Be Excellent To Each Other

Worse than sexualising his 5 year old daughter??

Lucifer did the same thing Blacklist did which is make the female lead flip from hating the guy (Red or Lucifer, depending on the show) one week and then completely liking/trusting them the next. I didn't finish either show but did read up what happened and it's just a total mess in both cases.

I get that too.

No, I didn’t say it was worse, but that wasn’t a one-off. He’s an attention-seeking moron who says disgusting things for clicks and money. I heard he also superglues locks.

Another G Coren post:

Next door have brought their 12-year-old son a drum kit. For fuck’s sake! Do I kill him then burn it? Or do I fuck him, then kill him then burn it?”

He followed that up with the ‘punchline’: “Child for sale, charred and partially fucked. Has own drum kit.”

A few (but really very few) of the massive amount of Twattish things GC has said, here: https://brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/ ... iles-coren

Wow, that's disgusting. And I personally find 'dark humour' funny, but there's nothing funny nor clever nor witty there.

I find it hard to understand why someone would post something like that. All the while others will adamantly spout how "cancel culture has gone mad and you can't say nuffin these days can ya"

It always seems to be that the ones that moan the loudest about cancel culture and being cancelled are the ones that still have a platform somewhere, just one that people don't pay attention to.

The Devil May Cry series on Netflix is pretty good, better than I was expecting, I'm enjoying it. It's quite loud and flashy, fun yet a bit corny, some of the bits land brilliantly and a few bits (not that many really) are a bit cringy. Dante seems to alternate between being incredibly powerful and yet also too easy for the main human character to get the best of.

So much like the games then, or at least the ones I've played.

My son told me off for calling it a cartoon. "It's anime, Dad, and you'll make my friends cross if you call it that".

Bit late to the party but Russian Doll was really good, series 1 especially. We watched both series over the course of this long weekend.

It was good to watch something that really grabbed our attention and kept us there. There have been a number of things we've started to watch and then just indifferently drifted away from them, never to be completed. Some we may go back to, but others seem unlikely.

My son loves this (and I really liked the first season of Poker Face, also with Natasha Lyon, second season not so much) and I have given it a couple of goes. but it really didn't grab me.

I may try it again, but I just didn't like any of the characters.

Russian Doll was decent.

S1 really picks up around ep 4, and accelerates towards the end when things start to get a bit weird.

I know what you mean about the characters, at times it felt that it was trying just a little bit too hard to be cool/spunky/sassy, I was thinking how in the real world they would have been told to just fuck off for being annoying and over the top. But I can suspend that disbelief as it's just telly.

I'm the other way round to Malc, though admittedly only a few episodes into s2 of Poker Face. Really liked Russian Doll but then just stopped watching series 2 - keep thinking I'll go back so I can tick it off, but maybe I'm just not bothered. But Poker Face so far is - along with the wild ride of The Rehearsal - is so satisfying that I've more or less stood up and applauded at the end of an episode.

Series 2 of Poker Face really feels like some other production team has taken over without having seen the previous season and with barely any notes from the original crew.

I tried Poker Face but it felt like a 10p Columbo. I'd rather just watch that instead I think. Her schtick is okay for one show but I wasn't feeling it outside of Russian Doll.

I see The Bear is back soon for S4. I really liked the first season, found the second season started very slow and was kind of low stakes. The Thanksgiving episode was brilliant TV though.

Didn't watch s3. Was it any good?

I'm not sure I can care about them opening a restaurant.

Unlike Cassandra, Channel Zero (Prime, I think?) is very Black Mirror but benefits from being serialised. The first two seasons at least, we overdid it and are having a break before going back to the third.

Smashed Season 2 of The Rehearsal in one sitting last night, absolutely incredible TV (his attempt to get into the head of "Sully" Sullenberger was truly something else).

It took me a couple of episodes but I did eventually twig Craig off of Hollyoaks in Fubar s2. Best character.

I really enjoyed Cassandra.

After many, many years I finally finished Cheers over the weekend.

