Hacker Cinema
American Vandal
2017 · TV series · 2 seasons
Created by Dan Perrault, Tony Yacenda
In the wake of their first documentary's success, Peter and Sam seek a new case and settle on a stomach-churning mystery at a Washington high school.
10 positivefrom 10 commenters
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12 comments on Hacker News
I'm of the opinion that most of the "dark, gritty" stuff we keep seeing in media just boils down to standard trend-chasing and market pressures to continue to use existing IPs. The cheesy, feel-good stuff from the 60s has already been done, so the darker stuff, especially when it's a darker take on those same characters, is still somewhat subversive to most viewers. When artists can't get real novelty, subversiveness is at least still generally respectable. Eventually, as the audience gets tired of this and it gets done to death, it will shift. Maybe not to the happy-go-lucky stuff, but I think surreal and absurdist humor is still fertile ground (see shows like: Nathan For You, The Review, Informercials, Corporate, American Vandal), and could be another future avenue for continuing to exploit existing IPs.
As for the general happiness of the population decreasing, I think that's mostly unrelated to the media trend. Economic troubles (low wages, housing unaffordability), societal strife, and social media all seem like obvious causes. However, Movies and TV are still generally viewed as an escape to most people, so while they reflect greater trends to some degree, I don't think they're as tied to it as the author may expect.
The article doesn't go into detail. I've been happy with messenger kids but for me the problem would be any ability to do likes on posted content. I think one of the big self-esteem killers of facebook is posting content with 3 likes while another kid posts the same content with 30 likes.
Also the option of potentially putting up content that mocks other kids. It's somewhat possible with messenger kids but the only information shared is between the few kids on a chat. If 3 kids chatting together make fun of a 4th, that sucks but that 4th kid is never going to see it. If kids Instagram mean everyone in a contact list is going to see the same content, that could be really damaging.
I don't know how many people watched "American Vandal", season 2. I don't necessarily recommend it in a vacuum, but it does an amazing job showing how much kids can be devastated by social media. When I was a kid, the popular kids could make fun of me ( and probably did ) but at least it wasn't in my face - or the face of the rest of the school so they could easily join it.
I agree with your core sentiment on movies - but I couldn't disagree more on the topic of TV having reverted to the mean.
It may not all be "Sopranos", but I've seen so many TV shows in the past decade that have pushed boundaries and delivered experiences that frankly, have hit me much harder than almost any movie - and certainly much harder than pre-netflix era TV.
I know everyone has different taste, but I think we've seen a lot of maturation in the past decade specifically in the form of more interesting TV anthology series / single-season narratives (True Detective, Fargo, Watchmen) and dark-ish comedies (Rick and Morty, Barry, American Vandal, Succession). I think networks in general are giving show-runners more space and budget for trying weird stuff, because even if they end up with a show that's too niche for a general timeslot - there's at least the possibility of selling it to a streaming service later (like Arrested Development, The Expanse, and Community did).
Are you saying Netflix hasn’t made quality shows that will last through 2039? I’d like to know which company you think has made close to the amount of quality shows Netflix has since 2014. Here’s part of a list I have for a content project. No company comes close to this output in recent history.
House of Cards launched February 2013 (7 seasons, finished)
Orange is the New Black launched July 2013 (7 seasons, finished)
Stranger Things launched July 2016 (3 seasons, 1-2 more)
—
Dark (2 seasons, 3rd is last)
Glitch (2 seasons, 3rd might never come)
Russian Doll (1 season)
Haunting of Hill House (1 season, anthology)
American Vandal (2 seasons)
Black Mirror (anthology, last season not that good)
The Crown (3 seasons)
When They See Us (mini-series, 2019)
Unbelievable (just came out)
—
Glow (3 seasons)
Kimmy Schmidt (4 seasons, finished)
Arrested Development (they tried, hard to get it all back together after years of being done)
Sex Education (1 season)
Bojack Horseman (5 seasons?) #animated
Mindhunter (2 seasons)
The OA (2 seasons)
Maniac (mini-series)
Wet Hot American Summer (2 seasons, but season 1 is the top notch one)
F is for Family (3? seasons) #animated
Big Mouth (2? seasons) #animated
—
Documentary mini-series
—
Staircase
Making a Murderer
Evil Genius
The Jinx
Wild Wild West
——-
There’s more I’m missing and I didn’t include a number of shows Netflix helps finance but isn’t the main financier or producer or original place of distribution. Shows like Glitch.
