What is your favorite TV show?

Haven't read any of the books, I liked much of it up untill very recently, by the latest season, I have lost a lot of interest since the "twists" and "surprises" seem very forced.

Also, it is a myth that "anyone" might die. There is a skilled illusion created by the author that principal characters die, but he cannot kill off characters truly central to the story - I mean, he could, but that would make him a bad author. A lot of the originality is not all that original, either:
The Ice wall = Mordor
That lame kid w no working legs = Frodo
The wildlings = that 30+ volume chick-novel series my mom read about "the ice people"

Frodo can't be killed, and he can't be built up this extensively and then just be killed off. The dragon-chick can't be just killed off. The lil assasin-chick can't be just killed off - and so on. The midget. These characters are safe and sound because they carry the story. IF they are killed off - the story would be bad, it would be a waste of emotional investment. Killing off Sean Bean is clever, because he did not carry the story. He was just a pleasant guy, likeable, amicable, fair, just, and all that crap - but not truly central to anything, he is expendable and replacable - and was immediately replaced by Rob (holy shit, I remember a name!) who is killed, and further replaced.

One of the more surprising kills is
that dude w the red witch, that was one of the more pointless buildups, and did indeed occur in the latest/r(?) season where things are more forced and artificial than before, but the red witch chick is still around, so I guess she continues his story-arch

Anyway, by now the whole dragon chick
being lost and surrounded by dothraki seem very forced, and my sense of suspense is being bored to death by the fact that she can either 1. get back to dragon business (then why throw this pointless delay in?) or 2. get killed off (you time-wasting emotional-investment-spoiling bastards... )

Oh, and Hodor. I remember his name.

Oh, and the whole
religious fanatic thing better take a U-turn out of boring-to-death land and go somewhere worth-while...
 
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I'm most grateful to him for the series he gave us, but I sometimes wonder about whether or not he held ADWD off until the show's release on purpose. Six years is a long time to write a book where only half your characters even appear. The guy is probably bathing in money right now, so I think it would be nice of him to finally finish the series before he dies.

I really wouldn't compare the lands beyond the Wall to Mordor. Nor Bran to Frodo. Bran's narrative feels a lot more forced in the series, and he's not that important. His actions have hardly any effect on the world. Besides, ASoIaF never was about the Others, or the dragons. Fuck that shit. It was about people and politics. Some people were disappointed that the 4th book didn't cover any of the happenings on the wall or across the sea, but it's in King's Landing that the things that matter happen.

While the story itself does have some generic fantasy elements, they are obscure, which makes them a lot more tolerable. The average person in that universe doesn't believe in magic or the undead, and dragons are just very powerful animals. The series would in fact be a lot better if Daenerys was killed off.
 
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LordAshur said:
I'm most grateful to him for the series he gave us, but I sometimes wonder about whether or not he held ADWD off until the show's release on purpose. Six years is a long time to write a book where only half your characters even appear. The guy is probably bathing in money right now, so I think it would be nice of him to finally finish the series before he dies.
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One of the reasons I tried to stay far away from the series - and most other drama-series, is that I hate being bogged down in some neverending story, this typical quest for dvd-boxes capitalist bullshit, I want a story, not to be reminded how much of a consumer whore I can be, but they GOT me (oh, look, a pun!)
They got me sitting down, watching the whole damn thing, and not even pirated either, NRK the state tv channel here decided to show entire marathons, and I got hooked, like most people trapped by it.

Now I feel cheated, and I am foreseeing a need to have bought 60 dvd sets by the time it finally ends.

I wanted to steer clear of Breaking Bad too, for the same reason, and there - thank god - the series ended. Series need to end! We watch this stuff FOR the ending, it's like South Park pointed out - as much as we like all the intrigue: WHERE ARE THE DRAGONS!?
I know they gave us a good battle-climax there, but by now I just don't trust it. Don't give me a battle climax if its nothing but a lure to have me sit through 3 more seasons untill the next battle :I

I'm such a grumpy old man with tv series, but they brought it on themselves. I never fell for "Prison Break" "4400" or stupid "Lost" either

But it just bothers me - we want a story... a story. Give us a story! If the story is good, then it can be 4 or 40 episodes, as long as it is a story with a start, middle and finish. What nobody wants is to be treated like money dispensers, and have some hypothetical show-finale dangled like a carrot in front of us for all eternity - untill it's finally cancelled due to low ratings :I
 
zegh8578 said:
I wanted to steer clear of Breaking Bad too, for the same reason, and there - thank god - the series ended. Series need to end! We watch this stuff FOR the ending, it's like South Park pointed out - as much as we like all the intrigue: WHERE ARE THE DRAGONS!?
I know they gave us a good battle-climax there, but by now I just don't trust it. Don't give me a battle climax if its nothing but a lure to have me sit through 3 more seasons untill the next battle :I
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... and I just started liking South Park even less. Fuck the dragons. What makes the series interesting is the characters, the politics and the intrigue, not its generic fantasy elements. I guess some people like watching one huge CGI army fight another, but making that the focus of the series would be like making dogfights in space the focus of Battlestar Galactica.

