Let the mystery be

I'm thinking Netflix is going to really alter a lot of things to make this into a bingeable series. The cast is obviously international. They've got Benedict Wong playing the lead, probably because he's one of the most well known actors of Chinese descent due to Marvel, but I feel he's seriously miscast as the lead as opposed to Detective Shi (who I think he'd be perfect as).

I'm curious to see how it will come out, and how it will compare to this, which is definitely a "by the book" adaptation, for better or worse.

I'm wondering if people who haven't read the books can even enjoy it. I'm enjoying the slow pace and how they are going into everything in the books. I also thought it was crazy ep 3 was entirely about the numbers. But there are going to be 30 episodes, so if you break the book up to 30 eps then it actually spent as much time as the book does.

But i am not sure I'd be into it if I hadn't already read the series and had a lot of things I was looking forward to seeing in live action

So does it get better? The books and story are amazing. Is it going to stay slow and drag things out? Yup. 30 eps is a lot.

Also have to say it's kind of funny watching two scientists lose their mind over satellite readings. I get why it's a big deal, but they went all out piling stuff on a table just so the lead can dramatically sweep it all off. One scientist looks for a pen by throwing all the binders on their desk down on the floor. They're printing out the results and holding onto the paper like "come on....print faster...come on!!!" Haha

The main reason I don't think that's probably true, is that YouTubers don't really have a reputation in the industry they'd like to uphold.

There were complaints of him being verbally abusive on set, using offensive nicknames for female staff members, and being touchy and huggy that made people uncomfortable.

The network investigated the allegations and determined they were warranted enough to part ways with him.

Supposedly the situation was reported as "mutual" but they most likely canned him for inappropriate behavior after the complaints.

It's a carry over from live plays and shows where people would laugh in the audience together during the show. They basically just started filming them on camera and then started making them specifically for that new technology known as TV. Some people like an audience experience, some don't, but a lot of people grew up with that as the standard so find it familiar. It's only been fairly recently that they switched to someone looking straight down the barrel of the camera to replace the laughtrack.

Guess Jon Cryer and Bosch weren't available

I don't think people appreciate build up anymore. They just want the payoff from the start. With shows being so short now days, binge watching being so popular, the idea of a show taking three episodes to build characters and setup future episodes is an unthinkable waste of time.

I've always wanted a Star Wars show or movie that would ignore the Jedi and The Force and focus on the world around it. Probably because I grew up in the Star Wars drought between Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace, where if you wanted Star Wars you had to resort to reading novels. And they were full of this kind of stuff.

I don't care if there wasn't a lightsaber fight or spaceship battle in the first few episodes. It gave me the worldbuilding and character drama I've always hoped for in live action.

lol you are in luck. This show has literally nothing to do with any Jedis or lightsabers or Skywalkers. Nothing to do with Episodes 1, 2, or 3. And it takes place before Episode 4, and before Rogue One, so you don't need to see anything that takes place after that (Mandalorian, Boba Fett, etc)

Of all the Star Wars shows and movies it's probably the one you can jump into most without knowing anything else.

I'd even suggest people watch it before any other Star Wars tv show or movie as it sets the stage and the stakes for the entire rest of the universe before watching them

Guess we've gotten the incel point of view now

The MiB comics sort of based their whole thing about parodying UFO conspiracy stuff and the Men in Black conspiracy theories.

I think a scary movie about them could be cool. But it wouldn't work as a Men in Black reboot. That's kind of like rebooting the "Airplane!" franchise to be about serious and scary airplane disasters.

But the conspiracy theory has been around for awhile. X-Files went into it a lot. But the idea of FBI looking Men in Black or government agents going to UFO witnesses and stuff is kind of a trope that was old before the MiB films came out and turned it into a comedy.

Married Wirh Children was pretty unique for the 80s. I grew up during that time and not much else competes with it for edginess. The only show I can think of that got similar attention for being against the grain is The Simpsons but even that feels tame. Those were the two shows that seemed to get articles in newspapers about how upset mom and religious groups were. MwC was banned in my house.

You're just not going to find edgy network sitcoms from the 80s I don't think. There might be sketch shows like In Living Color that broke a lot of norms but network sitcoms were deep into family friendly stuff. Seinfeld kind of broke things out of that.

There's another show the creator of Married with Children did that has a very similar vibe called "Unhappily Ever After" but that came out in 1995.

You might have luck looking at paid cable comedies. But the only one that comes to mind is "Dream On" which aired in 1990

Agents of SHIELD

After that episode I went online to look for games that would let me fight the Empire she had me so riled up lol

Episode 4 of Stranger Things season 4 for sure.

