Television

Well I’ve got to thank everyone that recommended Barry. What a fantastic series. I binged the first 2 seasons and it’s just been hilarious all the way through, but so dark/sad at the same time. I can’t wait for season 3, what an ending to season 2!!!
 
Benhawaii said:
any letterkenny fans on here? also watchmen is shaping up to be amazing. i was skeptical, but seeing all the hidden metaphors, the race and current politics interwined gives me high hopes for this show. also, give me your top ten series (in no particular order) of all time. ill go first!
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Tough to do because comedies tend to overstay their welcome historically but they also aren't as dependent on plot paying off. So I held the dramas to a different standard... which also meant leaving off dramas that are still airing because their arch is still incomplete.

1) The Wire
2) The Americans
3) The first 3 seasons of Arrested Development
4) Louie (even in retrospect)
5) The first 9 seasons of South Park
6) The first 7 seasons of King of the Hill
7) The first 6 seasons of the Office (U.S.)
8) Breaking Bad
9) The Sopranos (it's undoubtedly vital but dips in quality after s4 or it'd be higher)
10) Freaks and Geeks

Still on the air but in the discussion:
Mr. Robot (could move all the way up to #3 depending on how this final season ends)
Atlanta (could move all the way up to #2 depending where things end)
Legion (it ended but I still haven't watched season three because I want to watch s2 again first... could land as high as #6)
Ricky and Morty (could move all the way up to #5)
Succession (season 2 was perfect television)
 
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Anyone want to convince me Succession is worth my time? I know how good the reviews have been, but after two seasons of Big Little Lies I think I'm done with rich white people behaving badly.
 
JohnPeelIsMyCoPilot said:
Anyone want to convince me Succession is worth my time? I know how good the reviews have been, but after two seasons of Big Little Lies I think I'm done with rich white people behaving badly.
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Super get this. It is why I didn't want to watch it.

This is a dark comedy, almost satire, of rich people. It does not celebrate them or in any way try to make you feel sorry for them or like them. You hate them and kinda have fun in your hate of them. It's like a more grown up Arrested Development. The men are horrible people and pretty darn incompetent at everything.

I have also found that I am liking it more because I'm not binging it. I'm watching an episode every week. So, it isn't thrown in my face so much so that it inundates my thoughts. I can let one episode at a time sink in and then take a little bit of a break before diving into the next.
 
JohnPeelIsMyCoPilot said:
Anyone want to convince me Succession is worth my time? I know how good the reviews have been, but after two seasons of Big Little Lies I think I'm done with rich white people behaving badly.
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Its on my watchlist, but more to the point I LOVE your profile name!!

Image result for john peel thumbs up
 
So I finally got to the end of Sons of Anarchy..worth persevering with , some good twists and turns and lots of incredibly violent bits , with the odd great tune thrown in. Final episodes rounded the story of too , it’s not the wire or GoT but a passable series
 
Gavaxeman said:
So I finally got to the end of Sons of Anarchy..worth persevering with , some good twists and turns and lots of incredibly violent bits , with the odd great tune thrown in. Final episodes rounded the story of too , it’s not the wire or GoT but a passable series
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I loved Sons Of Anarchy, like you said theres lots of twists. The scene set in the prison when Jax is looking through the glass is heartbreaking.
 
Gavaxeman said:
So I finally got to the end of Sons of Anarchy..worth persevering with , some good twists and turns and lots of incredibly violent bits , with the odd great tune thrown in. Final episodes rounded the story of too , it’s not the wire or GoT but a passable series
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Selaws said:
I loved Sons Of Anarchy, like you said theres lots of twists. The scene set in the prison when Jax is looking through the glass is heartbreaking.
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Firm disagree. That series was a massive waste of potential. FX indulged all of Kurt Sutter's worst inclinations, especially in those bloated later seasons where episodes kept getting long and longer. I created a Disqus account just so I could complain about that finale in the old AV Club comments section.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Firm disagree. That series was a massive waste of potential. FX indulged all of Kurt Sutter's worst inclinations, especially in those bloated later seasons where episodes kept getting long and longer. I created a Disqus account just so I could complain about that finale in the old AV Club comments section.
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I agree that the quality dropped in the later shows but I think as a whole, and particularly the first season, it was a really gripping show. The whole storyline around Jax's love for the club and step-father clashing against the views his father wrote in the memoirs really made it interesting for me.
 
