Less consistent than season one but probably even better in its high points.
The decision to focus more on the female characters was incredibly wise: everybody and everything benefit from that. This is where it becomes a great show.
What a beautiful, beautiful season. Deep, funny, emotional, amazing in the way it brings forward all of the storylines. Maybe it's a bit heavy handed in how it connects to the real world stuff, but that's it. The rest is great. And it's not news, but what a great cast. Jesus.
Pulpier, bloodier, campier, more romantic and more fucked up than season one. A beautiful second season, more daring both in narration and visual style. Plus, the native american Mazinger and Julian Sands almost compensate for the loss of the albino guy.
Industry does something that i love: 85% of the time I have no fucking idea of what they are doing or talking about and still I find it riveting like my life depended on it. Or my cat's life, at least. The cast is amazing, so full of new faces and/or old faces that do something completely unexpected. The soundtrack, production design, costumes, everything is impeccable. And the direction is really ambitious, with stuff like "Let's shoot this stock exchange operation like if it was a bank heist directed by Michael Mann". Season 1 is all about explaining the context, season 2 is about the charactes and what they have inside. I have no idea what they are going to do with season 3 but the premise is really good and I can't wait.
A beautiful show, it represents in a very thoughtful and specific way the work in a restaurant, reproducing quite well - I'm told - certain obsessions and struggles, even though there's some "poetic licenses", of course. But it goes beyond the specificity and becomes relatable by anybody thanks to the impeccable writing, the great cast of actors and the ambitious direction, both in small things and in bigger stuff like the tracking shot episode. The guest stars are also amazing, particularly "that one": it's already great when you hear that voice in one of the first episodes but then he appears and suddenly the two charismatic stars become gregarious and awestruck. Also, huge shout out to Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who approaches this show charged up like someone who spent twenty years coming from the bench, finally has got the chance of a lifetime as a starter and gives you 42 points, 18 assists, 13 rebounds and 6 steals.
I understand it being a disappointment after the masterpiece that was season 4, but this is still an incredibly good ending for this show, that ties up everything in such a lovely and moving way.
The amazing chemistry between cast members, the lovely writing, the humour, the tension, it's amazing.
Such a perfect ending, it really is one of the best ever, I think.
It never stops changing and challenging its core concept and it manages the incredible feat of being traditional and completely fresh at the same time. Season three has the flavor of someone who now really knows what he's doing. Amazing.
A couple of episodes to get the engines running and then simply one of the best seasons of television ever. Much better than the already great season 1. Netflix was finally able to make something comparable to Orange is the New Black.
The cast is great, writing is really good and the way it mixes the wrestling part with all the different stories that slowly come out is quite gripping. Plus, it's a lot of fun. Maybe it's a bit of a slow burner, but when it burns it's really great. And for once the eighties theme doesn't feel badly done.
What the fuck wow yeah.
Even better than season one. The level of not giving a fuck and doing whatever it wants is amazing.
How the fuck does this get better and better every year?
The pilot is really amazing and the rest of the series is not on the same level but it's still really, really good, with great characters and a wonderful pair of actors in John Turturro and Riz Ahmed. This is how procedural crime stories should be made.
After the disappointing season 5, this is a return to form and a great ending for one of the best series of recent years.
Fleishman is in Trouble has got everything. The actors are great and perfectly cast, it’s visually ambitious and there’s such rich writing, that tackles midlife crisis, couples in troubles, abuses, nevrosis, bad healthcare, classwar, parenthood, small hypocrisies, trauma, being unable to communicate and everything else you could think of. It’s maybe a bit stretched here and there but when it works it’s amazing and that penultimate episode is out of this world.
Most of the time I have no idea what they're doing or talking about and it still is riveting.
