Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
|
Post by Quiara on Mar 27, 2017 11:32:13 GMT -8
Hey, the best show on TV deserves its own thread. I don't even know if Legion is the best show I'm watching right now. There are many shows competing for that title, including The Americans, a show I really like the direction they are going this year. I was a slight naysayer last year after things just got too dour for my liking, the difference this year is by focussing on the food crisis in Russia, something more of a wider issue that has real connections to history, there's just an ever so slight change in perspective that I think the show is really using to its advantage. I'm not sure how I stand on the fifth season, actually. Season four wrapped up a lot of the show's major plotlines, presumably with the intent to narrow the scope of the show in time for the final season. Todd van der Werff expressed what I was thinking with "Stingers," which is that the show was striving for a Shakespearean five-act structure... so S5 is starting to feel like wheel-spinning in that regard. Especially because a lot of elements of the season are giving me deja vu, and in kind of a negative way. The show's endgame has always been obvious, so putting the breaks on the denouement is annoying. Especially because there's really no reason to care about Matthew.
|
|
|
Post by otherscott on Mar 27, 2017 12:21:51 GMT -8
Hey, the best show on TV deserves its own thread. I'm not sure how I stand on the fifth season, actually. Season four wrapped up a lot of the show's major plotlines, presumably with the intent to narrow the scope of the show in time for the final season. Todd van der Werff expressed what I was thinking with "Stingers," which is that the show was striving for a Shakespearean five-act structure... so S5 is starting to feel like wheel-spinning in that regard. Especially because a lot of elements of the season are giving me deja vu, and in kind of a negative way. The show's endgame has always been obvious, so putting the breaks on the denouement is annoying. Especially because there's really no reason to care about Matthew. Well, I don't think the show particularly cares about whether we care about Matthew or not. The Paige storyline is about Paige, and the stuff she's dealing with isn't about Matthew in particular, but the fact that the stuff that is true for Matthew will be true for every boy that she comes across from this point on in her life. And that's kind of crushing.
|
|
Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
|
Post by Quiara on Mar 27, 2017 13:10:41 GMT -8
Hey, the best show on TV deserves its own thread. I'm not sure how I stand on the fifth season, actually. Season four wrapped up a lot of the show's major plotlines, presumably with the intent to narrow the scope of the show in time for the final season. Todd van der Werff expressed what I was thinking with "Stingers," which is that the show was striving for a Shakespearean five-act structure... so S5 is starting to feel like wheel-spinning in that regard. Especially because a lot of elements of the season are giving me deja vu, and in kind of a negative way. The show's endgame has always been obvious, so putting the breaks on the denouement is annoying. Especially because there's really no reason to care about Matthew. Well, I don't think the show particularly cares about whether we care about Matthew or not. The Paige storyline is about Paige, and the stuff she's dealing with isn't about Matthew in particular, but the fact that the stuff that is true for Matthew will be true for every boy that she comes across from this point on in her life. And that's kind of crushing. Ah, but isn't Matthew Beeman largely a proxy for his father? You're not wrong to say it's crushing, I just wish they would focus on the growing gulf between her and Henry instead which hits many of the same beats-- seeing them go from being a united-ish front in thinking their parents are kind of weird to Paige knowing exactly why her parents are weird and being unable to tell Henry. Also, Pastor Tim not showing up so far is hella sus. You'd think the Jennings would be keeping a much closer eye on him.
|
|
|
Post by Jeremy on Mar 27, 2017 17:04:09 GMT -8
It is a little odd that Pastor Tim hasn't shown up yet. The Americans has a tendency to drop and resume plotlines as the need demands it, but that's a character they should be keeping tabs on more often.
|
|
|
Post by ThirdMan on Mar 27, 2017 17:53:17 GMT -8
I haven't been all that engrossed by the season thus far, and the show would never be my absolute favourite, because its range of expression is too limited, and the show too gray, visually. So, one of the five- or ten-best, sure, but always a bridesmaid, never a bride.
And I wish they hadn't dropped the Kimmy subplot, because that had the potential for some really good, awkward humour: "I will sleep with this underage girl, for Mother Russia!" I mean, they were getting information off one of the heads of the CIA (her dad); that seems like something that wouldn't be dropped.
Anyways, I care not of "best". Legion's my current "favourite", and that's a fact, yo.
|
|
|
Post by buffyholic on Mar 28, 2017 2:25:22 GMT -8
I love that description "always a bridesmaid, never a bride". I still need to watch the final two of season four but I agree that the show perhaps needed some levity because it is too dark. It´s very good but I also wouldn´t place it as one of my favorites. "Dinner for seven" was not as good as the others before it but the ending was great. Poor Paige, another thing to weigh on her shoulders and I never thought I would ever like Paige, like ever.
|
|
|
Post by otherscott on Mar 28, 2017 6:07:34 GMT -8
Obviously I agree with your placement J.C. because that's where I've put it in my top 10 list pretty much every single year it's aired.
