#PRESTIGE. TELEVISION

[ripplesinthesand]

mon mothma getting wasted and dancing to space pop music because one of her oldest friends is about to get assassinated and she feels guilty while her cousin sits and mopes because she just saw her situationship for the first time in ages and it was only because she's here to carry out said assassination. andor is AWESOME.

[montanabohemian]

honestly, the people bitching about an objectively insane episode of wwdits are SO BORING. it's just a silly little comedy about some idiot vampires that live together and commit atrocities in new york. like what is so difficult to comprehend about that.

of course lazslo would create horrifying animal lab experiments that can talk that guillermo has to take care of.

of course nandor and colin are besties.

of course nadja makes 50 dunkin runs for a crazy lady.

it's just a weird show that is outrageous and funny and sometimes carries an emotional wallop. it's not fucking rocket science.

[purposechef]

A day in the life of two Stage-Five Clingers

[kieranculkn]

riverdale (2018) dir. kevin rodney sullivan // true detective (2014) dir. cary joji fukunaga

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

Too many people talking about good tos episodes like tribbles or balance of terror not enough talking about that one where Kirk has to read the declaration of independence dramatically to a warring civilization to convince them to lock in.

[phasmotid]

marty. buddy

[ehlihr]

the twitter pitt fans are incredibly annoying. miles of posting about how the pitt isnt “prestige tv” or slop or whatever bc theyre incapable of just enjoying their show without being (1) annoying and (2) disproportionately heterosexual about it

[cqssqndrq]

okay so the bad thing about watching a good show (the pitt) is that it highlights the mediocrity of other television in the same sphere (unnamed, to protect my inbox, but take a wild fucking guess) and now i'm not interested in like 90% of the shit i'm seeing on my dash. like no, don't raise my standards! now i expect more than the bare minimum from my media!

[beyourghost]

wait. mpreg?

[doitbuckley]

hiatus is going to be 80 years and apparently they also ruined the boat doctor show so where am i supposed to get my fix of compelling trash television now

[purposechef]

the four elements of good cooking

[babridai]

every time someone complains about bl plots being too 'simple' or 'dumb' or 'unrealistic' its like, do you guys know what genre you're watching

[sevensecondgap]

Man this yaoi is doomed as fuck my compliments to the chef

[ikjun]

every episode junmo is like so WHAT if i nearly die for gicheul !!! it’s for the job !!! my brother in christ your job is to bring him down not to show him your eternal devotion and readiness for carnage all for his name and sake i think we lost the plot a little but you do whatever and get that body count going for you i am sure the police force you actually work for will be super thrilled to find out you constantly mow down anything in your path to the point of accidental man-slaughter because someone looked at gicheul funnily and you lose your shit when that happens

[brbgensokyo]

otaku media is so wonderful because you have a group of talented artists across multiple disciplines coming together to produce a commercial product thats at best mildly eccentric or utter batshit while giving it their all.

[jaggedwolf]

tlou s2e2 opinions, full spoilers for the second game below

that's one way to solve a housing crisis

stuff I liked

Ellie says to Jesse, casually and confidently, dude we all know that you're going to run Jackson one day, and damn if that didn't break my heart. Jesse's been great, btw, loved the replication of the morning doorway conversation

Ellie dragging herself closer to dead Joel...pressing herself as physically close to him as she can...I almost wish that was the last we saw of him and her this episode...

Ellie yelling get up Joel get the fuck up immediately brought me back to that scene in that game

that and Dina getting drugged I thought were nice ways around the "conveniently knocked out for the appropriate amount of time" trope that also elevated the lodge scene

golf club remained! golfing jokes will continue until morale is crushed to zero

very good job displaying the discord within WLF squad, especially Mel

zombies hiding under a snowy layer of dead zombies is fucking creepy and stressed the fuck out of me, good job show

even frostbitten Dina trying to understand what's going on with lodge crew and asking about the WLF patch, going no no no about being drugged...protect her...

I wasn't unmoved by Maria and Tommy in the game but I think I am more attached to them in the show and this is gonna be rough bro. Emphasizing their and Joel's role in Jackson as a community has been a really good aspect of these episode.

