Television

Teeeee said:
It is my ultimate comfort show. I've watched it 7 or 8 times through (except S1, I always skip it). I agree so much - it is funny and hopeful. People tell me to watch The Office and I've tried a few times. It just has a different vibe. PnR is about friendship and supporting the ones you love and living your true life. The Office seems more mean. I just want happy. Andy and April being silly crazy in love. Donna living her best life. Ben and his adorable nerd obsessions. Chris's unshakeable positivity. Leslie and Ann's friendship. It is all the best.
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Yes yes yes yes. I can’t think of another comedy that just feels as good. Every character (minus maybe Jeremy Jamm) is so good, every relationship has something that makes me feel good. I especially like Ron and April’s relationship and even Tom and Leslie’s. It had been since it aired that I watched the final season. I forgot that Ron + Leslie episode. Oof. It made me feel happysad, but mostly happy by the end.
 
My wife was scrolling through Netflix on Sunday and landed on Rectify, and before I knew it we had accidentally watched 17 of the 30 episodes over again.

I am, generally speaking, not a big fan of rewatching stuff I've already seen, but this show makes me think & feel about so many different things. There's also maybe no other show that gets my wife and I talking about characters' inner lives the way this one does. Just so beautifully crafted. We're in Season 3 now, and up until this point, Amantha's landlord Melvin has only appeared in 2 scenes (and only has a handful more in the series, if I remember correctly). In his second scene of the show, which can't last more than 5 minutes, he says "I didn't know if I should come, but...regrets grow tiresome." Literally the only other things you know about this man are that a) Daniel cared for his turtles when they were kids, b) he's a landlord now, and c) he feels compassion for the Holdens. That's it. But based on nothing more than the actor's delivery of that line, you can sketch in a whole life story for this man in the small town of Paulie, Georgia. Even the smallest roles in this show were given just enough detail to help you believe that they were all complicated people with their own stories and pasts.

My original watch of this show was a season at a time over the course of 3-4 years, and the first time through I really focused on the slow, meditative aspects of it. Watching a little over 2 seasons in 2 days makes it feel much more compressed and makes the few violent incidents of the show seem more common than they are. The internal timeline of the show follows a very short period after Daniel's release from prison, but as a viewer I think I got more out of the first time when it had some time to breathe and just live in my mind between seasons.

I still think the show's most impressive feat is the way it shades in Teddy Jr. in so many unexpected ways; I'm at the halfway point of his story now and can't wait to see if I feel the same way after a second watch. What's more clear to me this time is that Janet was a wonderful character too, and I wish we got to see more of her interacting with the world outside of just her family.

I have a real soft spot for stories that find profundity in the mundane, and I think what gets me about Rectify is the concept that to a man who has been locked away with a literal death sentence hanging over him, everything in the world actually is profound. Daniel mentions Plato's Allegory of the Cave early in the series, and it's interesting to use that as a lens to rewatch the series as a whole: Daniel is really encountering the real world, in stages, for the first time.

I could talk about this show all day.
 
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I watched Lost in Space S3 E15 over the weekend. Anti-Matter Man - Original air date - December of 1967. I remembered something about an episode with John Robinson having an evil twin, and that I was kind of scared of that episode when I was a kid...did a quick Google search and figured out that was the one. The writing was a mix of campy and literary....and I found it fairly entertaining overall.

Also, I wasn't too scared this time, so I might watch a few more episodes. :D
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Teddy Jr.
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Spoilery stuff, for anyone who hasn't seen the show:
The first time I watched Rectify, I thought a lot about how Teddy reacted poorly to Daniel's appearance in his life. Teddy was kind of a dick, but the show went to some lengths to rehab him.