Selaws said:
I agree that the quality dropped in the later shows but I think as a whole, and particularly the first season, it was a really gripping show. The whole storyline around Jax's love for the club and step-father clashing against the views his father wrote in the memoirs really made it interesting for me.
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Oh yeah, "Hamlet on a Motorcycle" was what the show absolutely should have been. The end of the first season held a lot of promise for setting up a narrative arc for that. But the show kept getting distracted by gang wars and last-minute deals that end with the twist of someone getting shot in the head. And it was peppered with WAY too much graphic content that served no purpose other than shock value, and even that had rapidly diminishing returns. By the last couple of years, it was essentially a hate-watch for me, just because I wanted to see if it would ever make good on the conceit it had introduced in the beginning
it didn't.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Oh yeah, "Hamlet on a Motorcycle" was what the show absolutely should have been. The end of the first season held a lot of promise for setting up a narrative arc for that. But the show kept getting distracted by gang wars and last-minute deals that end with the twist of someone getting shot in the head. And it was peppered with WAY too much graphic content that served no purpose other than shock value, and even that had rapidly diminishing returns. By the last couple of years, it was essentially a hate-watch for me, just because I wanted to see if it would ever make good on the conceit it had introduced in the beginning
it didn't.
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I thought it got better as it went along ...
 
Teeeee said:
I really don't know why I watched every episode of SOA. It was definitely hate watching. I did not like that show at all. Charlie Hunnam is very pretty. But he can not act. And his faux swagger was just laughable.
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Yep I was glad to get to the end .. but it had some some decent qualities.. no classic but passable
 
Gavaxeman said:
Yep I was glad to get to the end .. but it had some some decent qualities.. no classic but passable
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I think that the show's biggest problems lay in Sutter's immaturity as a storyteller. If you go back and rewatch The Shield, you can see a lot of the same types of things in that show. But usually -- usually -- they were tempered by his collaboration with Shawn Ryan. In SOA, he had free rein as the solo showrunner and I think didn't know how to show restraint with imagery/characters/plot devices that he felt were "edgy." He clearly had a vision of a story that goes down one path, but his baser instincts kept dragging him down the other, less interesting one. Going back to Shield comparisons, one of the things you as a viewer are supposed to understand by the end of that show is that Vic Mackey, like Walter White, is a bad person. The things he's done are unforgivable. But Sutter tried to have it both ways in SOA: its protagonist was all too willing to commit some incredibly heinous, psychopathic acts, alongside his even more psychopathic friends, but the show also wanted viewers to accept that he was on a path to redemption, and that most of what his misdeeds were, at their root, borne out of love. Complex characters with messy contradictions are a staple of the golden age of TV, but I don't think this was a successful attempt.
 
Teeeee said:
I really don't know why I watched every episode of SOA. It was definitely hate watching. I did not like that show at all. Charlie Hunnam is very pretty. But he can not act. And his faux swagger was just laughable.
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Did ya ever watch the Apatow Freaks & Geeks follow up Undeclared? I really enjoyed that show but Hunnam played the Thespian majoring ladies man on that show and I thought he played that off well but when SOA started it took me forever to realize that it was the same actor. Also reminded me of Dan Stevens roles in Downton Abbey and Legion respectively It took me episodes to figure out that David was Matthew Crawley.
 
TenderLovingKiller® said:
Did ya ever watch the Apatow Freaks & Geeks follow up Undeclared? I really enjoyed that show but Hunnam played the Thespian majoring ladies man on that show and I thought he played that off well but when SOA started it took me forever to realize that it was the same actor. Also reminded me of Dan Stevens roles in Downton Abbey and Legion respectively It took me episodes to figure out that David was Matthew Crawley.
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OH YEAH! I did watch Freaks & Geeks and forgot he was in that. You're right, he was so much better in that.

I think SOA has kinda pigeon holed him. Unless I'm mistaken, he hasn't had a huge amount of roles since then.
 
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