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Euphoria: A Thousand Little Trees of Blood (2022)
Good resolution
Honestly, I didn't have high expectation for this series when I started watching. I thought it was narrated by someone who is pretentious and self indulgent, and the topic is pretty pedestrian (drugs - sex - dysfunctional family, the holy trinity of KKona land's high school drama featuring a cast of people who clearly look mid twenties). And almost all characters are completely predictable. All except for one.
The one character that surprised me and kept me watching was the "bad guy". Nate Jacobs carried this series. And now when the story shed light on his complex motives, some people don't like it. They thought it made no sense that he could be sympathetic, they thought "b-but the writer didn't account for all the bad things he did!", "how can he be redeemed?" "he's like a new character!" while in reality, his actions are still completely within character. These viewers either miss the clues from earlier episodes or just aren't very good at assembling facts and drawing conclusion from them. Ironically these same viewers worship the previous episode in which a junkie going through withdrawal magically pulled off great heist, evaded police and escaped capture like Batman. The average viewers seem to be okay with just about any arbitrary amount of plot armor being slapped on the protagonist as long as it is dressed up with some kind of intense struggle :))
In that aspect I'm glad I am not the average viewer of this series. I consider this episode a massive improvement over the previous episode. And I think the narrator is supposed to be unreliable, maybe she's on drugs (again)
Euphoria: Out of Touch (2022)
The sins of the father are the burdens of the son
This episode reminds us of how Nate Jacobs became who he is.
Something many mediocre fantasy writers don't understand is what makes a story great is mostly about how well the antagonist is constructed. In that aspect this series really delivers.
And it has exquisite aesthetic, too.
Nate and Cassie's development is great. It is great because it's a pairing that looks good in theory (he could complement her naivety and she could give him a moral compass), but is at the same time destined to end badly due to the incident in the first episode. If the writers never go there, you'd never see how messed up Nate's internal world is (buried deep in his fantasy you can still see Jules) and how much he was willing to give up to protect his family.
The White Lotus (2021)
Some people grow, others don't
Characters growths show interesting contrast.
The character with the most compelling development was the son, who was more intelligent than he let on (you can tell from how perceptive he was during his first conversation with his dad). It is quite logical that when you remove his shell and release him into the world, he adapts into a better human.
On the opposite end of the spectrum was the degenerate daughter and her equally dumb and ungrateful racist friend who didn't grow in any way, they ended just as they started: as parrots of textbooks with no understanding of how the real world works and always end up causing damage to those they care about.
The drama is fairly interesting with most characters getting a fitting ending, the grieving lady found happiness, the dysfunctional couple resolved their issue, the working class people who want easy money from the rich folks they despise in the end got BTFO'd.
The funniest aspect of the story: the daughter's friend who demanded justice for the oppressed was actually the root cause of all the bad things happened:
-She was the one who brought drugs to the island, which got into the hands of the hotel manager and escalated his conflict with the rich husband.
-She instigated the theft and assault which led to the rich husband using the knife to attack intruder.
One person was killed. Another was arrested and his life was ruined. There is a deep sense of irony when the root cause of the tragedies, Paula, was showed to make a lot of noises arguing against the people who paid for her vacation about equality and fairness, even shed a few tears for the poor exploited native people :)). In the end she just walked away with no understanding of the true extent of the havoc she created, while reading some book about colonialism to reinforce her opinions, lol.
This type of humor grows on you, but I can see it's not for everyone, because of the real story is hidden behind layers of satire and social commentaries. Rich people are portrayed to be obnoxious and off-putting on purpose, it's easy to miss the main antagonist and what the story really is about. People like Paula watching this will generally lack the self-awareness and humility to see how she ruined people's lives with her brand of justice.
Silicon Valley: Optimal Tip-To-Tip Efficiency (2014)
Almost as technically impressive as Gates' pancake sort
How many data can one guy manipulate at once, tip to tip efficiency, from the middle out, pre sort, D2F. Frankly speaking, I am impressed, none of this is real or accurate yet it feels completely authentic. They actually captured an aspect of algorithmic thinking, how we squeeze out extra efficiency in computation, it is with the line of thinking presented in this episode.
