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I gave up watching the Haunting of Hill House ten minutes into the last episode. I think long-form horror in any medium comes down to a series of moves of sleight-of-hand disguised as narrative & designed to evade or defer the giving of sufficient information, so to be able to keep up the atmosphere. The problem is of course that the longer the film or book is the more pressing becomes the need for information. Hence the ubiquity in long-form horror of the looped structure, or too much or too little closure, and the risk of boredom.

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The Inside No. 9 live episode was a bold and effective Halloween ghost story, though I doubt it'd have the same appeal for post-broadcast viewers. I hope other TLOers caught it.

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Funnily enough I think I might enjoy last night's Inside No. 9 more on a rewatching. The meta element created an emotional distance that stopped me fully appreciating the scary stuff and so I ended up admiring the episode more than enjoying it.

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I'm afraid I have to withdraw my endorsement of the once excellent medical/science/reality/horror-anthology series Monsters Inside Me. Caught a couple of reruns recently, and it appears that some geniuses (probably a bunch of newly appointed marketing or "brand maximalizing" "experts" at whatever US channel produces the show) have effected a number of unwelcome changes to older episodes. For instance, now viewers are treated to a series of annoying, useless factoids that pop up at random and do a great job of killing off all the tension and viewer involvement the show works hard to build up.

Worst of all, though, the show is now censored. The most striking and interesting images, whether real shots of suppurating wounds, or graphic surgical footage, or vivid recreations of both (e.g., a favorite scene where doctors haul out one unlucky soul's intestines to study them more closely), are now blurred out. As creative decisions go, this is on par with replacing the zombies in that Walking Dead crapfest with bundles of CGI balloons and lollipops. (Except that, in that example, the show might conceivably benefit from the alteration.)

Well, there's no way I'm supporting a program that promotes censorship, so forget I ever mentioned it. Alas, this has always been the way of useless busybodies the world over, feeding off and messing with the efforts of their betters in order to justify their own pointless existences. Talk about a bunch of ####in' parasites.

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bin delvin

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Greatest scene in the history of television!!!

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Really enjoying a rewatch of Person of Interest. Stylish if gimmicky case of the week procedural that gradually morphs into a dystopian SF thriller that debates such issues as free will, A.I. consciousness, and the ethics of mass surveillance. And the most important question of all: who is sexier, Amy Acker or Sarah Shahi?

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Following my girlfriend's insistence, who was a fan of the old TV series, I begrudgingly watched Chilling Adventures of Sabrina with her.

It was an extremely pleasant surprise and I was totally delighted by it.

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Doomwatch

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This!

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I am still not entirely sure why, but I watched Girlboss on Netflix; probably because I read the book following my girlfriend's recommendation. It was barely OK.

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Gunslingers. I have no idea why. There's just something so completely American about solving all your problems through the barrel of a gun.
Of course, most of the people profiled on the series died either at the end of hangman's noose or shot through the barrel of someone else's gun, so there's that.

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Episodes 1 and 2 of True Detective Season 3. Fantastic. Lovecraft reference in episode 1.

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I just finished series 1 of Flowers

Wow!
So beautifully dark (and funny)!

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About halfway through Mindhunter on Netflix. Pretty enjoyable, if you're one of those sickos like me that is fascinated by serial killers for some reason.

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I watched Perfume, the German TV mini-series; I am not sure if it is any good, but I found it fascinating. Also, the first episode of the last season of Game of Thrones, which was OK.

I am eagerly awaiting the second season of Mindhunter.

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Was True Detective S3 any good? I really liked most of S1. S2 didn't gel for me at all, but I at least respect Nick Pizza Latte didn't just repeat the same formula.

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I just finished the last episode of Flowers (series 2).
Wow! I was devastated.
It was so good (too good).
I started watching in January, but made myself not binge it.

I'll re-watch in a few years.

Now I'm just waiting for series 2 of Fleabag to show up on Amazon Prime.

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does on DVD count?

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Greatly enjoyed the most recent episode of GAME OF THRONES, really curious as to how they'll wrap it up over the next 3 episodes.

Also currently making my way through the BLACKADDER series, which I'm also very much enjoying... currently more than halfway through the 3rd season.

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I watched Sharp Objects and you should too.

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The 4th episode of Game of Thrones; it is becoming really uninspired and uninspiring. Also, season 2 of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which was OK.

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A slight improvement on the previous series. I understand the feelings a lot of people have but I'm still quite riveted at the most important moments.