This time I'm seeing him in a somewhat different light. I still think he's a difficult personality who isn't very mature and who is sometimes cruel, but I'm more sympathetic now. Leaving aside for a second what Daniel does to him and what effect it has on him, Daniel's presence outside of prison threatens his very existence. I rolled my eyes in my first watch when Teddy cries that Daniel has "taken everything" from him; this time, it feels more like Teddy is experiencing a crisis in which he realizes he's occupying the life Daniel was supposed to have. The tire store, his relationship with Janet (who asks him not to call her "Mom" anymore in the first episode), even Tawney's feelings for him...it's all what Daniel would/should have experienced if he had never gone to prison. At the beginning of the third season, Janet picks up dinner from Daniel's favorite BBQ restaurant, only to be reminded over dinner that it's actually Teddy's favorite, and Daniel has never even had their food. It's not that Daniel is replacing Teddy now; it's that Teddy has spent 20 years standing in for Daniel to everyone but his father without ever realizing it.

If there's one character I think the show fumbles a bit, it's Jared. His relationships with each of his siblings and with his parents never gets fully fleshed out, and although he is fixated on learning what happened to Daniel before he was born, the show has too much going on to commit to the idea that Jared only exists because of what happened to Daniel. All of the time that the Holdens and the Deans spend wishing for a world in which Hanna didn't die is in effect wishing for a world in which Jared was never born. I've been thinking about the scene where Jared breaks into the Dean house and takes something from Hanna's room (which by the way is a keychain with beads spelling out St. Augustine in the same episode that Daniel is giving his 'confession,' wink wink) and wondering what compelled him to do that. If I were to guess, it's that he feels like her life was a trade for his on some level and feels some sort of spiritual connection to her because of that (aside from the obvious that he's just obsessed with the idea of the older brother that he barely knows). There's a lot to wrestle with there that never makes it onto the screen.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
My wife was scrolling through Netflix on Sunday and landed on Rectify, and before I knew it we had accidentally watched 17 of the 30 episodes over again.

I am, generally speaking, not a big fan of rewatching stuff I've already seen, but this show makes me think & feel about so many different things. There's also maybe no other show that gets my wife and I talking about characters' inner lives the way this one does. Just so beautifully crafted. We're in Season 3 now, and up until this point, Amantha's landlord Melvin has only appeared in 2 scenes (and only has a handful more in the series, if I remember correctly). In his second scene of the show, which can't last more than 5 minutes, he says "I didn't know if I should come, but...regrets grow tiresome." Literally the only other things you know about this man are that a) Daniel cared for his turtles when they were kids, b) he's a landlord now, and c) he feels compassion for the Holdens. That's it. But based on nothing more than the actor's delivery of that line, you can sketch in a whole life story for this man in the small town of Paulie, Georgia. Even the smallest roles in this show were given just enough detail to help you believe that they were all complicated people with their own stories and pasts.

My original watch of this show was a season at a time over the course of 3-4 years, and the first time through I really focused on the slow, meditative aspects of it. Watching a little over 2 seasons in 2 days makes it feel much more compressed and makes the few violent incidents of the show seem more common than they are. The internal timeline of the show follows a very short period after Daniel's release from prison, but as a viewer I think I got more out of the first time when it had some time to breathe and just live in my mind between seasons.

I still think the show's most impressive feat is the way it shades in Teddy Jr. in so many unexpected ways; I'm at the halfway point of his story now and can't wait to see if I feel the same way after a second watch. What's more clear to me this time is that Janet was a wonderful character too, and I wish we got to see more of her interacting with the world outside of just her family.

I have a real soft spot for stories that find profundity in the mundane, and I think what gets me about Rectify is the concept that to a man who has been locked away with a literal death sentence hanging over him, everything in the world actually is profound. Daniel mentions Plato's Allegory of the Cave early in the series, and it's interesting to use that as a lens to rewatch the series as a whole: Daniel is really encountering the real world, in stages, for the first time.

