What TV SHOWS are you watching?

40% of the way into season 2, I am still loving Yellowjackets. In first season, I often anticipated significant plot developments, not because the show is cliched and predictable, but because my dark sense of humor seems to operate on the same wavelength as the writers of the show. And more importantly, they are playing fair with the storytelling by setting up key scenes in advance instead of just going for a cheap blindside of the viewers. When the camera lingers on a small detail, there is a possibility that it will be important later.

The show has become less predictable and even more interesting in the second season. A couple more survivors have been revealed. An apparent master villain surfaced, but subsequent revelations indicate that she is no more in control of the situation than anybody else. Elijah Woods has joined the cast, in a role that leans into previous flashes of dark humor on the show. At the same time, the scarier aspects of the show have also been ramping up. There was a nice chilling scene where a character with dissociative identity disorder is staring in the mirror. She turns away, facing completely away from the mirror, but her reflection is now glaring at the back of her head. Music selections still range from good to great, in terms of emphasizing whatever is happening on screen.

The only thing holding me back from recommending Yellowjackets to everyone is that it is planned to run for five seasons, and season three won't land until 2025. Might be better to wait a couple years before jumping on board.

After a two-week intense binge of Yellowjackets, I am back to my long-range viewing of all things Star Trek in chronological (stardate) order. I am currently halfway through re-watching the first season of Strange New Worlds, which is definitely one of my favorite Star Trek shows so far.

Pondering the various Captains across the whole franchise, I have been striving to capture the distinction between each Captain with a single noun:

Archer, the diplomat
Georgiou, the pragmatist
Lorca, the opportunist
Pike, the idealist
Kirk, the adventurer
Picard, the intellectual
Janeway, the ???
Sisko, the realist

I posed this to my Trek trivia team last night, and one of them said Janeway, the iguana, in reference to a notorious episode of Voyager.

Shellhead wrote: 40% of the way into season 2, I am still loving Yellowjackets. In first season, I often anticipated significant plot developments, not because the show is cliched and predictable, but because my dark sense of humor seems to operate on the same wavelength as the writers of the show. And more importantly, they are playing fair with the storytelling by setting up key scenes in advance instead of just going for a cheap blindside of the viewers. When the camera lingers on a small detail, there is a possibility that it will be important later.

The show has become less predictable and even more interesting in the second season. A couple more survivors have been revealed. An apparent master villain surfaced, but subsequent revelations indicate that she is no more in control of the situation than anybody else. Elijah Woods has joined the cast, in a role that leans into previous flashes of dark humor on the show. At the same time, the scarier aspects of the show have also been ramping up. There was a nice chilling scene where a character with dissociative identity disorder is staring in the mirror. She turns away, facing completely away from the mirror, but her reflection is now glaring at the back of her head. Music selections still range from good to great, in terms of emphasizing whatever is happening on screen.

The only thing holding me back from recommending Yellowjackets to everyone is that it is planned to run for five seasons, and season three won't land until 2025. Might be better to wait a couple years before jumping on board.

I'm close to the end of the second season, and I share a lot of your opinions. I appreciate how the show plays around a bit with the telegraphs.

The writing isn't... great. It’s serviceable, but sometimes TV-stilted in a "no one in this situation would speak or behave like this" plot-bot manner. Some of the plotting itself is overly contrived, but damn if it doesn't keep you glued to the screen.

I think whoever was responsible for the music selection deserves some sort of award. I'm probably biased, since I experienced my late teens / early twenties in the 90's era, but some of the establishing shots & scenes are impeccably paired with the tracks (e.g. the use of Nirvana's "Something In The Way", or more obscure MTV era ephemera like Live’s “Lightning Crashes”) and their pre-credit roll selection nailed it every time, Mad Men style. They really amped it up with the use of "Street Spirit" (Radiohead) and "Killing Moon" (Echo & The Bunnymen) in the penultimate and final scenes of the second season, though some unfortunate covers were used earlier in the episode.

