episode 9 sucked but the season was good. care to go into more depth?

watched a few episodes of barry on the plane back a few weeks ago, decent show. if it really was 3rd best show of the year, tv sucks then

who is america had a few good clips but i read a bunch of commentary about it and i agree, which is sacha is great at the ahah moment but he never really builds on it

bobbo,

I agree with much of nath's takes, especially the part in the spoiler tags. Some more:

I liked it.

I rest my case.

I also thought Sharp Objects was TRASH. Don’t @ me.

We'll always have OUR LAKERS at least.

It's not really clear just how good Barry is from the early episodes, because what makes it so great is the way the plot escalates and accelerates. The real story doesn't kick in until



One reason you don't see TV dramas on my list is that so few of them actually try to keep their plot moving, so I don't even bother anymore. Barry and Santa Clarita Diet told tighter-paced and more tense stories than Better Call Saul did this year. Why would I watch an hour of not much happening when I can watch a half-hour show that has more plot and is also funny?

colin,

The biggest reason I don't care for the Gus-Salamanca stuff is what you said about the story in general: We already know how it ends. In the case of Jimmy turning into Saul, though, I at least feel there are areas of his personality that weren't explored in Breaking Bad, and a sleazy amoral criminal lawyer is the kind of thing you see on TV a lot less often than gangsters in the kitchen doing gangster ****. Jimmy is changing into Saul; Gus already is who he is, his relationship with the Salamancas is what it is, etc. (Great example of this is the monologue Gus gives at Hector's bedside: That doesn't tell us anything we don't know already and doesn't move the plot at all. It's just an excuse to give Giancarlo Esposito something to do.)

Agreed on the montages.

Re: Mike / Werner,



I suspect one of the real problems with BCS is that all the plots are too disconnected from one another. When the show started, Jimmy and Mike interacted with each other regularly; we had Kim, Howard, and Chuck in Jimmy's story as well; and even Nacho interacted with Jimmy on a few occasions. This season, Chuck is gone, Howard barely factors in, Mike had one scene with Jimmy all season, and Nacho had none. The main story got the least screen time it ever has, with fewer of the players involved in it doing anything, and we didn't pick up the pace for the remaining players, either. (In season 1, the main plot might have had Jimmy do something, Kim do something, Chuck do something, Howard do something, Mike do something. Now, it's "Jimmy and Kim do something"... and that's it. It's still only one thing, and the rest of the time is filled with montages and such.) We're at the point in the show where the pace should be picking up, and instead it's slackened off. The best comment I saw about the pacing was:

Lol

I really appreciate both responses and they got me thinking. Will write more later

Chalk this up as a weird comment I must make somewhere (anywhere):

Catching a few minutes of 'Dancing with the Stars: Juniors' and this is the goddamned creepiest thing I have ever seen. It's like everybody involved *loved* 'Little Miss Sunshine' except they just ruined it with that protest crap!

Too creepy even for me.

ya they admitted that they missed that one, but the show seemed to exist in the blind spot of their entire staff, so whatta ya gonna do
(ditto for me, have only seen the first few eps)

not about Barry specifically (i should prob go back to this show given that i stopped before the point that nayth says it got good), but that list overall, and how i feel about rated shows/movies from the last few years. most of the time i come away thinking "yeah that was ..... fine".

thought Who Is America was kind of bad overall, and IASiP has kinda sucked for a while now (like 4 of the last 5 seasons or something). haven't seen the others on his list.

+1, lol

I haven't done a multi quote in a long time, and this was as good as any. As a precursor, I really appreciate both you (Nath) and you (Colin), this board has missed a lot of thoughtful interactions, and I'm glad we can come together in TV land to discuss meaningful medium of our day. I made my opinion clear - I really like the show and this season - but I'd like to go through, point by point, because you guys swayed me a bit.

The season was slow, but imo, the show itself has been majorly slow. It's definitely been guilty of *too* slow at times, but at least some stuff happened - namely, McGill's full year of *not* being a lawyer is now past us. The Gus v Salamanca was important because it was always a big wedge in BB, and IIRC, they never explained it THAT well. We now have complete backdrop.

Yeah, they could've given us more, but the entire season was basically Kim going back and forth to the "dark side" or not, Jimmy showing he was resourceful with the cell phone stuff (and that is what is turning him onto criminal law) and even the origin of the meth lab. It was slow, but important.


Really well said and point taken.

Yeah, I thought it was great. The story of the bell for example was pretty cool.

very valid.

agree. Thought this was horribly done and disappointed me.

I took it to mean even she has been fooled by him. Hell, I was "fooled". His monologue at the end sounded super sincere to me.


You're out? Damn thats cold dude.


That monologue was pretty cool tho.

I thought him committing cold murder was really out of line with his character, as was werner suddenly running away. They botched that majorly and I hope the writer with that idea has been fired.

