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Post by Incandescence 112 on Sept 25, 2022 14:50:12 GMT -8
"The Other Woman" just combined a lot of my least favorite elements of Mad Men - it tries way too hard to make a (largely redundant) point, and undermines the character growth of prior seasons to do so. Had it been produced a couple of seasons earlier, it may have worked; as it was, the main storyline just felt contrived and off-putting. (Not sure I remember the final Don/Peggy scene; like I said, it's been a while.) And yeah, "Mystery Date" is another episode I don't care for, mostly due to the ridiculously over-the-top Don story. All in all, Season Five is probably my least favorite season, though that might change on rewatch. Also, Greg was a terrible person, but I don't think the show really tried to convince the audience he was anything else. The final scene of "The Other Woman" is when Peggy accepts Ted's offer to work at Cutler, Gleason, and Chaough. Don begs her not to go, but she does so anyway. I can accept that Pete would do such a thing, given that Seasons 5 and 6 are largely about Pete backsliding and becoming more Don-esque after 3 and 4 showed a more likeable side to him. But Pete has a capacity for introspection and honesty that Don doesn't have, so he's able to pull himself out of his tailspin in S7. I agree with your general point though; a fair few Mad Men plot points feel contrived and awkward, and at times it decides to substitute a scalpel for a blunt axe, usually to poor effect. It is interesting that "Mystery Date" was acclaimed while "The Crash" wasn't.
Yeah, I don't think Greg was an actual problem with the show or anything--but I was sure glad to see the back of him.
And believe me, I'm already forgetting the episode titles as well, lol. But they are relatively fresh at the moment.
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Post by ThirdMan on Sept 25, 2022 15:57:04 GMT -8
I think the only time I specifically remembered episode titles of a show were when I was recording BtVS, ANGEL, and Seinfeld episodes on videotapes. Seinfeld ep titles were generally easy to remember, because they were always "The...(something)".
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Post by Jeremy on Sept 27, 2022 18:49:33 GMT -8
I can probably remember a lot of Mad Men episode titles, just don't ask me to match them to their plots. Not the kind of show where I can easily divide into episodes based on individual stories, even if the show itself was quite episodic.
I notice that a growing number of TV shows (mostly serialized shows, like Legion or Jane the Virgin or any number of Netflix originals) now tend to ignore episode titles entirely, in favor of naming each episode "Chapter X" or whatnot. I believe most TV writers tend to refer to each episode in the writers' room by their number in the season, rather than a specific title, so this practice presumably helps cut out the middleman.
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Post by otherscott on Sept 28, 2022 5:29:08 GMT -8
Could you elaborate on what you find "fascinating" about Betty in Season 1? Just curious... Betty is basically a child that is living out her childhood dream of basically playing house with this perfect, strong man and raising a family with him. Because of her immaturity though, she is not very capable of introspection. So she's feeling unfulfilled, because this dream 50s nuclear family model is extremely stifling to woman, but is completely incapable of determining why she is feeling unfulfilled because in her mind she's living out the dream that she and her recently deceased mother always wanted for her. In addition to that, she is instinctual enough to know that she doesn't have all of Don's affection, and that weighs on her as well, because there is a built in desire for approval with Betty. I don't know why we stuck with Betty after season 3, and the way Weiner ended her story was almost cruel, but I think in Season 1 she serves an interesting an important purpose.
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Post by otherscott on Sept 28, 2022 5:37:29 GMT -8
I can probably remember a lot of Mad Men episode titles, just don't ask me to match them to their plots. Not the kind of show where I can easily divide into episodes based on individual stories, even if the show itself was quite episodic. I notice that a growing number of TV shows (mostly serialized shows, like Legion or Jane the Virgin or any number of Netflix originals) now tend to ignore episode titles entirely, in favor of naming each episode "Chapter X" or whatnot. I believe most TV writers tend to refer to each episode in the writers' room by their number in the season, rather than a specific title, so this practice presumably helps cut out the middleman. I definitely prefer real titles even if they aren't chosen by or referred to by the writers. The "Chapter 1" stuff just gives me 10-hour movie vibes, I like my television to be more episodic if possible.
