What are you watching? 10/21/2022

[Dave Gray]

Andor - This is the premiere show on TV right now.  It's the best Star Wars show so far.  Lots of people will tell you it's Mando.  Those people are wrong.  Mando has more "Leonardo Dicaprio pointing at the screen" meme-material, and you're more likely to yell "oh my God" watching Mando, but Andor is a better crafted show with more to say.  It's a slow burn and you gotta work a little bit, but it's prestige TV.  I hope you're watching it.

House of the Dragon - I'm really liking this show as well.  In true Game of Thrones fashion, the characters aren't good or bad.  Most of them are levels of survivalists in a cold situation.  This is a zero sum game, so characters have to step on someone else to ensure their own safety, which causes good tension.  If you thought Game of Thrones was confusing, because everyone was dirty with shoulder length, brown hair -- buckle up.  Everyone looks the same and has off-shoots of the same names.  There are a set of twins named Erryk and Aayrk, for Christ's sake.  Everyone in the same families are married to each other.   ...so some is an uncle and a husband.  People are named after those that came before them.  Some characters are the same letters in the name, just mixed up.  And time jumps mean that they're constantly swapping out the actors.  It's a lot to follow.  It almost requires someone to watch with or some supplemental work after the episode to truly make 100% sure you know what's happening.

The Rings of Power - I also like this show, but I am not as excited to get to it like those above.  I have a feeling that if I fell behind, it would be hard to catch up.  There is good and evil clearly laid out, unlike House of the Dragon.  The show looks incredible.  It's a huge budget with mostly unknown actors, so all the money is on the screen.  The plot in season 1 is mostly about the identities of mysterious people.  And we know that there are big names from Lord of the Rings, so a lot of the intrigue revolves around trying to guess which unknown characters are which eventual Lord of the Rings characters.  I think that might hamper the show a bit -- now that there have been some key reveals, I am more interested in seeing the show move away from that concept.

Abbott Elementary - This is kinda like The Office/Parks and Rec/Brooklyn Nine Nine but set in a low-income school.  It's fun, but not super groundbreaking.  If you like those other shows, it's the next logical step.

The Great British Baking Show - New episodes came to Netflix.  This show is always heart-warming and sweet.  It's a good palate cleanser.

Movie-wise, I'm focusing on 1970.  I like the American offerings, but the foreign stuff has been a slog for this particular year.

[Sunstroke]

I feel like I am echoing Dave a little bit here...

Andor: My favorite show on TV right now. I can't wait to get to each new episode, and end up watching every installment twice.

Rings of Power: Close to Andor as far as how excited I get when a new episode is released. I was a pretty fanatical Tolkien disciple when I was growing up, and the long-term plan for this show is awesome.

House of Dragon: I was getting tired of the "house political soap opera" prior to this past episode, and then Rhaenys opened up a dragon-sized can of whoop-ass. Still a little disappointed that we didn't get a "Dracarys!" moment though...

La Brea:  No idea why I watch this show, as it has no suspension of disbelief, massive cheesiness, and seems more like a big budget Land of the Lost. I guess I'm just waiting for the sleestaks to pop out of one of the sink-holes or something.

I just finished watching the show "Suits," which I truly enjoyed. Not only did it have a cool cast and plot-lines, but seemingly every guest character that would show up was part of several of my old favorites, Supernatural or Grimm.

 

[fyo]

The wife and I have been watching both House of the Dragon and Rings of Power. Without a doubt we prefer Rings.

Nothing really *happens* in House of the Dragon - it's almost all politics. And the world just feels really small (unlike Game of Thrones). It's like that season of Walking Dead shot in a farm house to save money. Unlike Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon is really focused on a single group located in a single place. You aren't following a bunch of different groups spread out and if someone leaves the group, they are pretty much only featured again if the main group visits them or if they come back. Basically, it's shot like Friends (or The West Wing, if you want political drama). Sure, there's a lot of fancy CGI scenery and we even get the occasional visit outside the keep (and those look great, for the few minutes we get to see them), but it really feels very old-fashioned with (multiple) fixed camera locations (think Friends). I couldn't help feeling happy every time we saw someone go down the stairs (although always the same stairs).

Rings of Power has a completely different feel. The world feels huge. Like House of Dragons, there's a lot of CGI, but the action in Rings takes place all over and we more or less actively followed a handful of different groups (the Elves, the Dwarves, the Harfoots, the Númenoreans, the Southlanders, and a bit of Adar and the Orcs). In that way, Rings of Power was structured a lot more like Game of Thrones than House of the Dragons was.

