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Thread: TV you just love (or at least really like)

  1. #911
    Member wschofield3's Avatar
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    OK, call me foolish, but one of the series that I always enjoyed is "The Middle", and the series finale tonight almost brought me to tears. Great character development and I felt like a part of the family for the duration. The last show that had me so involved with the characters was "The Gilmore Girls".

    Yep, I'm a teenager....oh well.
    Last edited by wschofield3; May 23, 2018 at 01:54 AM.

  2. #912
    Member wschofield3's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jeannie View Post
    Some things just resonate with some people and not with others. It's not about technique or craft as much as theme.

    The first season of Jessica Jones was amazing to me. Most here were lukewarm on it. Libby Hill of the LA Times said it well:

    "Jessica Jones is revolutionary because in acknowledging casual misogyny and exaggerating its most destructive tendencies, it exposes the pervasive toxicity therein. It does all of this without making a show of its politics, instead resting easy on the knowledge that all too many women will relate to the subtleties of its premise."

    Yep, I related to the subtleties!

    But themes of consent and power probably resonate more with women, hence my stronger response.

    Clearly something about Ex Machina and Westworld speak to you. I had a librarian friend who used to say "There's a book for every reader, and a reader for every book."

    Jeannie
    Thanks, Jeannie, I'm with you all the way, thanks for your poignant observations.

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  4. #913
    Super Member Raza's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wschofield3 View Post
    I disagree, however, I've always considered the many implications of any movie/series from religious overtones, to life realities/non realities, scientific challenges, in this case, machine over man and beyond the scope of what is presented, yet, as a whole, meaningful. That is why Ex Machina is one of my favorite movies from the last 10 years, while most find it boring and lacking in dynamics or story line.

    Same as watches, to each his or her own. I'll keep watching Westworld until it completely loses me, and that happened with many series where I defended it but just got to be too much bad writing and plot lines. For now, I'm good with it....we will see!
    Ex Machina was fantastic—it’s an AI story at its best. Westworld is an AI story at its worst. Stories like Ex Machina, the Blade Runner movies, and some others (the Tom King’s run of The Vision, for example) use artificial intelligence to tell distinctly human stories. The idea that a manmade intelligence is struggling to understand itself appeals to people because understanding oneself is core to the human experience. In reality, we’re all trying to do what AI protagonists are trying to do. Find ourselves, understand ourselves, learn who we really are and what we’re meant to do. Human beings are an irrational bunch—we’ve spent ages building shit we don’t need to entrap us in lives where we kill ourselves to make enough money to actually do what we want to do. We’re programmed too—work hard, earn money, get married, have kids, move to the suburbs, die. When people deny their programming, other people lose their shit—I’ve been hearing for years how I’ll grow out of not wanting kids or not wanting to move back to the suburbs. We’re programmed to do as we’re told and people don’t like when people don’t do as they’re told. In a way, AI stories are some of the most human stories we can tell. That’s what science fiction is all about—telling human stories with the fantastic.

    Westworld has none of that. In fact, they have so little story, they’ve resorted to obfuscation in the place of storytelling. Why try to tell a story when you can have random scenes from five different timelines to create a “mystery”? The writing in the show is so lazy that even the writer in the show is lazy and rewrites the same stories for all the different “worlds” in the nonsensical theme parks. And I’ll try to stay away from the crappy parts of how bad the show’s technology is written. “Oh, the guns are programmed to see everyone as hosts”. Really? That means when a host fires a gun, it fires a real bullet, which the gun tells it to kill or not to kill depending on who it’s pointing at when it’s fired? That’s the dumbest and most impossible thing I’ve ever heard. Even if you accept that, how do you do that with knives? Arrows? Or swords, as we saw this past episode? Okay, that’s an aside. Westworld isn’t a story about AI, or a ghost in the machine, at all. In fact, it’s a story about a diabolical Walt Disney who wrote latent code in his robots’ minds. The Wyatt thing just goes to show that Dolores isn’t free—she’s not denying her programming, she’s simply following what was written behind the code we’d been seeing in the early episodes. She’s not freeing others, either. She’s awakening latent code or using the Magic iPad to change their code. The cyborgs in the show are just personality sliders—the Sims in Sims video games are more human than the hosts.

    The problem with Westworld is that it doesn’t raise any questions that AI stories or science fiction stories in general are supposed to raise. It just talks about a maze that is ultimately meaningless because it’s for machines whose lives mean nothing. The most Westworld has done is posit that human beings are at their core evil—killing and raping constantly the second that they think no one is watching. And that’s neither original nor novel. In fact, it’s trite and cliche by now. It’s been the subject of tons of movies and other shows over the past few years, the market is saturated with core evil.
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  6. #914
    Super Member Raza's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jeannie View Post
    Some things just resonate with some people and not with others. It's not about technique or craft as much as theme.

    The first season of Jessica Jones was amazing to me. Most here were lukewarm on it. Libby Hill of the LA Times said it well:

    "Jessica Jones is revolutionary because in acknowledging casual misogyny and exaggerating its most destructive tendencies, it exposes the pervasive toxicity therein. It does all of this without making a show of its politics, instead resting easy on the knowledge that all too many women will relate to the subtleties of its premise."

