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Ah, I see – didn't realize that the composer talked about inspirations in the interview.

Quite enjoying INVASION too, although pocket-size fascist schoolboy character is a massive pain in the hole and I hope he dies ASAP

i love setting up the broken marriage storyline right up front AS the invasion is starting

I keep expecting him to start belting out 'Never Gonna Give You Up' xp

Finished Squid Game, which I liked overall with some reservations.

I had the basic ending of the game figured out as soon as they announced the rules. Marbles episode was probably the best. They did make us "care" about the characters as the show went on.

Did not like the final scene at all and it seemed only necessary to give us the possibility of S2.

Spoilers:

What was the point of the policeman subplot? It basically went nowhere.

All of the class/capitalism stuff seemed unnecessary. The rich people in the audience were distractingly bad. Almost like the producers said, "you're going to be wearing masks so you don't even have to act, we'll just get anyone off the street for these roles." It criticizes individual "bad" rich people instead of the system that allows the players to fall through the cracks. A veneer of criticism of capitalism while actually reinforcing it. I'm not good on class stuff, but something was off.

oops entire last paragraph should have been hidden.

The rich people in the audience were distractingly bad. Almost like the producers said, "you're going to be wearing masks so you don't even have to act, we'll just get anyone off the street for these roles."

"They didn’t just pick us up off the street!"

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/19/they-didnt-just-pick-us-up-off-the-street-meet-the-globally-derided-squid-game-vips

Ha, glad it wasn't just me.

Also, that article doth protest too much.

Squid Game article above, VIP 4 more confirms his hamminess than justifies the quality of his acting. Not that I was expecting great acting, but each of the VIPs seemed to base their character on the emperor in the "Heavy Metal" Richard Corben segment.

Had the same negative reaction as man alive to the main character, though he somewhat redeems himself with his early game performance, and will hopefully emerge a better person. Watching last two episodes tonight. The Battle Royale comparisons are apt, but I loved how episode 2's game changer separates SG from BR.

whoa I didn't realize that was Geoffrey Giuliano as a VIP.

I cant recall if Ive kvetched about this before here or on another thread but for the love of motherfuck what is Apple TV+ problem with the GAMMA in their shows?

We tried watching the first 2 episodes of "Invasion" and every single scene was at best dim, and at worst "lit by a moon and nothing else" pitchblack. granted we were watching in daytime but Ive never had this issue with anything but Apple + shows. It feels like an asthetic at this point and a fucking annoying one.

I do know that Apple+ is more prone to crashing or failing to load than any of our other streaming services. Also, it and Disney occasionally have these annoying audio pops. I looked it up once and an explanation I found is that the shows/signals are mixed for 7.1 sound, so if you have an older amp or one not quite up to current specs it sometimes does that when it's decoding or whatever it is it does.

When I had Apple+, it would occasionally freeze then restart my TV. Also, the closed captioning regularly lagged, or froze then rushed ahead to catch up with the dialog.

yeah it's a real p.o.s. at least on my roku tv

i couldnt even get the app to work on my mother's FireTV a few weeks ago, it would open and immediately crash. No idea why. works fine on one of my FireTVs and obviously is fine on the apple TV devices we have.

Need to come in here again on Goliath. I think this season might be the best ever. Less repulsive wackadoo stuff than S2, more burrowing into families and interpersonal rivalries and how the past never lets you go. I have never seen a lusher looking show. I feel like every shot they're challenging their future selves: "top THIS!" The rain, the neon, the smoke, the darkness, the warm glows of the city, the long rides hanging off of trolley cars. BRUCE DERN. Nina Arianda continuing to MVP her way through every episode. The pulpy moonshot legal strategies. It's exhilarating and crazy and great. And look I'm not going to lie I now have a couple of Tania Raymonde movies downloaded why well it's not because of their IDMB scores okay

Agree, fourth (and final) season a major improvement on the third, which I hated. Thornton's dream sequences in this one are kind of annoying, but it does look incredible (and they busted out the music from The Conversation!) and the villains are great across the board.

I think it goes S4 > S1 > S3 > S2

Watched Ep. 1 of The Flight Attendant, and started Ep. 2, but bailed once it became clear that she was gonna keep having dull, expository conversations with the dead guy. Also couldn't see how they were gonna sustain interest in that thin-seeming premise for 8 eps. (...and it was renewed for S2!?)

The Flight Attendant is actually pretty good, but it's about as one-and-done a thing as I can imagine. The idea of a second season is absurd.

Speaking of heavily “inspired by” theme music (and graphics), check out that show’s opening titles side-by-side with Mad Men’s!

i loved the flight attendant even though it was pure trash. zosia mamet worth the price of admission, ihibidtae

Finished Y the Last Man tonight...it wasn't great or even very good TV, but it was good enough that I wish it had gotten another season to winnow out some storylines and get focused. The last episode seemed to be taking it back closer to the comics.

