What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Yeah, the new voices (or voice? Same guy doing both?) on R&M are close enough. The season is very frenetic, I like the balance of call backs versus episodic nature of the eps. Some got quite deep into the weeds (the numbers and letters one, for instance), others hit the perfect mix of absurd (valhalla pope). I'm glad they seemed to have wrapped up the multiverse rick stuff, that always got too navel gazing even for me. At this point most of the art direction and B plot elements are so bizarre I can't tell if they just fed the show to an AI and let 'er rip on doing most of the background work.

I do find it amusing that they have EXTREME violence, like just horrific mutilations, dismemberments, disembowlings, often towards random civilians, as well as a fair amount of profanity, but we gotta pixelate some low res animated genitals? Americas strange slide back towards 50's era prudeness WRT sex but full steam ahead on vulgarity and violence continues....

Hurting people is okay. Enjoying yourself or being comfortable with yourself is a no-no.

Death and Other Details (on Prime) is Benoit Blanc without the fun. Amid opulence there is a murder, and a private detective is dragged in. Mandy Patinkin is solid as our detective and it certainly is a pretty production, but everyone is constantly miserable. I know you want to criticize the rich, but let us enjoy the luxury by proxy a little. I was enjoying the whodunnit and questioning of memory that might offer clues on a rewatch, but halfway through it looks like there’s a pivot to something different and even less fun.

I’m enjoying Mr. and Mrs. Smith (also on Prime) a lot. It has absolutely nothing to do with the vastly underrated Pitt/Jolie vehicle but is weird and funny and thrilling by turns.

The Bodyguard (on Netflix) is pretty solid for most of its run. The first half of the finale is overly convoluted and the ultimate villain reveal is weak, but the early episodes put in the work to earn a constant sense of paranoia and inability to trust anyone. Characters make dumb decisions, but they feel motivated, not pushed to generate tension or further the plot.

I'm enjoying season 2 of Tokyo Vice on Max. I don't know how accurate any of it is, but I think it gives me a view of Japanese culture that I would not see otherwise.

I didn't see that season 2 came out. I'll check that out.

I look forward to watching season two of Tokyo Vice, but I just started rewatching season one to refresh my memory of the show.

Shellhead wrote: I heard that Echo underwent significant revisions and re-shoots because Kevin Feige considered it unreleasable in its original form.

Fourth season of True Detective continues to impress me, aside from the disappointing musical selections. The show does a great job of portraying a harsh northern winter, and the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska has a very lived-in texture. So it is disappointing that the music utterly detracts from the atmosphere by being a mish-mash of sounds from unrelated times and places. Musician and composer T-Bone Burnett did a great job with handling the music selections for seasons one and three (and inexplicably failed with season two), but he is not involved with season four. I was hoping for some traditional Inuit music and some dark, northern folk, especially given the supernatural aspects of this season. Instead, episode 2 featured songs by the Spice Girls and the Beach Boys. However, the theme song by Billy Eilish is growing on me, as it suits the visuals in the opening credits.

So how does this season connect, if at all, to prior seasons of True Detective? I don't remember any connections between season two and anything else, but seasons one and three both involved child abductions in the deep south. There is a recurring spiral symbol in season one that is back in season four. And here is a big one: Detective Rust Cohle used to live in Alaska, with his father Travis who died of leukemia. In season four, an old woman is haunted by the ghost of her deceased lover Travis Cohle, who had leukemia. I didn't connect the dots until episode two revealed that Travis had leukemia, and then it came together. My brother-in-law has leukemia, so the reference got my attention the last time I re-watched season one.

I just started watching it and the bleakness fits my mood perfectly. There are a few True Detective tropes at play: "I'm a damaged cop who hurts everyone around me". and "I'm engaged in casual intercourse because I'm emotionally broken" as well as the interesting callbacks to other seasons that you noted. I am not sure what to think of Jodie Foster's character yet, as I am halfway into the second episode. She gets major points for acting her age. I fear that at the end of the series we'll be left with a lot of unanswered questions and shattered lives. I felt that the use of the cheery soundtrack was meant to be darkly ironic. Prior to starting the series I was halfheartedly looking at cheap real estate in Fairbanks but now am looking only 1/4 heartedly. Those winters are designed to destroy marriages and create alcoholics.

Putting the frozen scientists in the hockey rink was an interesting choice.

I saw love and death, I started watching with apprehension because I recently watched the Candy series, on the same subject and I found it excellent.

True Detective season 4 nailed the landing. I wish the pacing had been better so it clocked in at one hour, but the extra 15 minutes was probably necessary to allow the scenes to breathe. Season 1 is unquestionably still the best season, but seasons 3 and 4 are both good, and I personally prefer season 4 because season 3 was too similar to season 1. I don't know anybody who loved season 2.

Season 2 is the only one I didn't finish. I felt like 4 crammed way too much into a short runtime.

I rank them season 1 (by a mile), 3, 4, 2. I don't know of another series that is so wildly hit or miss.