Really liked this season, same as other season had some idiotic stuff but then again also great things.... Hoped for more on the native people and their blight, thank god for that woman trooper, otherwise just again white people being saviours
I also thought it was fine, but given the setting, setup and characters the poor payoff really bites. It's better to miss the landing on a cool setup than to just suck throughout, but that wasted potential makes me more disappointed than if it has just been dreck from the start
Agree with everything you said, but I liked it a lot. I thought it wrapped it up well enough. Both murders true stories were discovered, but the public story kept peace with everyone. I like to think of three categories of tv shows (and movies for the sake)… those people watch, those they don’t, and those that are good if you don’t think about it like a school research paper. Haha
OMG, The Arrival! That one scene with the scorpions in Lindsay Crouse's hotel room haunted me for years.
Anyway, I only watched the first season of TD and don't remember much beyond the memes. This felt very much like an original show retrofitted with references to sell it under an established brand. And as one Twitter user pointed out, they expected us to believe these two incredibly queer-presenting women were straight. But I mostly enjoyed it - spooky shit, good acting, a more or less satisfying mystery, the imposing Alaska/Iceland landscape. Mare Of Easttown is still my favorite of HBO's limited series of this vintage.
1. They never actually tell us what happened to Danvers' kids. They reveal pretty early in S1 that McConaughey drunkenly ran over his own daughter, which let the viewer buy into why he was so bleak and mopey. They seem to imply that Danvers had some culpability with Holden's death, which would maybe explain why she's such a prickly asshole and why she's so obsessed with keeping Leah on the straight and narrow, but they never tell you what actually happened, so I never got a really good sense of who that character was.
2. The microbe that the Tsalal men were mining to "save the world..." are we supposed to believe that it actually existed? Again, what I liked about S1 was that it hints at this weird supernatural stuff, but it turns out the explanation for the murders was just man's own capacity to be cruel and depraved, and that the spiritual element of it was either an attempt at justification or self-delusion. The Tsalal guys being a bunch of weirdos with a quasi-religious belief about this magic frost particle as opposed to secretly brilliant scientists who actually discovered something useful would have been much more interesting to me.
Also, not to sound all "go woke or go broke," but...I didn't find the relatively didactic politics of both this show and the most recent season of Fargo to make for particularly compelling story telling. I too believe that domestic abuse and pollution are bad, but there was something about either show that felt a bit like liberal wish fulfillment, or a strained grasp at "relevance." But, as you said Vince, both shows kept me watching, so I guess they did their job to some extent.
The Danvers-Holden storyline felt like something that was trimmed during the editing process. I just don't buy that they felt one brief flashback to a car crash with no further details was enough. A lot of this season felt like it was trimmed to fit in six episodes, in fact, which is why I'm willing to give Issa Lopez a bit of a pass for many of the issues I had.
Jodie Foster said on a podcast (paraphrasing) that we, as viewers, probably didn't suspect the vigilante women as the murderers because we too often ignore the minority women who clean our floors, bus our tables, etc. IRL. That's a terrible justification for that narrative decision. We didn't see most of those women until the reveal! We saw the floor cleaner and the three-fingered lady in one scene (other than one or two shoehorned shots of the three-fingered lady in scenes that didn't involve her)! Don't blame us for not thinking about characters the show barely showed us.
Overall, this season was fine. Flawed but fun. This was as engaged I've been in a TD season since Season 1.
A lot of this season felt like it was trying to make a statement first and tell an entertaining story second. There are ways to do both (ie HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE). This season got close but fell short imo.
I thought it was fine and really only have two criticisms.
1. Far too many straight white people and not nearly enough Trans identifying indigenous people fighting against global climate change as well as their clear and obvious economic and social oppressors.
Do you like hot chicks, Yakuza groups fighting, and probably inflated accounts of a Jewish American journalist becoming the best crime reporter in Tokyo? How about Ken Wantanabe as a grizzled detective?
- I don't know if I can articulate this well enough, but this whole season I never really felt like we were following the thread of a mystery. There wasn't a slow unveiling of clues toward solving a particular crime. Or at least, it jumped between what happened to the scientists and what happened to Annie without being clear what exactly what they were looking for. It felt kind of like nebulous elements floating around and not moving in a particular direction? Don't know if that's way off base or not.
