You Have Been Watching

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Share your latest viewing here.

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[Sean Robinson]

Holy fuck, hadn’t realized there were new episodes of Black Mirror.
Thank you.

You’d think Netflix would have included that info in one of the 18,000 emails per month they send me, especially since they know I’ve watched all 6 previous seasons.

• This reply was modified 2 months ago by Sean Robinson.

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lorcan_nagle, Dave

I haven’t watched Black Mirror in ages but I’ve heard good things about the new series, I should get around to it.

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Dave

Havoc
Unbelievable, the film is nearly all set at night and I can see everything in it!
None of that murky, can’t see dark scenes, no. Nope, this film has action scenes and it’s going to show them off. Some guy goes through a wall headfirst? That stuntman’s pain gets to be seen.
Plot and pace are both good too. A tightly controlled set of characters with casting to match and superb pay-offs.
Yeah, this is good, very good.

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francisg, njerry, Uncle Retrospective, Todd, lorcan_nagle

Dave wrote:

It feels like this latest season of Black Mirror hasn’t got that much traction – like a lot of Netflix shows it seemed to get a blip of attention and then everyone moved on – but this season has been one of the best and most consistent in quite a long time.

I’ve seen a lot of ads for and clips from this season, though. Seemed to me like they were pushing it quite a bit.

I’m looking forward to it, too. My Netflix subscription is currently asleep, but I’m looking forward to soon reactivating it (when my Disney+ subscription goes to sleep) and watch Adolescence, Black Mirror and the new season of Stranger Things.

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lorcan_nagle

Oh, and I saw A Real Pain, which was absolutely wonderful. It has so much to say and such a great way of doing it, and it is just so wonderfully entertaining to watch Eisenberg and Culkin as these two cousins who are very close and estranged at the same time, and both in a pain that is just, well, life.

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Dave, lorcan_nagle

Saw Sinners today and thought it was excellent. I managed to stay fairly unspoiled going in, and I think that’s the best way to see it.

The story is good and it’s a film that has things to say as well as being entertaining, but the music and sound design especially is outstanding. An Oscar surely beckons. There’s one scene in the middle where everything comes together in an unexpected, transcendent way that I found surprisingly and suddenly moving. And another scene towards the end that really hits.

I’m glad it’s doing well, it deserves to.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd

I regret to inform you, I have been watching anime.

Well, Italian-Japanese co-production anime. It’s by RAI (the Italian state broadcaster, I think) and TMS and is called Reporter Blues. It’s set in 1920s Paris and is about a journalist, Toni, who gets into scrapes. I’ve only watched one episode actually, which was quite interesting. Or more the existence of the show itself is.

The copyright date on the title says 1989, but the earliest it aired was 1991, AFAIK. It had either a full season of 52 episodes or two seasons of 26 episodes, but only those first 26 were shown in 91, in Japan at least, possibly in Europe too, with the second lot seemingly not aired anywhere until about 1996. That’s definitely when it turned up on Malaysian TV, with an English dub. Lorcan’s probably ahead of me here, but I’m pretty sure it’s been dubbed by Omni Productions, the same team that did Transformers Headmasters et al and various Shaw Bros films. If not, it’s certainly in the same style. It’s not as bad, but it’s certainly ropey.

The weird thing is, only a few episodes have been found with the English dub and that’s through dual-language broadcasts on Spanish TV. They’re all from the second half of the series. Meanwhile, the German dub has been released on DVD (a couple of times) as “the complete series” but is only the first 26 episodes. There doesn’t seem to be any (available) version of it complete in one language.

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lorcan_nagle

Over the past few weeks I’ve watched The Residence on Netflix – largely because I’ll take a chance on anything if it’s sold as a cosy whodunnit, but also this looked like a fun premise (a murder takes place in the White House during a state dinner, and everyone there – staff and attendees – is a potential suspect).

Very early on it seems like it’s going to be a fun show, but it quickly becomes so drawn-out and padded and repetitive that by the time I got halfway through I was struggling to find the enthusiasm to press on. The sub-Sherlock detective has no personality other than being rude and liking birdwatching, the various quirky characters are mostly grating, and the mystery itself just isn’t interesting enough to sustain eight episodes. And the final episode is 90 minutes long! You could tell an entire story in that time.

Even a Kylie cameo couldn’t save it. One to avoid.

