2018 Media Roundup: Telly!
Dec. 29th, 2018 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabby I watch way too much TV and, unlike with books (where I keep track) or music (where I can see what I bought over the past year on iTunes) it's harder to keep track of what I watched. Nevertheless, here is what sticks in my mind the most.
The Good Place
Among the most well-constructed shows I've ever seen. A woman dies and goes to heaven, except that she's not supposed to be there. She's not a good person. She's surrounded by people who spent their entire lives making the world a better place, but if she reveals who she is, she'll end up in the Bad Place, being tortured for all eternity. It falls to her "soulmate," an anxious moral philosophy professor, to teach her how to be a decent human so that she has a chance of earning her spot in the Good Place.
And then the show pulls the rug out from under you. And then does it again. If you're not watching it, the less you know about what happens in it, the better. The structure is amazing; it reels you in with the funny sitcom format and then subverts it, leaving you constantly unsure of the status quo. Each season has been something different, and this year's is really building towards what's basically a Talmudic argument with God, which is a plotline you really don't see in a lot of media, let alone a sitcom.
Queer Eye
I did not sign up to cry over a makeover show.
The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell
I challenge you to find a show more made for me than a goth baking show with taxidermied Muppets and a murder plot or two.
Nailed It!
This show taught me more about baking than any amount of baking classes ever could.
Doctor Who
I have very mixed feelings about Nu Who's 11th season. On the plus side, we're free of the Moff's overly convoluted plots, racism, and misogyny. I love Jodie Whittaker's Doctor. Two out of the three companions are fantastic. I like the emphasis on smaller, more personal stories. There's more diversity in both the casting and the writing room, finally. The cinematography ruled.
The storytelling, though, not so much. The best observation I saw was that Chibnall thinks he's writing for children but has never actually written for children. Most of the plots were very Point A to Point B. There was at least one truly great episode, "Demons of the Punjab," and only one really awful one, but without an overarching theme, the season felt pretty pointless, with the characters just kind of wandering around and never in any kind of real danger. Overall, really fun, though.
American Vandal
It's silly and puerile but also kind of amazing. This season has our two aspiring documentary filmmakers travelling to an elite private school to uncover who using scatological weapons of mass destruction to terrorize the staff and student body. It's great as both a satire on true crime documentaries and also a fairly realistic depiction of teenagers such that is rarely seen on TV.
The Alienist
This year's Problematic Fave, I bingewatched it in a couple days and then read the book and put a hold on the sequel. It hooked me in with the costume porn and the architecture porn, but tbh it's basically got the appeal that I think Sherlock has for a lot of fangirls. Read into that what you will. Note that it is a show with two of my biggest triggers (bad things happen to children, bad things happen to cats) and several tropes that I despise, and I still want more of it.
Bojack Horseman
Continues to work its way up my list of the Best TV Shows Of All Time. This was a less dramatic season than previous ones, but no less heartwrenching, between Princess Caroline's attempts to have a baby, Diane's attempt to find herself, and the oh-god-so-fucking-painful exploration of Beatrice Horseman's life and (spoiler) death. As always, the experimental episode is the best, and this year's stroke of brilliance was to make me cry with an animated episode that is a single shot of a half-hour long monologue. Because it can.
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
I have an ambivalent relationship to the original She-Ra, For Reasons, but the reboot is flawless. It's got the magitech, vaporwave aesthetic, it's the gayest show I've ever watched, and there's a Marxist talking alicorn. Give me more.
The City & the City
The BBC adaptation of one of my favourite books did not disappoint. Full review here.
And my favourite show of 2018 was...
The Expanse
Season 3 is the point at which the show surpasses the books, which is a hard task because as you can probably see from my book log, I've been binge-reading them and am now into the novellas, having run out of the main series. But now I'm squarely in the "show is better" camp, after a stellar (hah) season.
There's an interesting article making the rounds about hopepunk, the idea that what's needed is not more grimdark dystopias but stories that serve as guideposts towards a less crapsack future. While I take issue with some of the examples in that article falling into this category (Game of Thrones? Really?) The Expanse is definitely this. I don't want to give away what happens in the last episode but it wasn't what I was expecting based on the books/the way genre fiction is typically structured, and it came at a time when I was feeling a lot of despair (in fairness, when am I not?) with a ray of light and redemption even in the context of its typically brutal setting.
And that's it for my babbling about pop culture for the year. I should probably work on actually creating some. :)
The Good Place
Among the most well-constructed shows I've ever seen. A woman dies and goes to heaven, except that she's not supposed to be there. She's not a good person. She's surrounded by people who spent their entire lives making the world a better place, but if she reveals who she is, she'll end up in the Bad Place, being tortured for all eternity. It falls to her "soulmate," an anxious moral philosophy professor, to teach her how to be a decent human so that she has a chance of earning her spot in the Good Place.
And then the show pulls the rug out from under you. And then does it again. If you're not watching it, the less you know about what happens in it, the better. The structure is amazing; it reels you in with the funny sitcom format and then subverts it, leaving you constantly unsure of the status quo. Each season has been something different, and this year's is really building towards what's basically a Talmudic argument with God, which is a plotline you really don't see in a lot of media, let alone a sitcom.