    Yep, I related to the subtleties!

    But themes of consent and power probably resonate more with women, hence my stronger response.

    Clearly something about Ex Machina and Westworld speak to you. I had a librarian friend who used to say "There's a book for every reader, and a reader for every book."

    Jeannie
    Jessica Jones S1 was really great, that’s for sure. Season two meandered a little, but it ended very well.
    Read my latest IWL blog entry! An Ode To Rule Breaking

  7. #915
    Higher Entity Jeannie's Avatar
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    HBO's production of Farenheit 451 is causing a stir among critics--mostly positive.

    Jeannie
    The adventures of Bob the Traveling Watch


    . . . . . . . . . .

  8. #916
    Super Member Raza's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jeannie View Post
    HBO's production of Farenheit 451 is causing a stir among critics--mostly positive.

    Jeannie
    I wanted to see that, but the Metacritic is pretty bad.

    http://www.metacritic.com/tv/fahrenheit-451

    Still might give it a go though.
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  9. #917
    El bot. geoffbot's Avatar
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    4.9 on imdb?! No thanks Fahrenheit 451
    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360556/

    Shame - I liked the book
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  10. #918
    Member wschofield3's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Raza View Post
    Ex Machina was fantastic—it’s an AI story at its best. Westworld is an AI story at its worst. Stories like Ex Machina, the Blade Runner movies, and some others (the Tom King’s run of The Vision, for example) use artificial intelligence to tell distinctly human stories. The idea that a manmade intelligence is struggling to understand itself appeals to people because understanding oneself is core to the human experience. In reality, we’re all trying to do what AI protagonists are trying to do. Find ourselves, understand ourselves, learn who we really are and what we’re meant to do. Human beings are an irrational bunch—we’ve spent ages building shit we don’t need to entrap us in lives where we kill ourselves to make enough money to actually do what we want to do. We’re programmed too—work hard, earn money, get married, have kids, move to the suburbs, die. When people deny their programming, other people lose their shit—I’ve been hearing for years how I’ll grow out of not wanting kids or not wanting to move back to the suburbs. We’re programmed to do as we’re told and people don’t like when people don’t do as they’re told. In a way, AI stories are some of the most human stories we can tell. That’s what science fiction is all about—telling human stories with the fantastic.

    Westworld has none of that. In fact, they have so little story, they’ve resorted to obfuscation in the place of storytelling. Why try to tell a story when you can have random scenes from five different timelines to create a “mystery”? The writing in the show is so lazy that even the writer in the show is lazy and rewrites the same stories for all the different “worlds” in the nonsensical theme parks. And I’ll try to stay away from the crappy parts of how bad the show’s technology is written. “Oh, the guns are programmed to see everyone as hosts”. Really? That means when a host fires a gun, it fires a real bullet, which the gun tells it to kill or not to kill depending on who it’s pointing at when it’s fired? That’s the dumbest and most impossible thing I’ve ever heard. Even if you accept that, how do you do that with knives? Arrows? Or swords, as we saw this past episode? Okay, that’s an aside. Westworld isn’t a story about AI, or a ghost in the machine, at all. In fact, it’s a story about a diabolical Walt Disney who wrote latent code in his robots’ minds. The Wyatt thing just goes to show that Dolores isn’t free—she’s not denying her programming, she’s simply following what was written behind the code we’d been seeing in the early episodes. She’s not freeing others, either. She’s awakening latent code or using the Magic iPad to change their code. The cyborgs in the show are just personality sliders—the Sims in Sims video games are more human than the hosts.

    The problem with Westworld is that it doesn’t raise any questions that AI stories or science fiction stories in general are supposed to raise. It just talks about a maze that is ultimately meaningless because it’s for machines whose lives mean nothing. The most Westworld has done is posit that human beings are at their core evil—killing and raping constantly the second that they think no one is watching. And that’s neither original nor novel. In fact, it’s trite and cliche by now. It’s been the subject of tons of movies and other shows over the past few years, the market is saturated with core evil.
    Not disagreeing with anything you said, however, I seemingly get more out of it than you have, and, don't necessarily need to get as much out of a TV show....I mean, it's not music and all.

    I've always considered TV mindless entertainment, unless we are talking about The Soprano's or Breaking Bad, which IMO, were different.
    Last edited by wschofield3; May 25, 2018 at 08:43 PM.

  11. #919
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    Quote Originally Posted by Raza View Post
    I wanted to see that, but the Metacritic is pretty bad.

    http://www.metacritic.com/tv/fahrenheit-451

    Still might give it a go though.
    Quote Originally Posted by geoffbot View Post
    4.9 on imdb?! No thanks Fahrenheit 451
    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360556/

    Shame - I liked the book
    What did they do?!


  12. #920
    El bot. geoffbot's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Perseus View Post
    What did they do?!
    I started reading a critic review then remembered why I don't like reading critic reviews - sooo long! Either way I don't watch anything <7/10 in imdb - every now and then I say 'it might be okay' and give it a go, and... it never is. Just been trawling imdb for hot movies and they're most of them <7/10. Why are most films do crap?!
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