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Finished Buffy Season 3, and it feels like such a natural conclusion to the series it’s hard for us to want to go on.

But that's just where the series for Angel starts off

 Overread wrote:
But that's just where the series for Angel starts off

Aka Vampire: Highlander.

Final comments on GoT.

Season 6 is definitely the breaking point.

The show’s overall quality (production, effects, acting, cinematography) remains high throughout. But boy can you tell the story going forward is assembled from the author’s notes, rather than a carefully written and edited novel.

As I mentioned before, no individual scene is weak as such, there’s just less connective narrative tissue. This leads to it feeling like a lot of things happen only because they have to happen to move things along.

This leads to silliness like S7’s bit where Jon and the Lads are somewhere North of the Wall and in deep trouble, only to be saved by Gendry legging it back to Eastwatch, sending a Raven to Dragonstone, and then Danny rescuing them on dragon back.

Now. That a story works. It’s a daring plan and a daring rescue. Cool. But it all happens so fast. And, in a genuine misstep? Jon and the Lads were put into a position where only a speedy rescue could’ve helped.

Thankfully, Season 8 largely avoids these things. Instead we get Dany going from perhaps understandably struggling to deal with strong, proud personalities, because that’s new to her, and just going Full Strength Insanity and torching untold innocents.

The showrunners could’ve done better. But as I’ve maintained? Creating a story and adapting an existing story aren’t the same job. So the bulk of the blame must land with GRRM for not finishing the tale himself.

All I know is that if I had it to do over I would not give one minute of my time to watching GoT.

Four Feather Falls, "How it all began"

Very early Gerry Anderson puppet show set in the old west...with a touch of magic! A bit before Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlet but still good fun with Nicholas Parsons and Kenneth Connor.

 warhead01 wrote:
All I know is that if I had it to do over I would not give one minute of my time to watching GoT.

It's been a rollercoaster for fans of A Song of Ice and Fire.

From the GoT final seasons massive letdown to the phenomenal 1st season of HoTD, lackluster 2nd HoTD season, to the excellent Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, I'm worried if season 3 of HoTD will be another dip.

 nels1031 wrote:

 warhead01 wrote:
All I know is that if I had it to do over I would not give one minute of my time to watching GoT.

It's been a rollercoaster for fans of A Song of Ice and Fire.

From the GoT final seasons massive letdown to the phenomenal 1st season of HoTD, lackluster 2nd HoTD season, to the excellent Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, I'm worried if season 3 of HoTD will be another dip.

It's irritating. The Knight show, I guess it was doing really well because Youtube kept filling my feed with shorts. groan.

Malcolm In The Middle - Life’s Still Unfair

On the first episode, and the magic is still there.

Hal and Lois remain the outright star attractions. And everyone else is seriously enjoyable, just not quite on the same level as Hal and Lois.

Only just released yesterday so of course no spoilers and therefore limited comments.

But this is working really well.

 aku-chan wrote:
Watched the first few episodes of Stargirl.

Kinda mixed on it at the moment, I like that it's not ashamed of it's comic book origins and can be dark without taking it's overly seriously (A problem I felt a lot of the earlier CW superhero shows had). But Courtney herself is wearing on me already (She's just too unrelentingly optimistic and peppy), and I'm not sure I like the "Create a teen version of the JSA and defeat the bad guys through the power of friendship" direction the show seems to be going.

I'll still give it a few more episodes though, I mainly want to see if they ever explain how a fairly overpowered iteration of the JSA got so thoroughly trounced.

Didn't even make it one more episode into this, once the extremely annoying, nerdy girl who never shuts up became the new Dr. Midnight I noped out hard!

It's a shame because I think the show had potential, but the teen hero thing remains such a hard sell for me (Which is also why my MCU rewatch has stalled on Spider-man:- Homecoming).

House of the Dragon S1

Second time watching. With the various time jumps, it’s easier to follow when you can watch a few episodes at a time.

But…I’m still left largely uncaring about the characters. The adults are all self centred and self obsessed gimps. The kids are spoiled brats. And it’s the same central story (no, I am King! No, I am Queen! No, I’m Brian and so’s my wife!) as GoT, but less interesting,

Also? Good golly are the names too similar to track

It is still watchable overall. But I’m lacking a great deal of investment.

Finished up Trigun: Stargaze and a little underwhelmed. It doesn't have the clear vision for what it wants to be that Stampede did and feels very much like it wanted to speed run the Maximum manga after oddly wasting a few early episodes. Personally, I always kind of preferred the more grounded conflict of the original anime to Maximum's bombastic finale anyway so it was always going to be a bit of hard sell for me.

[b]The Boys[/i] is very, very on the nose with S5 E3!

I just want to take a moment and heap some praise on Invincible's latest episode 'Don't Do Anything Rash' and the way it depicts its chief antagonist Thragg. Now I know they've substantially changed Thragg's depiction in the show. In comics my understanding is that he's a pretty garden variety Space Hitler, but here they've really shaken it up and somehow managed to amazingly thread that difficult needle of presenting someone unrepentantly evil in a way that genuinely makes you feel sorry for the guy. It's incredible. Hinges a lot of amazing voicework and some very careful but calculated animation choices painting the image of this person who just can't wrap his head around how his world is falling apart. Not just falling apart, but fell apart a very long time ago, largely because of all the values he holds most dear. No excuses are made for Thragg. He's not shown to be a 'good guy on the inside' or someone with the potential for positive change in any way. And somehow that just makes his moments here more somber.

