So, what are you watching?

What have you been watching?

So, what are you watching?

Postby cmsellers » Tue Jan 10, 2017 5:13 am

It occurs to me that we have "What are you currently reading?" and "What are you listening to now?" but not a similar thread for TV/Movies, even though a lot of us binge-watch an unhealthy amount of stuff.

I've been alternating between David Attenborough documentaries (most recently Flying Monsters, Conquest of the Skies, and most of Africa) and a Canadian television series called The Republic of Doyle.

The latter sounds more like something my mother would watch (she loves detective series), but the theme song is a Great Big Sea song, and Alan Doyle from GBS guest stars in later seasons, I so I figured I'd check it out. So far, it's remarkably OK. It's much more comedic than I expected, and that's a good thing, however (sadly) it's not laugh-out-loud funny. Also, St. John's is one of the most gorgeous cities I've seen. I've always wanted to visit Newfoundland, but now I need to visit Newfoundland.
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Re: So, what are you watching?

Postby JamishT » Tue Jan 10, 2017 7:32 am

I'm watching The Crown and The White Rabbit Project on Netflix. They're both pretty great!
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Re: So, what are you watching?

Postby KleinerKiller » Tue Jan 10, 2017 7:36 am

Now that I have Netflix like every other normal person, I'm finally starting Daredevil, and I plan on moving to Jessica Jones and Luke Cage in short order, so I'll finally be able to take part in the conversations dominating the internet.

I'm also starting the anime Izetta: The Last Witch, which is pretty good so far.
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Re: So, what are you watching?

Postby iMURDAu » Tue Jan 10, 2017 7:04 pm

I still need to finish season two of Ash v. Evil Dead. I'm on episode 6.

I've also become fond of watching engine swap/extreme mod videos on youtube.
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Re: So, what are you watching?

Postby ghijkmnop » Tue Jan 10, 2017 7:44 pm

Redacted
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Last edited by ghijkmnop on Fri Mar 15, 2019 4:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: So, what are you watching?

Postby IamNotCreepy » Thu Jan 12, 2017 3:29 pm

The most recent thing we watched was 3% on Netflix. It's a Brazilian show about a dystopian society where at age 20 people can go through a series of psychological tests called the Process in hopes of being part of the 3% of people allowed to enter the utopian society called the Offshore. It's like part Hunger Games, part Ender's Game.

We also recently watched Westworld.

Other shows that we watch regularly (when there are new episodes):

Bob's Burgers
Last Man on Earth
Modern Family
The Good Place
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
iZombie
Orphan Black
Jessica Jones
Stranger Things
The Venture Bros. (when they do a new season every couple of years)

There are shows that I watch by myself (usually while on the treadmill):

Daredevil
Luke Cage
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The West Wing (this is my primary treadmill show)
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Re: So, what are you watching?

Postby reallifegirl » Fri Jan 13, 2017 7:29 pm

Been watching all of the Big Fat Quiz of the Year videos uploaded on YouTube, but will take a break from them tonight to watch the latest Sherlock and maybe the first episode of Taboo. And I am definitely going to invested in Taboo for reasons that are not Tom Hardy in a loincloth.

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...yes. There are definitely other reasons.

Also I'm currently going through a major internal struggle because I have been saying for actual, literal months that Young Pope seems specifically designed to enrage me, and yet I may still watch it while seething. Even if I still think it could easily be the stupidest thing ever.

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Re: So, what are you watching?

Postby JamishT » Fri Jan 13, 2017 10:32 pm

Image


I watched Borderline the other night, and by watched I mean I blasted through the single 6 episode season that is on Netflix in a night. It's semi-improv, which I appreciate, and it's mockumentary style which is also great. However there's some tropes lifted directly from The Office (a Jim & Pam situation, pointless conference room meetings, inept boss, etc). I laughed regularly though, so I look forward to whenever season 2 drops.

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Last night I started watching Sirens which apparently got canceled after two seasons. It's a comedy revolving around a team of three EMTs in Chicago, and it gets downright hilarious. ALSO, WHY IS THIS USA NETWORK SHOW ON NETFLIX, BUT NOT PSYCH?
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Re: So, what are you watching?

Postby gisambards » Sat Jan 14, 2017 1:31 am

I've been blitzing It's Always Sunny, and I think it might be my favourite comedy of all time. It seemed to peak around Seasons 4 and 5 and then dip for most of Season 6, but Season 7 which I'm on now is back on point again.
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Re: So, what are you watching?

Postby Typical Michael » Sat Jan 14, 2017 2:07 am

I get into the habit of watching stuff I have already seen, that are familiar. Netflix, naturally. Like The Rockford Files, and Columbo.

I used to watch them with my dad when I was a wee boy, they shouldn't be forgotten.

Columbo of courses has Peter Falk. Format of a detective show that hadn't been done before; the opening act would show you the crime, so you already know who dun-it. The fun is watching Columbo figure it out whilst everyone thinks he is an idiot.

Rockford Files has James Garner, who is a real dick, but not enough to not be likeable. And some sweet cars and 70s chicks.
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Re: So, what are you watching?

