What's good on Amazon Prime Video

Not sure if it was mentioned elsewhere but Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard's Forever is great if you looove Maya Rudolph and, er, don't mind Fred Armisen. Hoping to see Noah Robbins go on to bigger things off the back of it also.

Red Oaks is absolutely wonderful, love that show and those characters so much

i've been watching bosch, it's so stupid and hackneyed and i love it

currently on season four, i.e. the season where the most conservative show ever regarding giving police the freedom to do whatever they need to do to solve cases tries to reckon with police brutality/torture. it's a trip and someone should write a doctoral thesis on it.

I oddly enough watched Red Oaks because John Podhoretz loved it so much.

I watched the first season of Red Oaks because my friend's son played one of the supporting car-parking nitwits. It was fine, especially Paul Reiser playing a shit.

the most conservative show ever regarding giving police the freedom to do whatever they need to do to solve cases

uh, have you ever seen Blue Bloods? ... like calling Bosch a conservative cop show compared to that ... impressive collection of Republican Americana ... idk

Bosch is like Hunter crossed with The Wire and it largely owns.

i have very conflicting feelings about it

I guess what I'm trying to say, is that most cop shows are "pro-cop, anti-bureaucracy" ... Bosch isn't all that extreme an example imo

i've only seen the first 3 seasons, they've become progressively better. It's this combination of old-school TV corn (including some of the acting and plotting) and nu-school atmospheric realism and some much better acting by a few of the key players. only thru S3, but 3>2>>1.

worst thing i've seen on this show was the disgusting PDA displays by one of the S3 military bad guys and his gf.

an interesting essay topic would be the portrayal of Irving in the tv series vs. the books -- the series has changed the character significantly and Reddick makes him much more sympathetic than the way that character is written in Connelly's books

i was being hyperbolic about "most conservative ever..." etc. i guess i just meant compared to the wire, which is clearly what bosch is aspiring to.

the seasons do gradually get better, i agree. the action scenes are usually exciting which makes it weird they only have like two-three action scenes per season.

i also like the weird choice to set up the koreatown killer plot in season three, continue it into season four, and then have it end completely anticlimactically as a C-plot (though i haven't finished s4 yet so maybe there's more to come).

haven't read the books but assume Irving is more a gray area type character? it probably is a good essay topic for a lot of TV/film portrayals of book characters, where they take a more nuanced and complex part and push it either towards more of a "good guy" or more of a villain. i feel like i was thinking of a different character in regards to this kind of recently, now i'm blanking.

this show and the Refn series make extremely good use of Los Angeles, w/Bosch being primarily Hollywood and the surrounding area and TOTDY being heavily in the San Fernando Valley.

all cop shows are reactionary and conservative by nature; the cop as protagonist means every other character falls into one of two categories: victim or criminal (bcz this is how cops see the world, naturally)

i guess i just meant compared to the wire, which is clearly what bosch is aspiring to.

I don't see that aspiration at all, unless you are thinking that by casting Reddick and Marlo the show is signalling that? Bosch strikes me as a more "personal narrative" centered show, whereas the Wire was about oppressive and/or dysfunctional systems and how it is near impossible through human agency to dismantle or change those systems.

haven't read the books but assume Irving is more a gray area type character? it probably is a good essay topic for a lot of TV/film portrayals of book characters, where they take a more nuanced and complex part and push it either towards more of a "good guy" or more of a villain.

Actually, in the books he is more of a villain and the show makes him more of a gray area type character.

casting Reddick probably makes the character even more likable i guess, plus he's got an underrated gift for comic underplaying. some of the better moments involve his side eyes at Bosch.

I've watched the first episode of the Refn show and need to keep rolling

after finishing the first, I was thinking that his style really made the episode seem longer than it was, but it really was 90 minutes! it's not necessarily intimidating, but I had to acknowledge it's a series where I'm going to have to actually make a commitment to one episode at a time. episode length seems to taper off after the first few

last episode is 30 min. i haven't gotten there yet, just finished up episode 7.

I'm not sure they do taper off. Last one is 30 minutes yeah, but four clock in at 90 minutes and another four around the 75 minute mark.

I've finished it now - was generally very good but I've no idea how many people are going to stay the whole course.

