At the risk of more off-topic rambling. Walking Dead bugs me. I do see it entirely as a libertarian fantasy where rules and oversight are gone and everyone is ludicrously self-sufficient.
I stopped watching several seasons ago, but was amazed they still had working cars with plenty of gas, no real food production, and nobody was interested in preserving and passing down any useful knowledge - like how to actually make or build anything, not even basic tools.
“One third of this show is not OK” is not a ringing endorsement. We made it through a couple of episodes, moved on. Bad science, bad choices… it couldn’t keep our interest, which was a shame. It sure looked pretty.
I’m still pissed over the cancellation of their One Day at a Time, which also feel into the “advertising? What’s that?” trap. I had no idea this show even existed until I started seeing memes about it, around the time the second season was released and those are what made my nesting partner and me seek it out and we loved it!
Now I’m just hoping we’ll actually get all of Disenchantment.
I don’t know that it’s the streaming consensus, so much as the habit Netflix has gotten into.
Cause this whole original content on streaming services thing is pretty new, and Netflix has been called out as an outlier for doing things this way. The other thing is Netflix is also increasingly criticized for having nothing to watch, and there have been reports of a customer retention problem. Their overall subscriber growth has started to taper fast, and a significant portion of the growth they’ve seen the last 5 years has been in developing markets.
Cause the thing is, and places like HBO found this out a long ways back. New shows bring in new subscribers, but long running shows are good for keeping them around. Which is why even Netflix bids so hard for old, long running sitcoms (though I have a whole different spiel on why this is stupid and the algorithm is lying to them).
Apparently Netflix’s base is becoming something of a revolving door, large numbers of people only subscribe for those headline series then cancel. HBO had issues with that as well, pre-streaming. A big way they dealt with it was keeping well liked but low watched series around for a good long while and re-running them regularly. So there was always something good to watch.
Netflix has an issue on that front. Frankly a lot of their money and effort was put into just filling space. They have dozens and dozens of reality shows you’ve never heard of. I mean look at these lists. The vast majority never make past 1 season, and the vast majority of them probably weren’t worth the time they got.
This also causes issues on the ancillary revenue and transmedia front. You’re not going to sell a ton of Witcher junk, if The Witcher is gone in a season or 3. You’re not getting a Star Wars grade media empire out of 2 seasons of Fate: The Winx Saga. It all represents a long term back catalog issue, not only has Netflix spent a lot of time the last few years with “nothing on”. But 20 years down the road it’s a bigger problem still. It’s a lot of money spent on things that have little to no value 6 months from now, but are still crowding up the main page years later.
They had very little competition on this front till recently. There aren’t a ton of steaming venues who have been doing original material long enough to have a show on for 7 seasons. Hulu barely did original programing, neither Apple nor Amazon can get their shit together and haven’t actually produced too many shows. But WB/HBO and Disney both hit it hard on launch. With much deeper, better back catalogs.
And I think you can see that in their recent moves. They renewed The Witcher for 3 seasons before the 2nd was even complete, they’ve been saying they expect at least 5 seasons out of it.
Compared to their past approach, where shows sometimes sat for a full year before even getting a renewal that’s a large change. Something like Glow sat in limbo for a hell of a long time before the pandemic ever came along to trigger a cancellation.
See this is the very first time I have heard of this.
I really enjoyed both seasons of this show as fun, relatively lightweight fare. There’s danger but nothing ever feels too grim, and the characters are likeable. It also looks great. So much more pleasurable to watch than the newer Star Treks.
Queer characters done well, front and center, which is the first thing that got my attention. (ETA: Including a non-binary character, one of the few appearing anywhere!) Mom as a vet suffering from depression? Huh. Didn’t know that was going to be a part of it, but oh I can so relate to that. I found it to be well done, with a good balance of humor and seriousness that often takes several seasons to reach.
