series What series are you watching?

Reading around a little, I am a little embarrassed at my rhapsodic tone regarding Winning Time. I forgot to mention that the show has lots of "this is so bad it's good" moments. Many of its still-alive-and-well subjects have weighed in, mostly with: what a load of crap.

Kareem writes:
The characters are crude stick-figure representations that resemble real people the way Lego Hans Solo resembles Harrison Ford. Each character is reduced to a single bold trait as if the writers were afraid anything more complex would tax the viewers’ comprehension. Jerry Buss is Egomaniac Entrepreneur, Jerry West is Crazed Coach, Magic Johnson is Sexual Simpleton, I’m Pompous Prick. They are caricatures, not characters. Amusement park portraits that emphasize one physical feature to amplify your appearance—but never touching the essence.
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Here's his whole post:

kareem.substack.com

"Winning Time" Isn’t Just Deliberately Dishonest, It’s Drearily Dull

How did so many talented people go so terribly wrong?
kareem.substack.com kareem.substack.com

I disagree with Mr. Abdul-Jabbar, when he says the show is "drearily dull," but I agree with him about everything else. I don't like a lot of historical fiction stuff when it just, toward no real end, makes chit up. Like Ron Howard's ridiculous depiction of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind. It bugs me that Mr. Nash is now famous as the guy who Opie made a movie about, as opposed to the visionary mathematician he was. But I (wait, what were we talking about?) digress.

(and, adding later, I like Ron Howard--didn't like that I made fun. A rare child star who survived being one, and, seemingly, a decent guy.)
 
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I just finished watching the first season of Julia last night (HBO Max) and I loved this more than I expected to. I have 0 interest in cooking (beyond making dinner a few times a week, which is purely a practical exercise) and never watch contemporary food/cooking shows. But the cast is amazing (Sarah Lancashire, David Hyde Pierce, Bebe Neuwirth, Judith Light, Fran Kranz and a longer list than I can do here).

It's about food, cooking, public television, being a woman in the early 60's, getting pushed out of a career (her husband), being a widow and making a new life (Neuwirth), being a black woman in a white man's world 60 years ago (Brittany Bradford) and a dozen other issues but all done with a wonderfully light touch.

I was very pleased to see it's been renewed for a 2nd season.
 
Stranger things S4

Netflix is really starting to piss me off, 30m a episode for this show while they cancel so much other original programming.
The entire movie of hangover only cost like 35 million, I really do not understand how they blew through 500k a minute on this show.

They introduced this girl and she was awesome ,my new favorite character


But then....
Episode 4 they give her the worst dialogue of the entire show, smack her in the face and then she disappears????
never to be seen or heard from again. god damnit.

I'm not usually sexist but when I heard her talking i had this instinctive feeling in my gut that her dialogue was written by a dumb man.
Looked up episode 3, female writer, oh maybe im wrong, look up episode 4.... 3 male writers. yeah i was dead on the money, written by a dumb man.

She actually mocks el at the end for having a dead father, like wtf??
So many problems with this, starting with the most obvious anybody else in the entire school that has a dead parent or friend with a dead parent is going to instantly hate her -- yet she is supposed to be popular?

And the less obvious ... she is supposed to be witty and catty, there is supposed to be tact to her words. not the dialogue of an oafish brute.

They ruined her :(
 
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Better call Saul is pretty good. Like everyone else, I am anxious and nervous to find out what will happen to Kim.

I'm re-watching Bates Motel. That was such a good show. Norman's dad really did a number on him.
 
I haven't watched stranger things season 4 yet, currently rewatching 1-3 to catch up. Hopefully all of season 4 isn't 30 minute episodes.

