TV Series On The Television

[Blossom]

[Thad]

But it's getting a two-part finale.

[Mothra]

I'll TAKE IT

[Thad]

The first episode of The Conners was good. It took a little bit to get warmed up, but it had some good laughs, and the way Roseanne's been written out of the show is timely and emotionally resonant. Turns out she had a secret opioid addiction and died of an overdose; the emotional core of the episode is a scene where Dan confronts the woman who gave her the pills (played by Mary Steenburgen), who responds that she didn't realize Roseanne had a problem and she believed her when she told her she just couldn't afford medicine.

All in all, I was impressed; I don't know that I'll be a regular viewer, but I like what I've seen so far. If the debut is any indication, the show's going to do a fine job of capturing what was great about Roseanne (the show) before Roseanne (the Roseanne) lost her damn mind.

[Thad]

The Watch is finally happening.

The article is filled with grating TV exec blather. But here are the important bits:

The Watch features many Discworld creations including City Watch Captain Sam Vimes, the last scion of nobility Lady Sybil Ramkin, the naïve but heroic Carto rot, the mysterious Angua and the ingenious non-binary forensics expert Cheery together with Terry Pratchett’s iconic characterization of Death.

Written by The Musketeers and Das Boot writer Simon Allen, BBC Studios is co-producing the series with Narrativia, the production company founded by Pratchett in 2012 and now run with Pratchett’s daughter Rhianna and his former business manager Rob Wilkins.

The series is being exec produced by BBC Studios’ Head of Drama London Hilary Salmon, who has worked on series such as Luther and Silent Witness, Ben Donald and Wilkins as well as Doctor Who’s Phil Collinson. It was commissioned by BBC America’s President and GM Sarah Barnett and Nena Rodrigue, EVP of Original Programming, Acquisitions and Production.

And there's a graf at the end indicating that the show will tell original stories, not adapt the novels.

[Niku]

Crazy Ex Girlfriend is so goddamn good.

It's pretty well known that one of their leads in season one was only contracted for the one season, and so when the show got renewed, they had to make a choice about whether or not to commit to the rest of the series or not. And they chose to stay on the East coast and be on Broadway, so their character arc got suddenly (but satisfyingly, for the most part) truncated for season two and written out before the crew expected.

So enter the current, final, season four where everything is coming back to roost and it makes sense to reintroduce the character .. so they just recast them. Not that uncommon.

But the entire episode more or less becomes about that recasting in-universe, reflecting on how people we haven't seen for years can seem like completely different people, with little mannerisms and affectations being taken on by an actual new actor to both constantly remind you this is and isn't the same person they were the last time we saw them. Some of the characters are immediately like "are you crazy, that's totally the same person" while others don't even recognize them at first. I don't know if this week's episode was necessarily one of / the best the series has ever done, but it was so incredibly confident in what it wanted to do with the tricky prospect of recasting a character most fans have been missing since their exit and it NAILED it so hard that it's definitely one of the most accomplished episodes its ever done, with the subplots subtly supporting the main theme in really smart ways, and just still managing to be really funny to boot (this might be Vella Lovell's best episode, at least).

I'm going to miss this show so much when it's over, but it's also the perfect example of how I wish the realities of TV offered more creative teams the chance to make their story and then end it when the time is right.

[mharr]

The article is filled with grating TV exec blather.

And the comments are filled with alt-right Pratchett fans throwing faeces because a Deadline Hollywood author described Cheery as nonbinary in their blurb. (Since edited out.)

Pratchett fans are alt-right now. Kill me.

[Grath]

The article is filled with grating TV exec blather.

And the comments are filled with alt-right Pratchett fans throwing faeces because a Deadline Hollywood author described Cheery as nonbinary in their blurb. (Since edited out.)

Pratchett fans are alt-right now. Kill me.

Not to defend the neonazis and it's been a while since I read the books, but wasn't Cheery just rejecting traditional Dwarven gender roles by being openly feminine?

