Topic: The TV Show Thread

I finished Westworld and on the whole really liked it. Don’t think any of the subsequent seasons ever quite lived up to the excellence of season 1 but they were always nothing less than interesting and entertaining.

@LN78 yeah I don’t think you’re alone in falling off during season 2. I’d personally say that season 4 was the second best of the 4 seasons… but I may well be alone on that.

@LN78 well… I ‘suppose’ that they could (in the way that anything could be iterated upon with the sufficient will) but I’m 99.9999% sure it’s done.

@LN78 @colonelkilgore I also loved the first season and didn’t mind the second season but dropped off after one episode of season 3! Regardless of my feelings on how it went later on, that first season is just brilliant.

@nessisonett yeah season 1 is absolutely top-drawer. We went back and re-watched all the previous seasons in the build up to season 4… and season 1 just improves with repeated viewings too.

@LN78 well, hopefully you’ll be pleasantly surprised if you do so 👍

Westworld Season 1 is probably one of my favorite seasons of television ever... up there with 'The Wire' (Season 4) / 'The Shield' (Season 5) / 'The Leftovers' (Season 2)

I'm a huge Jimmi Simpson fan also (Always Sunny...!) and think his performance throughout the show is pretty immaculate, nice to see him get his acting hooks into something meatier.

The whole concept of the park is fascinating, and the visuals are gorgeous. S2 delivered for me also, but I must confess I had to pretty much drag myself through S3.... it just didn't feel the same.

I might drop back in to S4 to wrap it up, but only once I'm finished with the magnificent Justified (halfway through S5, really enjoying)

@CJD87
This thread seems to think season 4 of Westworld is the last one. While we haven't got confirmation of a renewal yet from HBO, the producers have made it clear if renewed Season 5 will be the last one and will end the story.

@PegasusActual93 wow, a season 5 would really surprise me given season 4’s ending… I’d watch it though for sure. I’d always heard that Nolan had planned it as 5 seasons but after the mass audience drop off during season 3, that a little ‘re-tooling’ had to be done in order to finish the story in season 4. Just did a bit of googling after reading your post though and it does seem to be at the very least ‘up-in-the-air’.

@CJD87 you’ve mentioned some great seasons of TV there… Fargo season 2 is also personal fave of mine if you haven’t seen it. Also, I absolutely loved Justified… big Olyphant fan here!

@colonelkilgore Yeh Fargo S2 is pretty solid, albeit nothing could match Billy Bob Thornton from S1!

@PegasusActual93 Thanks man, as I've done S1-3 I suspect I'll likely come back to finish off the story

@colonelkilgore @CJD87 S1-3 of Fargo were all great and a clever way of doing an anthology programme with all of them and the film being intertwined.

S4 was a bit too much of a plodder for me though and the link into the other series was clever but a bit shoehorned in.

@colonelkilgore
Season 3 had a drop in ratings but Season 4 thanks to Hbomax viewership had a large boost in ratings, enough so that it would justify a season 5. It's been made clear they want to do a season 5.

@PegasusActual93 quite the conversational style you have there 😉

@colonelkilgore
Not sure what you mean

@PegasusActual93 just my personal observation is all. We live in an era where written (or typed) communication is extremely prevalent and as a result I’ve noticed that people have generally developed various measures within their interactions to avoid offence or misinterpretation due to the inherent lack of tone within a post/comment/text message etc. Your chat on the other hand (at least when discussing Westworld) is more akin to someone striking with a blunt object than a cordial conversation… and as a result it made me chuckle 🤭

@colonelkilgore
Don't mean to be blunt just have aspergers.

@PegasusActual93 ahh, well no offence meant and no offence taken 👊

@colonelkilgore Season 1 was excellent but I haven't seen any othe the others yet. Might have to rewatch it and then watch the others!

@MightyDemon82 yeah definitely worth a rewatch… I think the missus and I have actually watched season 1 3 times in all now.

Got around to rewatching Neon Genesis Evangelion for the first time in about a decade thanks to the recent Blu-Ray release, and while nostalgia probably plays a part, I definitely think it (mostly) still holds up.

I'm going to buck convention though and say I think the first half of the series is probably my favorite part of it. The animation & mech designs are wonderful, and it comes from an era where the anime world carried some sort of respect for military tech (+ cars & guns) & it wears it's appreciation on it's sleeve, which I always thought was cool (my favorite episodes might be the one where they siphoned off electricity from all of Japan to fire that rifle, & Asuka's introduction where they battled on the UN fleet). This is broken up by a surprising amount of light hearted levity that breaks up the drama. Yes, Shinji (& others) clearly has emotional problems, but I think the first half of the series generally does a good job of showing him slightly starting to open up around those in his life.

Of course it takes a much more of a dramatic tone in the latter half, and my favorite elements of the series start taking a back seat. However it does attempt to delve deeper into the convoluted lore which I do enjoy trying to piece together, and heck, maybe the critics are right and it is a bunch of nonsense with no greater purpose, but I still like to think I come away with it each time learning something about it I didn't know before.

Of course we all know they depleted their budget by the last couple of episodes, not being able to end it as intended. That said, while they are my least favorite part of the series I think they do well enough with what they have to work with (I think I would have been more satisfied with it had it confirmed that the "possible reality" short had been confirmed as the canonical ending, given how I feel about the lighter moments).

Haven’t seen much buzz about it but that Karen Pirie is one of the best mystery shows I‘ve seen in a while. I’ve never read any Val McDermid books but this was such a good adaptation that I’d be more likely to read one. Helps that they used Arab Strap as the theme!