- What I really loved starting off was the supernatural/horror elements (Travis ghost, frozen guy waking up screaming [which I guess wasn't actually supernatural somehow?]), and I really thought they'd gone all in on it. Plus some cool references to horror movies (Texas Chainsaw, Changeling, maybe Halloween 2?) had me really excited they were going all in on horror. Kinda pulled back from that, which was a bummer, but was still fun.
- Agree on the Billie Eilish song being perfect. This was the first time in forever that we watched the whole opening credits every episode. Just because that song is so good. And "when we all go to sleep, where do we go" gets you in just the right headspace.
- Nic Pizzolato apparently called this dumb, to which my first reaction was "How can HE tell?"
This really summed up all my likes and dislikes of the show. I know there's people on AV Club's comment sections ready to raze Season 4 down to the ground, but I tried to keep an open mind and really enjoyed the first five episodes. I (as well as many others I think) was worried that with only one episode left, they were going to have to shove a bunch of story all together, and that's what they did, which biffed the landing. But hey, it just got picked up for another season, so maybe they'll give this next one some breathing room with more episodes
I've not seen any of this *but* I am curious what people here are thinking of the Monsieur Spade show compared to the 2 seasons of the Perry Mason reboot.
Season one was super depressing but I thoroughly enjoyed the way it was presented. Season two was a bit tighter. Assuming because they didn't need to do all of the main character set-up like in the first season.
Really liked this season, same as other season had some idiotic stuff but then again also great things.... Hoped for more on the native people and their blight, thank god for that woman trooper, otherwise just again white people being saviours
I also thought it was fine, but given the setting, setup and characters the poor payoff really bites. It's better to miss the landing on a cool setup than to just suck throughout, but that wasted potential makes me more disappointed than if it has just been dreck from the start
Agree with everything you said, but I liked it a lot. I thought it wrapped it up well enough. Both murders true stories were discovered, but the public story kept peace with everyone. I like to think of three categories of tv shows (and movies for the sake)… those people watch, those they don’t, and those that are good if you don’t think about it like a school research paper. Haha
OMG, The Arrival! That one scene with the scorpions in Lindsay Crouse's hotel room haunted me for years.
Anyway, I only watched the first season of TD and don't remember much beyond the memes. This felt very much like an original show retrofitted with references to sell it under an established brand. And as one Twitter user pointed out, they expected us to believe these two incredibly queer-presenting women were straight. But I mostly enjoyed it - spooky shit, good acting, a more or less satisfying mystery, the imposing Alaska/Iceland landscape. Mare Of Easttown is still my favorite of HBO's limited series of this vintage.
Straight up balls, absolute paint drinking content.
My two big gripes with this season were:
1. They never actually tell us what happened to Danvers' kids. They reveal pretty early in S1 that McConaughey drunkenly ran over his own daughter, which let the viewer buy into why he was so bleak and mopey. They seem to imply that Danvers had some culpability with Holden's death, which would maybe explain why she's such a prickly asshole and why she's so obsessed with keeping Leah on the straight and narrow, but they never tell you what actually happened, so I never got a really good sense of who that character was.
2. The microbe that the Tsalal men were mining to "save the world..." are we supposed to believe that it actually existed? Again, what I liked about S1 was that it hints at this weird supernatural stuff, but it turns out the explanation for the murders was just man's own capacity to be cruel and depraved, and that the spiritual element of it was either an attempt at justification or self-delusion. The Tsalal guys being a bunch of weirdos with a quasi-religious belief about this magic frost particle as opposed to secretly brilliant scientists who actually discovered something useful would have been much more interesting to me.
Also, not to sound all "go woke or go broke," but...I didn't find the relatively didactic politics of both this show and the most recent season of Fargo to make for particularly compelling story telling. I too believe that domestic abuse and pollution are bad, but there was something about either show that felt a bit like liberal wish fulfillment, or a strained grasp at "relevance." But, as you said Vince, both shows kept me watching, so I guess they did their job to some extent.
