what's on tv?

[skweeki]

i watch way more tv than movies. there's something so approachable about a 20-40 minute time commitment (though i usually end up marathoning episodes and spending movie+ lengths of time in front of the boob tube anyway lol).

recently finished:

lost - i saw the first couple of seasons as they aired, but i didn't really get the appeal. the writing felt so scattershot and melodramatic. that melodrama ended up being one of my favorite things about the series when i rewatched--and finally got to the end--earlier this year. it's junk food tv and it's so fun to sit back and let it wash over you. the casting is awesome. benjamin linus is that bitch.

severance - beautiful visual design. crazy camera work. initially seemed like it was spinning a decent critique of wage labor, but it started to lose me as the focus shifted toward romance. overall, s2 felt less intentional and more like, ~creepy and surreal~ just for the sake of it. idk. i'm curious to see if s3 will pull it together.

currently watching:

city - just saw the first 3 episodes! it's delightful. impressive comedic timing, great animation, and a genuine love for the hum of everyday life. it'll have you noticing the clouds and the birds and some funny lil interaction between people on the street next time you go outside. i really like the style of the bgs--they're lined and brightly colored, but somehow they don't overwhelm the characters.

seinfeld - jerry seinfeld should be drawn and quartered but the rest of the show is a treat. no wonder it was on the air for so long. the episodes are a bite-sized 22 minutes, which feels crazy short in this age of 40+ minute shows, but it's refreshing. overlapping conversations and purposeful repetition build a snappy rhythm between A-plot, B-plot, C-plot and beyond. i think i'm a george, at least based on s1 & s2.

what have you been watching?

[lynnedrum]

as far as live action TV we haven't actually been watching a WHOLE lot... but I do want to get Mina to watch The Sopranos with me since I'd never finished it during my lockdown watchthru and we watched ep 1 recently and had a really great time. it's the most effortless action on earth to point at the screen during any episode of The Sopranos and go "there are a million beautiful butch lesbians on the screen right now".

but also, with Mina's sister, we are currently 10 episodes into Empresses In The Palace, a chinese historical drama about a Qing Dynasty imperial harem, somehow just around the same time everyone's started becoming obsessed with that Road To Empress FMV game. that game seems excellent and very funny but thankfully, Empresses is a more complex show than how silly and cutthroat that game is. I've been a Legend of the Galactic Heroes fan for a very long time, and the soapy drama of the trickery and betrayal and intrigue all have a familiar flavor. it's been a fun time, even though it's a little slow-moving at the start.

on top of that, we've been working our way through a rewatch of The Vision of Escaflowne with Mina's mom & sister. a smorgasbord of boys. fantasy supreme. i'm so in love with it, it's quickly working it's way up my favorites as far as original anime properties go... we still gotta see the movie..... but Folken (my escaflowne draculesque bishie of choice) is a Labyrinth-Bowie type of design in the movie instead of the Ziggy-Stardust-Bowie type he is in the show, so my heart hesitates... Nobuteru Yuki designed a hell of a Yoshitaka Amano guy with that one.

city....... city the animation my beloved.... i'm so scared to finish it. summer's over and we just let the last few episodes go... the last one we watched was the big race episode and it was so delightful. i gotta be a big girl and finish the fight. honestly, CITY The Animation could not be a better advertisement for CITY, the goddamned manga. I didn't realize just how condensed the show was from the manga until I started reading it, but it is such a sweet little surprise to start flipping through the pages and realize "...wait there's like a practically Endless amount more of these characters in here i get to enjoy once the anime's over!!". it's such a well-done adaptation.

[crittergill]

city - just saw the first 3 episodes! it's delightful. impressive comedic timing, great animation, and a genuine love for the hum of everyday life. it'll have you noticing the clouds and the birds and some funny lil interaction between people on the street next time you go outside. i really like the style of the bgs--they're lined and brightly colored, but somehow they don't overwhelm the characters.

Ahhhh I gotta watch more City!!! I've only seen the first episode but I adored it. What a breath of fresh air that show is.

I haven't been watching a lot of TV lately (unless we consider online-only streaming platforms...? I never know what I consider "TV" these days. I'm deep in the Dropout hole.) but my girlfriend and I have been going through Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I've seen it a thousand times, it's my favorite show, but rewatching it with her has really given me some new perspectives on it. Kinda preaching to the choir I'm sure but god damn that show is fantastic. I love the 90s Star Trek era in general but DS9 is just the best to ever do it.

