TV - What's your passion (NON-sports)?

[hrdboild]

That’s right. I briefly forgot I was a quarter century late to the party.

Speaking of being a quarter century late...

I just started watching The West Wing for the first time, on DVD, having already worked through all of Sorkin's feature film screenplays and wanting to complete the literary deep dive. I'm only 4 episodes in so far but already I'm getting flashbacks to the late 90s when you didn't even need to watch this show to be aware of it's influence on the medium. Most obviously through the normalization of the "walk and talk" approach to filming long dialog exchanges. Most of the conversation now if this show is mentioned at all seems to be about the idealistic view of politics being presented but I would also say that there are traces of the equally weighted "six or seven main character" ensemble story-telling approach in almost every prestige television/streaming show since. And Sorkin or no, it's still recognizably television and so not really my thing. I'll at least watch a full season before deciding whether to go further or not.

 

[Löwenherz]

Speaking of being a quarter century late...

I just started watching The West Wing for the first time, on DVD, having already worked through all of Sorkin's feature film screenplays and wanting to complete the literary deep dive. I'm only 4 episodes in so far but already I'm getting flashbacks to the late 90s when you didn't even need to watch this show to be aware of it's influence on the medium. Most obviously through the normalization of the "walk and talk" approach to filming long dialog exchanges. Most of the conversation now if this show is mentioned at all seems to be about the idealistic view of politics being presented but I would also say that there are traces of the equally weighted "six or seven main character" ensemble story-telling approach in almost every prestige television/streaming show since. And Sorkin or no, it's still recognizably television and so not really my thing. I'll at least watch a full season before deciding whether to go further or not.

I very much want to get back to The West Wing. I enjoyed The Newsroom, and loved the single season of Sports Night I saw in realtime back in high school. Difficult to fathom there exists a sliver of time when both Sports Night and The West Wing were on the air for competing networks.

But I think a combination of House of Cards, and the very real state of our contemporary national politics, have made a vintage show like The West Wing appear naively quaint and nostalgically passé. Admittedly I only got through the first episode, and clips I’ve seen of later seasons certainly increase the stakes, but in the midst of the pandemic when I first sat down with the show, a storyline based on news of the president falling off his bike being the all-hands-on-deck scandal of the day felt positively pastoral.

I’ll hopefully jump back in this summer, along with Mad Men, of which I’ve also only seen the first episode. I think the biggest hurdle for me doing so with both has been their daunting episode counts: More than 150 for The West Wing and nearly 100 for Mad Men. I’m still only halfway through Orphan Black’s 50 episodes. These shows were not meant to be binged, but my world isn’t really structured to carve out an hour a week for the next seven years to finish them as originally designed and intended. So I’m going to need a large block of time when the world stops and I can ignore all adult responsibilities to knock them out.

Thankfully I’m a teacher. They don’t pay you in dollars; they pay you in summers.

 

[hrdboild]

I very much want to get back to The West Wing. I enjoyed The Newsroom, and loved the single season of Sports Night I saw in realtime back in high school. Difficult to fathom there exists a sliver of time when both Sports Night and The West Wing were on the air for competing networks.

But I think a combination of House of Cards, and the very real state of our contemporary national politics, have made a vintage show like The West Wing appear naively quaint and nostalgically passé. Admittedly I only got through the first episode, and clips I’ve seen of later seasons certainly increase the stakes, but in the midst of the pandemic when I first sat down with the show, a storyline based on news of the president falling off his bike being the all-hands-on-deck scandal of the day felt positively pastoral.

I’ll hopefully jump back in this summer, along with Mad Men, of which I’ve also only seen the first episode. I think the biggest hurdle for me doing so with both has been their daunting episode counts: More than 150 for The West Wing and nearly 100 for Mad Men. I’m still only halfway through Orphan Black’s 50 episodes. These shows were not meant to be binged, but my world isn’t really structured to carve out an hour a week for the next seven years to finish them as originally designed and intended. So I’m going to need a large block of time when the world stops and I can ignore all adult responsibilities to knock them out.

Thankfully I’m a teacher. They don’t pay you in dollars; they pay you in summers.

I had a similar feeling. The first 4 episodes even were a little boring -- not quite what I expected but I tried to put myself in the frame of mind of this being a show that was produced in 1999 in a very different entertainment climate. I watched episodes 5-7 yesterday and it's picking up the pace a bit. The characters are starting to feel more lived in.

