Television

Max Sterling said:
Binge watched Reacher. It's like a long form 80's action movie. Herculean ex-military guy gets involved in ridiculously involved crime plot. Ultra violent shenanigan's ensue with a smattering of snarky one liners and some bewbs for spice.

His character is a little unbelievable, but just like Arnold, Stallone, and JCVD, it doesn't matter. You just want to see him crack bad guy heads, and boy does he. Holy crap.

Feeling a strong 6, light 7 on this one.
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The show is utterly ridiculous, borders on the incredulous and I like it more than I’d care to admit. Alan Ritchson is perfect casting.
 
I also finished Reacher today.

As I have mentioned before I am a fan of the books and have read almost all of them (2 left in my read pile). There are certain aspects that the show captures really well and it's miles closer to the books compared with the Tom Cruise film. Of course, there are elements that don't really live up to the portrayal of the book in my opinion, but at the end of the day I'm not interested in a scene for scene reenactment.

The show also makes different choices for the visual effect as well, such as
the final fights which paired up the heroes and villains (Reacher/KJ, Finlay/Picard, Roscoe/Teale)
which came off as a bit cheesy imo but it worked in the context of the show as they embraced this cheesiness at times.

One thing that I did notice is that certain scenes and sub-plots were taken from different books, although the main story is from the first in the series. I think the final scene
with his mother works better in the book. Reacher and Joe visit their dying mother and during the wake are given a box by an elderly man. The man looked after their mother when she was a child as it turned out that she was in the French Resistance, assisting potential POW by acting as their child so the patrolmen would assume they were locals and wouldn't stop them as they travelled from one part of the city to another. She saved 80 people and was given the Médaille de la Résistance (the Resistance Medal). In the show the medal was supposedly Reacher's grandfathers but I personally think the book version is much more interesting. A key theme of the books is Reacher's upbringing and his respect for his Mother is highlighted a lot, so this book version adds extra weight

Overall I thought it was great and I cant wait for the next season. Hopefully, they keep it going and it remains popular, I would love to see the overall narrative developed.
 
David A. said:
Season 4 is sort of like a sci-fi haunted house tale but still as subversive as the show ever got. It’s so good.
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jamieanderson1968 said:
I think S4 was its best season. A lot of different storylines came out and would coalesce in S5 and S6.
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Funny, I was off by a season because I lost track of where we were. S4 was fantastic, S5 is the one with so many storylines to start.
We have two more episodes to finish S5 then sadly, we'll be onto the final season. I may go back to S1 for some reminders on how it all got to where it is.

Also, the problem solving is a fun ride throughout the show. "How are they gonna....? Ohhh, nice."
 
ranbalam said:
Funny, I was off by a season because I lost track of where we were. S4 was fantastic, S5 is the one with so many storylines to start.
We have two more episodes to finish S5 then sadly, we'll be onto the final season. I may go back to S1 for some reminders on how it all got to where it is.

Also, the problem solving is a fun ride throughout the show. "How are they gonna....? Ohhh, nice."
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Even season 6 slaps. It is sadly truncated but I really hope another streamer picks this show up.
 
Finally got around to watching Station Eleven. Really good show. Only thing that bothered me was that they made Kirsten smart and perceptive - yet they made her totally stupid about Tyler/The Prophet, and the Station Eleven book.

She knows there are only five (self-published) copies. Yet, her first thought upon hearing it quoted is confusion and then believing that it was stolen from her hiding place in a random desk in a place miles away (don't know the distance, but just adds to the far-fetched nature of her thought process) that has no (known) connection with the person quoting it.

Again, really good show. But they portrayed an otherwise intelligent characters as pretty stupid in figuring out that Tyler is Arthur's son (like, lady, just ask a couple of reasonable questions based on your already observed facts and you all would've gotten on the same page).
 
Godspee You! Baby Emperor said:
Finally got around to watching Station Eleven. Really good show. Only thing that bothered me was that they made Kirsten smart and perceptive - yet they made her totally stupid about Tyler/The Prophet, and the Station Eleven book.
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I read the book years ago and honestly don't really remember it, and haven't seen the show yet, but I was raised in a high-demand religion that some people consider a cult, and I can say that many of the smartest, most perceptive people I've ever met believed it all, even the more ridiculous claims. They just had this one big blind spot, despite being bright, educated, thoughtful people. Sometimes being smart made them even better at justifying things than normal people.

From a narrative/storytelling perspective it's annoying, but in real life it happens a lot.
 
LeSamourai said:
I read the book years ago and honestly don't really remember it, and haven't seen the show yet, but I was raised in a high-demand religion that some people consider a cult, and I can say that many of the smartest, most perceptive people I've ever met believed it all, even the more ridiculous claims. They just had this one big blind spot, despite being bright, educated, thoughtful people. Sometimes being smart made them even better at justifying things than normal people.

From a narrative/storytelling perspective it's annoying, but in real life it happens a lot.
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But the thing is....she was never part of the cult and thought he was full of shit from the beginning. She was eyes-wide-open the whole time about him. At most, she developed some sympathy after she agreed to help him (to help herself/her people) and saw his sort of primordial pain (but this was after she should have asked those baseline questions). I get what you're saying, but I don't see it as a viable explanation in this instance.
 
FINALLY getting around to watching Watchmen. I know, I know. As a fan of the comic series and the added draw of Trent/Atticus doing the music plus rave reviews, I should've bumped it up my list. But here I am now.

Any way, I hope Regina King has awesome one liners throughout because "I've got a nose for white supremacy and he smells like bleach" is fucking gold.
 
Godspee You! Baby Emperor said:
FINALLY getting around to watching Watchmen. I know, I know. As a fan of the comic series and the added draw of Trent/Atticus doing the music plus rave reviews, I should've bumped it up my list. But here I am now.

Any way, I hope Regina King has awesome one liners throughout because "I've got a nose for white supremacy and he smells like bleach" is fucking gold.
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It’s a quality program and the fact it came out prior to George Floyd/Covid makes it seem almost prescient.
 
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