[onza]

of everything already mentioned in this thread so far:

Empresses in the Palace occupied a lot of my 2023-2024 discord watch-sharing with ~the boy~. i understand what my mother was getting out of 'all my children' this time now. especially delicious because a lot of it overlapped with the first season of excellent imperial chinese harem-focused anime The Apothecary Diaries, fun to see two totally different flavored takes on a lot of the same themes (probably about ~300 or so years apart lol 'china' that those in some ways are basically the same)

City is maybe the best anime. I don't have anything more groundbreaking to say about it that other people already haven't. it's important to understanding "summer", an ever-important part of life, all of us are still children superimposed on our adult selves.

weaved The Sopranos into the rotation a little while ago and am maybe ~5 episodes in now? It's quite great, not my favorite ever but i see why it was of the sort of importance that it is, and i get why it made a certain kind of "therapy" huge, etc. the cold open of episode 2 is one of the funniest things i've ever seen in my life


karas favs:


Halt and Catch Fire (2014-2017) follows a bunch of weirdos in the burgeoning computer tech scene in the 1980s starting out in 'Silicon Prairie' - the Main Guy has a total don draper complex but the show gets insanely more interesting once both the metanarrative and then the character himself realizes there's no such thing as a "main guy". then women happen and it's kino. human relationships are all we have when everything is computer

Wolf Hall (2015, 2024), extremely lavish BBC funded period piece around Richard Cromwell, head (?) advisor (?) to Henry VIII - Barry Lyndon by way of the west wing (non-derogatory)

Apocalypse Hotel (2025) some decades don't get one anime as 'consistently fun' as this, to have it come around at the same time as City (which rightfully blows it out of the water in terms of being, like, a formalistic masterpiece) is such a 'two cakes' moment . . . twelve episodes of anime slapstick about the end of humanity + the neverend of service work. perfect pacing 'all filler no killer' style. love it.

Iron Chef (1993-1999) obviously

[amos]

I just finished watching Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt with a friend about 15 years too late. Feels like one of those shows where they wanted to have fun animating something and then came up with the rest of it afterwards. It's fun! Also deeply stupid but for the most part in a good way.

[crittergill]

Iron Chef (1993-1999) obviously

I used to watch Iron Chef so religiously. i still think about the king/queen/prince bit every time i use a bell pepper

[turnip_juice]

Watched both seasons of Severance this year and I liked it quite a bit. I had no idea what to expect except that there is an office and I thought overall the premise works out in some fun ways.

Also watched Revolutionary Girl Utena for the very first time and I really didn't know what to expect either. One thing that stuck out to me most characters being you know young school kids but they've been acting like they had a whole life story behind them with implied amount of time passing from important character building drama in their life (and like...that can happen you know in real life and well it's not real life) and while it feels a bit silly it does feel apropriate at the same time how important and monumental some things would feel at that age. But yeah really liked it! Really beautiful show, some really bad people out there in the world!

Now watching City the Animation and while not everything lands for me it's been a very enjoyble time, waiting for my friend to return to continue it though.

I think next thing I'm going to watch would be Twin Peaks Season 3. Me and some of my friends went through both seasons of it recently and started on final season, but at some point we got too busy and now nobody remembers anything that happens in S3 so I hope i can continue soon when another friends rewatches first two seasons.

[amos]

I started watching Better Call Saul recently, 2 episodes a week just like the good ol days when TV was on TV. The direction is kind of wild, so many beautiful and interesting shots already. It's kind of funny my friend initially just hit 'play' without checking what episode we were on and 1. we started on season 3 initially 2. we watched the last 5 minutes of s3e2 for our second episode, and all the time we were just like "wow, some really cool choices in this show huh. I like how in media res this all is". Anyway, watching it regular-style is pretty good too.

I think next thing I'm going to watch would be Twin Peaks Season 3. Me and some of my friends went through both seasons of it recently and started on final season, but at some point we got too busy and now nobody remembers anything that happens in S3 so I hope i can continue soon when another friends rewatches first two seasons.

Twin Peaks s3 is awesome, probably one of the best TV shows out there I think.

[turnip_juice]

Twin Peaks s3 is awesome, probably one of the best TV shows out there I think.

I really want to watch it proper! We went through at least the half of it but due to our schedules I feel like everyone sort of lost interest in watching it together and started to forget everything what's been happening.
Also getting more familiar with Twin Peaks really makes me interested in watching the rest of Lynch filmography.

Also started rewatching Gundam Zeta, but that's going quite slow. And that's after recent rewatch of 0079 show which I still feel like holds very strong, you know in most parts! Also did watch the first recap movie of 0079 with a friend that never seen gundam and was really surprised how much new stuff they actually animated for it.

[carly rae jetfuel]

CITY is definitely one of the best animes I've ever watched. Every episode has at least one moment putting a big silly grin on my face. I'm reading the manga now too and it's delightful on its own merit.

I absolutely loved the first two episodes of Pluribus and I cannot wait to see where it goes and I strongly recommend it for anyone who wants to see Vince Gilligan do shit outside BB/BCS and Rhea Seehorn also rocks.

A new season of Fionna and Cake started and she's a useless messy bitch and I love her.

I also recently finished Deep Space 9 after watching it over like 7 years and I will miss it so much - definitely one of my favourite TV shows of all time.