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[Yoink]

The outcry about season 2 was fucking dumb.
The premise of the show was an anthology series with vastly different, probably unconnected stories involving detectives taking place each season.

There was some dopey shit later on in s2, but on the whole it lived up to expectations. People disliking it because it wasn't the same as the first season is a real peeve of mine.

[Digital Hellhound]

S3 is hitting hard so far. Might be because I’m dealing with Alzheimer’s-burdened grandparents myself that the whole concept is so compelling. Ali’s performance is spectacular, especially considering how he’s sorta playing himself three times over. I don’t think supernatural spookiness is actually going to play a large part here - it’s just them saying ’see, it’s like S1 again!’ - but the atmosphere is nicely bleak and unsettling nevertheless.

I have suspicions who might’ve done with already, so they’ve done a nice job setting up the rest of the season.

[Kagus]

Haven't started watching the new season yet, but I'm eager to get into it. Think we might need to renew our HBO subscription again.

I also didn't have a problem with season 2... I mean, sure, seeing Vince Vaughn in a more "serious" role was pretty weird/funny, but I didn't really have a problem with that and I even took the extremely unhappy ending in stride.

It's not the first season, of course it isn't... But I don't think it's bad. Not really sure where that's coming from. GF is another one who went around telling folks to avoid watching season 2 at all, but I feel it was still very much worth my time for the experience.

[Il Palazzo]

S1 was a tightly focused and character driven pseudo-noir. The smart writing is what elevated it above the regular TV fare. By smart I don't mean those bits when Mcconaughey would wax philosophical, but that it felt like the script was thought over many times, and any potentially spurious parts were cut, leaving a sleek product. S2 felt like a patchwork of cool and bleak parts that didn't quite gel together or go anywhere. It felt rambling and unfocused.

[Jopax]

To be fair, I didn't think S2 was all that bad, it was a mess for the most part, but it had it's good parts. It certainly didn't live up to the standard that S1 set.

And I'm not saying they have to do the same thing every time, and S2 wasn't bad because it was different, but right now it seems like they're cargo culting themselves if that makes sense. Taking some iconic things from the first season that a lot of people say they loved (even though it wasn't the only stuff that made it great) and repeating it because it worked then. The whole interview and several time periods thing for example, if it was present in S2 then you could say that it's a sort of hallmark of the series, the way it tells its stories, however different they might be, something that makes you go "That's a True Detective thing". But they haven't, and that was fine, different approaches for different stories and everything, but then they go back to using the same thing again because that's what folks remember the first season for?

Dunno, hard to completely put this into words, I'm just having a wierd feeling about the whole thing (mainly that they got lucky the first time and are now scrambling to repeat the success without knowing why exactly it was successful).
Still, one of the better shows out there right now, despite all that and I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of the season, just got some mixed feelings lurking about.

[heatwave]

Just started watching the Cinemax show The Knick. I haven’t even finished the first episode yet, but it’s already got me hooked.

[Yoink]

@Jopax: yeah, apparently due to the (in my opinion unwarranted) poor reception of the second season, the network brought in extra writers to meddle with the main dude's ideas and, presumably, bring it more in line with what they thought made s1 a hit.

[Il Palazzo]

Just started watching the Cinemax show The Knick. I haven’t even finished the first episode yet, but it’s already got me hooked.

It's great. Maybe a bit too clean-looking even when it's showing grime. But then again it's got Clive Owen, and I'd watch him in anything.
The man has a resting fuck-off face, and somehow that makes everything better.

[nenjin]

S1 was a tightly focused and character driven pseudo-noir. The smart writing is what elevated it above the regular TV fare. By smart I don't mean those bits when Mcconaughey would wax philosophical, but that it felt like the script was thought over many times, and any potentially spurious parts were cut, leaving a sleek product. S2 felt like a patchwork of cool and bleak parts that didn't quite gel together or go anywhere. It felt rambling and unfocused.

^

Season 2 was balls. It was an entire season of our protagonists being terrible people, and a straight up mystery plot that someone went "this isn't as creepy and weird as Season 1, quick, grab some weird looking masks!"

