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So they made up for the feel good ending of Joan is Awful with the incredibly dark, more Black Mirror end of Beyond the Sea Is the end of Kevin can gently caress himself worth watching? mcmagic fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Jun 19, 2023 |
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Jun 19, 2023 00:57
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mcmagic posted:So they made up for the feel good ending of Joan is Awful with the incredibly dark, more Black Mirror end of Beyond the Sea I liked it. It wasn't anything too crazy or unexpected but it was a good ending to the series. Major spoiler Kevin is terrifying in the "real" world
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Jun 19, 2023 01:33
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Re: L O S T. It's definitely a mystery box show, in the sense that the mystery box is a television subgenre is one that's propelled by various ontological and epistemological mysteries. The mysteries aren't about what's going to happen next, or the identity of a mystery figure, or whatever (though, yeah, L O S T invokes both those elements as well), they're more basic. "What is this place?" "Where are we?" "What is going on?" etc. These kinds of shows often (or perhaps even definitionally, in as much as there's a definition) rely on the continuous introduction of new mystery elements, since these kinds of genre mysteries are a primary form of maintaining audience engagement. Which means that, even as you solve various mysteries new ones have to take their place. I've got a friend who likes the genre a lot, and he compares the process to a shell game. I like that analogy. They're basically a fun genre to play around with, as long as you don't put significant skin in the game. L O S T doesn't "solve" all its mysteries, often because it was constructed based on dumb arbitrary crap that they figured they'd get around to solving later on and never did. I don't hold that against it, it's just how television is often made -- a tenuous relationship with plot, characters, logic etc. is the cost of watching one of these things. The big one people mention is the Outrigger chase from season 5. The one I always think of is the random magical storm that splits the characters up in the same season, for no apparent reason other than the show wanted half its cast in one location and the other half in another. And, again, that's fine. Who cares, they made an imperfect show. But L O S T, and mystery boxes like it, sort of encouraged an audience to see puzzles where there weren't any. And it's like, whatever, people are gonna engage the way they're gonna engage, there's no right or wrong way to have fun. But when you're making a puzzle based serial and have told your audience that there's a solution and then encouraged them to invest in that narrative, weekly, on-and-off, for six years, you're gonna have to pony up something satisfying or expect backlash. And, IMO, for a significant subset of the audience that was never going to be possible. The idea of the show, in their mind, was too big and specific to them and their interpretations. And that's before they get to straight up misinformation when it came to the show e.g. that the writer's had solutions to the mysteries they introduced -- they didn't, prompting one writer to leave the production -- or their early claim that everything had a scientific explanation behind it. mcmagic posted:Is the end of Kevin can gently caress himself worth watching? Yeah, I really liked it. Low key, but good.
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Jun 19, 2023 01:50
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OrthoTrot posted:Yeah, you hear this a lot as well but it's not true. Purgatory was introduced in the last season, but the island itself wasn't purgatory. Were there any psychopomps? A good version of this kind of show was (the UK original) Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. Some mystery, but satisfyingly concluded. There was a psychopomp.
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Jun 19, 2023 11:12
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I just want what I want in my entertainment and I'm not going to feel bad about what I like. I don't think hating shows that endlessly draw out mysteries and spin their wheels is wrong. I think cliffhangers and fakeouts are disrespectful to the audience and also bullshit. My mention of Rectify is something you can definitely ding me for, because that show is just this amazing bunch of acting and beautifully composed shots and writerly dialogue, possibly one of the best shows in the history of television, and I loved it while watching it, but I still don't like that it didn't resolve the central mystery in a satisfactory way. There's no accounting for taste. I too, am a massive stan for Rectify. Now, I was a bit nonplussed by the ending but slowly came to like it. Not saying that this was the correct or only way to take it but it made a lot of sense to me. What difference did the "solution" make to any of the main characters? There's a strong throughline in Rectify that the wrong person is being punished, or punished to no useful end. He, the one emerging from jail, is not the person that committed the crime, in one sense or another. And, realistically, any resolution would probably take years. So I was satisfied with it. A more complex example was the new Battlestar Galactica which kept promising solutions and revelations but it became evident that there were no such things and the writers were improvising wildly towards a damp squib of an ending. But, many of the individual and episodes along the way were strong, perhaps because they were less about the puzzle and more about the immediate situation of the characters: tensions amongst the survivors, insurrection, dwindling supplies, sacrifice. So, I was annoyed by the ending but still enjoyed the series.
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Jun 19, 2023 11:59
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I haven’t revisited BSG in forever, is Exodus still an accepted stopping point?
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Jun 19, 2023 13:37
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BSG didn't really start out as a mystery box show but did evolve into one, especially with the "final five" poo poo. BSG is a great example of why mystery box shows generally suck because its non-mystery elements (the endless chase, the cost of survival, the utility of democracy in a crisis, etc.) were all excellent while the mystery elements (who is Starbuck really, who are the final five, where is earth, etc.) were all bad or outright poo poo.
