My completely unscientific impression is that other services are making the effort to produce high-quality films and series, including Apple TV+ (Slow Horses, Silo, For All Mankind, Foundation, etc.), Max/HBO (Barry, Curb Your Enthusiasm, GoT, The Last of Us, etc.), FX (Shogun, The Bear, The Old Man, Fargo, etc.), and AMC (Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Night Manager, etc.). Whatever you think of the quality of shows in those services, they at least show genuine effort to make things that don't suck.
Reminded me of a scene in Barry¹ where the title character gets a small part in a movie and while his washed-up teacher is reviewing the script he sees Barry’s single line of dialogue and exclaims “That’s the name of the movie! They can’t cut that!”
This was one of the plot points of a Barry episode (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt27052797/) where two characters (legally) obtain sand for construction purposes and turn it into a business to whitewash their criminal past.
So, if someone pays for HBO Max and watches the latest episode of Barry at home via the app, but, as I do, feel that HBO's UI/UX is dogshit, and they then download a copy of it and slap it on their phone or laptop in a way that's more comfortable to them for their flight tomorrow, what's the difference? OP continues to pay HBO, but that next view is just on a local device.
Edit: HBO Max downloads "expire" after 30 days, and you have 48 hours to finish it once you've started[1]. You're also limited to 30 downloads at once. This is hardly 'convenient' for some people.
One thing I've noticed about my watching habits is that I won't put on a super intense, prestige TV show after work usually (maybe if it's Barry, damn, Barry is so good). Instead I'll watch something lighter or more repetitive like House MD or Schitt's Creek. Now k-dramas are not quite old school network television, but they're certainly more of a palatable affair than your average Showtime or HBO show. I wouldn't be surprised if Netflix realized that for every marquee top tier Emmy winning show, there's hundreds of people just turning on something to watch in the background that is familiar but slightly different.
Really, this isn't a new discovery. Soaps have existed since before television. But it is interesting how instead of one long-lived show, it's now a multitude of similar but different shows.
There's an HBO show "Barry", with Bill Hader and Henry Winkler (worth a watch for sure) that touches on this. Barry's girlfriend has a TV show on the in-world equivalent of Netflix and is thrilled when it hits the front page, and then crushed when 12 hours later it's off the front page and cancelled. In the most simultaneously hilarious and insightful scene I watched in 2022, they meet with an executive who explains how she's powerless to make any change since "the algorithm" had decided that her show didn't pop with the right demographics.
Barry has something like 11 writers, and 6 directors, though Berg and Hader direct most of them. Arguably, writing in TV shows is more (or at least equally as) important than direction.
George Lucas was doing it in the Star Wars prequals. I also noticed it happen in Barry in the last episode or two, when he kneels down in a desert, his face and body appear seamless, but his hair dissolves between two shots.
But if you get almost all the way through watching an entire episode of Barry on your gateway and then it stutters, trust me-- you're going to loudly ask why the hell this gateway won't do the goddamned thing it's supposed to.
> What recent (non-animated) funny movie or show have you seen that is not "feel good" or filled with sexual jokes?
I don't really watch comedy films but I watch a reasonable amount of comedy shows:
It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, 30 Rock, Atlanta, Avenue 5, Fleabag, The Good Place, Silicon Valley, Resident Alien, Barry, Home (UK), Mythic Quest, AP Bio, Tacoma FD, Ted Lasso, Russian Doll, Veep, You're the Worst, Better Things·
I'm not sure what your qualifier for "recent" is so feel free to ignore some of those.
Sure a lot of these aren't farces like Airplane or Scary Movie but it's not all feel good or dick jokes. There is plenty of comedy out there for all types of tastes.
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).
>Why can't you just enjoy a one or two well done seasons?
Not OP, but I share the opinion. For my viewing there are basically two types of shows. The first is relatively mindless entertainment. I enjoy an episode here or there but I'm not invested in the plot. I'm not watching YouTube recaps and "explainers" after the episodes, and I'm not engaged in a community where we discuss the plot and predict where things are going. Barry is a good example of that. Ted Lasso is another good example.
