tv_talk | Speak Up Saturday

I’m waiting to watch MAWS season 3. So far no new stuff yet I have a hunch that it’s after the new film is released in theaters next month.

Yes, so much stuff is tied in across platforms now.

Yeah a while back I rewatched some episodes of the 90s animated Superman series along with finishing season 2 of MAWS. Tho the art style of the former series is classic, I like the newer anime-esque style, and the characterizations in MAWS is fun.

The live action shows are ok, tho I haven’t seen Smallville yet.

We Were Liars - binged S1 the day it dropped. I wasn't expecting the ending, so bonus points for that. And I have an issue with what happened to the pearls in the end, but otherwise it was a decent watch.

Murderbot - still enjoying the eps, more than I did the book actually. Only problem with it imo is that the eps are too short.

Criminal Minds Evolution - I read the other day that Voit will be back again next season, and it really seems like the show is giving him a redemption arc and I hate it so much. I am so over Voit. Its actually starting to feel like he might be on the team next season, as a consultant or something. But he needs to be in prison imo.

Race Across the World - a few people here have recommended this so a little while ago I found a way to watch it, and its really good! I'm currently up to season 4, but S3 (in canada) has been my fav so far I think because everyone did a lot of ride sharing and got help from so many lovely people along the way. I really like the premise of this show better than amazing race. It lets you get to know the contestants a lot better I think, and I like how the locals get helped when the contestants do work.

thats pretty much it though, just normal weekly things nothing special.

Edited 2025-06-21 14:07 (UTC)

Only problem with it imo is that the eps are too short.
I agree! Some of them are fine, but the latest definitely felt too short. I don't mind a mixture of short and long episodes. Isn't that one of the freedoms streaming has?

Race Across the World does sound like a great premise.

Murderbot;

Poker Face;

Resident Alien;

The latest series of Walking With Dinosaurs

Aha, so Resident Alien is back. I'll have to see how we can watch it since we saw the last season before we cancelled YouTube.

I am very excited about the upcoming adaptation of Heated Rivalry, a m/m hockey romance book. I've just read the whole series of books that it's from and just posted about casting news over on

transmediaclub

For watching, Librarians and Murderbot.

Oh that sounds like something to look forward to!

I am very excited! And curious. The books don't have a lot of uh, dialogue? Yeah, would love to see how the writer's room reaction to the source material

It's just the usual at the moment. The latest episode of Poker Face really wasn't my favorite. An episode set at a New York apartment building could be fun, but I found Alia Shawkat's character so unlikable. I know that's how it was supposed to be, but it made me enjoy the episode a lot less.

Resident Alien is back, too. I could have sworn that this was announced as the final season, but apparently it's not. I'm not enjoying it as much as I used to, but I feel like I'm invested now, four seasons in...

I like Resident Alien less than my partner does, but as you say, once you're several seasons into a show unless you've come to hate it or just forget about it even existing, there's a tendency to keep watching. I'm rather surprised this isn't the final season either -- it must be doing well for SyFy.

Apparently it has moved to USA or is shown on both networks now? Maybe it's doing much better than I thought it was.

Looking at sites like TVLine and using TVMaze means I don't really forget about shows, but sometimes I don't care enough to continue a show. Like Carnival Row. Didn't have time when the second season came out and never bothered to watch it.

I remember trying a few episodes of Carnival Row but couldn't get into it. Of course sometimes a show really grabs me on a second watch but these days there's so much in the pipeline already...

Just commenting to tell you that I love your icon! ♥

It was made by

tinny. Not specifically for me, but when I mentioned not finding icons from the show, she presented it to me :D

I started watching Murderbot this week, and I might be a little obsessed with David Dastmalchian's Gurathin. Just one look at this character and I *knew* he would be my favorite. I also adore Murderbot and Mensah.

I watched three episodes of The Studio. The first two, I loved. The third one fell a bit flat for me.

The S2 Severance premiere was genuinely nothing that wowed me, but I'm sure that the hype will come back naturally.

Started El Eternauta, and so far, I really like the atmosphere.

Edited 2025-06-21 18:48 (UTC)

I'm used to seeing David Dastmalchian in small roles, it's great that he finally has some time to shine. I was also super into his whole premiere look, even though it's actually rather simple.

As a goth at heart, I'm enamored. *___*

I finally finished Black Mirror -- I'd been putting off watching the last episode because it's basically a film (90 min long) and I don't do films often. Had to find the time and mindset to commit to watching it, but finally did.

