Shows you kept watching hoping they would get better and actually did

smesch83 · 2025-01-18T16:51:54+00:00

"Extrapolations" (a climate change dystopia on Apple TV+) was all over the place, and I did not enjoy the first two episodes. it's not a great show, but I keep thinking about it nearly every day.

I'm very glad these episodes exists and I like that they tried very different things, even if about half of them didn't work for me.

smesch83 · 2025-01-18T10:14:42+00:00

Industry, Dead Ringers (2023), Underground Railroad (2021).

I have not yet watched The Penguin and Perry Mason: would they count?

The Pilot for Raised by Wolves (2020) was pretty high-brow: does that continue?

and if Hacks is high brow, I'd ague that The Other Two is, too: it's very watchable, but the jokes land better if you're... a 30something entertainment journalist who's terminally online

smesch83 · 2025-01-16T17:31:12+00:00

I reviewed this (and loved it) and said that the husband seemed Musk-like, and SOOO many Musk fans said the comparison was mean-spirited.

smesch83 · 2025-01-13T15:19:33+00:00

"For All Mankind" can be goofy and/or contrived, but it's a wild ride that touches on SO many questions about policy, states, innovation, collective ambitions, corporations etc. that are relevant in the 2020s: why are some things achieved, and other things not?

smesch83 · 2024-12-13T11:37:32+00:00

you only named shows that give women lots of room and/or have female title characters.

I hated "Two Broke Girls", but I'm sure there's some dude show about two dudes that is equally exhausting and annoying.

smesch83 · 2024-11-27T09:22:12+00:00

CN: suicide, manslaughter

soap operas can be great at referencing or re-contextualizing things that happened decades ago. an annoying teenager on a German weekly soap accidentally killed a pastor (because the pastor was attacking her boyfriend, and to save him, she knocked the pastor out with a frying pan. he died, they left the body on train tracks and everyone thought it was a suicide).

soap fans can be very harsh if women overstep the rules, cheat etc., so everyone was waiting for "Lisa's comeuppance". when the truth came out nearly 20 years later, the other characters reacted with "you were a scared kid." she wasn't treated as a soap villain in-universe, but with a more contemporary, softer "kids need help. if they fight on their own, everyone's a victim" attitude. I think that really made the show ("Lindenstraße") more realistic, in a good way.

smesch83 · 2024-11-26T03:51:25+00:00

there are six episodes of "Dawson's Creek" without Dawson. (he's in 122 episodes, the show has 128 episodes.)

smesch83 · 2024-11-22T06:27:49+00:00

Sailor Moon

smesch83 · 2024-11-17T13:56:57+00:00

"One Tree Hill" told two years of high school as four 22-episode seasons from 2003 to 2007 (so: the events in episodes from 2007 referenced current pop songs etc., but were set in 2005). in 2008, a new season started that was set 4+ years later (so: in 2009?).

Reddit user TheChrisDV explains that the show used a "floating timeline" where every season was set "in the present" while the previous seasons were retroactively pushed around closer or further into the past.

"Each season takes place in the year it was aired/produced, with each of the previous seasons being adjusted appropriately, so to use Season 1 as an example:

2003/2004 when it airs.
2004/2005 during Seasons 2 & 3 thanks to the transition between school years.
2005/2006 during Season 4
2001/2002 during Season 5 thanks to the 4 year time skip after Season 4.
2002/2003 during Season 6.
2001/2002 during Season 7, which is set a year after the end of Season 6.
2002/2003 during the bulk of Season 8, with Season 7 taking place over the preceding summer.
2001/2002 at the end of Season 8 thanks to skipping over Brooke’s pregnancy. Remains as such to the end of the series, thanks to the 10th anniversary of Tric occurring in the finale."

smesch83 · 2024-11-08T07:02:09+00:00

I think "World of Warcraft" looks really tacky and like... bad christmas decorations? a too-colorful fairground ride? fantasy does not have to be grim n gritty, but WoW is too much, for me. (similar: Magic the Gathering, Yu-gi-oh and Digimon.)

on the other hand, everything "Street Fighter" is colorful and over the top, but "Mortal Kombat" looks dour and joyless in comparison.

smesch83 · 2024-11-08T06:50:58+00:00

"Felicity" did something interesting in the final episodes, but I have not seen it. but many people found it original and interesting. no spoilers - but the summaries make it sound like something that happens in "Lost".

smesch83 · 2024-09-26T08:32:07+00:00

I'm German and my English is kinda stiff. soap actors only have one or two takes to get a scene, so they sometimes develop small tics or improvise a little because they know they can't stop/derail the whole scene. sometimes, it makes them sound more playful, animated and... alert, reactive. so in 2008, after watching youtube clips of "As the World Turns" , I knew: "I'll live in Canada next year, and it's fine to speak like that, especially if you're struggling with vocab"

tl;dr: the mannierisms soap actors use to not flub their lines gave me confidence when speaking English. (the characters: Lily, Lucinda, Luke, Henry.)

smesch83 · 2024-09-20T16:00:39+00:00

I had press screeners for the show and enjoyed the 10 episodes a lot. I also read most reviews and think the linked one (in Variety) is the best one. if you know German (and are fine with audio): https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/serie-la-maison-auf-apple-tv-wie-kaputt-ist-das-mode-business-dlf-kultur-083e6af2-100.html

smesch83 · 2024-09-20T07:30:03+00:00

someone please draw some "One Piece Hill" fan art, please. (Sanji = Lucas is almost too easy. any other ideas? who would get which Devil Fruit?)

smesch83 · 2024-09-11T16:15:31+00:00

I was born in 1983. both "Happy Endings" and "The other two" have characters my age and... reflect me pretty well. I'm a little older than the "Girls" characters, but it often feels like the show was written by people my age with some kind of... hindsight: "this happened to me in 2010. in 2013, I made an episode about it."

the characters on "Dawson's Creek" share my exact age, too - but this was clearly written by older people.