Well done. I haven't laughed this hard in a while.
Silicon Valley: Minimum Viable Product (2014)
Quite funny
First episode was great, some of the jokes are more subtle, some made me laugh out loud. They took the stereotypes and turned them into compelling characters that appeal not only to those in some specific technical fields but to a broader audience. That takes insights.
Btw the sampling theorem puts a limit on lossless compression (only certain type of band limited signals can be recovered with no quality loss) so it makes sense that our guy could do it for music, but our investors went and assumed it would work on other types of signals ("endless applications", "navigation data for self driving cars", "medical imagery" lol) and they wanted to throw millions of dollars into this guy's product before they even looked at his algorithm or had it evaluated by experts. That's bold :)
May our protagonist bypass the Nyquist rate on all types of data in the same way Terry Tao and Emmanuel Candes did with Compressed Sensing (mind you these are the guys who did not drop out of college :)) Gregory's facial expression when the word "college" is mentioned still makes me chuckle)
StartUp (2016)
How to turn interesting premises into a lazy and pandering cartoon
Characters are as authentic as plastic action figures.
Izzy: genius Stanford dropout with experience in "Unix, Linus and Windows" :))) not even joking, I'm just quoting her CV from episode 2. Prerequisite to enjoy this show fully is you need to have no basic understanding of computers. Izzy doesn't really show any sign of intelligence outside of the keyboard tapping super hackerz plot gimmick. She was dumb enough to give away her life's work when a tech billionaire investor brought in a "third party" (who obviously looked like they work for him to anyone with more than one brain cell).
Ronald: gangsta with a heart of gold, designated good guy of the story and his convenient plot superpowers: all the important deals are made by him, all the good ideas are his and his son's. By simply asking Izzy about how to sell drugs on Tor - something his son heard from a friend - Ronald and his son were credited with creating the new darknet (lol). The writers managed to shoehorn Ronald's moral high ground into every single contrived conflict he was part of, the card about his background was played again and again like a broken record.
Nick: a jittery opportunist who became a full on Machiavellian megalomaniac. As the story entered season 3, Nick's flaws became magnified while Ronald's flaws became nonexistent. They both became caricatures. And of course Nick ended up being the weak coward getting beaten up by the righteous gangster.
Nick's latest gf Mara was brought into the show for the sole purpose of being the female power taking down the evil men in charge. And her dad's character was needed to make her a victim, make Nick look like a buffoon and make Ronald look more "legit".
None of these characters made any effort to appear like real people or anything more than mouthpieces for the writer's slogans.
The story feels like it's written by students who wanted to write about serious tech topic but didn't do their homework and so they tried to overcompensate with political correctness.
There are just so many embarrassing technical details in this show, at some point an expert in security was handed a stack of papers with thousands of keywords, and she manually entered each term into her search program... holy cow... they just couldn't think of putting those data into a csv file and process them with some simple commands.
Mare of Easttown (2021)
Too obvious plot device
It is a typical formula for strong female protagonist with tragic life. The first expectation you should have is: no major male character is allowed to be anything close to smart or strong. In fact, they overdid it a bit here with Colin Zabel (even though we already have a male colleague of Mare who is a police officer who hyperventilates at the sight of blood)
Colin Zabel's one job (plotwise) was literally to make Mare look intelligent and competent for as long as he was alive. Just rewatch every conversation they had about the case. He was unironically useless for the investigation. Mare could have progressed the case in the same way without him because she had this powerful Deus ex Machina: she just happens to have a friend who happens to know the one important victim that could lead you right to the perpetrator, lol.
The writers masterfully set up expectation about Zabel as a whiz who solved some cold case, then wrote him to be a fraud and an opposite of a strong dependable colleague. Mind you they weren't at all subtle in what they were doing. It's almost as if they were scared that a half decent male detective would take away from our strong female protagonist and the theme of the show so they had to add as many sad traits into this poor Zabel guy as possible (living with his mom, dumped by fiancee, etc etc). The man just showed up then developed feelings for our main character in the course of several days, even though they already had another guy for Mare's romance. So now we know she's not only very smart but is also a very desirable grandma for some reason. But this type of fantasy is ok because we are also showed she is very flawed in her personal family drama, totally not a Mary Sue.
