2790

Watched the first episode of this and it was quite strong. I didn’t know I was in the mood for a moody French noir but it sucked me right in. The writing in particular is very good so far.

2791

The Recruit, on the other hand, is delish.

2792

Getting some mixed reactions here on The Recruit.

2793

I thought it was excellent through the whole run.

2794

It’s fun. Just don’t take it too seriously.

2795
2796

It’s a kind of mixed show. I liked the Veepish office comedy bits and I liked the spy drama bits, but I got whiplash from the tone shifts. Still, overall I give it a thumbs-up. It’s two good shows in one, awkwardly glued together. I enjoyed it a lot more than season 3 of Jack Ryan.

2797

Yeah, I thought 1899 was a mess. It started out potentially promisingly but quite swiftly showed that the showrunners are more interesting in screwing with viewers’ minds and navel-gazing rather than coherent story telling.

I’ve watched all or parts of 5 seasons worth of that team’s output and basically Dark S1 was excellent and relatively contained. If they had stayed contained and wrapped that story in S2 without expanding ludicrously, then that would have been a classic series. Instead in S2 and S3 they expanded the story and plot in digressive and chaotic ways and ended up with a show that broke me halfway through S3. Their Tribes of Europa effort after that was another deserved 1 season wonder: a mess with bad and tropey plotting that failed to engage me. And then 1899 another one and done.

Basically that creative team had one solid idea, the first season of Dark, and has IMO failed to sustain that level of quality. I no longer consider “by the makers of Dark” a positive.

2798

I certainly enjoyed The Recruit, but overall I think it’s a bit of a mess. It got overly complicated, and the continual recurrence of the refrain that you can’t trust anyone in the CIA or DC because everyone is trying to better themselves by kneecapping others – I just got tired of hearing it. It also became difficult to suspend my sense of disbelief. I don’t really know how actual spycraft works, but sending an untrained lawyer on CIA ops can’t really happen, can it?

Also, I feel like season 1 didn’t really have a conclusion. Usually we see a story arc concluded with a cliffhanger that promises a new story arc. We did get the promise of a new story arc but I didn’t really feel like anything was concluded.

2799

I enjoyed it myself, with some caveats. Regardless, it’s getting really hard for me to justify a Netflix subscription or get invested in any of their shows. Feels like everything gets cancelled and I’d rather wait until a show is finished before even starting to watch it. I figure if more people start to feel that way, they’re not going to be able to get much of anything off the ground.

2800

Alternatively they could try to put together some seasons with some internal cohesion and a satisfying season arc rather than setting most things up “to be continued”. The streaming era is fundamentally different than the network era and I think core stuff like show pacing, show structure, season structure, overall arc structure and so forth need to adapt as well.

Specifically I feel like too many show creators still have the old “need 5 seasons at least for syndication” mentality that dominated the pre-streaming era.

It’s interesting. I have been somewhat frustrated at times by Disney/Marvel’s pattern of mostly one season and done shows but that has also produced some quality stuff without all the uncertainty and baggage (at times).

2801

That would help. Especially when it’s the first (and maybe only) season.

2802

Did anyone have a go at Kaleidoscope yet?

2803

I’ve not watched many episodes of it but It reminds me a lot of the tone of Burn Notice which I enjoyed at the time.

2804

I finished watching 1899 yesterday evening so obviously two hours later it was cancelled. Typical.

Joking aside, I did not enjoy it nearly as much as Dark which I loved and binged all three seasons at once. 1899 was very slow - I almost stopped watching after the first couple of episodes but I am glad I finished it after all. I don’t think it ended in nearly as interesting place as the first season of Dark and in the back of my head I wondered if it would be renewed.

2805

Did you ever wonder why the three people with the literal keys to the puzzle — all three of whom were favorably disposed to each other and two of whom were actually in the know — never bothered to share the answer with each other?

2806

Is Kaleidoscope worth watching? I really like heist films, but this has gotten middling reviews. All I care about is if it’s fun.

2807

Given all the fuckery so many shows have indulged in with all the time jumps, plot jumps, mystery box crap, hide-the-ball-crap and just generally milking plot devices in lieu of having a good story (I’m looking at you 1899), I can’t really imagine any way the bizarre “watch in any order” schtick of Kaleidoscope is going to be good.

What happened to just writing a good story and telling it? Jesus wept.

(That’s a rhetorical; I know what happened: the urge to distinguish shows in an era of massive content and hype has led to a vast overreliance on gimmicks to capture eyeballs and that has led to some real inconsistency in show quality. Personally, I’ve had it with this BS. I’m burnt out on “techniques”, gimmicks, fancy story structures, etc. They’ve all been vastly overused in recent years. I just want basic storytelling at this point. Sure, storytelling techniques can work when they fit the material and the skills of the show runners but at this point when I see a storytelling technique I feel like it’s going to crap on my viewing experience 90% of the time and I just don’t want it.)

2808

I would say Kaleidoscope is worth watching. Just don’t expect a happy ending for most of the characters.

The “special” thing about the show is that the first 7 episodes are given to you at random, each episode jumps around the time of the big heist, which is the last episode that will be given to you. Two of the 7 episodes actually take place after the big heist.

Here’s the order of the episodes I got, and I think it worked well. Yellow, Green, Blue, Orange, Violet, Red, Pink, White.

If you do let it do random on you, if you get Red or Pink first, abandon it and choose something else. Red and Pink take place after the heist, and starting out there I don’t think would work well. After watching all the episodes, I think Yellow was a great place to start.

2809

How To Change Your Mind is pretty well done. Molly kicked me, but I may finish it sometime.