Television

Finished my rewatch of Game Of Thrones. It was quite enjoyable to but certainly not without it’s flaws. It’s such a rich and detailed world that rewatching it allowed me to pay more attention to certain plot points that I missed initially especially early on when I was trying to figure out who was whom. Also spent a lot of time staring at GOT maps online trying to understand where everything is located and I do enjoy a good map.

Next up, decided to rewatch Justified. I am a couple episodes in and I forgot how much fun this show is. As good as he was as Seth Bullock in Deadwood; Timothy Olyphant was born to play Raylan Givens. Watching bounce play off Walt Goggins’ Boyd Crowder as his primary foil is first-rate entertainment. The biggest issue so far is the terrible Everlast-lite wannabe Theme song. That is so awful I had completely blocked it from my memory.
 
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Sort of tangential question, but wtf is up with the AV Club site lately? I’ve been trying to catch up on Succession recaps and the site is almost unusable with the barrage of ads and the pages constantly refreshing and taking me back to the top of the article. And that’s not even to speak of the trash fire of a comment system (although I’m pretty sure I spied a Mr. @Bull Shannon in there!).

Yesterday I had the pages open for 3 or 4 episodes at once on mobile, and could feel my phone overheating as I scrolled. iPhone settings indicated a massive drain on battery life for the time that I had those tabs up, which ended as soon as I closed them (and cooled the phone down).

Great work, G/O Media.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Sort of tangential question, but wtf is up with the AV Club site lately? I’ve been trying to catch up on Succession recaps and the site is almost unusable with the barrage of ads and the pages constantly refreshing and taking me back to the top of the article. And that’s not even to speak of the trash fire of a comment system (although I’m pretty sure I spied a Mr. @Bull Shannon in there!).

Yesterday I had the pages open for 3 or 4 episodes at once on mobile, and could feel my phone overheating as I scrolled. iPhone settings indicated a massive drain on battery life for the time that I had those tabs up, which ended as soon as I closed them (and cooled the phone down).

Great work, G/O Media.
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Yeah, they pretty much ruined AV Club. Also. The new person running the show over there just told all the writers that they needed to relocate to LA or lose their jobs. One of the best things about the AV Club (and Pitchfork initially too) was that they were Midwestern operations that gave a non LA/NYC view of popular culture. I basically just follow all my favorite current and former AV Club writers on Twitter and rarely visit the site. The Ringer has pretty much completely supplanted AV Club as my “go-to” site for pop culture at this point.
 
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Indymisanthrope said:
Sort of tangential question, but wtf is up with the AV Club site lately? I’ve been trying to catch up on Succession recaps and the site is almost unusable with the barrage of ads and the pages constantly refreshing and taking me back to the top of the article. And that’s not even to speak of the trash fire of a comment system (although I’m pretty sure I spied a Mr. @Bull Shannon in there!).

Yesterday I had the pages open for 3 or 4 episodes at once on mobile, and could feel my phone overheating as I scrolled. iPhone settings indicated a massive drain on battery life for the time that I had those tabs up, which ended as soon as I closed them (and cooled the phone down).

Great work, G/O Media.
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Ok I thought the whole clunky feel and page reloading when scrolling was just me. Wow, I didn’t realize how truly shitty the site is now. I know people talked about it going downhill years ago, but it’s really within the last year or so that I’ve noticed the biggest changes. It’s clearly not what it used to be. And even the reviews for many of the things have lost something…like a unique voice or more interesting insightful info. Because of how often I would go to it before, I still find myself going there randomly but I don’t stay long cause the site makes reading even a simple news story hard to do.
 
Bennnnn said:
Ok I thought the whole clunky feel and page reloading when scrolling was just me. Wow, I didn’t realize how truly shitty the site is now. I know people talked about it going downhill years ago, but it’s really within the last year or so that I’ve noticed the biggest changes. It’s clearly not what it used to be. And even the reviews for many of the things have lost something…like a unique voice or more interesting insightful info. Because of how often I would go to it before, I still find myself going there randomly but I don’t stay long cause the site makes reading even a simple news story hard to do.
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Yeah, it used to be a place you could rely on for some capital-C Criticism. A season of TV reviews could almost hang together as a series of essays about art and culture through the prism of television, with a heavy dose of nerdiness mixed in. Now it seems to be mostly straight recaps. There’s still a lot of clever insight that bubbles up in the comments, but they’ve made it so frustrating to access them that it’s often barely worth it.

