[Whisperzzzzzzz]

 Abyss, on 05 April 2017 - 07:06 PM, said:

 champ, on 03 February 2017 - 04:08 PM, said:

Anyone watch Powerless?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5083928/

Tanking in ratings, pulled twice for repeats. All but dead.
If the next ep doesn't screen tomorrow night my 'six weeks and a burnoff' prediction is fulfilled.

I don't know who's writing this show, but they shouldn't be allowed to touch pencil to paper ever again. They've got a great cast, and they're just letting them wallow.

[worry]

Various contributors bust mostly creator Ben Queen, who also wrote the screenplay to Cars 2.

[QuickTidal]

 worry, on 06 April 2017 - 12:43 AM, said:

Various contributors bust mostly creator Ben Queen, who also wrote the screenplay to Cars 2.

It should also be noted that he merely wrote the screenplay for CARS 2 (the story was all John Lasseter and Co.) so any success that movie has with its audience is due to them, not Queen....and Queen is also responsible for at least two MISERABLE failures of TV shows in the early noughties, one which was cancelled a mere month after it began I think...the other got through 7 episodes and was cancelled. And one shitty movie that no one has ever heard of. Those are the only things on his resume.

He is literally a terrible writer.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 06 April 2017 - 01:04 PM

[Slow Ben]

Master Of None season 2 May 12!

[QuickTidal]

 Slow Ben, on 06 April 2017 - 03:44 PM, said:

Master Of None season 2 May 12!

YES! Can't wait.

My wife keeps asking, when is that MASER show coming back on?

[Tiste Simeon]

Anyone seen Mad Men? It's on Netflix in the UK now and I reckon I might check it out...

[Abyss]

 QuickTidal, on 06 April 2017 - 12:59 PM, said:

 worry, on 06 April 2017 - 12:43 AM, said:

Various contributors bust mostly creator Ben Queen, who also wrote the screenplay to Cars 2.

It should also be noted that he merely wrote the screenplay for CARS 2 (the story was all John Lasseter and Co.) so any success that movie has with its audience is due to them, not Queen....and Queen is also responsible for at least two MISERABLE failures of TV shows in the early noughties, one which was cancelled a mere month after it began I think...the other got through 7 episodes and was cancelled. And one shitty movie that no one has ever heard of. Those are the only things on his resume.

He is literally a terrible writer.

I could not see any reason for this show to be made, was surprised when it was greenlighted, stunned at the initial positive buzz, and wholly unsurprised at the subsequent downturn.

Superheroes + comedy makes for bad primetime tv.

It works perfectly well for low budget young kids TV at 430pm weekdays (the Thundermans, two or three others i have seen in passing and switched as fast as possible) and has no chance of securing a solid adult audience unless you have frikkin Joss Whedon, JJ Abrams or those Fringe guys, a B+ cast, a decent fx budget, and a writing room hivemind with massive CV, and even then i'd be sceptical.

This was a horrible idea from the start that tried to piggyback on other entirely different but successful shows.

[worry]

Mad Men is an A+ top tier show. It does the period drama stuff perfectly while developing some reaaaally heady themes under the surface for its entire run, with some major payoffs for season and series arcs. The plots are consistently unpredictable while the characters remain themselves, which has historically been one of the trickiest things for TV to pull off.

[Slow Ben]

The ole lady and I are re-watching How I Met Your Mother.

Season 9, with a few exceptions, really did suck a bag of dicks.

[QuickTidal]

 Slow Ben, on 13 April 2017 - 02:52 AM, said:

The ole lady and I are re-watching How I Met Your Mother.

Season 9, with a few exceptions, really did suck a bag of dicks.

Goddamn what they did to Barney and Robin was an abomination of character assassination. They literally spent the previous what? 2 seasons or more turning him from player/sexist cad....to someone that Robin could love and marry. To then turn around and reverse ALL of that for some eventual revelation about the daughter he has with some random woman...to prong that effect and leave Robin open for Ted finally...with the nail in the narrative S9 coffin being that it was all orchestrated..the entire goddamned show...and it's name "How I Met Your Mother"...to tell the story of how Ted met the mother of the kids he has...who friggin died...so they can find out how much he's always loved Robin and ends up with her.

It's literally the most creatively bankrupt TV narrative decision I have EVER sat through. Barney and Robin's ending pissed me off after all that buildup....but ending up with Robin and Ted together...was a fucking travesty.

The thing is, this could have been great if they'd just left Barney and Robin to their relationship and the personality changes they went through to get there...and had Ted end up with the mother and the denouement of his story could have been that you don't know who you really are going to fall for until you do.

