Like a lot of comedy shows, it takes a bunch of episodes to find its groove but when it clicks, it really does, despite having a very very very bad actress as the main character. The rest of the cast is amazing, though, and the way the season evolves, by destroying network comedy shows clichés and reinventing itself instead of sitting on a bland repetition of it's basic plot is amazing. It's really smart, funny, great TV.
Ava DuVernay has got the delicate touch of an elephant and the level of cheesiness is out of the park. Still, the first two episodes are really, really good, engaging and moving, quite thrilling if you don't already know how it went. Episode three is really the worst one, too much easy melodrama and really schematic in its structure. It gets a bit better in the final episode, thanks to the "prison drama" approach. Overall, it's an interesting and important series for sure but I think I would have preferred a different approach. Maybe it's just that I don't like DuVernay.
All the good elements from The Good Wife are more or less here: intriguing storylines, interesting courtroom drama, strong characters, good actors. So, obviously, it's a really good show. But, I don't know, something's missing. Or maybe it's just that I can barely tolerate how bad of an actress Rose Leslie is.
Most of the time I have no idea what they're doing or talking about and it still is riveting.
The first half of the season is kind of a mess, maybe too ambitious from a plot standpoint, clearly lacking the rythm and the inventions of the first two years. But then it comes together, the fun comes back and the last few episodes are really great, with an amazing season finale and a great cliffhanger.
I laughed a lot but I have to admit it's starting to feel a bit samey. Maybe it's time to end it.
So much better than everything Marvel/Netflix did after the first season of Jessica Jones.
Fuck House of Cards and all the other Netflix series, this is the one. And this season, jesus, is more amazing, deep, tense and moving than ever. Wow.
It takes two or three episodes to get the rhythm but by then the series becomes amazing. Great writing, ambitious direction, a very good cast, nice themes and an actually marvelous actress.
The longer season makes the overarching story feel a bit streched at times, but it remains really solid and the single episodes are almost always quite brilliant, so who cares? Plus, the last four or five episodes are really great, with a gripping crescendo and a closing cliffhanger that promises a more ambitious third season and the will to keep things fresh by shaking up the status quo. Thumbs up.
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.
I still haven’t watched the season finale because reasons but I want to take advantage of my psychotic social sharing backlog to say that when in January I found out there were some new episodes on Disney+ and we watched them, well… That Stickbird/Navigator/Dragon trifecta is such powerful stuff, in how it’s full of imagination and visually experimental but also in how incredibly funny and at the same time moving it is. I already said this, many times, and I will never stop: Bluey is the best show on TV. And it’s been the best show on TV for quite a while.
A beautiful season and also a fascinating left turn in which they basically say “Look, we can explore slightly different genres and it doesn’t feel forced at all, because we have great characters, great actors and a versatile show.” And it’s very well made. I love it.
They put this up one episode a day and I loved that. Every day there was a new episode, they were short, I enjoyed watching them because I like the visual style and I liked how they homaged movie classics. But no, really: one at a day, short, 30 minutes, that’s cool, do that, don’t do weekly hours, do daily 30 minutes, of everything, seriously. Worst part was that they had to make some interconnected narrative with the final two episodes and I couldn’t care less.
I avoided it for months because I kinda always assume that any Netflix show is uselessy overlong and boring, but then I decided to trust other people and watch it. And it’s amazing! The road rage premise taken to extremes is quite fun until the end but under that there’s an amazingly intense tale about (1) how fucked up we are, (2) life as (children of) immigrants and (3) how much it sucks to live in the USA. Great actors, amazing writing, a crazy but heartfelt ending… I hope they don’t make more seasons. Side note: Lee Sung Jin and Jake Schreier created, wrote and directed (with other people, of course) this show and are now working on Thunderbolts. And I realize that ten years ago I would have thought “Great, they seem perfect!”, five years ago I would have thought “I’d prefer they do their stuff but I’m happy to see good creators work on those movies”, now I think “No, please, someone must save them!” Sigh.
Lots of cliches, almost everything goes as you would expect but still this works very well, because it does everything very well. The acting cast is almost perfect, great acting and more than believable singing/playing (which is of course quite important). The four main actresses ooze charisma, are really, really good and they also are stunningly beautiful. The songs are maybe not masterpieces but they work, they feel like what the story is telling you they are (which is big: most movies and TV shows about invented art have the problem that when they show you the art it sucks). Writing and directing are also quite goood (James Ponsoldt I love you): there’s passion, honest emotions even when it’s predictable, great attention to details in human relationships and when it actually surprises you it hits so hard. A masterpiece it is not, but it’s a great show.
I watched it without knowing it was gonna be the final season and what a trip it was to realize it during the finale. I kinda have the feeling they crammed too much in here because they had more stories to tell, but who knows. And anyway, the flipside is that it will not become a repetitive mess in seasons 4 and 5, I guess. Anyway, I think it manages to close all the relevant arcs in a nice way, while also serving us a healthy dose of an against the type Zooey Deschanel and with a beautyful bottle episode right before the end, that boasts a tragically sweet and sour summation of the Rubin family ensemble.
This is basically five episodes of people running aroung looking for MacGuffins and ignoring everything that made season one great (the characters) because they have to explain the mechanics of the multiverse (which I don’t give a fuck about - the mechanics, the multiverse is fine, I guess). Sophia Di Martino barely registers her presence; Owen Wilson has got the best emotional moment of the season in the finale but basically nothing else to do; Jonathan Majors is funny, the scene in which he opens the big door for the first time is really funny and Timely kinda has a decent arc but now he’s gone; Tom Hiddleston does his best. There’s some nice moments, Benson and Moorehead inject some visual creativity that was the biggest thing lacking from season 1, the final episode is really good, the ending works but… I don’t know…
Gen V avoids the risk of being a lacklustre spin-off by changing the point of view: here we have some still (relatively) naive and (relatively) innocent youngsters who happen to live in the shitty and bloody world of The Boys. And what we get is a show that feels temathically in sync with its mother series but finds its own identity, generating some emotional punch and even being quite smart in how it connects to the other show. I’m not sure I loved the season finale, more or less in the same way I’m not sure I love the season finales of The Boys.