Episode counts are always daunting -- but there's no rule which says you have to watch them all. Sorkin left after Season 4 anyway. I used to feel compelled but at this point, with a nearly infinite number of things I could be spending my time on instead, if a show hits a lull that lasts more than a few episodes that's generally where I tap out. Not quite fair, but we all have to contend with the "what else could I be doing right now..." barometer of distractedness so I'm not holding them to a different standard then I hold myself.

 

[Löwenherz]

I had a similar feeling. The first 4 episodes even were a little boring -- not quite what I expected but I tried to put myself in the frame of mind of this being a show that was produced in 1999 in a very different entertainment climate. I watched episodes 5-7 yesterday and it's picking up the pace a bit. The characters are starting to feel more lived in.

Episode counts are always daunting -- but there's no rule which says you have to watch them all. Sorkin left after Season 4 anyway. I used to feel compelled but at this point, with a nearly infinite number of things I could be spending my time on instead, if a show hits a lull that lasts more than a few episodes that's generally where I tap out. Not quite fair, but we all have to contend with the "what else could I be doing right now..." barometer of distractedness so I'm not holding them to a different standard then I hold myself.

Maybe it’s sunk cost fallacy or my own undiagnosed neurodivergence, but abandoning a show with a serial overarching plot that I’ve dedicated any kind of time to beyond the first episode makes me break out into a cold sweat.

It’s happened. I lost access to Game of Thrones sometime around the 5th season, then stopped caring entirely hearing from the periphery how the story played out.

Even with Keri Russell at the helm, my interest teetered all through the first season of The Diplomat, until the finale fully killed it with a straight cartoonish Spy vs. Spy cliffhanger angle, fraying the already tenuously thin “grounded dramedy” thread of smartly-dressed competent adults fast-talking politics and strategy it had going for it.

I’m all the way over Wednesday, and after a moderately fun first season with signs of potential, I’ve had little urge to return following the mid-second season finale. The camp episode was horrendous and the nadir of a season already leaning hard into the worst aspects of the first … though I do want to see the Wednesday/Enid Freaky Friday episode. Shame.

I’m mostly at peace abandoning those, but even still they do kinda eat at me. Like a chore I keep putting off.

The less “incompletes” gumming up my headspace, the better.

 

[hrdboild]

Maybe it’s sunk cost fallacy or my own undiagnosed neurodivergence, but abandoning a show with a serial overarching plot that I’ve dedicated any kind of time to beyond the first episode makes me break out into a cold sweat.

It’s happened. I lost access to Game of Thrones sometime around the 5th season, then stopped caring entirely hearing from the periphery how the story played out.

Even with Keri Russell at the helm, my interest teetered all through the first season of The Diplomat, until the finale fully killed it with a straight cartoonish Spy vs. Spy cliffhanger angle, fraying the already tenuously thin “grounded dramedy” thread of smartly-dressed competent adults fast-talking politics and strategy it had going for it.

I’m all the way over Wednesday, and after a moderately fun first season with signs of potential, I’ve had little urge to return following the mid-second season finale. The camp episode was horrendous and the nadir of a season already leaning hard into the worst aspects of the first … though I do want to see the Wednesday/Enid Freaky Friday episode. Shame.

I’m mostly at peace abandoning those, but even still they do kinda eat at me. Like a chore I keep putting off.

The less “incompletes” gumming up my headspace, the better.

I'm confident that with practice eventually you too can learn to embrace the guilt-free jettisoning of fictional plot lines and characters from your mental backlog once they have revealed themselves to be unfulfilling. Once upon a time I would always finish a movie once I started it, out of some misplaced hope that it might "get better as it goes along". Eventually I came to realize that much like unicorns, I had never actually seen such a thing and had to ask myself if the reason for that is that they don't actually exist? The definitive turning point was when I encountered a Guy Pierce starring sci-fi action movie called Lockout and ejected myself out of it after about 15 minutes. There was a bit of "should or shouldn't I" back-sliding at first, but years later I now feel no guilt whatsoever when I throw in the towel. And if you do it early enough, you still have time to watch something better instead!

