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Just finished The Boys last night. Agreed with everything about Homelander being a fantastic character and amazing bit of acting. I think I love Black Noir.

On A-Train and The Deep:

Spoiler:

One of the central conflicts winds up being that Butcher refuses to see supes as anything besides evil. There's no room for nuance in his world. I think what the show was trying to do with A-Train and Deep was force the audience to take the journey that Butcher wouldn't. At first, the audience just sees these two as assholes who need to get punished. Over the course of the series, you see that the two of them are also broken and victimized in their own way. Not that it justifies what they did, but it turns them into people, instead of the cartoon villains that Butcher sees them as.

The piano bit with Black Noir might have been my favorite moment of the whole show though.

I think your statement about A-Train and The Deep also applies to Homelander. He was literally the kid in the Skinner Box.

Enjoyed The Boys. Engaging ending for sure. I really thought we would see:

Spoiler:

Starlight vs. Homelander. Before the fight with A-Train we never really see her full power. I thought she would end up knocking him around a bit but I don't think that is possible now

In regards to Lamplighter:

Spoiler:

Did I miss any info on them besides they "retired"?

karmajay wrote:

In regards to Lamplighter:

Spoiler:

Did I miss any info on them besides they "retired"?

It alludes to but never explicitly states that:

Spoiler:

Butcher murdered him in retaliation for Lamplighter burning Mallory’s grandchildren alive.

ruhk wrote:
karmajay wrote:

In regards to Lamplighter:

Spoiler:

Did I miss any info on them besides they "retired"?

It alludes to but never explicitly states that:

Spoiler:

Butcher murdered him in retaliation for Lamplighter burning Mallory’s grandchildren alive.

I must've missed that. Do you remember where they alluded to that?

Nevin73 wrote:
ruhk wrote:
karmajay wrote:

In regards to Lamplighter:

Spoiler:

Did I miss any info on them besides they "retired"?

It alludes to but never explicitly states that:

Spoiler:

Butcher murdered him in retaliation for Lamplighter burning Mallory’s grandchildren alive.

I must've missed that. Do you remember where they alluded to that?

There isn’t really one thing to point at, it’s just how it happens in the comics and how they talk around that particular aspect is one of the plot elements that is largely unchanged in the show. The clues would seem only loosely connected if you haven’t read the comics.

The other thing that really threw me was not recognizing Haley Joel Osmut at all until my wife pointed it out.

Nevin73 wrote:

I think your statement about A-Train and The Deep also applies to Homelander.

Spoiler:

Yeah, for sure, it's just a matter of degrees, I guess. They certainly show how Homelander got to be the way he is, but he's just so far down the path of straight up evil that it doesn't...matter that much? Plus, there's also Kimiko, who has had a similarly sh*tty time of it in a bunch of the same ways, but she's managed to pull herself back. Granted, she had help from Frenchie, but you could argue that Homelander also had the possibility with Madelyn, but continued down the path of being sh*tty.

I'd love to see more about Lamplighter. Or maybe I just really dig the costume design.

ruhk wrote:
karmajay wrote:

In regards to Lamplighter:

Spoiler:

Did I miss any info on them besides they "retired"?

It alludes to but never explicitly states that:

Spoiler:

Butcher murdered him in retaliation for Lamplighter burning Mallory’s grandchildren alive.

Spoiler:

Hmm I don't think that happens in the show because MM seems surprised that a sup can even be killed when they talk about Translucent

I'm tempted to pick up the comics to read more but not sure I want to support it if it has a lot of sexual assault stuff.

Chaz wrote:

The other thing that really threw me was not recognizing Haley Joel Osmut at all until my wife pointed it out.

Nevin73 wrote:

I think your statement about A-Train and The Deep also applies to Homelander.

Spoiler:

Yeah, for sure, it's just a matter of degrees, I guess. They certainly show how Homelander got to be the way he is, but he's just so far down the path of straight up evil that it doesn't...matter that much? Plus, there's also Kimiko, who has had a similarly sh*tty time of it in a bunch of the same ways, but she's managed to pull herself back. Granted, she had help from Frenchie, but you could argue that Homelander also had the possibility with Madelyn, but continued down the path of being sh*tty.

I'd love to see more about Lamplighter. Or maybe I just really dig the costume design.

Yeah, nah. Madelyn will definitely not help redeem anyone.

Watched the first season of Justified with my wife. It's terrific. I was expecting each episode to be more independent, like a typical police show. But the character arcs are so great. Looking forward to more.

Carnival Row is really good. Kind of Penny Dreadful meets Jack the Ripper.

What if it was Penny Gadget meets Chance the Rapper?

Woof, my wife and I just watched the first episode of Carnival Row and, although I will probably give it another episode, I was not a big fan. I thought the two leads were dull and thoroughly lacking in charisma, it was slow and poorly paced, and the whole "these fairies are dirty and diseased and they're taking our jobs!" stuff was about as subtle a metaphor for our times as an anvil dropped on my head. Way too much brooding and heavyhandedness, nowhere near enough fun and whimsy. My wife was not as negative on it as I was, but I will be pretty surprised if we make it past episode 3.

