Movie/TV recommendations

[Zeusthecat]

I ended up watching this reality show in my hotel room last night called Prospectors. It is a beard growing/gem harvesting show where a bunch of guys try to find the best gems and grow the scraggliest beards in the Colorado Rockies.

On one hand, this show is the fucking dumbest thing ever. On the other hand, it gave me a slight urge to abandon everything and devote the rest of my life to digging around in rocks and dirt to try to find good aquamarine samples.

[Mawd]

I started the new season of Fargo and I've been really liking it so far. It is different and there aren't as many noticeable goofball moments in the show because there aren't as many prominent goofs in the story, or they're goofing in different ways at least. Still liking it though. The Coen references are all washing over me. But it's been about 6 years since I last saw one of theirs that wasn't Barton Fink.

[syntheticgerbil]

I've gotten much more into the second season with the last two episodes, but now I don't know why the Native American character is an Anton Chigurh clone. The broader reference stuff is kind of grating on me.

 

I felt the riff on the gas station scene from No Country was way more distracting than the overly ridiculous UFO scene in the last episode for instance.

[Gormongous]

I really like it! It's basically Lost but with a big "Fuck you, there are no answers" right there in every line of dialogue almost. I only started watching a couple months back and I liked s1 but s2 is much stronger. Aside from Eccleston, Carrie Coon is also fantastic! And Justin Theroux has grown on me after almost two seasons!

 

Do you have thoughts on the second season's finale this past Sunday? I honestly didn't like it very much at all and it confirmed to me that the things I viewed as improvements from the first season aren't really understood as such by the creators.

 

The second season focused more on character moments, like the strongest episodes of the first season (the third for Matt Jamison, the sixth for Nora Durst, the ninth for the Garveys), and introduced another new family in Jarden, played by strong actors, to act as the bizarro-world counterpart to the Garveys' already dysfunctional one, suffering the same problems in different ways. Kevin Garvey sees and hears a dead person, does strange things while unconscious, and has a poor connection to the people in his immediate support network, while John Murphy has a hidden past of violence, an antipathy towards the miraculous, and a tendency to get angry as a means of solving problems. Great, I thought. A show about two men with different faults failing in the same ways as leaders and as fathers, against an apocalyptic background that's not the typical tableau of nukes or zombies. That's a season of television into which I can really dig my teeth.

 

Alas, no! Character moments don't drive the plot in The Leftovers, no matter how impactful they seem to be to the characters or to the audience. That's not grim enough for the current culture of television-watching! Instead, external forces, always nebulous until it's absolutely necessary to reveal their face or faces, threaten the characters with total destruction, the nihilistic stakes of a drama that's desperate to capture the same mindshare as The Walking Dead. The disappearance of three young ladies doesn't ask each character what they actually think the Departure means and how they have dealt with it. Nope, it's a childish prank meant to destroy a community. Meg's "really fucking amazing" plan isn't a challenge to the "remembering vs. forgetting" dichotomy perpetrated between the Guilty Remnant and every other character in the series. Nope, it's just the unfocused violence of a self-hating terrorist. Mary's awakening and pregnancy aren't an allegory of faith and miracles seeming like lies and con games up close. Nope, they're just a setup for Matt to have a child. Kevin's Christ-like experience of death and then life again is now just a plot gimmick to be recycled. So is the town that was the setting of an entire season being burned to the ground in an id-driven frenzy. Nothing matters, because Lindelof and team were just building up a more impressive house of cards, the better for us to be shocked when they knock it down once more. Next season, I'm sure the house of cards will be even bigger and even more intricate ("This time, the drama between the main characters is just too high and too deep, a third party can't defuse it for them with its intrusion again...") but I don't trust them actually to be building anything anymore.

 

And that's not even to complain about the lazy plotting that wasn't just dei ex machinis and twists/cliffhangers done for the sake of it. Meg, the most confused and desperate character of the first season, is suddenly reinvented as a supremely capable and confident zealot, mostly on the basis of an informed characteristic that she's "relentless" in a flashback to three years ago... you know, before her mother died and her whole world came tumbling down. When was Meg ever "relentless" about anything until the moment that the plot needed her to be the Big Bad in the final two episodes? For that matter, why was Meg's plan so pointlessly intricate? Why procure multiple pounds of plastic explosives that she has no intention of using and of which only the Guilty Remnant leadership and the audience are aware? Why involve the three girls from Jarden who also do absolutely nothing? Why make a bomb threat that gathers all law enforcement in the area, as well as a large portion of the town's population, if her intent is to cause a riot that overwhelms said law enforcement? Why not just have a few dozen of her followers cut down the gate without the dog-and-pony show, accomplishing the exact same outcome with fewer opportunities for things to go wrong? Why rape Tom, please why? The answer, of course, is that we're watching a TV show from the least talented writer on Lost and the intent is to hype the audience up, episode after episode, without too much concern for whether anything actually connects together, not least because the culture surrounding recaps and per-episode podcasts obviates the need for actual depth. Make 'em gasp, make 'em gasp, make 'em gasp—to misquote Singin' in the Rain. Rargh.