Absolute cinema storytelling in a few scenes of this episode. Very rarely has an attempt to make the audience feel bad for the villain really felt this authentic imo and a lot of it hinges on subtext and understatement with no direct effort put into telling you how to feel. It's just this hollow sense of sadness that this guy is the absolute worst and he can't ever change with all the certainty that these qualities amount to a profound tragedy.

Fist of the North Star

Seemingly a new series. Same animation style as some of the WH+ stuff.

And with attack names like Neck Twisting Face Splitting Twist? I’m basically just here for the gore, so the paper thin plot bothers me not one jot.

Oh wow. They bringing bad First of the North Star in this economy?

It is indeed back. And silly. Good fun though.

Malcolm In The Middle

Having enjoyed the modern day sequel, I’ve returned to the beginning.

It’s genuinely weird to realise this is 26 years old. And it’s still as funny and poignant as ever. Being an actual proper alleged adult now, there’s also the revelation that Hal & Lois are arguably worse than their hellspawn.

It’s still definitely worth a watch, because whilst it’s starting to become dated (arguably it’s the last great comedy pre main Internet age?) if you’re of a vaguely similar undisclosed vintage to me? Malcom, Rees and Dewey partake of the exact same dumb misadventures I did as a kid, and somehow survived.



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Also, Hal is why I must never never never never become a father. EVER.

Two Fat Ladies

Via YouTube. Clarissa Dickson-Wright and Jennifer Patterson take us on gastronomic delights of Foods That Will Lead To An Untimely Death, And Hang The Consequences.

First aired in 1996 and up to Patterson’s death.

At a time when cooking was becoming cool in the UK, along come two old birds who genuinely don’t give a feth. Like two mad old Spinster Aunts that’ve decided the whole world needs feeding up and more meat on their bones, just as others were pushing for healthy balanced diets.

Wonderful show, with terrific hosts. Just…maybe ration your attempts at the dishes they cook!

Just starting Black Mirror now. As disturbing as advertised... Got quite the back catalogue to go through but this is not one to binge I think.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Just starting Black Mirror now. As disturbing as advertised... Got quite the back catalogue to go through but this is not one to binge I think.

I keep meaning to go back to this one, as I always hear nothing but good things about it, but I found the first couple of episodes so lousy, I'm wary of doing so.
Don't know if it's a "It takes a few episodes to get good." situation, or it's simply not my kind of show.

We're about half-way through the latest Mackenzie Crook series, Small Prophets. It's in the same vein as Detectorists. It's a lovely, gentle, warm-hearted, intelligent comedy - well worth a watch.

 aku-chan wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Just starting Black Mirror now. As disturbing as advertised... Got quite the back catalogue to go through but this is not one to binge I think.

I keep meaning to go back to this one, as I always hear nothing but good things about it, but I found the first couple of episodes so lousy, I'm wary of doing so.
Don't know if it's a "It takes a few episodes to get good." situation, or it's simply not my kind of show.

Could be either. It's also a short story compilation along the lines of the Twilight Zone so more episodes doesn't really make it better and certain episodes might click with you where others don't. On the whole I really like it, but I also in part had my fill of it and haven't been back in a while.

The only problem is some episodes are rapidly moving from distopian scifi to current events.

Kale wrote:
The only problem is some episodes are rapidly moving from distopian scifi to current events.

Yeah, dystopian sci-fi is all fine & good as forms of entertainment. And when you've had your fill you can just watch/read/play something else.
You know, a nice place to visit & all but you wouldn't really want to live there....

Dystopian sci-fi as your daily reality? :(

AI everywhere, authoritarian governments in ascendancy, things kicking off in the Middle East, Trump trying to turn the USA in to the ‘Starship Troopers’ world…

“You better get used to sci-if dystopias Miss Turner. You’re living in one.”

And it’s not even a fun one.

Kale wrote:
The only problem is some episodes are rapidly moving from distopian scifi to current events.

Since I'm watching episodes from like 12 years ago sometimes it just feels like I'm watching the news.


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 aku-chan wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Just starting Black Mirror now. As disturbing as advertised... Got quite the back catalogue to go through but this is not one to binge I think.

I keep meaning to go back to this one, as I always hear nothing but good things about it, but I found the first couple of episodes so lousy, I'm wary of doing so.
Don't know if it's a "It takes a few episodes to get good." situation, or it's simply not my kind of show.

So, I was warned that the first episode was particularly fethed up and gross to the point of maybe skipping it. It was, but I was warned. After that, ya it is an anthology show so each episode you never know what you're going to get.

Netflix's Devil May Cry got another season.

IDK. S1 had a good start that become very eye roll by the end and S2 really starts with more eye roll. IDK who decided to make a DMC adaptation an ultra hamfisted political ramble but they shouldn't be allowed to adapt anything else. They kind of suck at it.

Oooh, interesting! Tales from the Crypt is now on Shudder.

You’ve not been able of get that on physical media in the UK for ages, so I’ll be resubscribing come pay day.