Also if your website is overheating my phone in 2022 maybe there’s too. much. shit. on it.
 
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Indymisanthrope said:
Yeah, it used to be a place you could rely on for some capital-C Criticism. A season of TV reviews could almost hang together as a series of essays about art and culture through the prism of television, with a heavy dose of nerdiness mixed in. Now it seems to be mostly straight recaps. There’s still a lot of clever insight that bubbles up in the comments, but they’ve made it so frustrating to access them that it’s often barely worth it.

Also if your website is overheating my phone in 2022 maybe there’s too. much. shit. on it.
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I also used to be a regular AV Club reader. I still follow their feed for news, but haven't really read their episode reviews since I think The Americans. I just read one review of an episode of Station Eleven and wow...my middle schooler could have written it.
 
ranbalam said:
I have one episode to go on White Lotus. I really don't have much of an opinion about it...it's...just kind of there.
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I thought the episode with the young couple and Jennifer Coolidge on the sunset cruise was amazing. Steve Zahn's increasingly awful confessions to his son were good, too. I really enjoyed watching it overall and thought that it had really well observed characters, but I do agree that its finite nature ultimately left me a little cold about what it really wanted to say. Sharp writing, great visuals, excellent acting, but it never quite adds up to be more than the sum of its parts in the same way that the very best TV does.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
I thought the episode with the young couple and Jennifer Coolidge on the sunset cruise was amazing. Steve Zahn's increasingly awful confessions to his son were good, too. I really enjoyed watching it overall and thought that it had really well observed characters, but I do agree that its finite nature ultimately left me a little cold about what it really wanted to say. Sharp writing, great visuals, excellent acting, but it never quite adds up to be more than the sum of its parts in the same way that the very best TV does.
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Yeah, I enjoyed it for all the reason mentioned. They also get bonus points for showing someone shit in a suitcase.
 
I really enjoyed White Lotus. I do think it has a few things to say about class and privilege, though I don't know if I read much into it that hadn't been addressed before elsewhere (did you realize the rich act entitled and dehumanize the poor?). Honestly, the low-stakes, self-contained nature of the show was really comforting in its way; since I was watching people on a week of vacation, it felt like a bit of escapism for my own self. And Mike White's humanism made all the characters enjoyable to hang with.
 
Bull Shannon said:
I really enjoyed White Lotus. I do think it has a few things to say about class and privilege, though I don't know if I read much into it that hadn't been addressed before elsewhere (did you realize the rich act entitled and dehumanize the poor?).
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This is, IMO, what separates it from a show like Succession. White Lotus makes observations about class and privilege that are nuanced and insightful without necessarily having the time or focus to deliver a cogent thesis that can be formulated via either the plot or the characters. There are too many characters and too many stories exploring different emotional threads to be able to neatly package it up at the end.

Not every show needs that in order to be a successful project, but the vacation aspect of the story also leaves the viewer with (IMO) a lack of closure, and a sense that this was a peek into a week that is, in and of itself, a heightened version of these guests' "real" lives back home, that ends with most of them right back where they started. There's nothing wrong with ending a story that way, but I can see how it would lead to a slight sense of narrative dissatisfaction.

I did like it. Just rooting around trying to articulate why it feels like it didn't completely gel for me in the end.
 
Jennifer Coolidge is great in this and I like the entire cast overall. There are some pretty good moments among characters and I enjoyed watching it. (over two nights) I love the scenery and the music is fantastic too. And yet it just didn't quite all add up to something I'd recommend or watch again. I rate it 'entertaining enough.' I should probably watch the finale though.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
I thought the episode with the young couple and Jennifer Coolidge on the sunset cruise was amazing. Steve Zahn's increasingly awful confessions to his son were good, too. I really enjoyed watching it overall and thought that it had really well observed characters, but I do agree that its finite nature ultimately left me a little cold about what it really wanted to say. Sharp writing, great visuals, excellent acting, but it never quite adds up to be more than the sum of its parts in the same way that the very best TV does.
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This is pretty much how I feel. I just watched it this week in a two day span. Great location, great acting, even great moments. But ultimately, not hugely impactful. I liked that they slowly starting bringing up the nature of privilege and how it relates directly to so much of what's happening. How a lot of the individual stories played out was nice and satisfying, but it does sort of lack something overall. I don't necessarily have complaints about it other than I found some of it over the top and gross (sparingly, but still gross), but it's not like the best thing that came out last year or anything like that. I am interested in the apparently happening second season - though it'll be new people in a new location.
 
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