Fuck, that ending pissed me off.

SIDEBAR: I used to be able to re-watch this show all the time, throw on random episodes and just enjoy...I have not been able to put it on since watching the finale. Every second of the previous episodes feel like a terrible lie to me now.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 13 April 2017 - 01:22 PM

[Morgoth]

 worry, on 10 April 2017 - 07:29 PM, said:

Mad Men is an A+ top tier show. It does the period drama stuff perfectly while developing some reaaaally heady themes under the surface for its entire run, with some major payoffs for season and series arcs. The plots are consistently unpredictable while the characters remain themselves, which has historically been one of the trickiest things for TV to pull off.

Mad Men is a great show. It had to drop it though as it all became too miserable for me.

[QuickTidal]

Anyone watching BROADCHURCH season 3?

SOOOOOOO great this season. Much closer to Season 1's whodunnit than Season 2's courtroom shouting match.

It's this show that really lets me have a window into the potential for how great Chris Chibnall's DOCTOR WHO show runner tenure will be. If he crafts it even half as well as he does BROADCHURCH, it's going to be wonderful!

[Salt-Man Z]

The thing about the HIMYM ending is how well it worked retrospectively, though. We watched the whole show (up until the last couple seasons) on DVD, and just ask my wife how many times I yelled at the screen, "Why? Why do you keep coming back to Ted and Robin?!" throughout the seasons. So in that way it totally worked for me. I could even get behind the mom's death on account of that. But the Barney/Robin breakup (and in particular the way they did it, via a couple of throw-in lines in the finale) was ridiculous. Not to mention they'd been building up to Barney & Robin's wedding for four fricking seasons. What I can't forgive the final season for is spending its entire interminable run at the hotel leading up to the wedding. Gah.

[Morgoth]

 QuickTidal, on 17 April 2017 - 12:48 PM, said:

Anyone watching BROADCHURCH season 3?

SOOOOOOO great this season. Much closer to Season 1's whodunnit than Season 2's courtroom shouting match.

It's this show that really lets me have a window into the potential for how great Chris Chibnall's DOCTOR WHO show runner tenure will be. If he crafts it even half as well as he does BROADCHURCH, it's going to be wonderful!

The music is also amazing, and is a big part of why the show works so well, at least for me. Ólafur Arnalds is an amazing composer / musician.

[QuickTidal]

 Morgoth, on 18 April 2017 - 07:34 AM, said:

 QuickTidal, on 17 April 2017 - 12:48 PM, said:

Anyone watching BROADCHURCH season 3?

SOOOOOOO great this season. Much closer to Season 1's whodunnit than Season 2's courtroom shouting match.

It's this show that really lets me have a window into the potential for how great Chris Chibnall's DOCTOR WHO show runner tenure will be. If he crafts it even half as well as he does BROADCHURCH, it's going to be wonderful!

The music is also amazing, and is a big part of why the show works so well, at least for me. Ólafur Arnalds is an amazing composer / musician.

Agreed. It's wonderfully scored throughout!

Sidebar (OF MONSTERS AND MEN fan) moment: Here is the track that Arnalds did with the OMAM singer Nanna.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 18 April 2017 - 05:14 PM

[Aptorian]

Anyone been watching the Dave Chappelle stand up shows on Netflix?

I finished the first show last night and came away sort of annoyed with Chappelle.

He's still a great storyteller and comedian but he just came off as an asshole during this set. He kept bringing up other people, in bad situations, and then shitting on them because black people have it way worse, admittedly himself recognizing he was being selfish.

LGBTQ should stop complaining because if a black person did the same thing it would be bad. Also some weird tangent about philipino people being emasculated and racist or something.

Then a story about Women's issues being less important than Black issues because white women problems are less important than black problems (cue some shot of black women in audience nodding their heads)

Then some story about Kevin Hart stealing his thunder, with some side jabs at Key and Peel using his show to get popular.

He just came off as being out of touch, bitter and just sort of a bigot. All wrapped up in a big scoop of "I'm Dave Chappelle! I used to be awesome and because I'm black I know better than the rest of you!" Which was the same schtick I remember from the 2000s but now it seemed a lot less fun.

He kept referencing shows he'd done where he'd bombed, blaming it on the audience or area, and all I could think was that he should have learned from that but I doubt he did.

Still that OJ Simpson and Bill Cosby build up was stellar.