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Jun 19, 2023 14:52
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:For another concrete example of nerd insanity: the teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode Seven featured a line of dialogue referring to a powerful new character who’s related to Luke Skywalker. Who could it be??? I don't think this is true
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Jun 19, 2023 14:57
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lol black mirror still got it
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Jun 19, 2023 16:05
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precious
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Deadite posted:It's very odd that you keep bringing up movies that are very clearly not mysteries as evidence that mystery box shows don't exist. If you used the internet in the mid 2010s and weren't bombarded with the rampant Star Wars hype-speculation/backlash, then... that's a real accomplishment, and I salute you I guess. Open Source Idiom posted:Re: L O S T. It's definitely a mystery box show, in the sense that the mystery box is a television subgenre is one that's propelled by various ontological and epistemological mysteries. The mysteries aren't about what's going to happen next, or the identity of a mystery figure, or whatever (though, yeah, L O S T invokes both those elements as well), they're more basic. "What is this place?" "Where are we?" "What is going on?" etc. Every serialized tv show will regularly introduce new sources of intrigue as others plotlines get resolved, because that's just narrative. Consequently, a "mystery box show" as just a show with an unusual setting. But the setting is so mysterious! Well, by the time you've watched a few dozen of hours of LOST, it should be very clear that the setting is "an island where a cult was doing time-travel experiments with some kinda cosmic radiation".
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Jun 19, 2023 17:35
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Every serialized tv show will regularly introduce new sources of intrigue as others plotlines get resolved, because that's just narrative. Consequently, a "mystery box show" as just a show with an unusual setting. Nah. That's a reductive definition -- it's not just that the L O S T had multiple sources of intrigue, it's the idea that these mysteries are all in some way connected, and that the solving of these mysteries a fundamental vector of action for both the characters and the audience. And I think that's the element that separates From or The Event or Flashforward from Buffy or Arrow or Farscape. It's the difference between Revolution season one and Revolution season two, and perhaps the difference between The X-files when it's in different modes. But, look, how would you determine the difference between these kinds of shows, given that the consensus seems to be that there is one.
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Jun 20, 2023 04:56
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Open Source Idiom posted:the solving of these mysteries a fundamental vector of action for ...the audience. Sounds like you're talking about marketing, not the shows
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Jun 20, 2023 06:01
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It's writers marketing to their audience. All writing does this but mystery box shows are definitely a particular facet of this phenomenon.
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Jun 20, 2023 08:23
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Shageletic posted:It's writers marketing to their audience. All writing does this but mystery box shows are definitely a particular facet of this phenomenon. No; what Deimos is referring to is the Lost ARG that was released concurrently with the series. That's the kind of thing that drives fans truly insane. We saw it again with the Cloverfield ARG, and subsequent fan backlash when it the game turned out to be an independent work with no relation to the plot of the actual movie. In Lost, the actual show, the big twist at the end is ultimately that there is no twist. Everything that played out earlier in the series is just straightforwardly literal.
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Jun 20, 2023 09:07
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:No; what Deimos is referring to is the Lost ARG that was released concurrently with the series. ...are they? Or are they talking about my post, where I'm not talking about the ARG. (which was written by the writer's room, and had participation by the writers as actors in the drama, so I'm not sure what point you're making here.) Or maybe Deimos could speak for themselves, I dunno. Just a thought. Edit: look, I think we're not gonna agree on this. I'd argue that the "mystery box show" is a genre just out of the critical mass that enough people think it's a genre, and I suspect that might be all the evidence that's really needed since it's a description of an abstract taxonomy? But I dunno. Also I get the feeling you've not seen many examples of the kind of show I'm talking about, so I dunno if we can really make any progress here. Finally, this convo's been going on for a while and I'm tired, so I'm gonna walk away on this one, sorry. Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 10:54 on Jun 20, 2023 |
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Jun 20, 2023 09:42
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Saw Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, honestly kind of charming to see hundreds of millions of dollars get burned for a sort of awkward sort of okay weird European scifi film that bombed. Dreaming of a better world where we had like five of these instead of the Avengers, just investors losing billions. Almost burst out laughing at Rihanna getting scratched offscreen and turning into dust...she's playing this terrible wooden comic relief character impervious to damage and then like the second the story no longer needs her shes just like "oof, well, looks like they got me...at some point...time to die"
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Jun 20, 2023 11:12
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:BSG didn't really start out as a mystery box show but did evolve into one, especially with the "final five" poo poo. BSG is a great example of why mystery box shows generally suck because its non-mystery elements (the endless chase, the cost of survival, the utility of democracy in a crisis, etc.) were all excellent while the mystery elements (who is Starbuck really, who are the final five, where is earth, etc.) were all bad or outright poo poo. That's a good summary of how I feel about BSG. Nice individual themes / episodes, shame about the overall plot. Trying to think about mystery box plots that worked for me, I only have Dark. Thought for a moment about Twin Peaks but it doesn't really fit the mystery box mold, being so deliberately obscure and unsolvable right from the outset - the solution isn't the point.
