The TV Discussion Thread

[Irish]

Over the next 5 years, it will be embarrassing to watch every major network attempt GoT's success and fail miserably.

[number8]

SWIMCHAN omg. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend keeps topping itself this season.

Of course the ep was directed by M/C fave Joseph Kahn.

[[ETM]]

Yeah, that was amazing.

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[amberlita]

So fucking good. This show kills me. I was initially about to lose my mind when Greg called her (with a blissful 3 second reprieve of my favorite song the show has done) but...turned out for the best really. Good for Greg.

This is perfection:

[Henry Gale]

The Nathan For You "Finding Frances" finale is unlike anything the show (or probably any show considering the comedic context its still in being a part of it) has ever done.

Incredible stuff. Not sure how to even describe it, but all I know is to recommend it. Whether you've seen every episode or none (which.. c'mon, you're missing out on one of the best shows around), it's a mesmerizing standalone piece of work that runs a wider gamut of emotions and ideas than any comedy, reality, or strange cross-section in between that I've probably ever experienced.

[transmogrifier]

But does it tie in with the MCU? If not, does it really exist?

[dreamdead]

My Crazy-Ex Girlfriend continues to develop the layers of depression in ways that feel true to Rebecca. I wish some of the material with Maya and Darryl weren't so broad, but the showrunners willingness to go into Rebecca's psychosis and not render it cute this season is very good. "To Josh, With Love" and its wonderful take-down of 50 Shades of Grey-ness remains the high point for me this season, but it's truly delivering. Nathaniel's been a great addition to the cast.

We're also watching Speechless, which is a decent enough ABC family sitcom. Every episode usually has a quality joke, and if the formula of the lesson-learned story arc is obvious, the writers usually make one interesting/valuable comment about able-bodiedness or overt double-speak in how society treats those who are disabled. And the cast delivers the material.

Looking forward to clearing time to dive into the second season of The Girlfriend Experience soon. I expect that no one else is watching, but that first season holds up pretty well for me.

[number8]

The ending of that episode was rough. I wasn’t expecting the sudden cut to the hotline number.

[Peng]

I lost it at "Becky, no...", and the remainder of that storyline this week is just as rough.

[Peng]

Also, I've run hot and cold on this show's songs since the beginning, but this one is a keeper.

[[ETM]]

So the Amazon LOTR deal has happened, and it's a prequel series, set before FOTR? Potential spinoff part of the deal?

Now I'm intrigued.

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[Peng]

The cost just for the rights alone (reportedly around 200-250 millions) is just insane.

[Irish]

Does anyone still read this thread?

Anyway, it bums me out that RT covers television now. Partially because of all the bloated opinions. Mostly because professional tv criticism is idiotic. (Seriously, how the fuck is that a job?)

I'm watching "Godless" and there are parts of it that are beautifully done and effective but, wow, it's also gotta be the biggest bait and switch between end-product and advertisement that I've seen this year.

Meanwhile, "The Marvelous Mrs Maisel" is funny but trite as hell. It's a 50 minute sitcom without a laugh track. Agitprop for the little bourgies carefully measured to fit in a 16x9 frame. Entertaining, funny... but Jesus. Politically, it's a mess. I mean, if another show did what this show does, certain twitter crix would be clamoring to string up the showrunners. But it's Amy Sherman-Palladino, and since both Gilmore girls are fucking saints, it's alright.

Blech.

[Peng]

How is it different from professional film criticism? Unless one thinks one medium is inherently lesser than the other.

[number8]

In case anyone's wondering, House of Cards will resume production of the final season in 2018, with an altered story that doesn't have Kevin Spacey in it at all. It will focus on Claire Underwood's presidency instead, and has been cut down to 8 episodes (probably because they had to keep paying the entire crew during this whole hiatus).

I've said this before, but I do think that the show really lucked out that they did that twist in the S5 finale. It was the perfect set up to have Frank Underwood not pop up anymore, and now they're utilizing it.

http://variety.com/2017/digital/news...ey-1202629619/

[Dukefrukem]

Spoilers?

