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So a couple amazing seasons descending into complete shit at the end then?

If they go beyond the books i guess

Going beyond the books was a part of it, but far from the only reason the last season was so bad.

Ok i tore through three episodes of Night Agent yesterday and was enjoying it. It’s not the peak of the genre by any stretch but it’s paced well.

Today I started up on episode 4. I don’t know if being away from it for a day broke the spell, or it was like this all along, but suddenly all I can see are its flaws.

Of course I will still watch it to the end.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Sunday, April 9, 2023 9:38 AM (five days ago)

I got to the last few episodes and it totally did the thing of "supporting character talks about what they are looking forward when this mess is over and then shortly after gets killed." I was less interested in the main white dude than in ... most of the other characters tbh ... he had that anodyne Matt Damon quality where he is likeable, but not particularly interesting ... the sociopathic hired assassin couple was more compelling.

does HBO still exist as a cable channel and will Max get it's content or what

Yes and yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wVHEfH0fVM

As bad as the new logo is (and don't know why they're losing the purple), I think there's an element of "can't win" in the reaction to the rebranding... when HBO Max launched, there was criticism along the lines of - "Why are they diluting the HBO brand?" Now it's opposite - "Why are they no longer leveraging the famous HBO brand?" Seems like it makes more sense to confine the brand to the HBO section of the new app, where it can retain its sheen of quality.

Like, why can't they just call it HBO? What's so complicated? All this name change bullshit is a distinction without a difference.

Because HBO is supposed to stand for "quality programming," and now they're adding all the Discovery crap to the mix.

same model as other streaming apps like disney with content hubs. they’ve already done that within the app and it’s fairly clear what’s hbo vs other stuff, but I guess the felt the need to make it explicit

it’s not even HBO Max right now, more like HBO+Max or HBO/Max plus DC, TCM, Cartoon Network, etc

I got to the last few episodes and it totally did the thing of "supporting character talks about what they are looking forward when this mess is over and then shortly after gets killed." I was less interested in the main white dude than in ... most of the other characters tbh ... he had that anodyne Matt Damon quality where he is likeable, but not particularly interesting ... the sociopathic hired assassin couple was more compelling.

― sarahell, Friday, April 14, 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Ultimately I liked this show even when it did dopey things or ran toward cliche. I appreciated that it spent time with multiple characters and got you to be invested in them. Even knowing that not all these characters are going to make it to the end (that’s not a spoiler - that’s a fact of the genre!), they still managed to earn a little pathos.

Anyway, it’s not going to rank among the best of the year for me but I enjoyed it most of the time.

I’ve got a few more Night Agent episodes to get through but it’s pretty much Reacher-but-joyless.

The 3body adaptation is curiously liger than the audiobook. It was fine,’even good in places. Some hilarious ‘bad guys must be evil so it’s okay to kill them’ stuff towards the end (which I don’t remember from the book, but I may be misremembering). Some of the cultural Revolution stuff drags, but I felt the same about the book. I’m

Liger = larger. How often does someone use the word liger?

Like the fabled half lion, half tiger? I dunno, maybe twice a week?

enjoyed the second season of Single Drunk Female

Anyway, it’s not going to rank among the best of the year for me but I enjoyed it most of the time.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Friday, April 14, 2023 9:15 PM (yesterday)

same!

We finally caught up with "Fleishman is in Trouble," and both really loved it. Some great casting/acting, and yeah, definitely in the pantheon of Jewishness depicted on-screen. Didn't read the book but kinda don't want to, since the show turned out to be pretty compact and satisfying. Some really funny stuff, some really sad stuff, some great song cues. Lives are messy, people are complicated, things change, things stay the same, college friends are great, kids are challenging and rewarding in equal measure, etc. etc.

men in power commit life-changing abuse, etc etc

but yeah the depiction of college friends/old friends was great and weirdly not seen that often on screen.

That's interesting, I didn't really catch a particularly prominent theme of abusive men in power. If anything there was a theme of powerlessness, told through the lens of various midlife crises.

Did we watch the same show? The whole story hinges around Claire Danes' breakdown after a male doctor reached into her cervix and broke her waters, while she is asking him not to do so. And how that birth trauma reverberates through her entire life (and by extension, the husband's, and kids').

I'm genuinely flabbergasted that this is seen as somehow not important. Or as 'some really sad stuff'.

