TV Streaming series to talk about.

Baba O’Riley said:
Yes. A very heavy episode. It was the dynamic between Captain Nixon and the German Widow that made this particular episode absolutely genius to me. The way they look at each other in the beginning - then at the end. It's like we know both of their stories without them uttering a word to each other. It's frightening too because we understand why Captain Nixon drinks and is in despair and the widow, who was so far gone in her arrogance and hatred, only understood the atrocities after she saw the walking, skeletal prisoners, touched the bones of the murdered Jews and smelled the death up close. The horrors of war in different ways.
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That was really well done, and poetic justice in a really satisfying way. I wish every Nazi/sympathizer got that kind of comeuppance.
 
duluoz said:
I’d peg it (along with Succession) one notch below Sopranos and Mad Men. Probably fourth of those four. The acting/writing/directing is not as skillful as Succession, but the Wire’s overall story arcs are much more compelling.
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What stands out in the acting, writing, and directing?

I'm not as knowledgeable as many on this thread. For me, I can't always discern how each contribution to the finished product. I do recognize which shows are more compelling and have deeper stories, at least to me.
 
I'm currently watching Invasion, which i believe is well written. Also waiting on the last episode of Foundation.
 
UNCatTech said:
What stands out in the acting, writing, and directing?

I'm not as knowledgeable as many on this thread. For me, I can't always discern how each contribution to the finished product. I do recognize which shows are more compelling and have deeper stories, at least to me.
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I’m not sure which show you’re referring to, but when you begin to look at shows or movies through that lens, you start to see how each component hinges on the others. You can have great lines delivered poorly, vs. quality actors who just can’t save the crappy lines, or a crappy storyline, etc.

And the director is the head coach, but depending on the project and the people involved, sometimes a director’s presence is bigger and it more heavily influences the writing and acting and camera work… and other times there’s less influence, and more freedom is given to those other contributors.

Series are different because the show’s creator or showrunner is really the broader “director,” but each episode can have its own individual director among several other directors for other episodes. So some episodes can have a different creative or visual feel within a series, and that can be by design.
 
duluoz said:
I’m not sure which show you’re referring to, but when you begin to look at shows or movies through that lens, you start to see how each component hinges on the others. You can have great lines delivered poorly, vs. quality actors who just can’t save the crappy lines, or a crappy storyline, etc.

And the director is the head coach, but depending on the project and the people involved, sometimes a director’s presence is bigger and it more heavily influences the writing and acting and camera work… and other times there’s less influence, and more freedom is given to those other contributors.

Series are different because the show’s creator or showrunner is really the broader “director,” but each episode can have its own individual director among several other directors for other episodes. So some episodes can have a different creative or visual feel within a series, and that can be by design.
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Did you watch the latest season of The Bear?

I read lots of negative about the season, but to me it was great. It got away from the hysteria of running the restaurant a little and focused more on the development and back stories of each of the employees. I liked that and I feel that they set it up well to have spin offs for each character, if they choose to.

What is your opinion?

I never watched the Sopranos or Breaking Bad, though I wouldn't mind considering all that I've read about them.
 
UNCatTech said:
Did you watch the latest season of The Bear?

I read lots of negative about the season, but to me it was great. It got away from the hysteria of running the restaurant a little and focused more on the development and back stories of each of the employees. I liked that and I feel that they set it up well to have spin offs for each character, if they choose to.

What is your opinion?

I never watched the Sopranos or Breaking Bad, though I wouldn't mind considering all that I've read about them.
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That sounds more like season 3 of the Bear. Season 4 was less individually focused.

You definitely should watch the Sopranos as it set the bar for all these shows. Breaking Bad is one of the best shows ever. I recommend it more highly than the Sopranos.

One of the things that I think makes both shows as well as Succession so great is outstanding character arcs. In some cases they even take flawed to awful characters and still tun them into people with whom the audience can empathize or even root for.
 
I popped a couple gummies last night and was looking for something relatively mindless to watch on Netflix. Settled on Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, which is the number one movie (really a documentary in this case) on the platform. I won't reveal any spoilers, but man I was floored by the depraved nature of the culprit. I've been thinking about it all day.
 
JCTarheel82 said:
I popped a couple gummies last night and was looking for something relatively mindless to watch on Netflix. Settled on Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, which is the number one movie (really a documentary in this case) on the platform. I won't reveal any spoilers, but man I was floored by the depraved nature of the culprit. I've been thinking about it all day.
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I was just going to post about this. The reveal is bananas. I can’t get my head around it.
 
A friend told me to watch Endeavor on PBS or Britbox and I’ve enjoyed it. Apparently it’s the prequel to the Morris series but I hadn’t seen Morris and it didn’t really matter since it’s before Morris was a big shot.
 