I could talk about this show all day.
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I started watching this yesterday based on your rec. I'm only one episode in and I don't know if it will stick but I'll just say that I understand what you were saying and the comparison to Detectorists.
 
jaycee said:
I started watching this yesterday based on your rec. I'm only one episode in and I don't know if it will stick but I'll just say that I understand what you were saying and the comparison to Detectorists.
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My suggestion is to give it the whole first season of 6 episodes.
1. If you're into the murder mystery intrigue aspect of the show, more happens on that front.
2. If you're into the meditative element, there are some really fantastic scenes exploring Daniel's state of mind in these early days after his release.
3. There is one scene that I think is truly, genuinely shocking, and one scene that made my wife and I cry both times we watched it.
4. The more people I can talk to about this, the better.

Edit: I'll also say that this show is really an exploration into the impact of trauma, but that doesn't become completely clear at first. There are roughly a half dozen incidents of violence depicted over the course of the whole series by my count, and at least one of them is somewhat gratuitously depicted as a 'hook' for the last scene of the pilot. The others are all, in my opinion, necessary to the plot and (aside from one other that really turns my stomach but is brief), really are genuinely about trauma. Some of them are not easy to watch, but I think the show really cares about viewers empathizing with the characters more than it does about smoothing the edges to make those scenes more palatable.

Edit edit: All of which is to say that "exploration of trauma" might not be something everyone wants to put themselves through and I respect that. But if you do I think Rectify handles it about as beautifully as is possible in ~22 hours.
 
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Indymisanthrope said:
My suggestion is to give it the whole first season of 6 episodes.
1. If you're into the murder mystery intrigue aspect of the show, more happens on that front.
2. If you're into the meditative element, there are some really fantastic scenes exploring Daniel's state of mind in these early days after his release.
3. There is one scene that I think is truly, genuinely shocking, and one scene that made my wife and I cry both times we watched it.
4. The more people I can talk to about this, the better.

Edit: I'll also say that this show is really an exploration into the impact of trauma, but that doesn't become completely clear at first. There are roughly a half dozen incidents of violence depicted over the course of the whole series by my count, and at least one of them is somewhat gratuitously depicted as a 'hook' for the last scene of the pilot. The others are all, in my opinion, necessary to the plot and (aside from one other that really turns my stomach but is brief), really are genuinely about trauma. Some of them are not easy to watch, but I think the show really cares about viewers empathizing with the characters more than it does about smoothing the edges to make those scenes more palatable.

Edit edit: All of which is to say that "exploration of trauma" might not be something everyone wants to put themselves through and I respect that. But if you do I think Rectify handles it about as beautifully as is possible in ~22 hours.
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I think I am going to re-watch it. It was such a beautifully done show, I am 100% positive I didn't catch or absorb it all.
 
Teeeee said:
I think I am going to re-watch it. It was such a beautifully done show, I am 100% positive I didn't catch or absorb it all.
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There are some parts that I had built up in my head to be better than they are on screen, and other parts I had forgotten were so good. There's also a lot more Holden wordplay than I either recognized or remembered from my first viewing. Example: when Daniel is injured and washing the windows and Amantha tries to take over, he stops her and says he can handle the panes. The way he just throws that away is perfect.

Ever since we first watched it several years ago, any time my wife and I are able to guess what the other one is about to do/say/think, we always follow it up with
Because I know ya
Because I know ya
Because I know ya"

in our best Kerwin impression
 
Does anyone know if the version of Stargirl for sale on the iTunes store is the CW version or the DC Universe version?

I was reading that the CW cut approximately 10 minutes from each episode to fit into their 43 minute time slot for their hour long shows.

Each episode of Stargirl premieres the day before it airs on The CW on DC Universe. It streams in 4K.

The iTunes store version is only HD, that much I know. But I can't tell if it will give me the extended cut or the CW cut.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
My suggestion is to give it the whole first season of 6 episodes.
1. If you're into the murder mystery intrigue aspect of the show, more happens on that front.
2. If you're into the meditative element, there are some really fantastic scenes exploring Daniel's state of mind in these early days after his release.
3. There is one scene that I think is truly, genuinely shocking, and one scene that made my wife and I cry both times we watched it.
4. The more people I can talk to about this, the better.