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Christian, Uncle Retrospective, Todd, Dan

Dave wrote:

Saw Sinners today and thought it was excellent. I managed to stay fairly unspoiled going in, and I think that’s the best way to see it.

The story is good and it’s a film that has things to say as well as being entertaining, but the music and sound design especially is outstanding. An Oscar surely beckons. There’s one scene in the middle where everything comes together in an unexpected, transcendent way that I found surprisingly and suddenly moving. And another scene towards the end that really hits.

I’m glad it’s doing well, it deserves to.

I saw it recently and it is SO layered. There is a lot to unpack.

Now I hear Ryan Coogler made a deal with the studio about the movie and getting the full rights later on.

Next: Thunderbolts

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Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle, Todd, Dave

Watched the first episode of The Studio on Apple TV. It’s one of the best openers I’ve seen in a while – the Hollywood satire is not the most original, but it’s funny and well-made and well-acted, with moments that come close to Curb in engineering these awkward moments and payoffs. Seth Rogen is a great lead too.

Of course, it’s on Apple so virtually nobody will see it, but I’m looking forward to more.

I watched the first 2 episodes of that and it’s definitely well made, but there was also a smugness to it that kind of put me off watching anymore.

I can see that – I think an element of that is hard to avoid when movie stars are doing stories about the movie business. But for me it was likeable and self-effacing enough that it overcame that.

I saw Final Destination: Bloodlines last night.

I didn’t have particuarly high expectations – I saw the first couple of Final Destination movies when they originally came out and enjoyed them, although haven’t seen them all – but I actually really enjoyed it. Some good setpieces, a couple of laughs and one or two decent (if cheap) scares, likeable characters, and it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

The original movies always had a wit and charm about them and this just feels like a modern version of that.

Dave wrote:

Of course, it’s on Apple so virtually nobody will see it, but I’m looking forward to more.

I definitely want to watch this. I’m going to get an apple+ subscription because I also want to watch Murderbot (that one looks really awesome) and (finally!) Severance, but I’ll probably wait until summer. Currently I’ve got my hands full with The Last of Us and with finishing Andor.

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Todd, Dave, Uncle Retrospective

This is why I want to see Murdebot, by the way:

I’ve finished Warrior, which ended quite well. They left the door open for another season, but at the same time it’s wrapped up well enough, and it was a good last season. Nice to see Marc Dacascos, too, and in such good form. I’ve always liked him, since Crying Freeman and Brotherhood of the Wolf.

I’m watching White Lotus S1 right now, as it’s apparently something everybody watches and think it’s good. I’ve watched like three eps now and I am still waiting for it to click with me. The characters are all so deeply unsympathetic, without exception, that I don’t really feel like spending any time with them. And yes, I know that’s kind of the point, but they are also so obviously built to be laughed at, so two-dimensional, that it’s hard to see the point for me. None of them have shown any kind of depth at this point, which it would take to make it more interesting. If all the show wants from me is point the finger and go “Look at these awful fucks!”, that’s not really enough to keep me watching.

The latest episode of The Last Of Us is good, and one of the best of the series so far. And yet somehow it’s still just doing what the game did, but a bit less elegantly, and with additional clunky dialogue to explicitly spell out aspects that are left as implicit in the game.

I wonder whether part of this is the more passive way that some people watch TV compared to the more active way that most players engage with a game. It feels like the game trusts you to pick up subtle body language and nuances in dialogue (and some things that are left unsaid), whereas the TV show feels like it doesn’t quite trust viewers to put all the pieces together if it doesn’t spell it all out.

So it’s a long weekend here.
Victoria Day. Really unsure why, but British monarchy, something something.

And I’ve got Tuesday and Wednesday off, plus people have left me alone.

So, I put on the first season of Fringe.
It was only going to be be background all day, just really takes over.

Love the cast, and the sporadic players.
Jared Harris? Love him (he’s on the screen right now).

Great show. Really should have done a rewatch multiple times already.

And for whats com8ng, well it’s been seeded from the beginning.
John Noble just plays that perfectly.

I do like Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson, but also having Noble, Lance Reddick, and Kirk Acevado (well, for the first season, he wouldn’t go from Toronto to Vancouver for second season and on)

If you’ve never seen, this is comic geek heaven.

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Uncle Retrospective, njerry

Sean Robinson wrote:

If you’ve never seen, this is comic geek heaven.

