TV you've just watched

[BryanM]

I've binged 15 seasons of Supernatural - only one episode to go. It's pretty gory for a networked show and lots of fun IMHO.

Lots of good memories of Supernatural. At worst an episode would be a mediocre little B-movie, sometimes the plot episodes were pretty good, but I always loved the meta comedy episodes. An internet friend once got a little shook when she learned I hadn't watched the first couple seasons, but I wasn't here for that noise. Reading/watching things from the start is for communists, you wanna take samples from the middle to know what something's really like.

Lots of memories of waiting all week long for the new episode to air on network TV.... just for it to be pre-empted by an emergency weather broadcast. A guy would be standing in front of a green screen, with a weather map showing the local area with some clouds over it. He would lean over and say to me he'd say "Hey.... Hey Bryan. Did you..... know that it's raining outside?!?!?"

And I'd glance out my window with the rain pitter-pattering off the roof and be like "Uh, yeah? Can you put Supernatural back on? I'm a Dean girl, and this is the one where he meets his idol Paris Hilton."

And he would laugh and laugh.... and then say "No."

And then this asshole would be standing there for an hour telling me that it's raining outside. I never once ever understood why it couldn't be a text crawl at the bottom of the screen with a minimap of the storm in the corner. Not once. It made me so mad. So mad. I'm still very very mad about it.

Oklahoma, everyone.

It was worse than Futurama's first run, when it was cancelled in exchange for football.

(A new season of Futurama exists, for anyone who still cares and didn't know. Apparently it will continue to live until 2026 at least.)

[neorichieb1971]

Avatar - The last Airbender.

Released today (Feb 22). I have to say after 2 episodes its pretty damn good. The sort of shit that hits your senses on a deeper level.

So far its much better than I expected. Thats all I'm gonna say for now.

edit - Finished it last night. Good stuff. One of the best shows on Netflix.

Only bad thing I will say is that it follows a template formula seen many times before. But it does have an emotional bond with the viewer at times.

[AGermanArtist]

Just finished Shogun ep 1. Woah.

[AGermanArtist]

Loving the Jesuit intrigue angle. Watched both available eps. I am really fucking like this a lot. Quality TV. This is quite something for FX.

[GaijinPunch]

Everyone is saying it rocks. Guess it's time to get Hulu.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Everyone is saying it rocks. Guess it's time to get Hulu.

I get it for a couple bucks a month added in with spotify. I don't know if they still have that deal going.

[emphatic]

True Detective season 4. What a mess.

[GaijinPunch]

True Detective season 4. What a mess.

I just finished it the other day. Truly awful. I've never seen more shit shoe-horned into a show for absolutely zero reason OR payoff. When that guy said time is a flat circle I almost threw up.

[Osirus]

True Detective season quality forms a rather nice square wave.

[SuperPang]

I'm glad I'm not the only one. It seems to have reviewed well but I was distinctly underwhelmed. It reminded me a lot of Fortitude. That was more interesting. (The first season, at least.)

Shogun is my TV life now. All in on that.

[GaijinPunch]

I'm glad I'm not the only one. It seems to have reviewed well but I was distinctly underwhelmed. It reminded me a lot of Fortitude. That was more interesting. (The first season, at least.)

Check Rotten Tomatoes. Audience score is like 57%. FEels like HBO paid some people off.

Shogun is my TV life now. All in on that.

I need to get on this. My one local ex-expat isn't quite on board, but, we don't always jive outside of ridiculous comedy, so I'll definitely give it a go.

[Bratwurst]

Shogun's turning out pretty good, perhaps the only complaint I might have is the producers wimped out on depicting execution by decapitation by masking it with some convenient visual obstruction. The original 1980s series had no such reservations.

[XoPachi]

That latest episode of Invincible was great. This show has such fantastic, well acted drama.

