What TV SHOWS are you watching ARCHIVE

Sons of Anarchy=Hamlet

It just forgot about that fact between seasons 1 and 7.

RobertB wrote: Shellhead wrote:

I look forward to eventually watching the first two seasons of Sons of Anarchy, but so far the library only has season 3 in stock. I was specifically warned to skip that season.

The problem is that season 2 has a cliffhanger that dumps you into season 3.

S3 is definitely a step down from S2, but I wouldn't tell you to out-and-out skip it.

I would. I thought season 3 was terrible, and it put me off the show for good. The melodramatic soap opera elements totally took over the cool badass biker stuff.

I am watching way too much TV. Mainly the same stuff as last year but some new stuff as well.

Arrow: still liking this except for his early flashbacks - none of that interests me at all. Amell still has emotion/acting issues - stiff necked, weirdly looking to the side of people, but still a good show

Flash: wow, this show has heart and is fun to boot. The Flask effects are great. Story great. I am having a blast with this one.

Shield: still pretty good. Way in the beginning I had my doubts but the story is really good and the acting nice. I do love how they throw in some old comic book characters like Creel as the Absorbing Man.

Constantine: I was not overly fond of the first few episodes but it does seem to be getting really dark and good. I don't care for the monster-of-the-week thing with only the tie-in of a growing darkness, but the show seems to be done very well.

Grimm: still a fan of this show. I like how they are handling things but I hate the Austria storyline. Enough already.

Hulk and Agents of SMASH: fun show. Love when the Leader is on toilet duty.

Marvel Avengers Assemble: I like it. Not fantastic but good to watch.

Ultimate Spider Man - web warriors: not liking this season much which seems to have changed the idea of this series - I liked the old Power Man/Iron Fist/White Tiger/Nova team.

Castle: I really did love this show, but now I find myself uninterested. I think I am done with it.

Man, am I forgetting a series or three? Probably. I know I watch Big Bang Theory. Fun, funny though somewhat predictable.

I am looking forward to the new season of Face off in January.

The Shield is great. Someday I will finish it.

ZMan wrote: Flash: wow, this show has heart and is fun to boot. The Flask effects are great. Story great. I am having a blast with this one.

QFT. I have been pleasantly surprised at how fun the show is and the scenes and SFX used to highlight the Flash's powers when saving people have been top notch. I'm quickly becoming a Flash fan and may need to switch my avatar. It is refreshing to get a hero without baggage and emotional angst.

ZMan wrote: Constantine: I don't care for the monster-of-the-week thing with only the tie-in of a growing darkness, but the show seems to be done very well.

I don't think they have a lot of choice in the matter. The bigger storyline needs to make an appearance, but if it's the overriding narrative you simply can't attract viewers that come to the series late. When you're not a miniseries you need to be open-ended enough to keep the series flowing from season to season. I think the show is good enough to go several years, so they have to parcel out the end of the world carefully. The core running gear needs to stay episodic.

Part of my issue with Castle right now is that it's become a married couple that fight crime instead of the other way around. Given the number of crime dramas I shouldn't care so much (enjoying "Forever" right now which is working the bigger storyline hard) but I do, I want them to go back to the core concept of the show. The path they've chosen for character growth doesn't interest me very much.

S.

Sagrilarus wrote: Part of my issue with Castle right now is that it's become a married couple that fight crime instead of the other way around.

A couple of criminals that fight married couples?

Gregarius wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: Part of my issue with Castle right now is that it's become a married couple that fight crime instead of the other way around.

A couple of criminals that fight married couples?

No I meant . . . hey that's got potential. You could do something with that.

Castle has jumped so far over the shark it isn't even funny.

Black Mirror

Netflix

Go

Sherlock Season 3. It's every bit as pretentious and probably even more convoluted than the previous two seasons but it's fun.

Season 4 of Justified was disappointing. The writing never quite persuaded me of the importance of the fugitive at the heart of the main story arc for the season. I finally hit my limit for the that sleepy-eyed simpering look that Raylin uses when he is trying to be charming. I couldn't give two shits about the impending birth of his child. Because I dozed off both times I tried to watch the penultimate episode, I gave up and didn't bother watching the final episode. I sort of liked one new bad guy for the season, the military veteran because he reminded me a lot of an old friend. But the only enjoyable part of the season came early on, when Boyd clashed with the traveling preacher with dueling scripture quotes and eventually lured him into a lethal trap that was half snake and half hubris.

Watched the rest of Black Mirror (well, the six episodes on Netflix... there's also a new Christmas episode). Fascinating and amazing show in many ways, but I also feel like it declined a bit in the second season.

Picture the Twilight Zone, but taking place in our present or very near future, with some technological focus that is beyond our current state but also very much within the realm of what might be possible before long, with some deep resonance to our cultural and personal proclivities.

Like the Twilight Zone, most of the eps have a bit of a twist or postscript, and it's there that I've felt a little bit less satisfaction with the later episodes, where the idea of the story was cool but didn't resolve as interestingly as they might have. But some of that might work better with a longer format; Robert Downey Jr. is supposedly making a film adaptation of the episode where everyone's lives are recorded through their eyes, and that one in particular felt to me like it could have gone to another level with more time.

My favorite was the second one, where everybody has to ride a bicycle to generate power for society, earning virtual money to upgrade their avatars and such while living very solitary lives. The protagonist makes a connection with a beautiful woman, but it turns into a bizarre but brilliant Orwell/Vonnegut type of thing. There's something achingly sad and poignant about that one.

All are standalone with different casts and styles. Great writing and direction, on par with Sherlock, but also unique. Really looking forward to more of these as they're made.

Sex with a pig the topic of discussion in the first five minutes. British TV has a weird need to be sexually shocking. The U.S. has its gratuitous violence, Britain has its deviant sex.

I'm leaping to the conclusion this gets better (the only direction available), but I think I'll stick with Sherlock for the moment.

I'm a few episodes into Marco Polo and enjoying it. Not quite great but pretty solid entertainment with a decent political Game of Thrones vibe.

I'm also re-watching True Detective due to receiving it as a Christmas gift and wanting to give it a second run-through. It's pretty interesting on the second go due to picking up on little bits of dialogue with a different context. For instance, just finished the second episode and the two interviewing detectives ask Cole about his visions and if he still gets them - he responds with that they stopped after he was clean a couple of years and he hasn't had one since.