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Post by Jeremy on Sept 23, 2020 5:35:06 GMT -8
Yeah, the first season tries to hew to The Good Wife's "ripped from the headlines" formula, to mixed success (the Rindell plotline - blatantly inspired by the Madoff scandal, several years too late - takes up a lot of screentime and never catches fire), but Season Two gets weird and over-the-top in a way the original show never did. And those episode titles (recalling shows like Friends and Always Sunny) reflect its level of ludicrousness.
Scott, I will probably be getting HBO Max pretty soon, in part for the HBO stuff, but also due to their increasing library of content from DC Universe (which appears to be shutting down its TV division), Cartoon Network, and TBS, plus their huge film library (including the Ghibli catalog).
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Post by otherscott on Sept 23, 2020 7:34:16 GMT -8
Does HBOMax currently get the HBO shows as they're airing as well? Like is it completely combined with the old HBO Now interface?
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Post by Jeremy on Sept 23, 2020 7:40:31 GMT -8
I think so. HBO rebranded their HBO Now service as just a standard "HBO" app, and got rid of HBO Go entirely. HBO Max is everything you'd get on the regular HBO app/service, and then some.
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Post by guttersnipe on Sept 23, 2020 15:37:32 GMT -8
I May Destroy You is one of the most uneven shows I've seen, some episodes are just downright awful. There are two episodes early in the season which I expect to hold up as the worst I've watched this year, though for completely different reasons. That being said there's a lot of really good things here being done, and attempted. The nice thing about TV as opposed to Twitter or Facebook regarding social justice issues such as racism, feminism, etc. is that it is an exploration rather than an exclamation. The show asks the very difficult questions of how much bad behaviour should a victim of horrible things be permitted? Can people change? Is all rape on the same level? I like ambitious shows, and this show is one of the most ambitious on air, despite the guise of being something the critics would be cheering on, and despite what I'd call a heavy social left lean. But man, when it's bad it is bad. I nearly took a punt on this earlier in the year, but I think I was somewhat deterred by what sounded like a overt commitment to keeping things near-the-knuckle. Either that, or just my usual apathy.
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Post by Jeremy on Oct 15, 2020 12:44:39 GMT -8
Having fully caught up on The Good Fight, I feel comfortable in labeling the show a compelling but frustrating mess.
Like its parent series, it has all the elements to make a great drama (and arguably weaves the season arcs and standalone episodes together even better than Good Wife did), but it undercuts a lot of the seriousness with lazy and painfully heavy-handed political commentary. To be fair, the show does feel like it's mocking both sides, in the sense that the humor needle spins so far to the right that it ends up on the left again.
Season Three was a bit of a drag, mostly due to Michael Sheen's character, who wore out his welcome within five minutes yet refused to go away. (The animated interludes peppered throughout the season were pretty funny, though some only in a so-bad-it's-hilarious kind of way.) Season Four was definitely a step up - I really enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek nature of the alternate-universe premiere, and found the satire episode to be one of the show's funniest.
Unfortunately, the season's production was abruptly cut short by the pandemic, so we don't get an actual finale. "The Gang Discovers Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein" isn't very good, but it's perhaps fitting for such a wild show to end its season on such an oddball episode. (We won't even talk about that final image.)
All in all, I can't say I recommend this show, but it's nice to see the Good Wife universe continue in this more surreal vein, even if it misses its targets as often as it hits them.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Oct 15, 2020 18:00:06 GMT -8
Having fully caught up on The Good Fight, I feel comfortable in labeling the show a compelling but frustrating mess. Like its parent series, it has all the elements to make a great drama (and arguably weaves the season arcs and standalone episodes together even better than Good Wife did), but it undercuts a lot of the seriousness with lazy and painfully heavy-handed political commentary. To be fair, the show does feel like it's mocking both sides, in the sense that the humor needle spins so far to the right that it ends up on the left again. Season Three was a bit of a drag, mostly due to Michael Sheen's character, who wore out his welcome within five minutes yet refused to go away. (The animated interludes peppered throughout the season were pretty funny, though some only in a so-bad-it's-hilarious kind of way.) Season Four was definitely a step up - I really enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek nature of the alternate-universe premiere, and found the satire episode to be one of the show's funniest. Unfortunately, the season's production was abruptly cut short by the pandemic, so we don't get an actual finale. "The Gang Discovers Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein" isn't very good, but it's perhaps fitting for such a wild show to end its season on such an oddball episode. (We won't even talk about that final image.) All in all, I can't say I recommend this show, but it's nice to see the Good Wife universe continue in this more surreal vein, even if it misses its targets as often as it hits them. I heard their show Evil is pretty good.....maybe the Kings work better on CBS? I guess they share that in common with Jonathan Nolan. I'm not a fan of ham-fisted political commentary, really. It can be done well, but that's not the case most of the time. Even BoJack didn't really do well when venturing outside the entertainment industry.
