I got about 2 3/4 episodes in before stopping. The show is kind of… extremely white? I looked at the guest list and they all seem to be successful and wealthy white people, with the possible exception being the alleged child murderer that rambles on about magic.
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Absolutely. It’s a very, very constrained perspective on spirituality. It’s not great that there are some many speakers providing authoritative interpretations of non-white traditions and no non-white speakers at all.
Last night I finished watching the first season of Pennyworth, that aired on the Epix channel. This is a prequel to the prequel of Batman, following a young Alfred Pennyworth in Britain in the late 1950s-1960s.
The show is… weird. It has a very strong Sherlock vibe to it, but I had to keep reminding myself that this was some alternate-reality London. The show is mostly very realistic in terms of setting, but then there will be some really odd things that stand out that remind you that this is DC’s London, where apparently they still have public hangings and airships, and not our London.
Overall, I enjoyed the show a lot, which surprised me. My only criticism of the show was it’s connection to Batman. This show didn’t need to be about Alfred Pennyworth, didn’t need to have Thomas Wayne as an American undercover CIA agent, and didn’t need to have any connection to the Batman mythos at all. They could have changed all the names and just had a weird London show about a young former SAS officer. I would have actually preferred that.
The show has a great soundtrack with a lot of classic 1960s British rock and punk and the overall plot about a Right-wing fascist organization (the Raven League) fighting against a Left-wing socialist organization (the No Name League), with the British government caught in the middle, was good, it just didn’t need to have any connection to Batman. Oh well.
Not sure if there will be a season two, but if there is, I’d probably watch it. All the actors are great, especially Jack Bannon who plays Alfred. Also, Emma Paetz, who plays Martha Kane (eventually Martha Wayne) is also excellent as an idealistic No Name League agent who starts working with Thomas Wayne and the CIA.
TLDR: Enjoyable show, just wish there wasn’t any Batman connection because it seems superfluous and unnecessary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVsHuvtXuqA
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Ugh ok none of that sounds interesting at all.
If it was like, one episode dipped into it, whatever. But if that’s the whole point of it than nah.
I started the first season of Homecoming. Why have I only just heard of this show???
It’s very good. Sam Esmail show, shot in this deceptively 80’s style despite taking place in the mostly present. Julia Roberts. Janelle Monae. A slow burn, non-binge show, with subtle hilarity and a theatrical style of tension.
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One of the things that took me out of ATLA was that, as much as I suspect they tried to be respectful, the white gaze was unmistakable, and subsequently uncomfortable, for me. It reminded me of trying & failing to find identity within the array of asian tropes I was expected to perform identity within. So, while it was a good show, I have really mixed feelings about it.
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Yeah I never got into the show, and some amount of the, well, offgassing of that effect is probably why?
Beforeigners is a great little show mixing time travel, or more specifically “time refugees” and crime noir. Went in with no expectations and really enjoyed the first season. I may have to check out more Norwegian TV after this:
“Flashes of light appear in the sea, and people from the past emerge in the present; the so-called “beforeigners” struggle to integrate into modern society, then a woman with Stone Age tattoos is found murdered on a beach.”
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After one episode, Devs looks like it’s about Wôzniak Kellhus.
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Wouldn’t Steve Jobs be the Kellhus and Woz is the Achamian?
Have been enjoying Space Force quite a bit. Not a perfect comedy, but I’ve had several laugh out loud moments watching this.
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Well damn, now I kind of want to watch it.
Yeah, it was odd. There were a few moments that had me laughing, there were a few moments were I was right on board with the characters and their victories, but a lot of the show just kinda passed by? It’s certainly enjoyable, but also kinda boring. It’s not BAD at any point, but I wouldn’t also call it a stand-out show. Hard to say what my opinion is on it, the whole thing is very mixed.
I watched the first episode. It was the most “fine” first episode of a tv comedy I’ve seen. Which means I’m probably not going to watch any more of it.
Yeah, to be honest, you could watch all the best bits as clips, and really not miss that much or enjoy it any less.
For some reason Office Comedies like the Office and Parks and rec always kinda suck or are uneven their first season.
Overall it was a good show to do other things while watching. Had some fun moments. I assume the second season will be better better.
Plus the humor is right in my wheel house since I have a soft spot for military bureaucracy comedy.
I saw the first episode and want to mostly echo Luke’s sentiment; other than I probably will end up watching a few more episodes.
I really wish that, being a space nerd, the space stuff was more authentic. Like it’s not even remotely on point at all. Unless it’s just some quirk of the first episode?
I might be too dumb to realize how much it gets wrong but at least Silicon Valley for example seems to use technology in a plaaaaaaaaaaausibleeeeee way, and treat the coding and work being done with some level of what at least passes a layman’s test of realism.
But in Space Force they treat the actual rocket science with about as much respect as an episode of Star Trek, which is to say not one single neutrino of a fuck. And that’s a shame because actual spacey stuff with the actual spacey science behind it could still be understandable to most people and the jokes could still use it as a medium. Or propellant. Well it could at least get the show through MAXQ. It might not stick the landing on OCISLY.
OK you need actually smart people to make actual science funny. Still.
I’d love to see maybe a parody on the commercial space race by a Mike Judge type. I think that has legs. You could have the company “Pad Ninjas” but they’re wearing leather bondage gimp suits because the company hired the CEO’s dominatrix friend from college as the fashion designer, and so it turns out half the rockets are explicitly phallic in very strange ways, so for example you have the launch tower sortof resembling a chastity device? And the CEO is just such a literal space cadet (we can have a whole flashback episode where they had some wild accident at Space Camp in the 90’s) that we don’t know if they are in on it or just oblivious or what.
Can have funny scenes where there’s a “that guy” engineer who is really trying hard to bring back the Apollo days wearing the 60’s horn glasses, driving a restored Chevy from the era, and the whole fedora and vest; he’s just such a piece of work but sometimes drops some absurd lines that are funny. Maybe we get the person who’s the spokesperson for the launches but they’re always really distracted during critical moments so the broadcasts are always super awkward.
And then there’s testing out in the desert and things are craaaaaazy out there. Like a bunch of super nerd engineers living in basically party dorms. It’s like burning man, but with rockets, so it’s rocketman, but that’s already taken so it’s rocketeer, but that’s taken, so it’s burning rocket; and then the rockets keep exploding so they hate the name…
See, maybe its only humor I’d get but that shit seems way funny if done right.
It is not. They face various problems that relate to the science, but then tend to solve them with absurd non-science solutions. And later in the season, they do actually get boots on the moon, as the slogan goes, and that’s also dumb as hell. It’s definitely a sitcom based around a desperate failure of a mission(ie, the entirety of space force), more than a show about going to space. It’s basically trying to be The Office in the Military, with a dash of Veep.
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I honestly have no idea if this is going to be good or not, or even faithful to the books, which while classics, are incredibly dated, but holy cow do the visuals of this look amazing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=148&v=xgbPSA94Rqg&feature=emb_logo
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