One of the things I loved about the FRINGE series is that events of the final season tied back to previous events of the series, all the way back to the first season. It made me feel like JJ Abrams wanted to tell a complete story and avoid the mistakes of previous shows like LOST and X-FILES that failed to resolve plot points. The finale was a reward to faithful viewers instead of yet another unsatisfactory disappointment.

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Sean Robinson

Yeah, I didn’t like the first few episodes of Fringe – lack of believability, generally speaking; the way the characters behaved in these situations just felt ridiculous to me – but I did watch the last season, and I liked how far out it was while clearly building on the previous seasons. Just going for it, at the end there.

Sean Robinson wrote:

Jared Harris? Love him (he’s on the screen right now).

I fucking adore Jared Harris. Have you seen The Terror? He’s absolutely amazing in that.

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Sean Robinson

The Last Of Us season 2 ended.

While I enjoyed some moments of this second season, it’s not up there with the first – there’s nothing on the level of the Bill and Frank episode – and I feel as though the story and structural choices that made the second game inferior to the first have only been magnified in the TV adaptation (plus they’ve added some problems of their own like the erratic pacing and on-the-nose dialogue).

Ultimately it’s just not the same show as it once was, and it’s only going to feel more different in season three.

I think critics have been relatively kind to this second season – there’s still goodwill there from season one maybe – but I predict that enthusiasm for the show will really dampen with the third season. And I’m really not sure how they can sustain this for four seasons, which is apparently the plan now.

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Christian, Ben, lorcan_nagle

One recurring flaw in Naughty Dog’s games, both in Uncharted and The Last Of Us, is their attempt to fuse moral complexity with rat-in-a-maze gameplay.  Thus you get a level where, as Drake, you slaughter goons all over the place then the villain tries to guilt trip you over killing his goons, but the game never enabled any alternative either, so it falls flat.

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Dave

I feel like TLoU2 (the game) tries to tackle that head-on, even if it doesn’t quite manage to reach a place where it says anything satisfying or even deeply meaningful.

But in the TV series it’s even less meaningful as you obviously don’t have the same sense of agency, involvement and responsibility as you do in a game where you “become” the character. You’re watching it unfold a lot more passively.

So what was a challenging (in terms of ideas) game due to your involvement as a player becomes a fairly familiar TV about cycles of violence, and the extent to which reprisals and revenge are justified.

It’s still well-made TV, but it doesn’t quite land like the games did.

The Last of Us is another show, like House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power, where I enjoyed the first season, but felt no desire to keep watching when it back after the long break between seasons.

I’ve started watching Murderbot on Apple TV+. I was skeptical, as I enjoy the books a lot, but it’s been good so far. Alexander Skarsgard is a good lead, and I’m enjoying his dry delivery in the voiceover. Some of the subplots aren’t great so far, but it’s only ~22-25-minutes episodes, so it mostly breezes by.

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Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle

I’ve only watched a couple of episodes of Murderbot but I’ve found it very nothingy so far, there’s just very little story to it and the humour falls a bit flat for me. Feels like a decent cast and production values have been a bit wasted.

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lorcan_nagle

paul f wrote:

The Last of Us is another show, like House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power, where I enjoyed the first season, but felt no desire to keep watching when it back after the long break between seasons.

I’m finding that with season 3 of The Great, which I recorded all of last year and have finally got around to. Even with a big handy recap at the start of the series, I find myself not caring too much about it. Maybe it’s been too long, maybe its quirks feel a bit stale (huzzah!).

Also, anyone else feeling a bit underwhelmed by season 2 of Poker Face? The mortuary episode was ok, but the gator cop one was awful. It’s really not grabbing me like season 1 did.

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lorcan_nagle

Martin Smith wrote:

Also, anyone else feeling a bit underwhelmed by season 2 of Poker Face? The mortuary episode was ok, but the gator cop one was awful. It’s really not grabbing me like season 1 did.

I have only watched the first three episodes. The first season was fun, and the second season has been fine so far.

For my own preference, I much prefer “whodunnits” to “howdunnits”.

Martin Smith wrote:

Also, anyone else feeling a bit underwhelmed by season 2 of Poker Face? The mortuary episode was ok, but the gator cop one was awful. It’s really not grabbing me like season 1 did.

