It's funny to effectively ask "everyone" is something is as "everyone" says it is

Nothing says hard hitting, independent thinker like “kids these days!”

Not like our generation, we were indoctrinated in a slightly different way, which was cool

They made fun of him. It was less "this is unethical" and more "what a dweeb, dating a child."

It being different mostly, IMO. Like it has a different feel to it and in the age of infinite versions of the same thing that goes a long way.

Also, nice mix of prestige quality and moment to moment laughs/entertainment. And that damn score.

Yes, it's absolutely silly to start anointing a show as one of the all time greats before it even ends.

I think they seemed happy at the start because they were going in a different direction and building their own thing. Getting back to headbutting with Logan is just going to make them miserable again.

Ultimately we don't know if it's the writer's or the Service's call to put in those cliffhangers, but one thing you can always bet on is that people will blame everything on the "suits' and treat the "creatives" like angels. It's just an easy narrative to circlejerk.

Social media is melting people's brains. There was a post the other day of someone saying they loved the pilot of a show and if they should keep watching.

People are bored, lonely and insecure, so they look for validation on the internet.

> > 2- Pancakes, divorce, Pancakes - Review

So happy to see this here. Just such an incredibly, sublime bit of comedy

Huh, his place looked like shit

I don't see it as a spiritual successor any more than any other post apocalyptic show. The Last of Us (based on the game and the show so far) is pretty much devoid of the characteristics that defined The Leftovers like the complete mystery/lack of interest in solving that mystery, the high concept storytelling, the focus on the existential angst of grief rather than processing it and moving on etc.

While it feels like blasphemy at this point, The Last of Us has way more in common with The Walking Dead than The Leftovers. The Last of Us is likely to be a Game of Thrones level HBO mega hit while The Leftovers was a specific critical darling with a devoted but modest fandom, and there's a reason for that.

TLDR: TLOU wouldn't make "International Assassin."

It’s more “what kind of sad specimen obsessed over a show they don’t even watch?”

Remember, his back is exactly as bad and Greer's heart is exactly as bad as the plot requires it to be at that exact moment

Am I misremembering? I thought in the OG stories he was also a military veteran. Although IIRC it's Red October where he famously never touches a firearm, he does in other stories.

But again the tone is "more than just a pencil pusher," not "motherfucking terminator"

Wasn't the whole point of the character that he's also a badass vet who is more than capable of violence when the situation calls for it?

I think the unfortunate change is that instead of him being unwillingly thrust in to the occasional violent situation, he's basically the black ops vanguard leading the charge whenever violence is the solution. And violence is always the solution lol

I was hoping making Russians the bad guys would be a return to form as that was the bread and butter of the genre but no, it's the same "Jack Ryan shoots his way across the world with his wisecracking buddy"

The show is just the embodiment of phoning it in. I thought I wanted more kinda cheezy, forgettable action stories. I think I forgot how goddamn boring they can be.

Ooooohhh love to learn something new!

Oh I don't think the show is, that's my point. I feel that particularly if you read Mike White interviews he's pretty straightforward about how he just kinda likes subverting expectations with these funny situations. I think the conversation/social media tries to frame it as smarter and deeper than it is.

It's that exactly. And honestly it didn't even go all that viral until S2. The conversation/fandom surrounding it got wildly different for S2.

Ultimately pretty much every question the show ever asks get answered with a muddy "people are people" sort of answer. S2 didn't say anything deep or profound about sexuality. Probably the closest it came was Imperioli yelling at his father for his inherited womanizing. It doesn't even really say much about the nature of tourism. Hell the most well meaning of the "rich set" in the first season ends up being the most destructive by far. In interviews mike White comes across damn near trolling people who want a really left leaning "rich people bad" message because they end up all being garden variety jerks rather than embodiments of evil wealth.

Then in S2 the very TikTok-y pathologizing came out. Every character was either a "sociopath" or an "incel" or an "abuser" or "closeted gay" or a secret rapist or something. Surprise surprise, aside from the outrageous murder gays plotline, every other character was aggressively vanilla in their sins.

I do wonder if this show is going to look a lot different in retrospect. It's one of those shows that everyone has convinced themselves is very smart but there's actually little evidence of that in the show, and even the creator is largely flippant about the themes. What's funny is on every post the upvoted top level comment will have a wildly different take on the themes of the show, they're all contradictory and everyone agrees to them.

Ultimately it's just sort of a fun show that humanizes bad behavior and doesn't have a whole ton to say.

Buying another media company =/= every facet of those companies blending in to one product. It's really that simple. Who Amazon owns has nothing to do with the value offering they're pitching with Amazon Prime.

Yeah I get the bit. I just found it boring and really poorly timed given how it threw off the season's pacing and tension build.

I think part of the point of The Sopranos is to have filler episodes. In no world would the show be better off without "Pine Barrens." It wasn't designed to tell a singular, tight, high suspense narrative. It was designed to be very concerned with the day to day lives and emotions of these characters.