Yeah, all we have so far is the names attached and a few words said on a big stage. We know very little about the shows, and obviously the people working on it will try to make it sound as good as they can. If I had a penny for every time some actor hyped up a movie or show that ended up being awful...
And I agree, Netflix goes for a wider breadth, but they have a significant number of quality and original content. Shows like Maniac, Our Planet, Russian Doll, Master of None, Ozark, Stranger Things, American Vandal and so on. There's something on there for everyone, and enough that you're never out of shows to watch.
Wild. I think some of the best tv of the past couple of years is on Netflix. Dark, Haunting of Hill House, Glitch, American Vandal, Sex Education, just off the top of my head as top shows in recent history. Solid shows like Now You See Me just having come out. Solid movies like Always Be My Maybe just come out. Then guilty pleasure shows that are good too like Sabrina. And shows on networks that likely aren’t going to pull content for their own service like BBC shows with top notch content like The Fall are on Netflix too.
If I was stuck with one companies original new content. I don’t see how I wouldn’t pick Netflix for now.
American Vandal (Netflix original) season 2 deals with this theme and is pretty amazing all around!
American Vandal Season 2 digs into this topic a bit. I'm sometimes caught off guard by how deep that show goes in such a comical manner.
Mad Men didn't even have an audience when it aired (<2 million viewers most episodes), and airs on a network that likely won't exist in 5-6 years (or at least won't be producing new content), so it's not super clear to me what your point is about those shows as evidence of how a network grows. The way a network grows is by producing content people want to watch, whether that's disposable content made to last a minute or content made to last the test of time. HBO isn't growing because people are subscribing to watch Sopranos re-runs.
Past reporting suggests churn in most subscription content services is very low, so your Netflix cancellation may be unusual. I'd also add that exclusive content is one part of the story, but there's also a lot of licensed content that's very good on Netflix as on other services.
But for what it is worth, I would rank the following Netflix originals to be "top tier" within their genre -- some of these genres lend themselves more to rewatching than others, and some are closer to my taste than others, some held up in quality through their run more than others, so in a sense I am ranking shows based on their peak quality --
Orange is the New Black; Bloodline; Stranger Things; The Crown; Gilmore Girls AYITL; The OA; A Series of Unfortunate Events; Mindhunter; The Haunting of Hill House; Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Master of None; Love; Lady Dynamite; Santa Clarita Diet; GLOW; American Vandal; Maniac; Bojack Horseman; F is for Family; Disenchantment; Hilda; Dark; The Rain; Elite; Chef's Table; Making a Murderer; Shot in the Dark; Wormwood; Wild Wild Country; Salt Fat Acid Heat; Queer Eye; The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell; My Next Guest Needs No Introduction; Lilyhammer; Terrace House; Alias Grace; The End of the Fucking World; Collateral; Wanderlust; Longmire; Black Mirror; Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
In addition to these, the following shows are Netflix originals in my region, indicating that although someone else initially funded them, Netflix bought them for exclusive distribution here, and also meet the above requirements:
Babylon Berlin; Bodyguard; Casé; Crashing; Cuckoo; Derry Girls; The Great British Baking Show; Happy!; Happy Valley; The Investigator; Peaky Blinders; River.
I have pretty broad taste in TV and watch a lot of TV while I am programming or running data analysis, so maybe the breadth of stuff I include here is surprising to most. But to the extent your post is a useful anecdote about how Netflix has no great shows, I'm responding to your challenge to "Name one show" that would meet that criteria.
