TV You Have Watched

[Atticus]

Another brilliant episode of The Last of Us (ep8). It's the first time I've been envious of my two boys ... them never having played the game, they had no idea what was going on and what was coming. And again, what it changes from the game is expertly judged, working for tv and offering a slightly different take for those familiar with the source.

[Neon Ignition]

Loved that they snuck a role in for Troy Baker, the only thing my missus is a tad down on with the show is how light on clickers it's been

[Atticus]

Loved that they snuck a role in for Troy Baker

Yeah, very cool. Although I totally missed it when watching ... I only found out it was him when listening to the official podcast later (presented by Troy Baker and Neil Druckmann).

[Neon Ignition]

White Lotus: Season 02
The show continues to be both much better than you'd expect it to be and also much worse than it's praised to be. This second season is fine but it already feels like it's run out of things to say, parts of this run border closely on being a remake of the first season so it's hard to imagine the mileage will last unless you're perpetually entertained by being taught that rich people aren't good people.

[gordon]

Just binge watched the first 8 episodes of The Last of Us. In short, it’s a great show, and both leads are a perfect fit for Joel & Ellie. I’ve always felt slightly ambivalent about the game, but I can’t fault anything about the series. Looking forward to the finale.

[Finsbury Girl]

So after googling WTF happened between The Mandalorian S2 and S3, it seems Disney were determined to get peeps to watch The Book of Boba Fett.

So I've now binged the season and my oh my was this up and down. I'm not sure what Robert Rodriguez was going for it feels like he's doing some grindhouse type homage to garbage 70s TV. Some of the action and choreography was atrocious. The fight between the assassins and Fennec Shand was laughably bad for example. And the kids on the hover bike things OMG just bad.

The episode with the train had some good stuff and needless to say when

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Mando, Grogu, Luke turn up

it improves immeasurably. The CGI for

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Luke

I thought was pretty good. I would have liked more

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jedi training

And what got me was where was the Boba Fett who destroyed a gazillion storm troopers in Mando season 2? And what about the massive cock up where he went back to the Sarlacc pit to look for his armour? We saw in the flashback that he knew he escaped with it on and it was taken by the jawas!! SMH.

Somehow I cannot see this getting a season 2.

Anyway I least I know now why the new Mando season started the way it did

[Dogg Thang]

I really didn’t enjoy the Boba Fett show and it is really frustrating to me that The Mandalorian will always feel incomplete as a result of putting a major plot event in another show. Well, I guess it was undoing a major plot event.

[Atticus]

I'm in the same boat. I enjoyed Mandalorian but really struggled with Book of Boba ... don't think I made it half way through the season. Shame it's the required glue between Mando 2 & 3

[Neon Ignition]

I still haven't brought myself round to watching Boba given the poor response it's had but I still don't understand why they even made it if they were just going to use it to undo Mandalorian's S2 finale. It couldn't be more obvious that hijacking a Fett series would be a bad decision and it's not like Mando S3 couldn't have handled the u-turn itself given how basic the storyline of that show is, they'd have need one episode at most and would have let Fett be its own thing.

[QualityChimp]

Finished off Edge of Darkness (1985 via iPlayer) and was pretty decent with quite an exciting final couple of episodes.
I'll be honest though, it got a bit confusing at times and it felt like all of the "goodies" switched allegiance by the end.

Started Gold (2023 via iPlayer) about the Brink's-Mat robbery, the biggest heist at the time.
It's something I've never really read about, so it's all quite new to me.
There's a disclaimer at the start that it's based on true events, but there are elements changed for narrative reasons.
I don't have a problem with that, especially if they say what they are at the end, Like Chernobyl.

Watched about 3 eps of The Last Of Us (2023 via iPlayer).
It's great, obviously, but not perfect. I'm getting a lot of deja vu from The Walking Dead (I read all the comics).
Also, there's not all that much clicker action.
However, that one episode where they come out the sink hole was immense.
I'm going to say that I think that Black Summer is a better series.
I'm glad both exist, though.

[Finsbury Girl]

Mando episode 2 - WOW it was awesome. That

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massive under water dragon

WTF!!

Also Bo-Katan is a beast

[Neon Ignition]

The Last of Us: Episode 09
It was alright, the opening was a nice addition as was the casting for it but overall there wasn't too much of note considering it was finale. I know the lack of clicker action was again a grating element for the missus but for me I think it was the decision to make the finale 40 minutes compared to the earlier episodes being upward of 1hr 20m. The beats matched the game but the pacing felt too rapid so the events didn't feel like they carried much weight when really they should be more notable than what came before. Still decent though.

[Lebowski]

The Last of Us: Episode 09
It was alright, the opening was a nice addition as was the casting for it but overall there wasn't too much of note considering it was finale. I know the lack of clicker action was again a grating element for the missus but for me I think it was the decision to make the finale 40 minutes compared to the earlier episodes being upward of 1hr 20m. The beats matched the game but the pacing felt too rapid so the events didn't feel like they carried much weight when really they should be more notable than what came before. Still decent though.

both myself and my son felt like they skipped a lot of what bonded them, in the game they survive multiple clicker attacks, survive through some horrible attacks from humans and go on this epic journey that spans quite a length of time, things like Joel saving ellie from drowning or Joel teaching Ellie how to shoot in that really beautiful Autumnal scene is skipped here. The time feels off too as in the show it feels like its set over few months as the entire second half of the season is all set in the snow.

I've seen some criticism on how they adapted one character

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the cannibal guy David feels like a very overdone trope, to change him to be a christian preacher who's a psycho and a pedo is like shooting fish in a barrel at this point in time

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, it's over condensing in the backend and I think kind of backs up the notion that Left Behind's episode should have been reduced to flashbacks to free up runtime for the last two eps to properly pace themselves.


Evil: Season 03
There's a chance that the fourth run could recover things, it suggests that the intention is to move things on, but this remains tonally and narratively a bit of a mess and barely worth sticking with. It could be really good but lazy writing and stupid bits ruin the good stuff.

[fuse]

Finally piping up on this now that I've finished The Last of Us. I enjoyed it enough but I also don't think it's the pinnacle of story-telling some would have you believe. What I am mostly glad for is that it does finally exist in this format. The game lost me very early on and it's only people talking about the story that has ever made me regretful dropping it, but now I feel like I've been able to enjoy it without having to play something that I don't enjoy. Naughty Dog's cinematic AAA leaning has always felt like they want to be making movies or TV shows more than games to me, and while I've not watched the Uncharted movie, I think I'm safe to assume this is a better realisation of these aspirations.