What TV/Netflix show are you currently watching? (Megathread)

[Cartagia]

I Love That For You - A single season series from Vanessa Bayer on Showtime.  I really like cast, and there are some great jokes and bits, but it leans a bit too much into cringe comedy for me.  The editing is also kind of weirdly bad for a big-ish show like this.  Molly Shannon and Jennifer Lewis are great on it, though.

Under the Banner of Heaven - Starts really strong, but quickly gets repetitive and struggles with pacing.  This should not have been told as flashbacks during the investigation but instead as a slow revelation of how messed up things got.  By leading off with crime it just becomes a series of "Yeah, I get it they were bad," because you know the ending.

[kamikazekeeg]

The Boys: Season 4 - While this was maybe one of the weaker seasons they've done, it's pretty much because it's about setup for the final season.  Which is unfortunate because there was so much going on with the Soldier Boy stuff from last season, but what is here is not nearly as strong.  Get some family stuff with Hughie, Starlight and Firecrackers fued, Homelander and Ryan (Poor kid hit puberty during filming and it's not till like the 2nd to last episode that his voice stops cracking), and while the others are involved, it's not as strong.  It's still messed up, obscene, gross, but hopefully they can go out big with the last season.  Might get around to Gen V eventually, not sure, I'm not as interested in the spinoff stuff.

[kamikazekeeg]

Reacher: Season 1 - This was overall a decent bit of tv drama/action.  I do think it got abit slow at times, but I liked it well enough, it's good side-watching tv.  Reacher is kind of an unapologetic badass, but also an incredibly smart one.  He feels like an 80's action hero brought into the modern day, the build of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the attitude of Charles Bronson lol I'll probably check out the next season eventually.

[Cartagia]

Tokyo Vice is a gorgeously produced Max series about journalism and the yakuza in the early 2000s.  It's got great performances, stellar direction, and some great storylines.  Unfortunately is also has a couple of lousy storlines, both headed up by the American characters.  It's weird because the police and yakuza story is phenomenal, but the two gaijn are constantly making dumb decisions that people in their positions should know better.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith - So, this show is weird, because the relationship writing and chemistry between Donald Glover and Maya Erskine is off the charts, but the spy storyline stuff feels so completely half-assed.  Like, I get the relationship drama is the important part, but your spy stuff still has to, you know, make sense.

Severance - I had a feeling that I was going to like this show, but nothing prepared me for just how much I was going to love it. I expected it it to be weird and creepy, but it has really blasted by my expectations. It is really one of the more disturbing dystopian ideas I've ever seen.  Like it doesn't sound that bad on the surface, but once you see it in action... jesus.

Conan O'Brien Must Go - Conan might be the funniest person on the planet for me.  I watched all 4 episodes last night and I could not stop laughing the whole time.  Very fun travel show.

[Cartagia]

I've got three months of Apple TV so I'm trying to knock out a few things.

The Afterparty is a comedic murder mystery where every episode is a different genre / style based on the character POV.  First season starts a little rough, because there's a lot of set-up to get through, but it really comes together in the back half as one of the most well-structured series of clues I've ever seen.

I liked the second season of The Afterparty more than the first.  It's got 2 more episodes so there's a little more time for everything to breathe, and as much as I loved the stacked absurdist comedic cast of the first season, the second just has better actors.  The conclusion isn't quite as satisfactory,but it just hangs together better overall.

Conan Without Borders basically started as a series of specials for his TBS talk show, but evolved into a little more over time.  Basically ended up being a trial run for his new Max series since COVID and the end of TBS contract ended this one.

[kamikazekeeg]

Got around to watching Season 7 of Rick & Morty and it's overall pretty on par on what to expect from the series.  The most interesting aspect was whether the voices were right since this was the season they got new actors and I think they nailed it.  If you know the voices, I feel like you can tell, to quantify it, Rick feels like 10% of what he was vocally before and Morty is 10% leaning into that "Ah Geez Rick" feeling of the voice, that's how I hear it.  That being said, you watch like one or two episodes and the difference is negligible.  Honestly it's impressive they got two guys to so expertly nail the voices without it sound like a caricature of Roiland's voice. 

Might get around to Solar Opposites, I think I was behind 2 seasons, but I thought the voice change they did for that was kinda funny from what I hear.  Solar Opposites I actually remember kinda liking more than Rick & Morty, which was because it was less like "Here's something random and messed up while Morty freaks out or doesn't and Rick assholes his way through everything, or doesn't", it was kind of a more consistent bit of comedy to me, so hopefully that's what it still is.

[tripredacus]

I started to watch the TMNT cartoon. I had the complete series on DVD for awhile now. A few things I noticed so far. First is that the episodes are not standalone, at least yet. I think they become more standalone later. The second was the most shocking to me. The origins of the Turtle Van, apparently the turtles stole Baxter Stockman's van in the Mousers episode. And between that and the next, Stockman went to jail. At which point, the Turtles then rob his house! I understand that Stockman becomes a villain later, but the way he is portrayed in the Mousers episode is that he is just looking for someone to sell his invention to, and is tricked by the Shredder. It is clear he did not want to use them this way and did the work for the Shredder under duress. And obviously he helps the Turtles when they find him.

[Cartagia]

Might get around to Solar Opposites, I think I was behind 2 seasons, but I thought the voice change they did for that was kinda funny from what I hear.  Solar Opposites I actually remember kinda liking more than Rick & Morty, which was because it was less like "Here's something random and messed up while Morty freaks out or doesn't and Rick assholes his way through everything, or doesn't", it was kind of a more consistent bit of comedy to me, so hopefully that's what it still is.

My fiancé definitely likes Solar Opposites more than Rick & Morty. It's less cynical and a bit more wholesome, and doesn't seem as concerned with trying to be some super smart epic sci-fi story (though it is also really smart).  Dan Stevens replaced Roiland on this show, and they did a very meta "Oh he injured his throat and we fixed it, and this is just what he sounds like now... and the technology we used uses chronitons, so it will be that way in any future flashbacks as well."  Simple, elegeant, addressed in the first 2 minutes of that season and it has just gone as normal since.