In terms of events actually transpiring (that we see), aka "action", I felt House of the Dragons just had very little to offer. It was actually kind of boring. Rings of Power wasn't what I would call "action filled", but there were a lot of major events and we saw a bunch of battles and stuff just *happening*. Not people talking about it, but things actually *happening*.

One of the truly remarkable things about Game of Thrones was that they were perfectly willing to kill off major characters that the audience had built a relationship with. That was probably a product of having been a series of books initially, but regardless, that's not something House of the Dragon does. Nor Rings of Power, obviously, but that was never Tolkien's style.

[Dave Gray]

House of the Dragon is also based on books.  They have more wiggle room to create some of the gaps in between.

I'm kinda having the opposite reaction that you do, about both LOTR and GoT.  I feel like for all the flash and big adventure in The Rings of Power, nothing happens.  ...or at least, actions don't seem to have consequences.  <Spoilers>  All this build up was put into a gigantic explosion that we are led to believe is this massive event.  An episode ends with a Volcano seeming erupting out of nowhere and destroying everything.  The fallout from that was the death of one character's friend.  And a queen, who up to that point hadn't really been a focus character, was blinded.  That was it.  However, the show is asking you to be impressed when it's revealed that the volcano is Mordor.

That's a lot of what that show is.  The characters and situations are not as interesting on their own, and seems to care more that it's obscuring from you the fact that whatever it's showing you is going to be important later.  So, --- is this character actually Gandalf?  Is it Sarumon?  We know Sauron is around here?  Is is secretly this character or this other one?

What's actually interesting to me is when Rings of Power gets more into the politics of it -- I liked the storyline with the Dwarves and Elves rift with the king. 

That said, the action is quite cool.  I think this show is going to get better once it can get out from underneath all of the mystery.

---

I like the politics of House of the Dragon.  It's what keeping me interested.  The world isn't as big, for sure.  It's only about one house.

----

That said, we really shouldn't even be comparing the two.  While they are technically both a fantasty setting, those two shows aren't doing the same things at all.

[Phishfan]

House of Dragon and Andor as well.

I just watched the first couple episodes of Severance. What a trippy show. Did anyone else watch it?

[fyo]

^ I don't disagree about them being fundamentally different, but I just found it interesting that House of Dragons strays so far from the Game of Thrones recipe, whereas Rings is actually constructed more like GoT.

At this point, I think Rings and House of Dragons are equally (not) book-based. I've read more or less everything Tolkien (although Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales were NOT my cup of tea) and Rings just takes few ideas and runs with it, constructing an entirely new story, albeit with some characters that we've heard about (and even met in few cases). That's pretty much exactly what HoD is. In both cases we also know pretty much where things end up, since they are prequels.

[Dave Gray]

At this point, I think Rings and House of Dragons are equally (not) book-based.

I don't think so.  I'm not an expert, but House of the Dragon is based on a book called Fire and Blood.
The structure of that book is not omniscient, nor is it from a character's perspective, so it reads more like a history book, from my understanding.  So, they'll say that a law is passed, for example, but the shows will take liberties with the backroom dealings of that law.

Edit: Let me know if I'm wrong fyo, if you'd read the Similarian, but I thought that Rings of Power doesn't quite get based off that as much and those things were somewhat intertwined with the Hobbit movies.

I just watched the first couple episodes of Severance. What a trippy show. Did anyone else watch it?

Not yet, but it's very, very high on my list.  I have a goal to watch a ton of movies in the 2022 calendar year, but as soon as that's over, I'm switching to these TV series.  I hear Severence is great....one of the best premiere seasons of TV ever.

[fyo]

^ You're absolutely right. For some reason, I had totally blacked out George RR Martin's books post the "Game of Thrones" books (which I read). Still waiting for him to finish that last volume... ;⁠-⁠)

[masterfins]

I watched Escape from New York yesterday before football games started.  One of my favorite cult movies.  It came out in 1981, and was set in 1997.

[Sunstroke]

^^^ I occasionally will do a double-header with Escape from NY and LA.

One of my fave cult movies as well... "You're the Duke of New York...you're A-number-one!"

Sun

[Phishfan]

In what may have been the last version of this I touted Winning Time. I'm currently watching Legacy the True Story of the Lakers which is a documentary interviewing the Buss family and associates of the team. Suck it haters 

[Dave Gray]

I also saw two basketball documentaries: The Redeem Team (2022) - Netflix
and 38 at the Garden (2022) - HBO Max

Both are great.  38 at the Garden is only 38 minutes long.