I enjoyed the show, as a guilty pleasure of sorts. (Except for Parker Posey, she AND her character are excellent) But I really related with your “hate-watching, then completionism” - that happens all to often for me. I can’t end a story in the middle. It drives me crazy.
People seem to dump on the 1998 movie a lot, but they at least did an interesting number on the theme, didn’t they?
Presented here as an Irresponsible Captain Tylor AMV, because why not.
Don’t ever watch Prometheus then
I like the pseudo-fact that characters in non-sci-if always never act foolishly.
Yah, plenty of valid criticisms there. The cars thing is a Hollywood staple, mainly because (as far as I can tell) no Hollywood writers know anything about cars. Gas goes bad a lot quicker than people think, and without being maintained pretty continuously, cars stop working very quickly. Any car newer than about 1995 has to be run every 10-14 days or the alarms and other always-on electrics kill the battery, so not a single car in that show would start because every single battery would be dead. They are never shown push-starting manual transmissions which is what would be realistic. They are eventually forced to give up cars and revert to horses, but again, much later than that would have probably needed to happen.
They get to the point of building and passing down knowledge, so I think you gave up too early, but they stayed in the “scavenging off the hulk of a dead world” phase way too long. They had hundreds of people living off the contents of old stores for years, when anyone who understands supply chains knows the stores are all empty in three days if logistics shuts down.
Outside of the glaring lack of commerce, the theme of the show is really the opposite though. The people who don’t form communities die off. It takes some of the characters too long to see that, but they do get there. I mean, it’s not a fantasy by any stretch- the characters are all starving and miserable the entire time. They eat dogs and nearly die of dehydration frequently. There was a whole cannibalist town, they were starving so badly. I think the theme is actually anti-libertarian if you watch it long enough. I don’t know Kirkman’s politics, but if someone was going to write a “yay libertarianism” show it would look like a Heinlein novel, not this. People are self-sufficient for a while because they need to be, but the message is not that it’s a good idea. Quite the opposite, every plot arc is about how people need each other to survive.
Overall, I find they hit all the right notes, just on the wrong timeline. What takes them five years should have been one year. Still, it’s probably my favorite show on right now so I guess there’s no accounting for taste.
The Walking Dead started out as survival horror and ends up as political drama, and the transition was messy and took too long
I almost cited it as well, but I’ve already derailed this thread enough. Basically all sci-fi horror has this problem except possibly Aliens. Honestly, it’s hard to come up with sci-fi that doesn’t have this problem. I know I’m not alone in my desire for smart characters. That’s the stated reason everyone loved The Martian so much.
This explains how miraculous it was that we got 4 seasons of Castlevania. It’s one of those shows which was a slow burner after the first half of the series where we got to see character progression from the fallout of their decisions. I doubt their second series based on Simon Belmont and crew will get any more luck considering how aggressive Netflix is.
Honestly, I find Parker Posey’s Doctor Smith the LEAST enjoyable part of the show. (Not her acting, which is actually quite good, just her character arc.)
I think the storylines involving the robot’s origins are the best parts.
I like it, not enough to care all that much if that it’s ending… but I’ll watch it and fold laundry or whatever.
I get that people don’t like when characters do dumb things, but it’s very much PG family action sci-fi… a fun romp for kids. Most of the original show was campy nonsense too, I’d be more inclined to criticize this remake for being too serious (but at least more fun than the 90s movie).
Also I like this series because it spawned a short period of time where people on social media were thirsting over the robot.
Series 1 especially felt like a family friendly version of The Martian, what with the characters constantly finding themselves in peril that they need to engineering their way out of
I’m glad you went first with this opinion, since we seem to be in the minority. Like you, I find Dr. Smith almost as annoying as the original. One of the other characters in both shows should have quietly killed off the Smiths after a betrayal or two. And the central robot mystery is my favorite part.
Off-topic, for non-binary characters you might enjoy Work In Progress.
Thank you, I will check it out.
