But Is It on Netflix? - Streaming Video Service Thread: Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney+, Peacock, YouTube TV, AT+T Watch, Philo, Playstation Vue, HBO Max, HBO Now, Facebook Live and many more

I watched the Dahmer show on Netflix and I’m really grossed out by it. Not simply by its content (which is gross) but it really talks out both sides of its mouth for the whole show. It’s creators claim it’s meant to humanize the victims and draw out the systemic racism and homophobia that helped Dahmer to get away with his crimes… but more often than not it’s just a creepy show whose protagonist is a killer. There’s even a whole episode about who gets to profit off of this story, and whose voices get to narrate this story… as if the show is not committing all the violations its characters lament.

On a recent flight, I occasionally glanced over the shoulder of a passenger in front of me, as she sampled various Paramount+ programming on her seatback TV (sans subtitles, so I only had the visuals to go on):

(a) the first two episodes of "Mayor of Kingstown," which seemed to blend disturbing scenes of violence with shots of Jeremy Renner grimly getting into and out of a car;
(b) several eps. of "Seal Team," which looked corny and boring as hell; and
(c) "Criminal Minds: Evolution," a show that I understand some people appreciate on a "campy fun" level, but which looked to me like straight-up murder p0rn.

It drove home what TV can be like when you stray outside the "critically acclaimed & buzzworthy" lane...

I'd be fairly curious to know what effect the pervasive bleakness of much of today's televisual offerings has on the psychology of today's viewers.

I couldn't even look straight at some of the Criminal Minds sh1t, man... I don't know how ppl can watch that stuff

(b) several eps. of "Seal Team," which looked corny and boring as hell; and

A pale imitation of the Unit without any of the weirdness that made that entertaining.

finally finished Ted Lasso season 3 what a fucking piece of shit, bafflingly poorly written, all over the place tonally, just a giant spaghetti bowl of unrelated plotlines

the nate stuff? what the fuck? he become a "good guy" again out of the blue then his redemption story is picking up jock straps again while they give Roy the job??

the shit with Danny turning all violent during world competition

Keely's plotlines were all over the place and for what?

dumb dumb dumb

we kinda forgot to finish the season awhile back and i hope my kids don't remember tbh

Didn't mind the finale, but after such an erratic, often terribly unfocused season, it felt like it was rushing to tie up its various (mostly pointless) plots and characters. A waste, really.

I've not seen the finale yet but the whole Nate storyline has been really sour and pointless.

Caught up with a couple of older docs on Hulu that were pretty good:

The Curse of Von Dutch - I’d vaguely heard of this brand but maybe it didn’t make it to New Zealand? Fascinating story of the seriously fucked up stuff (drug dealing, cartel connections, hit men, murder) going on behind the scenes of building the company. Lol Von Dutch was a nazi sympathizer?!

The Donut King - a refugee from Cambodia who built a donut empire on the West Coast. He sponsored hundreds of Cambodian refugees after the Khmer Rouge was overthrown, trained them and got them set up to run their own donut shops. Lots of first person accounts of that time period in Cambodia. Not a subject i knew much about so really interesting. So funny (not really) to hear Ford and Carter consistently talking about the US being a nation of immigrants, and welcoming Cambodian refugees. So opposite of what we hear today.

I've seen the latter, it was really interesting.

Lol Von Dutch was a nazi sympathizer?!

doesn't surprise me since people into that brand reek of racism to me

Eh, the original dude had nothing to do with the brand, and I think part of why the trend cratered was that stuff about him coming out (I haven't seen the doc, but I remember all this from the time). I didn't like those douchey hats either, but I don't think there's a connection there...

Von Dutch’s artwork was the basis of the brand - the brand font and the flying eyeball. He didn’t copyright his work so anyone could use it. This guy Ed was selling Von Dutch patches at some clothing trade show and this drug dealer and his protégée took one look and were like yeah that’s gonna sell (the hats came way later). Ed was supposed to get a cut of the business but allegedly got screwed over so later on he revealed that he had a deathbed letter - never seen before - written by Von Dutch that basically said he didn’t want to live in a world full N******, Jews and Mexicans, and that hitler had the right idea. He gave an to some Orange County newspaper who published it.