Yeah I’ve had the same feeling, which is a shame as I loved the first season. The first few episodes of season two were OK but the gator cop one was pretty dreadful and the baseball one wasn’t that much better. Not up the the standard of the first season.

Season 8 of L&O: SVU
Just bumped into it, seems like ages ago, but it’s January of 2007.
Huh, I guess that is ages ago.

Anyways, love Munch, love how he mixes with Ice-T (who really owes his career to Munch, I had a coherent thought, I swear …)

Just really want to throw on Homicide.
No, too much. Where to start?

Sean Robinson wrote:

Just really want to throw on Homicide.
No, too much. Where to start?

With Homicide? Start at the start, and you can stop after Season 3 (which is actually only 1.5 seasons of episodes).

Homicide starts great, but gets progressively worse every season as they run out of material from David Simon’s book, and get rid of the original cast and replace them with younger more annoying people. Seasons 4-6 are still pretty good in parts, I gave up on the final season two episodes in.

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Martin Smith

So yeah, went right to 3 Men and Adena.
Love it, and I’m about halfway.

Dave wrote:

The Last Of Us season 2 ended.

While I enjoyed some moments of this second season, it’s not up there with the first – there’s nothing on the level of the Bill and Frank episode – and I feel as though the story and structural choices that made the second game inferior to the first have only been magnified in the TV adaptation (plus they’ve added some problems of their own like the erratic pacing and on-the-nose dialogue).

Ultimately it’s just not the same show as it once was, and it’s only going to feel more different in season three.

I think critics have been relatively kind to this second season – there’s still goodwill there from season one maybe – but I predict that enthusiasm for the show will really dampen with the third season. And I’m really not sure how they can sustain this for four seasons, which is apparently the plan now.

Yeah, I loved the Ellie-and-Joel episode (which was truly heartbreaking), but other than that… I don’t know, it felt like in the last three episode there was just too much random running around. This is something I kind of blame the game for (without knowing if that’s accurate) because it felt a lot like the walking around looking for stuff that you do a lot in games. And then, there were the repeated last-second-saves by people finding Ellie who shouldn’t have been able to find her in exactly that moment. That’s kinda lazy.

It was also a problem for me that the season was so short. There was a lot here that was really interesting – mainly concerning the Wolves and Scars – that I would have loved to see further explored, but we got to see just glimpses of Isaac and of the whole cult thing the other side has going on.

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Dave

You may get your wish next season Christian.

The way the second game is structured, you play a long stretch as Ellie and see things from her perspective; then you jump back in time and play the same stretch as Abby and see things from her perspective.

Given the way season 2 ended, it seems likely that season 3 is going to be largely Abby’s story, exploring that side of things in far greater detail and occasionally intersecting with the story we saw from Ellie’s perspective in season 2.

Yeah, I was guessing that was what was going to happen, after that last shot. But honestly, waiting another season for this just means that there was too little meat in season 2. I don’t think that splitting this switch between seasons did them any favours.

Hey, if they’ve announced another season, does that mean that that’s going to be original TV content? Or is another game in the works?

If they’re playing this really cleverly, they’ll get out another game at the same time as the fourth season.

There is a further section of the second game that comes after those two sections I mentioned. I imagine that would be the basis for a fourth season.

A third game has been talked about as a possibility for a while, but it would probably be many years away at this point even if it were announced tomorrow. So I think it’s likely that seasons 1-4 of the TV series will just cover the first two games.

Or maybe some original content!

I think that’d be pretty cool, to have a bit that goes the other way round, first as TV and then as the first chapter of a game. But it’s probably going to go the way you’re saying. Which… I don’t know, it already feels too stretched out.

Yeah it’s a weird combination of some very padded sections and some parts that feel very rushed, like the developments of the final episode. The pacing has been all over the place.

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Christian

I’ve been watching Robot Chicken from the beginning lately. The first couple of seasons I’ve seen, but beyond that it’s very hit and miss. The show hasn’t aged brilliantly. The edge-lord humour relies on a lot of misogyny, especially early on. It is getting better on that, a bit, now I’m in s4. But while there are some truly great sketches (the architect of Raiders of the Lost Ark’s opening temple giving a tour to the client) there’s still some that are pretty distasteful. One has even turned out to be proposed current US government policy (American Gladiators at the border, with citizenship the prize).