This season feels a bit samey but it’s fine, not all comedies can be constantly forward moving and shapeshifting like The Good Place did. Plus, I just want to spend more time with those characters and I got that. Also, there’s Meryl Streep: she’s like a goddes amongst mortals, so much greater than any other actor in the show but also never stealing the scene, always making everyone else better. What a beast.
A couple of weeks ago I was scrolling on Netflix, Rick and Morty suddenly appeared, I remembered that season 4 left me a bit unimpressed but kinda won me beck with last few episodes, I saw that season 6 was already there, I started watching season 5, I thought it started a bit weak but it grew quite rapidly and in the end I had fun, with some laughs here and there. I guess one day I will watch season 6. Should I? Can you feel the meh in what I just wrote? Maybe I’m tired of it? Who knows?
Like season 1 but spicier. Badum-tsch.
Season 4 is a perfect ending for one of the most crazy, funny, emotional, surprising TV shows of late: this season is unpredictable and surprising until the end and it’s so much fun. It’s rare that I can watch something without having any clue of what’s going to happen but here it happened a lot and I never had the feeling it was forced in any way. On the contrary: at the end, you have the feeling everything was patiently built from day one. Also: the actors are all amazing and Bill Hader, who not only plays the title character but also directed every single episode of the final season while showing some real bravura, is a huge talent.
I watched The Strain more or less while it was being released and I had a lot of fun with it, but for some reason I never watched the final season. A few weeks ago, for some reason, I watched it. And I had a lot of fun with it. It’s got a nice B movie vibe, it’s competently made, there’s always a lot of momentum in the narration, there’s at least a couple of great episodes in every season, I liked the characters (Vasiliy Fet is amazing and I don’t understand how Kevin Durand doesn’t have a better career as the “co-starring” charismatic guy), the apocalyptic melodrama vibe is entertaining. The finale works and does what it has to do. Also, in season 4, that kind of second tier Paul Bettany, Quinlan, has got a line that’s very on the nose, like the whole show, but for some reason stayed with me: “Whipping yourself won’t make you stronger, it will only distract you”. So I had fun and I also found some meaning in it: what more should I ask for?
Poker Face is Natasha Lyonne doing her version of Columbo, with the mannerisms, the “wait, one more thing”, the chilled attitude and the fact that we know the culprit before she/he does. Plus, there’s the usual Lyonne vibe, a pseudo-superpower that makes things more bizarre, and an A-Team-like setup in which se has been framed and she roams around the USA helping people. Also, she kinda is like the comicbook Mickey Mouse, solving crimes while not being a cop. All of this is in a show that starts relatively “tame” but slowly becomes visually and structurally more and more ambitious, with some many homages to different kinds of detective stories and meta elements. It was created by Rian Johnson and it’s lovely.
What a wonderful season. Episode three is out of this world but the whole season is incredible, every character has got a moment of glory, there’ amazing people coming from the bench (look at James Cromwell scoring 20 and dishing 13 assists in the funeral episode), it’s got a perfect, inevitable, smart, on point ending. This is one of the best shows of the last few years and one of the best shows ever.
The end of season 1 worried me, I feared they were gonna continue adding mysteries and questions without ever giving answers and ultimately end up boring me to hell. I was wrong. Season 2 keeps the tempo going, finds a strong direction for the story, continues playing smartly on the balance between mental health issues and actual fantastical elements (even though they clearly are pushing towards a more horrorish kind of storytelling) and it kinda finds a strong ending that ties everything up. There’s still a lot to tell, of course, but this could be a series finale. So I want to go on, because I have fun spending time with these crazy characters and those amazing actresses (and Elijah Wood!).
I know a few people didn’t like this season and I do understand its highs are not as high as those frome the previous two but I wonder if it’s also a matter of too much hype. Because I kinda got what I wanted from it: a few more hours with characters I love, one or two beautifule episodes (Amsterdam!), lots of laughs, some strong emotions and a lot of good work on ancillary characters (which is what matters: as Ted says, he wasn’t the point).
Season 2 does almost everything season 1 did. It's violent, dark, filled with charismatic characters and faces (but not Joe Cole, Joe Cole is terrible), with so many plot twists and double/triple reversals that kinda get to a ridiculous point but keeps it fun until the end. The "almost" is because Gareth Evans didn't direct a single episode and because of that there isn't a single action scene on par with those two or three amazing action scenes we saw in season 1. Is the rest enough? I'm not sure.
Unpopular opinion: this is the best of the first three seasons. It finally knows what it is and what it wants to be. It's where the mix between having a storyline but also being the center of the Filoniverse works best. It's where Mando being someone who ends up as a witness to stuff much greater than him, where he contributes but he's not the main character, also works best. Also, the "greater" stuff is finally something relevant to him and not to the Skywalker family. Plus, for the first time, the more standalone episodes didn't bore me to hell. It's a simple, fun show, much better than the other two recent "classical Star Wars" shows.
Also: I kinda binged in a few days, which probably helped me with the slower parts and made me appreciate more the horizontal plot, which basically has got 5 minutes per episodes.
Also: if this season came out a year ago, the third episode would have been such a fascinating, ambitious, smart "bottle episode". But in 2023 it's the Wish version of Andor. Maybe it's better if Filoni and Favreau stick to blasters and sabers.
