HBO: Life after Thrones.

managee said:

F Murray Abraham is amazing.

Homeland is a strong show. Danes as Carrie annoys the hell out of me (so shrill, and her bipolar disorder is becoming a crutch for slow season arks), but the bigger political narratives have gotten better and better over the years. I can’t believe it has stayed as strong as it has after Lewis left. I love the parallels they draw between Keane and Trump, without making me feel like I’m watching a made-for-TV movie on CNN.

Saul is probably my second favourite Mandy Patinkin performance ever...

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I did enjoy when they had Danes character go manic and she colour coded and organized the main terrorists activities to find a pattern in his actions and a meaning behind them. It was actually a really good depiction of mania and the potential brain power that can be reached during a manic episode. The depression she feel into after was also a very good representation of the disorder.

It looks FANTASTIC! I will for sure be watching this comedy! I definitely need a good laugh every so often

I'm not sure how I will manage once Game of Thrones is done.... BEST show ever and no series can ever replace it!

Looking forward to the last season its going to be fantastic!

Insidious Von said:

HBO is setting up for life after The Thrones, a new comedy called Barry premiered on Sunday and it looks really good.

It's a show about finally: finally Bill Hader stops being second banana and becomes the main player, and finally Henry Winkler may get his second hit show.

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They are banking it all on west world

I’m not sure there is a replacement for GoT. I just finished Westworld, and even though there was some blah, including the finale, its yeah were the high-water mark for television in recent memory.

Westworld, like GoT, is ‘premier televsion’ - there isn’t much that can or does replace it from a production standpoint.

I don’t think Westworld is really intended for the entirety of the GoT fansbase. There is definitely great stuff that they compare on, but the mixed critical reviews and mediocre ratings are evidence enough that they haven’t found a true show that keeps subscriptions up ‘after thrones.’

Personally, I think Westworld is the best that TV has to offer, and worth every penny they pay for it. A third season has been ordered, by then they’ll be in production of GRRM expanded universe stuff.

I think they’ll be fine.

HBO waits for the right project, and almost never misses.

VI - Not going to quote your Westworld S2 (#52) post as there are a lot of spoilers in there. Sure it aired, but this thread is all over the map in-terms of subject, and I personally would regret spoiling the experience for someone who’s holding off for one reason or another.

Evan Rachel Wood is great, but if you only see the show as ‘worthy of her talent’ while ignoring the pedigree and performance of Ed Harris, Thandie Newton, Tessa Thompson and Jeffrey Wright (and the obvious other heavyweight), we definitely have different tastes in talent.

Zahn McClarnon was excellent, and I’d say has a very substantial role. He had almost an entire bottle-episode to himself, for which I’d bet he’ll get an Emmy.

The lesser Scarsgard, like the lesser Hemsworth, is a B-actor surrounded by all-stars. I’m glad I saw them as little as I did. Then again, I stopped watching Vikings a couple years ago mid-season.

And as for the lesser Nolan, Jonathan co-wrote Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar with Christopher. I’m not sure I’d look to Inception and Dunkirk as evidence that there is only one talented Nolan brother. I don’t follow celebrity gossip, but show-running is a full-time job, and this project has been going since 2014. Have they split or are they working on different projects?

If you watched season 2 and came to absolute conclusions about who is and who isn’t ‘alive,’ we were definitely watching a different show. Particularly in-light of the post-credit MIB sequence.

This was a bold season. Episodes like The Riddle of the Sphinx, Akane No Mai and Kiksuya went completely against the grain for a show that seemingly relied on big reveals involving main characters to move plot forward. Those episodes barely moved storylines ahead, focused on minor or new characters and were probably 3 of the best episodes on TV of the year.

If anything, HBO needs to trust in the co-creators’ vision as they usually do.

This isn’t for everyone, but the critics that HBO makes its shows for like it a lot, and so do I.

My single biggest criticism for the year is not shutting the door completely on resurrection for hosts or humans or human-host hybrids with the Cradle/Forge storylines. What made GoT great was that death was permanent (until season 6). I’m still a bit confused on what Tessa Thompson’s character did with the coordinates, and how that plays into the final Jeffrey Wright scene, but I’m sure I’ll re-watch soon.

Insidious Von said:

I never said Jonathan was the lesser Nolan, he just doesn't organize his ideas very well. Inception is still my pick as the best film of 10's, The Shape of Water comes close. The Nolan bros have split amicably, they are still a very tight knit family. Jonathan wanted to do more science fiction, Christopher wanted to go in a different direction. Maybe I should have waited to stream Westworld S2 like I did with S1. Watching it on a weekly basis got me confused. I'll have to rewatch the Ghost Warrior episode, I doozed off and missed the last third. I still have a problem with the arc of the finale, it just doesn't fit in. As for the ending, that's an enigma? Did Maeve Millay oft Charlotte Hale, where is Dolores?

Evan Rachel Wood has always marched to her own drum, she went Goth girl for Marylin Manson. One of the reasons I've always found her interesting.

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At the risk of posting spoilers, I’ll give this all-caps WARNING!!

Charlotte’s host body had Dolores’ brain in her for all of the modern timeline this season. If you saw her with Scarsgard, that was Charlotte Hale’s body with Deloris’ host brain. This helps explain Tessa Thompson’s performance though the season, which contained subtle nods to Evan Rachel Wood’s character and performance.

She made it out of the park with 5 brains I think, we’re not sure who they are. Once out of the park, she used Arnold/Bernard’s host replicator thing to build another Deloris body, wherein she again transferred her brain. Presumably she also made Bernard/Arnold and that now has his brain. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think that Bernard has the ability to come and go from the park, so it’s possible he wasn’t made outside the park at all, and the same Bernard we saw in the park is now out of the lake. The fidelity test suggests he had just come online.

The 5 brains or chestnuts or whatever is interesting. Very Battlestar Galactica. Unfortunately, I think everyone that made it to the valley beyond we’re revealed to be ‘unreachable’ so that could be the last of Zahn McClarnon.

I think Abernathy is a good guess. It seemed to be a big part of her cornerstone. I think Ford is likely as well, if that’s what bernard grabbed in The riddle of the Sphinx. Teddy wouldn’t be a shock, but hownhe got to the valley beyond I don’t know know. If you could get the MIB, that’s might make sense. But who knows. The mystery is an easy out if they write themselves into a corner.