Westworld or should I say...twistworld? I watched the season finale sometime back and it didn't crescendo into something that would've left me in awe. I was sincerely hoping otherwise though. While I loved the show in the beginning, I felt it plateaued out around the 7th episode or so. I guess I can nitpick on the things that didn't tickle my fancy but overall, the show was enjoyable.

Spoilers below:

Seems like most twists were predicted a long time ago. It's not a bad show but it's way overhyped and can be a bit confusing at times.

Hopkins, Harris and Newton were stellar throughout the season, but the showstealer in the final was Armistice. She was so cool.

Speaking of Westworld, can we talk about the fucking soundtrack? "This World," (the piano piece that plays during Dolores' introduction and usually at the beginning of the recaps) is just sublime. Ford's theme is pretty good too.

Westworld:

On the latest Walking Dead: not as good as the opener but substantially better than the other episodes so far. All around I enjoyed it. They need to stop this "let's just focus on one and only one plot-character nugget for 45 minutes" crap, it hasn't been helpful to the show since the last half of season 4, and especially this season it's just bogged things down. With this episode, they showed multiple character viewpoints, paced it well, and the improvement was so obvious I can't believe the producers won't notice it. I expect they will switch things up for the second half of the season. This episode actually feels like things are happening that will lead up to something greater, rather than a collection of disconnected vignettes solely united by human misery.

An aside: I'm starting to see why some critics think Negan doesn't translate well from the comics. He really does talk too much, his swagger comes off more as cocky than frightening, there aren't enough truly menacing moments with him....but dammit, I just can't look away from the screen when James Morgan is playing him. He has such presence, and he's clearly having fun in the role, which is something you don't often see on the show. People don't have fun doing anything on the show, but he---both the character and the actor portraying him---are having a blast. I do hope to see more of the those moments of quiet foreboding and menace, like when he was talking with Carl on the couch or with Daryl in the alley after he tried to escape. Just sort of quietly threatening.

I don't know enough about the "All Out War" story arc from the comics to know if this is happening for sure, but the "coming next week" preview coupled with the way this episode ended it feels like

I hope WestWorld was a one and done, but nothing ever is anymore.

I don't know why you would want any television show you enjoy to end at season 1. Why even make it a show at that point? Why not a movie, TV movie, or a mini-series?

Why not indeed? I guess because I wasn't involved.

I like the things I like to end on a quality note, not be drug through the mud for countless seasons until they collapse in on themselves.

I agree on that point, but tv shows are supposed to have arcs that continue beyond a season. If no television shows could maintain quality beyond a season we wouldn't really have tv shows, everything would just be a miniseries.

Who says theyre supposed to have season-spanning arcs? There's no reason that should be a hardset rule. Outside that I'm not really sure what you're angling at. I don't give a shit if you call it a season, series, mini-series, or multi-part made-for-tv movie extragavaganza. Just be brave enough to wrap it up on a satisfying ending.

I'm fairly sure True Detective and Stranger Things were meant to be a one-and-done but they both did tremendously well. I can't think of a television show that has done really well and not had a second season or some spin-off.

Of course. It almost never happens. But True Detective is a perfect example of a single season story arc that ends at the end. Coincidentally my favorite non-comedy of all time.

I don't know about Stranger things; way too many loose ends deliberately planted in the last episode for them to not plan on making a second. I'm sure they didn't anticipate the level of success the show had but the writing is on the wall, so to speak, in regards to whether it was "meant" to be a one-and-done.

I still consider TD one and done. season 2 was just an entirely new show packaged under a successful marketing label. the evidence doesn't support the allegation/claim that they're both 'true detective'.

to my mind, for _a show_ to be _a show_, an observer with no outside information should be able to draw the link

they should be able to tell NCIS and NCIS LA are separate shows, that TD 1 and TD 2 are different shows. the taxonomy would never say 'I'm still watching the same show' like they would when presented with seasons 1 and 2 of The Wire.

a 9 hour movie isn't really possible, sure, you can turn books into movies, but you have to sacrifice a shitload of content. and a mini series is probably harder to pitch and get an audience to, and why make a mini-series when you don't have to, when you can just give it normal 1-hour-commitment time-slots?

Yeah they were probably deliberately leaving the door open for another season if it did well, but also making it satisfying enough to stand on its own if it didn't do so well. Many of the loose ends in the last episode could work just as well as stingers, after all.

