What are you watching? - 5/12/2020

[Dave Gray]

The Wire - I've been meaning to watch this for years.  ...YEARS.   I finally started and am about 5 episodes in.  The best I can describe it is "honest".  It's just about good/bad/flawed characters on every side of drugs -- from dealers to cops to informants to users.  And the rat-race of all of it.  They get into the Xs and Os of the detective work and it feels legit.

The one thing I find weird about it, and it's not even a critique, is that the episodes seem to just end.  It's not like most TV now that ends with a reveal or cliffhanger or something to titillate for later viewing. On multiple occasions, a character will say something slightly profound and it just cuts to black.  It's just a different way to watch TV than a lot of premiere TV these days, built around shock or plot reveal to push the pace.

It's a slow burn, but I like it.




And with all the renovations we've been doing, I'm jumping back and forth between two shows on HGTV:

Home Town - A likeable couple (she's an artist/designer, he's a carpenter) help families buy and renovate, while keeping the charm and history of the historic district in a very small town in Mississippi.  They seem to know all the people they're working with.  I like the setup of the show.  We're a few seasons in and while the premise is generally the same, they've got a few tweaks to the formula here and there to keep it interesting.

Love It or List It - This show is trash.  It's totally formulaic and fake, but my wife and I watch it because the design changes are nice and we get ideas from it.  It's basically a couple where one wants to fix up the house and stay, the other wants to sell it and move.  A designed fixes their house to meet their needs, while a real estate agent finds them a new place.  Then the show concludes with them deciding whether to stay there or move.  The show is garbage because there is fake peril built into every episode, false conflict, and obviously scripted conversations that are done just for the camera.  Can't recommend but it's nice to have on....and the lady's design style is good.

[CF DolFan]

Outlander Season 5 -Married WWII nurse is transported back to 1743 Scotland where she "marries" a Scottish warrior.  This makes for an interesting dilemma especially once she returns later.  Season 3 kind of sucked but the rest has been pretty good. An action show that is also a chick flick. A great couples series.

The Last Kingdom Season 4 - Saxon child is kidnapped and raised as a Viking Dane. Uhtred of Bebbanburg returns years later to avenge the deaths of his new Father and to reclaim his homeland. It'a a constant battle between his Danish and English heritage.  I have loved every season of this show.

[Phishfan]

The Last Dance. What a great docuseries. I recommend it to anyone that have kids who never saw a young Jordan play. He truly was the greatest to play.

[CF DolFan]

The Last Dance. What a great docuseries. I recommend it to anyone that have kids who never saw a young Jordan play. He truly was the greatest to play.

I love that many people who were "on the fence" about Jordon vs Labron have changed their mind to "oh yes, I forgot how good he really was".

[Pappy13]

I don't watch TV these days. On occasion I watch a movie, but never TV.

[Phishfan]

The man could float in the air is the only way to describe it.

[Brian Fein]

I almost exclusively watch movies - the same shitty old comedies over and over. 

I do like The Blacklist.  James Spader is brilliant.  The show has evolved to a complicated web of lies and twists that makes it interesting.

Rick and Morty just resumed season 4 but I find the new episodes don't have the hilarious brilliance that season 1 and 2 did. 

Bar Rescue has become one of my favorite shows.  Its amusing to me how inept some people that call themselves "businessmen" can be.

[Tenshot13]

My wife and I made a deal:  I would watch Tiger King, which she wouldn't shut up about, and she would watch Breaking Bad, which I never shut up about and she refused to watch.  I understand the hype on Tiger King now, although it took me until episode 3 to really get into it.  Fun fact, my wife was a volunteer at Big Cat Rescue when she was a teenager.  She's enjoying Breaking Bad, and it's nice to re-watch it, as it's one of my top 5 shows all time.

Dave, we finished the Wire not too long ago.  It's exactly as you describe, it's a slow burn that's realistic.  I found it incredibly boring at times, but once I got into season 2 I was hooked with the style and story.  I still don't understand how there's a consensus that it's the greatest show of all time.  Nonetheless, it's still a great show.

CF, we finished the last season of The Last Kingdom the weekend it came out.  We love that show too, it's overtaken Vikings as my favorite in that genre.

