Misc TV
aka, things I was watching before the Olympics started up and I began having sudden and intense feelings about luge.
Teen Wolf
I feel like watching this show is more than a little like rooting for the Mets. You go in with very low expectations, because you know what you're getting yourself into. Then there are some pleasant surprises, and there's that point mid-season where they get hot, and you think, hey, there's some real potential here. Maybe they're actually going somewhere! Maybe this time will be different! And then, of course, it's not, and everything collapses, and you end the season lying on the floor clutching an empty bottle, wondering why you do this to yourself. (I'm pretty sure Dylan O'Brien is Matt Harvey in this analogy.)
So yes, the last few episodes are the equivalent of the midseason hot streak, and I'm definitely intrigued by what's going on, but it's hard to have confidence that it's actually going to end up in any sort of coherent and satisfying way. I live in hope of being proved wrong. (That goes double for the Mets.)
Downton Abbey
I knew I'd like this show, but if I'd known just how much of it was an epic bitchfest between Professor McGonagall and Harriet Jones (MP), I'd have gotten around to watching it a lot sooner. Currently up to early S3, not so unspoiled that I don't know what awaits me at the end.
The After
This is one of the Amazon Prime pilots, from Chris Carter of The X-Files, co-starring (among others) Aldis Hodge, Adrian Pasdar, and an almost unrecognizable Jamie Kennedy and Sharon Lawrence.
So, first off, the characters on this show are:
-a beautiful French actress
-a feisty Latina cop
-an angry black (armed) escaped prisoner who claims to be an innocent man
-a belligerent Irish alcoholic
-a sleazy lawyer, accompanied by:
-a hot blonde prostitute who gets naked at the first opportunity
-an eccentric, rich, older woman who faints at inopportune moments
...and a clown.
It's like Carter went shopping in bulk at Cliches R Us. I felt particularly badly for Aldis Hodge, who deserves so much better (guess who he plays!). Also no points for guessing that Pasdar is the lawyer, a role he could probably play in his sleep. I almost wondered if it was all SO cliched because the show was going to deconstruct the stereotypes somehow, but no, that doesn't seem to be the case.
There were some genuinely creepy and suspenseful moments, especially when it came to the small things: people crawling out of and under things that might fall on them, and a pretty literal use of Chekhov's gun. And I'm always up for a good apocalypse, but I had some quibbles with the way things were portrayed. We don't know exactly what happened, but we know that the power has been out everywhere for 24 hours - I buy that there would be chaos under those circumstances, but not that kind of chaos? In that kind of emergency, I'd expect people to retreat to their homes, walking (or biking) as necessary if car travel became impossible, and to huddle together to try to figure out some answers. Why is everyone just running around the downtown area randomly like they've been set loose in a pinball machine? It's both too early and too late for that in this timeline. Cops wouldn't just lose their minds and abandon their posts in the space of one day, and no emergency responder would ignore a woman who said people were trapped and a man was bleeding out. If this was all a side effect of whatever happened - if it caused everyone to act irrationally or violently - that should have been signaled more clearly.
So, yes, two strikes for the characters and the setting. However! At the end of the episode, everything just kind of goes nuts, in a very X-Filesy way, and it was fabulously cracktastic, and now I really want the show to get picked up just so I can find out where the heck they're going with this. And maybe it would turn out to be better than I think. Maybe the actress is actually dead, and this is her purgatory full of casting cliches and men who objectify her, and she can never quite make it home.
XF watch: there was a 1013 reference (in this case, an "officer in need of assistance" call), a ~significant bee~, and an ouroboros tattoo. Plus a plot that didn't make any sense. Nostalgia!
(
comments at Dreamwidth)
Teen Wolf
I feel like watching this show is more than a little like rooting for the Mets. You go in with very low expectations, because you know what you're getting yourself into. Then there are some pleasant surprises, and there's that point mid-season where they get hot, and you think, hey, there's some real potential here. Maybe they're actually going somewhere! Maybe this time will be different! And then, of course, it's not, and everything collapses, and you end the season lying on the floor clutching an empty bottle, wondering why you do this to yourself. (I'm pretty sure Dylan O'Brien is Matt Harvey in this analogy.)
So yes, the last few episodes are the equivalent of the midseason hot streak, and I'm definitely intrigued by what's going on, but it's hard to have confidence that it's actually going to end up in any sort of coherent and satisfying way. I live in hope of being proved wrong. (That goes double for the Mets.)
Downton Abbey
I knew I'd like this show, but if I'd known just how much of it was an epic bitchfest between Professor McGonagall and Harriet Jones (MP), I'd have gotten around to watching it a lot sooner. Currently up to early S3, not so unspoiled that I don't know what awaits me at the end.
The After
This is one of the Amazon Prime pilots, from Chris Carter of The X-Files, co-starring (among others) Aldis Hodge, Adrian Pasdar, and an almost unrecognizable Jamie Kennedy and Sharon Lawrence.
So, first off, the characters on this show are:
-a beautiful French actress
-a feisty Latina cop
-an angry black (armed) escaped prisoner who claims to be an innocent man
-a belligerent Irish alcoholic
-a sleazy lawyer, accompanied by:
-a hot blonde prostitute who gets naked at the first opportunity
-an eccentric, rich, older woman who faints at inopportune moments
...and a clown.
It's like Carter went shopping in bulk at Cliches R Us. I felt particularly badly for Aldis Hodge, who deserves so much better (guess who he plays!). Also no points for guessing that Pasdar is the lawyer, a role he could probably play in his sleep. I almost wondered if it was all SO cliched because the show was going to deconstruct the stereotypes somehow, but no, that doesn't seem to be the case.
There were some genuinely creepy and suspenseful moments, especially when it came to the small things: people crawling out of and under things that might fall on them, and a pretty literal use of Chekhov's gun. And I'm always up for a good apocalypse, but I had some quibbles with the way things were portrayed. We don't know exactly what happened, but we know that the power has been out everywhere for 24 hours - I buy that there would be chaos under those circumstances, but not that kind of chaos? In that kind of emergency, I'd expect people to retreat to their homes, walking (or biking) as necessary if car travel became impossible, and to huddle together to try to figure out some answers. Why is everyone just running around the downtown area randomly like they've been set loose in a pinball machine? It's both too early and too late for that in this timeline. Cops wouldn't just lose their minds and abandon their posts in the space of one day, and no emergency responder would ignore a woman who said people were trapped and a man was bleeding out. If this was all a side effect of whatever happened - if it caused everyone to act irrationally or violently - that should have been signaled more clearly.
So, yes, two strikes for the characters and the setting. However! At the end of the episode, everything just kind of goes nuts, in a very X-Filesy way, and it was fabulously cracktastic, and now I really want the show to get picked up just so I can find out where the heck they're going with this. And maybe it would turn out to be better than I think. Maybe the actress is actually dead, and this is her purgatory full of casting cliches and men who objectify her, and she can never quite make it home.
XF watch: there was a 1013 reference (in this case, an "officer in need of assistance" call), a ~significant bee~, and an ouroboros tattoo. Plus a plot that didn't make any sense. Nostalgia!
(
comments at Dreamwidth)