TV Backlog Culls, Spring 2023

[chuckro]

It’s time for some spring cleaning. I decided to go ahead and cull some things from my TV/movie backlog, especially since I’ve finally worn it down to something more manageable.

First off, I’m taking off Schitt's Creek (Season 2 and later) because I clearly am not interested enough in going back after watching the first season a couple of years ago. I had watched a few episodes of Bob’s Burgers a couple of years back, never actually logged them or made any notes, and found the jokes too repetitive.

I watched the first three episodes of Tell Me Lies (Hulu, Season 1) and thought it was basically The Sex Lives of College Girls, only less episodic and not a comedy. It’s nominally a flashback series, but that’s a rough framing device without narration; and there’s an eight-year gap but the first season only covers the first year, which means that I can’t expect anything to actually get resolved.

I watched one episode of Future Man (Hulu, Season 1) with the hopes that it might be entertaining, but it’s all crude sexual references and gross-out humor on a well-treaded plot (The Last Starfighter meets Back to the Future). Not worth my time.

I decided I was okay with Rebecca watching Shadow and Bone (Netflix, Season 2) without me and just tell me the important DRAMA. And as it apparently resolved the main plot but none of the character arcs and has been canceled after two seasons, I don’t feel so bad about that decision.

I’ve had several people swear that I should watch Severance because it’s the hot new thing; I opted to read the Wikipedia entry because there’s only so much “Don’t Create the Torment Nexus” I can handle in this world where the tech industry is dedicated to creating the torment nexus. (I appreciate that we’ve reached the point in science fiction where we acknowledge that 100% of new technology will be used to make rich people richer, and “Can we have sex with it?” and “Can it be used to kill people we don’t like?” are secondary concerns.)

And speaking of the Torment Nexus, I watched the first three episodes of Upload (Amazon Prime, Season 1), which my mom had recommended. It’s biting satire of modern society in a near-future sitcom about a man who is in a car accident in a self-driving car and is uploaded into a virtual “heaven” that his girlfriend is paying for. There’s a big, tangled mystery of why the main character was killed, and also the complicated will-they-won’t-they romance with his living “handler” who works for the digital afterlife company. And while the story interested me, the actual episode-by-episode characterization didn’t and the humor wasn’t really there for me. So I read the Wikipedia summaries of that, too.

Comments

[elissali11]

Not to throw a wrench in the works, but Schitt's Creek is very worth watching later seasons, in my opinion. My parents adore the show, so I started watching it with them, and I did find the humor a bit repetitive and too reliant on cringe factor as of the end of the first season, but where it really starts to get good is in the second season and later, because the characters all start to have arcs and seeing them grow and succeed is really worth it. There's a scene in a restaurant (I think in season 2?) that I feel like Eugene Levy should get an award for. (but it doesn't really work if you haven't suffered through the first season to get there, probably)

That said, if the backlog needs culling, the backlog needs culling. :)