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Post by ThirdMan on Sept 28, 2022 8:40:35 GMT -8
Could you elaborate on what you find "fascinating" about Betty in Season 1? Just curious... Betty is basically a child that is living out her childhood dream of basically playing house with this perfect, strong man and raising a family with him. Because of her immaturity though, she is not very capable of introspection. So she's feeling unfulfilled, because this dream 50s nuclear family model is extremely stifling to woman, but is completely incapable of determining why she is feeling unfulfilled because in her mind she's living out the dream that she and her recently deceased mother always wanted for her. In addition to that, she is instinctual enough to know that she doesn't have all of Don's affection, and that weighs on her as well, because there is a built in desire for approval with Betty. I don't know why we stuck with Betty after season 3, and the way Weiner ended her story was almost cruel, but I think in Season 1 she serves an interesting an important purpose. OK. I kind of feel like while the nuance of the situation may be in the script, I don't find much complexity or depth (and by extension, interest) in her actual performance. And someone who "has everything" and remains unfulfilled is a very common narrative trope. But whatever, Hitchcock called his actors "cattle", and if January Jones served Weiner's script sufficiently for you, fair enough. I just think it was a bit of a miscalculation to focus so heavily on her character in the earliest stages of the show, when so many of the other actors and actresses in the ensemble were doing more interesting and charismatic work.
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Post by ThirdMan on Oct 3, 2022 11:46:49 GMT -8
A few random things:
- Gave Reservation Dogs a look, but tapped-out three-quarters of the way through the second episode. It's good-natured and well-meaning, with a generally likable cast, but rather bland, and I'd prefer to devote my time to shows that have a bit more style and edge.
- I'm gonna at least watch the first season of Only Murders In The Building. Halfway through right now, and it's watchable enough.
- Rick and Morty last night was insane even by that show's typically wacky standards. The central conceit -- Jerry getting a fortune-cooking saying he was destined to have sex with his mother -- was hysterical, and they milked it for all it was worth.
- The Interview With The Vampire premiere was quite compelling, with the interracial element adding another interesting layer of conflict. I'll probably stick with this for the duration of its first season, if its writing, acting, and production values remain at the current level. Think it might work better as a miniseries, but it's based on a series of 13 novels (not including spinoffs), so we'll see how it goes.
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Post by Jeremy on Oct 3, 2022 17:51:04 GMT -8
- Gave Reservation Dogs a look, but tapped-out three-quarters of the way through the second episode. It's good-natured and well-meaning, with a generally likable cast, but rather bland, and I'd prefer to devote my time to shows that have a bit more style and edge. I initially dropped Reservation Dogs after the first couple episodes, as I found it rather generic and ineffective. But I eventually came back around and finished the first season. It's a bit like Better Things in that the show's voice is low-key and personal enough that it takes a bit of time for viewers to get on its wavelength, but there's genuine heart to the story and characters, and the second half of the season (which gets a bit more unusual and experimental, a la Atlanta) is quite strong. Haven't yet watched Season Two, but it's on my list. I generally like the cast, although Paulina Alexis' performance feels a bit weaker than the other kids'.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Oct 9, 2022 9:40:13 GMT -8
Anything I should watch this week on Max before my subscription expires? Irma Vep has been on my watchlist for a while. (Hell, maybe I should just do a Wong Kar-wai binge.) Check out The White Lotus. It's a really good, dark, funny social satire with a top-tier cast. And even if you don't like it, you can rant about it when it cleans up at the Emmys next month. Actually, I watched White Lotus a while ago! I forget whether I talked about it here. TL;DR: I mostly liked the show, and in particular had a very visceral reaction to the Sydney Sweeney character, having been friends with many, many a person like that and never quite having seen them depicted on TV before with such specificity. I think the show could have had obviously sympathetic characters and been slightly more audience-friendly, but I'm sort of glad that it didn't... um, I don't remember the names of any character on the show because I watched it six months ago and this isn't really a show where the characters' names are all that important, them being satirical archetypes, but like, the rich jock's fiancee could have been a creative soul who married up and found her brilliant spirit totally hampered by bourgeois values, except the show sort of implies that she's... actually not particularly creative or talented at all and is instead a listicle-writing hack. Etc. Ditto with Sydney Sweeney's black best friend, or the massage therapist, or... I guess that's the three "likable" characters on the whole show, actually.
