. It’s a product meant to inspire rage and confusion and epiphanies. It’s a show they want people to argue over endlessly.

Like, I get that for a lot of people, this is not a satisfying show to watch on your own. If you’re not going online to debate it, you’re not the target audience. Not that it can’t be fun solo viewing. And in fact it often is that kind of show for a lot of people, but that’s not what Jon and Lisa set out to create.

There’s a certain style of film that probably hit its peak form in the Jason Bourne series. In order to convey action they use shaky, handheld cameras and constant cuts every half second. The effect evokes the adrenaline pumping, high speed chaos of a fight/car chase/whatever. But what it doesn’t do is show any actual action. It’s yelling the word ACTION at the viewer and giving a few snapshots of what action might be happening, but you have to fill in the rest yourself. It’s not on the screen.

I think Westworld S3 took this same approach to the idea of an epic sci-fi series. They had the budget and production team to sell it. They pulled out all the stops to tell the audience we were watching something huge, masterful and important. Unfortunately, those huge, masterful and important parts never made it onto the show. They were alluded to, but didn’t actually exist. When you take away all the spectacle you’re just left with an incoherent shaggy dog story.

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