Brian, we watched Blacklist, but we just can't get into this latest season.  Spader definitely carries the show and he's good, but I've lost interest.  Maybe when we have nothing else to watch we'll go back to it.

Prodigal Son is an okay show, nothing special.  Cliff Notes, main character, who was the actor who played Jesus in The Walking Dead, is the son of a notorious serial killer who was a doctor named The Surgeon.  He's locked away now, and the protagonist is a FBI profiler who kind of has a deathwish and mental issues.  He begrudgingly uses his dad's help to solve cases.  There are repressed memories, blah blah blah.  It's entertaining enough, The Surgeon carries the show for the most part.  There are enough twists to keep it fresh I guess.

The HGTV show we watch is Flea Market Flip.  I can't get enough of it, and I got the hots for the host Laura Spencer.

[Fau Teixeira]

i've been watching law and order .. i'm mid way though season 6 .. only a few more to go !

[fyo]

My wife and I have been in a bit of a TV slump lately, just unable to find something we both liked. I really want to watch season 2 of Altered Carbon. We both really like season 1 and I really enjoyed the books. Season 2 isn't as good, though, and my wife doesn't want to keep watching it.

Right now we've settled on Lucifer, which is pretty fun. Just finished season 1, so we're covered for the next few weeks if it stays interesting.

[masterfins]

The Wire - I've been meaning to watch this for years.  ...YEARS. 

The Wire is good, I've watched all the seasons a couple times now.  At first it was tough to watch, I fell asleep during the first episode like three times, finally I binge watched a couple episodes during the day and got hooked on it.

Bosch is good, I've watched all those seasons and am watching again. 

Basically I've been looking for something good to watch, as I'm basically re-watching things I've already seen, like The Americans, Blue Bloods, House, Veep, Ballers, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, The Rookie, Jack Ryan, NYPD Blue.  I'm limited to Amazon Prime, as that's the only one I want to pay for.  I also watch other free apps with commercials; like Roku Channel, Crackle, Pluto, Tubi, etc.

Occasionally I come across something good, but there are only one or two seasons.  I watched a BBC show called "Our Girl" which I thought was good, only two seasons though.

[Tenshot13]

The Wire is good, I've watched all the seasons a couple times now.  At first it was tough to watch, I fell asleep during the first episode like three times, finally I binge watched a couple episodes during the day and got hooked on it.

Bosch is good, I've watched all those seasons and am watching again. 

Basically I've been looking for something good to watch, as I'm basically re-watching things I've already seen, like The Americans, Blue Bloods, House, Veep, Ballers, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, The Rookie, Jack Ryan, NYPD Blue.  I'm limited to Amazon Prime, as that's the only one I want to pay for.  I also watch other free apps with commercials; like Roku Channel, Crackle, Pluto, Tubi, etc.

Occasionally I come across something good, but there are only one or two seasons.  I watched a BBC show called "Our Girl" which I thought was good, only two seasons though.

Yeah, Bosch is good.  We finished that up when the last season came out.  Have you watched Goliath with Billy Bob Thorton?  It's pretty decent.

[masterfins]

Yeah, Bosch is good.  We finished that up when the last season came out.  Have you watched Goliath with Billy Bob Thorton?  It's pretty decent.

Yes, Goliath was good.  Another Amazon show was The Man in the High Castle, it started out good, then the middle seasons were kind of off, then the last seasons were good; I may go back and re-watch, maybe the middle seasons will make more sense now that I know what the whole show was about.

[Tenshot13]

Yes, Goliath was good.  Another Amazon show was The Man in the High Castle, it started out good, then the middle seasons were kind of off, then the last seasons were good; I may go back and re-watch, maybe the middle seasons will make more sense now that I know what the whole show was about.

When the old Asian guy had his...um...out of body experience?  Was when we stopped watching.  We lost a lot of interest after that.

Frankly these days if you don't want me to watch a show, put Nazis in it.  They are so over saturated, I'm sick of every bad guy being a Nazi.  It's like the people who create these sorts of shows are obsessed with them.  Nazis bad, got it, now make something with substance.

[Dave Gray]

I love Nazis as villains.  I don't see them very much in the shows I watch anymore.  They are one of the truly bad guys that you don't have to make multi-dimentional to be interesting.