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Better Call (The [TV] Thread) Saul
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I like the idea that there's a ton of kinds of Klingon, and all their appearances are canon.
I found a few things. This is all long-winded craft stuff, I'll toss it in spoilers so as to not take up acres of page space
ELSBETH gives up too much, too soon. We see every step of the killer's plan, we see his motive, we see his flaws as a person, it's all in those first ten pages. The only questions I had were, "How will Elsbeth, the character I already know and whose name is the title of the show, come into this story?" and "How will she catch him?" The answer to the first question came quickly and perfunctorily ("Consent decree, I guess?"), and the answer to the latter was, "idk, Sherlock Holmes powers." When there are only two questions, and the answers do not satisfy, the show does not satisfy.
POKER FACE shows us a lot, but crucially, it withholds enough to leave us with a lot of questions. "What's the relationship between the two men complicit in this murder? Why does the hard man show deference to the soft man? Who are they both afraid of, and why? How does an investigator come into this insular world? Who is that investigator? How will their energy break this machine?"
The answers on who's investigating and why are much more interesting, and on POKER FACE, that question gets to recur, which is brilliant. For ELSBETH it's always just "Consent decree," it's a pre-solved mystery on a show that desperately needs more questions. POKER FACE lets Charlie discover motives along with the audience, saves crucial pieces of context for her (and us!) to find as the story goes.
ELSBETH even throws limiters on "How will they get caught," because the "working with police" framework demands resolutions that come with handcuffs. POKER FACE can end all sorts of ways, preserving mystery about outcomes. POKER FACE also has that clearer tool, that wonderful lie-detector ability. We wonder how that tool will be used, where it will fall short, how it will need to be manipulated to find ultimate purchase. ELSBETH has... "She sees stuff and is off-the-rack quirky about it." I have less innate curiosity about, "How will she see stuff" because I've been watching procedurals my whole life. "How will a human lie detector get to the bottom of a bad vibe" is infinitely fresher.
One thing that surprised me was that, on the page, ELSBETH feels a little... Dismissive of its own enterprise. Like, there's a surprising shortage of jokes on screen - characters aren't especially witty, there aren't any comedic scenarios, it's all a bit perfunctory and plot-forward. And I missed it, for a second, because there are plenty of jokes in the "action tags," the prose descriptions of what's happening on screen. But they are generally of a, "Look at this shmuck" tone. "Look at this pitiful worm of a theater director, you know this type," the script assures us. But the problem is, yeah, I do know that type... Which means there's nothing here to surprise me.
Seeing a villain get dismantled is satisfying, I don't need him to have a secret heart of gold or whatever. But when he has no secrets from me, nothing to surprise me with, he cannot scare me. He is not a threat to be defused, the way Charlie musts always navigate. The show has already, and immediately, let me know he's pathetic. He isn't a villain, he's a punching bag, here to be swatted.
The Kings are normally experts of taking a thing you think you know, turning it 5 degrees, and getting you to see it in a new light. In ELSBETH, it's like they... skipped that "turn it 5 degrees" step.
That's just good branding.
EDIT: Ladies and gentlemen we have a haunted toilet.
He wrote some of my favorite episodes of LONGMIRE (so he's got his mystery procedural chops), but more excitingly, he created and ran the show DAMNATION. That show is, tragically, kinda forgotten, but it whiiiiiipped. Like, check this:
It was only 2017 and yet it somehow feels way ahead of its time, I feel like you could start airing it today and have more of a hit.
Anyway, yes please to letting that guy play around in the Poker Face sandbox, what a fun fucking pick
and I have never heard of it, not even in passing.
It only ran a season, and it was on USA when they were trying to figure out what they'd be "after the Blue Sky era." That was the loose categorization given to light, character-driven procedurals like MONK, PSYCH, ROYAL PAINS, etc. It defined them for a long time, but as some of their long-in-the-tooth shows started to sunset, they tried out a bunch of stuff.
MR ROBOT did well for them as one of their first big swings in this new mode, so they committed to dark and weird. But nothing else really did that well. THE SINNER popped in its first season. QUEEN OF THE SOUTH had a modest but loyal fan base and got a lot of awards, and was really cheap, but it's hard to call it a runaway success. But overall, for a long time, nobody really tuned in (my theory: if you liked Blue Sky, you were annoyed it was gone. If you didn't like Blue Sky, you weren't gonna go to USA because that's where Blue Sky is).
So USA didn't really like how any of their experiments turned out and they announced last year that they're going back to Blue Sky. They have no desire/incentive to keep those failed experiments alive in the public consciousness, it's hard to generate discourse around shows from this cul-de-sac in a basic cable network, I think anything in that bubble is gonna fade hard and fast from public consciousness.
Like, my parents are talking to me about suits and I'm just like "...I watched that show 15 years ago and got out when it started getting bad, why are you just now watching it?" And it's because it got on netflix for the first time.
Really highlights how important marketing is. Doesn't matter how good your product is if nobody knows about it.
I just started watching the Tremors TV show because I found it on tubi this evening
I agree. I was very disappointed to discover they had walked back that design.
https://gofund.me/fa5990a5
https://imgur.com/a/important-DqNGvxZ
A week or two ago, I finally felt good enough to watch it. And all of a sudden I started watching season two.
And I loved it. And I’m finally up to the finale, so tomorrow. Tomorrow I will finally start season 3.
Satans..... hints.....
Satans..... hints.....
Satans..... hints.....
Yeah Season 2 of The Wire is a trip. For example: Chris Bauer was younger than me when he played the role of Frank Sobotka, a character who's supposed to be in his 50s, and he looked twice my age at the time. Crazy!
Also Bane is a main cast member, and another main cast member is voiced by Nadja from What We Do in the Shadows.
Episode 3 is very NSFW though. For violence and nudity. At the same time.
It was good to see...
...in something again, though.
harry mudd is exactly the thing I figured would get you into discovery
also, captain killy
A living manifestation of when you know your entire day has just become derailed with some goddamn bullshit.
He's awesome.
This is Doom Patrol for me, I've got the final season DVD taunting me, I know it'll be an emotional rollercoaster.
Season 1 got my hooked good. However, season 2 I thought was a total slog to get through. I watched season 1 in two sittings, half a season each, but with season 2 I couldn't bear to watch more than three episodes at once.
Season 3 was a very slight improvement and I was wondering if I just don't vibe with the whole thing, but then seasons 4 and 5 and 6 were some banging good fun and I'm real glad I got through seasons 2 and 3 to get there.
I suppose next on the docket is City Primeval, which I've also heard good things about. Only eight episodes too, it looks like, which should make it easy to sit through in the next day or two.
Steam ID XBL: JohnnyChopsocky PSN:Stud_Beefpile WiiU:JohnnyChopsocky
I haven't gone back to give it a full rewatch, but season six is my second favorite season of Justified (after 2)
Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen are both fantastic, they parcel out more time (and great material) to Kaitlyn Dever and Jere Burns and they have a run of guest spots with actors who are great fits for the universe they've built
Seasons 3 and 4 are both pretty good with a few outstanding high points, but they don't pace/juggle their stories as cleanly and lack the clarity of purpose that seasons 2 or 6 had, IMO
Season 5 is pretty dire. It's like season 2 of Friday Night Lights, but it doesn't have the excuses of network meddling and a writer's strike like FNL did