Bluey is an amazing show, that makes me and my daughter laugh so hard with its montypythonesque humour but also moves me so much with its approach to family dynamics. Basically, every episodes generates moisture, whether because I'm pissing myself or I'm almost crying. It is so realistic in its absurdity, so creative, full of attention to detail (I love how it uses the tails of its canine characters to express their emotions), always really smart in how it treats characters of all ages, giving them agency, personality, intentions. Sweet, lovely, sarcastic, irresistible in how it characterizes the parents who get bored/tired and in how realistic it is even in the most crazy situation. Sadly, on Disney+ it's censored quite a bit, I guess based on America's tastes, so we cannot see a pony pooping because I guess it's too much (what the hell?) or you cannot have a kid asking about how babies end up in mommy's belly because... because? ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4E2s9KhM6w ). Even "better": there's no Dad Baby episode (I found it on torrent and we laughed so hard while watching it) because - OH MY GOD - dad plays with the girls faking a pregnancy and "giving birth" in the garden with the help of a neighbour. But we cannot see that. Because of course we can have decades of Disney movies in which the message is you solve the problem by killing someone but god forbid talking about how babies are made, kids asking questions about that and parents having to answer. Oh, I love the australian accents. <3
We Own This City is like if a sixth season of The Wire came from the multiverse, with returning actors in different roles and a complete change in style. The Wire was very emotional and personal but told through a docufiction visual style, We Own This City is a very dry and journalistic story told through the cinematic, messy, vital, temporally broke, ioncredibly effective vision of Reinaldo Marcus Green. And then there's a spectacular Jon Bernthal, who roams around the episodes like he's the shark from Jaws, swimming here and there, always ready to bite and chew everything when it matters. It needs a couple of episodes to really get there, but it's a great show, full of interesting ideas and with an amazing final episode.
A smart and surprising adaptation, that widens the scope, adds interesting storylines and plays with structure, opting to narrate the story by alternating different periods of time. I didn't like all the differences and I'm particularly perplexed by some choices they made with the Eighties stuff, but then again, they had to change a lot there, because of the structural changes. Also, it's to be expected when you watch something based on a novel you read. Overall, if you can live with the tipically eastern love for melodrama, this is a great show, with amazing production values, that beautifully recreates so many different time periods and locations, populates them with cray good actors (the three Sunja are out of this world but everybody is really, really good) and tackles in such a deep a smart ways all its themes and the idea of time changing a lot but also thing always staying the same. Plus, I love how deep it dives in eating food, preparing it and all the fish market dynamics, and the whole mix of languages, with korean, japanes and english, is really fascinating. I hope it gets renewed.
What a great ending for a lovely show. It's a pity some of the actors couldn't return (I didn't miss the therapist though) but the writing, acting and directing is better than ever. And that final image...
The Walking Dead if The Walking Dead was consistently great in every single episode, didn't last too long and didn't sound incredibly dumb when it tried to do drama. Great acting, writing, directing and such lovely writing, always interesting in how it's constructed and so caring and uplifting in how it takes care of its characters. What an amazing show.
Friday Night Lights but silly, optimistic and fun.
It ties up a lot of storylines from previous seasons in a great way, while also introducing a whole new universe (the politics stuff) and some new characters and plotlines for the following seasons. The Stringer Bell/Avon Barksdale plot is really great but I also loved all the arcs for the cops. One of the best things? McNulty arrived in season 1 looking like (and thinking he was) the great white saviour but in the end he's the most messed up of all of them.
This is where it goes from great to amazing. The whole docks storyline is incredibly well written and acted and the way it also works on moving everything around for the overarching plot that will go on in the following years is great stuff.
It's got that amazing quality of being great without being obnoxious about it.
The immediate rewatch is making me appreciate much more the character development, how later seasons pick up on stuff that was laid down here and already in the first season. The tale of Donna and Cameron and how they basically start acting like Joe when they realize their ambition, the depth of desperation in which Joe is falling, the pit from which Gordon is gonna have to crawl out...
Plus, honestly, this is such a lovely watch, of course when it's entertaining and fun, but also when it gets really sad, because it's so nice to be with such well written characters. What a show. I'm gonna miss it, when we finish this rewatch.
The first five episodes are out of this world and they constantly get better. The last four are still very, very good but they pay the price of having to do so much work to properly end a really complex story.
