I’ve watched the first episode of Smiling Friends. It wasn’t as hilarious as I expected, but it was genuinely fun. It felt like authors passion project they actually put love and effort into, instead of some generic Family guy ripoff they launch now and then and is cancelled after one season. I liked it.
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Been watching some Peacemaker recently.
A very fun, if pretty crude show that extends upon John Cena’s Peacemaker from The Suicide Squad movie.
Love the main gang of agents, Adebayo being my favourite (probably cause she’s also the audience stand-in).
Vigilante is a fun character with an interesting moral compass of “hate everything that’s illegal”, who’s even crazier (if zany and upbeat) than Peacemaker.
I’d also say John Cena is doing a pretty good job of being a misguided, foolish, yet self-reflective character. One who has clear, juvenile flaws, but has depth (in private).
It’s not outstanding acting, but he’s making me care for the guy.
Episode 4 spoilers:
Murn is a great character who I’d love to see grow. But goddamn, I hope that Butterfly reveal was a swap-out, or there’s some way to reverse it! He’s a great character!
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Drive to Survive Season 4 dropped today. It’s really good. We’re burning through all 10 episodes and getting pumped up for next week when the F1 season starts.
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David Simon + Baltimore + Police corruption = Me happily paying for a month of HBO Max
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https://screenrant.com/halo-show-video-game-comparison-writer-play-response/
Are they getting their inspiration from Uwe Boll’s way of making video game based movies? As in ignoring the source material altogether?!
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Watched the first episode of Moon Knight. I enjoyed it, it was funny and creepy. I haven’t watched any of the Marvel TV stuff yet, keep missing it and then tending to get spoilt on parts on the web, so want to actually keep up with one of these shows.
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Season 2 of Pacific Rim: The Black is gonna come out later this month (April 19th)
I don’t think I know anyone else who’s seen this, and I haven’t seen it being talked about on the internet very much, but I like it!
I liked the pilot-drifting lore they dived into in the first season and the kaiju battles are pretty cool! This looks like it’s gonna have more fun action, and that’s cool with me! The stuttering frame-rate for the humans looks the same, which I didn’t really like, but that was a small issue.
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I thought I’d already posted this great news, but it seems not.
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Time travelling trains. More of those damn stairs. And more death? This season looks like it’ll be extra trippy.
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Finally almost fully caught up with Better Call Saul. Two more episodes to go and I’ll be ready for the final season with everyone else.
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I just finished Queen of the South. My wife and I had been burning through seasons as they got added to netflicks, and the last season just hit the service. We really enjoyed it. I feel like a total Dumas though (bad pun intended) bc it wasn’t until midway through the last season that I realised it’s more or less a modern variant of the Count of Monte Cristo.
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Just started watching Dorohedoro on Netflix and I’m totally obsessed. So brilliant!
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Due to Netflix’s pathological inability to advertise or promote anything not named Stranger Things, I just found out the other day that Space Force season 2 was released a couple months ago. Some quick context: the first season released in spring, 2020 with and all-star cast featuring Steve Carell, John Malkovich and Lisa Kudrow, among others, and takes a look at the former president’s odd desire for space warfare. It had a lot potential that it mostly failed to live up to but I liked it enough to come back.
Anyway, I watched season 2 the other day and it’s… still just perfectly fine. The premise and cast are stellar but the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Something just continues to not click, whether it be the first season not leaning into the political satire angle enough or the second season abandoning it entirely in favor of workplace comedy or it just being too safe all the time and not wanting to risk offending anyone, even going so far as to not refer to either the former or current president by name despite referring to them fairly often. The plot from episode to episode also doesn’t really matter; very few events are built up to and even fewer lead to anything down the line. I think I could count on one hand the number of plot points that featured in more than one episode… “Problems”, such as they are, are usually magically fixed with little effort from the characters and sometimes even in spite of their best efforts to fail to solve them. Not that it matters anyway because most of the time the show is TELLING you things happened/are happening instead of SHOWING you.