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Jun 20, 2023 12:10
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Lodge 49 is a mystery box show that definitely worked for me, and I think it was because the characters didn’t have any sense of urgency to solving the weird things that kept happening to them. So the mysteries took backseat to the more real problems the characters were dealing with which gave the audience permission to not focus too much on figuring everything out. Now contrast that with Raised by Wolves which was nothing but dangling threads and hints toward some much larger backstory that was never discovered, and that is a much more frustrating show. Sure they tried to make up for it by popping extras like balloons filled with blood but that only goes so far.
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Jun 20, 2023 12:26
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Raised by Wolves started showing its hand by season 2, it was more unabashedly weird than cryptic. It ended on a bit of a whopper but that's unresolved because of the cancellation.
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Jun 20, 2023 12:49
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SCheeseman posted:Raised by Wolves started showing its hand by season 2, it was more unabashedly weird than cryptic. 
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Jun 20, 2023 14:16
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Raised By Wolves was so good and I'm bummed it died
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Jun 20, 2023 16:18
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:No; what Deimos is referring to is the Lost ARG that was released concurrently with the series. That's the kind of thing that drives fans truly insane. We saw it again with the Cloverfield ARG, and subsequent fan backlash when it the game turned out to be an independent work with no relation to the plot of the actual movie. BSG had a similar reaction of the angels just directly telling the characters/audience they were angels for 4 seasons, and people being furious at the end that this was literally what they were. Heck, an early season one episode is about Baltar losing his faith in his angel and then getting it back, titled "The Hand of God"
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Jun 20, 2023 16:33
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nonathlon posted:That's a good summary of how I feel about BSG. Nice individual themes / episodes, shame about the overall plot. I liked 12 Monkeys though that plot kept on getting convoluted. Ultimately the characters made it worth it tho I never did get round to finishing the last season.
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Jun 20, 2023 18:15
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Baron von Eevl posted:
Fwiw I definitely wouldn't recommend approaching arguing about movies (or art in general) as something to "win", that seems like a guaranteed way to feel frustrated. Relax, and  Or not, w/e but don't try and discourage the rest of us!
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Jun 20, 2023 22:08
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Caught up on the new season of The Other Two this morning and drat is that show hilarious. The timing of watching the episode where Brooke dates a billionaire and certain current events 
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Jun 21, 2023 01:54
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Platonic is like if ted lasso if it wasn’t annoyingly saccharine and most of the jokes were funny.
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Jun 21, 2023 02:58
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Really enjoying The Crowded Room on Apple TV+
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Jun 21, 2023 03:02
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veni veni veni posted:Platonic is like if ted lasso if it wasn’t annoyingly saccharine and most of the jokes were funny. Yeah I've been enjoying that a lot. Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne have great hang-out chemistry.
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Jun 21, 2023 13:16
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Secret Invasion more like zzzzzzzzzecret invasion.
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Jun 21, 2023 14:09
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I liked it, but I'm also an MCU dork.Enos Cabell posted:Yeah I've been enjoying that a lot. Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne have great hang-out chemistry. Rose Byrne has great hangout chemistry with everyone. Glottis fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Jun 21, 2023 |
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Jun 21, 2023 14:36
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yea I like Platonic, I get more of a Beef vibe than Ted Lasso, that might just be the setting though. love The Other Two I'll check out secret invasion
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Jun 21, 2023 16:30
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Secret Invasion is pretty boring.
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Jun 22, 2023 02:21
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Glottis posted:I liked it, but I'm also an MCU dork. 
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Jun 22, 2023 03:25
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I want to like a show with Sam Jackson, Olivia Coleman, Emilia Clarke and Ben Mendelsohn in it very badly but I just don't give a poo poo about anything that is happening on the screen.
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Jun 22, 2023 04:29
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mcmagic posted:I want to like a show with Sam Jackson, Olivia Coleman, Emilia Clarke and Ben Mendelsohn in it very badly but I just don't give a poo poo about anything that is happening on the screen. I didn't know it was possible to gently caress up a spy show with that cast but they found a way.
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Jun 22, 2023 04:30
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Bupkis is good.
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Jun 22, 2023 04:47
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Punkin Spunkin posted:So so sorry for your loss I'm not going to fight for this show, but someone enjoying something isn't a loss. It's one episode, c'mon.
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Jun 22, 2023 06:26
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Haptical Sales Slut posted:Bupkis is good.
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Jun 22, 2023 06:35
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I think it’s like the 5th semi autobiographical thing he’s done. I thought it was ok. Not great but fine. That movie he did with Bill Burr was basically the same thing but better.
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Jun 22, 2023 07:21
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Jose Oquendo posted:I didn't know it was possible to gently caress up a spy show with that cast but they found a way. Thanks for reminding me to finish Slow Horses
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Jun 22, 2023 12:49
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