Telly thread

What the absolute fuck is a xenomorph and why are you all watching children’s tv?

It’s more of a teen drama tbf.

Firefly, Buffy, Twilight fans all love it.

Something to do with Tony Hart I think.
I remember the controversy when Signourney Weaver was cast as him in the film.
'And now it's time to get away from the Gallery, you BITCH'.

Finished the series. I can't think how I would disagree with you more on it, and I don't for the life of my understand the Buffy references other than it features young adults as its primary characters, which is a pretty tenuous comparison. I think they did a fantastic job of expanding the Alien universe, by far the weakest episode was E5 which was just a pastiche of the previous movies - the rest of the series actually didn't really have much to do with the xenomorphs at all which were to some extent a McGuffin via which to explore themes of corporate skullduggery, unchecked capitalism, and the moral quandaries of biohacking.

Landman is a fantastic show. I hated Succession because I hate shows and movies where everyone is a prick and you want everyone to fail and die. This is a show full of pricks who are all for various reasons very likeable.

The one thing I can't get past is that there's no way Ariana hooks up with Cooper in the real world. She's so far out of his league it's not credible.

The main character was great to start off with but then fell off into a superwoman character with no weaknesses, no threat was relevant to her. A Xenomorph? Kills one in close combat then develops the ability to turn them into her pets and use one as her personal attack kitty.

A locked down base? Oh, she can open and close the prison doors at will. Turn off cameras, control the whole base? Fine.

Another android? Nah, I can control them with my mind and freeze them.

The other android kid gonna go rogue and maybe be her foe? Nah, she changed her mind and we’re all friends now.

But she cares about people? Well she did, but now she’s fine with one of her pets murdering a dozen scientists.

Xenomorph? It’s a dog now. Runs around and does as it’s told at her command. Not even a hint that it’ll turn on her.

Alien series always features a strong female as the main protagonist. But they’re human and have fears and weaknesses and a credible threat full scenario.

Wendy has none of these. Even coming to terms with her lack of humanity is no hurdle to her. She simply doesn’t care. Her brother is the last strand remaining to her old life and he’s practically discarded by the end. I guess this is her being the new monster, a man made monster and that’s the real horror all along… But then there’s no-one to root for in the whole series. It’s just a series of shitty people doing shitty things to one another. Who do you root for? They all suck.

Timmy Olyphant was great and steals every scene he’s in, but even his character doesn’t do anything fun that it was foreshadowing. Just ends up in a dumb android wrestling match which made 0 difference. The one-armed cyborg? What was the point of him arriving on the island? Nothing comes of it that couldn’t have happened via the 2nd Xenomorph escaping anyway. There’s loads of setting something up and then 0 satisfaction from the delivery. (Or just 0 delivery) Lots of filler. There was no satisfaction.

The Occulus?

That looks cool, oh wait, no. It didn’t do anything in the end. No pay off from weeks of set up. All the other aliens on the ship? Entirely pointless. Did little to nothing with them. What will the plant do? Kill one of the henchmen. Joy.

The Boy Kavalier - he’ll get his comeuppance - only not really. He starts the show in bare feet, pyjamas, messy hair and a smug look on his face and that’s how he ends it. He should have ended up with a huge eyeball in his face but I guess we’ll have to wait for more teeth pulling in season 2.

Nothing actually happens. The henchmen (of which there are both dozens of and not enough of at the same time) are there to be blended by the attack dog.

The kids are all murdered in the name of progress, but the series steers away from it just when you think it’ll properly tackle it. Probably because the writer doesn’t know how to.

None of the moralities that it explores come to anything. The whole Neverland metaphor is clumsy nonsense. Ooh one armed man is capt hook, Xeno the croc. Tripe.

The Buffy reference is the final scene in the ‘prison’ when the camera zooms out and it’s Wendy and her crew with the Xeno clinging to the cage. That was some Whedon level shit. A crew of teenage misfits/avatars and a pet alien.

None of the crew Wendy needs by the way. None of them, she can do everything. The perfect organism is now a lapdog to a perfect robot. No humanity left in the franchise. No one to root for or care about. Just a bunch of shitty people and some robots.

Oh and fuck off having music over the final scene every episode.

RC's review makes Landman sound less whiny-Boomer, anti-intellectual, petrowashing, wurzel-glazing than I'd expected.

I’ve seen one clip of Yellowstone (same writer as Landman) and, out of context, it felt like satire it was so one dimensional.

Assuming that's your view of Landman I don't think it's very fair, any more than Succession was mediawashing. It's a story about a whole bunch of fairly unpleasant people working the Texas oilfields, but it doesn't paint any of them, from the roughnecks to the CEOs, as aspirational. Unlike Succession they're actually three dimensional characters who can be funny and loving and surprising despite being generally fairly awful.

I didn't much like Yellowstone, btw.

Yellowstone was decent, but it's prequels are great.

Have you seen Landman? If you don't have this weird Sheridan hangup some seem to, you'll likely enjoy it. Loads of brilliant actors - Billy Bob Thornton, Ali Larter, Sam Elliott, Andy Garcia, Demi Moore - and a terrific script.

It takes an openly anti-science position. Not saying it isn't well written, just that what it's saying is shit.
Billy Bob was fantastic in Goliath, which is, after one excellent, normal season, one of the most batshit mental things I've ever watched.

Not yet but I'll add it to my list. Currently watching Territory, which kind of feels like Yellowstone set in Australia.

Five episodes into Down Cemetery Road assume it’s the same in the book but, if not, it seems weird to have two actors of the profile of Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson and not have them interact hardly at all. Feels like they are in two separate shows or they couldn’t get their schedules to match up.