The Danvers-Holden storyline felt like something that was trimmed during the editing process. I just don't buy that they felt one brief flashback to a car crash with no further details was enough. A lot of this season felt like it was trimmed to fit in six episodes, in fact, which is why I'm willing to give Issa Lopez a bit of a pass for many of the issues I had.
Yeah, if your story requires the characters to basically just state the message directly into the camera maybe you didn't tell it that well!
Jodie Foster said on a podcast (paraphrasing) that we, as viewers, probably didn't suspect the vigilante women as the murderers because we too often ignore the minority women who clean our floors, bus our tables, etc. IRL. That's a terrible justification for that narrative decision. We didn't see most of those women until the reveal! We saw the floor cleaner and the three-fingered lady in one scene (other than one or two shoehorned shots of the three-fingered lady in scenes that didn't involve her)! Don't blame us for not thinking about characters the show barely showed us.
Overall, this season was fine. Flawed but fun. This was as engaged I've been in a TD season since Season 1.
Lol, yeah, that's some beautiful press tour horseshit. "Actually, it's YOUR fault we didn't develop these characters."
A lot of this season felt like it was trying to make a statement first and tell an entertaining story second. There are ways to do both (ie HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE). This season got close but fell short imo.
I thought it was fine and really only have two criticisms.
1. Far too many straight white people and not nearly enough Trans identifying indigenous people fighting against global climate change as well as their clear and obvious economic and social oppressors.
2. I never got to pet the polar bear.
In the end it was all about family, and the real villain is toxic masculinity.
“my feed is dominated by extremely 38-year-old people.”
As someone who is 3.5 months from turning 38 I feel very attacked
This comment was way off base. I only just turned 38 a few months ago, so if anything I'm moderately 38.
And as a person who turned 38 like, 20 days ago, I am only *mildly* 28, and thus only feel a bit slighted, as opposed to attacked.
This show was absolutely awful, people should watch Tokyo Vice instead.
Tell me more about this Tokyo Vice, please.
Do you like hot chicks, Yakuza groups fighting, and probably inflated accounts of a Jewish American journalist becoming the best crime reporter in Tokyo? How about Ken Wantanabe as a grizzled detective?
Say less, bro bro. I'm in. Where do I stream this masterpiece?
Max
I thought this was a video game but now I'm actually intrigued.
Nailed it. Really good show, and inflated though it may be, the book was a pretty good read too.
- I don't know if I can articulate this well enough, but this whole season I never really felt like we were following the thread of a mystery. There wasn't a slow unveiling of clues toward solving a particular crime. Or at least, it jumped between what happened to the scientists and what happened to Annie without being clear what exactly what they were looking for. It felt kind of like nebulous elements floating around and not moving in a particular direction? Don't know if that's way off base or not.
- What I really loved starting off was the supernatural/horror elements (Travis ghost, frozen guy waking up screaming [which I guess wasn't actually supernatural somehow?]), and I really thought they'd gone all in on it. Plus some cool references to horror movies (Texas Chainsaw, Changeling, maybe Halloween 2?) had me really excited they were going all in on horror. Kinda pulled back from that, which was a bummer, but was still fun.
- Agree on the Billie Eilish song being perfect. This was the first time in forever that we watched the whole opening credits every episode. Just because that song is so good. And "when we all go to sleep, where do we go" gets you in just the right headspace.
- Nic Pizzolato apparently called this dumb, to which my first reaction was "How can HE tell?"
This really summed up all my likes and dislikes of the show. I know there's people on AV Club's comment sections ready to raze Season 4 down to the ground, but I tried to keep an open mind and really enjoyed the first five episodes. I (as well as many others I think) was worried that with only one episode left, they were going to have to shove a bunch of story all together, and that's what they did, which biffed the landing. But hey, it just got picked up for another season, so maybe they'll give this next one some breathing room with more episodes
I've not seen any of this *but* I am curious what people here are thinking of the Monsieur Spade show compared to the 2 seasons of the Perry Mason reboot.
Was season 2 good? The first one was well done but it bummed me out. Like, fuck off Perry, I've got my own problems.
I thought season 2 was much better than season 1. I think the showrunner of the Knick took it over or something like that?
Season one was super depressing but I thoroughly enjoyed the way it was presented. Season two was a bit tighter. Assuming because they didn't need to do all of the main character set-up like in the first season.