swan_tower (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
swan_tower) wrote2017-11-02 12:11 pm
swan_tower) wrote2017-11-02 12:11 pm
Entry tags:
More TV
Since a number of people seemed to like my previous post about TV shows I've been watching, I thought I might as well do a second one. This isn't all stuff I've watched in the interim; quite a lot of it is stuff I watched before, and didn't remember when I made that first post.
Powerless -- another exhibit for the display case of "things I like get canceled," this was a short-lived show about ordinary people in the DC world, set at a division of Wayne Enterprises responsible for making products to protect people against the fallout of the superheroic battles all around them. I'm a sucker for that kind of premise, and the characters were reasonably engaging; I enjoyed this even though the half-hour comedy format is one I often bounce off. But they didn't even get to air all of their filmed episodes before the network pulled the plug.
Emerald City -- speaking of things that got cancelled . . . man, this one was weird. I'm not even sure what I think of it. Is it good? Is it bad? All I know is, it had me intrigued. I initially dismissed it as "let's grimdark up Oz," but that sells the show short. There's some fascinating worldbuilding around how witches fit into the setting, with the Wizard trying to suppress and control magic in favor of science, and I think I'd have to watch the show again to say for sure whether I think it did an interesting job delving into the complexity of a conflict where both sides have their points, or was just so muddled it couldn't figure out what it was trying to say. Lots of great visuals, though, and I really liked the actress playing Mistress West.
The OA -- speaking of weird-ass things . . . I really liked this one until very near to the end. Then it fell into one of my least favorite pits, which is the trick of going "is this stuff real or is the character just crazy?" And then it tried to waffle back from that edge, and bah, it kind of fell apart. But they're apparently doing a second season? So I may give it a try. The premise is that a blind girl reappeared after going missing for years, and now she has her sight; she will barely talk to her family about what happened, but she gathers a group of random people together and tells them her story over a period of many nights, saying that she needs their help to rescue someone. I found all the flashback stuff about her absence surprisingly compelling, which is part of why I was annoyed when the show tried to pull that rug out from under me. It also didn't help that the climactic bit of the final episode wound up looking a bit too much like a flash mob performance -- I just couldn't take it seriously, even though I'd liked that element before.
Travelers -- like The OA, this is a Netflix show. People are sent back in time to try and prevent the calamity that created their future; it's a common premise, but this one has several twists. To begin with, only their spirits are sent back, and they can only occupy the bodies of people who are about to die. Also, there are quite a lot of them, being inserted into the timeline in different positions where they might be able to influence events, receiving orders sent from the future . . . which sometimes conflict or change without warning, because the future has its own politics going on, complicating the lives of the "travelers." I liked the dynamics that created, and I liked that the historical records used to decide where to send the travelers are not always accurate; one of the main characters finds himself in the body of a heroin addict, with all the associated complications, and another discovers that the entire known persona of her host body was pure invention, made up as part of a social therapy exercise. This also will have a second season.
People of Earth -- haven't seen the second season of this one yet. Another half-hour comedy show, this one about a support group for people who believe they've been kidnapped by aliens. It's frequently surreal, but does a great job with the social dynamics of the group -- and with the social dynamics of the aliens, who are in fact 100% real, and have their own workplace woes. It got surprisingly dramatic in a few places, which is part of why I liked it.
Riverdale -- ALL THE DRAMA. Initially this looked like they grimdarked the Archie comics, and they sort of did, but the better comparison might be Veronica Mars. It starts with a murder and revolves around the characters trying to figure out whodunnit, with several heaping shovelfuls of over-the-top family twistedness -- seriously, the Blossoms read like something straight out of V.C. Andrews. Competition for the title of Worst Parent in Riverdale is fierce, yo. But kudos for the writers apparently deciding that they really aren't interested in the Archie/Betty/Veronica love triangle, and especially aren't interested in making Betty and Veronica catfight over Archie. In fact, the younger generation are overall much better people than their parents are.
The Gifted -- just started this one. Dystopian end of the X-Men universe, with the actual X-Men gone and mutants subject to horrific laws. It feels more than just a wee bit topical these days, especially since a number of the leading mutants in the story are people of color, and then you've got the white family whose father used to be on the enforcement side of that divide until his own kids turned out to be mutants, so now they're finding out how the other half lives, so to speak. Not a cheery show, but I like the characters so far (three eps in).
Stitchers -- watched more than a season of this, but drifted away when I realized I wasn't all that invested. Core premise is silly SFnal cheese: a secret government agency has figured out how to hack into the brains of recently-deceased people and read their memories (in fragments) to solve their murders. But other than that it's basically a police procedural with a layer of metaplot on top. It was fine to put on in the background while I did other things, but eventually I decided that if I wasn't going to pay attention to it, I might as well stop.