...
Meanwhile, I have been really, really loving Reboot on... Hulu, I think. It's actually very good - maybe the best comedy of the year. It gets to have its cake and eat it too, mocking sitcom conventions but also playing them straight in ways that are genuinely pretty funny. It kind of reminds me of The Other Two. which I and I alone loved, and a tiny bit of Hacks which one or two other people also liked.
Resident Alien finished up its second season too, and it's very funny to me that the show is angling to have Enver Gjokaj in a regular role almost entirely as a casting gag of "ha ha remember Dollhouse? Wasn't that great?" Not because this is atypical for the show, which is full of stunt casting of the "remember THIS nerd IP!?!?" type, with veteran actors phoning in performances knowing they're only there to remind the average Syfy viewer that that actor you liked in Firefly/Terminator/Lost/Ancient Aliens/whatever is alive and available for autographs at Peoria Comic-Con 2023, to the point where George Takei will be cast in a CGI alien role so he can say "Ooo-ooh my" three times and then jet back to his home planet (this actually happened). Anyway, it's just funny to see that sort of reverence retroactively applied to Dollhouse in 2022, because Syfy's prime demo didn't actually like Dollhouse in 2010 even and just sort of pretended to be into it because nerd culture said you HAD to like this show so it wouldn't end up getting screwed like Firefly did, but ultimately even if they recognized some of the good things about the show they didn't *really* like it because the show had other things on its mind than quips and nerd fanservice and "I recognize that guy!" moments. Which brings into sharp relief just how much Resident Alien is dedicated to courting that type of viewer, not in a way that makes the show less enjoyable but certainly in a way that prevents it from playing to its unique strengths. It's like, do you remember when me and Zarnium were both really into Dark Matter? Remember that show? How it was really interested in exploring its characters, for the first couple episodes anyway, but then rapidly atrophied into a very stylish and likable but ultimately pretty generic hangout show that was like, "here's the Groundhog Day episode, here's the 36 Hours riff, here's the oops-we-timewarped-back-to-the-year-two-thousand-and-whatever-year-we-could-reuse-period-costumes-from storyline." And it's not even like they did a bad job at that, but I don't want to watch a sci-fi show that's just running through the genre tropes with post-Obama diverse casting, nice as that can be, I want a show that has its own unique path to blaze and actually wants to *say* something beyond pablum about chosen family or whatever hokey moral that geeks like because it doesn't challenge them or prompt introspection. This must sound like I *hate* this show but I don't, I actually enjoy seeing Alan Tudyk drop F-bombs and try to milk a cow with his bare lips, but every so often I think the show is going to do something interesting, be art rather than entertainment. And if it seems weird to expect that from this show then I have a lot of faith in it, because there is often a real sense that this show has its own aesthetic, that these are characters who really have inner lives and interests, that a show exclusively interested in Stranger Things nostalgia bait would not spend so much time with its Ute deuteragonist and her relatives on the rez. And I stick with the show because the worst case scenario is something fun and intermittently giggle-inducing, but I want it to be actually good and not just a dumb fun show.