Team Dud is enjoying Carnival Row so far (2 episodes). The setup has lots of promise with multiple moving parts that could interact in interesting ways. I like it a lot more than The Alienist - that seemed very familiar to me almost immediatel and I was done with it after one episode, but I don't know where CR is going given all the different directions they could go.

I find Delevigne better here than the other things I've seen her in (Suicide Squad and Valerian). I didn't find it poorly paced at all - it didn't feel rushed, but each scene was doing something important.

It's heaps better than Bright, at least. They'll have to be very careful with the Magical Underclass == Irish thing, since they're going reasonably close to a lot of events that really happened in history (and how they are equating The Burgue to The English), but I want to know more about the mythos and see if it hangs together or falls to bits after 5 minutes thought like Bright.

Watching Carnival Row and liking it so far. They made a production mistake though with a characters hair. She cuts it and then it shown uncut and then it is back to being cut.

My wife and I watched the first episode of Carnival Row last night. She didn't much care for it (fantasy is a hard sell for her), but I loved it and can't wait to watch the second episode. I agree with mrlogical that it can be rather heavy handed, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

Nevin73 wrote:

Carnival Row is really good. Kind of Penny Dreadful meets Jack the Ripper.

You had me at Penny Dreadful.

We just finished Carnival Row. All in all I enjoyed it, but I think that there was some lazy writing at the end.

Spoilered thoughts:

Spoiler:

We figured out who was behind the attacks by the end of episode 6. It wasn't too hard because are only so many characters.

They did such a great job of world building to basically set it aside for a retelling of the Arthurian legend (or Luke Skywalker or whatever). In the end we were unsatisfied by the direction the story was heading in, though we will tune in for Season 2.

Between this and GoT, it almost seems like they are trying to make incest popular again.

I tried to start Carnival Row, but it was waaaaay too lugubrious (word of the day) for me. My emotional reaction was a good thing, actually. It makes me want to get back to it eventually. I will need to be in the right state of mind, though.

I enjoyed it. They did a great job of building a believable world, and didn't dwell on the Fae differences too much, they were just there. About the only quibble I had with it is that it was dark - not storyline dark, but literally dark and hard to see, so much so that I watched it with the lights off so I could see better.

The show was dark for me also.

Same here, it is obnoxiously dark and difficult to see.

It’s a trend that needs to end. Light your show so we can see what’s happening! I blame Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. Using the lighting as it would have been at the time was a fantastic idea but it seems to have birthed a trend of ‘realistic’ night lighting which results in the viewer struggling to see what the... flip is going on.

My niece brought up a plot hole.

Spoiler:

If you need "seed" to tie the Darkascher to the owner, that would imply that only men could control one. How did Piety create hers so that she controlled it?

The HDR stream looks great on my telly, even in the sewers and the nighttime bits in a downpour. Maybe they haven't put the effort into grading the non-HDR steam. Or is it the same feed at all, I wonder?

Carnival row spolierish after thoughts

Spoiler:

I wanted to see Agreus' Puc-Junk. I mean we saw plenty of naked ladies and I was curious since they went into a lot of detail explaining how fairy ladies are different ect.

The beginning was slow but I did enjoy the story and even though I knew this was not a happy show that ending was a bit of a downer.

Also I loved the monster.

Nevin73 wrote:

My niece brought up a plot hole.

Spoiler:

If you need "seed" to tie the Darkascher to the owner, that would imply that only men could control one. How did Piety create hers so that she controlled it?

Spoiler:

I assumed it would be her egg or blood from her period since that is also related to the making of a baby

Carnival row was a fun show but a hard one to recommend without knowing the person I am recommending it to.

Finished Carnival Row and really liked it. A few questionable moments. Werewolf plot didn't really go anywhere and seemed rather dumb to begin with. Someone kills a werewolf early on that made me think they super powered but nothing is made of it. Someone joins a group and does crazy stuff to get in. The group doesn't come up in the last few episodes when it really seemed like they should considering what happen to their new recruit. In the first or second episodes cops are shown carrying electric lights which contradicts a scene in one of the last few episodes. Could have used more fae that weren't fairies or horny. I mean characters with horns but there were a lot of horny fairies. I wanted more as named characters doing stuff. We do see other type of fae in the background

The best part was the look, camera work and world building. I really liked the realistic problems that they showed if fae creatures were real.

I felt like everything, werewolves and all were just building the stage for the second season. They were very organic about building the backstory that just happened to have a mystery tied along to it...

Finished The Boys. Definitely better than most superhero stuff on tv. Wonderful casting all around, Antony Starr did an amazing job with Homelander.

Carnival Row:

Two episodes in and it to me feels like taking elements from Shadowrun and Final Fantasy and mixing it all up with bits of Dickens, Doyle, and Downton Abbey.