Random TV Show Thoughts

[mnkykungfu]

Quick thoughts on Blood of Zeus Season 2.... I think I wrote about season 1 here already, and it's a fairly complete arc on its own so there was no feeling that a sequel was coming. This 2nd season is completely the opposite. Most of the episodes spend a lot of time reflecting back on the first season, either filling in backstory leading up to specific events, filling in what other characters were doing during those main events, or having the main characters now deal with their mental states after those main events. Honestly, this approach didn't really work for me, as it feels so beholden to the first season that it's impossible to be impressed by it for what it attempts to build on.

By the last couple episodes, this season does feel like it has its own arc, but it's abruptly cut off with no payoff. A complete cliffhanger ending, I didn't even realize there were no more episodes left until I logged in to Netflix and couldn't find the "next" one in my queue. So clearly S1 was so popular that this just get greenlit for a follow-up 2 seasons at least, but the way the brothers have written this makes it feel pointless to watch until the next season is out. That said, it is still a really cool art style with good voice-acting and a nice take on some of the Greek gods. This story doesn't have that "lost classic myth" feel that the first season has, but I don't know... once S3 is made, maybe the whole thing will feel like a worthy follow-up.

If you like Greek mythology or just animation generally, I'd still highly recommend checking out Blood of Zeus Season 1.

 

[WilliamRedRobin]

I'm staying at a hotel and watching actual, honest to God, broadcast  TV, like we used to back in Queen Victoria's reign.
I never realised how bad the quality is compared to streaming until I hadn't seen it in a few years. I don't usually notice video quality, but I don't think I could ever go back to this. Especially not on a big screen.

 

[unfair]

how bad the quality is compared to streaming

Technically rabbit ears can get you better quality than streaming for 1080p content - depends on the bitrate - the cable providers quality were usually worse while the OTA signal was crystal clear 1080p, so whatever situation you're encountering is likely a technical or regional difficulty. Doesn't sound like the OTA ever upgraded to 4k, but god, that NBC 1080p was clean and sharp compared to Comcast's distribution of the same content.

 

[WilliamRedRobin]

I should qualify that I'm talking about Freeview in the UK. Sky, or other subscription based television probably have much better quality and more HD channels. Even then I guess it could be an issue with the ariel or the hotel's setup.

 

[Gaith]

Re: the one-and-done 2022 sci-fi series The Peripheral:

Amazon Producers: "Hi Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, you created the Westworld TV show, which started out strong due to a grabby premise (a Western theme park with realistic androids) and a clear first-season focus (said androids are starting to gain sentience, and when they do, there'll be mayhem). It also had beloved actors like Anthony Hopkins and Ed Harris. However, viewers were put off by the vague stakes and twisty, intricately plotted timelines of the second season, such that season three had about half of season two's viewers, and had garnered just about no buzz, despite airing at the peak of the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. So, what have you got for us this time?"

Nolan and Joy: "Well, we've got a show without a grabby premise or a clear first focus, only one somewhat recognizable star, vague stakes, and twisty, intricately plotted timelines across several different realities. And it'll cost late-stage Game of Thrones money, at about $20m per episode."

Amazon Producers: "Sounds like a surefire winner to us!"


... Congratulations to the series for getting referenced in the latest Red Letter Media gag video.

 

[WilliamRedRobin]

I keep seeing the trailer for Sweetpea and a bunch of articles saying it's the best show ever (like all those other shows), but idk.

It just makes me think of that Brooklyn 99 bit "Cool motive; still murder", except without the "cool motive" part.

 

[unfair]

I keep seeing the trailer for Sweetpea and a bunch of articles saying it's the best show ever (like all those other shows), but idk.

It just makes me think of that Brooklyn 99 bit "Cool motive; still murder", except without the "cool motive" part.

That actress was good in Wildlike and Sweetbitter so I figure it's worth a look, haven't had time to try it yet though.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Griselda (2024)
Sofia Vergara uglies-up for this, but is still nowhere near looking like the tough, butch, killer in real life. 2 of the 3 Narcos creators decide to turn this into a sympathetic girl power story, which is... questionable. But aside from the tiresome "women run the world" heavy-handedness permeating the episodes, it was more just the dumbed-down writing and telenovela vibes that stopped me from getting into this. I honestly just plowed through as HW to practice my Spanish listening, and then wrote this report (except in Spanish) for my tutor.

 

[unfair]

I keep seeing the trailer for Sweetpea and a bunch of articles saying it's the best show ever (like all those other shows), but idk.

It just makes me think of that Brooklyn 99 bit "Cool motive; still murder", except without the "cool motive" part.