UNCatTech said:
Did you watch the latest season of The Bear?

I read lots of negative about the season, but to me it was great. It got away from the hysteria of running the restaurant a little and focused more on the development and back stories of each of the employees. I liked that and I feel that they set it up well to have spin offs for each character, if they choose to.

What is your opinion?

I never watched the Sopranos or Breaking Bad, though I wouldn't mind considering all that I've read about them.
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Yeah I love The Bear and season 3 wasn’t quite up to par but it wasn’t as bad as some said. Season 4 was back up to par for sure.

But that’s a good example of different directors doing different episodes to change up the feel or pace of the series, while still blending it together well.

Watch The Sopranos. I wouldn’t binge it, I’d pace it to stretch out leisurely over months. Watch a couple or few episodes a week and savor it.

That’s how I watched Mad Men after it had left the air. It took me probably a couple years to watch it and was incredibly rewarding to experience it that way. It allows the characters and storylines to percolate and grow way way more so than bingeing.
 
duluoz said:
Yeah I love The Bear and season 3 wasn’t quite up to par but it wasn’t as bad as some said. Season 4 was back up to par for sure.

But that’s a good example of different directors doing different episodes to change up the feel or pace of the series, while still blending it together well.

Watch The Sopranos. I wouldn’t binge it, I’d pace it to stretch out leisurely over months. Watch a couple or few episodes a week and savor it.

That’s how I watched Mad Men after it had left the air. It took me probably a couple years to watch it and was incredibly rewarding to experience it that way. It allows the characters and storylines to percolate and grow way way more so than bingeing.
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What did you think about the child actor in Adolescent?

The way he reacted, his body language and visual ques, his eye control. He seemed to really do a good job with that role.
 
duluoz said:
Watch The Sopranos. I wouldn’t binge it, I’d pace it to stretch out leisurely over months. Watch a couple or few episodes a week and savor it.

That’s how I watched Mad Men after it had left the air. It took me probably a couple years to watch it and was incredibly rewarding to experience it that way. It allows the characters and storylines to percolate and grow way way more so than bingeing.
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That’s good advice. I can’t help but think I’d enjoy Sopranos (and a few other shows) even more, had I watched them that way

Mad Men is a show I never got to and seems like a great candidate for that type of viewing
 
UNCatTech said:
What stands out in the acting, writing, and directing?

I'm not as knowledgeable as many on this thread. For me, I can't always discern how each contribution to the finished product. I do recognize which shows are more compelling and have deeper stories, at least to me.
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This seems to be about The Wire, and I'll write about that.

The Wire is from my perspective quite a bit different from the other top TV series that have emerged in this kind of "New Renaissance" period of high quality television (somewhat begins with Oz, but the hydrogen bomb explosion of quality was The Sopranos). What I think is different about The Wire is related both to why it's so uniquely great, and then also why I don't think it's as fully successful as a narrative work--and that last aspect is why I put it a few notches below the best ever made for the medium.

What made The Wire brilliant and so different is it examined the nightmare various cultural and government forces have created in American big cities, as an outgrowth of institutionalized racism over countless decades, doing this in a form that looked like a journalistic expose. This means while there were ongoing characters, their story arcs were not the point, and various people came and went in the whole scheme of the real focus. Even though there are prominent, very dynamic characters, like Omar for example, they are not the reason for the show. The show examines the devastation of the societal stratigraphy that is in place and never really dealt with by policing and politics. What the greatest art often does is show us something we have not seen, or fully understood, about our world, and that's the highest quality of this series.

This kind of free floating focus of characters and transient minor stories is why the show is generally acknowledged as having some weaker seasons and a meandering narrative focus, even while the spotlight it shines on the social engines that produce and fail to deal with inner city crime feel like they are on the level of the greatest video documentary journalism. I've been through the series three times over the years and the last time I felt it did not hold up as well as a great contiguous story, of following characters, while all the details (as you mentioned, acting, writing, direction) are superb.
 
Heelsandeers said:
That’s good advice. I can’t help but think I’d enjoy Sopranos (and a few other shows) even more, had I watched them that way

Mad Men is a show I never got to and seems like a great candidate for that type of viewing
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I say this as a guilty sometimes binger, but the ability we now have to watch episode after episode of a great series--is a bad thing. With the best ones it is something like drinking from a firehose. The best series always need some time and contemplation about what you saw in each episode, what it really meant, and your own cognitive functioning of pondering what will happen. Often a comparison between what you think should happen versus what you want, and what will happen if the show is truthful and inventive.

I personally had to "catch up" with the first season of Breaking Bad, but then years later in watching it all again, I saw what I had not appreciated in all the details of that first season, when rushing through episodes.
 
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