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Post by Jeremy on Oct 9, 2022 13:13:53 GMT -8
Meanwhile, I have been really, really loving Reboot on... Hulu, I think. It's actually very good - maybe the best comedy of the year. It gets to have its cake and eat it too, mocking sitcom conventions but also playing them straight in ways that are genuinely pretty funny. It kind of reminds me of The Other Two. which I and I alone loved, and a tiny bit of Hacks which one or two other people also liked. I keep meaning to check out Reboot - Steve Levitan's track record is pretty mixed (the guy is responsible for Stacked, one of the worst sitcoms of the 2000s ) but he seems to be working a good comic premise with this one. Although that title keeps bringing up memories of another show with that name which I watched all the time as a kid, even though looking back now, it has some of the most terrifying animation I've ever seen. (Hey, it was pretty good for kids' TV in 1994!) My brain did not fully process the Resident Alien paragraph, but what was that thing about the cow?
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Oct 9, 2022 15:43:04 GMT -8
Meanwhile, I have been really, really loving Reboot on... Hulu, I think. It's actually very good - maybe the best comedy of the year. It gets to have its cake and eat it too, mocking sitcom conventions but also playing them straight in ways that are genuinely pretty funny. It kind of reminds me of The Other Two. which I and I alone loved, and a tiny bit of Hacks which one or two other people also liked. I keep meaning to check out Reboot - Steve Levitan's track record is pretty mixed (the guy is responsible for Stacked, one of the worst sitcoms of the 2000s ) but he seems to be working a good comic premise with this one. Although that title keeps bringing up memories of another show with that name which I watched all the time as a kid, even though looking back now, it has some of the most terrifying animation I've ever seen. (Hey, it was pretty good for kids' TV in 1994!) My brain did not fully process the Resident Alien paragraph, but what was that thing about the cow?Oh man, I don't even want to think about ReBoot from the '90s. Although I guess it's kind of interesting that so many kids' shows of the era were explicitly presented as taking place inside of computer games with an external "player" controlling the action, and I don't think that's really a thing anymore in the way it was when Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? and Dora the Explorer and the aforementioned ReBoot were on TV simultaneously. It's kind of a high concept framing device for a kids' show, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
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Post by otherscott on Oct 14, 2022 18:32:26 GMT -8
I did not know you guys got animated ReBoot in the states. I tend to assume most Canadian things are Canadian only things, because who else would want them?
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Oct 15, 2022 7:45:33 GMT -8
I did not know you guys got animated ReBoot in the states. I tend to assume most Canadian things are Canadian only things, because who else would want them? I accidentally watched the pilot of Family Law starring Jewel Staite and Victor Garber (!!!), and, um, I concur. Are all your dramas this bad? That's the only reason I can think of why Victor Garber is starring in this iMovie-ass show. Maybe I'm just being racist against Canadians and Coroner and Trickster are actually on par with the content on HBO!
(Are you impressed that I could name two Canadian shows that aren't $chitt's Creek?)
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Post by Jeremy on Oct 15, 2022 16:33:08 GMT -8
I think a fair number of Canadian kids' shows made their way to US television during the '90s and '00s, though some of them were international co-productions. (For example, lots of Canadian cartoons ended up on Fox Kids, since Fox Family owned part of CineGroupe, a Canadian animation studio.)
Heck, Nickelodeon pretty much owes its existence to a Canadian show - You Can't Do That On Television set the comedic template for the network in the '80s. So take a bow, Canada, you introduced the world to kids getting doused in green slime.
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Post by ThirdMan on Oct 15, 2022 23:17:41 GMT -8
There are a ton of quality TV shows and movies produced in Canada, by mostly Canadian crews. It's just that the financing for these productions is mostly in the States, thus they're ostensibly considered "American" productions. Most top Canadian artists (actors, writers, producers, musical artists, etc.) end up moving to, or at least working in or through, the States, though, because, again, that's where the money is. On the music side, see: The Weeknd, who's from Ontario, but is currently working a stadium tour. He's probably as popular/successful as any modern pop artist out there right now.
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