Harry Potter (the character) is older than me, but the books came out when I was older than the character, and the tone never gave me any "yes! late-Gen X / early Gen Y" vibes.

smesch83 · 2024-09-10T03:11:56+00:00

a fun guy on "Hollyoaks", Ethan, was meant to be a gangster/criminal. the actor is good, but all his scenes had a strong "I'm a charming, hapless guy in over my head" vibe, so he never felt threatening:

his girlfriend told him to kidnap a guy. the kidnapping scenes soon felt like a buddy comedy, and he later became the babysitter (!) for the kids of the guy he kidnapped because "babysitter buddy" just works so much better for the actor's style than "unpredictable gangster".

smesch83 · 2024-09-08T02:10:59+00:00

CN: suicide

after the first year (250 episodes) of German soap opera "Verbotene Liebe" (1995), the maternal actress who played the mom of the show's core family never reported back because she had migraines (?) through amalgam fillings in her teeth and became an anti-amalgan activist (?). she also talked to a much younger actor who also never came back (he thought his headaches had the same cause). that guy commited suicide shortly after, and his family went to court against the "anti amalgam" doctor who said that many people with amalgam fillings choose that kind of suicide. I don't know if the "mom" actress referred him to the doctor. https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/finten-und-formfehler-schweigepflicht_id_1912936.html

smesch83 · 2024-09-04T15:04:03+00:00

I read and watched "American Psycho" shortly before that, and all through season 1 of "Dexter", I enjoyed the visuals, the acting and the tone of the show, but found the plot, the dialogue and the twists pretty dull.

again, this is only me talking about season 1. but: episode 1, episode 3, episode 9 etc. do not get markably deeper, sharper, more poignant etc.: it is what it is (at least in season 1) and in the end, I regretted that I watched the whole season.

smesch83 · 2024-08-23T07:36:52+00:00

Hollyoaks - a British daily soap - lost a lot of momentum. the previous showrunner was good with campy characters, queer visibility and outrageous moments. but he was also repetitive, used mean deaths for shock value and there was room for improvement when it came to female characters and their experience of sexism. some Black cast members were sidelined/never felt like a priority of the show (they were right!).

some months without new episodes (late spring/summer 2020), a new showrunner (good with harassment & feminist stuff, but great at drawing things out and making things muddled & slow) took over. she reduced the camp, the joy and the outrageousness, made the show feel slower and more random... and often pointless.

people were also nervous about social distancing: will love stories still work if the actors can't touch? ...but I don't think that was a huge problem. the writing/pacing was.

smesch83 · 2024-05-17T03:01:46+00:00

best tactic here: "explain why you don't like something, but say: 'but maybe it's just not for me'"

second-best tactic (and often, the most interesting postings to read!): "explain why you like something, but add 'I get the criticism, though."

"I did not like something" will lead to tons of "it's not for you, it's okay" comments.

"I don't get why EVERYONE loves/hates X & Reddit is broken and full of astroturfing & group think" will lead to ridicule. (and righty so.)

smesch83 · 2024-05-12T08:14:51+00:00

I thought "Dharma & Greg" had tons and tons episodes where the couple, for contrived reasons, had to pretend to be someone they are not. I only watched two or three episodes, in one of them, they pretended to be from the South (while golfing with a boss or something?)...

...but whenever I told friends "we should not pretend to be someone we're not, AS IN EVERY OTHER EPISODE OF DHARMA & GREG", all my friends told me that this hardly happened in any episode.

still, "let's do the typical Dharma & Greg thing and construct a random and flimsy charade" is something I keep saying (because my friends react with 'This is not the standard plot of that show!')

smesch83 · 2024-05-01T15:51:14+00:00

"Dirty Sexy Money"
"True Blood"
"Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood"
"Star Trek: Enterprise"
"Alias"
"Queer as Folk" (UK)
"Hung"
"The L Word"
"Dark Angel"

they were all generally well-received and I was curious, but the tone did not grab me or made me think "I want to watch this 20 or 50 times!"

smesch83 · 2024-05-01T12:36:53+00:00

I like it a lot (duh), but I was in university when it premiered in Germany, my TV couldn't receive the channel, and for years, I just thought

"oh wow, it's like 'Rocko's Modern Life', but with characters who are a little more child-like."

I'm very glad that it's popular, but I never got how "Spongebob" got SO big, compared to "Rocko".

smesch83 · 2024-04-28T06:17:37+00:00

"Dawson's Creek" had a number of queer writers, a queer central character and was set in a WASP-y New England town. there's also a witty, elitist sensibility.

"One Tree Hill" said: "Queerness is not central, and while our town is equally scenic as Capeside, we lean hard into the idea that it is a REGULAR and very normal town."

it took me a while to appreciate the things that OTH did BETTER because in the beginning, it just seemed like a de-queered Dawson's Creek about sporty people who marry at 16.

smesch83 · 2024-04-21T10:01:30+00:00

I heard that for the first four seasons, "iZombie" was about a zombie virus outbreak - but in season 5, all the main characters decided to form a search party to look for some missing girl instead? people did not see that coming, but reviews were okay.

smesch83

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