 

[Löwenherz]

I'm confident that with practice eventually you too can learn to embrace the guilt-free jettisoning of fictional plot lines and characters from your mental backlog once they have revealed themselves to be unfulfilling. Once upon a time I would always finish a movie once I started it, out of some misplaced hope that it might "get better as it goes along". Eventually I came to realize that much like unicorns, I had never actually seen such a thing and had to ask myself if the reason for that is that they don't actually exist? The definitive turning point was when I encountered a Guy Pierce starring sci-fi action movie called Lockout and ejected myself out of it after about 15 minutes. There was a bit of "should or shouldn't I" back-sliding at first, but years later I now feel no guilt whatsoever when I throw in the towel. And if you do it early enough, you still have time to watch something better instead!

Well baby steps. I have abandoned a few shows without guilt after a single episode:

Into the Badlands: Was hoping it would be more Yojimbo and less Kung Fu, but proved to be the latter. I’m not at all a martial arts fan, certainly not enough to tolerate haphazard world-building in a by-the-numbers post-apocalypse.

Designated Survivor: Fascinating premise, but this had me screaming at the screen “that’s not how any of this works!” for all the stupid decisions-per-minute of every character who bumbled their way on screen, Sutherland’s HUD Sec turned Commander in Chief among them.

Timeless: This isn’t Quantum Leap. It’s Time Cop without Van Damme, which leaves an overly self-serious slog into half-brained butterfly effect chaos theory. The problem plainly is “The Hindenburg blew up a day later so now I don’t have a sister” just isn’t fun. The brilliance of Quantum Leap really was Al, who told Sam up-to-the-minute predictions of how he was changing history and what he could do to fix it. Blindly busting the gears of time to see how it ruins the future when you get back is exhausting. Made even worse when the main characters have as much chemistry as three co-workers from different departments forced to come in on a Saturday to manage an emergency.

Altered Carbon: I don’t remember having too much of a problem with this. Moderately interesting tale of human consciousness stored on chips and swapped into different bodies, creating something akin to nigh-immortality. Explores some of the awkward-to-nightmare situations that could arise from that, but otherwise a bog standard Cyberpunk less Blade Runner, more XChange; Stephen Baldwin’s 2001 SciFi vehicle. Think I just got bored having not connected with the lead, who literally changed bodies midway through.

Shogun: I’ve watched a ton of samurai movies. Really think I was simply burned out by the time I got to this one. Maybe I should jump back and give this one another …

Oh man, there I go again.

 

[hrdboild]

Well baby steps. I have abandoned a few shows without guilt after a single episode:

Into the Badlands: Was hoping it would be more Yojimbo and less Kung Fu, but proved to be the latter. I’m not at all a martial arts fan, certainly not enough to tolerate haphazard world-building in a by-the-numbers post-apocalypse.

Designated Survivor: Fascinating premise, but this had me screaming at the screen “that’s not how any of this works!” for all the stupid decisions-per-minute of every character who bumbled their way on screen, Sutherland’s HUD Sec turned Commander in Chief among them.

Timeless: This isn’t Quantum Leap. It’s Time Cop without Van Damme, which leaves an overly self-serious slog into half-brained butterfly effect chaos theory. The problem plainly is “The Hindenburg blew up a day later so now I don’t have a sister” just isn’t fun. The brilliance of Quantum Leap really was Al, who told Sam up-to-the-minute predictions of how he was changing history and what he could do to fix it. Blindly busting the gears of time to see how it ruins the future when you get back is exhausting. Made even worse when the main characters have as much chemistry as three co-workers from different departments forced to come in on a Saturday to manage an emergency.

Altered Carbon: I don’t remember having too much of a problem with this. Moderately interesting tale of human consciousness stored on chips and swapped into different bodies, creating something akin to nigh-immortality. Explores some of the awkward-to-nightmare situations that could arise from that, but otherwise a bog standard Cyberpunk less Blade Runner, more XChange; the Stephen Baldwin’s 2001 SciFi vehicle. Think I just got bored having not connected with the lead, who literally changed bodies midway through.

Shogun: I’ve watched a ton of samurai movies. Really think I was simply burned out by the time I got to this one. Maybe I should jump back and give this one another …

Oh man, there I go again.

