Finally getting around to Season 4 of Umbrella Academy and it's really good. I've enjoyed them all, but this one imo takes it up a notch. It has a bigger cast, yet still really manages to drill into and develop the characters even more. Lots of new intrigue and mysteries, the new Sparrow Academy is an interesting bunch to pit against the Umbrella's, more crazy time hijinks and apolalyptic scenarios. It's one of the best comic book shows out there. It manages the difficult task of being both goofy yet genuine at the same time. Not nearly as devastatingly dark and gory as The Boys, but with a gravitas you don't really get out of the Marvel family either. Hits a good mark.
My wife still watched Umbrella, and I catch parts here and there, but its just not for me whatsoever. I dropped out halfway through season one. I'm a Marvel guy, and fit better in my lane.
It's definitely different! i like Marvel quite a bit too, though some of the shows are hit and miss. Umbrella is a fun and different alternative. You definitely have to change expectations though. It has some gore and crazy violence at times, and can get pretty weird. I like the mystery aspect of them unravelling why the big event they are trying to stop is going to happen and then trying to change it. Convoluted as hell, but fun. The acting is also quite stellar.
I am also a Marvel guy, and I am a huge fan of Umbrella Academy. I really like the dysfunctional family dynamics of the show.
Yeah, all of the dark stuff is just not my cup of tea. And from what I watched a lot of the dialogue is just so bleak, sardonic, and confrontational. Like Tim Burton + Wes Anderson.
I finished watching the entire season of Andor, and its extremely well made. The acting, direction and production are all top notch, and it tells a very large story in an extremely detailed way. The 12-episode season is basically made up of four 3-episode arcs, each with more than two hours of screen time. So in a way its kind of like a four feature film set that tells one broad story. The show is very heavy, which is not typically my thing. It rarely has any levity at all, and it a serious drudge though hard situations. There are many various character arcs, some of which eventually collide, and others that do not or are left open. They are already working on a 12-episode season two that will lead directly into the events of Rogue One. The show isn't without its faults, as it continues the recent Star Wars problem of either assuming that every planet only has one small town where all of the population lives and/or that the Empire, 15 years after its creation, has an all encompassing control over every single small settlement on the billions of habitable planets in the galaxy, which I simply find hard to stomach. I keep thinking to myself why doesn't this character just go somewhere else, and its always left open, likely because its just easier to write that way. But I think that if they took the time to try and close loop holes and write a few lines of dialog here or there, it would help satisfy a lot of that. As it is, it keeps bugging me.
I finally got around to watching Dark on Netflix, a German show that has had rave reviews so has been on my watchlist for a while. It's very good, probably one of the best shows I've seen that deals with a time travel storyline. But...it''s also the most confusing show I've ever watched! You have to be 100% concentrating to even have a chance to try and follow it, and even then I still struggled to keep pace with what was going on. It has to be binged too, can't leave it for a few weeks and go back to watch the rest or you've no hope of being able to pick up the threads again. It has a satisfying ending though which, more or less, explains what was going on. Without that, I'd say don't bother, as you have to commit time to watching it and it would've been extremely frustrating. I'd read beforehand that the ending was landed and that was one of the reasons I stuck with it, even though my braincells were getting strained most of the way through!
I loved the 'Wool' series of books by Hugh Howey that came out a few years ago, and Apple TV has now made a TV show of them renamed Silo, which will be streaming from 5th May. Decent cast with Tim Robbins, Rebecca Ferguson and Iain Glen in it. Hopefully should be good and gets the full treatment of all the books over a few seasons.
Bluey Ok a 7 minute kid’s cartoon on D+ doesn’t seem to fit this thread’s normal fare, but this is a great TV show, not a great kid’s show but a great show. There are lots of reasons why people like the show and some of the most often mentioned are a positive father figure, genuine humor for adults and children, variation in storytelling, artistic style, the music and willingness to deal with heavy subject matter in tactful way. I will add some of my own reasons. 1) It’s Authentic with a capital A. The children act and talk like children. This is the first episode I watched, just choosing a random episode from the list. I have distinct memories of using very similar logic when I was playing games as a little kid. The architecture. I grew up in the city in which Bluey is set. All of the houses shown are genuine examples of houses of different eras in the city. The shops, libraries and schools are likewise genuine representations of actual buildings. The art style is somewhat stylized but the houses are based on genuine buildings. The only thing that’s a bit inauthentic is the geography in that things that in reality are far apart are treated as being close to Bluey’s home. The wildlife. You see all the birds, animals and bugs shown. Even more importantly you hear the sounds of the birds and animals even when they’re not shown and they are true to real life. The stories feel like real things that happened to real people. Anyone who has taken young kids to the movies will recognize this Often the stories are embellished and taken further than what started it, but you feel there is a genuine thing that happened behind the story. 2) It treats the military as a normal part of life. One of the grandads is an ex-soldier. One of the kids at school is an army brat. There are pictures on the wall of the house showing the grandad in his uniform and older black and white photos which I recognize as unit photos from WW1. It’s all treated as a normal part of life. So many shows treat the military as either heroic angelic beings or trained killers in our midst, so it is really refreshing to have the military treated as normal and unremarkable. In the episode ‘Army’ which gets a lot of praise for the way it depicts ADHD, I am reminded of my best friend when I was a young kid who was an army brat, and Rusty is a dead ringer for my friend. 3) There is no agenda. The focus of the show is kid’s play and how that is important for kids. There is no attempt to moralize or sermonize on deeper social issues. It’s so good to have a show you can watch and enjoy without being preached at.
I've read and seen good things about it. My kids are old enough that they don't want to watch "kids" programs any longer, so we missed out on it in our house, but I still follow a lot of parents accounts on social media, so I see people posting about it.
Turn it on for yourself then, it’s genuinely entertaining TV. There are a couple of episodes that carry a real emotional gut punch for parents, but I think you have to watch a number of normal episodes to get a handle on the characters for the emotional episodes to have impact.