I didn't enjoy hardly anything out of Season 2. It was a disappointment to me the same way Mulholland Drive was a disappointment. After years of watching creepy weird David Lynch stuff, MD was so normal by comparison I found I couldn't pay attention. S2 of TD wasn't that per se, but it had the same issue. It was mundane and boring, and the only interesting things in it were sad, unlikable characters being sad and unlikable. Collin Farrel's character was just pathetic throughout. And in general it just felt tawdry and bleak because it didn't actually know what it wanted to be, so it went with some "character-focused" schlock. S2 was way more about the characters than the crime, and neither were particularly interesting.

S3 already sounds better but I'm going to to give it some time to accrue some episodes so I can binge on it.

[Yoink]

Sure, the actual crime in S2 was stupid as shit from what I remember (yeah, masks and some edgy kids planning to kill someone involved in some conspiracy, I dunno it seemed kinda nonsensical), but can you really not see any merit in what you call character focused schlock?
I found the characters and the background politics they had to deal with quite entertaining, personally, as was the setting.
Then again I usually prefer flawed characters - which is part of why I liked Season 1, also, but maybe they went too far in s2 to appeal to the average palate. *shrug*

[Folly]

The Magicians is back for Season 4!

I really wish I had time to go back and re-watch this from the beginning, because there is just so much going on and it's all sooo good! But as it is, I'm diving straight into season 4, and it's off to a strong start. Looking forward to more!


Just finished Outlander Season 4.

This was an incredible roller-coaster ride of a season, and imo the best drama to come out of this show so far. Jamie and Claire are trouble magnets, and Brianna brings the worst of both worlds! I honestly have no idea where Season 5 is going to go from here, but I can't wait to find out.

[nenjin]

but can you really not see any merit in what you call character focused schlock?

Sure, but not the way it was handled in S2. In S1 there was that kind of "characters are people and make mistakes too" moments. But they were part of the story, instead of what felt like the bulk of the effort. In S1 you're humming along, this cool plot, some decent chemistry between the two detectives and then WHAM, that stuff happens. It gave it impact.

S2 came across as "Well, S1 was entertainingly unpleasant. How can we top of that? What if all three of our characters are complete fuckups with horrible backstories, and half the show is given over to their awkward and unpleasant sex lives and hangups. (And Collin Farrel as the saddest man on Earth.)"

Increasingly I don't find entire shows built around the concept of misery as entertaining. And S2 was miserable pretty much from top to bottom. The fact that there's talented actors doesn't change  that I wanted a shower after every episode. I don't find a main character grappling with being a gay cop and being filled with self-loathing and baggage any more interesting than a main character having angry hate sex with random guys because of her daddy issues. Or Collin Farrel being two seconds away from killing someone over rape at any moment. After a while you're like "This is neither fun nor interesting. It's just lurid and unpleasant schlock, with an artistic veneer because we have HBO money and real actors." I suppose if there'd actually been a good crime or mystery as the counterpoint to all this muck, something that maybe fed in to or set up all the high emotion....but the crime seemed like an afterthought. I started to dread when people would strip off their crime scene gloves because it meant they were about to be "off the clock" and we were about to be subjected to more garbo. In the absence of a crime that was interesting, the whole show acted like these three characters were what we were supposed to be paying attention to. And you could have gotten rid of any one of the three detectives and, at least to my recollection, it wouldn't have impacted the show in any real way.

Maybe to put it more succinctly, in S1 the detectives and their dysfunction were there to support the story of the crime and the killer, to make it more interesting. In S2, the crime was there to support the dysfunction of the characters, to give them a break from allllll the shit they're about to just "do their jobs." The crime in S2 did not in any way make the detectives and their stories more interesting, whereas the reverse is true in S1.

[Folly]

This is Youtube rather than TV, but I just started watching Everglow's Kingdom Hearts Timeline, in preparation for KH3 launch tomorrow.

122 episodes...yeah, I probably shouldn't have waited until the last day to start this one...

[Folly]

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is back for season 6!

Tonight's episode was focused on Brexit. It sounds like they are really giving the US some competition in the stupid politics department right now.

[nenjin]

Started True Detective Season 3. Just finished Episode 2.

I likey. It feels very slow, the build and the tension is there. Subtle little wrongnesses that are easy to miss. There's also a lot of just good classic procedural cop stuff happening, asking questions, putting two and two together. It feels like a satisfying mystery even without the otherness in the background.

I find the characters interesting, people I actually want to know more about. (Although man seeing Stephen Dorff is a trip.) I don't quite know if I'm enjoying the fractured time thing, it does seem to draw things out. But I'm still waiting for more to show itself.