It’s all just kind of a shame; I like the show, it just continues to fail to realize its enormous potential and I want to like it more but it won’t let me. Also, I wish that it was actually bad because then I could drop it instead of likely coming back if there’s a third season. On one hand I want another season to see how they avoid explaining how earth survived the giant meteor like they generally avoided explaining how the US and China averted war on the moon and their astronauts didn’t die up there. On the other, though, I kind of like thinking everyone died because of said meteor and I don’t know how much more unrealized potential I can take.
Actually, I think it’s even worse that it’s just ok to good because if I had to choose between two seasons of this on Netflix and another season of both Teenage Bounty Hunters and Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix, I would choose the latter without hesitation. If you’ve never heard of either of those shows it’s because they are part of the 90-95% of Netflix’s library that most people would never hear of because they aren’t the current golden show. They are also two of my favorite shows and I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive Netflix for burying them. If you can stomach quirky shows, female leads (gasp), the (checks notes) “homosexual agenda” and zombies*, I can almost guarantee you’ll like these; I highly recommend them.
Apologies for the Netflix rant on what should have been a purely Space Force review. It is a good show but it could be so much more and Netflix continues to favor its myriad mediocrity and burying the few genuine gems it does have. I think that’s the deepest cut of all…
*please note the mid-rant sarcasm because we’ve all probably met at least one person who doesn’t like at least a couple of these things…
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Yep. Mid/late February, iirc. Maybe one day Netflix will learn how to advertise/promote things that aren’t the current golden show and/or the shiniest, newest limited series… Either that or that they could alleviate their already struggling advertising department by not green lighting a thousand things a week… 
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Aw, this is a bit of a sad review to read. I was hoping they’d improved upon specifying the show’s comedy genre, but it doesn’t sound like it.
I was someone who was interested in Space Force when they released the first season a year ago, but dropped it halfway through. It felt like a comedy show that started with a good concept (the military needs to create a new, outlandish branch of “space army” under the delusional, erratic orders of their president), but didn’t know what it wanted to be. Either a political satire, workplace comedy, realistic angle or fictional angle…
And Steve Carrell’s choice of “army general buffoon” as the main character/leader of the Space Force, felt very odd. I did not buy into the believability of how he managed to retain such a position or survived any social situation. I liked John Malkovich’s exasperated straight man to Steve’s crazy antics, but I’d have preferred Steve to be the more “normal guy” surrounded by crazy events, but I guess that’s not his style.
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They did generally settle on workplace comedy but I think that was to its detriment; I think it should have actually embraced its original concept and premise more. It seems more confident in itself but something I started noticing is that it doesn’t seem very interested in explaining anything really. Like, things just happen, have no bearing on anything and then are forgotten. If you didn’t buy how Steve Carell’s character stays in charge, you’ll love how it forms a central arc of the second season! Sometimes. With grandiose speeches and triumphant music. Only for it to not matter at all and he’s just in charge. That weird disconnect happens a lot actually where characters say and do one thing but then the plot just happens the way it wants to. John Malkovich is even better this season though; the way he delivers the most mundane lines is just sublime. Again, it is a good show, there’s just so much more it could be doing and I think that makes it all the more disappointing.
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Severance is damn brilliant.
Adam Scott works at a dystopian office where employees are Severed. While at work, they have no memory of their real lives. In the real world, they have no memory of their jobs. Naturally, this raises all kinds of questions about work, identity and agency, since the worker versions of the characters, for all intents and purposes, are perpetually at their jobs and know nothing else.
It’s unsettling and surreal and compelling, with fantastic visuals and a story that unfolds and builds to a masterpiece of a season finale that reveals so much…but leaves so many questions.
I don’t think I’ve felt this way about a show since Twin Peaks. 
Plus it has one of my favorite title sequences in recent memory.
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Your review is perfect. My wife and I felt exactly as you did in season 1 and then came back for season 2 but stopped after 1 or 2 episodes.
It should have kept making fun of the politicians. That was some of its best moments, their portrayals of the guys who worked in the Trump White House and their parody of AOC (who they only referred to as Angry Young Congresswoman) we’re the best parts of the show.
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