TV round up

[the_ladylark]

Here are some random, more or less spoiler free (for anyone with less absurd spoiler-phobia than me, which is almost everyone) opinions on television, which I have been watching a lot of recently. Mostly for my own reference, just because.

Crazy Ex Girlfriend: Took me a long time to get into it, because I didn't realise what it was meant to be or what it was doing. Glad I stuck with it, because it got better, and then wow that final season was just fantastic. I don't think I've seen a finale that accomplished since Leverage. Structured and earned and meaningful. Lovely.

American Gods: Oh dear. I'm going to watch the rest of Season 2 but only out of morbid fascination for how you dive so completely off a cliff in terms of TV making.

Supernatural: It's finally ending, wheee! Honestly I love endings and I'm so happy they're going to have one. This season isn't grabbing me overall but it's still doing some interesting things, and the usual complete hodge-podge of mediocre, awful and incredible. Which would be entirely unpredictable week by week except that it's simply related to writer.

Star Trek Discovery: DON'T ATTEMPT STORIES INVOLVING TIME TRAVEL IF YOU AREN'T CLEVER ENOUGH TO THINK IN FOUR DIMENSIONS. It's watchable when it's not being vaguely irritating, but I wish they concentrate on the interesting parts of the story more.

Umbrella Academy: Better than it might have been but not quite as good as it could have been. I'll be interested to see what the second series looks like. But I adore Jeff Russo's music work.

There's plenty of other things I've been watching or am looking forward to, but either it's been more than a few weeks and I've forgotten, or they're current and I'm not up to date, or they're old. And I don't want to encourage accidental spoilers in comments.

Comments

[swaldman]

I'm sort of glad to hear that about American Gods, because... well, I'd been finding it uninspiring since part way through S1, but I'd been assuming that it was just because there's a strong dissonance between Shadow's character in the series and Shadow's character in my head. It's oddly pleasing to learn that it isn't just that...

[the_ladylark]

Hmm, I'm not sure my thoughts give any insight on that. The cliff I was referring to was a specific difference in quality between seasons 1 and 2, most probably due to the shift in showrunner and associated changes in tone and direction overall.

I enjoyed but wasn't thrilled by s1 and I think you're right, Shadow's characterisation might have been part of that. But s2 is different, and not in a good way.

[swaldman]

Ah, I see. I'm only 2-3 episodes into S2 (and need to hurry up and finish it before my Prime subscription expires in a few days)