Likes: It's been a year. That's a normal amount of time for a TV show.Originally Posted by Jord
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Active Member
It's been a year. That's a normal amount of time for a TV show.
Throbbing Member
I think I got carried away and forgot to remind myself that the pandemic held things up last time to be honest
Nevertheless, definitely something to look forward to!
Stubby Member
Just watched the first two episodes of the series finale. Laughed my ass off on the second episode. Everything is about to go nuclear.
Stubby Member
Anyone else watching the series finale? Another great episode last night. Guillermo Del Toro has a small role in the beginning!
Active Member
Spoiler: Fred Armisen had me laughing so hard.
Stubby Member
Yes I was laughing until I couldn't breathe!
Active Member
Man what a show, just a fantastic season so far.
Active Member
Wow. This week's episode left me both heartbroken and speechless.
Stubby Member
This season has been great! Can't wait to see how it all wraps up!
Active Member
I nearly spit out my beer. Absolutely one of the funniest surprises of the show. The second he was on screen with that face, I was dying.
I couldn’t believe that was actually him, I had to look it up. What a fantastic list of names that have been on this show.
Side note - I introduced a coworker to Barry because he was looking for a new thing to watch, and ever since then he’s been coming over while I’m sorting mail and just quoting random bits from the show. Always good to see new people finding out about this, seems like a lot of people are sleeping on it. Such a brilliant show.
I’m also really happy that they’re ending it on a good note, and not dragging it out into some bloated 10-season program for no real reason, where someone is “almost catching him” every season. I’ll probably be watching this for years.
Throbbing Member
What an episode. I lost it a bit last season (will definitely need to rewatch), but this one went 0-100 real fast. I watched episode 4 last night and it was absolutely breakneck but incredible - my jaw dropped.
Cannot wait to see how they are going to wrap it all up.
Stubby Member
Funny you word it that way cause that's my one(but big)gripe with the show. Barry/Fuches/Hank or Christobal etc constantly evaded police,other criminals/getting caught,getting killed etc for seasons even when their assassins had the upper hand because everyone around them become extra idiotic when it comes to those moments. I understand the show started out as 50% silly comedy,50% serious but as they significantly made the drama darker/more complex it came off as a lazy crutch to me to use pretty much one gag to always get them out of trouble. At first it was subversive,by the end it's rote. Oh look 58th scene where Fuches will attempt to harm/kill Barry. Oh of course he failed cause the assassins are comically stupid. Oh look scene 59 where he changes his mind and forgives Barry until the next time where he attempts it again and both of them will get away without consequences. Riveting...
Last edited by Something Underneath; 05-05-2023 at 08:00 AM.
Stubby Member
Another great episode despite I knew what was going to happen at the end. Only 2 more episodes left.
Active Member
Holy shit. That was one of the best episodes of the entire series.
Stubby Member
I agree. I certainly hope the final episode next week is at least an hour. I can't see them wrapping everything up in a 30 minute span.
Throbbing Member
Oh wow
Active Member
Indeed. Not sure how to feel about that.
Active Member
Very good episode, final five minutes is 10/10, though. Absolutely perfect.
And Spoiler: Jim Cummings!! I love that dude. I was distracted through most of the "movie" because he popped up in it. Well deserved. Great actor, great filmmaker.
Active Member
Spoiler: I really don't like the very last bit. Doesn't feel right that via the movie they turned Barry into a hero and Cousineau into a villain.
Active Member
See, I feel like most shows about killers probably fall into that trap. You can only have so many developments in that story, and so many different takes on that trope, before you start going in circles. It's just gonna happen when you give it enough time. But personally, I give Barry a pass on it, whereas something like Dexter bored me to absolute tears with it, for a couple reasons.
Barry has 4 seasons, 10 episodes each, about 30 minutes per episode. About 1,200 minutes. These characters are cartoon characters in a farcical story that's just trying to move from one beat to the next, even if certain events wouldn't actually pan out that way. I don't really care, because I'm enjoying myself along the way, having a laugh, and not being bogged down in things trying to be too realistic and serious, or needlessly long runtimes. Nice and quick, doesn't overstay its welcome. An additional four seasons of this would probably make me lose interest, even if they kept it short and sweet.
Dexter, however...8 seasons, 12 episodes each, plus a 10-episode "revival" for a total of 106 episodes, each one anywhere from what...45-55 minutes a piece? About 5,300+ minutes? All that time spent alternating between "almost being caught again" and "muh dark passenger." That's...SO much time - more time than I can personally be bothered to invest in something like that. That's not even to say I thought Dexter was bad, but boy, will I never feel the need to watch it again. It was fine, but I got it the first time around. The limited series didn't even need to be there, but they did it anyway, because whatever, they could I guess.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's just gonna come down to personal taste, like anything else.
Active Member
Spoiler: I think the fact that it doesn't feel right is part of the point
When I finished it last night, I was conflicted at first. Sad about some parts, felt gross about others. And then I watched it again, and I felt angry.
And that's not a bad thing, or a negative statement about the show....it's kind of one that's forced a bit of relfection that I wasn't really prepared for.
Active Member
Yeah, as stated above, that's the point. People want to tell themselves the story that makes the most sense; not necessarily what really happened. And of course this is a show that satirizes the film industry, so it makes sense to end on Hollywood telling a cheesy version of the wrong story.
As for my overall thoughts, the show started to fall off for me around the third season, I think. I loved the blend of comic and dark in the first two seasons, but then it seemed like the show leaned really hard into both of those, making for a show that was sometimes incredibly silly and sometimes incredibly dark and fucked up. The more that happened, the more it started to feel tonally disjointed to me. But I'm glad they wrapped it up when they did and that they took some big swings along the way.
Active Member
Best thing on HBO in 20 years
BADGERS
Finally, finally got around to binging the final season, all in one sitting. I'm surprised at how much was unspoiled for me, given that I couldn't avoid succession spoilers at all. I'm not super spoiler averse, I try not to care about that stuff, because not caring is the only way to really protect yourself from spoilers.
I was surprised about a few things. For one, this season felt much less dark to me than season 3, which felt a bit overbearing to me, and my expectations that this season would be even darker was one of the reasons I was putting it off. Obviously, still quite dark and serious. But the comedy was still very present. Ultimately I feel like Barry stuck it's landing albeit with a few rough spots. Cousineau's father in law got some expanding as a character that wasn't necessarily convincing nor smoothly integrated, and since so many of his choices direct the out come of the show, I wish they had put more work I to making him convincing. I also think that the show really failed NoHo Hank in the end by subjecting him and his partner to one of media's most notorious homophobic tropes and then giving him kind of a flat and shallow end. Hank and the actor who played him were the breakout star of this series and so it's a bummer they chose to go that route.
The time jump stuff is extremely jarring, but I think that awkward implementation served it well. It felt sufficiently surreal and uncomfortable and wrong and that I think conveyed the feelings of everyone in that situation. And it's final ending is also sufficiently bizarre and uncomfortable and still kind of funny.
Active Member
*stares in The Leftovers*
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