The Modern Western Discussion (was "sci-fi western discussion")

[nacho]

Yeah. Mando totally screwed the pooch. Boba Fett literally only featured Boba Fett for about 40% of the season! The rest was all Mando. So fucking stupid.

Get Andor in you. It's the best of the bunch.

[nacho]

Riding this weird Ashoka rollercoaster... I haven't yet watched the finale, and I'm so torn on this show. Because it fucking sucks...and...it doesn't. And it somehow lives equally in both these camps in a way that no other show has.

First you need to know everything about the cartoons. And, I mean, I've spent hours researching the backstory (and still haven't brought myself to watch the cartoons). This annoys the fuck out of me. For casual SW fans like me, who exist mainly in the cinematic universe, Ashoka is unapproachable and inscrutable. But, once I did my research, it became oddly fascinating.

Much of this is buoyed by the supporting cast. The late, great Ray Stevenson is the pillar for the bad guys. A shame he died so he can't be brought back somehow (again, haven't seen the finale). Newcomer Ivanna Sakhno is quietly perfect and commanding in every scene, even if her only job is to act with her eyes and scowl. Even hayden Christensen plays a better Anakin than he did in the movies. And David Tennant's disembodied voice as a droid has the same sort of on-screen presence and power as Anthony Daniels.

So almost every episode finds me both completely lost and totally engaged. But the engagement is in this distant, outside of the narrative way. Like appreciating a painting and then moving on to the next.

A very conflicting show. Most of me is relieved that it's over......but.... The reason I haven't watched the finale is because I don't want it to be over.

[monkey!]

That's what happens when... mumble grumble grumble...

[RottingCorpse]

The thought of watching anything Star Wars related exhausts me in a way I don't know how to explain.

[Nubbins]

The thought of watching anything Star Wars related exhausts me in a way I don't know how to explain.

I feel the same way. In fact, I feel that way about the whole Avengers stuff too. I have nothing against any of it, but I don't know what order to watch it in and have missed so much at this point, I'm not even sure I'd understand what was going on.

[RottingCorpse]

The thought of watching anything Star Wars related exhausts me in a way I don't know how to explain.

I feel the same way. In fact, I feel that way about the whole Avengers stuff too. I have nothing against any of it, but I don't know what order to watch it in and have missed so much at this point, I'm not even sure I'd understand what was going on.

For sure. Disney has now banked the future of Star Wars on a very specific part of the fandom. Ashoka seems impenetrable to the casual Star Wars watcher, which I guess I now am. More and more, I'm coming around to the idea that for all it's claims of "extensive" world-building, continuously being slavishly obedient to the most ridiculous rules of canon reveals Star Wars to ultimately be a very shallow narrative.

I also think I'm still mad that trolls hammered The Last Jedi, the first movie in ages that tried to open up the playbook a bit. So now we're stuck with the TV and movie equivalent of "The Simarillion;" masturbating over the most minute details within a very small circle.

[Nubbins]

Yeah man! I thought Last Jedi was great too.

Chalk it all up to streaming, I guess. We're drowning in choice. If I had a dollar for every night we've spent in front of the TV, aimlessly scrolling for 45 minutes for something bite-sized to watch before we go to bed... then just getting frustrated and watching random YouTube videos until bedtime because we can't settle on anything amid the handful of subscription streaming services we have. 9 nights out of 10, I just leave Larry to watch TV herself, plug in my headphones, and listen to records instead. I've really gotten to the point where I hate TV and mostly watch sports, if anything at all.

[RottingCorpse]

We're the same when it comes to TV, though I've leaned back into watching actual movies the past year. I have a co-worker who like me, love horror movies, but is married to a lady who refuses to watch them, so that's been nice.

[Nubbins]

We're the same when it comes to TV, though I've leaned back into watching actual movies the past year. I have a co-worker who like me, love horror movies, but is married to a lady who refuses to watch them, so that's been nice.

Yep, I struggle with this too. My wife will watch horror movies occasionally, but anything "with dragons, zombies, or space" in it is not even remotely interesting to her, so it limits what I watch.

I got her to watch the first episode of The Prisoner with me a few months ago and it was like, "ooo! A breakthrough!" then she fell asleep 45 minutes into it. I gave up.

[nacho]

I'm pissed about The Last Jedi as well! The best of that trilogy, and totally shit on. While I balked at the whole advertisement in act 2, it's exactly like you guys are saying: It was different, it challenged the narrative for the first time since Empire, and it felt like we were getting back into just plain old adventure scifi.

In the face of the glut of streaming and the TV angst you all talk about, we basically just do what Decider.com tells us to do. Or the Amazon reviews on Acorn or Britbox. What do we end up watching, then? Endless Britcoms and British detective dramas. It's all pork pies and cozy mysteries here, with a little Gordon Ramsey thrown in for spice, and my slavish devotion to Star Trek and, I guess, Nuwho.2.

The Star trek franchise, unlike all the others, really has found its footing. Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks have been almost 100% consistently perfect. Discovery's a boondoggle, but they're sheepishly bowing that out this year. And, even as a boondoggle, I sat through it all and don't really regret it.