This post has been edited by Apt: 19 April 2017 - 10:04 AM

[QuickTidal]

Chapelle is an odd duck. He was once literally at the top of the heap of comedy. Then he disappeared and there were rumours of mental health issues, and a breakdown of some kind. His road to coming back into the spotlight has been fraught with live shows that are literally just him riffing stories off and venting for an hour and a half while he smokes a pack or more of cigarettes. His comedy now is like some sort of Comedy Breakdown survivor therapy. I can't really watch it.

It showcases just how present mental health issues can be amongst the comedy community, and none of us know about it. Robin Williams untimely death is one extreme...but look at even Russel Peters...the guy used to be one of the funniest Canadians EVER...but his recent shows have been really mean spirited (to his topics AND his audience), and he talks a lot about his failed marriage (and not in a funny way)...and you can literally FEEL the mental health issues coming out. Same is true of Mike Myers. The guy was supposedly this hilarious sweet-hearted Canadian from Scarborough...but all the stories that have come out in recent years paint a VERY different picture of a very disturbed man.

[Abyss]

THE OA. Three eps in. Fascinating. Am genuinely curious where this is going and whether/how all the individual 'now' threads tie together with the flashbacks.

PAW PATROL. ok, i get it.... the whole Adventure Bay thing is a bottle experiment where they train puppies to become cybernetic weapons of war, right? ...like sooner or later someone is going to extract Skye's brain and put it in a Predator drone... Also, Alex is actively trying to kill off all the adults.

[amphibian]

The Chappelle Netflix special that's out now is different than how Apt portrays it. The one area where he actually steps wrong is about trans people. The rest is truth mixed with comedy.

White women do have it better than black men. The Filipino thing is indeed a sea change within Filipino society due to the women getting good jobs as nurses and less good jobs as maids overseas, especially in the Middle East. So guys like Pacquiao and Duterte became very popular due to the demographics back home.

The Kevin Hart parts were to jab at Chappelle himself due to jealousy. Key and Peele did kinda take over Chappelle's show and ride that to greater success. The bombed shows are very clearly referred to as fuckups by Chappelle himself and also in seeing a sea of white faces yelling I'm Rick James, bitch! at him everywhere. It's complicated, but he does present it as a "Yeah, I did not do that well, but fuck, I'm a comedian and I'm here, damnit."

It's a better crafted show than Louis CK's Netflix one, which my SO and I just watched. Chappelle tells things with more context and actual bitterness than CK's mostly abstract routine.

[QuickTidal]

 amphibian, on 19 April 2017 - 01:40 PM, said:

The Chappelle Netflix special that's out now is different than how Apt portrays it. The one area where he actually steps wrong is about trans people. The rest is truth mixed with comedy.

White women do have it better than black men. The Filipino thing is indeed a sea change within Filipino society due to the women getting good jobs as nurses and less good jobs as maids overseas, especially in the Middle East. So guys like Pacquiao and Duterte became very popular due to the demographics back home.

The Kevin Hart parts were to jab at Chappelle himself due to jealousy. Key and Peele did kinda take over Chappelle's show and ride that to greater success. The bombed shows are very clearly referred to as fuckups by Chappelle himself and also in seeing a sea of white faces yelling I'm Rick James, bitch! at him everywhere. It's complicated, but he does present it as a "Yeah, I did not do that well, but fuck, I'm a comedian and I'm here, damnit."

It's a better crafted show than Louis CK's Netflix one, which my SO and I just watched. Chappelle tells things with more context and actual bitterness than CK's mostly abstract routine.

I don't think half of that makes for good comedy to be honest (which maybe was Apt's point? I'm unsure.)...yeah, they are socio-politico truths, sure, fine....but how that tempers them into jokes is beyond me. I found his special largely unfunny as a result. It's like watching a strange-stream-of-thought documentary about the subjects he's speaking on. Like his SNL opening bit from recently...it was about 3 decent jokes sprinkled in about 15 minutes of off-the-cuff anecdotes about one thing or another. There is very little of the Dave Chapelle I used to find exceedingly funny in there.

As to Louis CK's special...I also found that largely unfunny, and to an extent mean-spirited as well. He's been funnier in the past.

But that seems to be a hallmark of the recent specials Netflix has helped produce for comedians. Look at Amy Schumer's failed attempt (the one she tried to blame on trolls for ruining)...I have about 3 or 4 comedians in my inner circle of friends and every single one of them said it was probably the worst special they'd ever seen. Even the last decent one I watched (Iliza Schlesinger's most recent) was about 20 minutes of good material buried in more than an hour.