Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

There's a documentary on there called Minimalism which is about how extremely good looking people with MacBook pros can feel better about their lives by reducing the amount of possessions they have. Quite a good hate-watch if you're in that mood.

i think i read about that one guy in the new york times. wanted to plop him down in the middle of the Amazon jungle with a penknife and a granola bar.

whatever happened to becoming a monk? used to be a thing. just walk away from it all. didn't have to make a big deal about it.

I think you can do without a couple of limbs too

Oh, you can watch that stuff all the time on regular tv, what with the deluge of tiny homes shows (which I've always felt would be much improved with the addition of a check-in 6-12 months later, when the couple has unsurprisingly divorced because they invested very little forethought in what it actually means to constantly be within thirty feet of your partner).

I do have a troublesome limb

tiny homes? you mean apartments?

no, there's an actual number of people (all of whom have probably been interviewed or the subject of an article) who live in houses the size of a storage shed or shack. some of them are a little wiser and just have an airstream trailer or something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_house_movement

"the forest is my living room"

split the difference and put your tiny house in a wal-mart parking lot

put it in yr pipe & smoke it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXKqdi0Wp0E

i assumed morbs was being ironic

So, I started watching "One Day at a Time", the new Netflix sitcom they just added, and it's pretty good! It's about a Cuban-American single mother living with her two kids and widowed mom, and apparently it's a remake of a '70s sitcom of the same name, but I'm not familiar with that. Anyway, like their "Fuller House" remake it's very much in the old-school sitcom mold, with a laugh-track, characters who are clearly defined types clashing with each other, a wacky boss, etc.

But this one is way more progressive, at least based on the first four or five episodes I watched. The teenage daughter is a feminist, and in the first two episodes they already tackle sexist traditions, wage differences between men and women, and mansplaining. And there's a really good episode where the protagonist's secular worldview clashes with her mom's deep Catholicism, I wasn't expecting a sitcom to deal with this in a serious manner, but it does.

Anyway, the show is (co)written by Gloria Calderón Kellett (who also writes for iZombie, my favourite series on telly right now), who is of Cuban descent too, so I like it how it's unafraid to do broad humour on Latinx sensibilities without reverting to obvious stereotypes. Even the conservative Catholic abuela (played by Rita Moreno) gets way more depth than you'd expect. So yeah, seems like a good series, I guess I'll binge watch the rest of it this week.

laugh track kinda kills it for me but i'm pleased that norman lear is still in the game

I read an article about the series, apparently it's not a laugh track but an actual live audience.

It was a bit distracting at first, but I was willing to accept it as a part of the series classic sitcom sensibility. Like, it really feels like they wanted to do something that could be formally from the '80s, but with a '10s awareness.

And the classic form somehow makes it more affecting when they go deep into issues that mostly weren't addressed in those '80s sitcoms. If the aesthetics were more contemporary, somehow I don't feel the juxtaposition would work as well. Like, if the classic sitcom form is some sort of a heightened representation of the world, here they show that it can be more inclusive than we thought.

And this is even more striking when you compare it to Fuller House, which really does use the classic form as if nothing had changed, as pure nostalgia comfort food.

All qualitative questions aside, I don't understand the branding of that show at all. It's a remake that doesn't resemble the original in any significant way and the original doesn't seem to be much of a nostalgia trigger, so...why not just make it its own thing?

To the extent that he's actually involved (he has to be like 117 by now), I am glad that Norman Lear's back, though. If not him, we definitely need somebody doing what he used to do about now.

the original doesn't seem to be much of a nostalgia trigger

I have no idea why, but a bunch of people in their early 20s think it's the greatest thing ever? I have no idea. I have some fond memories of a few tv shows but that one would never make my list

Huh. That is very weird information you've just related. Like...how on earth did people in their early 20s even discover or see the original?

I guess really there are zero sitcoms I remember from young childhood that I have fond memories of so maybe I'm the weird one here.

I watched the original and didn't think much of it

reruns/syndication I think

I remember a handful of shows in syndication I only ever watched when I was on summer vacation as a kid. We didn't have cable tv, but a local channel would play Bonanza/Little House on the Prairie/Matlock in the mornings (lol)

btw I will rep for Maaaaaaatloooooock

One day at a time was definitely one of my main shows as a kid

Okay, I'm now six episodes into this, and so far I think it's great! Without spoiling too much, in one episode they address veterans' PTSD in a way that made me cry, and another one turns from a goofy hijinks comedy into a big pro-immigration rant, which may be a bit jarring story-wise, but considering when and by whom the series is made, it's totally justified.