Also the first 15 minutes of The Boys season 3

The Book of Boba Fett episode 5

End of Peacemaker finale, or the whole finale

Wednesday dance

And if I could pick one scene or episode of Severance I would but it's tough. Maybe end of episode 4

I had to look back in my podcast and YouTube history because I know I'd heard this discussed. Secret Galaxy talks about it at around the 9:14 mark. Supposedly a lot of it came from Peppard who didn't want a woman on the show

https://youtu.be/l-CsopsdkXs

I watched S1 and enjoyed it. I felt no reason to watch S2.

I feel like it's one of those shows based off of a book. And rather than let it end how the book ended, they try to turn it into a pilot for more seasons.

I'm not sure how the books go but S1 feels like it wraps up and S2 is a new cast

Yeah there're been a few adaptions of the novels. Both live action and animated, and they usually base their look off of descriptions in the book.

The costumes for the characters for the 1939 musical were made to allow the cast to sing and dance so were heavily influenced by just practicality.

The same characters in Return to Oz were based off the book descriptions and made to look more like the actual things they are. An actual lion, an actual scarecrow, etc rather than a human actor in a costume.

I always found the scarecrow in Return to Oz terrifying but appreciated a less "stage musical" look to them.

If you want true nightmare fuel though, look up the characters in The Wonderful Land of Oz (1969). It has the Return to Oz story in it and it's a much lower budget version.

Costner doesn't seem to care about speaking out

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/3736298-kevin-costner-says-its-ok-if-he-loses-fans-over-political-views/

I'd played the Fallout series like crazy and didn't realize how much of it was inspired by this film until years later. Blew my mind. Crazy movie

The Witcher season 1 also had issues with it being non-linear. And the two main characters never change, age (over decades) or wear different clothes. Also it's all a fantasy setting so you can't be like "oh bellbottoms. This is the 70s"

They introduced a whole bunch of character in episode one. Dramatically killed them all (like who cares, I don't even know who they are). Then threw them back up on the screen several episodes later without telling you it's a flashback. So I'm like "this lady looks familiar, where did I see her before" but in my head the character is dead so I think it must be a different show.

And I know who you're talking about with the reveal and I absolutely needed that hallucination because I'd have had no idea who I was looking at lol

Yeah. I used to be better about it. But I've lately been watching a recap of a show before a new season starts.

We also have more shows now that have much larger gaps between the season finale and a season premiere.

I forgot most of what happened in previous seasons of Stranger Things. I went back and watched them after I watched season 4 and I'd forgotten tons of stuff.

With Dark I always had that website up which gave you everyone's history without spoilers so that helped. I'd need to use that website between episodes at times. And it just got more complicated as it went.

Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton is all I remember from the show. My stepmother loved it. I think I remember catching an episode or two but wasn't sure what was going on.

Have to imagine the state of television at the time. Just about all weekly shows were episodic. Each episode written as a single story that didn't connect to any others. If you wanted a serialized show you had to watch soap operas on one of the 3 or 4 networks that aired television. The high budget ones were on late at night. Falcon's Crest, Dynasty, Dallas, etc.

Twin Peaks was one of (if not the first) serialized genre shows with a mystery box element. Surreal imagery, a wide range of odd characters, and fantasy and horror elements. Nothing like it had been on TV before. It became huge and the "Who killed Laura Palmer?" mystery entered the zeitgeist and was as commonly talked about as Who Killed J.R.? around the watercooler.

Then season 2 comes around and the network tells Lynch he has to solve the mystery for the audience and reveal who killed Laura palmer and move on, something Lynch never intended to do. Unfortunately, there just wasn't anything to move onto. Once the mystery was solved the show was pretty much done. It limped along awhile and got a movie but David Lynch pretty much left and still talks about how he hated the second season

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/05/david-lynch-twin-peaks-season-two

The real legacy of the show is what it inspired. X-Files was heavily inspired by it, with Fox Mulder becoming the Agent Dale Cooper of the show, a "spooky" agent who investigated strange phenomena and mixes pseudoscience and mysticism into his investigative techniques and theories.

It also opened the way for more serialized genre shows like Buffy to tell longer story arcs. And other mystery box shows like LOST.

So most likely, by now, you've been ingesting a steady supply of what made Twin Peaks great at the time, but which has been refined, evolved and filtered into hundreds of various horror/sci-fi/fantasy serialized TV series.