Your Ten Favorite Shows Currently on Television

the 'stache and makeup and the extra pounds do a lot of the heavy lifting, but still, goddamn.

Can I start Hannibal at S02E01?

I'd watch the s1 finale first maybe but I am notorious about not being a purist when it comes to skipping seasons. hannibal s1 is mostly very good tho tbh

need to start from the beginning imo. I loved Hannibal S1 & S2. S3 was even more stylized and it had a narcotic quality that was hard to get into at first.

but I ended up liking it, and the ending was...

the abstract extremes of the first half of s3 are my favorite parts of the whole show

season one gets referred back to pretty often, you should watch it

Sweet, didn't know there was a TJ & Dave improv series. Thanks for the heads up, forks, and I second your recommendation. They do improv for people who think they hate improv.

― Why does this relates to Yoda? (Old Lunch), Monday, July 27, 2020 6:57 PM bookmarkflaglink

had no fucking idea this was the Sonic commercial dudes

season three is as i’ve said on the hannibal thread is as beautiful and immersive an aesthetic experience as they come, each episode like prism built out of dreams and memories. i don’t see much of a decline in quality from the first half to the second but i know ppl are less thrilled with the red dragon stuff

well i think i know what show i'll start on next

I didn't see a decline in S3 but overall it was so extremely morose, it was hard to take at first. I really loved the ending, hope there is some future for the series

I gave Corporate a shot, seems somewhat like Silicon Valley meets Office Space. (Also a script that seems kind of like it was written by Reddit dudes.)

In that vein I've been watching Silicon Valley again, it's mostly solid but some hasn't aged too well. TJ Miller sporting his "I know HTML (How To Meet Ladies)" t-shirt, a fair bit of sexist humor, the stereotypical woman of color prostitute...

Simon: Lol, i loooooooved that episode end. My partner and i have taken to calling each other "Lyle" when we catch each other in particular dumb moves.

OL: the TJ & Dave series is eight 50 minute improv sessions; they're basically all great. If you knock those out, there's a documentary called "Trust Us, This Is All Made Up" that offers another hour plus some process notes with the two of them by interview. I saw them live at Town Hall some years back and it was not the greatest set. It's a game of chance!

Neanderthal: One of the weird things about the modern world is that the "sonic guys" are both comic geniuses.

Rip: Hannibal is a fine wine to be savored; I wouldn't leave out anything tbh.

Viborg: Corporate occasionally wallows in its own jaded dipshittery but it's always self aware and doesn't really punch down. I like it a lot and respect its unwillingness to try to be likeable.

yes I appreciate how deliberately not appealing or charming the main Corporate guys are

and I just watched the s3 premiere of Corporate and it was delightful. amazed that despite being years late they were still, AFAIK, the first to use the nightmarish youtube algorithmic "children's videos" as fodder for dark laughs

yeah, that was inspired.

I'm strongly considering making separate click polls for the best series endings of the 00s and 10s. I'm compiling lists for both right now...I think I have most of the obvious ones in, but pls suggest notable series that you wouldn't want to see forgotten, especially non-US stuff and anything else that might escape typical radar (like animated/kids' series for instance, though I have Adventure Time in there already and I'm considering whether or not Steven Universe makes the cutoff - inclined to say no)

the spoiler alert polls

Umbrella Academy S2 was great, a marked improvement on S1

I might check it out if I keep hearing good things. I liked some individual elements of s1 but the A plot, most of the dialogue and a bunch of the supporting/tertiary characters (especially the hitmen...complete waste of time) were a total drag

I liked all the characters but thought some of the s1 pacing was sloppy (although I'm rewatching it with my partner and it seems that things are moving along faster than I remembered; Leonard is interesting way earlier than I expected him to be, for example). s2 has some necessary plot contrivances but by the time the threads start converging mid-season, it gets very engrossing.

lol DJP, my very opinionated TV friend online was loudly proclaiming the opposite ("it was so much better in Season 1!!!"). that makes me more curious

guess I'll watch both and inform whichever of you that is wrong that they are wrong.

You know what's surprisingly fun to watch for me, a childless american man in his 40's?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nv1m-aTCZI
this show is fucking great!

Umbrella Academy S2 was great, a marked improvement on S1

― shout-out to his family (DJP)

Could only bear three episodes of the first season, I found it terribly derivative.

I think you’d like the second season of UA Simon, I thought it improved on season 1 as well. It’s a lot funnier now too, which helps (I’m thinking Gerard Way had more input on this season than before, some of the lines are very... him.)