Just circling back on this, did end up watching it - well acted but a bit one-note as far as the plot, and not particularly enjoyable at least to my taste since it revolves around people generally being horrible. I think you could probably compress it down to movie length and not miss anything, it's a rather slow burn. So while a lot of elements are decently well done I'm not sure most real people would legitimately put it in their top 10 shows, much less best ever.

 

[unfair]

Just skipped my way through 1923 last night, because I wasn't super enamored with the settler/western story, and the indian girl story was okay-ish, but I quite enjoyed the Africa hunter story (the show basically has three almost entirely separate stories that it switches between). Unfortunately it's all left quite unresolved and definitely needs an additional season at least, hopefully they don't cancel the show after telling half a story like some do.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Platonic (2023)
I was just telling my friend about this short Seth Rogen/Rose Byrne vehicle and he said it "sounds like Neighbors but with different setups for the plot of each episode" so he hadn't been too interested in watching. Realistically, I think: well, yeah. That's probably exactly how this show was sold. Rogen and Byrne had great chemistry in those films, so I'm sure an Apple TV series about them getting up to shenanigans was an easy pitch.

Rogen plays a recently-divorced brewmaster who's now entering a mid-life crisis. Byrne plays his supposedly-stable former high-school best friend who is a housewife with the perfect family. She contacts him to try to patch things up since they had fallen apart due to her not liking his now-ex-wife. The show then becomes about each person challenging the beliefs and self-deceptions of the other person, forcing them to confront how stuck in their ways they are and ultimately, hopefully, ending with each becoming better and more-fulfilled people.

But really, it's about them getting drunk, f'ing up, and saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

10 episodes at less than 35 minutes each is supremely bingeable to me, and I tore through this. It's light and fun and has strong performances. I saw myself in the characters more than once, and only regret that it has a fairly conclusive ending. The middle 8 episodes are pretty unpredictable, really feeling like each dealing with their own plot, and then the final episode suddenly brings everything together. I could've watched several seasons of this show.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Agatha All Along (2024)
In my full review for this, I talk about how they really should've used the title "Agatha Harkness and The Witches' Road" and how all the title switching before landing on one that's pure member-berries and has nothing to do with the current series is really just emblematic of the show as a whole.

Marvel has made a big deal in the press about how they're "moving away from long-form stories" on Disney+ series and instead running them like normal TV. It honestly seems -much like this show's title- like a desperate re-branding attempt more than any significant change in the shows. WandaVision was arguably just as episodic as this show, and Loki felt very much written with those episodic beats. Maybe the only Disney+ show that truly felt like it was telling one big movie story was The Falcon & The Winter Soldier...which might be one reason I like that show so much better than most of the others.

Maybe the biggest change with this show isn't honestly the structure or how the story was broken down or the budget or effects, but more the overall tone and focus... which is just as uneven as normal network TV. This feels very much like all the writers and directors whose names you've never heard of all working on their own little piece of this show, resulting in a hodge podge of tones and ideas that kind of sort of come together but barely feel like they were planned that way. If you're looking for a show with that enjoyable trash TV cheese feeling like Charmed or Supernatural, you've got your new version here.

For me, that was absolutely not what I was looking for, and I ended this thing feeling like Aubrey Plaza had really been the only reason to watch. I very much hope her character becomes a bigger part of the MCU and is used in more things, with better writers. There's a lot of potential there. But if I never see any of these other characters again, I'll be completely happy.

 

[tremault]

Agatha All Along (2024)
In my full review for this, I talk about how they really should've used the title "Agatha Harkness and The Witches' Road" and how all the title switching before landing on one that's pure member-berries and has nothing to do with the current series is really just emblematic of the show as a whole.

Marvel has made a big deal in the press about how they're "moving away from long-form stories" on Disney+ series and instead running them like normal TV. It honestly seems -much like this show's title- like a desperate re-branding attempt more than any significant change in the shows. WandaVision was arguably just as episodic as this show, and Loki felt very much written with those episodic beats. Maybe the only Disney+ show that truly felt like it was telling one big movie story was The Falcon & The Winter Soldier...which might be one reason I like that show so much better than most of the others.

Maybe the biggest change with this show isn't honestly the structure or how the story was broken down or the budget or effects, but more the overall tone and focus... which is just as uneven as normal network TV. This feels very much like all the writers and directors whose names you've never heard of all working on their own little piece of this show, resulting in a hodge podge of tones and ideas that kind of sort of come together but barely feel like they were planned that way. If you're looking for a show with that enjoyable trash TV cheese feeling like Charmed or Supernatural, you've got your new version here.

For me, that was absolutely not what I was looking for, and I ended this thing feeling like Aubrey Plaza had really been the only reason to watch. I very much hope her character becomes a bigger part of the MCU and is used in more things, with better writers. There's a lot of potential there. But if I never see any of these other characters again, I'll be completely happy.