Tried to cancel my Shudder free month, and they gave me another free month. Feels like I just got free tix to a Cartilage Head show.

Use it to watch amazing Hong Kong gangster thriller TRIVISA please.

Yeah the Flight Attendant was great actually. Surprised they are going to milk another season out of it but maybe it will shift focus (it will have to)

I decided to give Squid Game another chance. Once I got past the maudlin and cliched character setup, the actual game segment is very well done and compelling, but tbh I found the red light green light scene extremely disturbing, like to the point that I woke up still thinking about it and felt very unsettled. I'm kind of torn between wanting to see what happens and just not wanting to watch any more, because I have such limited free time now and I don't know if I feel like having that kind of experience.

There were also a few minor things that bothered me probably more than they should have -- for example, the trader guy obviously could have declared personal bankruptcy, so they tried to write their way around that by somehow implicating his mom's little shop? This made no sense, why the fuck would a guy trading in tens or hundreds of millions of dollars worth of futures even bother to put his mom's little fish head business up as collateral, it would barely get him anything. And why was a guy trading at an investment bank putting up personal collateral at all?

Similarly, I don't know Korean divorce law, but something felt very hack about the whole "This guy upstairs studies law and says you can get custody if you can support the child." That just sounded way too simplistic to me - did they mean that he could get partial custody and then block the other parent from moving to the US?

What I thought was great, however, was the level of visual storytelling, which I thought stood out even among some of the better prestige tv shows.

also Tracer otm upthread, missed his responses to my last post until now. Also like PBKR's point about how as a critique of capitalism it seems to fall a bit short (although obviously I haven't finished it out).

Also, just kind of wondering now if there is some kind of gotcha audience fingerpointing going on -- "See, YOU are the voyeur, YOU enjoyed watching people get gunned down playing a game," and it's like, nah, I really didn't, it fucked up my whole day and now I don't think I want to watch anymore.

Michael Haneke's Funny Squid Games

this is ancient but my wife went back and watched Friends from College which I had avoided because I heard it was so terrible and it is not really terrible at all, dunno why everyone thought these people were such outlandish assholes in the first season, they are not half as bad as Seinfeld. Keegan Michael Key wears on you but he's meant to be annoying. It's not like, amazing television but it was entertaining enough.

Only Murders in the Building was a fun, fast-paced watch. Excellent cast, a lot of actors I love that I don't see much anymore. except for Selena Gomez, who I've never seen act before and don't hope to again

Oh, I just noticed they're making another season, so I guess she'll probably be in that, huh

Sprangg Breeaaaaaaak forever

one of the best films of the century TBH

otm

Only Murders was v enjoyable, am so glad its getting a season 2!

Narcos Mexico is back. Couple of episodes in, it feels very much like Narcos.

anybody watched Impeachment? with Beanie Feldstein and Clive Owen??

I invited them both but Clive couldn’t make it

lol

this week's Invasion was somewhat tense

Seeing lots of recommendations for Invasion - how good is it? Like, Expanse good (i.e. unmissable) or Colony good (i.e. very missable but pretty good fun)?

Also loved Only Murders - it reminds me of the sort of late 80s/early 90s comedy that we use to endlessly rewatch on VHS. Definitely feels like something you could watch twenty years from now and still enjoy in a low-key way (if the world still exists)

I don't really get the Serial theme plagiarism issue - the plinky-plonk piano on the bottom is similar but the dominant theme on top is completely different. Besides -- the plinky-plonk sounds ripped off from Harry Nilsson's One anyway (or a dozen songs like it)

I have no dog in the fight, but "One" and a million other things are just piano marches (God Only Knows, Day In the Life, etc.). The Only Murders theme (like Serial, I guess?) is a particular sort of melancholy/spooky/menacing minor key march with touches of exotica. Both good themes, imo! I've never heard Serial, but I never skipped the Only Murders credits.

(Only Murders, btw, gets docked a few points for adhering too closely to Ebert's Law of Law of Economy of Characters, just as Maid of Easttown avoiding it gets extra points.)

I got spoiled by some headline way before watching it, so I couldn't tell how obvious (or not obvious) it was. Didn't affect my enjoyment though!

Invasion is OK, but it relies on a lot of people not asking/doing obvious things to propel the plot.

Only Murders took a moment to get going then was really good. Our kids almost bailed after first episode and then were glad they stuck with it.

Yeah, Invasion is definitely not Expanse good but it's very watchable and has some excellent moments amongst the more mundane ones xps

This season of Love Life is great. Jessica Williams' character is certainly someone one could fall in love with.

Agreed. I liked the first season but liked this one more. Both had moments of like "uh, that's now how life works/that's now how jobs work" or whatever, but the first season had more of that, and the second season was probably funnier.