The TV Series discussion thread

Drithius said:

So, with Letterman's last show, I decided to finally tune into James Corden's Late Late Show. After being a huge, huge fan of Craig Ferguson, I have to say that this guy sucks royally.

I would routinely tune into Craig Ferguson for a couple minutes and end up staying for the full hour - he was just that charming, intelligent, and real. With Corden, on the other hand, I had every intention of watching for the full hour from the get-go to get a decent impression of his talents but couldn't make it past the monologue. He is just so tiresome and forced in his routine.

Has anyone caught this guy's act? Does anyone actually enjoy it?

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He is the worst. Made endless crap in UK. Don't know how he got that job.

love this show

Sheldon Plays a MUD

xSamhainx said:

love this show

Sheldon Plays a MUD

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That's not really a MUD, it's a single player game (like Zork).
I used to watch that show, but the laugh track killed it for me (yes, I know it's not an actual laugh track, but telling the audience when to laugh, and raising their volume to 9000, is actually worse than a laugh track for me).

I liked this representation someone wrote of what happens in the studio...

The guys are playing video games. The audience murmurs with excitement. They know what's coming. Penny enters and says "Hello". A few audience members let out short squawks of nervous laughter, but are quickly silenced by those who want to wait for the drop.

"Hello, Penny," says Sheldon. One audience member faints; another silently orgasms.

"What are you guys doing?" asks Penny, as nearly half the audience, unable to contain their mirth, begins to chuckle.

"Playing video games," says Leonard with a bizarre tilt of his head as though he is attempting to view the world by looking under his spectacles.

One audience member immediately vapourises as his esophagus reaches several million Kelvin from the sudden burst of pent-up laughter. The walls shake with hilarity. Seats become unbolted as the manic pressure caused by the audience's combined laughter creates a significant electrical field in the studio. Several audience members go insane. Some begin clawing at their skin to keep from passing out. As the laughter intensifies, it begins to take on a more rhythmic nature, sending out huge, regular bursts of energy which will later be misinterpreted as a supermassive pulsar by a distant intelligent race. The magnetic field is so massive that the rest of the solar system, and eventually the galaxy, begin to be drawn toward the studio in a sharply declining orbital pattern.

"Bazinga," says Sheldon.

All matter in the universe is sucked into the black hole of humour created by this ultimate hilarity. All of existence is rapidly compressed into an infinitely small point, which explodes simultaneously to being created.

14 billion years later, with an irony so profound it is never even guessed, the research scientists of one of the new universe's intelligent races terms this singularity "the Big Bang".

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Anyone watch 'Mr Robot', or 'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell'?

Corwin said:

'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell'?

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Liked the book a lot -- are they doing it justice?

Haven't read the book, but what I saw (the first 2 episodes) was very well done.

Corwin said:

Anyone watch 'Mr Robot', or 'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell'?

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No and no.
Never heard of them, honestly.

Those are filmed where? You know I'm mainly after exotic stuff, everything mainsteam can wait till I get retired and even then there is a huge possibility I'll skip it completely.

I'm rewatching Hannibal, as my GF expressed interest in it.

She's digging it, and I'm sort of finding that it's even worse than I remember it being

DArtagnan said:

I'm rewatching Hannibal, as my GF expressed interest in it.

She's digging it, and I'm sort of finding that it's even worse than I remember it being

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I totally get what you're saying, as we have four opinions amongst the four of us in our house as well. I feel like there is a certain aesthetic and narrative style that, regardless of the quality of writing or acting, will likely determine whether or not you like the show.

For us, my younger son (17) loves it and can't wait for June 4th, my older son (18) will watch it but is more about the shot composition and filming structure than the actual show, and often can't actually tell us what was going on because he was focusing on technical film minutia My wife absolutelyhates it ... and for me there are elements I like, but at the same time it is the only show on TV that will almost invariably put me to sleep (literally).

joxer said:

No and no.
Never heard of them, honestly.

Those are filmed where? You know I'm mainly after exotic stuff, everything mainsteam can wait till I get retired and even then there is a huge possibility I'll skip it completely.

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JS & MrN is a 7 part BBC production based on the novel of the same name.

Corwin said:

JS & MrN is a 7 part BBC production based on the novel of the same name.

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I encourage all and everyone to watch it!
It is incredibly good.

kopija said:

I encourage all and everyone to watch it!
It is incredibly good.

