so dipping a toe in solo and its honestly a bit goofy so far. it feels like a humorless dr who episode, its hard to describe.

also they got rashida jones attached and like thats their big splashy crown jewel and apparently shes literally in the first ep and thats it.

also and i say this from a place of love, when your project has a rapper with one name involved, people arent going to teach courses about your vision in a hundred years, lets put it like that.

im kinda struggling with barry as of last night.

not in a 'this is bad' way but in a 'this maybe isnt fun anymore and im not sure its going to be again in the 90 minutes we have left' way.

also something thats a little disconcerting is bill hader talking about how he more or less learned how to write barry by hanging out in the writers room for better call saul.

because the tonal parallels between them are too obvious to ignore, they are basically in lockstep with the drift from madcap to oppressive claustrophobia caliber tension.

like im not saying sally is derivative of kim, but there are some really jarring parallels between those characters that id probably fixate on even if i didnt know barry was there when they mapped out kim's trajectory.

small prices to pay for a great series but i really want this to be more than just a nosedive into consequences, that would feel really lazy to me if thats how we went out here.

like 'i dont want to do a 5th season because i have fuck you money to make elsewhere so lets just go super dark and have all these flawed characters drown in their own hubris and personality flaws and wrap a super dark fucking bow on all this and fuckit why not its art' lazy.

like we really did lose a whole ass season between him appearing in sally's apartment and the 8 year time jump and thats actually kind of a problem, no matter how well directed the next 3 eps are.

i want a pill i can take that wipes out all memories of one arbitrary tv series so i can watch alice in borderland again.

Barry is taking an odd turn for sure. I kept thinking they were in some imaginary flash forward world and that we would somehow magically be transported back to the apartment. The Raven is god tho.

Citadel is pretty lame but I can't not watch at this point. Finished Rabithole which was decent but totally full of holes. Also finished Netflix's The Recruit which was actually pretty good. Coming back for season 2. I still can't do Succession or Beef - it just reminds me of my life. Fatal Attraction is pretty good so far - if you haven't checked that out it's worth watching a few eps to see if you get into it.

Yea Recruit was ok. So far the most promising shows for me are Love & Death and White House Plumbers.

Other than those the last few months have been full of mediocre seasons. Kinda ok not offensively bad. Second seasons of Shadow & Bone, Carnivals Row and Sweet Tooth. Picard's 3rd season was pretty ok (don't bother s1 or s2).

Gotham Knights is still shit. Will Trent is semi retarded.

Daisy Jones & the Six was ok. Hate the documentary gimmick. It's almost always equivalent to narrator that wastes twice as much time.

Still haven't watched Mandalorian. I waste a lot of time, but everything I've heard about the show makes me think it's just not worth my time.

Love & Death is a Fargoesque thingie starring Wanda and pudgy dude I've seen often, but no idea about the name.

Dunno what White House Plumbers resembles. Woody Harrelson is in it and Cersei.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z778sJGKB3E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuKM2sTTmHg

Likely watched more Youtube thingies than actual tv shows.

Michael Reeves stuff has been solid...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USKD3vPD6ZA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_BlNA7bBxo

...the first video isn't even completely OT for this forum.

Random panel show clips...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F21mTojMCAc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q9IRpFGgPY

...I don't really like any of Bob Mortimers sketch shows, but random panel shit is mostly gold and he currently has a fishing show with Paul Whitehouse. Sean Lock is a deceased comedians comedian. Dunno if panel shows exist in any form in NA. They are mostly gameshows that only exist for stand-up comedians to riff off each other with occasional random celebrity sightings.

Oh forgot Johnny Vegas...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3RlWbzU8Hw

...guessing it's about 50/50 for native English speakers to understand what he is saying. I think I've just became used to semi incoherent dialects from UK and Ireland.

Then some long form stuff like...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nrTm0t3RGo&list=PLGQlAYt4dMO8KYPG5VcSvcXz rOCH66u-L

...four part Barney's Scarab Lord series that likely doesn't make any sense to people that haven't played WoW in Vanilla or the first Classic. In the context of Youtube cinematics (that barely exists anymore) it had insane production value mostly from burning like 1k hours and collaborations. For the record I played the first classic about 15 mins and then I remembered how clunky and time consuming it was. I was bamboozeled back for TBC and Wotlk almost entirely because of level boosts. There's nothing enjoyable about doing the same quests for very close to literal hundredth time. I've used every scam/meme leveling scheme that has existed in retail versions of the game.

Basically the series ramps up pretty hard in the last two parts. Makes infinitely more sense if you know the Scarab Lord event and/or classic Andy spergery.

succession / barry thoughts:


SPOILER

yeahhhhh like.

they both ended on reasonable / strong notes but neither really exceeded expectations.

succession....;

tom wins?

shiv blows up everyones dreams and morphs into her mother?

roman's parting thoughts = none of it matters, nothing is anything?

kendall has his life long ambition completely destroyed at the cusp of getting everything he ever wanted?

i respect the thematic consistency. logan said they werent serious people. i get that if theres a theme, its that. but the sheer cruelty of their final notes seemed unnecessary to me. like these are literally 3 damned souls who will likely never speak to each other again in any meaningful way, they lost the company and they lost each other.

and they had each other and the company and then shiv just deep sixed it all because at the last minute she decided kendall wasnt capable? i wish there had been something to prop that up before she went right to 'you killed someone'. like if she had said 'look, my equity is worth 1.5bn and if you fuck this place up i walk away with pennies on the dollar and i cant risk it because i dont have faith in you', ok that would carry the final notes of the show.

but to just watch her hand the keys to the kingdom to tom and lukas like somehow her nest egg is safer in their hands? i dont know. i guess it just wasnt that show. so be it i suppose.

but when i compare this to like... the series finale of 'the leftovers'.. its ...... unsatisfying.

and then coming in hot on its heels, barry.

i like where things landed for sally and her son. i like fuches' redemption. but gene going to prison for life? his son hating him and honestly believing he was a drug dealer who shot him on purpose? and then executing barry when barry was going to turn himself in to get gene off the hook? i mean, ok, i guess... but... tf... gene had his life destroyed like several times over, what tf was his crime exactly?

how does fuches scampering off into the sunset fit into the morality of this show? how does gene's destruction fit into the morality of this show?

im just saying, why bother to make these people sensitive, relatable, endearing, vulnerable, and human if their fates are going to be so arbitrary and essentially meaningless?

and i want to make this clear; im not saying the ending was bad. it categorically was not a bad series finale. but im also not saying its good. because 'good' to me is a bow tied to the whole package that kinda makes sense of it all. again, see 'the leftovers'. everything just felt kinda chaotic and nihilist and i dont remember this show being chaotic and nihilist up until this last season. so whatever.

maybe both endings will click for me later but for now im just kinda unimpressed.




🤷

Haven't caught up on Succession yet but Barry was kind of unsatisfying yet I didn't hate it. I did like his reaction prior to Gene shooting him in the head - that gave me a chuckle. For a second I thought they were going to pull a Sopranos so the fact that they wrapped up the story was at least positive. The characters in the show were all deeply flawed so I don't hate that Gene got some measure of comeuppance. He did murder Barry after all. Noho Hank might be one of my favorite bad guys ever. fin