BEST TV Shows to watch... CURRENTLY...

Lagduf

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That’s good. I could see episode 6 being an ending but I’d be pretty disappointed.
 

famicommander

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Was it solely a tie in to Ms. Marvel?

Like was that thing they were trying to steal actually a diamond or what?
I didn't recognize the diamond, dunno if it's special or just a shiny thing.

I just thought the whole bank heist and Matt getting the guy to take him to the bathroom played out in a really cheesy way.

Just not a strong couple of episodes at all.
 

famicommander

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Everybody in episode 6 is fucking stupid.

What was the girl's plan? Just gonna walk into the serial killer's lair and...? She didn't even take her uncle's power medallion thing. Just walked right to the spot where people keep disappearing armed with a cell phone flashlight.

And Matt clearly knows that's exactly what she's going to do, but waits until the kid turns up missing in the middle of the night to do something about it.

Muse is not really landing either. We haven't really seen any characterization, and Matt has already beaten the dog shit out of him. We're 6 episodes in and all we know is he's seeing Matt's therapist girlfriend, he kills people, he paints vigilante murals with blood, and Matt can beat the shit out of him pretty easily. Doesn't seem to have his Inhuman abilities from the comics.

Still don't give a fuck about Kingpin's marriage.
 

terry.330

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Finished this season of Reacher. It’s more of the same, not bad, not great. Big guy gets caught up in something and has to punch/shoot his way out and even the score. Getting pretty cartoonish though. Also Reacher seems more autistic than in previous seasons.

New season of Bosch. apparently it’s the last. Probably won’t bother, they lost me when they made the daughter a cop. That shit was embarrassing.
 

SouthtownKid

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…. Stop watching television
I don't really watch much outside of ocassionally binging a series on streaming that actually looks promising. I definitely don't watch any of the mind-numbing Marvel or Star Wars garbage that makes up a depressing percentage of this thread. But I'm a Bond fan, so I'm kind of invested in what happens to the franchise. Amazon has already pitched a Moneypenny series, a Felix series, and a female 00 series, and a few others, diluting the brand by flooding the market with shovelware Disney-style, which is what prompted the Broccolis to finally throw up their hands and sell.

Not that all the movies were great or anything. But when you look at the "Eh, good enough, get it out the door" attitude amazon has toward Reacher, or their tedious Rings of Power series, suddenly even the worst Brosnan era Bond movie looks charming.
 

Lagduf

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Finished this season of Reacher. It’s more of the same, not bad, not great. Big guy gets caught up in something and has to punch/shoot his way out and even the score. Getting pretty cartoonish though. Also Reacher seems more autistic than in previous seasons.

New season of Bosch. apparently it’s the last. Probably won’t bother, they lost me when they made the daughter a cop. That shit was embarrassing.

Reacher vs Pauly was worth it. That fight was straight out of something like Banshee.

I just watched the first four episodes of Bosch Legacy S3.

If you haven't enjoyed Legacy at all then it's more of the same: Bosch, Chandler, the daughter and her partner.
 

Taiso

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I have only watched the first season of Reacher. I enjoyed it quite a bit but haven't been motivated to continue. I just know it's going to be the same thing over and over and I don't feel like I need to see it more than once.

But the 'woke Reacher' memes have been pretty funny.
 

famicommander

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Common Side Effects just aired its season 1 finale. I thought it was really good, and I'm glad it's coming back for another season.
 

HornheaDD

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Common Side Effects just aired its season 1 finale. I thought it was really good, and I'm glad it's coming back for another season.
Mixed feelings.

I agree with the first season being great, but I was hoping for a miniseries at least. I knew by the 5th or 6th episode it wasn't gonna be a bottle season but I was hoping for it.
 

famicommander

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Mixed feelings.

I agree with the first season being great, but I was hoping for a miniseries at least. I knew by the 5th or 6th episode it wasn't gonna be a bottle season but I was hoping for it.
It's a pretty open ended concept and they introduced a lot of characters and plot threads. No reason at all to limit it to one short season.
 

famicommander

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So yeah.