Edit: I'll also say that this show is really an exploration into the impact of trauma, but that doesn't become completely clear at first. There are roughly a half dozen incidents of violence depicted over the course of the whole series by my count, and at least one of them is somewhat gratuitously depicted as a 'hook' for the last scene of the pilot. The others are all, in my opinion, necessary to the plot and (aside from one other that really turns my stomach but is brief), really are genuinely about trauma. Some of them are not easy to watch, but I think the show really cares about viewers empathizing with the characters more than it does about smoothing the edges to make those scenes more palatable.

Edit edit: All of which is to say that "exploration of trauma" might not be something everyone wants to put themselves through and I respect that. But if you do I think Rectify handles it about as beautifully as is possible in ~22 hours.
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I think I will re-watch this at some point too. @Teeeee and I had talked about it in depth when we both watched it a couple years ago. It's so dark, slow and demands your attention and also your emotion, so it's really difficult for me to decide to watch again. Not entirely dissimilar to movies like 21 Grams and Requiem for a Dream.

This scene I posted below was so important; I feel like we all waited the entire series up to that point for it. Intense, sad and gripping.

 
I think me completely forgetting that the Run season finale aired on Sunday is all the commentary we need on how good that show was.

I *guess* I'll waste 30 minutes of my day today watching it.
 
ranbalam said:
I think I will re-watch this at some point too. @Teeeee and I had talked about it in depth when we both watched it a couple years ago. It's so dark, slow and demands your attention and also your emotion, so it's really difficult for me to decide to watch again. Not entirely dissimilar to movies like 21 Grams and Requiem for a Dream.

This scene I posted below was so important; I feel like we all waited the entire series up to that point for it. Intense, sad and gripping.

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I think that the first time I watched I was a little too focused on Daniel's memories of the night of the crime, and how he was unjustly convicted, to remember that he had identified one of his biggest traumas to Teddy in one of the very first episodes. It just didn't fully occur to me until this scene that this might be the thing that Daniel finds most difficult to deal with.

Rewatching it, it really hit me a lot harder -- knowing what's coming -- when the guy in the cell next to him admits to Daniel in a flashback that he was one of the men who assaulted him. The show doesn't spend much time on Daniel reacting directly to that (just a shot of a silent scream), but now the impact is more obvious to me.

I also thought that Danie's depression in the second season was mainly about Kerwin's death, and the general hopelessness of his situation. And that might have been some of it. But this time I realized that those scenes are being shown in parallel to how Teddy is reacting to what Daniel has done to him: depression, lashing out at people who try to help, destructive behaviors...I had misattributed all of that simply to being on death row, but thematically maybe I should have been linking Daniel's experience more closely to Teddy's.
 
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Indymisanthrope said:
I think that the first time I watched I was a little too focused on Daniel's memories of the night of the crime, and how he was unjustly convicted, to remember that he had identified one of his biggest traumas to Teddy in one of the very first episodes. It just didn't fully occur to me until this scene that this might be the thing that Daniel finds most difficult to deal with.

Rewatching it, it really hit me a lot harder -- knowing what's coming -- when the guy in the cell next to him admits to Daniel in a flashback that he was one of the men who assaulted him. The show doesn't spend much time on Daniel reacting directly to that, but now the impact is more obvious to me.

I also thought that Danie's depression in the second season was mainly about Kerwin's death, and the general hopelessness of his situation. And that might have been some of it. But this time I realized that those scenes are being shown in parallel to how Teddy is reacting to what Daniel has done to him: depression, lashing out at people who try to help, destructive behaviors...I had misattributed all of that simply to being on death row, but thematically maybe I should have been linking Daniel's experience more closely to Teddy's.
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Of course, the beauty of this show is in its complexity and ambiguity. Daniel has obviously experienced several traumatic things, and just because the last season pivots a bit to emphasizing one dimension of his trauma doesn't mean that the rest of it is solved or was unimportant, or was misdirection from the show. It's all significant and contains echoes of various events, and it stands to reason that once Daniel is living in a shared space with strange men again that this would come back to the forefront of his mind.

