The Official Good Television Thread
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CiG
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rms
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Vegard Pompey
ALLY TO GOOD, NIGHTMARE TO YOU
Classic rms critique, profound in its laconism.
Anyway, just came here to post that Justified is returning with a limited series!
Anyway, just came here to post that Justified is returning with a limited series!
no country for old wainds
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i’m always dubious about reviving a series that finished so perfectly but obviously i’m gonna lap this up even so.
CiG
Harbinger of Metal
Einherjar86
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Mare of Easttown owes its success a lot to True Detective and Sharp Objects, but it's still a solid entry in the regional procedural aesthetic. Winslet's performance alone is worth watching, but moreover it's an acute take on post-2008/rust belt depression (in multiple senses of the word).
Structurally speaking, the season itself is really in debt to the first season of True Detective, down to the red herring and intense showdown roughly midway through--or at least preceding the denouement, can't recall exactly when she discovered the abductor's house.
CiG
Harbinger of Metal
rms
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it's a fun show that deserves no critical praise or anything else. Nothing else going on? Mare is a fine show to throw on and enjoy.
We already talked about this show months ago. Doesn't anyone use the search function?! Or is this reddit where the same topics gets a thread every few months and we all just repeat ourselves lol
There was a lot of deliberate angles to the mystery that went nowhere or really had any solid justification. Sharp objects was similar to that, but Made could've done more to really create the city dynamics. In the end, it did shit like "hey one person knows the pastor was a possible rapist at a previous church so he's our guy but wait that was entirely made up just to fill air time for a few episodes" is one such issue..but again, fun procedural and that's it. How barren is our TV wasteland to have to spell this out!
Vegard Pompey
ALLY TO GOOD, NIGHTMARE TO YOU
Not even a huge Mare of Easttown stan or anything but I don't think the show is held back much by the murder mystery being unsatisfying. It's a show where the actual murder mystery is basically an afterthought and a pretense to explore the characters and milieu of the series and for that end it works totally fine. (As an aside, I feel like this is a tired trope and I'm kind of starved for a good whodunit where the mystery actually IS central, but I wouldn't hold that against Mare of Easttown.)
CiG
Harbinger of Metal
Speaking of people not using functions, use the spoiler function you stupid faggot.
rms
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CiG
Harbinger of Metal
Vegard Pompey
ALLY TO GOOD, NIGHTMARE TO YOU
Halfway through Yellowjackets. The pacing is kinda bad (do we really need to spend all this time on future Shauna's affair? Meanwhile the actual mystery unravels at a snail's pace) but everything else about it is terrific. The character writing seems super nuanced across the board (except for the Christian girl), you really get to see everyone at their best and worst. Misty in particular might be my favorite TV character of recent years. Hail to the Goddess, the Goddess of Doom!
Einherjar86
Active Member
I was thrown at first by the pretty rapid back-and-forth between 1996 and the present. Not always organic in its cuts. Present-day Shauna's affair is kinda boring and feels cliched, but it's a slow burn that pays off, in my opinion.
My favorite character is Nat, but I think it's mostly because I had a crush on a girl like that in high school, lol.
My favorite character is Nat, but I think it's mostly because I had a crush on a girl like that in high school, lol.
Vegard Pompey
ALLY TO GOOD, NIGHTMARE TO YOU
Having finished the season, hard disagree.
I guess the point was to show how lingering trauma/paranoia caused Shauna to jump at shadows and eventually murder a probably innocent man who might actually be exactly what he seemed. Perhaps it's even intended as some metanarrative poking fun at viewers who look for mystery in a drama and are trying to find the "plot twist" in a story about a traumatized woman in a stagnant marriage having an extramarital affair. Regardless of intent, it was an awful lot of time spent on what basically amounted to a red herring in a story that has been stalling all season. The abrupt way it ended felt like a cruel joke both for the time spent and also because the guy was actually fascinating and likeable (to the show's credit, no character ever feels like a throwaway, except the Christian girl.)
I liked the season though. In general I felt the 1996 plotline moved exactly as slowly as it needed to to sell the descent into atavism, while the present-day storyline was mostly treading water.
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Einherjar86
Active Member
That's fair, I also was least interested in adult Shauna's affair throughout, if I'm being honest. And at one point, my wife was like "are they seriously doing the 'bored housewife has an affair' trope?" So it probably feels like the most phoned-in aspect of the show.
My rationale for it, which I don't offer as an attempt to change your opinion is
that adult Shauna's affair is inextricable from her affair with Jeff as a teenager. There's something oddly poetic to me about the juxtaposition and contrast between teenage Shauna--whose life, prior to the crash, is so-to-speak "just beginning," lots of options, accepted to Brown, poised to excel, etc.--and adult Shauna, who feels trapped, stuck in routine, bored, suspicious of her husband (who, it turns out, isn't cheating: "There's no book club!?"), really a perfect stereotype of the fucking desperate housewives schtick. So in both of these scenarios, one variable and one controlled, she has illicit affairs. I would explain the time spent on her adult affair as not just a red herring or metanarrative jab (I like that second reading, btw) but also a psychological profile of someone trying to fuck her way out of an adulthood by reliving a time when she felt like things were still available to her.
That may have been what you meant by trauma, so sorry if I'm not saying anything new. On the point of trauma, it is suggestive that she repeats her adulterous behavior, repetition being a Freudian thing associated with trauma.
But overall, those adult sequences of the affair were the ones I enjoyed the least, so I take your point.
Also, disappointed we didn't get more of the man with no eyes that Taissa sees. Hoping that doesn't just fall away. Freaked me out the first time we see that fucker.
That may have been what you meant by trauma, so sorry if I'm not saying anything new. On the point of trauma, it is suggestive that she repeats her adulterous behavior, repetition being a Freudian thing associated with trauma.
But overall, those adult sequences of the affair were the ones I enjoyed the least, so I take your point.
Also, disappointed we didn't get more of the man with no eyes that Taissa sees. Hoping that doesn't just fall away. Freaked me out the first time we see that fucker.
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