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Post by otherscott on Apr 16, 2021 6:18:04 GMT -8
I would also agree that the first season of The Americans is not particularly strong. I think it has a great pilot that hooks you, and the actual spy stuff is probably as good as it gets in the entire series, but the relationship drama is very uncalibrated and has some issues in the season, and that's what the show would lean on a lot later on. The meat of the Elizabeth Philip conflict is at its best when it's ideological conflict, not insecurity about whether each of the spouses has stronger feelings for others.
Hoping to get to The Nevers pilot shortly, I'm not as excited as I want to be that's for sure.
I started Dark and through a few episodes it is really a show that is up my alley. Also picked up For All Mankind as the second season has caught some buzz, and I have to say that the first season is a lot stronger than I was led to believe. I feel like it got very overshadowed by The Morning Show at the time it was released.
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Post by ThirdMan on Apr 16, 2021 9:42:16 GMT -8
I started Dark and through a few episodes it is really a show that is up my alley. Just remember to take notes, because the plot gets ridiculously convoluted as it goes along. Heh. Are you watching the original subtitled version or the (unfortunately, default) English-dubbed version?
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Post by otherscott on Apr 16, 2021 17:56:45 GMT -8
I think the default might have switched since you watched it, as I am watching the original subbed version and it never really started playing the dubbed version. I'm taking mental notes? Taking notes for a TV show sounds like a lot of work, even though I'm definitely enjoying this one.
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Post by ThirdMan on Apr 17, 2021 3:03:26 GMT -8
I think the default might have switched since you watched it, as I am watching the original subbed version and it never really started playing the dubbed version. I'm taking mental notes? Taking notes for a TV show sounds like a lot of work, even though I'm definitely enjoying this one. Ah, I see. Yeah, I do believe that at the time I watched the show, the default setting was the dubbed version, which I changed after a couple of minutes. Obviously I was joking about the notes, but you'll be having a grand old time when the time-travel paradoxes start to pile up. It's exceptionally convoluted, but carried along well by a strong ensemble cast.
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Post by ThirdMan on Apr 18, 2021 16:25:30 GMT -8
Well, I'm now through the first three seasons of Search Party. I've enjoyed it well enough. You guys said that the fourth season is a significant drop in quality. Should I not bother watching it, or is it just uneven?
ETA: I'm about to finish up Season 4. Well, the episodes are longer, and the plot is a bit more outlandish, but I don't mind it, overall.
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Post by Jeremy on Apr 19, 2021 6:12:10 GMT -8
Unfortunately, I did not like Season Four of Search Party at all. The main plot felt contrived and ridiculous from the start - a concern I first had when it was introduced in Season Three - and it wasn't particularly well-paced or structured. (Expanding the episodes from 22 to 30 minutes led to much of the story feeling draggy and bloated.) Also, splitting the main characters into four different storylines for so long was detrimental to the show's key group dynamic.
What made Search Party such a great show in its first two seasons (and to a lesser extent in its third) is that the comedy and drama was derived chiefly by the quirky characters, rather than an outside plot. But the need to have each season top the last in sensationalism turned out to be a bad idea.
The only S4 episode I really liked was "The Imposter," which sort of works as an oddball standalone episode. The comedy is a little broad, but the story is more character-focused and coherent than the rest of the season surrounding it.
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Post by otherscott on Apr 19, 2021 7:37:07 GMT -8
I've just started Search Party, I'm about 5 episodes in. And I absolutely agree the quirky characters is what make the show unique. Less unique, but also notable is the way that the show seems to be subtly shifting the sympathies of the audience from Dory to Drew and Portia in particular as the season has progressed. (It's going to take a lot more to get me to sympathize with Elliott).
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Apr 19, 2021 11:15:45 GMT -8
I started Dark and through a few episodes it is really a show that is up my alley. Just remember to take notes, because the plot gets ridiculously convoluted as it goes along. Heh. Are you watching the original subtitled version or the (unfortunately, default) English-dubbed version? First season is slow as hell, second season is great, and third season disappears up its own esophagus. That's how I remember it being, anyway.