That said I do want to defend the visual grayness as an intentional choice that adds to the atmosphere of the show. If it had a higher range of colour the visuals wouldn't fit the show to the degree they do now. That said the limited range of expression has long been my principal problem with it. It doesn't look like that's changed this season, but I do feel more engrossed than I did in the last one.
|
|
Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
|
Post by Quiara on Mar 28, 2017 7:59:38 GMT -8
I'm on the fence w/r/t the show's color grading. On the one hand, the show is really really really dark. When you watch the deleted scenes or gag reel or whatever their dinner table is so much lighter. On the other hand, it makes the scenes where the show discards that darkness really stand out. For instance, the color grading is at least half of what makes the ending of "Chloramphenicol" so powerful.
|
|
|
Post by ThirdMan on Mar 28, 2017 12:34:05 GMT -8
The colour grading is perfectly appropriate for the show. I'm just noting that it's one of the reasons it could never be my absolute favourite program, because I tend to prefer something with a bit wider range, is all. The same can be said of the show's overall tone: there's nothing wrong with it, per se. Though I will say there's probably a bit of an incongruity between the show's mostly ultra-serious tone, and the silly-looking wigs the leads often wear, which verge on camp at times.
The show also has a bit of a kitsch quality with the '80s music, which is cool.
|
|
|
Post by Jeremy on Mar 28, 2017 15:49:40 GMT -8
I've never really thought of The Americans as being the very best show on television. It's always skirted around the edges of that title - a perpetual 9 out of 10.
The color scheme can be a little monochromatic at times, but it fits with the show's often grim tone. Few shows can pull off that kind of literal darkness as well as The Americans does.
|
|
|
Post by buffyholic on Mar 29, 2017 3:26:44 GMT -8
I love the use of music, it´s completely fitting!
A problem I have with the show but funny enough, not this season (4, not 5 yet), was Paige and the fact that there were really slow episodes which didn´t advance much and almost stepped into the line of boring. Season 2 and 3 had that and it bugged me a bit. Season 4 is just fantastic but I also wouldn´t say it´s one of my favorite shows.
btw, who else had a big laugh during the dinner scene in "Dinner for seven"? I mean, we had the spies, the government agent and Paige, pastor Tim and Alice who all know the truth all having dinner.
I also think Keri and Mathew Rhys deserve to win already some awards because they are so great.
|
|
|
Post by filibanfi on Mar 29, 2017 6:30:57 GMT -8
I'm really digging this season. It's not as exciting as the other ones thus far, maybe, and VanDerWerff is probably right in his theory - side note, in a recent podcast he said the series was its seventh favorite among the ones aired since 2010 and referred to the lack of stronger stretches of episodes Boscal-- Quiara was talking about a while ago, and I agree, even if those "Do Mail Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?" and "Stingers" were just exceptional - but I'm looking forward to the developments as much as ever. The series hasn't changed, but it feels, I'd dare say, lighter than the admittedly so-dark-it's-quite-frustrating, but excellent, Season Four, even if it actually isn't. It's just making us breathe again. "The Midges" was probably the best, so far, but I loved the first two episodes, too, each featuring one long, muted, beautiful scene - I have to admit it, I was kind of disappointed when, at the end of the scene where they enter and examine the lab, Elizabeth talked, because it'd have been such a fascinating stylistic choice to carry on through the season. Anyway, I still have to watch yesterday's installment, and I just don't really care for Entertainment Weekly's "reviews", but this is certainly strange.
|
|
|
Post by Jeremy on Mar 29, 2017 9:35:05 GMT -8
"What's the Matter with Kansas?" was a decent episode, but - as the show itself acknowledges - it's treading familiar ground. I don't expect the Kansas material to be a long-term component of the show, but I can see it getting old pretty quickly. (I'm only concerned because The Americans has a tendency to keep characters/plotlines around well past their expiration dates.)
On the plus side, the Paige material is still stellar. (Hi, Pastor Tim!) And I did like Elizabeth's wig-and-glasses look - one of the show's better disguises in some time.
|
|
Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
|
Post by Quiara on Mar 29, 2017 10:01:52 GMT -8
The show also has a bit of a kitsch quality with the '80s music, which is cool. Kitsch isn't the word I'd use here... like, the 80's are the decade for kitsch, so the decision to scooch away from the MTV zaniness that defines the 80's in the popular consciousness is deliberate. Of course, zany MTV kitsch would be appropriate if the show was going for a Brechtian critique of shallow capitalist excess. Which the show sort of does -- Poshlust is uniquely Russian, after all -- but in subtler ways, like having Yung-hee rail against the nefarious capitalist scheme of the Cabbage Patch Kids or having Alexei Morozov praise the faux-authentic gluttony of Bennigan's to high heaven. But like, I'm not expecting them to swap out Roxy Music for hair metal anytime soon.
|
|
|
Post by ThirdMan on Apr 5, 2017 13:06:26 GMT -8
I sure hope Philip's Russian son finds a way to force a meeting/confrontation with him, because otherwise, that whole subplot would be a total waste of screen time.
|
|