Watched the first two episodes of The Kollective. Didn't know much about it, but it wasn't at all what I was expecting in that I thought it would be slanted more towards not that serious, but it's totally serious and I actually enjoyed it more than I was expecting. Hope to maybe finish that tomorrow. Damn tennis matches keep eating into my TV time...

Other than that it was mostly rewatching seasons 1 and 2 of Star Trek Strange New Worlds. Not quite finished season 2, but almost. And the weekly episodes of Murderbot, Criminal Minds, and Welcome to Wrexham.

I am interested in Smoke, which starts on Apple TV+ on June 27. Also, there's a Bosch spin-off starting July 7, called Ballard and starring Maggie Q. Her character was introduced in the most recent (and last) season of Bosch: Legacy. I will definitely check it out. I have two weeks off coming up and besides overdosing on Wimbledon, I plan to finish up a bunch of series I've started but not made any headway with.

Finished the Bono 1 man show today, "Stories of Surrender." I quite liked it and wish that more such theater presentations were filmed. It creates a different thing from seeing it in person, but even if you've got little more than a bare stage there's still so much that can be done with a performance when filmed.

Have almost finished The Studio but it's not my thing. Too much humor that triggers my embarrassment squick. I've been forwarding through big sections of it, but just want to see where the season ends. They certainly got a lot of cameos, especially for the Golden Globes episode.

Finished Pachinko S2, and tried out The 1% game show. Moves slowly, lots of chat with the contestants, but it asks different sorts of questions so I'll give it a few episodes. Kind of curious that it moved from Prime to FOX, as game shows are not particularly expensive programming so either it wasn't a good fit for Prime viewers or they could get more money from Disney. Either way it means I don't have S1 available for viewing.

Have caught up on Welcome to Wrexham, almost through S3 of Brokenwood, saw a bit more of Buccaneers and expect to finish the latest of Slow Horses tonight. We're a third of the way through S11 of Last Week Tonight, which is as far back as Max offers (his seasons apparently run from June to June). That means we can't see S10 which we also missed, and irritatingly, for no reason we can see, Max does not save our place when we view an episode. So it not only doesn't record that we stopped partway through one, it doesn't note that we watched it at all. So we have to track that ourselves AND we have to go into our saved list each time because it does not list the series in our Continue Watching option on the Home page.

Also saw Dune 2 and plan to try out the series.

MAX has the worst interface, by far the worst of all of the streaming channels. I think Hulu may have the best. Prime is sketchy, Netflix has issues with bandwidth and dies at various points - it also keeps going and makes it hard to stop it. But Apple is fairly good as is Hulu. Apple is somewhat easier to find things on though.

I've not tried Pachinko - how is it?

One thing that bugged me about Apple is that I could only remove shows from my "continue watching" list if I logged in online, not from the TV interface. And in its early days it would mix shows you could buy via Apple with things you could watch directly (not unlike Amazon). I'm not sure if it's still doing that now that it has a fairly robust amount of original content.

Hulu's does work pretty well. The only thing is that they are cross promoting content from Disney+ and I sometimes forget if I started watching it there or on Disney, but it doesn't save your place from the other streamer so that gets confusing.

I really enjoy Pachinko as a window into a place and period of history I knew little about. It mostly focuses on a central character and her family but gives a lot of insight into culture and lifestyle. And it's a generational story shifting between two time periods.

I've been considering Pachinko, because I like historical family dramas about historical periods I know zip about. Historical dramas work for me - if they focus on a family, or a mystery. I don't like War Dramas, so tend to steer away from those.

Given the time period they do deal with war but it's more a matter of how they have to deal with changes as a result.

As long as I don't have to slug my way through battles, I'm fine.

Finished The Agency and really enjoyed it. Would recommend for those who like high caliber procedurals.

Watched Presence last night and wow wow wow. Can't say anything. Go in blind but watch this. With Kleenex, maybe.

Finished Dept Q last weekend.

1. Finished first three episodes of Andor, now on to the second arc. The first three episode arc drug a bit. I had to re-watch episode two - on account of having fallen asleep during it. Andor drags a bit? But I still love some of the characters - so am pulling through.

2. Buffy Re-watch - am in S3, its my comfort show. Take-aways:

* Xander is a jerk that jumps past insufferable. Methinks there is a bit more than a little Hyena!Xander in Xander than expected - or more likely the writers are enjoying exploring it. And I have to admit I cheered Evil Spike when he clobbered him in Episode 8 of S3 (Lover's Walk). Willow is also annoying for the first half of the season. The writers do not appear to like him.