Daredevil Born Again is officially shit. Three terrible episodes in a row.
 

famicommander

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Finished up Jessica Jones season 1 again, hadn't seen it in years.

It holds up really well. Maybe could've been 1 or 2 episodes shorter, but I think it's easily the best season of any live action Marvel show.
 

terry.330

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Checked out The Bondsman on a recommendation from @Average Joe, it’s fun, dumb and surprisingly gory. Kevin Bacon hunting demons that escaped from hell in rural Georgia with his mom. Very goofy.
 

Taiso

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Welp.

I watched the new Devil May Cry animated series on Netflix.

Produced by Adi Shankar (Castlevania), after having watched all eight episodes (roughly 30 minutes apiece, give or take) in two sittings, the thought that comes most to mind is 'something ventured, nothing gained.'

On the plus side, the animation, artwork and action are all better than Castlevania on its best day. I'd say that, overall, the production values of the visuals are stellar, maybe the best ever for a 'western anime.' The voice acting is, for the most part, solid but it is not without some issues here and there. Kevin Conroy, in what is most certainly his last performance as the vice president (of the USA, yes), is very good and fits that character to a T. Scott Taylor-Compton as fantastic as this series 'version' of Lady (more on that in a minute) and Johnny Yong Bosch does the best he can with the material given to him (more on that in a minute as well).

So....what's wrong with the series? It gives us slick actions sequences, some of which exceeded my admittedly low expectations, some legit funny moments that made me laugh out loud and a compelling villain that has a more complex backstory than I was anticipating.

Well, as it turns out, there is a lot wrong with it.

To begin with, Adi Shankar can't help but insert his naive liberal world view into the narrative. I don't know about you but when I think Devil May Cry, the last thing I imagine is 'narrative about American colonialism.' Social messaging somehow made its way into the technically excellent but conceptually misguided 2013 Ninja Theory 'reboot' that wasn't, DmC: Devil May Cry. If there's one thing that will lose me as an audience member, it's when a major corporation that benefits from western capitalism decides to take a crack at western capitalism. It's yet another clumsy attempt to appeal to the natural inclination of the youth to revolt against something they've been told is bad bad very bad, which can have no redeeming qualities because it all 'feeds into a system' that is far beyond their underdeveloped brains to fully comprehend.

This animated series feels like that, I suppose. American audiences getting a lecture about how unkind they are to refugees candied up with violent action sequences and glorified stylish killings. Adi Shankar is either the boldest producer on the planet or the stupidest, because he either knows he's a hypocrite and doesn't care (how simple villains act) or he's very well meaning and thoughtless at the same time. I want to say that he believes he's the latter but is unaware that he is the former. Most sympathetic villains have 'main character syndrome' and Adi Shankar is no different.

The main issue with the narrative isn't the anti-American position on immigration. I'm used to these brain dead takes because I grew up in a liberal creative space. It's not that the message isn't valid. It's more that it's one part of a disposable product that, if weaned only on this material from adolescence on up, leads to an unfortunate Dunning-Kreuger effect where one doesn't know what to do with the truth in order to see the world in more complex terms. This is puerile and narcissistic. It's not a serious examination of the situation and, therefore, damages the finished product's overall quality. A simple story about stopping bank robbers expertly told is vastly better than a bad story about American colonialism or capitalism and that's just how it is.

Where I am going with this is that the story wants me to sympathize with the demons and see their point of view. See, in this needlessly complicated interpretation of the mythos, Sparda sealed the demon world off from the mortal realm and stayed on 'our' side of 'the wall', and let's call this for the plain allegory that it is meant to be: Trump's Wall in Trump's America. The part of the story that we were (apparently) never told was that there were innocent demons on 'that side', and they've been oppressed by their demonic kings and have no way to get out. Meanwhile, in our comparative paradise, everyone has it just perfectly fine. Never mind that our side also has oppression and tyranny, which Shankar himself willingly concedes since it's just another story about 'America bad' at the end of the day. What, exactly, are the demons running towards? From intolerance to intolerance? At least they won't end up in cages.

Oh.

Shit.