 

I just finished rewatching the third and final season of Deadwood and I'm honestly stunned at how much better it does dysfunctional individuals, more or less, facing the irruption of an existential threat to their respective ways of life both singly and together as a community. George Hearst is genuinely terrifying, even when sometimes made to look the fool, and the show's writing works mightily to help the audience understand exactly why he has the power that he does and what it means to every other character in the series. Maybe it's unfair to compare anything to what is possibly the greatest television show ever made, but it's what's on my mind when I watch The Leftovers' scripts give Regina King an amazing hour of performance and then totally forget about her for two or three times that span.

[Professor Video Games]

Maybe it's unfair to compare anything to what is possibly the greatest television show ever made...

 

Have any of the Thumbs seen Deadwood? A Deadwood (Re)watch Cast would be so good. Too bad there's not a reason for a revisit like there was with Twin Peaks, aside from the show's GOAT status of course.

[Gormongous]

Have any of the Thumbs seen Deadwood? A Deadwood (Re)watch Cast would be so good. Too bad there's not a reason for a revisit like there was with Twin Peaks, aside from the show's GOAT status of course.

 

I think about this all the time. Even just reading the essays from the AV Club rewatch of Deadwood has a feeling of peeking behind the curtain of consummate craft, so I almost can't imagine the pleasure of my favorite podcast network talking about my favorite show. Still, I might be misremembering, but I think Chris has commented in the past with one of the two principal reasons that people don't watch Deadwood: "not into westerns" or "watched a couple of episodes and nothing seemed to be happening."

 

I'm sorry if I'm wrong about this, Chris. Also, watch Deadwood. It's not a western and it's impossible not to be hooked following Wild Bill's arc.

[Professor Video Games]

Sigh...nobody's perfect. Those essays seem good though, and reading them makes me want to revisit the show even more. They'll have to do I guess...

[Erkki]

I tried to watch Kimmy Schmidt but the first two episodes are just awful IMHO. I got a feeling like it might get better, but I'm not sure I want to invest my time... Maybe I'll go with Deadwood instead (or Man in the High Castle).

 

[edit] Actually, I forgot I meant to watch Season 1 of Fargo so I'll go with that instead. But definitely want to check out Deadwood soon.

[jennegatron]

I liked Kimmy Schmidt alright. I thought it was funny, but was not in love with it. I'm pretty anti-Midwest/Indiana jokes though because in media they (almost) always come from a snobbery coastal attitude that everyone that doesn't live on the Eastern Seaboard or in California is a fat idiot with no culture, and it leaned on that too heavily for my liking frequently.

[Patrick R]

Yeah, I agree with that. I think a lot of Tina Fey's shows rely on nasty caricature, so it's not as if the East Coast characters aren't also portrayed as that. It's just that there's a dozen different East Coast caricatures that are more specific and well-observed, where the Midwest stuff is kind of lazy.

 

My bigger problem is she does the Seinfeld thing where most ethnic minorities are just wacky obstacles with ludicrous accents instead of actual characters. But I still thought that show was funny as hell. Her joke-factory approach to sitcoms really clicks with me. I get tired of shows like Parks and Rec that try to wring pathos out of their cartoon-like characters. By the end of that show it felt like every episode was 60% people hugging and saying supportive things, possibly (in my mind) to pander to their Tumblr fanbase.

[jennegatron]

I did not enjoy the final season of Parks & Rec, & loved the rest of it. I also love 30 Rock, and totally recognize that the cringe worthy laziness Tina Fey's shows have when it comes to People of Color. Truly ludicrous. There's an honesty and affection that Parks & Rec felt for Pawnee was genuine and came through, as where the way Kimmy (or Kenneth the Page on 30 rock) are a joke because of where they're from, rubs me entirely the wrong way.

[Patrick R]

There are shows that can walk that line. The Larry Sanders Show is as funny as sitcoms get but the characters are all real and you grow to care about them deeply. Parks and Rec got there occasionally, but mostly when I watch comedy I just want to laugh. I don't care if any of these fictional people learn lessons because 98% of sitcom characters have the emotional maturity of 7th graders. They have to in order to keep cranking out jokes.