[Some-Mist]

just finished masters of the air (mota) and overall it wasn't as good as band of brothers or the pacific, but it was still worth the watch. the first few episodes were on par, but the rest fell short.

my biggest issue with mota was the change they made in story telling and it's probably due to multiple factors like the creators of the mini series changing hands again and not having first hand accounts for direction from the vets involved and relying on the written material.

band of brothers had narration from winters/nixon/lipton/etc, the pacific had leckie/sledge/basilone, so the original two mini series had multiple accounts of what was happening in the same place and time of the war and it helped attach you to all the individuals that the narrator had interactions with and you always knew what was going on. if something happened to one of the people they'd interact with, you felt the impact through the narrator. mota was only narrated through crosby which made it much more cinematic having only one account of the events. people would disappear and then you wouldn't have any idea what they went through or if they're still alive and it created a movie-like anticipation to see if you ever found out, and it felt kinda cheapened by it.

probably going to start the gentlemen

[emphatic]

Re-watched season one of True Detective as my wife didn't take an interest in the show until she happened to watch the beginning of season 4 and we watched all of that. Damn, season one is so good. We're gonna watch seasons 2 and 3 now too.

[AGermanArtist]

The Walking Dead - The Ones Who Live concluded with ep06.
They wound up the entire series with the last 5 mins of this one episode and they fucked it right up. Terrible, terrible, terrible.
Shame on all involved.

[GaijinPunch]

We're gonna watch seasons 2 and 3 now too.

Curious how I feel about Season 2 now after Season 4.

[neorichieb1971]

Kin - BBC iplayer & AMC.

Recommended by someone at work. Drug gangs in Dublin have a dispute, little gang doesn't like big gangs rules, shooting starts, kid gets in the crossfire.. its war.

Whats impressed me so far is the soundtrack. The 1st episode had a little too much build up for me and the accents are kinda strong. But so is the story once it gets going. And I can't get enough of that soundtrack. Reminded me of Heat a little bit. Its an AMC production so probably out there in the States as well. I only watched 2 episodes so far, had a slow start but once it gets going it pulls you in.

[vol.2]

I just finished Gundam 079-080 (First Gundam). While it does share a lot of DNA with Space Battleship Yamato, Gundam refines the formula by creating a tighter story with a more realistic science fiction premise. This is achieved primarily by pitting mankind against themselves, rather than some distant, technologically advanced invaders. That allows Tomino to craft a scenario that is more reminiscent of a typical earth war, and therefore a lot more relatable. The factions and differences between them are far less, and there is a lot more room for detail when you're not worried about defining the traits of an alien race. And detail there is! So much amazing mech lore and designs. I love the Valkyries from SDFM, and all of Masamune Shiro's works from the 80s, but none of them are as wholly realized in a story as they are in Gundam.

The mechs are obviously a nucleation point for Gundam fanatics, but just as genius was Tomino's invention of the Newtypes. It's such a subtle way of introducing mysticism into the series that it feels so possible and integrated into their world. There are countless science fiction writers who posited ESP-like powers in space (Philip K Dick did this in numerous novels), but it's integrated very well in the Gundam universe, and never feels like the sole focus of the story; the driving force of Gundam is Amuro's Newtype powers and his supernatural ability to win any battle, but it never takes away from the military tactics or the interpersonal drama between other cast members, it just provides a driving force for everything to happen around

The most critical thing I have to say is that the ending isn't really satisfying, but of course the show got cancelled early so there's not much they could do about that. It's really such a shame, because some of the best episodes are towards the end, when Amuro finally meets Lalah Sune and they start having psychedelic mind conversations.



I've got to wonder if the show hadn't been cancelled, would they have allowed that situation to develop more, or would Amuro been able to find other Newtypes to explore his abilities with. I very much wonder what would have transpired after the final episode, and I'm going to seek out the light novels Tomino wrote to fill in the gaps.

Lately, I've been part of a Gunpla model building club here in Baltimore. We meet one tuesday every month. I completed assembly of a Master Grade MG RX-78-2 GUNDAM VER 2.0, but I still have to partially disassemble it and do some panel lining and weathering.




I started watching Zeta, and while I really do like it, it's not quite as gripping to me as First Gundam was I have to say. I'm not really attached to any of the characters in the same way, and everything feels kind of flat in comparison. It's got even better animation though. The amount of detail and shading in the mechs is like off-the-charts good in Zeta. I can see why it was successful and why it sold so many model kits. To be fair though, I have only got through about 7 episodes, so maybe I'll like it better by the end.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Watching Griselda. Thought it was going to be lame but after checking it out it's alright. Manages to hold my attention well.

