What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Jaime has some interesting development with Brienne, losing a hand, etc... but I really like the Hound's chemistry with Brienne and Arya, and also his short story with the villagers/sept builders and his relation with the Broherhood. Jaime sticking with Cersei for seasons seem like a show of stupidity to me. The best characters are the smart ones... Tyrion, Bronn... The Hound--not very intelligent, but highly logical with a touch of compassion. Not a fan on any of the Starks.

I'd like to say that Arya has good character development but really she's just growing up. Whereas Hound has a really cool arc. You're right, his is the most interesting when we think of his "what on Earth are you doing with the Stark bitch?" to burying the bodies of the farmer and child. Lots of stuff going on there.

Got roped into watching Norsemen on Netflix. Seems to be a Norwegian show about Vikings, but with The Office-like humor. I need to stress that the show is violent and certainly contains adult material, so it's sort of like HBO's Rome or Game of Thrones, but with laffs.

Being only about six, 30min episodes, it's hard to not give it a try.

jeb wrote: I've enjoyed THE NIGHT MANAGER on Amazon Prime. Pretty solid. Runs a bit thin through the middle, probably better as a 3-4 parter, rather than 6-part miniseries.

Started THE EXPANSE. Just one episode. S'OK, I guess.

I just finished The Night Manager. I'm pretty sure that Amazon changed the ending of the book. I'm too lazy to use the spoiler tag so I'll stop there.

I'm a horror snob. The first three horror movies that I saw were Carrie, Halloween, and Alien. Since then, I've seen a fair number of schlocky horror movies, but I take no pride or joy in that fact. I've also seen some excellent horror movies, and I am always up for a good scare. But even a decent horror movie can suffer from an excessively long buildup that exhausts the viewer before the chills arrive.

So I elected to skip American Horror Story when it started in 2011. The name was off-putting, and horror tends to be difficult to execute well in a tv format. The only way I could see a season-long horror story working was if the there was a long, teasing buildup to the horror. But Halloween is my favorite holiday, and as the anticipation builds each fall, I feel the need to re-visit the horror genre for some pre-gaming. So I am finally watching the first season of AHS.

The pilot episode was a revelation. They lined up a great cast and absolutely crammed the story with hooks to various subplots. More importantly, the show takes an interesting approach to the horror genre. At it's heart, season 1 of American Horror Story is a soap opera, but dialed up past the limits of that genre, and all the way into horror. All the typical soap opera stuff is there: infidelity, lying, dark secrets, substance abuse, medical drama, baby stuff, etc. But each one of these elements is pushed hard, to the point of madness and murder.

Connie Britton was perfectly cast as the mom, playing a tough and competent woman similar to her character on Friday Night Lights. Dylan McDermott does a fine job as the father who is also a pyschiatrist. Jessica Lange plays the older lady next door, and her performance is especially nuanced. Two young actors show a lot of promise: Evan Peters and Taissa Farmiga. Farmiga resembles a young Jennifer Love-Hewitt, but she relies less on her fragile beauty and projects great confidence in her scenes. There are various other solid performers of lesser note, though I am quite fond of the old housekeeper who always hits her lines with perfect delivery. Another minor part is played by a young woman with Down's Syndrome, and the show unflinchingly tackles that aspect straight on.

So, instead of the long, slow buildup that I was expecting, American Horror Story comes out swinging right away. Shocks or chills arrive every few minutes in the opening episode, and by the end of the second episode, the family is already planning to sell the house. But along with all the classic horror cliches, this show also tackles the terrifying spectre of the Great Recession, leaving the family at least temporarily stuck living in a murder house during a tough housing market downturn. Plenty of Americans can relate to a fear of bankruptcy much more readily than a fear of ghosts.

Speaking of ghosts, it's no surprise or spoiler to say that this season is a ghost story. It's a great approach, because each ghost story is a dramatic tale on its own, and they cumulatively add to the dark history of the house. Most episodes start with an origin story for one or more of the ghosts in the house, going back nearly 100 years at times. The show seems fond of Stephen King's concept of a haunted house, as explained in his Danse Macabre or exemplified in The Shining. There are rules here, involving what binds a ghost to the house and what might release such a ghost to move on. In addition, there are all too human threats as well.

For all the ghosts in the house, the central story remains the tragedy of a family falling apart. It started with a miscarriage, and then each family member fell prey to their own weaknesses to cope. The season opens with them moving all the way across the country for a fresh start in California, a place that is full of people who came for a fresh start. But they brought all their emotional baggage along, and the house seems to thrive upon on their dysfunctions.