 

I like shows like 30 Rock and Seinfeld and Arrested Development (well, Arrested Development after the first season) that just lean into that, instead of trying to warm my heart. There is a shitload of media out there depicting realistic characters I can care about, shows that don't have a joke-every-20-seconds mandate. If I want to watch characters grow and stumble and come together and fall apart, I'll watch Six Feet Under or Mad Men. But if I want to laugh for 22 minutes, I will never put on a "heart-warming comedy" like The Office or Parks and Rec. I don't like that middle ground.

 

I like the "dramedy" side of that middle ground even less. I am all about the identity politics of a show like Orange is The New Black, but that straddling between comedy and drama usually just results in a tonal mush that puts me off. Same with a show like Men of a Certain Age or Weeds or Shameless or any of that Showtime shit.

[gregbrown]

Have any of the Thumbs seen Deadwood? A Deadwood (Re)watch Cast would be so good. Too bad there's not a reason for a revisit like there was with Twin Peaks, aside from the show's GOAT status of course.

Especially if it was paired with a read-through of Oakley Hall's Warlock. <3

[Ben X]

I tried to watch Kimmy Schmidt but the first two episodes are just awful IMHO. I got a feeling like it might get better, but I'm not sure I want to invest my time... Maybe I'll go with Deadwood instead (or Man in the High Castle).

 

[edit] Actually, I forgot I meant to watch Season 1 of Fargo so I'll go with that instead. But definitely want to check out Deadwood soon.

 

I loved Kimmy Schmidt but it definitely only hits its stride around episode 3 or 4.

[twmac]

Agree with Jennegatron, Parks and Rec was awesome until the last season. I don't think I managed to finish it.

 

Unbreakable Kimmy I absolutely loved, whereas 30 Rock was a show that I laughed in spite of myself.

[Ben X]

Re. 30 Rock, I didn't like it for quite a while. I ended up watching all of it,but even by the end, I still felt like a lot of the time I was appreciating the clever writing rather than finding it hilarious (it took me until season 3 to actually laugh out loud) but I was certainly laughing more regularly and always enjoying it. It had the ensemble sitcom problem of too many characters with nothing to them at all, all written in the same voice. Brooklyn Nine Nine, Futurama etc - they start off with this group of characters without bothering to actually come up with anything past name and job for most of them. Unlike, say 3rd Rock or The Simpsons, which start small and slowly build up their raft of supporting characters in an organic way. Although my expectations with 30 Rock may have been affected by the (incredibly smug) opening titles including two characters who normally get one or two lines per episode. And honestly, I found Kenneth and Tracy's line delivery pretty irritating throughout. It also took me a long time to find the incidental music anything other than intrusive and overbearing.

 

Basically, if they'd called it The Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy Show and changed the titles accordingly, I probably would have had a lot more accurate expectations.

[syntheticgerbil]

Kimmy Schmidt made me sort of uncomfortable and I didn't laugh a ton, but it was TV fodder to keep on the background, so there's that.

 

My beloved show these days is Brooklyn 99. Mindy Project Christmas episode was amazing though.

[twmac]

I also liked Brooklyn Nine Nine, I don't think it suffers as much from ensemble cast as Ben is saying.

 

For example Scully and Hitchcock get nothing in the beginning and are now kind of brilliant. Amy Santiago suffers a lot in the first season of being the fall-person but they fix her character almost completely in season 2. Terry Crews feels a bit flat on first watching but having rewatched recently there is a lot of 'deconstructing the macho persona' in him that I missed.

 

The rest of the crew are fully rounded and if it weren't for messing up Gina (she is so good in the first season! Why, turn her into a punchline in Season 2?) I would say that the writing is perfect.

[Ben X]

Well, I guess I didn't get far enough to see them fix it, then! That's part of the syndrome - they do build up the characters eventually, it's just that there's a season or two where they're all there not doing much waiting for that to happen.

[Woodfella]

Theres another "Screen unseen" event on Monday. I'm excited. You book tickets and you don't know what film you're seeing until the title card comes up. Only thing guaranteed is it will be a film that isn't out yet. Only thing is I booked before I got my current job and unless I get an early finish, I'm gonna miss the first 30 mins

In any case I will report back!

They do actually release clues to what it is before hand and people try and solve it but I don't see the point in that.

[Erkki]

Well, maybe I'll give Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt another chance later. It's just at first it hit me with totally shallow characters seemingly unaffected by any events that happened to them, such as spending years in a cult, in a bunker, thinking the world has ended. Besides that it seemed kind of racist and every kind of other -ist.

[Trip Hazard]

Master of None is boss, and makes me feel all warm and tingly on the inside. A touch too sentimental for my hard, British heart, at times.

[melmer]

https://vid.me/lvBw

[Twig]

there's a distinct lack of will smith in that trailer

[elmuerte]

Independencer Day