Don't know about that, the dialogue was the same, the pairing of mismatched distraught characters was the same, substance abuse, intro credits with same musician, the hidden knowledge of some underworld, law enforcement, the unraveling mystery element slowing peeling back, it could have easily transpired somewhere in the US while Rust Cohle and Martin Hart were doing their thing, also a couple non-main characters from season 1 re-emerged in season 2. Sure it didn't have Hart or Cohle but at it's emotional core and visual style it was virtually identical.

I didn't see them as loose ends, but rather simply not explaining everything as a shit ton of 80's movies did. A lot of people these days need everything spelled out to them without a hint of unknowing. Mystique has become an unattainable quality.

And on the flip side, for producers mystique has become a cash cow way of dragging viewers on for longer than they might otherwise have stuck with the show. See Lost.

There's a difference between using mystique to hint at a larger world/story and abusing mystique for the sake of ratings, though.

Very true.


So I watched the mid-season finale of Walking Dead. It's the best episode since the opener and as I suspected in my last Dead-related post here, they're not dragging out the buildup until All Out War. The episode ended---this isn't really a spoiler anymore---with the scattered cast of Alexandria and Hilltop reuniting and vowing to fight the Saviors. Rick has come around. It looks like the second half of the season is going to be very different from the first half.

Highlights:

1. Negan was less of a one-trick pony this episode; there was a moment where his swagger fell and he was legitimately rattled. The way James acted there, Negan actually looked like he realized he was vulnerable and unsettled, great job. Also, he looks creepier without the beard.

2. Props to Rosita for

3. Just in general, things actually happened this episode. There were character interactions meaningful beyond just wallowing in shared misery, there was forward plot movement without a big action piece.

Low points:

1. I understood how Negan was able to but I'm sure that was lost on a lot of viewers, probably most, as well as most critics. The writers should have had one more line about it.

2. The boat scene with Aaron and Rick was just dumb. When they made makeshift paddles out of the broken sign all I could think was "but you couldn't duct-tape those boards over the bullet holes in the boat so it doesn't sink? How do you wander the wasteland without duct tape or something?"

3. I just think reunion-type scenes where everybody wordlessly smiles and looks meaningful with dramatic music sapping over everything are so corny. The only worthwhile part was the bro-hug between Rick and Daryl. Speaking of which...

4. If this season had been paced properly Daryl would have fucking escaped earlier and they could have devoted some actual time to it. Like,

I really liked that episode but I have enjoyed 90% of this first half of season 7 anyway. I agree with most of what you wrote. I like the sappy staring scenes though and this one in particular felt great after what they've all been through, for me. Can't wait for All Out War.

I thought the first half of Season 7 was their best stuff in a while. Slow paced, sure, but really well done in most aspects. The worst episode was the first one just because I didn't care about the deaths due to that terrible cliffhanger deflating the tension - after that it got better and I've enjoyed the world-building and the kind of omnipresent, unseen threat that Negan's group is in the episodes they aren't there. And the last two episodes have been a lot of fun.

The episode was fairly decent although I could have done without the Hilltop scenes, there was far too much crammed into one episode. Darryl's

My wife and I watched a couple episodes of Black Mirror yesterday evening after hearing many good things about it. I was particularly not impressed. It's not terrible, just not very interesting and doesn't have much to say (at least from the two episodes I saw). Kinda generic/cliche dystopian stories about the negative effects of technology, etc. I wouldn't recommend.

I had the same reaction, but it gets a lot better after the first two episodes. The first one in particular is downright shitty, the second one is OK, but from there on out it's (mostly) very good. The series should really come with a "rocky start" warning, like Star Trek: TNG does.

Gotcha. I think we watched episodes 1 and 3? The first one involved people harnessing power through exercise-bikes and getting on an American Idol-esque tv show. The second episode we watched was about little implants that recorded everything you saw and the effects thereof. Hmm, maybe we should stick with it then...

Huh, I thought episode 3, "The Entire History of You" was the single best episode of Black Mirror ever made. I'm not sure I'd call the pigfucking episode "shitty," it had stilted dialog and pacing problems, but I thought the "message" was a good one.


Anyway, Star Trek: Discovery news!