Anyone watch The Boys yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcrNsIaQkb4

i sorta read the first thirty issues of the comic it's based on and I can tell you that it's based on vile subject matter

Based on the trailers and the Wikipedia page for the original series it looks like real chud bait.

the comic redeems itself a bit by the midpoint but anyone who claims to be a big fan is probably a sociopath

it’s Garth Ennis going into the red on cynicism about superheroes and any show is going to either cut things back entirely, or cut back in ways that obscure the obvious vileness of the enterprise, making it apologetic imo

Under the Silver Lake (by dude who did It Follows) got panned and sunk into oblivion, but... I kinda liked it? It’s messy and shaggy dog, not sure what it all amounts to, but it sinks you into its world. Surreal LA noir thing, easy to see the Lynch fiber, but kinda brought to mind Inherent Vice (the book) maybe moreso than the PTA movie.

It got planned at Cannes but it's already got quite a cult following. I saw it on the big screen and had so much fun with it.

I was not aware! Yeah, I had kinda forgotten about it until I saw it on Prime. Intended to just check out the first 15 minutes or so before bed to see what kinda vibe it had and ended up watching the whole thing.

Halfway through The Boys and it might actually be... ok?

It's dialled down in the same way as the Preacher TV series was, probably even more so and has simplified the plot hugely so it can largely avoid the Ennis-isms.

Ready to have to reverse this opinion after the second half.

I watched the first episode and enjoyed it. mh's point is a good one, but I never read the comics, so... *shrug*

From a writeup:

Like Starlight, Quaid’s Hughie finds himself entering into a new reality where he learns the truth about the Seven. His journey starts with an awful loss when speedster A-Train runs through his girlfriend Robin and liquefies her right in front of his eyes. Kripke says he always viewed that scene as vital to the Boys’ ethos, something he doubled down on after talking to Darick Roberston. “When we were having really early conversations, I asked, ‘What’s important to you?’ And he said ‘Please, the most important thing is that A-Train runs through Robin.’ And I was like, ‘Well, that’s really important to me, too, and we’re definitely going to do it.’ Just because, to me, that really sets the tone of what this show is going to be.”

I guess the tone is “me never, ever watching this”

this (nsfw) image from the first issue is on page 8 if it gives you some idea on "tone"

I think that’s indicative of the comic

‘Main character has spiteful sexual encounters” is kind of a different realm in the story from “central main character has his life ruined by unthinking superhero who doesn’t care about normal people”

xp - good god

Ennis had a short series called Rover Red Charlie about dogs after the end of the world that was great until a scene where a giant pitbull keeps a human slave and there's a half page drawing of the human being forced to eat doggy butt.

*good not great, overstating because the initial premise was right up my alley until it got all Ennis-y

I regret to mention The Boys also includes dog-on-human sexual acts

christ. Ennis is truly the pits and always has been since his early days of ruining Hellblazer. I'll give this "edgy" shit a pass.

Ive been watching the show and its had nothing that bad thus far, aside from one rather rapey scene where a woman sits on a poor shmucks face and basically grinds on him til his head gets pulverised.

The main thing weirding me out is what the hell accent is Carl Urban doing? Sometimes it sounds like spot on australian then it veers into comedy cockney.

a woman sits on a poor shmucks face and basically grinds on him til his head gets pulverised.

so, suicide by....

oh god, never mind

Dark edgy parodies of superheroes are somehow even worse than actual superheroes

Forever isn't getting a S2. That's fine. I think they told enough of the story and maybe this will free Rudolph up to do something where I don't have to temper my pure enjoyment of her with tolerating Fred Armisen.

I've liked the first couple of episodes of The Boys ok so far. Don't know anything about the comic, if that's the source, but it's very Watchmen meets RoboCop (the movie) meets ... that James Gunn movie Super? So far said edgy superheroes seem to be in service of a broader satire of corporations and marketing/branding.

can't believe they went disney with a live action megamind

Amazon seem to be promoting the shit out of The Boys (similar to Good Omens) whereas Too Old To Die Young got absolutely zero coverage

Forever isn't getting a S2. That's fine. I think they told enough of the story

Yeah I'm OK with that - unless maybe they wanted to do something in the same universe and same rules with different characters that'd work for me.

the best episode of forever was the standalone one imo. i don't think it "works' as a piece of television without a second season, though on the other hand i don't think a second season would have necessarily have been great. i also dislike fred armisen

I'm on episode 4 or 5 of "The Boys," and man, it gets pretty dark. Sometimes funny, often OTT, sometimes smart. I also think the soundtrack so far (everything from the Damned to Bill Withers) is pretty sharp, and the cast is strong across the board, Urban's accent aside. fwiw, the most "all-American" of the characters is played by another Kiwi.