Of the two of these that I've seen, I also abandoned Altered Carbon quite quickly despite my initial enthusiasm for the premise. Your observations align with my own, from what I can remember about it at this point anyway. Which is not much.

And I finally decided to give the new Shogun series a try just this past weekend. This new adaptation is critically acclaimed, bronzed in awards, and the ad copy at least claims they used some historical sources to fix what was blatantly inaccurate about the novel but I was already bored mid-way through the first episode. I'll probably give it one more episode at least but considering this is essentially a work of fantasy masquerading as pseudo-history, it seems like the dramatists who cooked this up should be able to do a better job of grabbing my attention up front. This still just comes across as people who are not Japanese explaining Japan to other people who are not Japanese and while the actors all seem to be doing fine work with what they're given, it's not operating on a level that I find very interesting (so far).

The praise for this show is so effusive, I figure I've got to be missing something (...hey maybe this one actually does "get better as it goes along"...) but it's probably just a matter of taste. Game of Thrones was sold to me as catnip to Tolkien fans but I regard it more as "all of the boring bits of Lord of the Rings mashed together with all of the pathos, whimsy, and charm excised" and this show seems to be treading water in roughly the same territory.

 

[Löwenherz]

Of the two of these that I've seen, I also abandoned Altered Carbon quite quickly despite my initial enthusiasm for the premise. Your observations align with my own, from what I can remember about it at this point anyway. Which is not much.

And I finally decided to give the new Shogun series a try just this past weekend. This new adaptation is critically acclaimed, bronzed in awards, and the ad copy at least claims they used some historical sources to fix what was blatantly inaccurate about the novel but I was already bored mid-way through the first episode. I'll probably give it one more episode at least but considering this is essentially a work of fantasy masquerading as pseudo-history, it seems like the dramatists who cooked this up should be able to do a better job of grabbing my attention up front. This still just comes across as people who are not Japanese explaining Japan to other people who are not Japanese and while the actors all seem to be doing fine work with what they're given, it's not operating on a level that I find very interesting (so far).

The praise for this show is so effusive, I figure I've got to be missing something (...hey maybe this one actually does "get better as it goes along"...) but it's probably just a matter of taste. Game of Thrones was sold to me as catnip to Tolkien fans but I regard it more as "all of the boring bits of Lord of the Rings mashed together with all of the pathos, whimsy, and charm excised" and this show seems to be treading water in roughly the same territory.

I’m rather relieved to have someone validate my lack of enthusiasm for Shogun. Whenever I’m less than ecstatic for something heaped in critical praise, I tend to assume I’m the problem.

“It’s not you Shogun, it’s me; I’m just not ready to jump back into a relationship with another Samurai media property right now. But hey, you’ve got a ton of people who really seem to love you; I just know you’ll find your audience right away. It’s my loss, truly Shogun. And I’ll be rooting for you at the Emmys this year. Promise. OK, night night, yeah had a lovely time, just gotta get up early tomorrow and … is he gone? Wonder if I still have Archer on speed dial.”

Things started rough for me when the Samurai show kicked things off with a ton of English. I get that it was a European shipwreck, and setting things off there acts as a way to get the largely American audience acclimated with the story before pushing them into the deep-end of the subtitle pool. But then I thought: “wait, aren’t these guys supposed to be Portuguese or something? Why are they speaking English? Is this show gonna do the thing where everyone speaks English, but they pretend it’s a foreign language because they all have an exaggerated accent?” And I was so distracted by that train of thought I missed most of the first scene.

Was relieved when, who I assume were, the Shogun’s people spoke Japanese in the next scene, right until one of his, let’s say, attendants called another prefecture a “s—-hole” and I started thinking “is that a direct translation? Do the Japanese have a word for ‘s—-hole?’ Did he call it like a toilet or some equivalent and the translators just wanted to jolt the Americans awake? I’ve seen a lot of Samurai movies, and I can’t think of a time a member of the Samurai class spoke crudely in one of them. Generally in film at least, that’s a mark of a bandit or ronin specifically as a way to differentiate them from the Samurai, who are typically portrayed as being hung up on ceremony, honor, pomp and circumstance. Even Kurogane only called Lady Kaeda a “vixen” and “viper” right before beheading her for manipulating the entire clan to its doom in Ran.” And then in my head I started going through the Samurai movies I’d seen to think of a time I could remember a Samurai cursing in such a way and I completely missed the rest of the episode.