The designer they took on in the last few years - who took it from a workwear brand for surfers etc, to more of a glittery pop culture, mtv style brand - went on to design the Ed Hardy brand.

finally finished Ted Lasso season 3 what a fucking piece of shit, bafflingly poorly written, all over the place tonally, just a giant spaghetti bowl of unrelated plotlines

the nate stuff? what the fuck? he become a "good guy" again out of the blue then his redemption story is picking up jock straps again while they give Roy the job??

the shit with Danny turning all violent during world competition

Keely's plotlines were all over the place and for what?

dumb dumb dumb

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, June 5, 2023 3:13 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I really think the show's heart is in the right place so I feel bad saying it but it's pretty lame a lot of the time. Astonishing cast, tbh, but the tone misses. I hesitate to suggest it was trying too hard but I think it does. It seemed as if it was trying to fill the space vacated by Schitt's Creek but it was nowhere near as funny nor anywhere near that show's level of earning its heartwarming moments, pathos, relationship heartbreak, etc.

yeah the nate storyline on ted lasso really went nowhere, plus he was redeemed by falling in love with a girl, big eye-rolling whoop. We also learned absolutely nothing about his girlfriend other than she was Polish, and she went from ignoring him one second before suddenly deciding she liked him back. huh?  

for the other characters, I feel like they had some good ideas about where they wanted the story to go but forgot to write a bunch of scenes in between e.g. i appreciated that keeley ended up choosing herself over the two dudes fighting over her, but there was little to no explanation about what exactly happened between her and roy. and almost every big decision made by the characters this season happened offscreen - nate quitting his job, the team deciding to take him back, ted deciding to go home, etc. 

Meanwhile on the state of things. Some good quotes in here:

https://www.vulture.com/2023/06/streaming-industry-netflix-max-disney-hulu-apple-tv-prime-video-peacock-paramount.html

“The entire industry,” says the director Steven Soderbergh, who has been navigating structural changes in Hollywood since 1989’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, “has moved from a world of Newtonian economics into a world of quantum economics, where two things that seem to be in opposition can be true at the same time: You can have a massive hit on your platform, but it’s not actually doing anything to increase your platform’s revenue. It’s absolutely conceivable that the streaming subscription model is the crypto of the entertainment business.”

Quality content on Netflix. Search string “how to”. Top results include documentaries on building a sex room, becoming a dictator (complete with hitler picture), and fixing a drug scandal. Wtf

re Ted Lasso

this season was definitely a strugglebus, arbitrarily sending all the characters off in weird directions & inventing conflict where there was none etc, it all got a bit weird. But i do still like watching it, i think mabe just bc of the goodwill built up from s1i guess. there’s nice bits here and there still.
i did like the jamie/roy friendship that started up in amsterdam w the training & bike riding. also seeing jamie’s bizarre relationship w his mum lol (and his hilarious childhood bedroom)

The cast and acting are all top-notch, just have no idea what went awry with the story (stories) this season. It's like they literally lost the plot. There were a bunch of delays, right? Maybe it was a covid casualty, and they were left with limited time with the cast, or the cast all together or something like that, and developed all this stand-alone secondary story stuff as a stopgap only to struggle to tie it all together again? But the key disappointments were, yeah, separating the cast to no appreciable gain, and the amount of conflict (and resolution) that took place off-screen, or, worse, for no reason at all: Roy breaking up with Keeley, Nate's heel turn, etc.

Brett Goldstein and Brendan Hunt were also making Shrinking at the same time?

Along with producer/showrunner Bill Lawrence - as I understand it, he was the big loss from S3, and explains why all the storylines went haywire.

the bar was pretty low for me, I found it fine. It was dumb but also cute enough. I didn't mind most of the schmaltz. When the Sound of Music thing happened I threw the TV out the window but other than that, whatever.