As far as budgeting, once you cross the line into "stupidly rich" there is no rhyme or reason to the numbers. I can break down the budget of an 8 million dollar 1 hour show, and there's still a huge amount of waste. CGI has gotten cheaper, rather than more expensive. I suspect they are pulling a gallopoli, just asking for 4x the budget they need, and then finding ingroup people to distribute it to after the fact. There's really no amount of period accurate 1986 t shirts or used disco vans that can run up that kind of tab. Samsara filmed across 11 years in over 100 countries and the bill was like 8 million dollars. This is just super rich people mindlessly throwing bales of cash at each other for minimal efforts. They doubtless just threatened to cancel the show if they didn't get a paid 3x the normal rates. I like the Mandalorian, but same thing over there, just billing 20 million an hour to produce a minimalistic spaghetti western with 700k of vfx and 3 people standing in a desert talking. The entire spaghetti western format was pioneered so that people could make 2 hour movies for 150 grand.

The first half of Better Call Saul's new season was ok'ish, but definitely nothing spectacular. They really focused in on Howard, the series dullest character, and the payoff seemed random. I'll watch the end when it shows up, but honestly, I think BCS was about 65% wasted opportunities. Saul Goodman's life story and character just aren't nearly as compelling as Heisenberg's.

I really like Bates Motel, and watch through it every few years. It's a decent show.

I should also note that I did eventually watch Frontier season 1, and it was pretty good.

I'm waiting for The Boys season 3 tonight, as dark and messed up as the show is, there's never a dull moment.
 
Nate North said:
I should also note that I did eventually watch Frontier season 1, and it was pretty good.

I'm waiting for The Boys season 3 tonight, as dark and messed up as the show is, there's never a dull moment.
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Nice! Season 2 was my favorite of Frontier.

I have been catching up on the boys, won't be ready to watch season 3 til next week
 
I rewatched game of thrones.. picked up on one or two things i didn't notice before.
Cut this clip together for one of them lol

Danny: Stop drinking
Tyrion: Everyone get drunk or you're disrespecting Danny.

 
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I think GOT is probably the best film ever made. It's easily the quality of a theatrical release, but maintains pacing for 70 hours. Maybe I should take a lesson from GRRM and just sleep all day, occasionally writing a paragraph or two, and turning in a part of a novel every 7 years or so. You never notice any burnout in his writing, and I think the secret is just working maybe 20 days a year. lol.
 
I watched Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey on Netflix about the Latter Day Saints.
A religious prophet that is told by god to marry and have sex with 14 year old girls.



In this documentary God is a pimp for teenage girls, and religion is a system designed for old men to fuck each others daughters.
Clearly this way of life is designed for men, and then on top of that the spirituality stuff is added to brainwash the women into obedience.

It's insane how much power the men have in this community, and then when they are 80 and marry a teenage girl for their 23rd wife
They tell her, be sweet and obdient, and since you're my wife it's godly for me to have sex with you

This reminds me of a lot of other stories I've heard about various religions, their prophets, and other cults too such as Waco

I’ll end with a game of thrones quote

Bronn: Men without cocks. You wouldn't find me fighting in an army if I had no cock. What's left to fight for?
Jaime Lannister: Gold?
Bronn: I spent my life around soldiers. What do you think they spend that gold on?
Jaime Lannister: Family.
Bronn: Not without a cock, you don't.
Jaime Lannister: Maybe it really is all cocks in the end.
 
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sfoster said:
I watched Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey on Netflix about the Latter Day Saints.
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ok, so I decided to watch this, and I had to stop for a second in the middle of this first episode an ask a question that I feel is being glossed over in the narrative.

There is a part in the story here, where the "son of the prophet" decides that the 2002 Olympic games herald the end of the world, and the destruction of SLC Utah. Moving forward, the Mormons are told that they all have to uproot and move...... to another town in Utah (the center of the universe). So there is this section in the show where everyone is selling their houses and packing everything into uhauls to go and found a new post apocalyptic civilization a couple hundred miles down the highway. Since everyone did in fact sell their houses and businesses, etc. It seems pretty clear that they genuinely believed that SLC was going to be destroyed, killing anyone who lived there.

