The Syndicate

The Comeback is one of the best, most under-appreciated shows in television, and you should all be watching it. After it was cancelled in 2005(!), HBO brought it back this fall, and it's even better this time around.

Black Mirror is fucking melting my brain.

Maybe binge-watching it wasn't the best idea.

Comparing Walking Dead to Lost is an insult to the latter, IMO.

I'd recommend that Lost fans check out The Leftovers (made by the same dude as Lost, and covers much of the same spiritual and philosophical ground that the show did) and the French show The Returned. (which really is "Lost with Zombies," with flashback episodes and everything)

S~V~S wrote:

insertnamehere wrote:Comparing Walking Dead to Lost is an insult to the latter, IMO.

I'd recommend that Lost fans check out The Leftovers (made by the same dude as Lost, and covers much of the same spiritual and philosophical ground that the show did) and the French show The Returned. (which really is "Lost with Zombies," with flashback episodes and everything)

Well, thanks for that I did not care for the Leftovers, no counting for taste, eh?

I did not say it was as good as LOST, but there are similarities. A group of disparate strangers thrown together due to a catastrophe learning how to survive in a radically different place with very different rules that what they are used to. Plus supernatural stuff plus red shirts. Fish out of water ensemble drama.

Superficially, yes. But Lost was, at its Lindelof-y core, about a bunch of people with various problems learning to overcome them. I.e., they were lost, now they're found.

Walking Dead is a bunch of people swirling around a toilet bowl. The only character arcs are ones where people either die, or become more miserable. Someone tries to have a shred of humanity that isn't entirely focused on survival, and they're swiftly punished with either death or trauma.

Furthermore, the show doesn't even do anything interesting with this misery. It just repeats the same story beats over and over again.

Why didn't you like the Leftovers, by the way?

Scotty wrote:

Cryptonic wrote:Rewatching Breaking Bad atm. Only like 3 episodes left, no idea what to watch next.

Have you tried Dexter? My gf got me watching all 8 seasons and I just finished that shit in 2 months. Very entertaining. Almost all the seasons were well done, I thought. (I have differing opinions on a couple of them, but that's to be expected in long runs of shows)

You're one of like, 5 people I've seen who didn't think that show went to hell in a handbasket after season 4.

DharmaHelper wrote:I tried to watch the Young Pope, and I learned that ~7 minutes of weird bullshit is about my limit. I'm good.

I, however, must possess an endless appetite for weird bullshit, as I absolutely adored the first episode and can't wait to watch the rest of the series. I mean, come on. How can anyone not love a show that produces high-quality, thought-provoking theological discussion such as this:

Ricochet wrote:EXTRA: For any cinephiles out there, Sorrentino's English-language work so far ranks as the piece of garbage fire that was This Must Be the Place and Youth, which, apart from having a couple of dumb scenes, the stuff of Tommy Wiseau's creative sessions, I rather considered it too disliked by the general critics. (If anyone is paying attention to the new The XX album and their song Lips, the sample from there belongs to an original piece by David Lang... which was heavily featured in Youth, btw

/trivia)

So far, I get the vibe that YPope is mostly accepted as both ridiculous and yet enjoyable.

It's like House of Cards but set in the highest rungs of the Catholic Church, and also 100 times better.

The first shot of the show is Jude Law emerging from a mountain of naked babies followed by him giving a speech about the benefits of masturbation and abortion. Then he wakes up, and screams at his servants for not instantly bringing him a Cherry Coke Zero, which is the only thing he drinks. He also gets a pet kangaroo, who he lets live in the Vatican gardens.

The final scene of the pilot is Young Pope admitting that he doesn't even believe in God, and smirking at the camera, proving that the immortal question: "Is the Pope Catholic?" can be answered multiple ways.

Also Diane Keaton is in it for some reason, playing a nun who wears T-Shirts that say "I'm A Virgin (But This Is An Old T-Shirt)," along with James Cromwell, who will unfortunately never top his performance in American Horror Story: Asylum.

It's the most purely fun and enjoyable viewing experience I've had in a while, which probably says more about me than anything else.

