I liked MitHC but have a feeling they’re not really that interested in exploring some of the central themes. The whole “movies from a different world” plotline seems to get dropped for soap opera shenanigans, although there’s still some weirdness going on.
Somehow, I got the impression that they were going to have at least one more season of Man in the High Castle, but it seems like it should have dropped by now if it was going to.
I resumed watching The Last Ship when I have a free hour or two in the evening. I liked season 1, but stalled out in season 2. It had a few episodes in season 2 that annoyed me, but also had some good ones mixed in and after. I watched the last episode of season 2 last night. OMG, did they really kill off that character??
A week or two ago, I finished season 2 of the version of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency with the Frodo guy. So strange, but good, too.
Very soon. October maybe? It’s in the coming soon lineup on Amazon…
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I think there’s a MitHC season coming soon.
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The end of Dirk Gently was kind of sad. Not because the last episode wasn’t good, but because they had set things up to let the series take off and the BBC canceled the series.
Yet another example of how John Rogers’ method of making every season as if it will be the last season, so that if there are no more episodes, everything’s wrapped up.
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Siglet Primus (now 10) has decided that he loves Doctor Who so we’re watching these again. David Tennant is his favorite, until he saw Matt Smith episodes.
I bought and watched S1 of Westworld a few months ago after catching a few episodes on HBO. I really enjoyed it all; the ending was pretty mind-blowing and now I need to watch it all again. But I’ve heard S2 was a dumpster fire.
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I didn’t think so, but I do think season 2 started better than it finished. @Lee_Ars is into the show so maybe he can chime in.
We tried Gunpowder last night. I think it was out in the BBC a year ago? Lots of Game of Thrones people in a period drama about the whole conspiracy to blow up parliament I mainly know due to V for Vendetta. Kit Harrington/John Snow is heavily involved, and apparently a descendant of the character he plays.
I fell asleep during it, so can’t say much. We’ll find out tonight if $Wife wants to finish it or not, and may delay a day or two.
We also finished Season 2 of Ozark which is pretty good.
“Dumpster fire” is definitely not how I’d describe it—there are some amazing moments in there, and the ending of S2 wraps up enough that it could have functioned as a series finale if needed.
I’ve had a few weeks to think about how I feel about WW season 2. My first impression on finishing episode 10 was a big fat WTF. As with S1, there were a buttload of important reveals that were held back until the very last ep and watching the season knowing those reveals changes the character of a lot of the season’s events. After re-watching the whole show start to finish, my opinion has moderated significantly. I think the creators went a little too far up their own asses, but I don’t think the season was bad.
My tl;dr I guess would be that if you liked WW S1, you absolutely should watch S2. You should know going into it that the mindfuckery is dialed up to 11 and that you have to see all ten episodes in order to really judge the season, and you should know that as with S1, the final episode throws a hell of a lot of information at you.
But I wouldn’t call it a dumpster fire. I enjoyed it.
The problem, though, is whether or not a show that demands that much out of you can be enjoyable. Can you get away with a piece of mass-market entertainment that is essentially incomprehensible unless you pay very, very close attention and literally take notes as you go along? HBO can, because HBO is HBO, but I don’t think even HBO will pay for another season like S2 was. I thought S1 was baroque, but at least from the perspective of “shit you have to keep track of,” S2 makes S1 look like a practice run. If S1 was a fun and decently engaging word find, S2 is an expert-level sudoku puzzle.
Lots of folks love expert-level sudoku puzzles, but lots more folks don’t.
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We’ve skipped WestWorld so far… True Detective has a similar really bad S2, but I’m cautiously hopeful that the S3 they’re working on will be better. In that case it’s a bit different as each season is a self-contained story with different casts.
Westworld S1 is some of the best TV I’ve ever seen, even if S2 didn’t quite measure up. The best part about it is that you only need to give it a single episode. Watch the WW S1 pilot—you’ll know by the time the episode is over if you’re in love with it or not. If you don’t like the pilot, you absolutely should bail on the show because it only gets crazier from there.
But there’s nothing on TV I’d recommend more.
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I basically agree with what you said and you explained it much better than I could. I do think Nolan and Joy need to dial it back a bit - they did try to get way too cute. That being said, this show is the best mindfuck around, IMO.
I only knew from early reports via social media; I didn’t travel much the last six months, so was not staying in hotels with HBO (which is how I got exposed to S1). I adored S1, so I will pick up S2 sometime and find out.
I’d love to be watching the show I started this morning, but apparently Warner Bros decided to scrap DramaFever today, so my go to subscription site for my Asian televisions shows is gone. Kaput. Disappeared.