Continuum -- ditto this one, though I didn't get in as far (I think only four or five eps), and might give it another shot, especially if anybody here recommends it. More time travel, but the characters didn't engage me as much as the ones on Travelers did.
Once Upon a Time -- this was my background show for a good long while. It's . . . not actually good? And continually frustrated me by its common failure to actually get full value out of even its good ideas? I was basically there just for Hook, and that mostly because Alyc used him as the casting for an NPC in the game she's running. But even with him, there was so much narrative potential left on the table -- in part because this is the show that made me realize I'm getting very tired of the "dual timeline" format, flashing back and forth between Then and Now. Not only does it produce weird constraints on account of the writers trying to cram more and more into the backstory, but it means that any given episode can only devote half of its attention to either Then or Now, with the result that they're both underdeveloped.
Quantico -- speaking of the current ubiquity of the dual-timeline format. This show can be summed up to L5R fans as "what if the Kitsuki Investigator school was actually run by the Scorpion?" Toward the end of season one it got too over the top for my taste, and of course I doubt this bears any resemblance to actual FBI training. On the other hand, I loved how many women of color were in it, so if that's a selling point to you and you don't mind recrackulously over-the-top drama, check it out.
Powerless -- another exhibit for the display case of "things I like get canceled," this was a short-lived show about ordinary people in the DC world, set at a division of Wayne Enterprises responsible for making products to protect people against the fallout of the superheroic battles all around them. I'm a sucker for that kind of premise, and the characters were reasonably engaging; I enjoyed this even though the half-hour comedy format is one I often bounce off. But they didn't even get to air all of their filmed episodes before the network pulled the plug.
Emerald City -- speaking of things that got cancelled . . . man, this one was weird. I'm not even sure what I think of it. Is it good? Is it bad? All I know is, it had me intrigued. I initially dismissed it as "let's grimdark up Oz," but that sells the show short. There's some fascinating worldbuilding around how witches fit into the setting, with the Wizard trying to suppress and control magic in favor of science, and I think I'd have to watch the show again to say for sure whether I think it did an interesting job delving into the complexity of a conflict where both sides have their points, or was just so muddled it couldn't figure out what it was trying to say. Lots of great visuals, though, and I really liked the actress playing Mistress West.
The OA -- speaking of weird-ass things . . . I really liked this one until very near to the end. Then it fell into one of my least favorite pits, which is the trick of going "is this stuff real or is the character just crazy?" And then it tried to waffle back from that edge, and bah, it kind of fell apart. But they're apparently doing a second season? So I may give it a try. The premise is that a blind girl reappeared after going missing for years, and now she has her sight; she will barely talk to her family about what happened, but she gathers a group of random people together and tells them her story over a period of many nights, saying that she needs their help to rescue someone. I found all the flashback stuff about her absence surprisingly compelling, which is part of why I was annoyed when the show tried to pull that rug out from under me. It also didn't help that the climactic bit of the final episode wound up looking a bit too much like a flash mob performance -- I just couldn't take it seriously, even though I'd liked that element before.
Travelers -- like The OA, this is a Netflix show. People are sent back in time to try and prevent the calamity that created their future; it's a common premise, but this one has several twists. To begin with, only their spirits are sent back, and they can only occupy the bodies of people who are about to die. Also, there are quite a lot of them, being inserted into the timeline in different positions where they might be able to influence events, receiving orders sent from the future . . . which sometimes conflict or change without warning, because the future has its own politics going on, complicating the lives of the "travelers." I liked the dynamics that created, and I liked that the historical records used to decide where to send the travelers are not always accurate; one of the main characters finds himself in the body of a heroin addict, with all the associated complications, and another discovers that the entire known persona of her host body was pure invention, made up as part of a social therapy exercise. This also will have a second season.
People of Earth -- haven't seen the second season of this one yet. Another half-hour comedy show, this one about a support group for people who believe they've been kidnapped by aliens. It's frequently surreal, but does a great job with the social dynamics of the group -- and with the social dynamics of the aliens, who are in fact 100% real, and have their own workplace woes. It got surprisingly dramatic in a few places, which is part of why I liked it.
Riverdale -- ALL THE DRAMA. Initially this looked like they grimdarked the Archie comics, and they sort of did, but the better comparison might be Veronica Mars. It starts with a murder and revolves around the characters trying to figure out whodunnit, with several heaping shovelfuls of over-the-top family twistedness -- seriously, the Blossoms read like something straight out of V.C. Andrews. Competition for the title of Worst Parent in Riverdale is fierce, yo. But kudos for the writers apparently deciding that they really aren't interested in the Archie/Betty/Veronica love triangle, and especially aren't interested in making Betty and Veronica catfight over Archie. In fact, the younger generation are overall much better people than their parents are.