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Post by Jeremy on Oct 15, 2020 20:36:02 GMT -8
I've seen a bit of Evil. It's a well-made show and an above-average procedural, but it feels too much like another in a long line of X-Files clones - you've got the quirky man who's a True Believer and the lady partner who rolls her eyes. That formula has been run into the ground in recent years (Forever, Sleepy Hollow, Lucifer) but it just keeps on keepin' on.
Modern TV just doesn't do political commentary well. Because current politics are so polarizing, an episode with a political message can't even take a mild position without looking like an "Aw, snap!" moment on social media.
Still, there are a few shows that handle political messages well. The Boys is really good at it, in part because a lot of the political themes are either metaphorical or tongue-in-cheek, so it can get away with being a little obvious. (Although Season Two goes a little overboard in trying to discuss white supremacy in both a direct and indirect fashion.)
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Post by otherscott on Oct 21, 2020 20:17:35 GMT -8
Having fully caught up on The Good Fight, I feel comfortable in labeling the show a compelling but frustrating mess. Like its parent series, it has all the elements to make a great drama (and arguably weaves the season arcs and standalone episodes together even better than Good Wife did), but it undercuts a lot of the seriousness with lazy and painfully heavy-handed political commentary. To be fair, the show does feel like it's mocking both sides, in the sense that the humor needle spins so far to the right that it ends up on the left again. Season Three was a bit of a drag, mostly due to Michael Sheen's character, who wore out his welcome within five minutes yet refused to go away. (The animated interludes peppered throughout the season were pretty funny, though some only in a so-bad-it's-hilarious kind of way.) Season Four was definitely a step up - I really enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek nature of the alternate-universe premiere, and found the satire episode to be one of the show's funniest. I quite liked Season 3. When Michael Sheen showed up I definitely rolled my eyes and got very annoyed at the level of cartoonishness that was happening in that first episode of his, but he started to blend into the show a little more and was working pretty well for me by the end. I'll never call it a great acting job or anything, but it stopped detracting after a while. Diane's plotline was definitely the weak link in the season for me, by a fair amount. But still I thought everything around that was entertaining but kinda empty. I just see The Good Fight as a popcorn show, and I'm not sure whether it's trying to be more than that or not, but I definitely like it on the level of popcorn. I haven't gotten to Season 4 yet. I do feel comfortable calling The Good Fight a better show than Evil. The Michael Emerson character is that epitome of evil character that Billy Bob Thornton and David Thewlis played in Fargo, and boy do I ever hate those characters. I don't know why it suddenly became okay to make villains one dimensional and as mustache-twirly as possible again. I am also just not really interested in its core conceit all that much, I can't bring myself to care if there is true Satanic stuff happening in all these episodes. There's good stuff going on with the acting and with Mike Colter's character but it's not the delivery system I would have wanted.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Oct 22, 2020 8:48:39 GMT -8
I do feel comfortable calling The Good Fight a better show than Evil. The Michael Emerson character is that epitome of evil character that Billy Bob Thornton and David Thewlis played in Fargo, and boy do I ever hate those characters. I don't know why it suddenly became okay to make villains one dimensional and as mustache-twirly as possible again. I am also just not really interested in its core conceit all that much, I can't bring myself to care if there is true Satanic stuff happening in all these episodes. There's good stuff going on with the acting and with Mike Colter's character but it's not the delivery system I would have wanted. So is it one of the rare X-Files ripoffs that stays true to the original conceit for the X-Files where the Scully would be right half the time?
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Post by Jeremy on Oct 22, 2020 10:52:28 GMT -8
I quite liked Season 3. When Michael Sheen showed up I definitely rolled my eyes and got very annoyed at the level of cartoonishness that was happening in that first episode of his, but he started to blend into the show a little more and was working pretty well for me by the end. I'll never call it a great acting job or anything, but it stopped detracting after a while. Diane's plotline was definitely the weak link in the season for me, by a fair amount. But still I thought everything around that was entertaining but kinda empty. I just see The Good Fight as a popcorn show, and I'm not sure whether it's trying to be more than that or not, but I definitely like it on the level of popcorn. I found Diane's plotline entertaining, though not necessarily for the reasons intended. It's a fun skewering of "the Resistance" and its effect on America. And it does give Diane an antihero streak which feels in line with Alicia's arc in the original series. Still, The Good Fight is definitely best viewed as popcorn TV, and rarely anything beyond that. Which is kind of a shame, since Good Wife produced some great TV at its peak, and it looks like the Kings aren't interested in aiming for that level anymore.