I feel like I enjoyed it for the most part, rather unexpectedly I might add..... until the last episode, where t seemed like they threw everything in the trash just to have one big 'gotcha' which really wasn't very rewarding or clever IMO.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Reveal message: SPOILERS FOR AGATHA ALL ALONG...

Well, you probably remember from out talks about Multiverse of Madness and Love and Thunder that I've found Marvel's tone management really problematic in the past few years. They'll be trying to do a deadly dramatic story about suffering and loss (like for Wanda, or Thor) and then the character is being flippant and the film's tone is abruptly cheesy and goofy. It totally takes me out of the story and makes me lose all investment in the characters.

Marvel used to be quite good at balancing telling a serious story but allowing for moments of levity. It's what set them apart from DC films at first. But by the time we get to this series, the tone is just outright CAMPY. Like, Rocky Horror Picture Show campy. And yet they continuously bring up super serious elements like women fearing for their lives against the patriarchy, the loss of parents, the loss of a child.

So when the show goes from a serious beginning episode to yadda yadda into the episodic hijinks, I immediately started tuning out. Then amongst all the bickering side characters that get no actual depth or development, I have nobody to care about accomplishing their goals. Certainly not Agatha, who never once seems like a good person. The reveal with "Teen" was a nice surprise, but not exactly unexpected, but then they just... keep... hammering... on... the... twists:

Oh, he's Billy! Oh, he's dead! Oh, "Rio" is literally Death (how the F is Agatha supposed to have started that relationship?)! Oh, Billy is somehow powerful enough to literally manipulate reality into whatever he wants it to be on a minute-by-minute basis! And oh: Agatha's actually an evil bitch!....oh wait, no that wasn't a twist at all.

I mean, the ending 2 episodes of the show were just like a showcase of how badly written the whole thing was. You can't just throw in a bunch of seriousness at the end after not developing it at all, and then have an audience move from "ha ha silly singing witches!" to "this murderer needs to kill this other mass murderer before Death does". It's just such a blatant emotional ploy, I found it really facile and cloying.

 

[Gaith]

^ No love for the MCU D+ thread?

 

[mnkykungfu]

Eh, for me honestly it would be toxic. I'm almost constantly disappointed, so it's better not to dwell on it too much. Just post final thoughts if I watch the series (I don't watch them all anymore) and be done with it.

 

[tremault]

Reveal message: SPOILERS FOR AGATHA ALL ALONG...

Well, you probably remember from out talks about Multiverse of Madness and Love and Thunder that I've found Marvel's tone management really problematic in the past few years. They'll be trying to do a deadly dramatic story about suffering and loss (like for Wanda, or Thor) and then the character is being flippant and the film's tone is abruptly cheesy and goofy. It totally takes me out of the story and makes me lose all investment in the characters.

Marvel used to be quite good at balancing telling a serious story but allowing for moments of levity. It's what set them apart from DC films at first. But by the time we get to this series, the tone is just outright CAMPY. Like, Rocky Horror Picture Show campy. And yet they continuously bring up super serious elements like women fearing for their lives against the patriarchy, the loss of parents, the loss of a child.

So when the show goes from a serious beginning episode to yadda yadda into the episodic hijinks, I immediately started tuning out. Then amongst all the bickering side characters that get no actual depth or development, I have nobody to care about accomplishing their goals. Certainly not Agatha, who never once seems like a good person. The reveal with "Teen" was a nice surprise, but not exactly unexpected, but then they just... keep... hammering... on... the... twists:

Oh, he's Billy! Oh, he's dead! Oh, "Rio" is literally Death (how the F is Agatha supposed to have started that relationship?)! Oh, Billy is somehow powerful enough to literally manipulate reality into whatever he wants it to be on a minute-by-minute basis! And oh: Agatha's actually an evil bitch!....oh wait, no that wasn't a twist at all.

I mean, the ending 2 episodes of the show were just like a showcase of how badly written the whole thing was. You can't just throw in a bunch of seriousness at the end after not developing it at all, and then have an audience move from "ha ha silly singing witches!" to "this murderer needs to kill this other mass murderer before Death does". It's just such a blatant emotional ploy, I found it really facile and cloying.

I think that sums it up really well. I guess I just rolled with it, it wasn't as offensively written as something like Ahsoka or Obi Wan, but at the same time it was irreverent and without direction. As you say. I just enjoyed each episode on the surface level. I share your approach.

In the meantime, people were talking about Penguin, which I'd completely ignored due to TV spin-off fatigue..... only to find that it was an incredibly well done show.