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Post by ThirdMan on Apr 19, 2021 13:30:21 GMT -8
Unfortunately, I did not like Season Four of Search Party at all. The main plot felt contrived and ridiculous from the start - a concern I first had when it was introduced in Season Three - and it wasn't particularly well-paced or structured. (Expanding the episodes from 22 to 30 minutes led to much of the story feeling draggy and bloated.) Also, splitting the main characters into four different storylines for so long was detrimental to the show's key group dynamic. What made Search Party such a great show in its first two seasons (and to a lesser extent in its third) is that the comedy and drama was derived chiefly by the quirky characters, rather than an outside plot. But the need to have each season top the last in sensationalism turned out to be a bad idea. The only S4 episode I really liked was "The Imposter," which sort of works as an oddball standalone episode. The comedy is a little broad, but the story is more character-focused and coherent than the rest of the season surrounding it. Yeah, that's fine. I always find it interesting how viewers go from loving a show for one or two seasons to being completely checked-out the next. As plotting has less of an effect on my overall enjoyment of a series than it seems to for others, I neither loved nor hated any of the seasons. Even though Elliot is typically presented as the most morally unappealing of the four, I often found myself being annoyed by Portia's sheer dopiness, as good-hearted as it may sometimes be. And the Chantal character is completely insufferable, though very on-point in that regard. I even think Drew had very little dimension in the early going. Three of the four felt like caricatures of shallow, entitled Millennials, before deepening somewhat by the end of Season 1. But Shawkat holds the show together for me, even if Dory's characterization gets more outlandish as the series progresses. I think a viewer's impression of Season 4 would be strongly influenced by how they feel about the Chip character, as he eats up a lot of screen time. I don't mind him, and thought the performance was pretty solid, and of a piece with the show's typical tone. But it could certainly be a deal-breaker for some. I also thought the art-direction of Dory's, uh, living space in Season 4 had a bit of a Michel Gondry vibe to it, contrived as it may be in practical terms.
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Post by Jeremy on Apr 19, 2021 16:55:28 GMT -8
Three of the four felt like caricatures of shallow, entitled Millennials, before deepening somewhat by the end of Season 1. What impressed me most about Season One at the time it premiered was the way the writers managed to embrace the shallow cliches of upscale Gen Y while still developing the characters beyond their basic stereotypes. And they pull the rug out with the reveal that Dory may in fact be the shallowest one of all. And yeah, with S4, I found Chip pretty annoying, though I think that's largely because I was not able to take the whole arc seriously. If a plotline in a TV show doesn't strike me as natural and organic, there's very little chance that I'm going to like the character(s) who drive that plotline, especially not when they've got such onscreen dominance.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Apr 19, 2021 18:40:52 GMT -8
Well, I'm now through the first three seasons of Search Party. I've enjoyed it well enough. You guys said that the fourth season is a significant drop in quality. Should I not bother watching it, or is it just uneven? ETA: I'm about to finish up Season 4. Well, the episodes are longer, and the plot is a bit more outlandish, but I don't mind it, overall. Funny, I was just thinking "I need to watch the final season of Search Party now that I have HBO Max!"
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Post by Jeremy on Apr 19, 2021 20:27:00 GMT -8
Actually, the show was picked up for a fifth season recently. No indication of it ending just yet.
I will most likely watch Season Five, though I'm hoping it aims for a more grounded story arc (and maybe whittles each episode down a few minutes).
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Post by ThirdMan on Apr 20, 2021 2:25:43 GMT -8
Yeah, one of the creative downsides of the "freedom" afforded by streaming services is that episode lengths can get a bit unwieldy. The vastly-inferior Netflix-produced episodes of Arrested Development being a prime example of that.
And Quiara, I would wager you'd probably respond to Season 4 of that show similarly to Jeremy, as opposed to me. It IS pretty amusing, though, that I'm now ahead of you on the series you originally recommended to me. Funny how that works out sometimes. Heh.
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Post by otherscott on Apr 20, 2021 7:22:19 GMT -8
First season is slow as hell, second season is great, and third season disappears up its own esophagus. That's how I remember it being, anyway. It's funny because I don't think the first season of Dark is dragging at all. In fact I'm going to use this to go off on a tangent on the differences between "slow" and "dragging" - the key for me is that if a show is taking its time and being deliberate, is it doing so with a direction in mind. Is there a purpose to the pace? With a lot of Netflix Bloat shows, the problem isn't that they were slow, because a lot of time, there's a lot of action in the episodes that drag. The problem is that there's minimal direction or reason for the plotlines of those episodes. They are just throwing things in to fill space. That's usually what I mean when I complain about a show having too many episodes. The pure pace of the show is incidental, it's how much of the show actually matters. On the other hand, a show like Dark clearly has a direction, and while action might not be happening the time spent with each character does seem to have a purpose, either by leading you further down the path of the mystery or relaying how the events are affecting them. It does have a slow feeling because at the moment the viewer is ahead of the show, which always creates a feeling in the viewer that the characters are either being dumb, or just wanting them to get up to speed already. But I really appreciate the pace of the show a lot, it feels like it's building to something carefully by making sure the viewer has the blocks in place.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Apr 21, 2021 8:24:32 GMT -8
Actually, the show was picked up for a fifth season recently. No indication of it ending just yet. Do you remember when shows would get cancelled after one season and we'd all feel sad about that? What a 2010 phenomenon.
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