TV Thread - beware, [expletive] can get spoilery

[Vidor]

Working our way through season 2 of "House of Cards". Well, I read the recaps in advance, and the way Frank Underwood gets his second promotion is even dumber than the way he got his first one. But beyond that--goddamn, this show is just horribly bleak. Just two evil people being horrible and causing misery and pain. Why watch that?

Of course, the wife loves it.

[longhornbaseball]

[SHOW]

The show officially jumped the shark when he killed Zoe.

[Vidor]

I actually liked that. Mentally I checked out of the show in the first season when we were asked to swallow the idea that the Vice President of the United States might actually resign his post to run for a statewide office.

But the other day we're watching the episode where some cartoonishly evil FBI agent is threatening that innocent lady reporter with going to prison when all the innocent lady reporter wants to do is stay home and take care of her mom, and it just made me angry. I don't need happy endings to everything, but a little hope would be nice.

[KyCardinalFan]

I really recommend the series, "Going Deep with David Rees" on the Nat'l Geographic network. A humorist/satirist who's a contributor to HuffPost (iirc) delves into the reasons for- and the best ways to- do everyday tasks. Last night was How to Light a Match. Very entertaining and educational.

Some of you may enjoy his books as well. (Search David Rees on Amazon) He also had the Artisan Pencil Sharpening site where he would sharpen a pencil "expertly" for $40.

[thrill]

Nathan For You is a little too much for me. If I heard he was a super cool/generous guy off camera maybe I could. It's definitely funny, but it's not like he's exposing racism/homophobia like SBC, he's effing with small business owners looking for help. And I doubt an 'As Seen on Nathan For You' sign in the window would help an awful lot.

Mainly he exploits the insatiable desire of the average Los Angeleno for being on TV. These people all sign releases.

[MrSaigon]

Nathan For You is a little too much for me. If I heard he was a super cool/generous guy off camera maybe I could. It's definitely funny, but it's not like he's exposing racism/homophobia like SBC, he's effing with small business owners looking for help. And I doubt an 'As Seen on Nathan For You' sign in the window would help an awful lot.

Mainly he exploits the insatiable desire of the average Los Angeleno for being on TV. These people all sign releases.

Under what pretense? I imagine there's a great deal of truth to your sentiment, though.

[Secret Weapon]

[SHOW]

The show officially jumped the shark when he killed Zoe.

[SHOW]

this is when i quit watching the show. i watched the next episode thinking it would be how he had to outiwt the police, or use his power to bribe them or whatever to get out of it, but there was literally no investigation, it didnt make any sense.

[thrill]

Nathan For You is a little too much for me. If I heard he was a super cool/generous guy off camera maybe I could. It's definitely funny, but it's not like he's exposing racism/homophobia like SBC, he's effing with small business owners looking for help. And I doubt an 'As Seen on Nathan For You' sign in the window would help an awful lot.

Mainly he exploits the insatiable desire of the average Los Angeleno for being on TV. These people all sign releases.

Under what pretense? I imagine there's a great deal of truth to your sentiment, though.

I'm not saying he's doing something noble. He wouldn't either. In interviews he says the people he meets make his show work because of their kindness. It's like they feel sorry for him and let him go through with his dumb ideas.

[Jocephus]

Michael B Jordan is a great actor.

[SHOW]

Michael B. Jordan knows he's lucky to have gotten his start on "The Wire," the hit HBO series that's often hailed as one of television's greatest dramas. And so it was with a heavy heart that he first took the the news of Wallace, his beloved character on the show, getting killed off.

"Each script that I got, I'd just be flipping through the pages to see if my name was in the back," he recalled in a HuffPost Live interview on Tuesday. "It was like okay, now I can read it, because people were dropping like flies. Like nobody was safe on that show."

Including, of course, Jordan himself. "I got that dreadful knock on my trailer," he said, "and ['The Wire' creator and writer] David Simon was like, 'Look, I love you. Everybody loves you. But that's why we gotta kill you.' And yeah, Wallace was gone."

Interestingly, Jordan credits his critically-lauded "Wire" performance to his lack of acting experience at the time.

"I was really young and raw," he said. "I can't really take credit for that -- that was something that was just me at that time in my life. I was able to kind of like, do that. I didn't have any training, I didn't go to class or anything like that."

While the 27-year-old never expected "The Wire's" exorbitant success -- the show was actually slated to be cancelled after the first season -- he says the series has informed the caliber of projects he now seeks out.

"The writing on that show was incredible. I was really lucky," he said. "[The show] set an extremely high bar. It's going to be hard to ever reach that level, but I want to get something close."

[haltz]

I'm not saying he's doing something noble. He wouldn't either. In interviews he says the people he meets make his show work because of their kindness. It's like they feel sorry for him and let him go through with his dumb ideas.

I just binge-watched the whole series over a couple of days. I think this says it well, from the Dumb Starbucks Grantland article:

the suckers who show up for the free coffee or climb up a mountain to redeem a coupon aren’t really the butt of the joke. Nathan for You deals with the lengths people will go to follow social conventions, particularly on camera, and how incredibly weird humans become when they’re trying to act “normal.” Fielder employs his jagged Canadian politeness to push people to their limits, seeing how far they will go not to upset the apple cart, and then shoving the apple cart over right in front of them. Nathan for You never treats the store owners as mere rubes; they are presented as the straight man to Fielder’s intensely awkward behavior.