* I feel sorry for Faith and Cordelia. Both feel like outsiders, and I'm not sure the writers were going for that for Cordelia? I can totally understand why Faith dumped the gang for the Mayor later in the season. She has no watcher, she's in a dirt bag motel room (similar to Buffy's in Anne) and is rarely consulted. I'd have left them too.

* The writers are making fun of the SATs - and I'm on board. They really rank on those tests big time - it's in almost all the episodes. Also, they show how meaningless they are - by having the least interested in studying or knowledge excel. Buffy, Cordy and Oz have the highest test scores, and could care less, while Xander and Willow have the lowest. It's kind of obvious by episode 8 that the writers don't think highly of the SAT's and are having a blast making fun of them. (The SATS or the US's Standardized Testing)

* The writers are making it really clear Buffy and Angel can't work. Every single episode it comes up. They can't be friends. They can't be in love. They can't work together. Spike of all people finally gets through to Buffy by bringing up "love's bitch" which is an echo of the Counselor, Platt, who more less tells Buffy the same thing.

* There are no duds in S3 so far - I haven't skipped over any episodes upon rewatch, so most definitely an approvement over S1 and 2. I think they found their rhythm finally writing wise.

3. Murderbot

Something else...not sure what.

The Bear is coming June 25, and I may need to do a Foundation rewatch for when it drops, also a rewatch of The Diplomat.

What did you think of Dept. Q?

I agree with the critics, great characters and performances, but poorly plotted. I had to explain the plot to my mother who got lost in the last couple of episodes. And I had to rewatch an episode to figure it out. It has very convoluted plotting that didn't quite work, which is a problem in the mystery genre. I got very frustrated by the plotting. Apparently it closely follows the books, except for the location, which may have been a mistake. (I wouldn't know I've not read the books? But I've noticed that those who did - had no issues following the plot and loved it. So it may work better for you - if you read the books first? Don't know.)

It does what a lot of mystery shows do - attempt to throw the audience off course with a lots of twists and turns. Except the twists and turns don't make a lot of sense. And various timelines don't quite fit.

I got a bit lost in it. Not helped by the fact that the main mystery is a bit horrific like something out of Criminal Minds. It's a very dark and gritty series, with a lot of graphic violence - some of which is towards women.

But Mathew Goode is excellent in it, and it has some interesting characters who are very compelling. I'd watch S2 for the characters. And I really liked the characters. But whomever is responsible for the plotting, sucks at plotting. (I've been told it's the original writer - so maybe they need to veer away from the source material?)

Edited 2025-06-22 15:24 (UTC)

I enjoyed the characters too much for the plot to be a big issue for me, but there was at least one twist that I rolled my eyes at. I was also a little disappointed that there was no resolution to the first mystery. If there is a second season, I hope we will finally get more answers.

I felt much the same way. The characters made it possible for me to handwave the plot. I want a second season - because there is no resolution to the first mystery in the first season - and I was actually more interested in it.

I'm keeping Hulu long enough to finish Nine Perfect Strangers season 2, so I'm filling in the time watching Fixer Upper-Behind the Design and Flea Market Flip, a two-team competition where they are given $500 to buy flea market items which they refurbish; the team that sells the refurbished items for the higher amount gets a $5,000 prize. It's surprisingly suspenseful. It turns out "don't paint those rattan chairs!" is the equivalent of "don't go in the basement!"

I finished The Residence, and I really enjoyed it as expected. The first half of the last episode was annoyingly recappy, though, and now that I think of that, the whole show had this weird thing where five minutes into every episode they'd do a recap of the things that had *just* happened. Not even in previous episodes, just in that same episode! I thought it was just cdramas that did weird unnecessary flashback things, but that was noticeably weird, too. But on the whole, the show is a solid rec.

One more ep of Murderbot, and while I enjoyed it, the last three eps have been getting farther and farther from the book, and I'm having difficulty finding the parallels and figuring out why they changed so much in the first place. It's not bad, I'm enjoying it, I'm just a little confused.

I watched two more eps of Love Scout, and I think I should stop. The main couple is good, but lots of the rest of the show is annoying me. The pacing is very slow in places, both leads have other romantic interests that annoy me, and overall it's just not doing what I want it to do. Mostly I just went back to it because I was so tired I couldn't concentrate on anything else. Which is also why I watched a lot of youtube content last week. But there was nothing special that I need to rec now.

It annoys me so much when episodes do internal recaps like that.

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