***Official TV sitcoms and Series recommendation thread***

[rong]

Anyone tries sense8 yet?

[aubreymcfate]

Anyone tries sense8 yet?

I did. caveat: I only saw the first 3 episodes.

Positive: The Wachowskies are really good at creating quirky and fun worlds that speak to alternative subcultures. The scifi part of the story (their psychic abilities and the way they randomly bleed into each other's lives) is pretty cool. Not hard scifi at all, very much focused on the emotional narratives of these people's lives and how the superhuman ability stuff is interwoven in their life problems. Anyway, the scifi intrigue stuff is pretty slick and cool, if a little ambiguous and confusing.

Negative: Honestly, a lot of crappy writing. Also, really heavyhanded self-righteous pedantic ideology. It's just so obvious when they're preaching social commentary about whatever -- inner city violence, police, transphobia, etc. -- it really takes away from any authenticity of the characters. It's like they constructed a scene just so a character can vent about a certain political issue -- it feels fake. The overt, not at all subtle ideological agenda totally flattens the characters. There's also some other cliched writing/storylines that are a bit of an eye roll -- sometimes they're so campy it's fun and sometimes it's just a boring trope.

[aceyducey]

What ever happened to shows like combat, ironside?

[rong]

I did. caveat: I only saw the first 3 episodes.

Positive: The Wachowskies are really good at creating quirky and fun worlds that speak to alternative subcultures. The scifi part of the story (their psychic abilities and the way they randomly bleed into each other's lives) is pretty cool. Not hard scifi at all, very much focused on the emotional narratives of these people's lives and how the superhuman ability stuff is interwoven in their life problems. Anyway, the scifi intrigue stuff is pretty slick and cool, if a little ambiguous and confusing.

Negative: Honestly, a lot of crappy writing. Also, really heavyhanded self-righteous pedantic ideology. It's just so obvious when they're preaching social commentary about whatever -- inner city violence, police, transphobia, etc. -- it really takes away from any authenticity of the characters. It's like they constructed a scene just so a character can vent about a certain political issue -- it feels fake. The overt, not at all subtle ideological agenda totally flattens the characters. There's also some other cliched writing/storylines that are a bit of an eye roll -- sometimes they're so campy it's fun and sometimes it's just a boring trope.

Agree with most of the criticism. I guess I kinda let it slide because there were so many characters that we needed to relate to and using cliché stereotypes was an easy way to do it, I guess it's a little lazy maybe. But I got over it because I liked the premise and the way they blended the characters together was pretty cool.

It gets better. Although expect more crappy dialogue. But more cool shit too. Lots of cool shit in fact. Plus a couple of awesome memorable lines that help you overlook the shittier dialogue.