What TV Shows Are You Watching?

Watching Bluey with my 3 year old. It’s really good. Bandit, the dad, is the most committed to the bit I’ve ever seen!

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I’ve heard that Bluey is good good, not just kid good. Are the reports accurate?

Ive read all 3 books and reread them fairly recently (last 2 years) and the biggest changes that the show takes from the books is it makes everyone involved directly involved or related to Kovacs that makes the whole world feel bent around him in a way the books do not. Whole characters are changed or replaced to facilitate this change.

Season 1 pretty directly maps just to the 1st book, Altered Carbon, so while it has these character changes the plot beats and overall story are still strong. Season 2 smashes together the plots, characters, locations, and ideas of the 2nd and 3rd book together intensifying all of the general adaptation issues and just making a jumble of events which notably brings down the show quality.

Giant Macro level snapshot of all 3 books.

  1. Altered Carbon: Meet Kovacs, get the big buy of the setting, see “old earth”, straight noir post ww2 vibes
  2. Broken Angels: Kovacs is in a perpetual grinding planetary civil war on an edge planet, touches more on the martian fallen civilization and has a just trying to survive in a warzone story.
    3.Woken Furies: Kovacs returns to his birth world, Harlan’s World, and gets embroiled local revolutionary poltiics, a ltot of the "recent’ political history and philosphy of the setting is explored. This has more of a spy thriller feeling.
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Yes, there are episodes that are really artistic. A good number of the stories are almost at parents rather than kids (though kids will still enjoy them). All of the characters are great. Its just on a whole 'nother plane compared to most of what gets made for the toddler age range. I’ve had friends without kids enjoyably watch it when over my house and I have it on my 2 year old son and my sister and mother have both watched it completely on their own.

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Yes. There’s stuff in there that’s really poignant for adults with regard to parenting. It sets a really good example to try to live up to.

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I watched Altered Carbon a while ago. I tried an episode or two, then stopped.

I went back to it later when I realized I had read a different novel from the same author years ago, in which international megacorps settle their differences by having execs do car battle to the death on their commute.

The noirishness of Altered Carbon was ok but the vibes of “90’s cyberpunk guy really likes Japan” put me off. See: fight scene with 15 naked clone ladies wielding katanas.

Absolutely, yes. And pay attention to the places they go, that’s where I live!

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I think Morgan’s writing on Altered Carbon is a bit better than in Market Forces (its a more layered setting rather than just intensified corporate dystopia with death derby “jousts”) and would encourage you to read the book as its better than the netflix show. That said its definitely got a bit of grindhouse patina in the depictions of violence and sexual violence, but it doesn’t have the cyberpunk orientalism the show just sleepwalks into.

I appreciate the synopsis but I don’t think that book is ever getting to the top of my queue ^_~

We’re working our way through all of Star Trek. Right now we’re double-fisting Picard and Strange New Worlds. Both in their third season.

Bluey is a must watch for any parent. But it’s so good, I can only assume anyone would enjoy it.

It’s just so damn good.

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My wife and I will often watch it even without our son around. I’ve seen it described as a parenting show that kids will love too and it’s really accurate. But I agree, even without kids it’s hilarious and the super short run times make it an easy watch.

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HBO Max just dropped a surprising new series yesterday called Fired on Mars…and they only dropped the trailer for the series just THREE DAYS before its premiere.

Only the first two episodes are up now, so it’s a weekly release series, but from what I’ve seen so far, it’s REALLY DAMN GOOD.

The series follows Jeff Cooper, who goes to Mars to get a job as a graphic designer only to be laid off. There’s some clear anti-techbro satire since the company doesn’t give a shit about him, and when an employee literally DIES ON THE JOB, this opens an opportunity for Jeff to get a new position at his company (it’s the surface of Mars, so there’s nowhere else to go)–and it turns out that this new position is even worse than the one he was just fired from.

This show is absolutely incredible so far. Please go watch it if you can.

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I’ve been waiting for a new space-based office series for a while. An comedic animation like this isn’t the way I expected to see it, but, I’ll definitely take it.

Is anyone else watching the current season of Bob’s Burgers getting the feeling from the tone of the episodes that it was meant to be the final season? There’s just something about it that feels like it’s wrapping things up to show they’ll all be okay in the future.

If anyone remembers Drops of God, that manga about wine from the mid 2000s, well Apple+ made a live action adaptation and it’s… pretty okay. I really enjoyed reading the first few volumes of this manga and I plan to eventually finish it, hopefully in print format. This manga taught 20something me a shit ton about wine and its appreciation and was a joy to read.

The show makes a lot of changes to the characters, their backgrounds, the setting, and the subplots. But the basic framework of the storyline is still there. A globe trotting wine tasting competition to see who inherits rich dad’s ridiculously overvalued wine cellar. While I certainly have critiques about the changes made to the characters, my biggest disappointment about the show was how they changed the over-the-top visual representations of the taste of the various wines. Where the manga shows the characters transported in passion to exotic locales and situations from the mere smell of a fine wine, the show opts for more of a mind palace situation with accompanying pastel smoke-bomb explosions. Meh. I also miss how one of the main characters, in the manga, had such an exquisite wine pouring technique that it would regularly blow people’s minds. Shit had me rolling. So far I’ve only seen the first couple episodes, so maybe things will spice up to the level of the manga as the series progresses. We will see.

Should also note that this show is one of those tri-lingual productions with the characters all switching between speaking Japanese, French and, English as needed. Which definitely makes sense for this story.

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I know one thing about Drops of God, and it’s decantering, from such a height!!

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Mrs. Davis is an American science fiction comedy-drama limited series created by Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof for Peacock. The show stars Betty Gilpin as a nun who partners with her ex-boyfriend on a journey to destroy Mrs. Davis, a powerful artificial intelligence. The show explores the tension between technology and faith and asks some of the biggest questions that society faces about technology and faith. The tone of the show shifts from slapstick comedy to drama and back so quickly at times that it may cause whiplash, and it also has surrealist elements.

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The show is set in a world where democracy is constantly at odds with misinformation, behavioral manipulation, the surveillance state, and the interests that control these extraordinary powers
1 2. The show has a dense patchwork of illusion and deception, and it has occasional humor 3.

Loved the music as well, I’d put it above Class of 09 also.

So this is just a nightly news program?

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