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Previous thread was closed so thought I’d start the new one.
ReplyFYC: Better Call Saul, The English and The Good Fight in all categories including Emily Blunt, Bob Odenkirk, Christine Baranski and Rhea Seehorn.
My very unpopular opinion is that Perry Mason (2020) goes HARD and it was one of the best series that year.
Hoping s2 is just as good or better.ReplyCopy URLFYC:
The HBO darlings everywhere (The Last of Us, Succession, The White Lotus, Perry Mason, Somebody Somewhere, White House Plumbers, Love & Death);
The Apple gang (Bad Sisters, Slow Horses, Shrinking, Ted Lasso, Black Bird);
Poker Face, The Great, The Bear, Evil (especially Katja Herbers) and The Good Fight.Please! These gays, they're trying to murder me!
I vastly prefer episodes like “Please Hold My Hand” and “Left Behind” in The Last of Us to those like “Endure and Survive” and this most recent installment “When We Are In Need”. Part of the show’s strength is when it focuses on the characters around it and the A to B points that Joel and Ellie go across. It provides for riveting character based storytelling where we learn about the characters we’re watching on screen, the traumas they’ve been through in their pasts and the layers beneath them just as they’re finding them out themselves. With this type of storytelling not only do we discover more about the people we’re seeing on screen but the stakes of the show are raised in a way that makes you genuinely tense and scared.
But then with episodes like the latter two it’s almost like the show completely ignores how the earlier episodes have been crafted and just descends towards clichéd violent tropes that at certain points can honestly be constituted as torture porn. I’m not someone who hates violent scenes (I think they can be utilised quite well narratives and can sometimes be very meaningfully choreographed) and I know that this is a show that is based on a video game in which these plot points do happen and these scenes occur. But at the very least you’d expect that as with any of the other episodes in the season that there would be some sort of meaningful build up and that these scenes would be accompanied by you feeling some sort of emotional connection to the horrors you’re witnessing on screen and you’d feel that something has actually been achieved. Instead it just feels so manipulative and lacks substance in a way that makes it seem like the violence was used gratuitously. It perplexes me why more acclaim is showered on episodes like those two compared to others in the season when if it was quite literally any other show the internet would be set ablaze with Twitter threads and op-eds on it going too far.
ReplyCopy URLFYC: Better Call Saul, The English and The Good Fight in all categories including Emily Blunt, Bob Odenkirk, Christine Baranski and Rhea Seehorn.
I vastly prefer episodes like “Please Hold My Hand” and “Left Behind” in The Last of Us to those like “Endure and Survive” and this most recent installment “When We Are In Need”. Part of the show’s strength is when it focuses on the characters around it and the A to B points that Joel and Ellie go across. It provides for riveting character based storytelling where we learn about the characters we’re watching on screen, the traumas they’ve been through in their pasts and the layers beneath them just as they’re finding them out themselves. With this type of storytelling not only do we discover more about the people we’re seeing on screen but the stakes of the show are raised in a way that makes you genuinely tense and scared. But then with episodes like the latter two it’s almost like the show completely ignores how the earlier episodes have been crafted and just descends towards clichéd violent tropes that at certain points can honestly be constituted as torture porn. I’m not someone who hates violent scenes (I think they can be utilised quite well narratives and can sometimes be very meaningfully choreographed) and I know that this is a show that is based on a video game in which these plot points do happen and these scenes occur. But at the very least you’d expect that as with any of the other episodes in the season that there would be some sort of meaningful build up and that these scenes would be accompanied by you feeling some sort of emotional connection to the horrors you’re witnessing on screen and you’d feel that something has actually been achieved. Instead it just feels so manipulative and lacks substance in a way that makes it seem like the violence was used gratuitously. It perplexes me why more acclaim is showered on episodes like those two compared to others in the season when if it was quite literally any other show the internet would be set ablaze with Twitter threads and op-eds on it going too far.
I have to say, I mostly agree with all of this. For me, the show is at its best when it’s doing subtler character building (which is why my 2 favorite episodes by a long shot are Long Long Time and Left Behind). I am fairly sensitive to violence, but I can tolerate it when it’s paired with impactful storytelling (which is why I actually quite liked Endure and Survive, though it’s not my favorite episode by any means). However, I was not a fan of When We Are in Need at all because until the shocking stuff happened I was kind of bored? Like I don’t know, I wasn’t even remotely invested in any of these new characters and Ellie and Joel were not doing anything all that interesting? I like their characters when they’re interacting with other characters or with each other (I loved the scene at the end despite otherwise not liking this episode), but I don’t find them super captivating on their own. And then the shocking stuff happened and I just really hated watching all of that because not only was it just really hard to watch but it was also like, after being bored most of the episode it felt like I was being forced to be engaged? Of course, I’m obviously in the minority here and I don’t expect anyone to agree with me to this extent, but I’m just not super huge on a lot of the storytelling choices being made in this show. I wish we got a lot more smaller scenes fleshing out Joel and Ellie’s dynamic rather than the apocalypse stuff that I really don’t care about in all honesty?