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I finished Game of Thrones; I really liked Daenerys Targaryen as a villain, but the ending was king of meh.

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Read George R. Martin's ASOIAF series and watched all seasons of Game of Thrones. Not a super fan of Martin's writing at all, just read to find out what happened.

The show itself was very compelling and the acting and CGI was well done. However like many others, found the final TV episode (and final season) to be a bit of a let-down. My colleague at work put it well, "At least, I now feel released from having to watch this show."

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There hadn't been a well-written season since Season 4, and now I'm glad our watch has ended as pop culture was too saturated in this nonsense. People are going to be going on about how terrible this finale was for years, but it is beyond my comprehension people were expecting a great finale given the how askew all the plots had gotten.

I'm going through Cathy Gale episodes of The Avengers since I have finished the audio recons of the lost episodes.

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I was kind of sad to see GAME OF THRONES coming to an end, and I'm not even one of those people who have been watching since day 1 (I actually started watching the first season on a whim back in 2013, around the time that the third season had begun, and quickly became hooked both on the show and also the books from which they spawned from). Kind of relieved as well, actually, because following a show on a weekly basis year after year can become a bit draining after awhile. I know it was divisive but I enjoyed the finale and thought it mostly brought things to a satisfying close: IMO it achieved the whole "bittersweet" feeling that Martin has talked about over the years, and I can kind of see the (hypothetical) book series ending this way as well, even if the routes it takes to get to that ending might end up a little different. There were some nice callbacks to earlier episodes in the series, some things that genuinely surprised me (certain characters who I was almost 100% positive were going to be killed off ended up surviving, for example), and it was nice to see that at least a few of my favorite characters made it all the way to the end. Visually it was often stunning (though that could be said for many of the episodes this final season), and even if the dialogue this last season has been erratic in quality at times (the second episode aside), I think that the showrunners brought their A-game to the finale, and of course, most of the actors delivered in spades. Surprisingly, I feel that Dinklage was maybe the MVP for this season, and I say that because I always felt that the Tyrion character has been a little overrated by the fandom, and it almost seemed in recent years as if he were fading into the wallpaper (season 6, for example, mostly saw him standing around and trying to tell forced jokes). But he pretty much killed it these last few shows, I feel.

Naturally, there were some things I wish they had done differently (for example, it's a shame how they kind of dumbed down Euron Greyjoy's character), and many of my predictions as to how it would end turned out to be way off, but I'm okay with that. At the end of the day I'm not the one telling the story and I certainly wouldn't be so foolish as to sign a petition demanding HBO to shoot a new version of it.

Some people seem to equate the show to desecrating Shakespeare but I do think the books, while enjoyable, are overrated. Martin is good at creating interesting characters (to some extent), but his plotting leaves much to be desired, he's certainly not as imaginative as other writers in the genre (like China Mieville), and he's certainly no great prose stylist (let's just say that Stephen R. Donaldson has nothing to worry about). I think his reputation as a great world builder is suspect as well. A lot of people like his Westeros creation because it supposedly emulates a medieval world down to the smallest detail, but I read a fascinating article online once that pointed out that Martin gets many of his details totally wrong (for example, things like how quickly his kings can field massive armies, and the wonky population distribution). And for all the shows lapses in logic, the books have howlers too, like in book 3 I think he had archers on the ground picking off soldiers atop an 800 foot wall, which is literally impossible!

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I mostly enjoyed the Games Of Thrones last season but agree with most of the criticisms leveled at it. Inescapably everything keeps coming back to "what are the books going to do?", because whatever criticisms are leveled at the shows writers, I really doubt many writers could have supplied their own great ideas what to do with the bigger questions.
I'm hoping Martin does something interesting with Bran/Three Eyed Raven and all the Lord Of Light stuff, because understandably, the show just didn't know what to do with the mystical side of things.

I hope I never have to watch a weekly show ever again. The weekly ritual is overrated and so much of the speculation and quibbling is a waste of time until it's all finished.

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Thing is, I'm not entirely convinced that Martin will go into super-detail about the more magical/mystical stuff in the books... he's said multiple times in the past that when it comes to magic he prefers to not go too much into detail and likes to leave things vague and mysterious. Having said that, he probably will go a little more in-depth with the Bran character, but we'll see. One big issue a lot of people seem to have with the show is that very little background information was given about the White Walkers (aside from their origin). I think partly because this might be covered in greater detail in the Long Night prequel, but also partly because Martin himself might not be entirely sure... the Others have done surprisingly little in the book series up to this point, literally only appearing on page twice in thousands of pages of material.