My wife and I were speculating last night that maybe something in Ray McKinnon's planning changed in the third season. The seasons have, respectively, 6, 10, 6, and 8 episodes. The short third season feels like it wraps some things up rather abruptly, almost as if McKinnon realized he needed to prioritize what parts of the story he wanted to tell because he knew his time to do it was limited. The senator having a stroke, the sudden introduction of another kid who becomes a main suspect, etc., felt a little like trying to wrap things up quickly to get Daniel out of Paulie and find a way to put him on a new path for the final episodes.
 
Teeeee said:
I've been watching She Ra. I'm not here for your judgment. Also, it might be the most queer show ever.
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SHUT UP BECAUSE I LOVE THE NEW SHE RA AND DON'T CARE THAT I HAVE BEEN WATCHING IT WITHOUT KIDS. NO SHAME!!!
TheMythOfSisyphus said:
You’ve been watching.
But is it good?

I saw its marker being advertised and I gave watching it a thought. I don’t really have much nostalgia for She Ra (although I watched He-Man).

Is it good as its own thing (ie not banking on viewer nostalgia)?

When it was announced the wife (@MsLoganHenney) and I commented on it. She’s into animation so she may like it.
She loves the reboot of Voltron and (she’ll correct me if I’m wrong) I believe one thing she liked was its more adult tone.
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The animation is fabulous. @MsLoganHenney I would 1000% recommend. Also, you are an animation fan?! My dream job is to be an animator.
 
nolalady said:
SHUT UP BECAUSE I LOVE THE NEW SHE RA AND DON'T CARE THAT I HAVE BEEN WATCHING IT WITHOUT KIDS. NO SHAME!!!

The animation is fabulous. @MsLoganHenney I would 1000% recommend. Also, you are an animation fan?! My dream job is to be an animator.
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Oh, there are no kids here, just me. It's a fun show. I finished S1 last night.

I like how some of the characters have slowly been introduced. So it isn't "Here are 15 characters all at once, good luck trying to get to know their names much less anything about them." I think Mermista is my favorite. Same actress that played Heather on Crazy Ex Girlfriend.
 
tvham said:
Agreed, so so bad.
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What was the point? Of that episode? Of the whole season?

I am absolutely baffled by how anyone thought that was a good show to even create. And then once they started creating it, how they were able to so effectively waste such vast talent. I mean, it is actually a bit impressive how horribly wasted the talent was.

Please tell me that will not be picked up for a 2nd season. I need Merritt and Phoebe to not have any of their time consumed by another season. They need to get back to Unbelievable/Fleabag caliber television.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Of course, the beauty of this show is in its complexity and ambiguity. Daniel has obviously experienced several traumatic things, and just because the last season pivots a bit to emphasizing one dimension of his trauma doesn't mean that the rest of it is solved or was unimportant, or was misdirection from the show. It's all significant and contains echoes of various events, and it stands to reason that once Daniel is living in a shared space with strange men again that this would come back to the forefront of his mind.

My wife and I were speculating last night that maybe something in Ray McKinnon's planning changed in the third season. The seasons have, respectively, 6, 10, 6, and 8 episodes. The short third season feels like it wraps some things up rather abruptly, almost as if McKinnon realized he needed to prioritize what parts of the story he wanted to tell because he knew his time to do it was limited. The senator having a stroke, the sudden introduction of another kid who becomes a main suspect, etc., felt a little like trying to wrap things up quickly to get Daniel out of Paulie and find a way to put him on a new path for the final episodes.
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Wow, you have really helped me gain more understanding on some of the nuances of the show. I think a second viewing would help me catch more of this and be able to discuss it on a deeper level. It truly is outstanding, and yet it doesn't seem like many people have watched it.
 
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