I have a suspicion about where the Eugene stuff is heading and I'm very into it.

stuff i'm silly/neutral on

rip bigot sandwiches. did they make Seth more genuinely remorseful here or am I misremembering? will find out when I replay the game

i'm neutral on swapping Dina for Tommy as Joels' patrol partner. There never needed to be an excuse for name disclosure, and the idea that Dina had insufficient motivations for going with Ellie in the game is a very foolish idea - even if they weren't dating, Ellie is her best friend. of course she would. same reason Jesse does.

But Dina being able to recognize the WLFs is intriguing, and given the parallels between the characters it tickles my brain to have Dina and Mel be so physically close this episode

I will absolutely be annoyed if Ellie and Dina are not together together before the departure for Seattle though, that'd be dumb. I don't need a getting together story for these two. (oh god, or if we don't get Ellie/Dina banging but maintain the explicitness of the Abby/Owen scene. I'm fine if we skip both.)

Jackson simultaneously readying themselves for an attack, sending out pair patrols, and working on pipes, all while a blizzard was raging felt a tad stupid to me. It's a completely random day in the game, and IIRC, the weather doesn't look bad enough for anyone to comment on it while patrols leave Jackson.

This is what happens when you don't take New Years Day off people, don't let it happen to you

Tommy having all the runners ignore him as he baited the bloater was him stealing all of Joel's plot armor, I've decided.

Yet I do enjoy the indications here that even Tommy and Maria are not immune to the human flaw that drives the plot of TLOU - my person over duty, my person over my community, my person over your people, my person over the fucking world.

I understand you hired Kaitlyn Dever and Pedro Pascal and Isabela Merced and so you want to show off their faces as much as possible, but it is impossible for me to take them seriously when they run around outside in a blizzard with zero covering of their faces or mouths. From what I've seen, all three are capable of acting with their eyes. Maybe let them do that?

This is probably just a reality of the set, but RIP staircase down to door of doom

stuff I did not like

okay...oh boy...first let me say nothing I say in this section is criticism against the actors and their acting abilities/choices. I think every actor is knocking it out of the park with what they're given

but I think it's completely fair to be displeased with the casting of Dever as Abby, and anyone going "people were upset Abby was muscular and now they're upset she isn't, how stupid" or "HDU criticize an actress's looks, very sexist of you" isn't worth listening to.

Abby's physicality in the game served gameplay purposes, yes, but it also (1) indicated the level of determination she'd approached her revenge mission (2) indicated her rigor in her WLF work (3) was frankly satisfying to see, given the general tendency for even action-hero female characters to be skinny and/or small and/or physically unimposing (4) made the first fight between Ellie and Abby interesting in their respective advantages (5) made the final state that we see Abby in sobering. Losing these, especially (3), is a bummer.

People saying that it is impossible to find a buff actress or even an actress that is noticeably more physically imposing than Ramsey that is good at acting...be for real. I had my writing critiques for Brienne in GoT but even there they managed to find Big Girl.

All of that said, Dever is mostly very good in the lodge scene. The way she conveys Abby's violence and vulnerability, her frustration with her friends and which of them she cajoles, her delivery of lines from the game

but the monologue to Joel felt very silly. Did you know the doctor was my dad?? Have you already guessed that??? uh how on earth would he have guessed that. why are you making Dever say these lines when she would've done a very good job with game!Abby getting interrupted sooner.

Oh god, and she doesn't get to declare game!Abby's final decision that they are leaving Ellie (and Dina or Tommy) alive, that they are Done, which helps her "We let you both live, and you wasted it!" rage later on.

why are you having Abby balk at torture, when in the game it's heavily implied Abby's done it before but doesn't want to confess that to Lev. why do that soft-pedal.

If the intention of the early revelation of the Fireflies or dead dad was to add sympathy for Abby early in place of the early focus on Ellie in the game, I both think that's wrongheaded and that it doesn't work, because murdering Joel overrides that sympathy.

The game does it smartly by having the Fireflies reveal, however obvious, be explicitly stated right when Ellie is being extraordinarily cruel to Nora, and the Abby's dad reveal happen right before we are stuck spending time with Abby and cannot escape her PoV.

Neither does Ellie escape the show's insistence on Loudly Stating Exactly What Feelings Are Happening right now, because we basically get her telling Jesse that she and Joel have made up. Why. Why do that. Let Ramsey react more subtly to a casual mention of Joel and Dina out on patrol together. An explicit update on Ellie's Joel feelings is not needed for that brilliant burst of grief and sorrow at seeing Joel gone.