Then there are the shows where I get invested in the plot and story. Shows where I am theorizing with my wife, watching YouTube videos on it, and discussing it online. Shows such as Westworld or Game of Thrones.
There are some shows that straddle the line well, but you usually know ahead of time. Watchmen falls into that category. Single season, compelling drama, had me engaged the whole time, and it was a single season. But I knew it was going to be a single season from the start.
This is the same reason I typically try not to read unfinished trilogies. Patrick Rothfuss and GRRM have ruined me.
> When Netflix comes out with a new show I won't watch it until it gets into a third season.
Why can't you just enjoy a one or two well done seasons? Season 1 of Barry on HBO was basically a perfect story. Season 2 wasn't terrible, but it was stretched and didn't really add to what had been a perfect capsule. Patriot on Amazon, was also a brilliantly plotted two season arc, and though I love the characters I admit to push it to another season would be to take away from it not to add.
Off the top of my head: Succession, VEEP, Barry, Big Little Lies, Sharp Objects, True Detective (seasons 1 & 3), Chernobyl.
Big Little Lies was probably the worst of that bunch, and is still lightyears ahead of any recent Netflix drama.
On Prime, The Man in the High Castle is a guilty pleasure despite its flaws. The bizarre spy drama Patriot is absolutely excellent.
I like that with Prime, I can subscribe to HBO within the app, and also buy seasons of some cable shows, like FX’s Legion, Fargo, What We Do in the Shadows.
I prefer that experience much more than Netflix. With Netflix, the original content has to be so good that it offsets the lack of being able to purchase non-Netflix content, and frankly Netflix originals have just not been good enough to cut it for a while.
I think not being able to purchase it should resolve moral/ethical issues.
But a lot of pirates like to complain they cannot purchase it according to their specific demands.
People used to complain that they had to buy cable to watch game of thrones. They wanted a solo steaming service. Go look at old reddit posts, pirates would proclaim that they would subscribe to that instead of pirate.
HBO made exactly that. And now the complaint is that it costs too much. Or they don’t want to pay for Barry or Veep episodes they don’t want. But they’ll stop pirating if they could just buy GoT!
I think the vast majority of piracy is just because they can get it for free.
Additionally, if the content is just not available in your country yet, then at best, you would be morally/ethically justified in pirating now and then paying later when it’s allowed.
Cosmos? Planet Earth? Or what about the myriad of documentaries you can find? Or shows about history?
I suppose this also depends on if you think fiction betters you as a person (I don't think the medium you receive it in matters all that much; so I don't think you need to read a thick russian novel). If you don't; I guess I just fundamentally disagree with you, and in a way, I almost feel sad on your behalf. Almost all of human morals and values, not to mention deep life lessons, have historically been taught through fiction. If you do, then obviously there's a lot of EXCELLENT fiction on TV, shows like Breaking Bad, or Mad Men. Or recent shows like Barry. Those shows rival even large novels in the amount of time it takes to consume them and what they can say, and they even have the advantage of being able to take advantage of music and filmography to set moods and make points that books cannot (books of course also have their own set of advantage, I'm not trashing them)
No, not really. First off, returning to the status quo is a sitcom thing, not a "pre-Internet" thing, but even then, characters change, leave and are introduced from time to time. Also, you can jump into a "modern" show and figure out any context you need to know pretty easily. I got into Barry and Curb in the middle of their seasons this year, and I still laughed through them...
Hacker Cinema
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In the TV show Barry, this is what NoHo Hank was doing. I thought it was sort of a joke, but guess not.
My completely unscientific impression is that other services are making the effort to produce high-quality films and series, including Apple TV+ (Slow Horses, Silo, For All Mankind, Foundation, etc.), Max/HBO (Barry, Curb Your Enthusiasm, GoT, The Last of Us, etc.), FX (Shogun, The Bear, The Old Man, Fargo, etc.), and AMC (Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Night Manager, etc.). Whatever you think of the quality of shows in those services, they at least show genuine effort to make things that don't suck.
