Being forced to listen to Wizzard for enternity? I'd be ok with it.

Maybe throw in a See My Baby Jive for variety.

Almost done with season 4 of The Wire. Just watched one of the hardest hitting scenes I've ever seen in television. This **** feels too real, it's hard to process.

OK, just watched the this episode (USS Callister). I was wrong when I said we shouldn't be "making fun of nerds": the one in this episode is pure evil.

I watched tonight's Walking Dead.

SPOILER ALERT:


Nothing to spoil because nothing happened. Nothing ever happens.

I should probably stop watching this show because it is endlessly frustrating, but I can't/won't because I've already watched over 100 episodes over the course of nearly a decade. But I should.

I don't what ADHD afflicted person makes this show, but they need to get back on their ritalin. This show jumps around more than House of Pain in a trampoline park. It suffers from a terrible lack of focus. It has an A plot, and a B plot, and C, D, E, F, and G plots. Because they go back and forth so much, not much actually happens over the course of a season. It takes forever to watch, but because it has 17 different plots going at once, it's only like an afternoon and part of the early evening has passed in the show. Maggie has been pregnant for like four seasons already. My wife has given birth to two real children in the amount of time.

BUT MAYBE SOMETHING IMPORTANT WILL HAPPEN NEXT WEEK, I BETTER KEEP WATCHING

Did anyone else watch Halt and Catch Fire? It's a weird premise for a show; it's a fictionalized version of some parts of the modern PC origin story or something. I don't know how else to describe it. Anyway, it ran for 4 seasons on AMC I guess, but the entire show is up on Netflix. I really enjoyed it. I can't really explain why. Hrm.

That's hilarious. Your analysis is my exact same feeling about the show. I too, have been watching it since the beginning, and I too have felt that the show has been pretty weak for the last 3 seasons, or half seasons, or whatever the hell it's been. Basically, since Negan was introduced.

I actually really like Jeffrey Dean Morgan and think that his character is now the best on the show, but I will say the endless amount of plot holes, stupid character decisions, zombies only being a threat when the show wants them to be, etc are all beyond tiresome. My wife actually really enjoyed TWD when the first few seasons were more about survival, and less about being a Hollywood action movie. She asks me every week now if we have to watch the show, but we wind up watching it anyway for the exact reason you mentioned. It feels like we've invested so much up to this point that I keep hoping for a big payoff, but I really should know better.

I stopped watching it. I used to love that show but I'm over it. Fear the Walking Dead is actually much better at this point. Or actually, it was at the point up to which I stopped watching it, too. Argh.

there are better shows to be watched :'-) The Walking Dead is a ****in slog

I really enjoyed it too. I really liked the first season a lot. I think a lot of people didn't like the first season, because they thought it was like a Mad Men rip off set in the 80s, with Joe as a kind of mysterious anti-hero similar to Don Draper. But I thought the first season was great. I really liked how, in that first season, the show focused on themes of ambition, striving for the impossible, and the idea that creating innovative technology could satisfy a human hunger to create something meaningful -- even transcendent, and cosmic. I liked it a little less in later seasons when it shifted its focus away from Joe and towards the female characters, and became an ensemble drama less about ideas and more about personal connections. But even then I still really enjoyed it.

That's really interesting; I liked the first season but I enjoyed the next 3 more than the first one. I only watched a few episodes of Mad Men and I didn't really "get it" I guess so I don't grok the comparison.

I'm glad someone on here other than me at least watched it. Although I don't really have much more to say about it.

I really liked Hell on Wheels and Turn: Washington's Spies, also AMC shows. Give them a shot. Both on Netflix.

Another thing about halt and catch fire... the music was really good!

I can't bring myself to watch it ever since the cliff hanger ending where they left it a question mark who died a season or two back. The whole episode up until that was build up to the big reveal of who was going to be killed, and we didn't even find out during that episode. We had to wait several months until the beginning of the next season to find out who died. And even then, if I recall correctly, we had to wait through the entire first episode of the next season! After that, it became pretty clear to me that the writers have massive contempt for their audience and expect them to watch no matter what they're dragged through... so **** that show!!!

*Note, spoilers in my post are only half spoilers. No specifics mentioned, but still might give away stuff that happened two or three seasons ago.

I didn't consider it so much contemptuous as incompetent. They tried to build up tension and make it dramatic by delaying the reveal. Kind of like how lame reality shows reveal who's been eliminated by saying stuff like,

"The person who is safe is.... [30 second pause]... Jeff! And the person going home is.... going to be revealed right after the commercial break!"

Cheap theatrics. But yes, very annoying.

I also think they have too many characters now. My wife and I keep saying, "oh yeah, I forgot about that guy. What was his name again? Where was he going?" The show needs a character purge.

First half of "Black Museum" episode of Black Mirror was great. The end was just over the top and full of cliche.

I watched season 4 of "The 100" and I enjoyed it. The premise of the original season 1 was silly and it's just gotten even more so but I like most of the characters and the settings and the conflicts they set up (even though a lot of them are really over the top and don't make a lot of sense a lot of the time). Anyway, I enjoyed it.