 

[asterixsmeagol]

I finished Agatha All Along over the weekend and I have similar complaints. Partway through the series I just stopped watching because it was boring. House after house after house just repeating the same basic story felt like a cheap way to stretch out an already dull story. But by the end I was mostly left wondering why any of it happened or why the viewer should care. I guess the basic plot was that Agatha has been telling witches a fake story about the Witches Road for centuries, so that she can steal their power because she has to*, but it turns out that this time Teen, who is actually Billy Maximoff, has been the one in control and it's actually all real. And also his soul got brought back to the MCU and put into some other kid's body who died in a car crash. For some reason. And also Death is there and she's mad at Agatha or something, I guess because of something with her son not dying when he was supposed to hundreds of years ago? Maybe? And then Death tries to kill Agatha, but Teen shows up and saves her, but then she gives him up, but then it was fake, but then she dies, but then she comes back as a ghost even though nobody else did, and then they're friends, and then they're going to go find Tommy. What? Why?

*Also why? Did I miss that or was it just another bit of exposition with no real reason behind it?

 

[mnkykungfu]

^re: the magic-stealing.... they haven't really defined this, but it seems to me like Agatha's actually a mutant? Like, besides all the magic study and stuff, her natural ability is just to be a magic succubus. Like Bishop but for magic energy. So this inherently made her "hated and feared", as the muties like to say, and due to her treatment by other witches, she turned against all of them and became like the Anti-Witch. Which totally does not excuse her just mass-murdering witches for the hell of it. I mean, they could have made it that she was using their energy to keep her son alive, who didn't have enough vitality to live on his own. And then it would have been really sweet and poetic that he asks her to stop killing witches, even though it would kill him. But you know, this show was nothing if not missing the easy, better writing opportunities that were right in front of it.

 

[mnkykungfu]

ON THE OTHER HAND:

X-Men '97 (2024)
I think this might just be the best cartoon ever made. I hesitate to even call it a cartoon. It's ostensibly picking up directly from the old X-Men cartoon which ended in 1997, which I just watched all the way through and wrote about back in this post. It has an update of that same classic theme song, same intro title sequence and end credit sequence, basically the same character designs, and even a lot of the same voice actors. The finale of that show left the X-Men without a Professor X to guide them, but with a world that was maybe more sympathetic to mutants than ever before. It was a bittersweet, hopeful place to end...

So this picks up exactly from there, with Cyclops leading the team, who mostly is feeling a bit like they can relax and stop fearing that they'll be hunted and hated at every step. But then the inciting incident comes: (mild SPOILER)- in Professor X's last will and testament, he gave everything he owned to Magneto and charged him with caretaking his school "for gifted youngsters", his resources, and his dream of peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants. Suffice to say that the X-Men do not take this well.

This is but one of many famous storylines that this season adapts directly from the comic books. In fact, it's basically like a run on the X-Men comics has been faithfully brought to "life". The tone is not really like the rock-em-sock-em '90s cartoon, but more of the comic book sweet spot between tweens, teens, and geeky young adults. The episodes are about 10 minutes longer each, which really allows them to dig in, to have more dialogue, more character moments, more fleshing out of the story points in each episode. At 34 minutes each, you can do a 2-parter that feels essentially like one of the DCAU movies, only, you know, good.

I was super-impressed by how much more mature the dialogue is in this version, and how much they really embrace complex, more adult themes. The original kids' show had a lot of deeper stuff percolating in the background, but here they have full-on lengthy conversations about, for example: would you want your kid to be born a mutant? Would losing your abilities be like losing a limb, or becoming normal? Is physical touch necessary for a relationship? Can a relationship survive betrayal? How do you "come out" as a mutant to your parents? Etc. All this is normal stuff in the comics, but kind of got sublimated in the old series in favor of lots of energy blasts.

But as far as the action goes: that too gets a huge upgrade! The animation here has so much care put into it, clearly a much higher budget than the old show. Tons more in-betweener work for fluidity, very anime-inspired dynamic key frames, super consistent key matching and color work. They show lots of the X-Men using teamwork with their powers, showing why they're a great team, showing why Cyclops is a field leader badass, why Marvel Girl/Phoenix is an absolute force... in fact, basically all the characters get a real upgrade in terms of what their capabilities are shown to be, with the possible exception of Wolverine, whose healing factor they don't really push. But they DO let him get a lot more bloody and visceral with his claws than they'd ever allow on a morning cartoon!

Mostly though, I was impressed with the writing in this, with the stakes and the pathos. There's an episode in Genosha that I genuinely cried at, it was actually touching. And the voice-acting is very helpful to sell that stuff. The only real complaint I have in that regard is that the original actress for Rogue is back, and she sounds quite different now. I mean, in the show, Rogue is a year older, still in her early 20s. But her voice now sounds like she's got 30 years and a pack a day of cigarettes worth of mileage. And not in a sexy, bluesy sort of way, just... old. I'm not a fan. But everyone else is honestly pretty great, and the show was just a joy to watch. I can't recommend it highly enough, whether you catch up with the original series or not.