I’d say you’ll know by the end of the first episode, and probably quite a bit sooner, if you are going to like the show or not. If you are into it, continue on. If you are bored, then just stop.  I continued on and while I don’t exactly regret it, it was far from one of my favorite TV experiences in 2021.

So apparently it started reasonably strong and then had a large drop off in viewership.

If all that was objectively outstanding, then why did it feel so subjectively fake to me? Like I was always seeing them as costumes and sets and props, and not just getting lost in show.

I was fully prepared to treat it as its own thing, I just didn’t like it that much.

I could only get through the show by skipping forward through all the scenes with Vicious/Julia (unless Spike was also in the scene).  I do not feel I missed anything important.

All my favorite superhero content this year was TV shows. I’d probably take Hit Monkey over any of the movies.

Stole SEASONS as Lyanna Mormont!

Obviously he expected his movie to solve the media problem, right before it solved the climate problem.

Fiberglass and plastic?

I actually like the idea of Bran ending up a vulnerable King, elected on the assumption he would be weak and easy to manipulate. It sounds like the original vision had something like that happen early enough to really develop it, as opposed to in the TV series where as an ending point, it left many audience members…

I don’t see that as being accurate of Craig’s Bond, and I am not sure it really applies since Roger Moore’s run. And in fact that Alan Moore line is from 1986, so right before Dalton started.

No Time to Die was the third-highest grossing movie of 2021, and the top two were both China-specific movies.

That implies an independent existence to this character beyond whatever Eon Productions decides to do with the character. And that makes no sense to me in this case, because the character is fictional, and has long since moved on from the original Fleming character as well.

I’d define it as the next movie in the franchise having a woman in the lead role.

Not to be crass about it, but the latest James Bond movie was the third-highest grossing of 2021, first among non-China-specific movies. Spectre was #6, Skyfall was #2, Quantum was #7—really going all the way back, it has been a reliable hit machine.

This sort of reminds me of the debate about allowing women (or for that matter people of color, Jews, and so on) into prominent traditional institutions like colleges, clubs, military branches, and so on, versus creating separate institutions for them. Normally a particular movie role would not be a close analog, but…

A bit of a nitpick, but I don’t think Christopher was being absentminded when he told his stepmother about the bodies. I thought it was framed as a very intentional decision. His surface reasoning was that she would not send them money unless he gave her a compelling explanation as to why they were in France, but the…

Yeah, Kate O’Flynn as DC Lancing was so, so fantastic. If this is British Fargo, the replacement of fundamentally earnest small-town investigators like Marge Gunderson, Molly Solverson, Lou Solverson, and Gloria Burgle with the world-weary, sardonic, resting-“I can’t believe I have to put up with this shite”-face Emma…

Exactly, this is clearly and intentionally British Fargo. They even do the “This is a true story” thing where the “true” fades out, which was used in the opening of the third season of Fargo in which Thewlis stars.  That can’t be an accident.

Yeah, Tom in real life would be among the worst people I ever met.  In this show, sympathy is always relative.