Your Ten Favorite Shows Currently on Television

the writing is a garbage fire but i'm endlessly amazed by the quality of the likenesses.

i continue thinking about Raised By Wolves. It seems like an important show, not because it's any good but as a marker of just how much pre-COVID money corporations kept floating around to fund the raving mythologies of white guys who have proven capable of building franchises, no matter how unhinged. it, like much of the politics and entertainment of this era, looks more like last of the pus leaving the wound than anything else. that such poisonous idylls are regularly fun to watch doesn't make me feel particularly good about soldiering through to the end.

watching the first episode of how to with john wilson now. was that kyle mclahclan???? (abt 13 mins in)

also oh my god this show

yeah, it has to be him, right? i bet that's the columbus circle stop; can totally believe mclachlan doesn't know how to swipe his card.

"Whoa - knowledge and assumptions! Those are like Loggins and Messina. They seem similar, but time proves one of them to be completely worthless."

k, I'm sold for the long run

― LaRusso Auto (Neanderthal), Monday, September 28, 2020 1:41 AM bookmarkflaglink

you won't be disappointed. I think the final season is prescient and amazing but I think i'm in the minority.

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Monday, September 28, 2020 11:26 AM bookmarkflaglink

in Season 3 and still loving it

the john wilson show was WAY better than I expected and I'm in for the long haul

glad it's a hit neanderthal! it's def one of my faves of this past decade.
which we prob need a poll thread for eventually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyQ85DEVpbc
Very excited about this. Stever James' "America to Me" is one of the best shows I saw last year.

jfc I was growing to love Gabby and then Brockmire jumps to the year 2030

idk how I feel about it but I'll give it a chance. hard to really get invested in all of the characters who turned up in S3 and have them abruptly disappear and replaced by a brand new one, but I think that's cos I'm emo due to COVID-19 right now

the degree to which the current season of Brockmire was prescient in the writing room is astonishing; stick with it for an episode or three. i think it pays off. but yeah, it's a whiplash moment.

that first episode of how to with john wilson was incredible

we're raving on the NFY thread as well, but honestly it deserves its own thread

so the Brockmire ep where Jules has the stuntman as a guest and he blows himself up just had me rolling.

just because of how obvious it was what was going to happen and how oblivious she was.

The Queen's Gambit on Netflix is really good. It seems like it would be corny-ass prestige TV bullshit, and it has some big weaknesses, but you can't go too far wrong when you're starting from a novel by Walter Tevis (who also wrote the books that became The Hustler and The Man Who Fell To Earth; he wrote a book called The Color Of Money, too, but that movie has very little to do with the book other than the title). There were some parts that I wish were written by Harry Crews, but it made chess interesting for seven hours, which is quite an achievement.

one of my kids (9 y o) is really into chess. are there any scenes that would be too much for a kid to handle you think?

hope there's no violent scenes featuring chess pieces

windom esrle is BACK baby

are there any scenes that would be too much for a kid to handle you think?

There's no nudity or graphic sex. Some profanity. I'd put it at a solid PG-13. And the chess scenes are filmed in really exciting ways, so it's worth trading a possible awkward conversation for a probable explosion in your kid's interest in the game.

So what you're saying is, the queens they use would not excite me?

late pass but I laughed ridiculously hard at the second episode of Space Force

to all the people who recommended Brockmire over the years: thank you this show fuckin rules

I can't finish the 4th season til Biden is sworn in.

But yes...it rules

this show is like....the good version of Bojack Horseman

ok that's needlessly mean but I do like this better and it has a LOT of shared territory

it does help that Brockmire never becomes a complete son of a bitch. he has a very wavering but nonetheless-still-present empathy, and while he's a massive narcissist (like any broadcaster), it's nice that some of his 'gaffes' actually come in the service of doing the right thing at the wrong time.

i'm pleased you two came around. The description is a hard sell, especially if you are talking to someone who doesn't care about baseball, but I really think it's secretly one of the best-written and most acidly funny shows of the new century.

Charles is my fav. in all of his incarnations

i'm not sure i understand why you're holding off on the last season

I watched 3 eps or so. the stuff about the "disputed lands" and the (admittedly funny) global warming cynicism hit too close to home for my brain during the lead up to the election. I actually found the digs at how terrible baseball is now in 2033 to be pretty hilarious (multi-colored bats, etc)

that's all. i may watch a few tonight tho.

the final ep of season 3 actually stressed me the fuck out for that reason too, with Art Newly being alt-right leader and people harassing Brockmire at the stadium

i can understand if it hit you wrong. it's remarkably prescient, to the point of pain really. But I think it's still pretty great and it never loses touch with what makes the show work.
Frankly, i'm impressed with the chutzpah it took for them to say "well, we've mined this vein as far as we can; let's jump thirty years into the future and blow the whole thing up"

yeah and I still think it's well done, especially with its humorous depiction of how everybody has just accepted this extremely degraded, awful form of existence and have long become desensitized to it. basically an Overton window season.

they clearly foresaw that in the middle of daily riots, climate disasters and open pandemic that big league sports business would foolishly along with diminishing returns until the well was truly dry

*"foolishly limp along"

I don't care about baseball at all fwiw

joe buck and bob costas are surprisingly funny in this imo

I laughed really hard at "you called Jesus the Mayor of Ausckwitz!"

sigh @ my phone typing skills

I was laughing so hard at S1E1 of Brockmire my son asked me what was wrong. So thanks for the rec.

"That's right, I said Fatty Boombalatty.
And at 400 pounds, he is officially the fattest player in the history of baseball.
Folks, that's no small feat because fat guys have been a part of this game from the beginning.
Babe Ruth himself, the very greatest of the greats, was also a big, fat piece of shit, so wonderful bit of history we are looking at here."

ok, perfect last season

I don't think I've ever been won over this hard by a show whose basic premise (angry cucked white alcoholic sports commentator stages a comeback) sounded so utterly disinteresting

Looking forward to the series Small Axe starting tomorrow night.
Steve McQueen directs 6 dramas on great Black British figures in the history of the late 20th century.
9pm Sunday the 15th BBC1.
Have great expectations but not seen any of it yet.

You know what's real good that i wouldn't have imagined was gonna be good is Netflix's Aunty Donna's Big Old House of Fun.
https://www.netflix.com/search?q=aunti&jbv=81009617
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5FGOaz__W0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9-7UrG8OgY

Aunty Donna

That show is incredible

didn't know it was anybody but me! lotsa fun.

anything's a drum!

Interesting to see people liking that show! I couldnt get past the cringey hipsterness... but some of their skits are ok .

cringeyness mostly wears off after an episode but maybe not knowing the hallmarks of aussie hipsterdom helps