Seven episodes in, and I am hooked. I can't wait to see what will happen next or how the show will surprise me. It did worry me for a while that maybe I have become to jaded to fully appreciate horror now. The show is exciting, and I can see it trying hard to scare me, but no goosebumps so far. But when I went out for a run last night, the shadows did seem deeper and darker, and I even crossed the street while running past the creepy old house on my block, the one nearly buried in unchecked foliage.

This new season of Rick & Morty has been uneven (the Pickle Rick episode was a clever idea, but mediocre in execution), but the last two episodes have been mind-blowingly great. Hard to describe without a detailed frame of reference, but some of the same brilliance and depth that marked the series so often earlier on.

Shell,
My favorite season is AHS: Hotel. It has a legitimately touching finale and is well worth watching.

I accidentally stumbled across an episode of Rick & Morty online recently, and gave it a try. It was an early episode from the second season. Just after it started, my cat jumped up on my lap so he could also watch. It was pretty good, though not quite laugh out loud funny. I realize that the obvious comparison would be with Back to the Future, but the style of humor seemed like a more extreme version of Futurama. My cat doesn't usually have a long attention span, but he avidly watched the whole episode.

the_jake_1973 wrote: Shell,
My favorite season is AHS: Hotel. It has a legitimately touching finale and is well worth watching.

I've heard that Hotel is the best season of AHS. I am looking forward to it.

Shellhead wrote:

the_jake_1973 wrote: Shell,
My favorite season is AHS: Hotel. It has a legitimately touching finale and is well worth watching.

I've heard that Hotel is the best season of AHS. I am looking forward to it.

I have yet to see Roanoke, but for me the series are easily Asylym >>> Hotel > Murder House > Coven >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Freak Show.

Asylum is way too many ideas jammed together, but is very entertaining throughout with solid performances from everyone. Hotel runs pretty well throughout, but never seems to grasp what it wanted to be. Murder house falls apart near the end (fairly common problem with AHS), but only really has the one idea that it focuses on so it does not become a scatter shot mess. Coven completely blows its ending, but has the quippiest dialogue and a sense of fun that most of the series other than Asylum are missing. Freak Show is just garbage other than John Carroll Lynch as the clown and Finn Wittrock chewing scenery like a madman.

Shellhead wrote: I accidentally stumbled across an episode of Rick & Morty online recently, and gave it a try. It was an early episode from the second season. Just after it started, my cat jumped up on my lap so he could also watch. It was pretty good, though not quite laugh out loud funny. I realize that the obvious comparison would be with Back to the Future, but the style of humor seemed like a more extreme version of Futurama. My cat doesn't usually have a long attention span, but he avidly watched the whole episode.

Definitely works better having seen it all, as there are a lot of callbacks and specific character things that are developed over time. Some pretty heavy and interesting stuff, even. But yeah, I would agree with "a more extreme version of Futurama" as a shorthand description.

Shellhead, for the first half of the first season AHS or so, my impressions were very similar to yours. Let me know what you think once it is done.

Watching Narcos season 3. I like it better than season 2 (which I liked a lot, but not as much as season1).

I've finished 2 episodes of Narcos season 3. I think I like it less, since it's an entirely different narrative now. But I still like it.

barrowdown wrote:

Shellhead wrote:

the_jake_1973 wrote: Shell,
My favorite season is AHS: Hotel. It has a legitimately touching finale and is well worth watching.

I've heard that Hotel is the best season of AHS. I am looking forward to it.

I have yet to see Roanoke, but for me the series are easily Asylym >>> Hotel > Murder House > Coven >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Freak Show.

Roanoke is garbage. And I think I may already be over Cult thanks to Sara Paulson's character. This could be due to the fact that I immediately hated the character with debilitating phobias. I'll give it a couple more episodes and see how it goes.

My series ranking is Hotel >>>> Murder House>Asylum(Quinto is great in both)>>Coven>>>>>>>>>>>>Freak Show>>>¹⁰⁰Roanoke

hotseatgames wrote: I've finished 2 episodes of Narcos season 3. I think I like it less, since it's an entirely different narrative now. But I still like it.

Yeah, the narrative and tone is different, but I was hooked once the story started moving along.
As much as I liked Escobar story, I pretty much knew the major milestones, here I am completely in the dark as to what's going to happen. Also, season 2 had some filler episodes and storylines, I am quite invested in every plot-line here. In particular there's one character walking a very thin line, got me on the edge of the seat.
Also, I like how Cali Cartel is so different from Escobar, and the show does a good job of showing how their operation works and how much more sophisticated it is compared to Escobar.
Also, it shows better than ever just how utterly stupid is the war on drugs. The whole bloodshed is put in motion by DEA.