On the other hand, say what you will about libertarians, [SPOILERS ENCLOSED] --> but the sons of *****es know story structure. The first part of this episode, about the doctor, well, that was brilliant.

Gillette says he submitted the story as a part of a book collection of short stories, back in the 80's, but the editor thought it was too dark. I guess we had to wait until Black Mirror for such dark things to get the green light!

Slowly watching The World at War, fantastic documentary. So much original WW2 footage, which is the best part. And a great description of the key movements of the war.

Anyone watch Westworld?

Yes, I love it. I won't be home for the season opener, so I'll have a day to avoid the flood of articles about it. While I liked the theorizing about where the plot was going last year, a lot of it was spot-on and if the showrunners do post the entire plot of the season like they've talked about I won't go looking for it.

I watched the first season.

I know it was enjoyable enough and it looked pretty, but I'm struggling to remember anything that actually happened in it.

Sorry, don't know how to play this video :(
https://i.imgur.com/idQUSUu.gifv

Oh, this is the TV thread. Going to post movie **** in here I guess.

Anyone ever see Grave of the Fireflies? I heard it's soul-crushingly depressing.

Funny you mention it. I just saw this come up in a top 10 movies too depressing to watch more than once. We got it from Netflix years ago but I never finished it because the disc was damaged.

Watched all of Longmire since I last checked in. Fairly decent.

Ok Westworld was mentioned up there ^^. I loved Season 1. Season 2 so far has been complete ****. I don't know how they did such an about face but we're like 7 episodes in so far and only one episode has been even halfway decent. I have to watch in 15 - 30m stints because it's so boring. I find myself drifting off and wanting to watch anything else. And I mean anything. Like "Love Connection" on Hulu is better than this. I can't understand how they so royally screwed it up.

I did enjoy HBO's "Barry" quite a bit.

I don't know what's up with these 8-episode "seasons" though. We get 8 episodes then have to wait a year for 8 more. Remember when shows were like 24 episodes long? Yeah a lot of the episodes were crap but it can't be that hard to come up with a compelling story. Ok, I'll try...

It was a dark and stormy night...

Hmm, that's all I got.

I'm enjoying Arrested Development season 5. I also watched the recut of Arrested Development season 4. It was... okay. Too repetitive.

I finally watched Silicon Valley season 5. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I bet some of the jokes about crypto don't age very well. Those jokes probably seemed more relevant when they were writing the show than by the time it aired.

I think I enjoyed the new AD less than I want to admit to myself, because I started watching the first season again after I'd finished it and it got immediately better.

I had low expectations which may be helping me to enjoy it more. Some of the jokes and gags are pretty good, and clever. Still, it seems like they really didn't know what to do with a lot of the characters. Many of them have become shallow two-dimensional caricatures of themselves (Gob and Tobias) and others have developed in weird ways that aren't very interesting (George). Even though she was always on the side lines in the original series, Maeby is perhaps the only character who they've done something new with in a way that is natural and funny.

I'm only two (three?) episodes into the newest season. I haven't watched the first three seasons in a few years. I might be wrong, but does it seem like season 5 depends HEAVILY on Ron Howard's narration for the show to make sense? I know the narrator has always played a big role, but it seems (to me at least) that the show has become very dependent upon his commentary to keep the show moving and understandable, more so than in the first seasons. He has more lines than any of the characters, probably more than even most of the characters combined.

I'm not sure if that's because it's following on directly from a season from five years ago and they're expecting people to have forgotten what's going on.

I just watched it with a friend. I was surprised by how unpretentious it felt. No cheap punches, and given the semi-autobiographical story, it really feels like a personal confession of it's author. And it's really heartbreaking.

No wonder the movie felt so authentic. I never felt a better examination of guilt from a movie. This movie belongs on every "watch precisely once" list.

This is the video I watched recently as movies too depressing to watch more than once. I haven't seen them all and I don't necessarily agree with the premise for #6 and #2.

#10. “House of Sand and Fog” (2003)
#9. “Grave of the Fireflies” (1988)
#8. “Sophie’s Choice” (1982)
#7. “Million Dollar Baby” (2004)
#6. “The Passion of the Christ” (2004)
#5. “Precious” (2009)
#4. “Hotel Rwanda” (2004)
#3 The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
#2 Schindler's List
#1 Requiem For a Dream

What's the point of watching a depressing movie?

Ha, what? Is the point of art to just make you feel happy and comforted? I mean, I don't always feel like watching a depressing movie or reading a depressing book, but sometimes I do. There's plenty of ways those (and songs, visual art, whatever) can be worthwhile.

There are plenty of "sad" books or movies I like. "The Road" is one of my favorite books and it's sad as hell. But the point is that it's not just sad , it's about perseverance or fatherhood or whatever. But some movies (Requiem for a Dream) are just depressing for depressions sake. Same thing with Fireflies and Striped Pajamas. Life sucks, yay.

Are you suggesting that a movie about the deep and lasting harm of addictive behaviour should have a happy ending?

Grave of the Fireflies isn't "just depressing for depressions sake". Unless if you miss the admittingly not entirely direct message about societal loyalty, responsibility and guilt.