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Post by otherscott on Oct 22, 2020 14:53:55 GMT -8
So is it one of the rare X-Files ripoffs that stays true to the original conceit for the X-Files where the Scully would be right half the time? That's pretty accurate actually. Though it should be noted that the main character is playing more of a moderate skeptic role, there's a more skeptical skeptic on the team as well, though he gets considerably less screentime than the faux-Scully and faux-Mulder pairing.
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Post by ThirdMan on Oct 22, 2020 17:40:59 GMT -8
The Michael Emerson character is that epitome of evil character that Billy Bob Thornton and David Thewlis played in Fargo, and boy do I ever hate those characters. I don't know why it suddenly became okay to make villains one dimensional and as mustache-twirly as possible again Hmmm, I've heard some folks refer to Thewlis's character as "mustache-twirly", but hadn't gotten that impression with Thornton. I haven't watched S1 of Fargo in some time, but I recall Thornton playing more of a pragmatic "evil" character. Like, he's not wilfully going out of his way to hurt people, but will simply do so if he finds the alternative too inconvenient. Anyways, I don't mind "mustache-twirly" characters in an ensemble show, as long as the majority of characters don't fit that description. There's a place for theatricality.
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Post by Jeremy on Oct 26, 2020 19:57:41 GMT -8
I watched the third season of Search Party. Been nearly three years since Season 2 concluded, but I was able to get reacquainted fairly quickly.
The show continues to do what it did so well in its first two years - balance hilarious dark comedy with solid character drama (this time at the courtroom level). It remains one of the best distillations of millennial culture put to television, particularly when it comes to perception of reality. (The "pancake" sequence is one of the more on-the-nose examples the show has done.) And Alia Shawkat remains spectacular - Dory is a compelling character even as she goes full sociopath.
That said, I did find this season to be a notch lower than the first two, mostly due to the multiple subplots that aren't adding much to the story. The stuff involving Elliott and Portia is hit-and-miss, and the Chantal thread feels disconnected from the rest of the show. And that stalker arc... did not work at all. Way too heavy-handed for the series.
But I'm still hooked enough to keep watching. There's only so long the series can go before the story becomes too implausible (or the characters too unlikable), but we aren't at that stage yet. I was concerned the writers couldn't work the story for more than ten episodes, but it's managed to reinvent itself every season, and continues to defy my expectations. Really one of the most criminally overlooked shows on TV.
And hey, it sounds like they've already filmed Season Four! Hopefully we won't have to wait another three years for its release...
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Oct 29, 2020 10:19:41 GMT -8
Been thinking about this recently, and I think Search Party is uniquely positioned to age better than a lot of the buzzy comedies-in-theory of the '10s because eventually, the ever-so-slightly out-of-touch hyper-specific references (fidget spinners, the ice bucket challenge, yanny/laurel) will eventually blend together in our collective consciousness as "2010s nonsense" and thus the show will stop feeling quite so on-the-nose.
The one thing that didn't quite ring true about the show's third season, imo, is that Dory is not just a media villainess, but a media villainess who's the daughter of Iraqi immigrants... and this is never mentioned outside of a glowing 60 Minutes profile.
(Oh, and it was funny seeing Pat Kiernan as himself. Always love seeing NY1 anchors playing themselves on TV.)
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Post by Jeremy on Oct 29, 2020 19:17:31 GMT -8
Kiernan does that a lot, doesn't he? Played himself in multiple TV shows and movies. He's a mainstay in the MCU, and has practically been immortalized after his scene in Spider-Man: Far From Home.
(Truthfully, I find it a little jarring when a widely recognizable news anchor plays himself in a straight drama - always pulls me out of the story. I'm thinking of Anderson Cooper in Batman v Superman, or Chris Matthews on that one episode of West Wing. The one time I think it worked was Wolf Blitzer in the last Mission: Impossible, since his cameo was played as tongue-in-cheek.)
As for Search Party itself, I think the themes and characters will hold up well. I mostly tend to view it as a show "of the moment" because of how well it captures the current faults and anxieties of Gen Y.
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