There's still plenty of funny jokes and gags, but I like how the writers aren't afraid to go all serious and discard all humor when the plot calls for it. Not every episode deals with such serious issues though, so it doesn't feel like it's all soapboxing.

xp to tuomas, "live studio audience" is not much different than laugh track these days tbh.

i watched the first ep & it's very enjoyable

My favourite character is the brash feminist teen daughter, it'd be sooo easy to make her into a caricature, but they don't, and I'm loving that. Plus the actor portraying her is great at adding some credible insecurity in her performance, so she feels like a real teen and not just a mouthpiece.

is valerie bertanelli in it? if not, dont care

The finale of One Day at a Time made me cry twice within five minutes, and this is supposed to be comedy! It's not subtle at all with its morals, but I don't think it needs to be. The first season was pretty much best traditional sitcom I've seen since the early seasons of How I Met Your Mother. IMO everyone who appreciates this kind of stuff and not just more postmodern/cynical sitcoms like Arrested Development should watch it.

Hopefully Netflix will make more of it, if corny and safe nostalgia food like Fuller House gets a second season, so should this.

i might try it. i don't get why it has to be based on ODAAT either. netflix can show whatever it wants. it doesn't really need a gimmick. the original show had some good moments early on but mackenzie got really bad/sad and ann romano could be one of the most annoying scolds/wet blankets on t.v. most people don't remember that it ran forever and had lots of choice jump the shark moments in its later days. it became completely terrible with the teen kid and endless boring schneider sub-plots. valerie was the only reason to watch it. she should have had her own early 80's working girl sitcom.

it was always weird when a show that started in the 70's ended up in the 80's.

it ended with schneider and circus people which was going to be a spin-off where schneider joins the circus. which, if it had been successful, might have changed the course of young corey feldman's life.

it had the EXACT same trajectory as Alice. single mom show that started at the same time and had some 70's realness to it that became some bizarre cartoon that went on way too long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM2frSIqhIw

does a tuomas watch Black-ish? kinda feel like Black-ish and Bob's Burgers are the best sitcoms on american t.v. at the moment. if Bob's Burgers counts as a sitcom.

i finally gave bob's burgers another chance and i love it!

kinda scary, but i looked to see what was on when One Day At A Time premiered and these are the shows I watched regularly or semi-regularly that year. apparently, i did not need a computer or iphone to get my screen time. this also doesn't count the saturday and sunday morning/daytime t.v. i watched.

the muppet show
hardy boys/nancy drew mysteries
six million dollar man (ruled my world)
the sonny and cher show (last hurrah for them, i think)
rhoda
phyllis
the captain and tenille (never missed it)
the feather and father gang (actually sad when this got cancelled!)
the jeffersons
maude
shields and yarnell (never missed it)
little house on the prairie
happy days
laverne & shirley
eight is enough
mash
one day at a time
family
the bionic woman
baretta
charlie's angels
holmes & yo-yo
mr. t and tina
blansky's beauties
fish
starsky and hutch
the mary tyler moore show (last year, i think)
the bob newhart show
the carol burnett show
emergency!
good times
all in the family
alice
c.p.o. sharkey
the life and times of grizzly adams
welcome back, kotter
barney miller
what's happening
three's company
the waltons
donny & marie
sanford and son
chico and the man
rockford files
quincy, m.e.

finished watching Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and I BLOODY LOVED IT!

Might have to go back and watch it all over again.

I was watching all of those except for four or five of them. Somehow.

Xpost

I apparently missed one and a half seasons of Always Sunny in Philadelphia. There were a few clunky episodes, but overall they're still really drawing this shtick out.

is that over yet? I saw that Sweet Dee stars in her own Fox sitcom now

I guess the new season premiered last week. Still going.

DGHDA was bonkers but brilliant.

Gives me hope that Max Landis won't make a pig's ear of the American Werewolf in London reboot.

xps

Watched season 3 of Peaky Blinders recently. Almost didn't because I was kinda over it and the music is annoying for the most part, but this was the most enjoyable one. Some pretty clever plotting imo.

im torn between whether its OTT-ness is "goofy and fun" or "exhausting"

I've never seen Peaky Blinders but Taboo (the new Tom Hardy show written by Stephen Knight) provokes similar feelings

love it when Tom Hardy and his creaky voice pop up in PB.

American Werewolf in London reboot

First I had heard of this, am now in a rage

TBF, it's presumably with his dad's blessing.

well I suppose he does feel obliged to support his idiot son's terrible ideas

cyrus and i are watching the new lemony snicket. cyrus loves neil patrick harris to death. it's fun. joan cusack! and robin sparkles!