[guigui]

Any shmups member watched the Fallout series ?

I've always been a fan of the original games and read here and there the series captures them quite well. Curious what the community thinks about it.

[vol.2]

Any shmups member watched the Fallout series ?

I've always been a fan of the original games and read here and there the series captures them quite well. Curious what the community thinks about it.

I watched the first episode and I thought it was good. I did not like Fallout 3, which the TV show seems sort of based on the world of, but they changed enough stuff around and made things matter more than they did in the game.

At first, I wasn't going to watch the show because the three stars came on the Wired Youtube channel and they came across to me like complete idiots that didn't know or care about the Fallout mythology at all, but then I read some good reviews and decided to give it a shot. I still don't much think they know anything about Fallout, but it turns out that they don't need to be smart or to care about the games to read their lines well and do a good job of acting. Go figure.

[GaijinPunch]

Walton Goggins is great in everything

[AGermanArtist]

I've only played around 35hrs in Fallout 3 before my save file corrupted and I've never trusted a Bethesda game, since, but I really like the 3 episodes of the Amazon show I've seen so far. They certainly haven't cheaped out on it, from what I can see. With this and Shogun I'm having a great time right now.

[vol.2]

I've only played around 35hrs in Fallout 3 before my save file corrupted and I've never trusted a Bethesda game, since,

I finished it, and I feel dumber for it. If you don't want to go back and finish it, you might enjoy this rundown.

[emphatic]

Rewatching Banshee, as my wife hasn't seen it. So, so good.

[Some-Mist]

watched a couple episodes of the fallout show mainly for goggins, maclachlan and pemberton. pemberton is one of the funniest social media dudes I follow and I just saw him do his one man show live a couple months back, so I had to give it a shot.

seems fine so far and I'm enjoying it. only beat new vegas and got pretty dang far in fo4

[NYN]

Luke Cage Season 1 of the Netflix production cycle. Re-watching Jessica Jones ("Laser eyes... Moron!") previously and being delighted (again) by Mike Colter's performance, we jumped to his own spin-off. Handsome, sweet, and irresistible for the main part, and the remainder of the cast is nothing less to talk about. Ali, giving all kinds of flavour, is a treat. I find Marvel as a brand hokey in comics before and after Mickey's Reign, and mega-block-busting a bore to endure (so I don't), though this stuff has to be done before Big Netty became a lazy mother. The music score has some surprising punch and is highly enjoyable. 3 eps in.

[vol.2]

Sand Land on Hulu

I thoroughly enjoyed the first 7 episodes. I have already read the single tankobon that exists and I liked that and this doesn't really stray from the source material. It's definitely more "for kids" than a lot of Toriyama's other works. Sand Land doesn't really contain the same level of grittiness that can be found in Dragon Ball even. There are plenty of terrible things that happen off screen (genocide, opression), but there isn't really any on screen death, and it's always blatantly avoided. It's basically a buddy story between an older human and a child devil (or fiend). It plays out a bit like a problem child at school and the relationship he develops with one of his teachers in, what seems to me, a distinctly Japanese way. I taught middle school English over there for some years, and the friendship that develops between the fiend child and the human is very reminiscent of those that developed between the more outspoken and difficult male students and their favorite teachers. Usually they would be from slightly less well-to-do families, and probably be headed into construction or something similar to their father. Kids like that tended to get particularly rambunctious towards middle school grade 3 because they knew it was kind of the end of childhood. They might not really be going to high school (probably to night school while working) and they would soon start the family business. The main character in Sand Land is something like 1500 years old and still a child, so this is definitely kind of a Peter Pan story for children like that specifically. Of course, there are certainly elements that are cross-culturally relatable, but I found it to be particularly poignant as a reflection of growing up in Japan, as I believe it was intended.

The story goes on past the end of the tankobon, but I've only made it a little of the ways past that. I'm not sure how much input Toriyama had on the new parts of the story, but it's fun so far.