[mharr]

Yeah, it's a classic satirical reversal. Traditional dwarf society doesn't have gender roles and it's not the done thing to reference having a gender at all outside the privacy of home, but Cheery gets a job in the big city, fills her head with depraved ideas from other races and starts a Femininity movement. She's the exact opposite of nonbinary, but the commentary and parallels are obvious if you're not invested in bad-faith literalism because Teh SJWs.

I should check out some established Pratchett forums to see if the mainstream response is less crazy, but I'm scared about what I might find.

[Blossom]

Dwarves in Discworld are ... a tricky subject. Pratchett was trying to do something good and positive and new, but even the gross tropes he was satirizing were filtered through the writing mind of a cishet white man from the 1940s. And "she's rejecting the gender unary by embracing a gender binary" is a take to be approached with a hell of a lot of caution even if you actually do know what you're doing. The man deserves full marks for effort, but he kinda missed more than he hit in terms of a queer metaphor that carries water.

Case in point for why there's no bundle of good intentions that can make up for even one pass from a sensitivity reader. Appreciating what Pratchett was going for and the good faith effort made to get there, while recognizing that he didn't really know enough to know the failures and missteps made along the way - which, I can't find the interview now, but in the later years I believe he himself said was the stance he had to take about his early Dwarf stuff, that he'd fucked himself into a narrative corner by trying to do something he wasn't equipped to do - is kind of the only thing you can do about it all.

Those so-called fans getting technical about the definition of nonbinary re: dwarves are the worst kind of shit, though.

[Mothra]

Nightflyers is pretty good. If you like space horror, I'd say it's got more than enough cool ideas and cool scenes to make it worth it (I think it's just 6 episodes).

It's one of those shows that kind of needs to stick the landing for me to really recommend it. I like about half of the characters quite a bit. I love the tech, and the near-future setting and lore. It looks really good, surprisingly.

The story though? Pretty decent? Nothing mind-blowing. Some plot threads I'll enjoy, others I won't care for.

Angus Sampson is excellent. He feels right out of Alien. Maya Eshet is also great and I was not expecting that.

[Thad]

The article is filled with grating TV exec blather.

And the comments are filled with alt-right Pratchett fans throwing faeces because a Deadline Hollywood author described Cheery as nonbinary in their blurb. (Since edited out.)

They've also corrected "Carto rot".

[Büge]

[Mothra]

The Timeless finale wassssssss okayyyyyyyyyy

Didn't ruin anything. Wrapped up all the loose threads. We got what we wanted.

Wasn't really good though? Like, at no point where they in any real danger, or have to figure anything out under stress? The main villain is apprehended without issue by some middling, by-the-books police politicking. All the future and past plot threads are resolved in the most straight-forward checkbox list way imaginable. Everyone kissed a lot, all the time machine stuff was sorted out in a responsible way.

Eh? Think I got my hopes up way too high for this.

[Mongrel]

"Any landing you can walk away from is a good one." also applies in TV-Land. If it wasn't a belly landing, even better.

[Wheels]

Well then. I am not sure what to think or even say for that matter, but you have my attention, Netflix.

[Thad]

I love Grant Morrison but he lost me at "pedo Santa".

[Mongrel]

So two years later we're actually getting around to watching Letterkenny, and fuck me, we're fucking DYIN'

Not only is this the funniest fuckin' shit I've seen in ages, it's more painfully Canadian than a goddamn Heritage Minute.

I don't think I've ever lost it watching a TV show as hard as I did when they mentioned Gordan Korman's This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall (which, as only the Canadians here will know, is a book one could - and possibly still can - find in dog-eared condition in just about any elementary school in the nation).

[Mongrel]

[Thad]

I just saw Janet(s) and man, I don't care about awards but D'Arcy Carden deserves some for playing all four principals. She did some damn fine work on that one.