Yeah, my thoughts on it match yours to a T. Coulda been shorter, but that would’ve meant less Katharine O’Donnelly, so I was ok with the miniseries length.
Hearing Kate’s regular voice in the little after-show thing they do really drives home the point that she is a phenomenal actress. Maybe I just think that because I grew up with these accents. Most of the American characters in the stuff I watch turn out to be from Australia or England and sound nothing like the characters they portray. But I guess I tend to think they just make up an American voice and go with it. With this show, I get how much craft goes into nailing the accent because this accent I know.
Finished Mare of Easttown and man did that final episode hit hard in some spots. I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this series, but the excellent acting, quality production and solid writing combined to create a show that was unique and interesting. Highly recommend to anyone looking for content on HBO Max.
Couple of loose ends that don’t make sense. Why did Jess and Dylan burn the journals? Jess said she didn’t want Erin’s personal stuff made public as her reason, and that makes some sense, but Dylan’s motive was simply to keep the baby’s real father from becoming known so that his parents could raise DJ? He seemed awful keen on recovering those journals and intimidating Jess, even though the whole town already knew he wasn’t DJ’s real father. Then that picture of Erin and John…uh, OK, what teenager has an actual photograph (in the form of a selfie no less) instead of just a digital image on her phone?
Guess there won’t be a season two since this was just a one-shot limited series and they wrapped up both major storylines pretty well. I suppose Season Two could be Mare taking off to investigate the disappearance of her daughter Siobhan on her way to UC Berkley. I mean, what parent in their right mind allows an 18-year-old girl to drive themselves cross country from Pennsylvania to California for college?! My wife and I (parents of a 17-year-old girl) looked at each other during that goodbye scene and were like “Oh hell no…what the?!”
We enjoyed it, but honestly,This text will be blurred the whole gun thing was bullshit. A former cop keeps a loaded gun in a shed in the backyard? Which he wanders out to get every time he hears a noise in the house? And he never mentions to his friend cop that it went missing for just a part of one night, when he miraculously happened wander out there? But he cant be bothered to keep it closer? I would love to burgle that house while the geezer is roaming around his back yard in the dark!
Okay, my big peeve with HBO Max is you know how at the end of a Netflix episode it’ll give you the on-screen prompt to advance to a new episode?
HBO Max will do that… except that there’s still about 20 seconds left in the episode before the credits actually start to appear.
It’s completely bulldozing over the last moments of an episode.
Yeah, but you can choose not to advance at that time, and just let the credits play to the end. Then it will advance to the next episode at the end of the credits. I think it’s a good system.
No, what I’m saying is that the big Play The Next episode is splayed all over the center of the screen in the final moments of the episode, before the credits roll. You know, during the emotional sendoff.
Like in the finale of Mare of Easttown, it shows up and blocks the moment she’s going into the attic.
That didn’t happen to me using a google tv to stream.
I haven’t ever seen that prompt, either.
Ah I see, that sounds like a platform specific thing.
On Apple TV it just makes the episode a bit smaller, taking about 3/4 of the screen, while the “next episode” part displays in the bottom left. But you can see the whole screen of the episode.
What platform do you use, out of curiousity? Xbox?
Sounds like this just happened (or got worse) this week with an update for the Apple TV HBOMax app.
I haven’t checked the Roku app yet to see if anything similarly awful has happened there.
Been enjoying Hacks quite a bit, though episode 5 does a little bit of shark jumping near the end. It’s a show where a 20-something TV comedy writer played by Hannah Einbinder gets stuck writing jokes for an aging comedy star played by Jean Smart (Jean Smart is amazing), a situation that neither of them particularly enjoys.
The show strikes a really interesting tone–it’s mostly from the perspective of Hannah Einbinder’s character, and it does try to be sympathetic to her viewpoint. But it’s also painfully obvious that she’s an idiot 20-something and her cynicism masks a deep insecurity and naivety that exhibits itself in self-destructive and selfish behavior. And Debra (Jean Smart’s character) is seen through her eyes as a washed-up has-been recycling jokes that are painfully anachronisitc. But Debra’s character is actually really fucking funny; she’s got an on-point quip for every situation. And she sails through her tawdry-seeming life while retaining a remarkable amount of dignity and poise. The show manages to avoid falling into cliche, has complex characters, and doesn’t resolve its character dilemmas in any tidy way. And it’s pretty damn funny.
Just finished up Season 4 of Gomorrah over the weekend.
Followed the same path as referenced by draxen here after watching ZeroZeroZero on Amazon, which I thought was great.
I think Gomorrah was better. It’s quite the ride. Looks like there will be a Season 5, which the show runner thinks will be the last.
Also, in looking up whether there’d be another season, I came across that there was a film as well that covers Ciro’s backstory and also hints at being some kind of bridge in to Season 5. Unfortunately, it can’t be streamed anywhere so it looks like I’ll have to pick up a copy off ebay.
I just finished the last two episodes of Mare last night. The hype is deserved as this show really captures the complicated and messy web of family ties in this slice of a small town. The murder mystery is almost incidental but works well enough to trace a path through these households as they deal with various versions of the unacceptable in their own ways. Settings and performances are superb throughout, and it is a special treat to see Kate Winslet devour a role over a seven-hour miniseries instead of just a two-hour film.
That being said, whew! I think I need to give myself a break and have the next item on my watchlist be a bit on the lighter side.
Just finished Mare as well. Overall I thought the performances were terrific, and the story was super compelling, if not somewhat cliche.
I did bounce off the gun in the shed thing a bit. It seemed just a little too perfect in order to make everything come together at the end.
Oh, and the fact that they were sending off their freshman-aged kid on a road trip from PA to CA. I guess they didn’t want to move the shoot to an airport or something, yeah, I did a second take on that one, too.
Yeah, my wife called bullshit on that as well
Real life anecdote. The GF’s 19 year old daughter drove from St. Louis to St. Johns, Newfoundland earlier this year. That was 2600 miles and five or six days of driving. She had a car she wanted to use at the college in St. Johns and she also had a dog to transport. Driving made the most sense.
At 21, among many other shorter overnight trips, I did a multi-night trip gambling in Reno with friends, drove across the country twice, backpacked alone in Europe for a month and did a 3 week trip to Australia. I think depending on the kid, I wouldn’t have too much problem with them driving across the country to college at 18.