And some sketches where I’m surprised they convinced people to do them. There’s a Punky Brewster parody where he magic creature friend in her closet (which I’m guessing is from the cartoon, not the live action sitcom) curses her with infinitely expanding breasts, a joke at how actress Soleil Moon Frye, erm, developed early and considerably and had to get breast reduction at a young age. So you wouldn’t expect Soleil Moon Frye herself to be playing Punky in that sketch and yet, there she is. Odd.

Another is a sketch skewering A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila, portraying her as a poorly programmed robot that malfunctions and crashes a helicopter into the set (which is relatively tame by the standards in which RC depicts women like Paris Hilton, Linday Lohan, Britney Spears etc) in which Tila Tequila plays herself. The only thing more surprising than that was looking up what ever happened to her and finding out she went full Kanye but years earlier and like 150% harder. She’s openly Nazi, homophobic, anti-vax and a flat earther. Yikes.

So truly early Robot Chicken is a cultural treasure trove.

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Uncle Retrospective, njerry, lorcan_nagle, Todd

Just back from seeing S/He is Still Her/e, the official Genesis P-Orridge documentary.  P-Orridge was the originator of the term Industrial Music with their band Throbbing Gristle, went on to be a pioneer of acid house with Psychic TV, and with their second wife, Lady Jaye Brewer, engaged in the Pandrogyne project where they both underwent cosmetic surgety and hormone replacement therapy to better resemble each other, rejecting their individual selves to become a single entity named Breyer P-Orridge.

It was amazing.  Less a retrospective of their life and more a look inside their life, how it felt and how it impacted on the lives of their family and friends, primarily drawing on interviews with Genesis themself before their death, their daughters Caresse and Genesse, bandmate Alice Genese, and friends Clarity Haynes and David J Haskins (of Bauhaus and Love and Rockets), it presents P-Orridge as a walking set of contradictions – seen as too extreme for punks in the press, but a loving and rather domesticated parent in the flat over the combination merch store and ritual sex space that made up the Psychic TV headquarters.

The heart of the documentary is the daughters walking around the home they lived in after they fled to the US (A Channel 4 documentary alleged Psychic TV engaged in child abuse, the footage they claimed proved this was in fact a recording of a sex magic ritual between consenting adults that Channel 4 in fact partially funded.  They were on an exentded trip to Thatland at the time and decided to not return to the UK and fled to the US, living in Winona Ryder’s family house for some time), and then talking about Gen’s relationship with Lady Jaye… Which gets utterly heartbreaking with Jaye dies suddenly and tragically young. You can see how this ages Genesis, and while they continue on with music and art, the absence of Jaye in their life clearly leaves a gulf, and it’s so heartbreaking to see that grief played out on the screen followed by the decline of their own health and death.

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Uncle Retrospective, Christian, Todd

Department Q

Meet DCI Carl Morck, a human wrecking ball for both his own life and those he works with. Fortunately for Carl, and everyone else, he has Rose and Akram, easily the best character by far, to keep him sort of together, along with his ex-partner cop and perpetually hacked off boss.

It’s impressive writing to have Carl be the mess he is, not without reason, but not go so far so as turn off viewers. Also, while he has neither tact nor grace, he is often right.

The supporting cast of other cops, lawyers, gangsters and psychos make for a slowly engaging tale. One that suggests its various threads might converge, but don’t. This may leave scope for future series.

One weakness is the final resolution with the final villains. Then again, if the point is to demonstrate that violence and crime is weak, petty and pathetic, it certainly succeeds.

Netflix would be rather stupid not to build on this with a further series or few. The core cast is excellent, the writing is smart and the Edinburgh backdrop gives it a very distinct feel. True, it’s not revolutionary or innovative, but it doesn’t have to be. All it has to be is good and it is very good.

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Todd, njerry, lorcan_nagle

DEPT Q

We enjoyed this one too, but my recommendation to my fellow Murricans is to watch it with subtitles in English, otherwise some of the Scottish accents are too dense for comprehension.

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Christian, lorcan_nagle, Ben

I watch everything with subs, if it has it.

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njerry, lorcan_nagle

I finished off Interior Chinatown this weekend. An intriguing show with a tantalising premise but it doesn’t quite hang together properly nor stick the landing, imo. I’m really curious to know what anyone else who has watched it thought of it. And if anyone’s read the novel it’s based on.

That show is on my radar, but I haven’t watched it yet. I’ll get back to you when I do.

