What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Zac Snyders animated Norse series Twilight of the Gods is ONE THOUSAND PERCENT pure, unfiltered, Snyder. So you will already know if this is for you or not. I, naturally, dig the crap out of it, as I'd say this is far more 300 Snyder than Army of the Dead Snyder. It's violent, gory, borderline pornographic, has all the touches of modernity you'd expect and then runs them all through a filter of pure testosterone. Just keep the kiddoes FAR away lest you want them seeing Thor getting a casual blowjob from a sea witch right after he blasts a group of fleeing children into oblivion

That sounds disappointing, to be honest. I’d love a decent Norse mythology series

n815e wrote: That sounds disappointing, to be honest. I’d love a decent Norse mythology series

This ain't that. It's not an animated version of Neil Gaimans "Norse Mythology" comic, for example. It's much more of a revenge adventure tale that borrows heavily from Norse myth when it wants to. It has a very interesting depiction of Loki, for example, that digs deep to bring up some of the weird stuff around him that far more superficial treatments (like the MCU) overlook. But it isn't following any tale specifically though it does weave in a few as stories. It's sorta like that Zeus show, also on netflix, more of a Percy Jackson level take on a mythos than a serious one.

It's quite female fronted as well, there is a scene where every woman leaves their man asleep (post-coital for most of them) to go off to fight because the implication is that the men are kinda drags on them or divide their attention because the women have to worry about keeping them safe. It's an interesting reversal of COUNTLESS scenes of men slipping out of bed or leaving their women at the doorway (often with a few kids hiding behind skirts) but it's sorta at odds with how these characters are shown in battle because they are CLEARLY nigh unstoppable as a team.

Still, it's a rollicking good adventure, even when it feels more like a fever dream than a coherent story. Even the slo-mo is better used here. The steady hand of Jay Oliva (who helped Snyder make Man of Steel) is very apparent as he knows animation like few others. It ends with a cliff hanger and I hope there is more.

The art aesthetic will be divisive. It feels kinda like the The Book of Kells movie to me, stylized and minimalist (no where near as lush as TBoK though, which is just a joy to watch), but very evocative of the period. Frame rate, like a lot of modern animation, is low but it gets the job done. For all the nudity its mostly presented as plainly as possible, not a lot of breast jiggle or wang flopping animations. The dialogue can be brutal though, the line "I'm gonna widen your woman's gash" does a good job making you hate the bad guy, not that the audience needs a lot of incentive. You can just hear the guys giggling in the writers room at a lot of the lines, but somehow it works.

The Ark - Watched a couple episodes so far. B-scifi show that's reminiscent of 90's shows in a good way. Cryo-sleepers wake on a colony ship with a year left and have to live on the ship. But since they're the first they don't even know for sure if the planet will be survivable when they get there.

Somehow Apple TV has become my favorite streamer. It doesn’t have the depth of library of any of the others, but the ratio of hits to misses is pretty incredible. The first season of Ted Lasso is still there, the second season of Shrinking comes out this month, Bad Monkey looks fun, and Slow Horses somehow gets better every season.

Best villain yet, propulsive storytelling, tight plot done in six episodes. Well made and fun.

Did I miss a scene at the end of Kaos? It didn't seem to lock in why the ending turned out how it did.

I was enjoying The Old Man on Hulu. Season 1 was pretty compelling. Then I get a few episodes into season 2, and it's like they changed the writing staff or something. It stretches believability past my breaking point, and certain characters seem very "out of character". I may be done.

The premise is Jeff Bridges is an ex-CIA spy, who has been hiding from the government for years. Certain events put him back on the radar, and John Lithgow is trying to track him down. Intrigue, deception, etc. Maybe watch season 1 and stop?

Have continued my slow binge of The Vampire Diaries into season 6. I have always appreciated that the show transcended its CW teen drama foundation, with greater focus on action and compelling drama than on the trifling romances. There must have been some changes in the writing team between season 5 and 6, because now the show has become more soapy and prone to sloppy storytelling. Everything still makes sense in terms of emotional beats, but the characters now engage in questionable reasoning to support their decisions. I'm fine with the young adult characters making some mistakes, because that's why people often do when they are in their 20s. But when a centuries-old vampire does something stupid because of feelings, it undermines the entire show. I will probably finish this season, since I am already 7 episodes deep into it, but may drop the show afterwards, depending on the writing.