Postby Marcuse » Tue Jan 17, 2017 12:01 am

I've been watching the BBC remake of the Swedish tv show Wallander. It's terrible. As in; so terrible that it comes right back round to being hilariously funny for all the wrong reasons.

The titular character, Kurt Wallander, is absolutely the World's Most Hangdog Man. A human being for whom his personal theme song would be the sad trombone on a loop. The filming supports this in the most absurd way. At one point, having been signed up to an internet dating site by his daughter (because heaven forbid he ever does anything to alleviate the black vortex of personal despair we're supposed to infer from his placid, often distant expression) he gets a hit and arranges a meeting for 8:15. By 8:10 he's still at work, and doesn't leave until 8:45. When he rocks up to the club at 9:00, he's met by his date walking out and when he gestures feebly in her direction and makes what the actor thinks is a pleading expression, she curtly tells him no. Twenty minutes might have been overlooked, but 45? Never.

The scene ends with a lingering shot of the WMHM looking blankly into the middle distance in a room filled with people partying. My brain plays the sad trombone so many times, then the power cuts out leaving him in the dark as well. By this point I was surprised that a bird hadn't managed to fly in there to shit on his forehead as well. But the whole thing is like this. He's always being shouted at, struck, laughed at, cuckolded, and treated like a completely incompetent and stupid oaf who completely deserves what he gets because he's just that useless.

The camera work is also ridiculous, featuring so many extreme closeups of our trombone inspiring protag that they often forget that we might want to see things like...his chin, or his hair. Nope, only closeups of his eyes and snorting nostrils will do. Especially when he's doing something incomprehensibly stupid for no reason. Which happens a lot for a show about a detective.

Yeah, I'm going to go there. The writing for this show simply isn't there. They focused so hard on making the mystery mysterious that they often forget little things like logic or sense. Wallander, at one point, engages his foe alone and comes off badly. They then make a lot of mention and show that he's going back into the fray with backup. He then promptly leaves the backup behind to deal with the situation alone, rendering the scenes where they make that apparent utterly useless.

In addition, the characters enter and leave the show as required for the story and simply do not feature unless they're directly relevant to the plot. This happens with regulars such as Wallander's partner (played by Tom Hiddleston, who will forever be Loki) and characters only added for that plotline. They walk into the story, perform their function and then walk out and cease to exist. It makes every character seem like a cardboard cutout, and not a living breathing person and kills the immersion. They're also very bad to tying up what happens to characters. At one point Wallander enlists a teenage hacker he'd previously arrested to work on his case, because the bumbling oaf can't use computers at all (in a hilarious concession to the English speaking audience, they have him literally speak everything he's writing on the computer because he's writing it in Swedish in an attempt at verisimilitude). But when the teenager is traced by the baddies (and thus far everyone who has run afoul of them has died quickly and gruesomely) he's merely left in his house by Wallander, with only the precaution of a couple of words of warning to his farmer parent, and...shutting the kid's bedroom door. We literally never see him again, and don't even find out if he's alive or dead. One character who betrays him then performs a heel face turn in the same scene we start seeing her in the heel role.

Every scene feels like someone dreamed it up in isolation and then threw them together with no regard for the cohesive whole, and often using scenes purely for appearance without any theming or framing that makes it fit together with the rest of the episode. The whole thing is a mess, and I can only stand it by throwing out gales of laughter every time I see another silly situation or sad trombone moment.
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Re: So, what are you watching?

Postby NathanLoiselle » Tue Jan 17, 2017 1:01 am

Lemony Snicket's Something Something Unfortunate Events. It's so depressing it's funny. So terrifying that it's comforting. So something else that is something else.
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Re: So, what are you watching?

Postby cmsellers » Tue Jan 17, 2017 4:17 am

So having watched the first two seasons of Republic of Doyle, it's very soap-opera-y, as in there are a lot of stupid tropes which TVTropes suggests are most popular with soap operas, though presumably they're just a sign of shitty writing generally.

However the setting really is gorgeous. I watched every single episode of Two and a Half Men because I liked the beach house, and this show is nowhere near as bad as Two and a Half Men. So I'll probably watch the whole thing.
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Re: So, what are you watching?

Postby JamishT » Mon Feb 06, 2017 7:14 am

A while ago, I finished watching Flaked (Will Arnett's Netflix show), and I wasn't really impressed. It's not really funny, not really believably serious, and overall not impressive.

A couple of nights ago, I finished Santa Clarita Diet, which starts kinda weird and KEEPS SPIRALING DOWN INTO WEIRDNESS. And it's great! It gets super gross at points, but it's funny all along too.

Now I'm back to The West Wing.
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Re: So, what are you watching?

Postby Australia » Mon Feb 06, 2017 8:51 am

I watched the first couple episodes of Riverdale, based on a colleague's suggestion that it was bonkers (after I suggested he watch the bonkers Dirk Gently). Now we don't really get Archie comics here, but I assumed it was just the American version of Ginger Meggs, though I know through osmosis that he fights Predator at one point. Anyway, not the case if the show is anything to go by. There's murder, pedophilia, fraud and it's basically Veronica Mars, only with no likable characters. I don't know if I even like the show, but it's hard to look away. Also, all the teenagers look like they're in their late twenties, so I guess it's basically every other teen soap or they're just leaning into that trope.
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