The Gifted -- just started this one. Dystopian end of the X-Men universe, with the actual X-Men gone and mutants subject to horrific laws. It feels more than just a wee bit topical these days, especially since a number of the leading mutants in the story are people of color, and then you've got the white family whose father used to be on the enforcement side of that divide until his own kids turned out to be mutants, so now they're finding out how the other half lives, so to speak. Not a cheery show, but I like the characters so far (three eps in).
Stitchers -- watched more than a season of this, but drifted away when I realized I wasn't all that invested. Core premise is silly SFnal cheese: a secret government agency has figured out how to hack into the brains of recently-deceased people and read their memories (in fragments) to solve their murders. But other than that it's basically a police procedural with a layer of metaplot on top. It was fine to put on in the background while I did other things, but eventually I decided that if I wasn't going to pay attention to it, I might as well stop.
Continuum -- ditto this one, though I didn't get in as far (I think only four or five eps), and might give it another shot, especially if anybody here recommends it. More time travel, but the characters didn't engage me as much as the ones on Travelers did.
Once Upon a Time -- this was my background show for a good long while. It's . . . not actually good? And continually frustrated me by its common failure to actually get full value out of even its good ideas? I was basically there just for Hook, and that mostly because Alyc used him as the casting for an NPC in the game she's running. But even with him, there was so much narrative potential left on the table -- in part because this is the show that made me realize I'm getting very tired of the "dual timeline" format, flashing back and forth between Then and Now. Not only does it produce weird constraints on account of the writers trying to cram more and more into the backstory, but it means that any given episode can only devote half of its attention to either Then or Now, with the result that they're both underdeveloped.
Quantico -- speaking of the current ubiquity of the dual-timeline format. This show can be summed up to L5R fans as "what if the Kitsuki Investigator school was actually run by the Scorpion?" Toward the end of season one it got too over the top for my taste, and of course I doubt this bears any resemblance to actual FBI training. On the other hand, I loved how many women of color were in it, so if that's a selling point to you and you don't mind recrackulously over-the-top drama, check it out.
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The show goes kind of sideways sometime in season two. We're in early season three and still trying to figure out what's going on.
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That sounds adorable! I'm sorry it didn't even get a full season.
Then it fell into one of my least favorite pits, which is the trick of going "is this stuff real or is the character just crazy?" And then it tried to waffle back from that edge, and bah, it kind of fell apart.
Does that mean it made a decision and it was narratively the wrong one, or did it not do a very good job of making the decision, or did it fall apart in some other direction entirely? (Totally spoiler-indifferent. I have no idea if I am ever going to see this show.)
In fact, the younger generation are overall much better people than their parents are.
I think of that as kind of the YA default. Are they doing something interesting with it?
Dystopian end of the X-Men universe, with the actual X-Men gone and mutants subject to horrific laws.
Yeah, that sounds horribly topical. Is it in canon with however the rest of the movie/TV universe is working these days?
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The protagonist (who calls herself the OA now; her parents still call her Prairie) tells her life story to the group, of how she was born in Russia and her father got into trouble with mob types, how she got adopted in the U.S., and then her attempts to reconnect with her father and how she met this guy who was doing experiments on near-death experiences who kidnapped her and imprisoned her with his other subjects and then weird-ass stuff started happening . . . and toward the end of the season, one of the characters finds a box of books in Prairie's room about Russian mobsters and near-death experiences and so forth, with the strong implication that she made it all up. And for a little while it seems like the show is saying yeah, Prairie/the OA is just delusional. But that doesn't explain how she got her sight back (or why she would have non-Braille books in her room -- even if she got them after reappearing, she never learned to read the non-Braille English alphabet, because she lost her sight while she was a kid in Russia, assuming any of that was true which it may or may not be), and then at the end it looks like she successfully crossed over into the other dimension she was trying to reach . . . so basically I was deeply annoyed (and almost stopped watching) for the stretch of time where it seemed to be committed to the "nah, she's just crazy" interpretation, and then it failed to win me back with the "OR IS SHE" twist at the end.
I think of that as kind of the YA default. Are they doing something interesting with it?
The show doesn't come across as very YA; it spends a lot of its time on the dynamics of the parents' generation, too. But when all the adults are backbiting and trying to use their kids as pawns in their own conflicts, it's nice to see the kids overcoming that and working together.
Is it in canon with however the rest of the movie/TV universe is working these days?
It's apparently an alternate timeline.
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I gave up on Quantico at the end of season one mostly because of that very over-the-topness. Also, I've decided I have personal issues with conspiracy-based shows even if they're good -- which is why I also dropped The Blacklist, Blindspot, and Timeless around the same time.
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And yeah, I'm kind of tired of conspiracy shows. Very few of them hang together in the long run.
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I would like to think that it went a far way toward inoculating me against trusting the show runners for any future grand-over-arching-plot-type shows.
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Season two - I think I made it through 3 episodes and gave up - it's EVEN MORE over the top and twisted.
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We're still on S1 of Stranger Things; I figured I'd hold off on saying anything about that one until we've at least finished the season.