Stump Sohla, on YouTube. She’s really good. She’s a brilliant cook and funny
I watched the first episode of Eureka, and thought it was entertaining. I’ll watch a few more episodes and see where it goes.
Just finished “The Queen’s Gambit” on Netflix.
It was OK.
I’ve watched the first half of the season and really like it. You’re majorly underselling it by comparing it to Hallmark or Nickelodeon though. It’s very well made and doesn’t have all the constant cheesiness. I wish the main characters were college students instead of high school students as it would make a lot more sense.
The ages, hence Nickelodeon. I liked it, but it is really just a long Rom Com (which is my go to genre). Too long in my opinion. Some of the auxiliary characters are too cliched, a la Hallmark.
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Not really binging, but an episode or two daily for the Crown season 4.
Also Ozark.
My wife wanted a distraction from election drama, so I’ve binged on a bit too many shows of late (with and without my wife).
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The Good Place. I really liked The Good Place, though it changes a lot over the course of its run and gets quite dark. I can only assume the show arose because someone bet a philosophy major that they couldn’t make a TV comedy about moral philosophy. The philosopher definitely won the bet.
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Umbrella Academy. Fun. Weird. But slow, particularly in season 2. This mostly results from trying to give reasonable character arcs to 6+ different characters. They’re mostly successful, but if you’re really focused on just a few arcs then the others can feel like filler.
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The Boys (Season 2). Seems to lose a lot of story momentum in season 2. Similar to Umbrella Academy, season 2 follows a bunch of separate threads, with not much advancing with respect to the main plot until the end. But the team in Umbrella are… more human?.. less caricatures? in a way that makes their arcs more interesting to see (to me at least).
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Dark. Almost got through 2 episodes, and then realized I could be doing something - anything - else. Booooring. Does this actually pick up at some point?
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Black Mirror. Got partway through the first episode; gave up when it clearly seemed to be going down the most obvious and boring path from the initial conceit. Are the later episodes any better?
One of the best shows imo. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two seasons. I got really attached to every character. Season 3 was meh but it had to wrap up so …
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The first episode is where the prime minister f’ed a pig?
Yeah there are much better episodes in later episodes/seasons. It didn’t get its fame for nothing. Good to watch when drunk or stoned for added feels.
How far in do you think I should go before I decide it (Dark) just isn’t for me? I mean, it pretty clearly goes places, but so far doesn’t seem in any rush to talk about any of it.
I think episode 3 or 4 is when things start to “click” for certain characters that something isn’t right with regard to the timing of things. That’s when things get interesting.
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Ok. I’ll give Dark a few more episodes then.
You call getting partway through one episode a binge? We have very different lives!
Yes, Black Mirror is good, and the first episode is not indicative of the rest of the show, although the rest of the show is bleak and twisted, just not nearly as horrifying (at least on the surface).
I actually thought the first episode is pretty realistic.
Err… the programs I listed roll up to at least 45 hours, watched over the course of about 10 days. Which is kind of disturbing, honestly, since it was all done after the kids has been put to bed.
(The first Black Mirror episode wasn’t horrifying, just silly. You want what? Yeah, no. Sometimes random stuff happens that might end a political career. That’s part of the job, and you just spin it the best you can. The ransom demand just sets a phenomenally bad precedent, and national leaders make decisions that get people killed all the time. Sure, maybe these folks are stupid, selfish and short-sighted, but if so why should I care about the predictable consequences they suffer as a result of bad decisions that were ultimately made purely for narrative purposes?)
I don’t think the focus was really on what happens to the Prime Minister, it’s really the people’s mindset. I think it’s entirely realistic that people will actually push the PM to go through with the extortion demands, mostly because many people just want the spectacle of it. People get off on what happens to public figures, however tragic and disgusting,
True. But I don’t need a work of fiction to tell me that. I get enough of that on the “news” already. 
Yeah well, this was released prior to the Trump fiesta. Things were a lot milder back then.
On that note, this episode is actually fairly uncharacteristic of Black Mirror, since it doesn’t really have a futuristic tone to it at all. but it does capture the essence of a black mirror (reflecting the dark side of humanity).
The good thing about BM is that you can watch any season and any episode, they’re not related. but they do hide easter eggs sometimes from earlier episodes.
Ok, fine. I’ll watch some more Black Mirror. Right after I watch some more gloomy Germans investigating child abductions, nuclear plants and suicidal fathers (I think?).