Diego is much-improved as a character

enjoyed s1 in the beginning, thought it got markedly worse as it went along.

i do find it amusing that diego's power is basically 'knives.'

basically a gritty reboot of hank azaria's character from mystery men

I think the most interesting thing about the show is the interplay between the siblings and s2 leans into that much more along with better individual arcs for everyone (including Ben!)

Corporate started out kinda shocking this week but ended up in a more normal/standard place. For a few minutes there I truly thought maybe they'd lost their minds.

Did that High Fidelity show get dramatically better in the second half? Never watched it, but I seem to remember it getting terrible reviews after the first few episodes, but suddenly lots of people are sad it got canceled.

i think the social media hullaballoo (hula-balloo?) is mostly about losing a show with a black female lead moreso than people enamored with the actual quality of the show
https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/zoe-kravitz-high-fidelity-hulu-diversity-1234729635/

I thought the 2-3 episodes of High Fidelity I watched were terrible, it just stole so liberally and unimaginatively from the movie

Finally finished season 3 of Goliath. Pretty unsatisfying overall; it seemed really messy and flailing compared to the two previous seasons, with a lot of threads left dangling but in a way that made me dread, rather than hope for, a season 4. At this point I'm happy to walk away with positive memories of the first season.

it was less than the sum of its parts by the end. no big twisteroo. i still loved it though.

I've been revisiting a comfort series of mine, the MMA drama Kingdom (not to be confused by the more recent series of the same name, or the LvT one of course) w/ Frank Grillo, Jonathan Tucker, Matt Lauria, Kiele Sanchez and the great Paul Walter Hauser. It's incredibly flawed and deeply misery-porny but I love the hangout vibe and (mostly) low-key dialogue. It ran for three seasons and ended in just about the bleakest fashion possible, which was only appropriate.

Just finished S2 of Umbrella Academy, loved it. Robert Sheehan is a doll.

ZeroZeroZero is really great, amazing locales

loved zerozerozero. reminded me a ton of gomorrah

ugh, netflix canceled patriot act. it was by far the best of the left wing talking head news talk shows, i mourn it passing.

i missed South Side when it came out but was curious enough to look into it when i saw it had been renewed for an HBO season... and it's great! Lots of gallows humor and the lead cop characters being bumbling violent assholes on the take come across a bit differently in the current environment but just good writing, good acting and a solid exercise in world building. Kind of everything I wanted from Detroiters but didn't quite get. Worth a look.

The opening scenes of Lovecraft Country annoyed me for the same reason that the recent series Hollywood annoyed me: it seemed too eager to spell out the connections between its historical fiction and the contemporary moment (a discussion of the titular author's "problematic" history was inevitable). Once the characters get on the road, though, it hits its groove. A couple of tense moments worthy of Get Out (Peele is an exec. producer) and a satisfying payoff. I'll keep watching.

I’m tempted to say DARK, but as I inch towards the last 3 episodes, I fear the house of cards will all collapse. I’ve never had to use Wikipedia so much to remember who the hell I’m following

Impractical Jokers has more gravitas and sophisticated social commentary than anything on American network television today

Drunk History - secretly one of the most reliably intelligent and consistently inclusively casted and written shows on television - canceled by Comedy Central as they "pivot away from live action to animation". It had already been renewed and had been nominated for three emmys this year.
Waters has a first look deal with national amusements; doesn't look like the show will move anywhere else and that it's dead in the US until someone reboots it.

Didn't like the second episode of Lovecraft Country at all. I couldn't tell if it was meant to be an act of "world building" or if the whole secret society plot was just a one-off (or at least something that will get less emphasis in later episodes). The James Baldwin sequence in the first episode is repeated here with Gil Scott-Heron--powerful the first time, my reaction this time was "are they really gonna do this once per episode?" The anachronistic musical queues--the Jeffersons theme, some horrible millennial-era modern rock thing--were annoying. I'll see if next week's is any better.

I haven't seen it yet, but everything I've read about the first two episodes comes more or less straight from the book.

Finished Bluey (super great, more episodes soon i hope) and made the natural transition to the predominantly-Black cast and entirely female-directed New Orleans strip club soap opera P(ussy) Valley, as adapted by the playwright Katori Hall from her play of the same name. One episode in, it is hit and miss (some of the dialogue and characterizations are either OTT or just badly chosen) but a lot of potential ideas of merit and interesting plot possibilities. Need to see more and am cautiously intrigued.

My dissenting opinion re: Lovecraft Country is that may be shaping up into something really, really special. I'm generally loath to make such sweeping pronouncements two episodes into a thing but hey. I was very 'yeah, why not' about watching it in the first place but it's got me by the lapels.

Yeah I am all in

I'm all in, I love it. I was also a big fan of the book too though, so I've been anxiously awaiting this for some time.