Then again, I thought This Must Be The Place and Youth were both pretty great films, so maybe Mr. Sorrentino's 21st-Century-Fellini-wannabe charms just speak to me.

Trailer for Season 3 of Damon Lindelof's show The Leftovers, which happens to include weird occurrences on a plane ride to Australia.



It's basically LOST, and I'm 1000% on board.

Ricochet wrote: ↑Sat Oct 07, 2017 5:33 am Picked up Black Mirror to watch something during the next week or two, with a little incentive from a Nerdwriter vlog essay on its traditional or not use of tragic and cathartic motifs. I happen to like my coffee bleak and existentially burdening, so it should be an interesting watch.

I'm interested to see your take. Everyone I've talked to seems to respond differently, favoring different episodes over others. No two people seem to have the same Black Mirror opinions, except those that hate the whole thing.

Here are my personal rankings that I composed after season 3 came out last year.


1. The National Anthem
2. White Bear
3. The Entire History of You
4. San Junipero
5. Playtest
6. Shut Up and Dance
7. Be Right Back
8. White Christmas
9. Hated in the Nation
10. Fifteen Million Merits
11. Nosedive
12. Men Against Fire
13. The Waldo Moment

For whatever reason, Playtest clicked with me as a straight genre exercise that was well-executed, while Nosedive just seemed a little on-the-nose and didn't have the effect on me that it had on Rico. It lacked the bite and nastiness it truly needed to work. Also, RE: National Anthem...

Ricochet wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2017 3:23 pm #10
THE NATIONAL ANTHEM
Unfortunately, with six years in the past and improvements over three whole seasons, I can't imagine this sticking high on any list.

Ha! For me, National Anthem serves as both the thesis and the key for the entire series in terms of subject matter, capturing the public's toxic apathy towards politics better than Waldo, it's casual capacity for cruelty better than Shut Up and Dance/Hated in the Nation, and the technology-induced disposition towards denial better than 15MM/Men Against Fire. It's also quite cheeky. I'll admit that it does work better on a rewatch.

To be honest, my top three are all fairly interchangeable in terms of my opinions on them, but National Anthem resonated the most in my mind.

never even managed to finish stronger thongs season one

It falls into that category of Netflix Original that feels like it was birthed wholly from the website's algorithm, combining this actor, and this storytelling trope, and playing it in the most crowd-pleasing way, so it can fit into the media diet of quadrants which enjoyed similar movies and television shows. They all feel focus-grouped to hell and back. Stranger Things, Gypsy, Ozark, 13 Reasons Why, Narcos, The Crown, Bloodline, literally all of the goddamn Marvel shows, and most recently Mindhunter all fall under this category for me.

Bojack Horseman, Black Mirror Season 3, Arrested Development Season 4, Master of None, and weird shit like The OA, Neo Yokio, Sense8, and the Get Down are the only shows to break through that barrier of homogeneity.

Meanwhile, the two O.G. Netflix shows, House of Cards and Orange is the New Black seem to both have fallen into holes of tarnished mediocrity.

Ricochet wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2017 4:53 pm tfw you have one hour to spare, check the channels, Twin Peaks The Reruns, yet it lands on the shittiest episode...

Part 12, 13, or 18?

I've also somehow managed to talk myself into liking Part 18, by the way. Lynch fanboyism is a hell of a drug.

Matahari wrote: ↑Sun Nov 26, 2017 2:32 am If you like weird, I recommend Glitch on netflix, and Fortitude on Amazon. Does anyone watch The Blacklist? I haven’t seen it mentioned here, but I’d like to hear people’s ideas about whose bones are in the suitcase, and theories about who Red may or may not be-

Glitch looks like yet another remake of the French show The Returned, and while I remember loving the batshit bonkers turns that Fortitude went through, I haven't yet watched Season 2.

Ricochet wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2018 6:41 pm

insertnamehere wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2017 4:02 pm <snip>

Thoughts on Season 4, m'man?