Her family drama led to Zabel's final function as a plot device: to help Mare participate in the investigation after being suspended so she can earn redemption point for next episode. And also just as crucially: to be Ned Stark, for bonus shock value.
It's not about being predictable really, predictable stories can be compelling and interesting. This story just has an obvious one trick pony plot device they keep shoving in our face and I'm actually surprised the amount of people eating this up, with just a little bit of analytical thinking you can see what the writers were doing, again and again since the beginning.
Nobody (2021)
Too predictable
The story is very typical. The moment the guy who speaks Russian showed up, you can already see the ending.
It's a straightforward cookie-cutter action fantasy that ticks all the boxes to appeal to the frustrated, bullied, weak males, and it works.
John Wick meets Falling down, but with less style than the former and less substance than the latter.
Ginny & Georgia (2021)
might take a few days to finish an episode if you are not used to secondhand embarrassment
Characters are often overacted, some to the point of being clowny. They are trying too hard to make it seems like there are teenagers in this show.
In fact that makes the comedy the best aspect of the show: a bunch of really weird mid-late 20s clowny tapdancing actors acting like high schoolers.
Storywise everyone needs a dramatic confrontation with everyone else. Just draw a diagram you will see. Even the little kid needs a relationship drama. Also, bedroom door locks have not been invented in this show, so everyone just walks into bedroom of everyone else.
Nonsensical plot devices, copious amount of drugs, alcohol, sex inserted into the story sprinkled with some political slogans and voila you have the recipe for 'coming of age' story. Not very interesting or creative.
The writer ended up creating a bunch of cartoonish bipolar characters as the intellectually inferior friends to the 'iamverysmart' protagonist (apparently taking AP English and citing some movement in the 80s are very impressive feats). And the mom is also verysmart, strong, independent and dangerous.
Imagine a generation of kids like Ginny: inflated sense of self importance, big ego and often overestimate their intelligence.
Not sure why some people try to inflate the internet ratings of this bad soap drama. Would recommend watching only if you are really good at handling cringes.
Shadowplay (2020)
Lazily written caricature
This is the story you would expect the average American highschooler to come up with. Not actual adult writers. The roles of the Americans and the Russians in this show are simply cartoonish. As fiction, the story is simply bland (obviously historical truth doesn't matter here as the show has nothing to do with actual history and it doesn't need to stick to any actual event).
And to user "dlbottla", no you don't see the "truth" if you have lived on one side of the war. In fact that makes you the most biased. In every war there are three sides: there is your story, there is their story, and there is the truth. Historical truth can only be realized once you analyze the data and events from both sides.
Today you will learn that history is not simply told by the victors, it is also often told (or in this case caricatured) by those with the loudest voice. Yes, brutality of the Soviet army who just lost dozens of millions of their kin does exists, but to what extent? are they your Hollywood villains that you need the American superheroes to save you from? it is always a black and white picture if you ignore all the colors in between. And it is those colors in between that make for good historical fiction.
Gangs of London (2020)
Low quality soap drama that happens to feature gangsters
Some dramas are edgy, some dramas are trite and boring, this series managed to be both.
It tried hard to appear sophisticated, but it really is just another shallow, clumsily written soap opera that happens to feature gangsters.
Writers think just killing off characters and shoot their scenes through dark filter and their story will appear darker and more serious. They forgot about authenticity, coherence, conflict resolution (which actually requires good understanding of the setting). This is the hallmark of a low quality soapy drama.
- Under cover cop with ridiculous plot armor and generic tragic background, check.
- The patriarch of the largest crime syndicate flipflopping between a dangerous psycho and an inept emo baby, check.
- Professional "special" force mercenaries with overwhelming number and heavy grade weapons almost failed to kill a kid because they for some reason decided to go in guns blazing to attack a safehouse, then subsequently got BTFO'd by their own grenade, check.
- Deaths of random characters with 30 seconds of screen-time that nobody cares about, check.
- Exaggerated fight scenes to create fake tension but are actually completely predictable because of plot armor, check.
- Following the "bad guys are the Illuminati lol" cliche to a tee, check.