At some point I really want to whip up a point-by-point defense of the last season (dealing with everything from pacing issues, character arcs/redemption themes, loose ends, and that most over-used term, "plot-armor") because so much of the criticism I've seen is either a lazy regurgitation of things that other people have said ad nauseam online already (such as "Jon Snow only had 2 lines of dialogue all season hurr hurr") or wildly inconsistent (it amazes me to see that some people who critiqued the show's 7th season for starting to turn into a cliche fantasy story also complained about Jon Snow not being the one to fight/kill the Night King, which would literally have been the most cliche fantasy scene they could have done). On the other hand, that might not be totally worth my time when I should be working on my own books, so don't hold your breath, is what I'm saying. :p

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I haven't read the books (I'd prefer to start Martin with stories I don't know, Fevre Dream, Sand Kings and short stories in particular) but it seems to me like the Sandor gazing into the fire moment was supposed to be going somewhere. Could swear there was a few more things that suggested it wasn't all going to be mystery.
The Stoneheart subplot must go somewhere. Perhaps more resurrections?

Was a bit disappointed that Rila Fukushima only appeared once. Why get a relatively famous actress to be glanced at for a minute and then never reappear?

I hadn't heard those particular criticisms of Jon's story but since the show's so popular, there's just a huge variety of criticisms.
Really surprised me that so many taken offense to the very idea of Dany taking a bad turn, but there was a lot of talk of newcomers who just saw this as a costume soap who maybe didn't see the red wedding stuff. I heard employees at supermarkets talking about the show multiple times, so the popularity is kind of stunning.

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Thing is for the last few years I've been frequenting a lot of the places where the show is discussed (such as the Watchers of the Wall website, the Westeros forums, the ASOIAF reddit, and, of course, reading many of the mainstream episode reviews and so-called think pieces), so I've been exposed to many of the pro and con viewpoints in regards to the series (both the books and the TV show).

Contrary to what most of the fandom thinks I actually think that dropping Lady Stoneheart was a good idea (and I'm not just saying that because I find Beric Dondarrion to be a much more interesting character, both in the books and the TV show). It's bizarre, Martin has critiqued Tolkien for bringing Gandalf back to life because he felt it diluted the impact of his death, then he goes and does the same thing with Catelyn Stark. I mean I can see why they needed to keep one resurrection in there to set it up for when Jon Snow is eventually brought back to life, but... I don't know. I can see fans being more upset if Lady Stoneheart was a more prominent character, but she literally has like 1 page at the end of book 3, 5 or so in book 4, and didn't even appear in book 5. So unless she does a real lot in book 6, so far she has seemed a pretty pointless addition.

I must admit that I do find reading about Martin's struggles with the series to be macabre fascinating in a way. It seems like he was in control of the ship in the 1990's but ever since finishing the 3rd book of ASOIAF the wheels seem to have come off and the story has become kind of directionless.

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(and yes, for the curious as I read the book series, specifically the trade paperbacks/hardcovers, I kept a running page total for every single character, mainly to satisfy my own curiosity. So, for example, if you wanted to know how many pages that, say, the High Sparrow appeared in for book 4, I could tell you he appeared in a total of 11 pages... or if you wanted to know how many pages he appears in for the series as a whole, I could tell you he has appeared in 15 pages. Some results surprised me: both Tywin and Jaime Lannister, for example, appears in a mere 8 pages in book 2, while Robb Stark only has 9).

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Wow, is this that a habit with other books or did you do this to come prepared to discussions?

I cant see Stoneheart disappearing. No way is the Stark mum just going to be of no real consequence. I'd guess she'd be pretty important.
As far as I gather, Gandalf is basically the same person when reborn but Catelyn is not just bitter but fundamentally changed?

Keeping her in the show wouldn't have made sense because again, who knows what Martin is planning for her?

Should also say that I think Michelle Fairley was one of the best actors in the series. She gave it a gravitas it didn't have enough of later on.

I think the Alt Shift X youtube channel guy was an intelligent commentator of the show.