Queer Eye
I did not sign up to cry over a makeover show.
The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell
I challenge you to find a show more made for me than a goth baking show with taxidermied Muppets and a murder plot or two.
Nailed It!
This show taught me more about baking than any amount of baking classes ever could.
Doctor Who
I have very mixed feelings about Nu Who's 11th season. On the plus side, we're free of the Moff's overly convoluted plots, racism, and misogyny. I love Jodie Whittaker's Doctor. Two out of the three companions are fantastic. I like the emphasis on smaller, more personal stories. There's more diversity in both the casting and the writing room, finally. The cinematography ruled.
The storytelling, though, not so much. The best observation I saw was that Chibnall thinks he's writing for children but has never actually written for children. Most of the plots were very Point A to Point B. There was at least one truly great episode, "Demons of the Punjab," and only one really awful one, but without an overarching theme, the season felt pretty pointless, with the characters just kind of wandering around and never in any kind of real danger. Overall, really fun, though.
American Vandal
It's silly and puerile but also kind of amazing. This season has our two aspiring documentary filmmakers travelling to an elite private school to uncover who using scatological weapons of mass destruction to terrorize the staff and student body. It's great as both a satire on true crime documentaries and also a fairly realistic depiction of teenagers such that is rarely seen on TV.
The Alienist
This year's Problematic Fave, I bingewatched it in a couple days and then read the book and put a hold on the sequel. It hooked me in with the costume porn and the architecture porn, but tbh it's basically got the appeal that I think Sherlock has for a lot of fangirls. Read into that what you will. Note that it is a show with two of my biggest triggers (bad things happen to children, bad things happen to cats) and several tropes that I despise, and I still want more of it.
Bojack Horseman
Continues to work its way up my list of the Best TV Shows Of All Time. This was a less dramatic season than previous ones, but no less heartwrenching, between Princess Caroline's attempts to have a baby, Diane's attempt to find herself, and the oh-god-so-fucking-painful exploration of Beatrice Horseman's life and (spoiler) death. As always, the experimental episode is the best, and this year's stroke of brilliance was to make me cry with an animated episode that is a single shot of a half-hour long monologue. Because it can.
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
I have an ambivalent relationship to the original She-Ra, For Reasons, but the reboot is flawless. It's got the magitech, vaporwave aesthetic, it's the gayest show I've ever watched, and there's a Marxist talking alicorn. Give me more.
The City & the City
The BBC adaptation of one of my favourite books did not disappoint. Full review here.
And my favourite show of 2018 was...
The Expanse
Season 3 is the point at which the show surpasses the books, which is a hard task because as you can probably see from my book log, I've been binge-reading them and am now into the novellas, having run out of the main series. But now I'm squarely in the "show is better" camp, after a stellar (hah) season.
There's an interesting article making the rounds about hopepunk, the idea that what's needed is not more grimdark dystopias but stories that serve as guideposts towards a less crapsack future. While I take issue with some of the examples in that article falling into this category (Game of Thrones? Really?) The Expanse is definitely this. I don't want to give away what happens in the last episode but it wasn't what I was expecting based on the books/the way genre fiction is typically structured, and it came at a time when I was feeling a lot of despair (in fairness, when am I not?) with a ray of light and redemption even in the context of its typically brutal setting.
And that's it for my babbling about pop culture for the year. I should probably work on actually creating some. :)
no subject
Date: 2018-12-29 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-29 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-29 11:28 pm (UTC)I think I didn't watch the right episodes of Nailed It because I felt bad for the contestants -- they didn't know enough to know what they didn't know, and were being asked to recreate masterpieces. They kept approaching the tasks from the top down rather than the bottom up, which hurt my baker's soul. Of the three episodes I watched the one I most enjoyed was with the cop, as I amused my companions by vociferously rooting against him.
The presenter is a delight, though. She looks like me mad over to be hot..
no subject
Date: 2018-12-30 03:27 am (UTC)I would feel bad for the contestants except that it really seems like everyone on the show is in it for the lulz. And they're always so adorable, especially Nicole Byer, who is a treasure. I just want to drink vodka with her and say encouraging things to each other.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-30 03:34 am (UTC)It's got the magitech, vaporwave aesthetic, it's the gayest show I've ever watched, and there's a Marxist talking alicorn. Give me more.
This is now going on the watch list. It sounds perfect.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-30 02:25 pm (UTC)It is perfect. It's so wonderful.
Hopepunk
Date: 2018-12-30 06:01 am (UTC)Re: Hopepunk
Date: 2018-12-30 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-31 05:55 am (UTC)Need to go back and start up w/ Good Place again. I watched and loved Season 1, started Season 2, lost patience because I was watching it on NBC online or whatever where the commercials were unskippable and frequently lagged in a way that meant I had to start the episode over, and I gave up. There also was stuff in early Season 2 that felt like them spinning their wheels while deciding if they'd written themselves into a corner, but maybe that clears up?
no subject
Date: 2018-12-31 02:23 pm (UTC)