A few weeks later, Peacock pulled the plug on Schur’s TV adaptation of Field of Dreams even though it was deep into preproduction. “They just changed their mind,” says Schur. “They didn’t want to spend the money anymore.” He notes that the project will have one lasting artifact, perhaps the ultimate monument to Peak TV’s unfulfilled potential: “We built a baseball stadium in a cornfield in Iowa that’s still sitting there as we speak.” They built it, and nobody came.

Vulture article is good so far, so much of the streaming model seems unsustainable (at least as far as making non-trash content).

"Peak TV's unfulfilled potential"

What was the potential exactly?

BJ & The Bear reboot

and almost every big decision made by the characters this season happened offscreen - nate quitting his job, the team deciding to take him back, ted deciding to go home, etc.

― Roz, Tuesday, June 6, 2023 1:00 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah this (and as josh echoed) is the real problem, there were a couple times i rewinded like did i miss something? felt like a lot of what should have been the "big scenes" didn't exist

yeah i noticed that too

Season 3 of Warrior will be on Max June 29. If you haven't seen it it's basically a combination of Kung Fu, Deadwood and Banshee, and it fucking rules.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89dEEKEzglw

I like this dumb 'based on a true story' show on peacock.

warrior is very fun

If you liked True Lies, FUBAR is an 8 hr spiritual cousin. Dad and daughter discover they’ve been hiding CIA jobs from each other and loved ones, must collaborate on saving the world while reconnecting. Tom Arnold cameos, sarcastic quips and wackiness aplenty. Stakes don’t feel high, but the cast has decent chemistry.

Did anyone watch Dead Ringers on Amazon? I’m halfway through and enjoying it. I never saw the Cronenberg movie so I don’t really have any sense of where this will end up.

i didn't watch it yet, I heard it was excellent. the cronenberg movie is also excellent, no idea how much they have to do with one another though, I assumed the series used that concept as a launching point and probably went in another direction. I unreservedly love Rachel Weitz so I should get on this, two Rachels is better than one

Weisz..if i love her so much I should probably learn how to spell her name.

She’s great in this

I watched five minutes of the first episode and went “oh, oh no”

I got to the end but it was a real chore. Far too much going on, twice as long as it needed to be and I really didn't understand which one the core story was supposed to be.

I watched five minutes of the first episode and went “oh, oh no”

lol is that good or bad?

on a different horror tip, I just finished and really liked Gannibal - Japanese rural cannibalism series on Disney+. Apart from the people eating, thought it was pretty effective re: the creepiness of living in a village where everyone is all up in each other's business.

Mrs Davis was an absolutely wild ride. Unreserved recommendation.

Japanese rural cannibalism series on Disney+

I love how Disney's thing of having I think Hulu's catalogue in Europe makes sentences like this one possible.

The other two continues to be totally ridiculous and better and better.

Polish action mom movie is better than the J-Lo action mom movie. imho. (they are the same movie. i'm guessing the Polish one came first? on netflix.)

I'm sure if I went back to watch the first season of The Other Two, I wouldn't even recognize it compared to the show it's become (and I love the current season)

I don't even remember but I'm pretty sure it wasn't as totally broad and off the rails as it's become. It's so much dumb fun right now though.

The final season of Mayans MC is currently streaming, one episode per week, on Hulu. I blasted through the first four a few months ago so I'm riding with it to the bitter end. No lies, this is a seriously weepy telenovela disguised as a hardass crime drama. This gang of violent bikers, perpetually at war, spends an incredible amount of time hugging and crying. One dude's big subplot is him trying to pull his elderly mother out of her depression after he's had to put her in a home! It's a seriously rich text in the "crisis of masculinity" genre.

how many episodes of The Rehearsal should I watch before I dive into the thread?

lol is that good or bad?

It was a lot of gory childbirth scenes, I was not prepared

how many episodes of The Rehearsal should I watch before I dive into the thread?

probably all of them