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Current TV Boxset Addiction

Started by radiator, 20 November, 2012, 02:23:29 PM

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Hawkmumbler

#750
So, first season of Game of Thrones completed and what a belly full that was. And it still only felt like the first act. So many memoriable characters (Bronn turned out to be a firm favourite. I hope he sticks around, he's given me probably one of my new favourite quotes) and some truely shocking moments ([spoiler]Ned Stark getting the chop. Jesus christ[/spoiler]) has solidified this as my new most anticipated show. Hurry up Now TV! Get the second season online!

pictsy

I'm still trundling along at a slow pace with the original Battlestar Gallactica.  There have been so OK episodes but it's starting to get a little tiresome.  I think I can see the appeal, however.  It does seem to identify things like social issues even if fails to engage beyond a superficial level with them.  It's a rare thing even then.  Mostly I am finding it a flavour of silly that isn't entirely to my taste.  I don't know whether I'll watch all the episodes.  It is definitely interesting to see the source material for some of the concepts and stories that appeared in the remake.

Maybe if I interspersed it more with episodes of X-Files - which I inexplicably stopped watching.

radiator

Glad to hear it. Did you know about [spoiler]Ned[/spoiler] in advance? Hard to believe anyone in the Western world doesn't now know about that, and [spoiler]the dragons[/spoiler] by now.

Personally I found season 2, while still great, to be a bit of a bump in the road, but seasons 3 and 4 are both magnificent.

Bronn is easily one of the best characters, but expect to grow to like certain characters you've already met a lot more as the series goes on.....  :-X

For me the standout moment of season 1 was probably this bit:

QuoteKevan Lannister: "The great hairy one insisted he must have two battleaxes. Heavy black steel, double-sided".

Tyrion: (nonchalantly sipping wine) "Shagga likes axes".

Dandontdare

Quote from: radiator on 14 November, 2014, 05:29:19 PM
Personally I found season 2, while still great, to be a bit of a bump in the road, but seasons 3 and 4 are both magnificent.

That's encouraging - I loved season one, but sort of trailed off halfway through season 2. I still intend to finish it, but I'm glad it picks up a bit.

Hawkmumbler

Oh heck yeah. To be honest the [spoiler]Dragons[/spoiler] came as a bit of a dissapointment, if in execution only as I felt the CGI was somewhat lacking. I am however familier with how the look in later seasons so i'll over look it.

Bronn clicked with me due to his witty exchange with Lysa Arryn.

Arryn: "You don't fight with honour!"

Bronn: "No...But he did 'Looks down at the whole where sirEgen fell'"

Coass writing that. Oh, but I assume this character is [spoiler]The Mountain [/spoiler]? I assumed that was going somewhere as we never actualy saw him get arrested. Either him or [spoiler]Jorah Mormont[/spoiler] whom i've already grown to like as a character.

radiator

#755
Quotebut I'm glad it picks up a bit.

That's putting it mildly  :lol:

I found season 2 to suffer a bit from 'difficult second album' syndrome. It founders a bit in the absence of a single main storyline/protagonist and feels a bit messy and unfocused as a result. It also (and this is just me being biased as I was reading it at the time) imo totally fluffs some of the standout moments of the book - I won't go into details but certain plot changes they made make the actions of certain characters make no sense at all (for example [spoiler]Jon[/spoiler] coming across like a total buffoon throughout).

They also totally neglect certain key characters to devote more screen-time to fan-favourite characters like Danaerys (who has very little to actually do in the narrative at this point) eg Stannis, Davos and Melisandre - very important characters in the overall story who are totally shortchanged in the adaptation. They're just not very well established or characterised, and my girlfriend (who I use as a litmus test for the 'average viewer') still has to be reminded who they are every single time they appear. The romantic subplot for a certain character (greatly embellished from the novels) also takes up a lot of screentime and is quite tedious.

Not to put anyone off - it's still great TV, just be aware that it really gets back into full steam towards the end of season 2 (and it's well worth persevering to witness the incredible penultimate episode)...

Tiplodocus

Only four episodes into Breaking bad but it's had some great stuff already. The chemistry lesson/flirting intercut with disposing of the mess of the body and the whole thing with Crazy 8 in the cellar being particualrly top notch telly.
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

TordelBack

#757
Just finished a leisurely, indulgent rewatch of Firefly capped off with Serenity.  Truly remarkable, one of the most finely-crafted genre TV shows ever produced.  It finds its feet instantly (in the intended viewing order, that is), establishes a believable ship-as-a-home thing immediately, is (almost) consistently good throughout its 14 episodes and film, and effortlessly delivers great character moments without dipping too far into schmaltz. Every bit as good as its evangelists would have you believe.