It will star Sonequa Martin-Green from TWD*, marking the first black woman to be the lead in a Trek series (although she will only be a Lieutenant Commander), Anthony Rapp (the star of the movie version of the musical Rent and a very well-respected Broadway actor) whose character will more than likely be gay, Doug Jones (an actor with an intimidatingly huge IMDB page, most of it good) as a new alien species for the show, and the captain will be played by the one and only Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Tomorrow Never Dies), which is rather exciting to say the least.

The show has been purchased by Netflix for distribution everywhere.... except the US, where it will still be on CBS's fledgling streaming service. However, Netflix will distribute it in the US a few months after it airs.

The show will be one of the most expensive TV series ever produced, with a $7 million budget per episode (VOY and ENT episodes were between $3-4 million); much of this budget paid for by the Netflix deal.

Showrunning has been picked up by Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts, two of Bryan Fuller's understudys from Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies. This is much much better than fucking Alex Kurtzmen, although still quite sad Fuller won't be the main architect behind the show, since he is literally the best person in all of Hollywood to headline the series.

Each season will be arc-driven, with the feature-length pilot + 12 episodes creating a complete story (think season 3 of Enterprise).

Filming will be in Toronto rather than LA, and it will air in May 2017.

*can any of this forum's legion of TWD viewers comment on her acting ability?

Yeah, I thought the first few eps were just fine. The Entire History of You and Be Right Back have to be the best episodes, and White Christmas. I think where the show really succeeds is in showing the characters' reactions to social media and technology, and finding the nuance in that aspect. That way it becomes more than just a 'this is what our society has become' thing. It's about people and how really, they are the same no matter what technology they have - they can be vengeful, shallow, image-obsessed or fragile, and the technology only channels those things in new ways.

^Obviously Black Mirror is not going to please everyone. Like the better episodes of Twilight Zone, there's some phenomenal episodes and some so-so. You either like the investment and dark direction it illustrates or you don't.

Sonequa Martin-Green is a serviceable actress, neither outstanding nor unbelievable. I could think of better choices but, eh.

Started The OA (2 episodes in). It's basically telling the story of a blind girl who went missing and turned up again 7 years later with her eyesight restored. It's got some weird arcs as it goes along. Interesting but a bit slow-paced so far. Not sure if I like it yet.

Hadn't watched much TV until just recently. S3 of Black Mirror was good, essentially more of the same which is fine enough for me. I think I would actually start to grow tired of the show in larger doses, so hopefully they'll cap it at six episodes per season.

Also, just now I finished DS9. Excellent show, although I do have two s7 quibbles:



Anyway, even though I've heard from just about everyone that it's worse, I'm still looking forward to Voyager. But first I'll watch Westworld since that's all the rage.

The "message" was somewhat interesting, but the whole thing was just poorly set up - the PM guy is having a nervous breakdown over fucking a pig? C'mon, this is a guy who has the power to order men to their deaths. I'd get it if he were like an older guy who was super invested in his public dignity (see Urquart from UK House of Cards), but the PM has essentially zero character building going on and just looks and acts like an average shlubby dude. When THE ENTIRE CONFLICT OF THE EPISODE is based on his character, properly developing that character is kind of essential.

I mean Jesus, compared to what the demands for the Princess's release COULD have been, he should've been fucking that pig with bells on.

White Bear was an even worse piece of shit, though. The great episodes are great, but people never seem to bring up the stinkers!

Fans of Rick and Morty; what are your 3 favourite episodes and if you had to pick a most memorable scene?

Huge Rick and Morty fan here!

Three favourites? Hard to choose, but I guess the Meeseeks episode, A Rickle in Time (the one where the screen splits) and maybe The Wedding Squanchers (the last episode of season 2), but it leaves out so many others it's hard to really pick three favourites.

Memorable scene might be where Morty is about to be sexually assaulted, or where Rick is upsetting over the break-up with Unity.

What about you?

Two more episodes to go in Westworld. The early part of the season was good, but kind of had me scratching my head as to why people were dumping jizzbuckets all over it. "Yeah ok, it's a Deadwood episode of Black Mirror stretched out a bit." Now that the plot has thickened and the characters have really started come alive (heh) I'm super pumped to see how everything plays out at the end of the season.

This scene though:

^ To be honest, most scenes in that show are just pure gold and that is merely one of them. "Scientifically, traditions are an idiot thing."