What's good on Amazon Prime Video

The presentation/tone is the real issue I suspect ppl are having, but to say more would be spoilery

Did not dig the comic so would need to hear it deviates considerably as incentive to check out

Given that it's by the Walking Dead people, I worry that they'll have to shoehorn a bunch of awful gore every episode. If that is not the case, I'd love to know, since I was getting into it until that scene.

― DJI, Wednesday, April 21, 2021

5 eps in there are a couple of winces here and there but only one other scene like the one you're thinking of, and again in that one a certain kind of point is being made. it's ugly but not gratuitous.

They've uploaded all 75 episodes of Jim Nabors' late '70s talk show and IT'S A VIBE...

Good news

Twitter: Announce Season 2, you cowards
InvincibleHQ: How about Seasons 2 AND 3?!?!?!? pic.twitter.com/lWCSGbNTka

— INVINCIBLE (@InvincibleHQ) April 29, 2021

people who take issue with the violence will uh not be happy with that finale

I do like the show but it kind of grew off me over the course of the season, mostly small writing problems adding up

chief among them:

I definitely see the appeal of a psychologically somewhat "realistic" superhero show where a big ol' chunk of the point is that in any sort of "real world" scenario, having godlike powers while being surrounded by fragile meatsacks called "people" would actually be a horrifying responsibility. that's a fine starting point to work from. so to then have our protagonist bounce back (physically and at least to some extent psychologically) within a couple weeks after his own father beats him nearly to death and murders "incalculable" numbers of people, including literally using Invincible's body as a battering ram to turn an entire subway car of people into gore, kind of makes it seem like Kirkman and co. have the same level of respect for human life that Omni-Man does.

but yeah I mostly came away from it wishing it was actually a new season of venture bros, which actually pulled off the "psychological quasi realism in a comic-book/cartoon/pulp world" without all the casual genocide

Consequence-free violence for bloodlusting fans is the Kirkman motif. That and bad dialog

yeah it's just jarring because it does feel like some people involved are trying to pull it in a less hateful direction and it ends up in a weird tonal place

I watched the new Dave Grohl van touring documentary 'What Drives Us' this morning on Prime.

It's not really about van touring, most of that is just glossed over. It's mostly famous rock stars (some of whom have never toured in a van!) talking about themselves and how much they enjoy playing live. They did interview some younger bands (Starcrawler, Radkey), but they get very little screen time. Dave Grohl made himself the star of the documentary, so there is plenty of Foo Fighters content. I enjoyed it, but if you're looking for a van-touring documentary, the one that was recently posted in the youtube documentary thread is a much better one.

Vannist critique

Simon OTM - I haven’t watched the finale yet but initial pleasure has dwindled

I'm wondering - is Prime's original content (not counting stuff actually intended for families/children) deliberately, notably edgier than Netflix's? (Disney+ is a foregone conclusion.) I thought it was just the Rogen/Goldberg joints but reading about the lowlights of Them has made me wonder if it's not a deliberate strategy.

The most violent Netflix original I can recall was Daredevil and it seems tame compared to the most gruesome stuff in these series.

I haven't thought about that before, but it does make sense

The Boys is ott for sure.

Though it's animated, parts of Invincible are actually worse.

Meanwhile Netflix's most popular(?) original superhero thing, Umbrella Academy, is family fare by comparison. (Based on s1, anyway.)

Invincible spoilers:

I did not read the finale as "welp everything's okay now" in any way, shape, or form. I read it as Mark is still deeply wounded by his father's betrayal and is rededicating himself to humanity as a result. I also read it as him seeing the galactic coalition as an opportunity to stop intergalactic Viltrumite expansion once and for all, so others won't go through the same trauma he and Debbie went through. A lot of the epilogue to that fight was explicit rejection of his father and his father's values; it doesn't make sense to me to read it as if Mark has "bounced back" or to parse the events as creator contempt for humanity. If anything, the entire series was about how traditional superhero stories are casualty-riddled bullshit and Atom Eve is the only person whose heroic endeavors seem to make any sort of lasting positive impact.

I know they were going for that but (imo) the writing and characterization doesn't back it up credibly.

I mostly enjoyed the "baddie of the week" elements - I liked the way they went for heavy serialization while remembering to tell discrete stories. So many series do nothing to take advantage of the episode as a discrete storytelling unit.

sometimes when I watch shows on streaming that were on network/basic cable, I think that commercials in a way were a nice way of forcing writers to make each episode have a good 3/4 "chapter" structure

that's generous. half the time it feels like they use the commercial break to expositionally recap what you just watched

I only just managed to get to the end of the first episode of Them, with no intention of going back, and we all know what my standards are like for watching things that aren't any good.

Didn't realize Invincible was being released weekly so only discovered tonight that episode 6 wasn't the finale.

Still awaiting Undone Season two... apparently it's coming, but nobody seems to know when.

Oh yeah! That was good.

odenkirk brought it up in some of the press for nobody, he seems hyped about it

I am also hyped though the first season seemed like it ended at a natural conclusion

rember when the tick and invincible had a crossover and they fought red jelly people just so they could do a gory invincible fight pic.twitter.com/HLaqm3wftS

— Tredlocity (@tredlocity) May 6, 2021

cute!

ha! had no idea that happened

Just mentioned this on the other streaming thread...

Watched Michael B. Jordan's Tom Clancy's John Kelly Clark Is...Without Remorse on Amazon Prime. It's pretty good, but there are some absurd aspects. In the opening scene, Jordan and his top secret Navy SEAL kill squad emerge in full scuba gear from a swimming pool in the middle of a building in downtown Bombed-Out Middle East-burg, kill a bunch of anono-goons and then as they're walking toward the next stage of their journey, not only is all the scuba gear gone but they're not even wet! Also, how did they get into the pool in the first place? After that, though, it's pretty solid. Jodie Turner-Smith from Queen & Slim is Jordan's running partner throughout, and she's excellent in both the dramatic and the ass-kicking scenes. The actor playing the villain is...a surprising choice, at least he was to me.

It’s a Taylor Sheridan-written, Stefano Sollima-directed venture, much like the Sicario sequel. I think it works better than that movie, and is infinitely more coherent than the second season of Amazon’s Jack Ryan show. It’s just kind of blah.

I still can't understand why ZeroZeroZero isn't more popular

The first episode didn't really grip me; should I keep going?

Yes

So many shows about drug kingpins and dead girls.

the gleeson bros comedy is just the right amount of un-engaging to be a comfortable doing-chores-while-not-really-watching show.
what other shows are like that?

The first episode didn't really grip me; should I keep going?

Probably not then as imo it went downhill after the first few episodes

1st episode's glamorous violence and sadism didn't do anything for me tbh

Final season of Bosch has dropped today

watched 3 eps last night