I was very impressed this time by how well the movie ties into the series, allowing for a few summarising tweaks and the slightly-off Shepherd Book, I remember finding it more jarring at the time.  What I almost couldn't believe is the absence of Reavers from the TV series - in my memory they had been a regular presence, but in reality its just a single brief chase, a booby-trap and one disturbed survivor of an attack, all the rest is purely from characters' conversation.  Amazing.

I still can't decide whether losing the vast further potential of the characters and setting that is evident in every episode is worth the fact that what we did get remains fresh and near-perfect, and was never diluted or stretched out to the point of boredom.  It's a toughie.

A treasure of a line from near the end:

Wash: [talking about River] Psychic, though? That sounds like something out of science-fiction.
Zoe: You live on a spaceship, dear.

pictsy

I personally felt the evangelists oversold Firefly.  I thought it was OK, but no where near as good as I heard.  Which unfortunately means I feel it's over-rated.  If it weren't for being exposed to fandom before viewing I'd have probably thought it was... OK.  Hmmm.  Well, it's enjoyable enough.  Doesn't spark for me in any great way.  Good characters, nice idea.  I think it was the stories that failed to engage me, though.  I can only remember three episodes and two of them I do not remember fondly.  The infiltration one was pretty good.

The way they dealt with reavers in the series was really good and there is a lot in the show that was a set up for further series.  It's easy to see that this was the start of something and I think it doesn't entirely measure up because of the promise of what was to come that never materialised.  Serenity is good and entertaining but really serves to just put a cap on a story that wasn't given much of chance.

I wasn't as annoyed that Firefly got cancelled as much as I was that Stargate Universe did.  That show certainly didn't hit the floor running and had many faults but towards the end it's quality was improving exponentially.  Can't bring myself to watch the final episode, though.

von Boom

Half way through Firefly myself. I'm trying not to rush through it since there is so little to enjoy. I think the time is right for an animated Firefly series so we can continue the adventures in the 'Verse. I swear by my pretty floral bonnet...

TordelBack

#760
Quote from: pictsy on 15 November, 2014, 01:12:31 PMI can only remember three episodes and two of them I do not remember fondly. 

Funny you should say that, because I was surprised how poorly I remembered individual episodes (with the exceptions of Our Mrs. Reynolds, Objects in Space and the series-best Jaynestown*) - the character stuff, incidents, settings, yes, but I had only a vague idea of how they fitted into an episode structure, and I'd watched it through at least three times before (admittedly some time ago). 

That's one thing that I find to be so successful about it - rather than my enjoyment depending on lurching between episodic plots of varying quality (in the way something like ST:TNG does, where I'm sometimes forcing myself to watch episodes that I know are going to be unforgiveably bad) the core of the crew and their home is what makes the show: individual plots are often just ways to showcase their attitudes, or reactions to new characters (Saffron, Niska, Jubal Early etc). 

There are a few slightly duff plots (I've no idea how the crew escape from their missile-laden pursuers in 'The Message', for example, and the tinfoil-brothel episode makes very little sense), but even those are so chock-full of interesting character interactions that it's sort-of irrelevant.  So yes, perhaps in terms of episode plotting there are shortcomings (and let's face it, the pseudo-SF setting is pretty nonsensical), but as a roman-fleuve** focusing on the fortunes of a group of complex and engaging characters as they explore their world, it's a rare complete success (for me).   

Conversely, this means that if you don't fall for the characters and their witty banter littered with makey-uppy language, you may well be disappointed.


*An episode not spoiled one iota by revelations that Adam Baldwin is actually Jayne in real life
**See what I did there?

Professor Bear

Quote from: pictsy on 15 November, 2014, 01:12:31 PMI wasn't as annoyed that Firefly got cancelled as much as I was that Stargate Universe did.  That show certainly didn't hit the floor running and had many faults but towards the end it's quality was improving exponentially.

The only way was up?