(These are TV shows only, not films. I haven't really liked many Netflix original films although there are a few I would say are great, like Okja and Roma)
Highly subjective and therefor probably not welcome here, but since this was the comment I saw first:
My Top Netflix Shows:
- Better Call Saul
- Bojack Horseman
- Mindhunter
- Fargo
- Maniac
- The End of the Fucking World
- Master of None
- American Vandal
My Top Netflix Movies:
- Beats of No Nation
- Roma
- Annihilation
- Okja
And where I think your list is wrong:
- 13 Reasons Why
Very problematic show[1]. I found Netflix' response to the criticism lacking and season 2 doubles down on the mistake. Even if one can ignore that, I think the writing and characters are still insultingly thin.
- Ozark
Not bad at all. But also not nearly as good as Breaking Bad. If we didn't live in this gilden television age, I might've found it worth my time
- Altered Carbon
Visually very entertaining. But it's definitely pulp.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_Reasons_Why#Social_impact
Someone recently commented elsewhere that they were tired of paying for streaming access to a bunch of shows nobody wants to watch, and they wanted access to the most popular movies/network shows/whatever.
I didn't comment then, but FWIW: some of the best shows available are now streaming originals from Netflix, Prime, etc. If you haven't checked out specifically any of the Netflix originals, you're missing out. It's a complete replacement for the non-sports watcher.
As posted in response elsewhere below, here's a list of Netflix's best work:
- Stranger Things - Narcos - The OA - The Haunting of Hill House - Marvel series. All of them! - GLOW - Ozark - Altered Carbon - American Vandal - 13 Reasons Why
Also good:
- Atypical - Love - Flaked - Maniac - Master of None - Chef's Table - Making a Murderer
This is by no means a complete list, you can find that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Netflix
I tried to skim through it and provide my own short list of what I really liked, so this is just one person's opinion.
I have to concur with this 100%, most true crime shows from Netflix have felt padded, something where I feel like if the podcast Criminal can make an enthralling episode about an event, the TV versions should be adding a lot more for the 10 hour version. In fact, the only "true crime" series I can think of actually completing is American Vandal, which was not only engaging but laugh out loud hilarious as it mocked itself. I'm truly curious to see if they can capture it in a season 2 without it being a repeat of the same. Of course, there could be some personal taste and behavioral patterns that endear the audible versions of that format more compelling (I usually listen to podcasts during times when I'm not able to be distracted with a phone, articles and texts, such as when I'm driving, yard work, or walking the dog). It could just be that the format for TV relies far more on imagery and visual cues when produced for the screen. I do know that I really haven't seen a real true crime TV series keep me engaged beyond an episode or three, which probably just means I fall out of a different "taste cluster", but there are just some shows that can use visual imagery to enhance a non-fictional topic (Vox's Explained comes to mind here). Unless there is a lot of in-depth information, and a way to make it salient to the story, it's hard for me to value the time commitment.
Likewise, even fictional shows with short seasons can feel tedious at times, which for me, many happen to be British shows, though not all (I enjoyed Safe, but got really bored during Collateral and The Fall, both of which I've heard great things, but much of the storylines just ended up feeling as if scenes were there to "enhance the tension", but served some other purpose). Again maybe super personal and cultural, but I do love long format television, just please give me a reason to keep caring about the outcome without having to wind down some plot rabbit hole).
I might just be impatient and a typical American who is affixed with getting "a hook" somewhere in the first 3 episodes, or I'm probably going to give something else a try. And there are quite a few really good foreign series that I enjoyed, (such as The Rain and 3%) and then some domestic and international shows that put me in the same taste cluster as shows like Dark, The OA and Sense8 that really just never connect. I'm not sure if that's a padding issue per se, but I guess anything that you're not really getting into just feels tedious after a while.