I finished Under the Banner of Heaven. It was pretty solid throughout, with a complicated story, nuanced characters and deep themes. My one minor note is that it relied heavily on non chronological storytelling, but didn’t quite perfect the balance between the “present day” investigation, flashbacks, and the early history of the Mormon faith.
My next show is The Lost Symbol on Peacock. This is based on Dan Brown’s book with the same main character as The Da Vinci Code. So it’s pretty silly, but it has high production values and is entertaining enough.
Yeah, I wasn’t really feeling it. It was just more of the same old trying to fuck each other over on some deal conversations (which was hard to follow for a while after the off-season). The Disgusting Brothers stuff was great, though.
You have to love the 90s soundtrack. The most recent episode included Smashing Pumpkins - Drown (awesome), Garbage - #1 Crush (awesome) and Papa Roach - Last Resort (trash, but one of those things where you’re like lol I remember this). The team in the show is class of 1996, which was my exact senior year in high school.
The character and actors play it straight up. They realize they are in bizarre situations but still don’t step outside the experience. The show overall knows that the audience knows and wants it to be a bit over the top and delivers without completely going into farce. Hitting the right balance so far. We will see if the need to further turn the crank pushes it over the edge eventually (think Lost, black list, etc).
i watched S1 about a month ago, its an okay show but it feels like the writers have no actual plan and its going to start going off the rails pretty soon
The thing about Yellowjackets is that it should be right up my alley. I love these weird mind-bending shows where you’re trying to figure out what’s going on. The problem with Yellowjackets is it’s so damn boring. And it shouldn’t be. It checks a lot of my boxes.
It started well but S1E3-8 were so tedious and drawn out, I’m surprised I didn’t bail. When I start a show, the vast majority of the time, I’m going in expecting to like it… at least to some degree. I’m not a hate watcher but it got dangerously close in the first season. The show redeemed itself enough in the last two episodes to hook me back in.
I’m going to give it one more episode but I thought S2E1 was more tedium. It had a few fun reveals (I liked Shauna chilling with frozen Jackie and eating her ear, that was great). I always love Melanie Lynskey but I don’t care about her husband or angsty daughter.
Get rid of all the soapy stuff and stick to the campy weirdness and I’m in until the end.
Yes, my wife and I both liked Outer Range quite a bit. I like Imogen Poots. She has such a great face that really stands out on camera. I suspect next year we’ll learn more about the world on the other side of the hole. They teased it a bit. Is it the future or a divergent parallel universe like in Counterpart (another good one if you haven’t seen it)?
Another mind bender with Poots is a movie called Vivarium. Stars her and Jesse Eisenberg. That’s a movie that’s firmly in my wheelhouse. Come to Daddy with Elijah Wood is another in this vein that I liked.