Huh? No, that's absolutely accurate, as far as her character goes. But the Lizzy Kaplan character is going through something else totally unrelated, as is the more conventional midlife crisis of Adam Brody. And of course while Jesse Eisenberg is most directly impacted by the aforementioned (which is truly horrifying), he has his own shit to unpack. So no, not saying that wasn't a part of the story, just not a main theme, imo. It is for her particular story, though, for sure.

(To be clear, I wasn't even thinking of that event as an example of "some really sad stuff." I just meant the general ennui faced by the protagonists. What happens to Rachel is definitely a prime mover of the show, and something much worse and more specific than what Brody and Kaplan are dealing with.)

I haven’t watched the premiere yet but I’m really glad that Somebody Somewhere is back. First season was a real delight.

Termination List is even dumber than the Jack Ryan series, I didn't think that was possible.

Started this comedy Jury Duty on Amazon and it’s pretty hilarious so far.

It plays like a documentary and exactly one guy on the jury is an actual dude who showed up for jury duty. But every other juror, the judge, the lawyers and witnesses are all actors.

Thanks for the rec, watching it now. There’s a great bit of casting, haha (It’s on Freevee, btw)

we just started Jury Duty too - v funny, enjoying it so far!

omg that looks great!

ok this should be good: Bob Odenkirk joins S2 of The Bear.

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/bob-odenkirk-the-bear-season-2-1235595584/

Hometown hero!

Yaaaaaay

I'm gonna have to get Hulu again eh?

I don't dislike Bob Odenkirk — I've never watched Better Call Saul, but the movie Nobody was good — but I liked the show as it was and don't think it needs him.

He could definitely chew too much scenery in that cast.

Episode one of Jury Duty was funny! I don't see how that dude could even be fooled by the premise/ruse, but whatever, it doesn't matter.

Seems like they just found the right guy... my wife told me about hearing one of the actors talking about the show on a podcast; he said the ruse worked so well, they (the actors) almost suspected that they were somehow the ones being punked.

I like how it's not a mean-spirited prank thing... it's good-natured (at least what we've watched so far), and yeah, the ruse part of it doesn't even really matter so much, it works as its own thing.

(I can't imagine how they were able to commandeer the Superior Court building for the production...!)

My wife also listened to an interview today with the main guy (Ronald). When asked if he suspected anything, he said so much weird stuff was happening that he thought something may be up... but since he didn't know what it was, that would mean it was all being staged for his benefit, and he just wasn't able to wrap his head around that.

(Sounds like he shared some other interesting details about the production, but I'll save it.)

speaking of Odenkirk, anyone watching Lucky Hank? I've seen a couple enthusiastic reviews but more that are neutral, wondering whether I should bother watching

I love Bob but I couldnt get with that show. I could see the audience that would LOVE it - other college prof/uni worker types - everyone just seemed so awful. Maybe it needs time? I only watched the first 2 eps.

I read the book it was based on, but keep forgetting that it was based on a book I read.

I was less interested in the main white dude than in ... most of the other characters tbh ... he had that anodyne Matt Damon quality where he is likeable, but not particularly interesting ... the sociopathic hired assassin couple was more compelling.

This was one of my problems with The Night Agent (which was grand, really, we zipped through it and I could knit while following it, which is sometimes what I want). If a show is this light and generic, I would like to have someone to fancy, and I could see that you were supposed to fancy lead actor whatshisface, but nope. "Anodyne Matt Damon quality" sums it up very well.

The great thing about Jury Duty is that, in a way, the fact that one guy is not in on the premise is actually not the point. They’re playing him as the straight man rather than the butt of the joke. I love that some characters have storylines with each other that have nothing to do with him.

I’m four eps in and absolutely loving it. I was roaring when the one juror sighs at a witness named Cody.

It’s like if there was one guy on The Office who actually thought he was working for a paper company.

xp Yeah that was so funny... (I'm also 4 eps. in). The way they set up these "storylines" and gags, it's pretty amazing

I had to rewind and watch twice the self-introduction of the blonde influencer / "certified lash tech" on the witness stand, it was so well done. The parade of characters almost plays like a Christopher Guest movie.

I did as well

Christopher Guest vibes otm. It's kind of a neat hybrid, if I understand it correctly. Like, scenes with Ronald have to be a mix of scripted and improvised (when anyone interacts with him). But there are scenes without Ronald that are fully scripted and, I assume, somewhat blocked. A lot (most?) reality shows are in a sense "written" in the editing bay. This one is kind of being written in real time. (Again, only one ep in.)