(contd)
 
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Taiso

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(contd)

I remember when Devil May Cry was about killing demons, keeping our world safe from the monsters, heavy metal violence and a self aware irreverence of its own conceits. Dante is a great hero because he all but knows he's the coolest character in a video game. Eventually, with the third game in the series, it became more about his tortured relationship with his brother Vergil. 4 expanded on the mythology of Sparda's legacy by introducing not only another character into the mix but also a view into how the world sees Sparda's actions so many years after the fact. And finally, the fifth game is all about reconciling that twisted lineage, bringing all three of the principles to a kind of 'ultimate' form and riding the whole thing off into the sunset. It was never about politics. It was about ass kicking action, having a good time running up that style meter and, if you care, a family burying long brandished hatchets.

I don't know what I was expecting out of this series, but I would have liked for Capcom to step in and say 'Let's not repeat Ninja Theory's mistake. The audience wants to just have some fun and kill some unambiguously evil monsters.' But I didn't get what I would have liked with this series. Five years ago, I've have been a bit more upset. These days, I'm just mildly disappointed. Maybe they should have added some real life guest characters.

Lady is wonderfully performed but may be the most unlikeable 'stunning and brave' woman in the history of escapism. She drops enough F bombs to make up for the entire cast AND that of Castlevania, isn't fun or playful, has no sense of the reclaimed innocence that the video game version was able to achieve and is just an ornery, unlikable bitch. The backstory tries to get me to buy into her hard knocks attitude after a life that was taken from her by her father's obsession with demons but this ain't it, fam. Shankar dropped the ball on this character, plain and simple. It doesn't help that they made her part of a special forces unit called 'DarkCom', a black ops group tasked with hunting demons. In what is a clear nod to Captain Commando, their uniforms look very similar to his and one of the bit characters in a later episode bears a striking resemblance to him. Lucia from Devil May Cry 2 makes a cameo in one of the early episodes as well, and she looks great. Perfectly recreated from a visual standpoint. It's just too bad that she isn't a bigger part of this story and that she came from a terrible game, because I think I liked her more than this version of Lady despite having no lines and doing nothing with her 5 seconds of screen time. It's okay, she was never going to be more than a 'member berry anyway.

Dante himself is another problem with this production. The two gripes I have with him are:

1.) He comes off like Nero from Devil May Cry 4 and 5 cosplaying Dante and not an authentic interpretation of the character at all. This makes SOME sense, since Jonny Yong Bosch voices him and JYB was Nero's voice in those games. Apparently, Capcom doesn't want to cast Reuben Langdon (the definitive Dante for all time IMO) because he's conservative and has some conservative views. Yoshinori Ono reportedly fired him from reprising his role as Ken in Street Fighter 6, only to then leave Capcom shortly afterwards, although that has to do more with his desire to radically change the game into a tag fighter than anything else. Given what this animated series ended up as, I'm glad Langdon isn't involved. No need to tarnish his legacy with this.

2.) Dante is written as though he might as well be Deadpool. Nigh unkillable with a hyperspeed healing factor and a propensity for awful jokes, 'Donte 2.0' has a few clever lines that fit well in this series but utterly lack the self aware coolness of the video game version, especially in the third, fourth and fifth entries in the game series. Dante is an adolescent male power wish fulfillment fantasy. Shankar seems to be 'above that', but that's probably because he's a tremendous faget that was bullied in high school. I don't know if that's true, but everything he creates comes off as whiny bitching from an emo kid that has no reason, as an adult, to be either whiny or a bitch.