 

[Warhawk]

Daredevil: Born Again - Season 2 - Well done, better than the first season, I think. I saw part of the endgame coming a bit off, but very timely and appropriate overall.

 

[Warhawk]

The Boys - Season 5 - really nailed a LOT of the stuff that's going on right now. That's the way to do it.

The season itself was a bit uneven at times, but I thought they wrapped the show up pretty well.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

Netflix picked up The Man In The High Castle so I decided to give it a go - only after re-reading the Philip K. Dick original. I'm only one season through (out of four) but it's a pretty interesting adaptation. It uses the same characters and relationships as the book (at least almost exactly) but blows through most of the novel's plot points in the first two or three episodes while throwing in some pretty big plot changes. Obviously taking a ~200 page novel and turning it into 40 hours of TV is going to require extrapolating the plot quite a bit, but I think they took it in the right (only?) general direction.

Dick's novel - like most of his work - is jumpy and scattered and brilliant and weird and extremely incomplete. The basic idea here is to plop us down in an alternate reality about a decade after Germany and Japan won WWII and have subsequently divided the U.S. between themselves. Dick hints at a power struggle between Germany and Japan (the series leans WAY more into that) but the MacGuffin of the novel is a strange book titled "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" that describes an alternate reality where the U.S. and Allies won WWII, which is being suppressed by the German authorities.

The show changes "Grasshopper" to a series of films - very good idea, works a lot better on screen - and from what I can tell at the end of the first season completely changes the identity and Grasshopper-relationship of the title character (not sure what I think about that yet). The title character from the book hasn't shown up yet (at least not openly) but during a quick glance on IMDB I saw the character name in the credits so it would seem they're going to work him in yet - I'd guess in the same basic capacity as in the novel, just not identified as the eponymous MITHC.

I was a bit worried that they would completely blow past the mysterious "wu" properties of the jewelry Frink manufactures, another essential but incompletely-explored trope from the book, but they slowly start hinting at it and then end the first season with a very satisfying full-on depiction of a part of the novel I was sure was going to get canned.

Anyway, I'm all-in for now, and though the bulk of the 30 episodes left basically has to be extrapolation on the novel I'm interested to see where it goes and how it "completes" Dick's subtle allusions and scattered thoughts.

 

[Warhawk]

Netflix picked up The Man In The High Castle so I decided to give it a go - only after re-reading the Philip K. Dick original. I'm only one season through (out of four) but it's a pretty interesting adaptation. It uses the same characters and relationships as the book (at least almost exactly) but blows through most of the novel's plot points in the first two or three episodes while throwing in some pretty big plot changes. Obviously taking a ~200 page novel and turning it into 40 hours of TV is going to require extrapolating the plot quite a bit, but I think they took it in the right (only?) general direction.

Dick's novel - like most of his work - is jumpy and scattered and brilliant and weird and extremely incomplete. The basic idea here is to plop us down in an alternate reality about a decade after Germany and Japan won WWII and have subsequently divided the U.S. between themselves. Dick hints at a power struggle between Germany and Japan (the series leans WAY more into that) but the MacGuffin of the novel is a strange book titled "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" that describes an alternate reality where the U.S. and Allies won WWII, which is being suppressed by the German authorities.

The show changes "Grasshopper" to a series of films - very good idea, works a lot better on screen - and from what I can tell at the end of the first season completely changes the identity and Grasshopper-relationship of the title character (not sure what I think about that yet). The title character from the book hasn't shown up yet (at least not openly) but during a quick glance on IMDB I saw the character name in the credits so it would seem they're going to work him in yet - I'd guess in the same basic capacity as in the novel, just not identified as the eponymous MITHC.

I was a bit worried that they would completely blow past the mysterious "wu" properties of the jewelry Frink manufactures, another essential but incompletely-explored trope from the book, but they slowly start hinting at it and then end the first season with a very satisfying full-on depiction of a part of the novel I was sure was going to get canned.

Anyway, I'm all-in for now, and though the bulk of the 30 episodes left basically has to be extrapolation on the novel I'm interested to see where it goes and how it "completes" Dick's subtle allusions and scattered thoughts.

I never read the book but found the series to be very well done overall. (I didn't even know it was based on a book.)