They say they’re going to refund everyone what they’re owed, but who knows when. 
A year ago, I posted this:
So, what happened?
According to the article on comicbook (I guess that’s the website’s name), the pilot episode did very well and everything looked good to have it air on Freeform. And then it just kind of disappeared because Marvel wanted to shop it around to different networks.
But, Disney won’t allow Marvel Television to sell shows to companies outside of Disney, so Netflix is out. Could have been on the upcoming Disney streaming service, but now that seems unlikely with the other miniseries Kevin Feige might be producing.
If not Freeform, then maybe ABC or Hulu? The latter seems dependent on the Disney/Fox merger going through as expected. Disney Channel and Disney XD are probably out because the show’s probably aimed at a more adult demographic.
That’s a shame. Another series that looked really good, stalled or killed by executive meddling.
Okay, so you’re a Squirrel Girl fan like me. Where can you go to see a TV series about her?
Well, look no further than Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors on Disney Channel and Disney XD. It’s a movie instead of a TV series, and it’s just one piece of the entire Marvel Rising “multi-platform franchise”.
First came the “Marvel Rising” comic books. They set up how some of the characters meet. “Secret Warriors” doesn’t give you those introductions, so you need the comic books. This idea can work well because you shift the preliminary stuff off to the comics so the movie can focus on the meat of the story.
But there’s a big problem with the comics: the titles and numbering. Here they are, in the order they were released:
- Marvel Rising, #0
- Marvel Rising: Alpha, #1
- Marvel Rising: Squirrel Girl & Ms. Marvel, #1
- Marvel Rising: Ms. Marvel & Squirrel Girl, #1
- Marvel Rising: Omega, #1
Marvel’s operating under the idea of “first issues sell better, so let’s Number 1 all the things!” They’re doing it with other comic books like X-Men, but having one title with “Squirrel Girl & Ms. Marvel” and another where you flip those two around?
Marvel, stop confusing your customers, especially when you’re not really making separate comic series. If they’re part of the same storyline, give them consistent titles and numbering. Like this: “Marvel Rising, Part 1 of 5” Or, if you want to keep the “issue 0” for the first one, start the numbering at zero and go up to four, then put on the interior title page what the chapter is for that particular issue.
This is a bad gimmick and it’s drawn more criticism, but I’ll cover that in the comic books thread. Onward.
The second part of Marvel Rising are the webisodes called “Marvel Rising: Initiation”. Six episodes at 4 or 5 minutes each and you can watch them on the Disney Now website. They also assume the viewers have read the comic books and skip the same introductions between some of the characters.
Third is “Secret Warriors”. Does a good job of setting up the larger storyline and Squirrel Girl’s even more wacky and hyperactive than she is in the comics or the novels, but also shows off how smart she is by rattling off how she tracked someone down. You can see Tippy-Toe and her mimicking each other at times. We finally see her using her tail as a weapon, which she points out and doesn’t happen in the comics.
Speaking of her tail, I said a while ago in the comic books thread that she has the ability to stuff it inside her pants and is proud of that ability so that she doesn’t seem any more out of the ordinary than any other “full figured” gal in that area. This movie takes it further to where hammerspace pretty much has to be involved, though that typically involves separate objects, not something that is biologically attached to the person.
In the future, there will be two more specials. First is “Chasing Ghosts”, involving Spider-Ghost from the “Initiation” webisodes, and the second is “Heart of Iron”, which brings Ironheart into Marvel Rising. Those were announced last month, but no release date yet. Hopefully it won’t be too long. Disney has a bad habit of holding episodes of their animated TV series and releasing them when they feel like it. For example, it takes 8-10 months to make a half hour cartoon. There’s a couple of episodes of Phineas and Ferb that didn’t get broadcast until over two years after they were first announced.
Two more seasons of GoT to go! Bingewatched Frontier last week (Jason is so pretty…), all caught up of Curse of Civil War Gold and Curse of Oak Island. Trying to watch Haunting of Hill House but I just cannot for the life of me get into it. Was watching Sneaky Pete but that’s on a back burner. Caught up on Vikings yesterday too. Whew! I’ve accomplished so much! 
I started watching Vikings, but stalled out about the time Ragnar was sent to negotiate for the land from that other guy.
I feel a little bad we “stalled” on Altered Carbon. I loved the original novels, but the series seemed to be pushing to make the characters unpleasant, and they aren’t exactly nice to begin with.
We’re getting into Lucifer surprisingly.
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Vikings started to get kind of muddy to me. Like I just couldn’t guess where episodes took place in the time line despite that being very important.