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This (adaptation of a book) reminded me of legend of the seekers. Apparently it is not that bad, some positive reviews out there.

I watched a lot, so a summary in twitter-like condensed form:
- Catched up with game of thrones. I see this season has lower scores on imdb but I still liked it a lot. The polish alone (and gorgeous shots of Ireland) is worth it, but I'm still hooked and can't wait for more.

- Alien and Aliens (both bluray director's cut). Though it has been a long time, alien wasnt that suspenseful anymore. For some reason I was expecting a fresh experience due to the DC and remastered soundtrack, still great though. However, Aliens has been reinforced as my favorite of the franchise. I also prefer the later designs of the alien.

- Max max 1 and 2 (3 is still on my list). Never saw them, Mad max 1 was not what
I suspected, which was more of a survival/apocalypse settings. It had a slow start and people seemed to still live 'normal' lives. Max max 2 was more what I expected from seeing the new mad max trailer and better than the first one. Enjoyed them both, though it requires some adapting to the old-fashioned pacing.

- Jupiter's ascending: It was an ok to good action movie, don't understand the negativity. Well I do, it has flat characters and uninspiring love story, but it was visually stunning and I like what they tried to do. I found some elements original and interesting (the harvesting, etc.). Regarding the administration scenes, I'm always reminded of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9o1E222iFQ
The matrix brothers now have a new show sense8 on netflix, but it seems it is being destroyed by critics just like jupiter.

- Kingsman: Saw this right after the above. Great fun action movie, it becomes all the more obvious were jupiter is lacking.

- American sniper: Good drama/action movie. The ending was a bit too sudden, just as you think everything is alright…

- Neon genesis evangelion: A bit harder to get into, like most anime, but at episode 15 it seems to finally get interesting.

- supernatural. They should end it. Quickly.

- Alien and Aliens
- Max max 1 and 2 (3 is still on my list).
- Jupiter's ascending
- Kingsman
- American sniper

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Are not TV series.

Yes, wasn't the intention. While writing I noticed I watched more movies lately. Then again most of them are series, and I watched them on TV

Sense8: stoped watching half way through the pilot, what a mess!
Re-watching The Wire in glorious HD after 10 years, what a masterpiece!
Those english magicians are still able to hold my attention.
Looking forward to this ATM.

The last two episodes of Game of Thrones have been great, for different reasons. Last week, awesome for awesomeness sakes. This week, oh man, the feels.

Yeah, I was about to post the same.

It should be of note that previous week's "scene" north of the wall didn't happen in the books, nor did the fire scene from last night (yet, perhaps to appear in a future book). The dragon scene last night did I believe to some extant.

Next week is the last episode of the season, I believe, and will have some more great stuff I hope. BTW, then they will be caught up to the novels since they skipped tons of stuff from the last book.

George better publish the next book ASAP, otherwise they will have to make up a lot of the story to shoot this summer for next year's season….

Of course, they could backfill with a lot of skipped material from previous book(s).

I imagine HBO will have to forage ahead on their own for the most part. When I started reading Fire and Ice in the nineties, I already was quite familiar with Martin's....let's call it "well deliberated" style of writing from the Wild Cards series, so I certainly wasn't expecting a book every 2-4 years. I think HBO will manage just fine, and we, as the audience, just very well might find we end up with 2 slightly different versions of a very interesting world.

Well Martin gave HBO the endings to his books so they can finish the show.

Link - http://www.hitfix.com/news/george-r-r-martin-tells-hbo-how-game-of-thrones-will-end

“Last year we went out to Santa Fe for a week to sit down with him Martin and just talk through where things are going, because we don’t know if we are going to catch up and where exactly that would be,”

“If you know the ending, then you can lay the groundwork for it. And so we want to know how everything ends. We want to be able to set things up. So we just sat down with him and literally went through every character.”

Martin, who concedes that it’s “alarming” how rapidly the show is gaining ground on the books, adds, “I can give them the broad strokes of what I intend to write, but the details aren’t there yet. I’m hopeful that I can not let them catch up with me.”

But while the release of "A Dream of Spring", the final novel in Martin’s series, may seem an eternity away for many fans, Benioff and Weiss see a definite ending for Game of Thrones, after seven or eight seasons.

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So fans of the books might not be happy to see the endings on TV first.

Yeah, I wouldn't worry about it. Martin is likely deriving more profit from the TV show than from the publishing, and has probably outlined the rest of the saga for them. Then he can work further interest from whether he does something different in the books.