The TV thread

Two episodes left in my Sons of Anarchy binge. Gotten through 6 seasons and 11 episodes in little over two weeks.

As I was about midway through Sons, I recognized a feeling that I've had on other binges of popular shows that I only catch up on years later. Mad Men, The Wire, 24, Dexter, Sopranos (that was back in the DVD days so took forever for that one), even something like HBO's Rome.

It's almost an anti-watercooler moment and vibe I get when binging these, in that it feels like I'm the only person in the world who knows about the show, an absurd but enjoyable feeling. It's like discovering a book no one else knows about that I get to curl up with each night and read in secret, there's an intimacy to the viewing when I'm not reading recaps, tweets, messageboard arguments about it. I start thinking things like, God, Jon Hamm is so good, I can't wait until people start discovering this guy's talent. With Anarchy it's been, Man, if people knew about this tiny show he's making, people would think Kurt Sutter is utterly unstable and possibly dangerous but damn I love his series.

Once I do complete the binge, I enjoy then going back and reading all the recaps, all the arguments, all the rankings of seasons and episodes and characters, all the interviews, watching YouTube tributes, reading entire books dedicated to the series. And while I love that part of the post-binge, I also regret a tiny bit that I've lost that personal connection to these little upstart shows no one in the world knows about.

 

That is an interesting take on it. I also binge-watched Sons of Anarchy after it had gone off the air, but I didn't have that feeling that you are getting. Oddly enough, at least one of the spoilers I had been told turned out to be wrong. This was about three years ago and I also got through it very quickly. In my case, I started right before surgery on my foot. I wasn't able to walk for a while after the surgery, so I did very little but binge-watch the show for days.

I'm curious to hear what you think when you have finished.

 

I'm catching up with Blindspot season three - it's a ridiculous show, but the puzzles are fun, the actors work well together, the stops around the globe are nice to look at and who doesn't love Patterson? And some of the doses of humor are very creative. Bill Nye the Science Guy is Patterson's dad? Not the actor, actually Bill Nye The Science Guy. And Weller is a total fanboi of his?

 

Just finished it. I loved the show, the sheer delightful absurdity of it, the violence, the humanity, though the last season was....a bit much. But also understandable given Jax's mental state and what he thought had happened. Also it took me four seasons to realize Sutter played Otto.

 

I think I knew going in that Sutter played Otto, which was interesting given all the horrible crap that kept happening to his character.

I had some problems with the final season, too, as did many who watched the show. The appearances by Michael Chiklis were distracting, but I get it was meant as a nod to fans of The Shield, which was also written by Sutter.

Overall, I enjoyed the show for many of the same reasons, though some story lines dragged a bit. I always thought it was fun that Sutter based it on Hamlet. So many of the performances are fantastic, especially Ron Perlman as Claudius....I mean Clay.

 

But Venus Van Damme...agreed toward the end the MC seemed to take one step forward and two steps back with each Jax decision. I have enjoyed Mayans MC. I'm surprised Sutter hasn't already landed a streaming deal since his departure from Fox/Disney. Imagine what he could do on Netflix.

 

Mayans isn't bad, but not on a level with SOA at its peak.

Venus Van Damme was a fun supporting character.

 

Trying the free week trial of Peacock TV, after that it's 4.99 a month.

Started with Rockford Files which I never got into but can see myself binging on now after the first episode.

 

Peacock is free with ads that don't seem intrusive from what I've experienced so far. The 4.99 per month is to go ad free.

 

I thought the $4.99 was premium content (like EPL games and some original programming) and $9.99 was premium and ad free.

 

Gave Schwimmer's show Intelligence a chance (3 of the 6 episodes) but doubt I'll keep going.

The first episode was promising but it started going downhill from there.

 

We started up season two of Castle Rock, which kind of seemed like it came and went without making much of an impact. The hodge-podge of King's work for this season seems to be Misery, Salem's Lot, Jerusalem's Lot and maybe Carrie. We've only seen two episodes, but so far it seems as good as S1. My wife likes it more than I do, because she's from the area where they shot it - Gardner, MA - so she gets a chuckle about how they didn't need to do any set design for a rundown mill town.