Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

I do love being able to choose when I start and stop but I can rarely watch just one series in a straight shot like my friends do. I usually take a two day break even when I jump in and often struggle to get past the middle episodes (even with good shows).

Neanderthal, I commend you - sounds like you don't waste as much time as me

:-)

I did rewatch almost 3 seasons of Breaking Bad w/ a girl one weekend but it's cos I was trying to get laid

(did not happen). but idk when it's with someone else I have an easier time doing it - I live alone tho so that rarely happens.

trigger warning: in the middle of the new rory scovel special there is a skit with him and jack white. i had to turn it off last night and missed the end of his special. but it wasn't that hot anyway. it was okay.

i feel like i have been amuuuuuuuuuuused by a lot of recent specials but not a lot of LOLing going on. maybe i'm just jaded. i mean the occasional LOL. but no sustained hilarity. everyone is so technical now. like comedy grad students. hope live comedy doesn't turn into the iowa writers workshop.

the impact of the internet has to count for something. all of a sudden people can study every comedian ever at length.

lots of these Netflix shows (and a lot of "golden age" tv shows) are complete trash, i think the AV Clubbing/Sepinwalling of tv shows gives the impression for a lot of them that they possess a quality and usefulness that's non-existent. i try with a lot of these shows, really. i guess one good thing about this new era is that the seasons are 10-13 episodes long. i tried watching Miami Vice recently and i like it still (cornier than i remember), but jeez those network shows...the seasons were a million years long.

cyrus and i started watching every episode of Friends and it has taken us months of occasional binging. i don't think i remembered that it was on for 10 seasons. we are on season 9. the dermot mulroney era.

Long long Holiday, nice french animated miniseries about WW2

It seems quite historically accurate, doesn't avoid the difficulties,but still manages to be uplifting at times

scott have you seen Neal Brennan's 3 Microphones? I really enjoyed that ine

i thought it was pretty good! also the very definition of technical. i actually liked the serious stories the best probably.

i mean i liked the bamford special too and that was all about concept. i'm not anti-concept. people get to have an actual budget and try things. which is cool. but the comedy itself feels like its never been as meta. like sarah silverman taking a long pause to talk about the joke she just did. these are obviously very talented people. but i guess i'd like to see one that is more of a visceral force of nature kinda thing. someone who has them rolling in the aisles. i guess that's just up to kevin hart now.

she's a really good writer but i think what i appreciate the most about someone like maria bamford is that she's not afraid to look dumb. like, physically, she will do anything with her face for a laugh. which i appreciate. i like fearless people. and goofy people who are smart.

speaking of which, do you guys watch The Heart, She Holler? so demented. on Hulu though. not Netflix.

nomar OTM

also it seems like there's a new mediocre stand up special on Netflix every day. Truly they are the Walmart of programming

i guess that's just up to kevin hart now.

i dig Scovel (i was actually at the show taping!) but yeah the jack white thing was such a waste of time and really ground things to a halt.

indeed there's lots of mediocre standup stuff on there, not to mention a recent spate of vaguely disappointing offerings by top tier dudes (eg Chapelle, Louis. and sadly Norm's kinda sucked), but also some pretty good ones that i would've likely never searched out on my own (Brennan, Ali Wong, Kathleen Madigan)

I watched Moana last night, it was okay.

"i don't hate kevin hart but this is such a depressing statement"

was just trying to think of someone more old school wild/loud/etc. he seems like such a throwback to the 70s or early 80s if you watch netflix with all the english major standup that they feature. or a throwback to def comedy jam days anyway.

i do actually laugh pretty hard when i watch jim gaffigan specials! i can't help myself. i like a little old school.

and i do like kevin hart fine. he's really good at what he does. even if he's sometimes more energetic than funny. but the energy can be funny.

new season of Aquarius - Sharon Tate, finally

"spate of vaguely disappointing offerings by top tier dudes (eg Chapelle, Louis. and sadly Norm's kinda sucked),"

louis was probably may fave out of those and norm had some funny stuff, but, yeah, they all kinda disappointed in a way. they just look full now. like they just had a really good big meal. and i think something is missing from comedy when you aren't hungry anymore. they obviously don't have to prove anything. i mean they are complete pros and will probably always be worth watching though. they are experts.

lots of these Netflix shows (and a lot of "golden age" tv shows) are complete trash

binging modern netflix stuff feels a lot more like reading a good book than watching The Next Big Thing. if we finish an okay book it's because we consider it to be enjoyable for what it is, but if a tv series is anything less than breaking bad on steroids we collectively crack the shits for some reason.

imo the takeaway from peak/prestige tv is not that everything is exceptional (it's not), it's that you can have a go at any old thing and might derive a good amount of enjoyment from it. i mean game of thrones bores the living shit out of me, but i can get caught all the way up in something objectively worse like grace and frankie or santa clarita diet. just like reading decent books ahead of the all-time best books, it doesn't matter.