And about Stannis:

It's in fact unknown. Ramsay claims, in his letter to Jon Snow, that he killed Stannis. There was a sample chapter of TWOW where Theon was with Stannis' army, they had taken the Dreadfort and were preparing for a battle with the Boltons. So there's a chance that this is in fact the battle where Stannis dies.

At least they won't be able to fuck up the Ironborn parts since they don't exist.
 
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GoT is not a series - books or TV, for what it matters - that revolves around huge high fantasy battles and mythical artifacts and/or creatures. When it deploys one the aforementioned elements, just as the last season did, no surprise, it fails, and fails hard.
 
LordAshur said:
... and I just started liking South Park even less. Fuck the dragons. What makes the series interesting is the characters, the politics and the intrigue, not its generic fantasy elements. I guess some people like watching one huge CGI army fight another, but making that the focus of the series would be like making dogfights in space the focus of Battlestar Galactica.
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What I mean is that it is false advertisement, and misleading build-up. I adored the first seasons, as devoid of dragons as they were, because they offered an expectation towards something. Many expectations have paid off in full,
such as the death of Geoffrey.
I want to tell GoT what Brad Pitt said, in Seven - Don't jerk me off, man - just don't jerk me off, is all I ask!
They have been dangling those dragons around for how many seasons now, either use them, or fuck them off, but enough with the dangling :D

And I GUESSED that!
That Stannis' death wasn't in the books!
, I just didn't feel confident enough to actually guess it out loud :D
 
Hassknecht said:
Yeah, Moon Knight's pretty cool.
Venom would also be pretty cool as an antihero.
But seriously, the Punisher.
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Maybe flesh out the What If? universe in which Frank Castle gets the Venom symbiont and tames it to go on the most epic rampage against crime sadly not shown in comic.
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I've been reading the new Batman and Nightwing New 52 reboot series. They both actually extremely good.
 
Martin has a very excellent explanation for the "discrepancies" between his books and the show. As he puts it, "How many children does Scarlet O'Hara have?" The events of the written story differ with the events of the film story, because they're two different versions of the story. They're not the same story at all.

Granted, the ASOIAF books just make more sense in most respects, and the GOT seasons just follow anachronistically modern sensibilities in contrast with their medieval fantasy setting. Still, they're two different stories, which is important to remember.

What worries me is that the showrunners, David and Dan, will take their "anybody can die" stance towards characters and really do away with CORE characters who are not only still alive, but NEED to still live. Grenn dying in the show when he's still alive in the books is one thing, he's just a brother of the watch. In the show, he's much cooler, much nicer, and one of the VERY few brothers who's even characterized, so when the Battle of Castle Black needs tragic consequences to hit home with the viewers, Grenn's gotta die JUST so the tragedy and loss for Jon registers with the audience. Similar happened with Robb's show wife; she was killed off both to silence all the speculation about whether he would have an heir as well as to make the gruesomeness of the Red Wedding all the more apparently. But the lingering questions about what happened with Jeyne Westerling and whether she was pregnant or not were (and remain) very important for the books.

So, things like Tyrion reaching Dany and becoming a trusted aide is one thing; it spoils that Tyrion does make it to Dany and does manage to convince her to allow him to council her. But things like the final shot of Season 5 are a very different thing; it could be David and Dan just pulling another Grenn, or twisting the story to try and trick the viewers, or it could indeed be actual spoiler.

Conflicts between the two forms of the story besides, the show is still great. I try to forget as much as possible about the book details with each new season, because it makes for a better viewing experience. It was hard to watch Sansa's story in the latest season, because I recognized how out-of-place it was from where she stood in the books. It was also very frustrating watching Gendry get fucked over by the Brotherhood Without Banners and sent off to be a blood sacrifice for Melisandre. But some of the moments in the show, even with small adjustments, are just done PERFECTLY. Watching a badass (if totally made-up-for-the-show) fight between the Hound and Brienne, culminating in a very similar parting scene with Arya was excellent. It put a small damper on Brienne's arc, because she FINDS one of her targets, only for Arya to slip through her fingers (and then again, the following season). But the crucial point of the scene was the emotional "end" for the Hound, and that was played perfectly. It was left appropriately ambiguous, and it was just the right amount of somber and bitter.