And on the second part, watching this show has been kind of a surreal experience because I don’t think I’ve ever “not gotten the hype” to this extent. Like, it is genuinely difficult for me to find any sort of criticism for this show since the conversation around it has just been “masterpiece” shouted back and forth. Not that I’m upset people are loving a show they were clearly super excited for!! But the overwhelming love for this show has felt a bit suffocating for me to the point where I don’t really like sharing my opinions on it lest someone respond to them with “but why don’t you love this episode though, it was the best one yet!” or “wait, you’re not in love with this series? why?!”.
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Succession, Industry, Ted Lasso, Dead to Me, and Fleishman Is in Trouble in all categories!Don’t know if it is unpopular but it sucks seeing Hacks s02 underperforming. IMO it was much better than the debut season.
Oh honestly same, I liked Hacks S1 but Hacks S2 was a step up on basically every conceivable way imo. Kinda bummed it’s been doing significantly worse.
At least it rightfully won WGA Comedy Episode (don’t care that it was juried, it was deserved)!
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Succession, Industry, Ted Lasso, Dead to Me, and Fleishman Is in Trouble in all categories!But the overwhelming love for this show has felt a bit suffocating for me to the point where I don’t really like sharing my opinions on it lest someone respond to them with “but why don’t you love this episode though, it was the best one yet!” or “wait, you’re not in love with this series? why?!”.
I’ve had that feeling with a number of shows but I agree.
For what it’s worth I do wonder if a lot of the online hype is from people who primarily game and don’t watch a lot of TV. It’s good, but like, every episode isn’t revolutionary, and it has pacing issues. I think the Metacritic score is a bit nuts.
ReplyCopy URLI enjoyed Poker Face when it first started airing but it’s gotten really old really fast.. I can’t imagine watching multiple seasons of it.
I think I’d agree if it weren’t weekly. I kinda look forward to my little murder mystery every Thursday. Also, at least they change up the formula a little every episode, so you never really know what’s gonna happen.
ReplyCopy URLI enjoyed Poker Face when it first started airing but it’s gotten really old really fast.. I can’t imagine watching multiple seasons of it.
I like Poker Face for what it is but I find the awards posturing around it more obnoxious than most. I kind of hate when shows unique selling point is “oh, this is a better version of X”. Hated it with HoTD v GoT too. Hate it with Andor and Mando.
ReplyCopy URLJean Smart’s performance in Hacks is overrated.It’s great but Kaley Cuoco was better than her both times.
I quite like Jean Smart in Hacks, and I do think she deserved her Emmys. That being said, I also definitely preferred Kaley Cuoco by a significant margin both times. She was just phenomenal in that show.
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Succession, Industry, Ted Lasso, Dead to Me, and Fleishman Is in Trouble in all categories!My unpopular opinion with Jean Smart in Hacks is that she absolutely deserved her first win but didn’t deserve her second at all. She wasn’t bad in the second season by any means (this is Jean Smart we’re talking about) but I just thought she was merely ok in season 2 and didn’t match up to the work of the other comedy actress performances last year. Helene Yorke, Natasha Lyonne, Sarah Lancashire and Bridgett Everett were all better than her from outside the nominations pool and Elle Fanning and especially Kaley Cuoco were so far ahead of anyone else last year. Depending on my mood on some days I even prefer Brosnahan’s performance in Maisel season 4 to Smart’s in Hacks season 2.
ReplyCopy URLFYC: Better Call Saul, The English and The Good Fight in all categories including Emily Blunt, Bob Odenkirk, Christine Baranski and Rhea Seehorn.
I am halfway through the last season of The Sopranos and I have to unfortunately say I find the show to be extremely overrated. When Tony (James Gandolfini) and Carmela (Edie Falco) aren’t on my screen, I instantly get bored, not only because it’s slow-paced, but mostly because I can’t find a way to connect to the other characters and there are just so many of them and even after 6 seasons they still feel pretty much irrelevant.
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