While it had many great moments, I just don't think it's aged as well as Frasier has. The early seasons have too many topical references that don't work any more, and the underlying sexism and treatment of women makes for uncomfortable viewing at times.

Now, I appreciate that watching a sit-com weekly is going to be a very different experience to zooming through many episodes in a compressed space of time, and the point of the genre is nothing changes, but dear god Carla gets irritating pretty quickly. Likewise Rebecca was far better when she had things to do that didn't involve weeping over men, but that was pretty infrequent.

I'd recommend restricting yourself to the main Frasier ones for both the lore and the utter delight of the Lillith/Frasier relationship. I also think the season 3 episode The Heart is a Lonely Snipehunter is a brilliant examination of male bonding (marred slightly by an uninteresting B-plot about baseball stats).

I'm not sure I'll be going back to the bar. Like Seinfeld I'm glad I've watched it but it just doesn't stick with me in the way the spin-off does.

Finally finished Hand Maids Tale recently. Good god they could have wrapped this up seasons ago. Great start, shit finish.

Modern US TV in a nutshell

We’re working our way through Succession at the moment. It was really engaging from the start, and the scheming and back-stabbing is a good replacement for the now-sullied House Of Cards.

When every character in a show is odious, it’s hard for one character or role to stand out as being particularly more debased than the rest, but surely, for the first season at least, it’s Tom. The actor, (Michael McFadden?) can turn his character traits in a blink. So creepily brilliant.

Tom was brilliant. I loved that show.

Lady T has been trying to plow through Lost. She feels that watching it in big chunks makes the story easier to follow, and that's probably true to an extent, but I still feel like the writers were kinda making it from season to season without any clear mind of exactly where they were going and just 'answered' one mystery by creating two more mysteries instead.

He is amazing. And his character gets even better as the show goes on. Each series you’ll struggle to pick who the worst one is.

I was bored so binge watched Foundation over the past few weeks.

The first season is okay/decent, but then it really fucking takes off. Season 2 was excellent and 3 has been really good so far.

Lee Pace is superb as Day, as is Terrence Mann as Dusk.

We’re on episode 3 or 4 of the second series of Succession and just been through the Boar On The Floor episode. It really is quite an exploration of different types of depravity.

Kieran Culkin is very effective at being creepy, too. That weird little snorty snicker he does is so effective, as it’s not (thus far) overused. I like the way the show likes to dangle a ‘safe’ character to the viewer before either peeling off a layer or flipping that character. It’s really good.

Alien Earth!!! Only seen the first episode so far, they have obviously spent a lot of cash on this...excellent stuff (including Ronnie James Dio over the end credits).

Yep, that was absolutely spot on for look, feel, cast and plot.

Maybe don't listen, but there's a decent interview with the showrunner for Alien Earth that tempered my excitement a little. But I've got the first two lined up to watch, and am very happy to hear good news from everyone who has seen it.

https://podscripts.co/podcasts/kermode- ... us-special

Not even finished the first episode so far* - I'm calling it, best Alien since Aliens.

* Having to take breaks because of pacing is a sign of an Aliens doing the right things, these days.

One ep in on Alien Earth also. I'm not too sure about it. It didn't look or feel right. Too colourful, too fake looking. The xeno looked particularly rubbish. And all the synth kids stuff felt like Westworld wankery to me.

I didn't get the Dio thing either. It was like it was a full stop on a much more exciting episode than what we got.

I had no idea that was Adrian Edmondson as the trillionaire's advisor.

Episode one of Alien: Earth.

VERY GOOD.

Looks movie quality (well, more recent movies…) and 90% was excellent. Sound quality and ambient soundtrack was very good. Story certainly got me interested, even when the kids turned up. Man alive, that leech was fucking COOL though. When it rolled off! Fucking creepy fucking fuck.

A few things just rubbed me the wrong way:

The spaceship flashes of what happened annoyed me. I don’t think you needed that. The actor who played the captain is great and the crew were very watchable too (unusual for a recent aliens movie, IMO). I kinda wanted to see more of them.