My favorite episode of SGU was the one where they encounter a time loop, and the viewer knows it's a time loop because not only have they seen time loop episodes of tv shows before, but time loop episodes happened at least once (sometimes more) a season in the two previous Stargate shows, as did alternate reality episodes (the penultimate episode of Stargate Atlantis - the show that directly precedes Stargate Universe - was an alternate reality episode and didn't even bother with a framing or bookend sequence set in the "regular" Stargate universe because alternate reality episodes were so commonplace) and also bog-standard time travel or paradox episodes - yet the entire cast of SGU have to sit around a big table and discuss at length what this conundrum they've encountered could possibly be.
Better than that, when the scientist - the smartest man in the room (that is in a spaceship) - suggests that it might be a time loop or an alternate reality, the cast are all like "that's just science fiction stuff", despite the fact that they were having the conversation on a spaceship and would have been briefed about the possibility of encountering such phenomenon because of the 15 years of documented encounters with alternate realities and time loops by people with whom the cast were communicating on a regular basis.
I can vaguely understand the idea of making characters genre-blind in order to avoid breaking suspension of disbelief necessary to the fiction, but in what was technically the sixteenth year of a franchise based on stripmining other sci-fi properties for ideas and then not only hanging a lantern on doing so, but making at least four episodes whose entire premise was pointing out that someone psychically linked to a character couldn't get work as a scriptwriter because all the ideas he presented (gleaned from the adventures of the cast of the show) were deemed too unoriginal by the tv executives who were making the show in which the story was currently being told, you kind of have to admire the sheer chutzpah of thinking people would go along with it almost as much as you have to admire the producers then blaming the show's complete failure on fans who had nothing to do with its production.

Even among a series with episodes where characters encounter alternate versions of their lives where cast members play different versions of themselves that then turns out to be a delusion or a dream state (also a yearly occurrence in SG1 and SGA), that episode is a truly magnificent example of the kind of joyless stupidity that killed a once-invincible franchise.


For added Firefly linkage, SGU was an attempt to copy the success of Battlestar Galactica, which was written, produced, and SFX-ed by people who'd previously been heavily-involved in the making of Firefly.  Serenity even appears in the background of a shot in the BSG pilot.

TordelBack

Quote from: Allah Akbark on 15 November, 2014, 03:55:50 PM...yet the entire cast of SGU have to sit around a big table and discuss at length what this conundrum they've encountered could possibly be.
Better than that, when the scientist - the smartest man in the room (that is in a spaceship) - suggests that it might be a time loop or an alternate reality, the cast are all like "that's just science fiction stuff", despite the fact that they were having the conversation on a spaceship and would have been briefed about the possibility of encountering such phenomenon because of the 15 years of documented encounters with alternate realities and time loops by people with whom the cast were communicating on a regular basis.

Contrast this with SG1, where the genre-savvy cast remark on a regular basis how their current adventure resembles Alien, Star Wars or The Simpsons.  Or BtVS, where everyone immediately identifies Warren's oddly-behaving girlfriend as a robot, despite it being only the second robot they encountered.  It undermines the seriousness of the situation (something SGU took very, err, seriously), but also makes the characters much more believable, and relatable, as our contemporaries. 

(As an aside, I've often wondered what it must have been like for the San Francisco characters in STIV:TVH to encounter Kirk, Spock and the IKD Bounty, coming as they do from a world where there was no Star Trek).


Goaty

I so loved STU! Wish Syfu will film few more episodes to finished off the show. There was Season 3 scripts online and thought that was perfect finish off as it was just 6 episodes scripts.

pictsy

Sorry Allah Akbark, I lost track of what you were criticising.  I'm under the impression you aren't a Stargate fan.  I can understand, I didn't like it during it's original showing. 

I watched SG1 almost all the way through a few years ago and actually reappraised my opinion.  I really like SG1s self-referential awareness about what kind of show it was.  It actually works well in its favour.  The characters are surprisingly entertaining and likeable.  It loses pace towards the end, though.

SGA, for me, was a mess and I gave up on it long before getting to the end.

SGU almost didn't catch my attention.  My first impression was "this is a Battlestar Gallactica rip-off".  Except it isn't.   There are similarities, certainly, but this was a different take on the space-opera survival genre.  It also takes Stargate in a new direction with a degree of disassociation with the previous entries in the franchise.  It actually struggled to set itself apart from SG1, SGA and Battlestar Galactica story wise and had some poor casting choices.  Robert Carlyle carries a lot of the show himself allowing some other actors to start shining - notably Jamil Walker Smith in his role of Master Sgt. Greer.  By the end of the second series I was entirely engaged, invested and entertained.  It seemed a little bit like a trial by fire but for my money the show was going to come out the other side as something fantastic.  Then it got cancelled.  I was very disappointed.

Firefly, on the other hand, was cancelled before I watched it.  I had actually seen the film first (and enjoyed it) before finding out about Firefly.  I heard it was fantastic, amazing and it's cancellation was the biggest crime against television ever.  I just didn't see it.  It obviously didn't deserve to get cancelled based on quality.  It's quality was consistent and it had a very capable cast and crew.  The consistency is perhaps the problems, it achieved it's potential.  It hit the ground running, kept pace (mostly) then ended (kind of abruptly).  If there was a second series it would have been more of the same quality.  SGU faltered at it's start but I think it became a better program.  I certainly enjoyed it more than Firefly in the end as it engaged more with what I am interested in seeing in a sci-fi TV show.