Reminded me of a scene in Barry¹ where the title character gets a small part in a movie and while his washed-up teacher is reviewing the script he sees Barry’s single line of dialogue and exclaims “That’s the name of the movie! They can’t cut that!”
¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_(TV_series)
This was one of the plot points of a Barry episode (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt27052797/) where two characters (legally) obtain sand for construction purposes and turn it into a business to whitewash their criminal past.
You seem to have missed the key line:
>I actually “pirate” some of stuff I pay for.
So, if someone pays for HBO Max and watches the latest episode of Barry at home via the app, but, as I do, feel that HBO's UI/UX is dogshit, and they then download a copy of it and slap it on their phone or laptop in a way that's more comfortable to them for their flight tomorrow, what's the difference? OP continues to pay HBO, but that next view is just on a local device.
Edit: HBO Max downloads "expire" after 30 days, and you have 48 hours to finish it once you've started[1]. You're also limited to 30 downloads at once. This is hardly 'convenient' for some people.
[1]https://help.hbomax.com/us/Answer/Detail/000001242
One thing I've noticed about my watching habits is that I won't put on a super intense, prestige TV show after work usually (maybe if it's Barry, damn, Barry is so good). Instead I'll watch something lighter or more repetitive like House MD or Schitt's Creek. Now k-dramas are not quite old school network television, but they're certainly more of a palatable affair than your average Showtime or HBO show. I wouldn't be surprised if Netflix realized that for every marquee top tier Emmy winning show, there's hundreds of people just turning on something to watch in the background that is familiar but slightly different.
Really, this isn't a new discovery. Soaps have existed since before television. But it is interesting how instead of one long-lived show, it's now a multitude of similar but different shows.
You're probably right about that, I have noticed a pretty good line up on there when we had it for Silicon Valley, Game of Thrones, and Barry.
But I'd expect that of HBO also. They were the original channel to go to if you wanted to see great movies when I was a kid.
There's an HBO show "Barry", with Bill Hader and Henry Winkler (worth a watch for sure) that touches on this. Barry's girlfriend has a TV show on the in-world equivalent of Netflix and is thrilled when it hits the front page, and then crushed when 12 hours later it's off the front page and cancelled. In the most simultaneously hilarious and insightful scene I watched in 2022, they meet with an executive who explains how she's powerless to make any change since "the algorithm" had decided that her show didn't pop with the right demographics.
Barry has something like 11 writers, and 6 directors, though Berg and Hader direct most of them. Arguably, writing in TV shows is more (or at least equally as) important than direction.
George Lucas was doing it in the Star Wars prequals. I also noticed it happen in Barry in the last episode or two, when he kneels down in a desert, his face and body appear seamless, but his hair dissolves between two shots.
The title of a season 3 episode of Barry sums this whole situation up: "crazy times s*t show".
Season three always is so disappointing. Barry's doing what now??
> You don't need video to run a gateway.
Sure.
But if you get almost all the way through watching an entire episode of Barry on your gateway and then it stutters, trust me-- you're going to loudly ask why the hell this gateway won't do the goddamned thing it's supposed to.
> What recent (non-animated) funny movie or show have you seen that is not "feel good" or filled with sexual jokes?
I don't really watch comedy films but I watch a reasonable amount of comedy shows:
It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, 30 Rock, Atlanta, Avenue 5, Fleabag, The Good Place, Silicon Valley, Resident Alien, Barry, Home (UK), Mythic Quest, AP Bio, Tacoma FD, Ted Lasso, Russian Doll, Veep, You're the Worst, Better Things·
I'm not sure what your qualifier for "recent" is so feel free to ignore some of those.
Sure a lot of these aren't farces like Airplane or Scary Movie but it's not all feel good or dick jokes. There is plenty of comedy out there for all types of tastes.
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).
