TV: What Are You Watching?

[Yodaking]

Really enjoyed the first 3 seasons of Sopranos, some of the best TV around, season 4 the writing starts to suffer though. Their are still great individual episodes from time to time but the season long story arcs and overall show direction are not as good.

[chas]

Found Arrow and Flash On Demand. Saw the first Flash so far, and liked it. I enjoy that the father is played by John Wesley Ship, the old TV flash!

[Ixe]

I should try to finish the Sopranos. I think I left off in Season 4, so that may be why I stopped. I'll put something in the spoiler for what gave me pause. It's said with extreme vagaries but some people are purists about what they hear.

Spoiler Alert!

They had a particularly traumatic event happen to one character, which is fine if you are going to address the subject matter more seriously but less so if you just treat it as a one-off episodic thing that they just get over before the next episode. I got a few episodes past that point but I've only seen them call back to it once and in a minor way. I'm not saying that it should define the character's life, but it feels that they used it more for shock factor for a single episode and then just brush under the carpet rather than seriously deal with all of the repercussions of the event.

If we're talking HBO shows, I'm obligated to mention The Wire, Game of Thrones, and I would even tack on Rome and possibly The Leftovers.

The Wire has a shaky season 2 but it's all important and overall fantastic. I probably don't need to tell people what Game of Thrones is, but Rome was the show HBO had done that made the creators of Game of Thrones believe they could pull it off with them. It's only 2 seasons long and covers Roman History from the fall of the Repulbic to the rise of the Empire with enough liberties taken to make an entertaining narrative. The Leftovers and is done by the same people that did Lost, which is to say that it will keep you intrigued with dangling mysteries that never get answered. It is overall abysmally depressing but with rich characters and great acting that I suspect it will continue to grow on with future seasons. It always has the risk of becoming garbage, but the first season stood well enough on its own in my opinion to recommend to people into that sort of thing.

[IAmBatman]

The Wire, Rome, and Oz are all on Amazon Prime as well, and will be next on my hit list after The Sopranos.

Even if the Sopranos goes down a bit after season three (I didn't read the spoiler), I'm willing to bet it's still better than most things on TV now.

[stubobj]

Oz is an amazing show!

[Yodaking]

Love, love Rome. I've watched the series all the way through at least 5 times now and would be happy to watch it again at any time. It really does get better on the second viewing as you then rewatch the early stuff with greater insight as to who the characters are and where their story arc is heading.

The Wire is also a top 5 show all time for me. The way each of the 5 seasons break down different aspects of the city/society yet wrap them all up together is fantastic. One of the few shows that has a great finial episode too.

I'm also a big fan of Deadwood since we are talking about HBO shows from the past. It was canceled without ever getting a chance to wrap things up though.

[IAmBatman]

I think Deadwood is on Amazon Prime as well, but I'd have to doublecheck.

Amazon Prime definitely just went from being all about free two day shipping to being much more for me when they added that collection of shows!

[Hahma]

Blacklist, Big Bang Theory, Flash, Agents of Shield, Grimm, Chicago PD, Chicago Fire, Gotham, NHL Hockey, Arrow

Kind of getting sick of Arrow. Boring and I really don't care about the characters.

[chas]

Hahma,

I agree about Arrow. I only watched the first episode to see if Flash was in it, and if I had blinked I would have missed him--and he wasn't even running. I hadn't checked in since the first season, and I checked right out again.

[chas]

'ONLY IN NEW YORK CITY' DEPARTMENT

Here in NYC, my gum dentist gave me a clean bill of health today. Then when we were talking comics and comic movies/TV as we usually do, he mentioned that one of his patients is an actor who just became famous on TV in the last month. He said the guy is so nice that he couldn't be sure who he was until he heard his voice, and then he knew.

Last night on Gotham they repeated one of his lines from the previous show in the opening flashback:

"I am Oswald Cobblepot."

He doesn't walk funny in real life, either. Not like a penguin.

[Hahma]

The Blacklist
Flash
Agents of SHIELD
Chicago Fire
Chicago PD

[chas]

Rome is marvelous indeed. I wonder if anyone makes those "SPQR" T-Shirts? I never got HBO because I resent paying for premium channels, but I have serveral HBO series on DVD!