The soundtrack is a disaster. When it's not regurgitating cheap knockoff covers of the game's vocal offerings, it's muddying its visuals with some of the poorest choices of 'alt rock' of the 90s and early 00s. There is a scene in one episode where Lady needs a car and she takes one from a douchebag in a speedy, expensive looking sports vehicle. I don't know cars, so we'll call it the SUX 5000. The song playing from the car stereo is, I kid you not, Butterfly from Crazy Town. Not that the song is bad, but the only reason it's in the scene is because durr hurr Lady is about to get a cool car and the song has the word 'lady' in it. There is also a scene where the US military is flexing and, no shit, they are playing Greenday's American Idiot as it happens. When soldiers are raiding an apartment complex, Guerilla Radio from RATM is blasting. Evanescence apparently contributed a new track called Afterlife but Shankar's age is clearly showing with some of his soundtrack choices. This is pretty standard edgyboi music from a bygone age. Dante himself, it could be argued, is similarly dated but if you were gonna modernize him in any resperctable way, this wasn't the path to take. In my opinion, these sequences felt like things Shankar had dreamed of making for two decades and finally got to live out his vanity project dream. May he never get the chance to adapt Berserk. I'm sure Casca would lose all of her sensuality, sensitivity, femininity and softness. All Shankar likely sees in her, and characters like her, is a 'badass bitch' that displays motherly sentiments too often for his liking, I'm sure. But I'm theorizing now, so I'll move on.

It gets 2 stars out of 5. It has some great technical merits and legit fun action sequences but it is ultimately crippled by Shankar's need to project his own narcissistic values and dated tastes onto something that he simultaneously tried to update while holding to his own aging style. He isn't a talented enough storyteller to pull that off, especially considering Devil May Cry didn't need it and, I'd guess, never would have asked for it if anyone at Capcom had the balls to give that truth a voice. Dare I say it, but Castlevania, for its many flaws, is a vastly more satisfying product than this.
 
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Taiso

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The old me is still in here. He creeps out once in a while when he isn't calling everyone gay.

Even though I called Adi Shankar gay in the review.
 

HornheaDD

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At the behest of yet another person, I restarted the Wire. I watched maybe 5 episodes of it about 6 years ago or so, and completely noped out at the episode where McNulty and Bunk(?) are just "fuckity fuckity fuck fuck fuck, fuck me, fuck fuck fuck."

It was just dumb to me so yeah I noped out. Anyway, I mentioned it to the wife that my buddy told me I should give it another chance and.... well, fuckity fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

Enjoying it greatly so far. About 6 eps into the first season and enjoying it. I still like Breaking Bad more, and I doubt it will get unseated as my favorite show ever, but who's to know just yet.

Severance is almost there though..
 

Lagduf

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At the behest of yet another person, I restarted the Wire. I watched maybe 5 episodes of it about 6 years ago or so, and completely noped out at the episode where McNulty and Bunk(?) are just "fuckity fuckity fuck fuck fuck, fuck me, fuck fuck fuck."

It was just dumb to me so yeah I noped out. Anyway, I mentioned it to the wife that my buddy told me I should give it another chance and.... well, fuckity fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

Enjoying it greatly so far. About 6 eps into the first season and enjoying it. I still like Breaking Bad more, and I doubt it will get unseated as my favorite show ever, but who's to know just yet.

Severance is almost there though..

I’m gonna be real with you. Season 1 ends on a banger, with one of the most memorable scenes in TV for me.

You’ll be hyped for season 2 and I implore you to stick it out. Season 2 is not bad by any means but it’s easy to bounce off the series at S2. It just has a different feel and some of the new characters aren’t the most interesting (and we don’t see them return.)

Season 3 was the best television I had ever seen until I watched Season 4.

If anything for you it will be fun to see how many people from the Walking Dead and Invincible were first in the Wire.

Also features Michael B. Jordan in his best role.

Best character in the series though? Hands down it’s Bodie. You’ll have to watch the entire series though to see why.
 

HornheaDD

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I’m gonna be real with you. Season 1 ends on a banger, with one of the most memorable scenes in TV for me.

You’ll be hyped for season 2 and I implore you to stick it out. Season 2 is not bad by any means but it’s easy to bounce off the series at S2. It just has a different feel and some of the new characters aren’t the most interesting (and we don’t see them return.)

Season 3 was the best television I had ever seen until I watched Season 4.

If anything for you it will be fun to see how many people from the Walking Dead and Invincible were first in the Wire.

Also features Michael B. Jordan in his best role.

Best character in the series though? Hands down it’s Bodie. You’ll have to watch the entire series though to see why.

Yeah I saw teenie tiny MBJ in there lol. Love that dude so it was nice to see him as a kid.

I was wondering if Bodie had a big arc or something because they keep focusing on him. I'm intrigued.
 
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