The big name stars like Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, have some good performances although they tend to be one-note. Ricci seems to be the only one who fully stepped into character while Wood and Lewis kinda played their typical personas (to good effect, but we’ve seen them before). I think the "teen" actors have carried the bulk of the show so far. The two Sophies, Sophie Nelisse (teen Shauna) and Sophie Thatcher (teen Nat) in particular, absolutely crushed it.

The show plays around with Lord of the Flies dynamics, namely the ambiguity of evil/divinity occupying some liminal space between communal construction and external places of power/danger, & then blends it with the conceit of Stephen King's IT, where the gang gradually regathers to confront whatever has been haunting them for 25 years and is angling for some sort of rebirth. The plot continually tip-toes around what "it" actually is. This haziness leans a bit heavily toward supernatural implications at times, but I'm not convinced that it's going to go all-in on this and I’ll be disappointed if it does (to me, this would tip the scale into Stranger Things territory, which doesn’t interest me). It doesn't exercise the same nuance or lyricism with this register as The Leftovers, but it sometimes approaches that vibe and I'm really curious to see where this goes in later seasons.

Overall, I think it has some really compelling ideas & execution, with a conspicuous layer of "industry TV" around it that I hope doesn't completely subsume it's more interesting elements.

Yellowjackets season two ended well, taking into account the uncertainties facing many shows in the modern streaming environment. If Yellowjackets never gets another season, the season two finale did a good job of answering a number of questions and wrapping up some storylines. But it also set up some interesting new angles to explore in a season three. Fortunately, there is going to be a season three, though it won't be available until 2025. Although I love Yellowjackets, I don't think that it needs five seasons, and might even be better with just three or four at the current pacing. Five seasons would require slowing down the pace of the flashback storyline, or else concluding it and moving on to post-rescue life in the late '90s.

I hope they're compelled/forced to end it with the third season. Shows like Legion and The Leftovers were actually well served by that limitation, and I worry that any further breathing room for Yellowjackets will just spiral it into Lost territory.

I watched True Detective season 4. I liked it a lot more than most people I've talked to do. I thought the final two episodes were a slightly silly trainwreck plotwise, but the character work from both the leads was still incredibly strong throughout. It was great to see them nail two fairly unhinged virtuostic performances with women leads, though I felt the indigenous actress wasn't given as much to work with character wise as Danvers provided to Foster.

Season 2 of Tokyo Vice continues to delight, and I like it even better than season 1. Possibly because less time had to be spent introducing people. The most recent episode even finally revisits the opening scene of season 1. If you have Max and don't mind subtitles, or can speak Japanese, you should check this show out.

3 eps into Three Body Problem and it is FANTASTIC. Great adaptation of a novel I would have said is unadaptable. D&D really pulling weight here with that Netflix money. Much faster and more accessible than the Chinese adaptation which is like 30 eps of roughtly the same material. If anyone likes non "pew pew at the aliens" type sci-fi, this has my HIGHEST recommendation.

If they can keep going then book 2 and 3 are gonna be EPIC.

hotseatgames wrote: Season 2 of Tokyo Vice continues to delight, and I like it even better than season 1. Possibly because less time had to be spent introducing people. The most recent episode even finally revisits the opening scene of season 1. If you have Max and don't mind subtitles, or can speak Japanese, you should check this show out.

I've been hyping the show here and on the Discord channel. HBO/MAX really did the show dirty by burying it as a pure streaming release, available at midnight on Thursdays. They should be promoting it more ( even on the streaming app its somewhat hard to find ) and actually aired it in a dedicated time slot to pick up more viewers.

A third season seems unlikely but I'd be all over it if they renew it again.

A few episodes into 3 BODY PROBLEM and really digging it. Prestige sci-fi that is smart and science-centered.

I read the book a few years ago and kind of bounced off it -- forced my way to the end but didn't remember much of it. I think (and this is on me, not the book's fault) my brain had trouble keeping all the Chinese characters' names distinct. Seeing characters on screen makes it a lot easier. Plus some of the characters have been switched from Chinese to other nationalities, which got criticism from the usual corners but whatever. The actors are all excellent.