What TV Shows Are You Watching?

Just finished rewatching Gravity Falls. That show deserves a final thoughts episode.

They already did.

I binge watched both seasons of Daredevil, overall pretty good. However its really never delivers on the promises of its setups which bothers me. This leads to really weak finales in both season 1 and 2. The first 10 episodes of S1 were incredible television but it really goes off the rails after that and into Season 2. The resolution of plots were rushed, under explained, and lacked proper pacing. Season 2 especially felt like 3 seasons mashed into one and the characterā€™s emotional continuity from episode to episode suffered as a result.

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Started watching True Detective over the weekend. Got to ep6 and itā€™s definitely an interesting so far! I love me some southern gothic.

Season one of Peaky Blinders was a solid story start to finish. We thoroughly enjoyed it. Bonus points that it was short and focused. I expect to watch further seasons, but not immediately.

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Totally blanked on that. My bad.

Iā€™ve not seen it myself but Birmingham (where I now live) doesnā€™t get enough love so I ought to.

Yeah. Thatā€™s an accurate description. Iā€™ve given up on it, too.

Just rewatched Daria. Itā€™s still one of my all-time favorite American cartoons.

Finished watching The Punisher TV series. Itā€™s definitely better than the 2 Punisher movies. Iā€™m only just starting Jessica Jones, but after watching 3 Marvel TV series and hearing about how Luke Cage/Iron Fist/Defenders are all mediocre, I feel like the overarching problem with these shows is that each season is too long. The Punisher is probably the least affected by length since its a more self contained story but it still could have been a much stronger 10 episode series.

Thematically, the Punisher is somehow an edgy action-thriller that deals with heavy issues while also managing not have much of a message. You could say it was being even-handed by having all sides of crazy represented in both the gun control debate and the PTSD soldier dilemma, but I think it isnā€™t cohesive enough of a narrative to have a real take-away. Perhaps this was deliberate as a means to sidestep controversies but I think it was more that the writers themselves werenā€™t sure where they stood on these issues.

Frank Castle is far more sympathetic of a character here than in his definitive run by Garth Ennis, which is fine considering the vastly different timelines. They donā€™t quite go far enough in showing how Castle isnā€™t just an anti-hero, he can be just psychopathic, but Iā€™m assuming the next season will explore his nature/nuture angle that the comics did.

Overall I think The Punisher is slightly worse than Season 1 of Daredevil and much better than Season 2. There actually isnā€™t as much violence as youā€™d expect, it was a pleasant surprise how many character moments there were. It has a much better (and more violent) finale than the other series but it struggles a bit in tying the threads together it get there. Stand out characters are Micro and his family, they probably had too many scenes, but they easily had the storyline I was most emotionally invested in. Jon Bernthal is a perfect cast as the Punisher and easily erases previous mental images of the character.

Putting Luke Cage in the same category as Iron Fist and the Defenders is just wrong.

Iron Fist and the Defenders are both terrible shows. Absolutely horrible. The first half of Luke Cage is excellent and while the second half drops in quality, it is still miles above the other two.

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While I Agree with your position on Luke Cage, Defenders was no where near terrible.

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It still had Danny Rand in it, so itā€™s at least somewhat near terrible, if only by association.

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No, Defenders was also terrible, but in slightly different ways than Iron Fist. The gap between what the show could have been, and what it actually turned out being, was greater than the same thing with Iron Fist.

The Defenders was just bad. So bad in fact that theyā€™re not planning on making a second season. Even Iron Fist is getting a second season, although I wish they would just scrap that.

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Honestly thought the Luke Cage/Iron Fist moments were pretty rad.

They were - but it always felt like most of that was in spite of Danny, not because of him.

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At least they managed to get a decent fight scene out of Danny in Defenders. That one where he put his hood up before he walked down an alley and you conveniently couldnā€™t see his face the whole time.

One of the biggest mistakes of Iron FIst was not putting him in a mask so it was easier to put a stunt double in :-p

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Thatā€™s one of them. The other is that they fundamentally didnā€™t understand the character. The entire premise of the show was flawed.

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Iā€™ve been watching the new Queer Eye show on Netflix, and itā€™s made me cry two to six times per episode.

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