>Why can't you just enjoy a one or two well done seasons?
Not OP, but I share the opinion. For my viewing there are basically two types of shows. The first is relatively mindless entertainment. I enjoy an episode here or there but I'm not invested in the plot. I'm not watching YouTube recaps and "explainers" after the episodes, and I'm not engaged in a community where we discuss the plot and predict where things are going. Barry is a good example of that. Ted Lasso is another good example.
Then there are the shows where I get invested in the plot and story. Shows where I am theorizing with my wife, watching YouTube videos on it, and discussing it online. Shows such as Westworld or Game of Thrones.
There are some shows that straddle the line well, but you usually know ahead of time. Watchmen falls into that category. Single season, compelling drama, had me engaged the whole time, and it was a single season. But I knew it was going to be a single season from the start.
This is the same reason I typically try not to read unfinished trilogies. Patrick Rothfuss and GRRM have ruined me.
> When Netflix comes out with a new show I won't watch it until it gets into a third season.
Why can't you just enjoy a one or two well done seasons? Season 1 of Barry on HBO was basically a perfect story. Season 2 wasn't terrible, but it was stretched and didn't really add to what had been a perfect capsule. Patriot on Amazon, was also a brilliantly plotted two season arc, and though I love the characters I admit to push it to another season would be to take away from it not to add.
Off the top of my head: Succession, VEEP, Barry, Big Little Lies, Sharp Objects, True Detective (seasons 1 & 3), Chernobyl.
Big Little Lies was probably the worst of that bunch, and is still lightyears ahead of any recent Netflix drama.
On Prime, The Man in the High Castle is a guilty pleasure despite its flaws. The bizarre spy drama Patriot is absolutely excellent.
I like that with Prime, I can subscribe to HBO within the app, and also buy seasons of some cable shows, like FX’s Legion, Fargo, What We Do in the Shadows.
I prefer that experience much more than Netflix. With Netflix, the original content has to be so good that it offsets the lack of being able to purchase non-Netflix content, and frankly Netflix originals have just not been good enough to cut it for a while.
I think not being able to purchase it should resolve moral/ethical issues.
But a lot of pirates like to complain they cannot purchase it according to their specific demands.
People used to complain that they had to buy cable to watch game of thrones. They wanted a solo steaming service. Go look at old reddit posts, pirates would proclaim that they would subscribe to that instead of pirate.
HBO made exactly that. And now the complaint is that it costs too much. Or they don’t want to pay for Barry or Veep episodes they don’t want. But they’ll stop pirating if they could just buy GoT!
I think the vast majority of piracy is just because they can get it for free.
Additionally, if the content is just not available in your country yet, then at best, you would be morally/ethically justified in pirating now and then paying later when it’s allowed.
I could name far more!
Cosmos? Planet Earth? Or what about the myriad of documentaries you can find? Or shows about history?
I suppose this also depends on if you think fiction betters you as a person (I don't think the medium you receive it in matters all that much; so I don't think you need to read a thick russian novel). If you don't; I guess I just fundamentally disagree with you, and in a way, I almost feel sad on your behalf. Almost all of human morals and values, not to mention deep life lessons, have historically been taught through fiction. If you do, then obviously there's a lot of EXCELLENT fiction on TV, shows like Breaking Bad, or Mad Men. Or recent shows like Barry. Those shows rival even large novels in the amount of time it takes to consume them and what they can say, and they even have the advantage of being able to take advantage of music and filmography to set moods and make points that books cannot (books of course also have their own set of advantage, I'm not trashing them)
Is this really true?
No, not really. First off, returning to the status quo is a sitcom thing, not a "pre-Internet" thing, but even then, characters change, leave and are introduced from time to time. Also, you can jump into a "modern" show and figure out any context you need to know pretty easily. I got into Barry and Curb in the middle of their seasons this year, and I still laughed through them...
The trailer for the Netflix Barack Obama movie "Barry" is showing the description and cover art for the HBO tv show "Barry".