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Martin Smith

Squid Game 3

A couple of things upfront:
1. The 9-episode season 1 is perfect as a standalone story. It didn’t need anything beyond that. But hey, capitalism.
2. The next story didn’t need to be broken into two long parts. But hey, capitalism.

The performances are great and the tension is perfectly executed. By having a 7-part SG 2 and 6-part SG3, it does allow for you to spend more time with the characters and get to know them better. While that’s a positive, I think it would have been overall better to tighten things up and tell the same story in 9 episodes. The story does lose some of the urgency the first season had.

A good chunk of the last episode is a “where are they now”. There’s a big celebrity cameo that essentially acts as a springboard to possible future seasons/spinoffs.

Overall, SG2 and SG3 were good, but it would have been even better if it had been just 9 episodes.

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lorcan_nagle

A friend started a rewatch of The Leftovers.
Said it’s been too long for a proper rewatch, and he’s loving it all over again, but had to take a break after season one.
“Emotionally exhausting, but in a good way”

So I started a rewatch.
Fucking started crying right at the beginning.
The “3 years ago” scene where the baby goes missing along with 2% of the world’s population.
But it’s a good cry.

Up to the Nora episode.
Love Carrie Coon, and heart-wrenching when she hires a prostitute to shoot her (in a Kevlar vest) to feel something.

Great cast.
Justin Theroux, Amy Brennamen, Carrie Coon, Christopher Eccleston, Liv Tyler, Ann Dowd, Regina King, Scott Glenn, Paterson Joseph.
Plus more.
Plus some good background “look who it is” (like Carisi from SVU, more).

Enjoying this.

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njerry, Uncle Retrospective, Todd

So finished season one of The Leftovers.
More than one cry, but it’s weird that I was crying on the very last scene, when “look what I found” is so fucking beautiful and needed .

Then the first episode of season two. This is when Regina King and Kevin Carroll show up, in the fictional town of Jarden Texas, where no one was lost to the sudden departure.

So of course our cast moves there, and now something happens to the daughter of there next door neighbor.

And I need a break. My friend is right.
Becoming “the opposite of young”, and being human and empathic (or trying at least) has it’s limits.
I am okay with that, just sharing.

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Christian, Uncle Retrospective

I still needs to see The Leftovers for the first time. Maybe that’s project for the summer.

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Uncle Retrospective

argh, I spent ages writing reviews of Lazarus and Gundam GQuuuuuuX and the board seems to have eaten them.  TLDR?  They’re both good but too short for the amount of story the creators wanted to tell

lorcan_nagle wrote:

argh, I spent ages writing reviews of Lazarus

I watched Lazarus and thought it was okay. It dragged in the middle a lot, and the last episode just seemed to wrap everything up way too quickly. I think a much shorter season would have conveyed the urgency of the situation so much better. (This is the same criticism I have with Squid Game 2 and 3.)

It will be interesting to see what they do for second season, if it is renewed.

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lorcan_nagle

I finally watched Alien: Romulus, to warm up for Alien: Earth. It’s good fun. Not exactly amongst the strongest movies in the franchise, but a pretty good re-invigoration of what Alien movies should be, after all the shit we had to endure in the last almost 30 years.

And now Noah Hawley can blow this thing out of the water.

I also started watching The Penguin, which is better than it has any right to be. It’s not the Sopranos though, mind you, however much it would like to be.

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Ulf, Ben, Dave, Todd

I finished watching The Bear season four. It’s better than season three but it’s still a bit of a slog. They clearly realised a while back that they had very little plot to explore with these characters, so things move very slowly (fairly urgent plot points take many episodes to pay off, if they ever do) and there’s a huge amount of overwritten therapy-speak character exploration that often feels like a chore to sit through.

Having said that, there are a couple of decent moments and the cast is mostly fine, with Ayo Edebiri still the standout by far.

But I feel like the show probably needs to wind up now as it’s just constantly circling the same ideas and it doesn’t have anywhere near the energy that it once did.

At least they rowed back on all the real-life chef cameos and pretentious waffle that killed season three. That stuff was unbearable.

(I didn’t intend that pun, but I’ll take it.)

It was announced today that The Bear was renewed for Season 5.

Todd wrote:

It was announced today that The Bear was renewed for Season 5.

Yeah, they clearly hadn’t finished the overall story of the series with this latest season, but season 5 should really be the last I think.