yeah i've binged stuff (often on call, when i'm stuck at the hospital for 24hrs) that was...fine. maybe even bad. but stringing together a few episodes of something making a stab at the kind of narrative cohesion that was absent from long-running weekly shows with mostly self-contained episodes can have its moments

have to disagree about silverman's special feeling too meta. there were a couple of meta jokes but a lot of it was really raw, really honest, and the meta stuff felt to me like just another angle on being honest with the audience. i mean obviously it's all constructed. but it didn't feel pointy-headed to me. at all. i actually liked the louis one first time around and then i watched it again, or at least the first half, because the lovely Emma B hadn't seen it, and i was like 'really?' you stretch the joke about the year zero out that long? i think i've even heard some of those jokes before, elsewhere. like about living in the year -3 or whatever, and talking about it like that in real time. i miss the jokes about his kids, about how crazy they make him. he seems a little bit too sane, too together these days. maybe that's what you mean by 'too full', scott. louis' thing was always about how he hates himself. anyway!

Where does that meta thing come from? I was watching it and thinking of Stewart Lee but presumably it has older precedents.
If the self referencing thing and talking about audience reaction is what you are referring to by that.

"I've eaten Cinnamon Toast Crunch for my last six meals" - glow tv show. I'm sold

glow is realllly good

First two episodes were great. I want to get back home and binge the rest.

We're also enjoying the random Japanese shows hat pop up on Netflix. Japanese style originator is fun, I enjoyed learning how to appreciate Tempura.

yeah glow is rad

Yeah been enjoying Glow. Even thought i wished shows were a bit longer. Ones i've noticed are about 35 minutes. Seems an odd duration being used to getting videofiles from commercial tv shows that seem to be about 42 to fit in commercials for an hour slot or 20 minutes for a half hour.
BUt I guess that Netflix is its own thing without those considerations. BUt is that going to create hassle if they need to sell shows on to other broadcasters.

Also nice not to have things happening across the bottom of the screen which i always find distracting. Might need to watch back through Orphan Black since this is probably true of that at least in its Netflix form. Trailers and other ads should be shown in breaks not across the show I'm watching.

I think when you add in commercials and recaps on broadcast TV, an hour is only 35 minutes now. I noticed it with this season of RuPaul's Drag Race, which is on Netflix in Ireland. Each episode of that is just 34 minutes.

when bbc america airs THE OFFICE or AB FAB they just bump the schedule so things start at :35 etc. maybe netflix will be the force that brings back turner time!!!

tbh i got bored and wandered off of GLOW after 4 eps. any reason to keep going if i don't love it by now?

I just started watching FILINTA, a detective thriller set in istanbul the late ottoman empire. It probably isn't very good but I like its stylised look -- which is faintly steampunky without actually being steampunk and hence bad -- and the music is pretty.

netflix description says he's a detective, but he's more like a befezzed 1870s james bond working on behalf of the sultan (don't know enough abt turkey to pin down the date, and the stylisation makes it harder)

That sounds cool, and makes me think that Pamuk's 'My Name Is Red' could make a great mini-series.

I watched most of Hasan Minhaj's special last night, and it's good as long as I keep telling myself to think of it as a one man show and not stand-up. At first it bothered me that it seemed to be going for applause rather than laughs but it's just a different thing, more like an hour and a half Moth story (with accompanying Powerpoint). Or like a Ted Talk with more jokes.

Exactly. It has some really funny bits but it's definitely something else.

Is this a new genre? Where is the line drawn? Mike Birbiglia and Chris Gethard both do it, although they're more in a storyteller mode whereas Minhaj isn't quite as experienced so it less gracefully veers from one man show/monologue to comedy.

I've enjoyed all three.

But there's a bit of that Moth showiness that I find really grating. Like after the laughter you pause for a second and then say "but the thing is..." and then say something really deep before the lights go down.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a Rory Scovel special up. He's not for everyone and it gets pretty subversive, but if you get on his wavelength it's the funniest stuff.

I really wanted to like Minhaj but the tone, which both of you describe really well, was just like kryptonite to me. It's all so UP FRONT and HERE'S MY DEAL and OH MY GOD.

tbf I don't like most standup, or The Moth, or Risk, or Spark True Stories, or TED Talks. Like, at all.

Yeah I recoiled a little from the polished sincerity of it (which sparked some self-examination, but some of those moments with the zoom-in on his serious face as the lights go down are just corny).

I blame millenials

#soinspiring

#sodamnrelatable

btw, someone from the Moth came to my office to do a team building workshop and I ended up standing in front of all the executives and creative teams and telling them the story, in my best attempt at a Moth monologue, of the tie I DJ'd with Peter Hook from New Order.

tie = "time"

ha. I saw P Hook DJ once at.. what was that club in the meatpacking district where you could still smoke after the ban? they had an upstairs? Gah what an awful memory I've got. Anyway he was DJing and I swear to god at one point we all heard a "Mixmag" audio sting and we were like... he is not just playing a Mixmag covermount CD, is he?? Sorry maybe i need to Moth that story up a little bit.

Peter Hook is a DJ FRAUD

Peter Hook is a DJ FRAUD

THAT'S IT!!!!!!!

loooooooooool