Here's my question. Usually when you sell a house, it's for a new family to move in. They tour the home, ask questions about the water heater, etc. Maybe there were hundreds of Mormon real estate agents, but I kind of doubt it. At least some of those tours would have been given by the homeowners to the prospective buyers. So did these people smile and shake hands with the buyers and their kids, while believing 100% that the home they were selling would be destroyed the next year and the kids burned alive.

Isn't there some kind of ethical issue with lying to get money from a property you believe is worthless, and intentionally setting up families to be killed? That's what they thought was happening right? They would sell the family the house, and then supposedly everyone would be killed the following year in the SLC apocalypse.

I'm just wondering if I'm missing something here. That just sounds like a really bizarre situation, those home tours for supposedly doomed families.
 
When I've bought or sold a house, the owners have always had to clear out. I never met the owners of either of my houses and I never met the buyer of the house I sold. That's what the real estate agent is for;. To lie about the house in order to sell it. Did you know that if there is a whole in the floor and the owner puts a rug over it or a couch, it's up to the buyer to look under the rug or couch to see if there is a hole in the floor. The agent does not have to tell you,,, at least not in Utah.


Oh, and I'm watching Better Call Saul. LOVE IT!!!
 
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The new episodes of BCS are pretty good. I'm watching Stray right now, or playing it, not much difference in this case. It's great. Amazing bit of creative art. Finished the Boys season 3. Good but not as good as previous seasons. Watching Star Trek BNW, the marketing department's answer to fan backlash about how DS9 didn't have any planetary exploration. It's ok, a solid C+, so more than twice as good as ST discovery. Rewatching Dexter season 8. Watching Frontier season 2 finally. Watching the Umbrella Academy. It's not great, but I've seen worse. Watched the Obi one series. It's pretty decent, not as good as the mandelorian, but better than boba fett. Watched breaking bad front to back again. Watched the fantastic beasts trilogy. Who is this for? Watched Keep Sweet, horrifying. It's like getting to see what would happen if the people from my home town created their own government. Watched Planet Earth 2 again, because I saved up some money and bought a neo qled. Pretty great show if you've never seen it. Also, if anyone out there is in the market for a new TV, I can recommend this new generation of qleds. It's very competitive with the LG CX, without burn in issues. Watching the Offer, but just getting started.
 
Anybody watch Bates Motel? That was a disturbing yet brilliant prequel series to Psycho, except Norman's future isn't as secure as it was in the movie.
 
I've watched it all the way through several times. It's a good series. I think that it got overlooked by most people for some reason, and never really got the attention that it deserved. Better than most TV.
 
The guy behind nathan for you



Has a new TV show on HBO called the rehearsal.
Really enjoyed the pilot episode.

It's not quite as zany, its basically like nathan for you except he is helping people out with personal problems instead of helping out a business.
So it's missing all the funny customer ineractions that used to pile on, but its replaced that with sentimentality.

Still has some great laughs.
 
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Bit the bullet and paid $25 for this season of better call saul. lol.
feels bad cause im used to half that being worth a whole streaming service instead of just one season of one show.

but hey, its the final season, with 10 seasons of tv history behind it, i can fork out a little cash

im actually more excited for the finale of The Rehearsal
 
I’ve been watching the 2nd season of American Horror Stories as it drops (Thursdays).

American Horror Story has been incredible, except the last season didn’t really snag me the way the previous seasons did. I don’t know… it just wasn’t as enthralling to me.

But I binged S1 of American Horror Stories last year and found it to be hit and miss. The much lower budget was quite apparent, both in writing and production. It mostly felt like an afterthought. Actually, it seemed more of an experiment for which the low budget makes sense. But this second season is a different story. It’s much better-produced, and seems to have been given more budget and resources. So far, each episode has been worth the watch.

The new season of AHS drops later this year.
 
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