Didn't want to break this up into 2 parts, so:

1. Yeah, first 3 seasons everything was connected, and it was better that way. This season, they were all doing their own thing. The writing could've tied them in a lot more - hell, mike and saul had NOTHING to do with one another.

2. good point, lol. hopefully season 5 is him being a lawyer

Finally binged through the final season of Silicon Valley. Pretty meh. I can't recall the last time I watched a final season of any show while being more aware of how "done" the writers obviously were. Erlich was sorely missed (and I missed Stephen Tobolowsky but that is probably just me).

it was pretty bad but I thought it was still on for another season

Oh wow I checked Wiki and you're right, it's renewed for season 6. I assumed based on content + the fact that they only managed to scribble out 8 eps this season that they were done. They should be done.

Succession is pretty good through 6 eps. excited to see how it finishes. Several audible LOL's from me each episode mostly between Greg and Roman.

Babylon Berlin was the best show this year ainec

I'll try to answer as best I can.

The problems with the pacing in a nutshell: To get through Jimmy's year as not a lawyer, despite taking a full season to do so, the show still had to use a montage where they skipped forward in time ten months.

As far as Gus and the Salamancas, I thought we got all the backstory we needed in Breaking Bad when Hector killed Gus' partner / possible lover.

My thing is, I don't really care about origin stories for logistics. I care about origin stories for characters: How did a high school chemistry teacher become the world's leading meth kingpin? How did a good-hearted but ethically slippery guy become an amoral scumbag profiting off the drug trade and defending violent criminals?

The Superlab, Gus and Mike's team-up, etc., those are stories of logistics. The characters don't change.

Re: Kim, I think this is a case where if the show didn't have an actress as good as Rhea Seehorn, the story would've fallen apart, because they rarely gave her anything to do and basically depended on her face to carry the story. And even then they couldn't decide what they wanted her to do. She's unsatisfied with corporate law, so she goes into public defending... except then she decides she wants to scam with Jimmy some more... except then she decides after one scam to go back on the straight and narrow. Huh?

She definitely was: When she asked if he still wanted to be a lawyer and he said yes, she took it in sincerity. I also think her whole thing, starting with confronting with Jimmy about Chuck, was meant to provoke him into actually dealing with his feelings about Chuck.

Turns out he had, and he decided his career was going to be a middle finger to the respectable gatekeepers of the world like Chuck. Kim was blindsided because it was the first time he'd pulled a con she wasn't in on.

I'm more forgiving of this part of the plot than y'all are, but I'm also left wondering how bad Gus' vetting procedures were in the first place to hire a guy who so obviously cracked under the strain of the job.

Yeah, like I said, it comes down to the pacing being slow, awkward, and stilted for me, and also that they just don't spend enough time on the parts of the story that I care about.

I gave up after season 4 because I'd gotten so bored with the show. Not feeling any particular reason to return after reading this. (Might be one of the great "What if?" questions about TV, if Christopher Evan Welch hadn't died.)

Aside, I'm surprised more people didn't like Who Is America? Maybe I just love shows like Da Ali G Show and Nathan For You, but any episode of TV where you can say something like "Dick Cheney signed a waterboarding kit and talked about killing Iraqis with the same glint in his eye that a kid opening a new toy at Christmas has, and it was, like, the fourth-craziest thing to happen that episode" is good TV to me.

this may actually be true. def worth watching.

and, as for german shows, deutschland 86 starts soon. deutschland 83 was legit good a few years ago. it was like the americans but with a more historically accurate backdrop and really just a lot better in a lot of ways. good mix of humor, spy procedure, history, and drama.

I'm glad you mentioned this. I just finished the 3rd Babylon Berlin book in English because the show was that ****ing good, and was looking for something similar to get into. Watched the first episode of Deutschland 83 and was kind of meh. Just seemed like it was going to be too predictable and something that's been done a million times, but I'm going to give it a couple more episodes now.

Babylon Berlin is highly elite though and should be watched.

Liked d83. Thanks for the heads up

I'm glad I stopped watching BCS after the first episode of Season 1.

No offense.

I wish I had as much foresight as TuT and didn't sit through 2 boring-ass seasons.

NEXT SEASON SHOULD BE GOOD THO GUISE

Just caught up with BCS. Thought it was the worst season by far of a show I like a lot.

Really dgaf about the meth lab plot line. Seemed like a big exercise in proving Gilligan had thought about all this stuff in detail when creating BB, which applies to a lot of stuff in the show. The ending with Mike/Werner can be justified as Mike growing into his BB role, but I feel like he was already there? Always seemed ruthless and cold blooded to me

I’m over the montages as others mentioned. I’d take it further and say they’re pretty painful and repetitive. It’s the same formula over and over.