But yes I agree.

[Sycophant]

A great amount of so-called TV criticism really isn't; it tends to amount to recaps with a light ~opinion~ seasoning that tends to evaluate episodes on an even higher context scale than film criticism.

I don't know that I'd go as far as saying that the idea of TV critic being a job is stupid. But I think the state of TV criticism may be even worse than videogame criticism on the whole. I mainly turn to TV reviews as historical artifacts to see how fans received certain episodes of shows when I come to them years later.

Anyway, RT's outsized position in the media landscape is kind of a bummer in general. For aggregation, I prefer MetaCritic, which is also problematic. Is RT just accepting reviews for whole seasons? It looks like they're not aggregating individual episode scores but reviews for seasons as a whole--are they allowing that to be only post-airing reviews or the initial crop of reviews that tend to be based on whatever screeners the studio makes available pre-airing?

Anyway, Better Call Saul season 3 is very, very good. I love how small and petty but large and interesting the drama is on that show.

[Peng]

I feel like the ratio of good to bad criticism for both medium (I don't count what is clearly expressed as "recap") isn't that different.

As for RT vs Metacritic (in regard to film), never understand the preference of the latter apart from RT being so (too?) famous that it encourages both bad behaviors in fanboyism/criticism and resentment. RT is MC with more functions and being more comprehensive; you can view overall stuff/looking at tomato, or you can go to similar "MC mode" by looking at avergae rating for Top Critics. And I don't know how stuff like the site-guessed 100 scoring puts it over RT.

[number8]

[Sycophant]

I don't think I'm okay with this.

[Skitch]

As usual I'm probably the very last to the party, but...any fans of Wil Wheaton's show Tabletop? I love this!

[number8]

Welp. Irish already deleted his post, but in it he said that the reason TV criticism is on a lower rung from film criticism is because there's no risk to watching television in the same way following film criticism builds the desire to see a movie, and I've been thinking about that and I somewhat agree, and that popped in my head while I was reading this:

Awards Season Is Killing Film Culture

Because while TV has its own issue of binge-watching and explosion of content making the shelf life of TV conversations shorter and shorter, it does not have the issue of critics and audiences being as time-displaced as it is in terms of film conversations. Especially if we're talking about social media discussions rather than officially filed writings, you do see engagement and amplification happening between "TV culture" writers and fans, whereas prominent film discussions on twitter usually amount to a bunch of colleagues and a handful of festival-goers talking about the film, with most people either not chiming in or chiming in with a simple "can't wait to see it." I'm not convinced if either is good or bad, but it is noticeable.

[Ezee E]

Welp. Irish already deleted his post, but in it he said that the reason TV criticism is on a lower rung from film criticism is because there's no risk to watching television in the same way following film criticism builds the desire to see a movie, and I've been thinking about that and I somewhat agree, and that popped in my head while I was reading this:

Awards Season Is Killing Film Culture

Because while TV has its own issue of binge-watching and explosion of content making the shelf life of TV conversations shorter and shorter, it does not have the issue of critics and audiences being as time-displaced as it is in terms of film conversations. Especially if we're talking about social media discussions rather than officially filed writings, you do see engagement and amplification happening between "TV culture" writers and fans, whereas prominent film discussions on twitter usually amount to a bunch of colleagues and a handful of festival-goers talking about the film, with most people either not chiming in or chiming in with a simple "can't wait to see it." I'm not convinced if either is good or bad, but it is noticeable.

I've been saying for years that awards season, and the blogging "award predictors" have really hurt film criticism, because their articles basically amount to "award worthy or not," and they rarely see a movie before September and after January. Feb-Aug is a dead season.

[Thirdmango]

I hope other people are watching Runaways. I'm loving it right now.

[number8]

Loved the first two eps but got bored midway through the season. It does the teen drama better than the superpower stuff and the more it tips to the latter the worse the show got. The action/chase scene in ep 5 was embarrassing to watch.