I thought it had too many retreads of old ideas.
My favorite two seem to both be somewhat maligned among the fanbase for whatever reason: Metalhead and Crocodile. Metalhead was the only episode that felt completely and utterly different from anything they've done before, and I'm a sucker for high-contrast black-and-white cinematography. Crocodile was a nice little Coen-y riff about how invasive security technology can lead to more violence and less safety, with all the bleakness and gorgeous direction I expected from the guy who made The Road.

The one episode where Liam McPoyle/William from Westworld slapped his smooth, featureless, Ken-doll-esque crotch was pretty fun, but not super groundbreaking or anything.

The two leads in Hang the DJ were both great and had actual chemisty, which was the only thing that made the episode more than a Arkangel was super-meh, and Black Museum was like White Christmas with none of the originality or acting prowess.

Overall a step back for the show, but not a waste of time. Hopefully they'll rebound.

I'm probably gonna watch Electric Dreams at some point, which is Amazon's "star-studded" attempt at a sci-fi anthology series, and report back with a comparison.

DharmaHelper wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2018 12:59 pm Hahahahaha INH liked Metalhead.

BEST EPISODE OF SEASON FOUR

FIGHT ME

DharmaHelper wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2018 11:45 pm [mention]insertnamehere[/mention] Just watched episode 1 of Electric Dreams and it was ok. It definitely wasn't bad. I'll keep watching the series for now.

Keep me posted. Just finished The End of the F***ing World on Netflix and was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it. The show takes a whole bunch of indie-movie tropes I usually find utterly noxious, and fleshes them out to the degree that they work. It certainly got more idiosyncratic and likable as it went along, and the whole thing is smoothly binge-able in a way that a lot of the bloated Netflix fare oddly isn't. (Then again, it was originally a British Channel 4 show, which might explain the relative quality.)

LIST OF NETFLIX ORIGINAL SHOWS INH HAS RECENTLY STARTED AND PROBABLY WILL NOT FINISH:
The Crown
Atypical
Longmire
Stranger Things
Big Mouth
Godless

I might check out Peaky Blinders, Alias Grace, and GLOW, but I'm pretty burnt out on pretty much everything "Netflix Original" that isn't this, Bojack or Black Mirror.

After DH's condemnation of Metalhead and admiration of Arkangel, I can't wait to see Electric Dreams Episode 3.

Anybody watching The Good Place? It somehow has better, more unpredictable, yet well-planned-out serialized narrative arcs than most "mystery" dramas. Saying any more about it would ruin the show, but after a mere two seasons, (finale of S2 is next week, I believe) it's by far my favorite Micheal Schur show, beating out The Office, Parks & Rec, and Brooklyn 99.

I'd recommend it for anyone who digs any of the above shows and is into the heavy-theorizing/constant mysteries of stuff like Lost.

HOT TAKE:

Channel Zero, despite having a semi-idiotic premise (horror anthology where each season is based off of an internet creepypasta), is the most underrated show on television. It's good, brainy, well-executed indie horror. Season 3 just started and it has the potential to be the best one yet. If you like spooky shit that's actually intelligent, check it out.

Sloonei wrote: ↑Thu Jul 19, 2018 11:36 pm I’m finally watching Twin Peaks. Episode 3 just ended. That dream sequence was... um.
I like this.

You're starting my favorite show of all time, albeit one that's a little hard to get into. Here's what I told Ricochet when he started the show:


My suggested viewing experience is as follows: All of Season 1. Episodes 1-9 of Seasons 2. Episodes 21-22 of Season 2. Fire Walk With Me. Season 3.

You can find Rico and I's episode-by-episode discussions in the Twin Peaks thread, they were pretty fun to do. Also, watch the Log Lady intros for each episode. They're all pretty amazing.



Watching the show for the first time, do you have any suspects so far? What's your reading of the dream sequence? Are there possible clues to be gleaned from it, or is it nonsensical bullpuckey?

Sam Esmail's new Amazon show Homecoming fuckin' slaps.

My favorite part: the soundtrack is entirely made up of scores from other films, with a bunch of iconic Carpenter and 70's thriller stuff in there. Also, Julia Roberts can actually act. Who knew?