What TV SHOWS are you watching?

The Grateful Dead documentary they put up on Amazon is pretty good. Like, it's a by the numbers documentary but the band is interesting. Their relationship with music labels and their whole fuck you attitude is kind of great.

It's hard to understate the kind of optimism all the way around in the first three episodes or so.

repoman wrote: Do you guys remember Bernie Mac? He used to have a TV show they called The Bernie Mac show.

It was funny....it's still funny...it's on Netflix.

Man this show is really good. Makes me laugh out loud every episode and I don't mean that in a LOL kind of way. I mean actual vocalized guffaws.

Oh heck yeah. Bernie Mac was killer good. It's a shame he checked out so early.

I am watching the first season of The Expanse. I suspect that the network pitch was "Game of Thrones in space," though with less sex and violence. There are several POV characters, and the show shifts from character to character to create multiple artificial cliffhangers per episode. Some mysterious faction is trying to cause a war between Earth and the Mars colony and the miners in the Asteroid Belt. One of the main storylines is classic cyberpunk featuring a hard-boiled detective. The scenes in the space stations remind me most of the movie Outland.

It's okay and getting better, with occasional flashes of greatness. I like that some of the science stuff is just presented without explanation, and as far as I can tell, the science is fairly solid. The characters have some real depth. The acting is good enough. I give this show a modest recommendation. If you've got some time to spare to watch another sci-fi show, The Expanse is not bad.

However, there are some quirks that bother me. Most airlocks are in the floor instead of the wall, apparently so there are convenient pits to throw people in. That is the classic Expanse combat maneuver: throw someone down into an airlock and then threaten to eject them into space. Characters with adversarial viewpoints will suddenly reach an understanding when one of them volunteers a painful and emotional memory, which is fairly lazy writing. The secret faction is impossibly wealthy, sneaky, and informed. And most of the space ship and space station sets are really dark, probably to make it easier on the folks responsible for the props and sets.

oooo, i need to see Outland again. i love that flick.

I found the second season of Expanse to be far worse than the first, and my dislike for the main character doesn't help.

hotseatgames wrote: I found the second season of Expanse to be far worse than the first, and my dislike for the main character doesn't help.

The end of the first season more or less sealed the shows fate for me. It has "bug hunt" written all over it at the end, more or less flushing the political intrigue they worked so hard to nurture. I haven't seen season 2 yet so I'm not qualified to speak, but I'm no longer optimistic. I mentioned this on another web site and everyone said "oh no! that's the best part of the show! You don't realize what it means!" So it appears my preference for noir, broody sci-fi is in the minority. Frankly I don't care what it means. Everyone uniting against a common enemy is the absolute last thing the show needs.

I'll agree that the science in the show is cool. It's set in the era of space travel that I like, and it keeps the characters in the action instead of the writers saying things like "the ship is the main character!" in interviews. Hadn't considered the airlocks facing down. I'll observer that all of them are huge cargo locks, perhaps there are man-sized locks that aren't featured so much? I'll keep an eye out.

I liked The Expanse a lot (haven't seen the second season yet). So much so that I started reading the books. The first season just covers the first half of the first book. I just started the second book this week. The books are incredibly easy reads, and share that changing point of view and frequent cliffhanger style.

I think the reason the airlocks are in the floor is because they create artificial gravity by accelerating the ship. So whenever there's gravity, "down" is opposite the direction of travel. Similarly, airlocks on space stations or asteroids are down because centripetal spin is creating gravity.

By book three bug hunt is mostly gone and a more intriguing mystery remains. But book two (season 2) is still some bug hunt.

On the other hand season two should have my two favorite expanse characters, the Marine and the bureaucrat. Especially when compared to the pretty wet noodle main crewmen characters.

Edit:. I thought it was a book a season so nevermind

The books have a bug hunt element, but that political intrigue is just as strong. That balance, along with the noir mystery elements are what really entices me. I'm still trying to finish up Nemesis Games.

The Expanse is too smart for most people (in that by showing realistic physics it totally fucks with what bad science shows have trained people to believe). Scenes like a character on the OUTSIDE of a spinning ring having to hang on for dear life or risk being thrown off into space, or "explosive decompression" just gently moving things out the airlock, My main beef with the Expanse is all the muted, garbled dialogue (which was vastly improved in the second season, although the Iranian lady playing Avasarala still sounds like she is chewing marbles). I hope the show survives long enough to get to the later books, though I fear their already glacial plotting will slow even more. I can see an easy out at the end of book 3/season 4(?) though, I don't expect to see anything past that.

Yeah, end book 3 is an obvious place to stop if it isn't going great.

I watched GLOW. It was fun, not great. The main issue I had was that Ruth Wilder, the main character was wholly unlikeable. Desperate, annoying, shallow, and vapid. I guess that was kind of the point though...and she was quite a lot like some of the aspiring actors I've known. The show gets notably better once the GLOW show gets going, it becomes quite charming.

I just hate that every new show has to be chock full of profanity and sex. Did we really need that quite graphic sex scene (with noted board gamer RICH SOMMER!) in the first show? I'm no prude, but Thee constant barrage of R-rated material gets old. Every show is like Skinemax After Hours or whatever now.

and what's with all the foul language in music these days? I mean good heavens...

Preacher, season one. The title character is a reformed criminal turned small town preacher in Texas. One day, he accidentally gains a supernatural power and tries to use it for good.

The Vertigo comic of the same name was very provocative but usually failed to address some interesting theological questions and instead went for crude and juvenile shock value. And yet I couldn't stop reading until the end because the main characters were so compelling. The story took some weird and frankly stupid twists, and one significant character, Arseface, was just a critique of fame and had no actual role in the main storyline.

Preacher the tv show, almost completely throws out the original story and yet somehow keeps the main characters intact. It sometimes goes for the same juvenile shock value, but more often takes aim at the big questions. There is a recurring focus on mundane details, not as an elaborate hypnotic technique deployed by David Lynch, but to ground the show despite the supernatural aspect. There is more violence than in the comic, though less killing so far. The story is thrilling though the pace is not hectic. In the comic, it seemed like the opening in Texas was just a necessary setup to be endured before the story really got going. The show spends the first season in Texas and makes it worth the stay. Unless you are uptight and close-minded about religion, you will probably find Preacher entertaining.

I watched the first 2 episodes of GLOW. Quite enjoyable so far, I'd say.