So where it counts, the show TOTALLY gets it right. No deaths are ever wasted. Even if a character "isn't supposed" to die, the accompanying scene is really great television to enjoy.
 
They have to be careful though. I am all for creative license, either way, but that doesn't mean I will enjoy all choices made. The thing that made GoT so fun for me to follow, was that I really liked the choices, be they positive or gruesome.

That goes for every author, though, especially the longer a series becomes, the more they are expected to keep a certain concistency with the choices they make - the style of their story-telling.

On a slightly different note - did anybody notice how many other TV-series tried to fake boldness, as a response to the popularity of GoT? Most notably, I remember an episode of CSI, right in the wake of the explosive popularity of GoT, they went "oh, we can kill off central characters too! Almost!" and had this super-dramatic cliff-hanger ending, where the bff of Horatio gets shot during bullet exchange, and not only does he fall down, leaving it ambigious and suspenseful - but he makes theee death-stare, wide open, blank face, just "+_+!!!" *DEAD!!!* with a fade-to-white, the most noble of death-fade episode-endings...
Only to just whimp out completely by the very next episode, hospital scene "i'm fine guyes :]", fuckin cowards... :D
 
And thank God for that, Horatio and his one-liners are about the only good thing ever to come out of CSI.

Though they could kill everyone else, and have the show continue with Horatio as a badass one-liner-toting vigilante, with the only other recurring role being that of his sunglasses. If only modern TV had the balls for something like this. :seriouslyno:

But seriously, what happened to all those brilliant shows like Magnum PI, MacGyver, A Team, Knight Rider...

 
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Oh man, I loved Magnim PI, I forgot all about it, that and Miami Vice, I was too young to really watch when they were normally on tv, but I really liked when they featured as late-night reruns (along with other classic series like Frasier and Cheers)

I like that 80s gun sound, "Poooof!" :D it's so unintimidating today
They would also shoot more sparingly, often with some big revolver *aim!* "POOOOF!" "Darn it, he got away!"

That Miami Vice movie they made, maaaaan how it missed the mark - DARK, GRITTY, ULTRA VIOLENT, I imagine Cartman in the production "Nooo Kenny, not Poof - guns go Rak-a-Tak-a-Tak!"

Oh, and a channel here are showing noon reruns of Bonanza, another good show. As a kid, I would always skip it "yawn, cowboys" (European, not very into that stuff) but after giving it a shot later in life, it's actually quite a good series. Very down-to-earth, but with very varied themes per episode (and Hoss' very tall hat!)

I always wanted to give MASH a decent chance, I have only seen a few episodes of it, and it's not very likely for reruns (but Bonanza is an example of this not necesarily being true, which also gives me hopes for Seinfeld reruns)
 
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We finally got Dynasty back on national television. Don't know what the ratings are like now, but I think that the ratings that series had in the 80s are holding the record for all of former Yugoslavia to this day. Years ago we also got a rerun of North And South. Allo Allo and Only Fools And Horses were also aired lots of times.

I only saw ten minutes of the Miami Vice movie before screaming "HERESY!" and never trying to watch it again.

Why did everything have to be so much better in the 80s... Nowadays if someone came up with the idea: "Let's make a show about a guy who fights criminals who are above the law, works for an outfit which keeps its secret lab in the back of a truck and drives a sentient car which talks and jumps.", he would be rejected before you could say Knight Rider.
 
I haven't seen Allo Allo in years (although I did watch through Fawlty Towers recently, totally worth it!), it's one of those where I'm still a bit unsure if I'm really gonna find it as funny as when I was little (despite not getting half the jokes either back then), the English cop is funny by himself though "Good moaaaaning"

Knight Rider I watched mostly with a friend, maybe it was on cable, which I didn't have. That's one I doubt I would find a lot of genuine quality in today, after all, it's a talking car... but fun for the kids!

Another series, while we're on it, that I am almost afraid to re-examine, is Shagma/Mondes Engloutis/Arcadia/other titles

Since the intro theme tends to pop up whenever 80s kids want to be nostalgic, I'm gonna show the Pirate's theme instead, that played every time the pirates showed up

I loved this series as a kid - and it's one of few series I would be nostalgic about - still as a kid! Today I am worried it will be a real let-down to watch as an adult, so I am leaving it as a memory for now.
 
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Why do people like Archer? It has to be the most boring "edgy" comedy I have watched. I can barely make it through an episode without getting sleepy.
 
Hmmm My favorites would have to be...
1. Rick and Morty
2. Avatar: Last Air Bender
3. Over The Garden Wall
4. Steven Universe
5. The Twilight Zone
6. Edd Ed n Eddy
7. Breaking Bad
8. Seasons 1-3 Spongebob
 
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