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It's hard for me to hone in on specific criticisms of the final season's writing as almost nothing worked properly. The major beats all felt correct to me in theory, and I'm sure the books will hit them, but they felt unearned, boring and flat as the writers aren't talented enough to do them justice and lack Martin's flair for characterisation and structural set-up/pay-off. No quotable lines of dialogue or clever ways of structuring or worldbuilding. Just all very linear and Hollywood cheese. I can't see any of their inventions for the final few seasons going down as Thrones at its best. Dany razing King's Landing to the ground was always going to happen, so I didn't mind it and defended it as an obvious future book element, but Arya ending the White Walker threat felt inconsequential and underwhelming as it didn't mean anything dramatically.

Martin's Sandkings is brilliant. A Feast for Crows is a step down from A Storm of Swords in a lot of ways, but it contains some of his most beautiful prose. I am slightly expecting The Winds of Winter to come out next year and hope he manages to finish this excellent series some day, but Robert Jordan's demise didn't stop me from loving Wheel of Time. I'd really rather have no ending than a terrible one.

TLDR: D & D can't write.

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Generally I only keep page tallies for characters in books that form part of a series, though sometimes I will do it for a standalone book if it's one that I really care about (such as la-bas by Huysmans). It just interests me I guess to see how much each characters appear in each book. In the case of ASOIAF/GOT it was interesting also to compare how much the characters appear in the books compared to how much they do in the show. Take Euron Greyjoy, for example. While I'm not crazy about how he was depicted (probably more so than for any other character), a lot of people complained he didn't do as much compared to the books. But in fact he's barely appeared in the books at all: he literally only has like 14 pages in book 4 and that's it (though I've heard he appears in one of the book six promo chapters). That's a good example of a character who has gotten a lot of hype from the book readers, but whose actual merit has yet to be really proved. If anything the show has given many of the minor characters MORE face-time. Like Grey Worm has only had 24 pages in all 5 books total, yet has done much more on the show. Of course in some cases the reverse is true: Barristan Selmy has done much more in the books than he ever did on the show, for example.

I find it amusing though that people complain about the bad "sexy" dialogue in the shows when the book series has some howlers as well: in FEAST FOR CROWS alone you have Samwell Tarly's penis being described as a "fat pink mast" and a woman's vagina being described as a "Myrish swamp." He seems to have a yen for wide dark nipples as well because those get a lot of shout-outs. In any event I certainly don't watch the shows or read the books for the stunning dialogue.

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Littlefinger's death in particular was a big letdown. He deserved a much more memorable sendoff.

For all the complaints of the early seasons having the HBO nudity pandering, I think pandering in the last few seasons was a much bigger problem. Or fanservice as some call it.

But as I said earlier, most of the final season episodes did really excite me despite all the flaws because of what had been built up across the series and because it was executed just well enough to cause frisson for me at the big moments.

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I kinda like that one!

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Yeah, I don't think much of the neckbeard fan theories that have been circulating the rounds the last few years but I did like the idea of Littlefinger faking his own death, and for awhile I was convinced that that would be the 3rd "oh ####" moment that Martin told D&D about (I think it's safe to say that Dany razing King's Landing is, in all probability, that moment). I think they were going for a callback to Ned Stark's mistake (going south, where he was totally out of his depth), just having Littlefinger do it in the opposite direction, but it didn't quite work.

Certainly the last season had some epic moments, visually speaking. I liked the Christian symbolism of Beric's last stand, the shot of the 3 dragons fighting above the clouds of Winterfell, thought Varys' execution was well-handled (I really loved the way that Drogon just came out of the darkness; it's probably the most terrifying he's ever looked, which is saying something), and I really think that Cleganebowl lived up to the hype (which kind of surprised me because I wasn't as looking forward to it as a lot of the fan base was). I even didn't mind that Qyburn (one of my top ten favorite characters) was killed by his own creation, because I've always been a sucker for the Frankenstein trope.

I thought the last episode had some great moments as well: the long conversation that Jon and Tyrion have before Jon sets off to confront Dany (which I think may be one of the best scenes in the show's entire run), the great shot of Dany with Drogon's wings behind her, the catharsis factor of watching Drogon melt the Iron Throne (I like how it was dragonfire that created the throne in the beginning and dragonfire that undid it in the end). Brienne finishing Jaime's entry in the White Book was a nice little touch as well.

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Visually? I'm a near tireless cgi hater, so I didn't really dig it that much but I thought King's Landing was looking pretty good.

This made me laugh
HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

There was also a similarly funny drawing of Bran getting his warged crows to carry Arya over the trees to drop her on the Night King.