Well, re-watching, anyway. Back in 2020-21, I was unemployed, so I started writing reviews of all of the episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, plus some side pieces based on the character, comics lore, and cultural views of it/them. I was doing it based on the bulk of season 1 that HBO had in their system. Then I got a job and kind of dropped off on it. So, here we are, 3.5 years later and I discovered a Blu-Ray set of the entire series for about $20 on Amazon (we no longer subscribe to HBO/Max; yes, I know people are raving about The Penguin.) So, I'm going back in and reviewing the 50+ episodes that I didn't get to. It will, uh, take some time, but I haven't seen many of these in three decades, so it will be a decent look back. Maybe I'll be done by the time the second season of Caped Crusader shows up?

dichotomouspurity.blogspot.com/2024/10/p...ere-we-left-off.html

Sprung is a fun show on Amazon. When the lockdowns of Covid hit, a bunch of inmates is set free. Three of them move in together and start a series of increasingly ambitious capers, a large amount of toilet paper being the first target of course. The madness of 20/21 is presented well and it's got a heartwarming, friendly tone and an impressive array of dumb but mostly well-meaning characters. The jokes mostly land. A nice touch is that two of them have to wear hand-me-down clothes from the seventies. One season, an ending is present but I really wouldn't mind a second season. It won't win any awards but it's a good time and I cared about the folks.

There are literally no heroes on The Penguin. After a brief reference to Batman and the Riddler that establishes this show as a sequel to The Batman movie, it is all about the villainy. The Penguin himself is a very different character from previous incarnations of one of Batman's least-respected villains. Past Penguins have typically been pretentious little men, speaking in a mid-Atlantic accent while wearing tophats, monocles, tuxedos, and umbrellas. Colin Farrell insteads plays a Penguin who is a large, ugly, scruffy guy with a heavy Brooklyn or maybe Jersey kind of accent. And yet he has a certain crude, working class charisma, often able to talk his way out of trouble or at least buy enough time for a chance to escape. Farrell disappears completely into the role, with the makeup, the accent, and acting way beyond anything I have previously seen from him.

What makes this show special is the way it really delves into the origin of several very bad people, forcing the viewer to sympathize with them even as they do terrible things. Cristin Milotti is a riveting scene-stealer as a gangster daughter who pokes a little too far into her father's crimes and gets framed and incarcerated for ten years in Arkham Asylum. Clancey Brown (best known as the Kurgan in the original Highlander movie) is a large aging mob boss with very scary eyes. The collisions between these powerful characters rock Gotham City to its foundations. The plot twists are sometimes shocking, nearly as memorable as certain scenes in Game of Thrones.

Over the course of just eight episodes, viewers see the Penguin's descent from flawed idealist to scheming bastard to absolute monster. And I personally couldn't stop cheering him on, until the final vicious twist near the end of the season. Even then, I understood him well enough to sympathize, even as I hated what he did. Great writing, good acting, strong production values, and good music selections. Several episodes feature at least one visually stunning scene where it all comes together like magic.

I enjoyed Juliette Nichols: Silo Raider immensely. Looking forward to the rest of season 2.

Commercial breaks on Paramount Plus worked out for the best. The two oldest were convinced to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender by the ads during Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

We just finished the first season. It is that good. Frequently gorgeous and fluid animation, fully-realized world, solid ensemble, interesting standalone episodes. No complaints beside Princess Yue needing another two episodes to flesh out her arc.

Then we watched the trailer for the live action Netflix adaptation. Absolute garbage. Visually faithful and mostly pretty except for Fire Nation facial hair which looks like I was put in charge of collecting horse tails and gluing them on faces, but it otherwise looks like a total misery fest. What if our penguin sledding hero is just a crying, whiner? Feels like a huge overcorrection worrying that the kids who watched it on release are now adults and worried about seeing something “too kiddie.”

Clarksons Farm - A documentary/reality show that I actually like. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to run your own farm, this is the show for you. He clearly doesn't need the money so takes risks but it's fun watching him fail a lot and learn about modern farming along the way. Being a long-time TV show host before this, he's good at keeping things moving and articulating what he's doing/thinking.

Dune Prophecy - To be honest, I had low expectations. I'm not into prequel stuff usually. But most stuff isn't 10k years earlier, either. The proto-Dune universe they've made isn't perfect but is still a cool setting. I'll finish the season.

I watched the first episode of Interior Chinatown. I don't yet know what to make of it. It seems like it's a tv show existing within a tv show, but it could just be a stylistic choice. Jimmy O. Yang (from Silicon Valley) plays a waiter in his family's Chinese restaurant. He dreams of being the main character instead of just some background nobody, and then ends up witnessing a kidnapping. Later, Kung Fu happens.

I'll watch another episode.