- "Wise" character decided to kill another character to stop the leak of information which is leaked anyway because some other character has super detective that can follow everyone and uncover their secrets, but wait, except for the undercover cop LOL
- Crime bosses literally look like paid actors. A lot of posturing and swinging weapons around, then died because of said swinging of weapons. Limbs flying, cartoonish bloodshed. Intimidating? no, unless you're 12. Comedic? yes.
- Ultimate bad guys of the series look like your middle school teachers in a black limo pulling up next to you asking about your unfinished homework, nerve racking.
- The most intimidating crime boss was mr Wong from episode 1, he never appeared again.
An important lesson for the writers: when you write a story you need to have a central theme you want to culminate, like the complex politics between different factions and the power struggle. Where is the power struggle? it's distracted and out of focus, a major part of the story is just a completely monotone cat and mouse game with an evil bogeyman and their convenient superpower that needs zero explanation or build up, just use the good old Illuminati formula lol
Killing off characters for the "twist"is just a plot device. A plot device should not be the central climax of your story. You don't write your story for the twist, you write your story for the central theme. That's the difference between edgy high schoolers who just watched GoT and someone who can actually write a decent story.
Outer Banks (2020)
To be taken in small dose, daily
I recommend watching this show when you're eating something, preferably a daily meal. You need food to distract you from the triteness so you can focus on the positives of the show. Only then, the characters might grow on you. It is not about a lack of realism. Unbelievable stories can be compelling and authentic, here they made a believable story completely cringey and unauthentic.
Our boy is a super model in rags (cap backwards) having to fight Aaron Carter over his girlfriend the princess (I kid you not that is actually the main romance in the show). The princess is a virgin who also looks like a walking advertisement for botox and fillers. The problem is Aaron Carter goes to the gym and is an athlete (7th in nationals). The writers did try to hook us in with various phony scenarios and cliche conflicts: the "Kooks", "macking", "Pogues" etc a pure cringe adaptation of the elites vs working class theme. They just don't really have any substance, every high five and lip bite after delivering a line did have a comedic effect, so that's a good quality of the show. It sort of work if you don't sit through more than 30 minutes of this show at a time.
Characters are cardboard stereotypical with one token black guy on each side ("Kooks" vs "Pogues" lol), you can actually guess what each of them will do in "dire" situations after you watch the first episode and figure out their role in the group. We have the smart guy who drops SAT words, the impulsive guy who will do something over the top to bring extra drama, the girl who happens to have the right tool at the right time, etc I laughed hard when the "smart" guy dropped the "independent variable vs dependent variable" line. The dialogues literally sound like they are generated by chatbots (You can find chatbots powered by NLP algorithm, if you input character's name and role, they will autogenerate the dialogues and you cannot tell the difference from the writing of this show).
Despite all that, with good food this show can be entertaining. Still, people who rate this higher than 5 are probably under the effect of the quarantine.
You (2018)
You don't have to accept the story to be entertained by it, and I am entertained.
In my experience as a mathematician, people who are overly focused on the details of fiction are usually the same people who are unable to grasp basic math or physics beyond high school level, when abstractions and uncertainty come into play. To quote a certain famous philosopher: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it".
The ability to hold uncertainty in your mind and entertain the given premises and consider the story being told under those premises, is the difference between the intelligent audience and unintelligent ones. You don't have to accept the story to be entertained by it. It is normal to not be entertained by fiction, but if people who don't enjoy it feel the need to try and analyze its realism, then it looks like they are overcompensating for something, perhaps a weak grasp of abstraction found in the real world?
This overcompensation is commonly seen in many of the negative reactions to this show, criticizing its lack of realism or insulting the age of the audience who enjoyed it. The thing is, even when one realistically considers the details these people complain about, their criticisms are still full of holes and biases: like the remark on how much a bookstore clerk makes, to complain that the financial setting is not realistic, forgetting Joe is also the owner of the store, or the complaints about artistic license of the stalking scenes (lol). In fact, every unrealistic situation criticized can be equally defended simply because there are always hidden variables that can explain away the perceived inaccuracy. This is a well known thesis of underdetermination by Pierre Duhem and Willard Van Orman Quine :)