The kid going ‘Alita: Battle Angel‘ pissed me off. She’s got a sword now from a paper slicer, aye? And a magnetic back? Didn’t like it.

The Alien didn’t look gooey enough for me either. I like them sloppy like my… um, memories of previous Alien films.

I don’t like the premise for the rescue, either. Oh and I really fucking dislike the child genius CEO. Reminds me of Jesse Eisenberg’s fucking tragic Lex Luther in Batman v Superman. It’s so clichè, derivative and schlocky. Do we have to have comic book CEOs in these fucking things?

And the whole scorpion chat and then the human/animal chat? Terrible. Are they really going to have this child-like decision making come up in the show be interesting? How about cutting that out and having more stuff about what it means to die or transfer your consciousness. Something people can debate. Did the body die? Who fucking cares. Here’s a flash of the body. Moving on. What about talking about rules of engagement and the brother? No one says shit?

Dumb marines talking shit after a 9/11 event was a poor choice too. Laughing and joking, just seemed like some Prometheus shit. And why didn’t search and rescue give a shit about people coming out the building? Dude crushed the death. Pretend you didn’t see it. Just fucking react!? Maybe be concerned for yourself? Maybe shout at the people coming out. And why are all the ship floors level? Put your stage on a slight slant and have the actors react! The ship was apparently perfectly fucking flat.

Anyway, 90% very good. 10% nitpicking things I’d have preferred done differently but weren’t, like a big cry baby. You’ve got to wonder about the editorial decision making in entertainment though.

The marines are the same idiot gung-ho marines from aliens. The CEO is Paul reiser from aliens (crossed with Jared Leto in blade runner 2049), so presumably will die horribly soon.

We've got 12 minutes of episode 2 left, because Helen fell asleep again last night. I want to watch it but don't want to only watch 12 minutes, so we'll wait until episode 3 is out.

There are plenty of criticisms to level at it, but it's still the best alien since aliens.

Not for me. Alien3 and Resurrection definitely better and I'd even put AvP ahead of it for fast-paced fun. That said, I'm an AvP1 apologist even if AvP:R is the second worst film ever made.

Come on now, it’s only been two episodes of eight. It’s like watching a trailer and calling it the BEST FILM EVA111!

The second episode is noticeably not as good either. And what’s with the rock soundtrack over the credits? Really fucking kills the vibe.

Reminds me of when the old-timey piano in Westworld would play modern songs. I'm telling you, if this show gets more than one season it'll become a hyper-complicated mess.

Preferred the second episode because at least the xeno does some stuff in it.

I was ready to give up on the whole thing when that guy was having a dinner party while dressed as a ponce.

Also, I guess they don't have the budget to show any proper xeno kills.

But anyway, it was better.

Guess I'll be avoiding this thread so that I don't consume spoilers too!

Fallout Season 2 trailer

Alien episode 3 was a mess.

Watched the first four episodes of the new King of the Hill [MousePlus] and it's just as lovely and wholesome and funny as I remember the original series being.

Alien Earth ep4 was sloooow but quite good. A couple of good moments there.

I don't remember episode 3, but that usually at least means I didn't mind it

Episode 4 was the Apocalypse Now Redux episode. I liked it.

Unstable is a lighthearted comedy with some nice funny bits but also a lot of plodding bits, almost it's boring in places. It's close to being zingy and zany at times but some of the actors don't have quite the comedic timing to pull it off so the whole thing just falls short. Rob Lowe as the leading man just isn't all that funny and his hair is just too overstyled and thick for a man of that age (says me, as a baldy since my thirties). It also reeks a bit of vanity project as it's another real life father-and-son set up. Fred Armisen is good though.

Having worked in or around science labs for some time, a lo of what is going on in the lab scenes is really annoying to me (eating in the lab, genuine equipment being used as a prop for a completely different purpose, poor pipette handling techniques, and of course an overall That's Just Not How Science Works). I do appreciate that expecting accuracy in a comedy drama is foolish but still, GNNNNNNNK, it grates on me.

Alien Earth today, fucking hell that was incredible.

Yeah that was really, really good.