TV watching poll

[rachelmanija]

After not watching much TV for two years, I actually caught up on a couple shows. However, all are best left unspoiled, in some cases for everything but the premise.

Which shows would you like me to make spoilery discussion posts on? Feel free to talk about or rec/anti-rec them in comments to this post, but only in a non-spoilery manner.

Poll #18132

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 76

View Respondents

Which TV show would you like me to post on?

View Answers

Legion
18 (23.7%)

The Good Place
34 (44.7%)

Better Call Saul (Season one)
7 (9.2%)

Killjoys
14 (18.4%)

11.22.63
3 (3.9%)

Comments

VAGUE SPOILERS for 11.22.63

[rachelmanija]

In that case, I will tell you here: I had the same problems with the adaptation that I had with the book, which was that the protagonist never quite came alive to me as a character and I was bored by everything involving Lee Harvey Oswald. I additionally found the love story less compelling in the miniseries than I did in the book - my favorite part of the book was the long stretch where the hero is just hanging out being a teacher and dealing with the fallout from his girlfriend's stalker. What I did like about the miniseries was the look of '60s, the credit sequence (damning with faint praise, but it really was excellent), and the darkly comic aspect of the ways the past tries to prevent itself from being changed.

The changes it made to the story generally made sense, but it missed one of the most fun aspects of time travel, which is the repeated tries at getting things right - he only makes one major trip to the past. It also failed to fix what I thought was the big flaw of the book, which was providing more of a sense of who the hero was as a person and why he was so determined to save Kennedy. James Franco was OK but there wasn't much there there. I think a better or more interesting actor could have sold it way more on the script they had.

Re: VAGUE SPOILERS for 11.22.63

[sholio]

Whaaaaat, the multiple do-overs and the critical "can't fuck up now, I'll have to start all over!" tension were the biggest thing I liked about the book! I enjoyed the immersive take on the 1950s/60s, but it was the really interesting twist on time travel that truly fascinated me.

I still like my idea about Lee Harvey Oswald SO much better than what the book went with. I spent most of the book thinking it was going to turn out that Oswald was another time traveler who was killing Kennedy to prevent an even more horrible future, and the hero was actually the antagonist and just didn't know it. I was so deeply disappointed when that turned out not to be the case.

Anyway, from the sound of things, the adaptation keeps everything I didn't like about the book, takes out some of what I did like, and doesn't add a whole lot that's new ... so yeah, can give this one a miss.

Re: VAGUE SPOILERS for 11.22.63

[rachelmanija]

I know! I liked the early time travel bits of the book a lot (and was disappointed when the end went with a more common time travel idea rather than something more inventive), and the miniseries skipped that entirely. In the interest of time (ha!) I assume, but at the cost of the most fun part. (And they should have known that was the most fun part, because it's the entire premise of Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow.

I also like your idea about Oswald better than the actual one. I have no pre-existing interest in the Kennedy assassination. Usually King can get me interested in stuff I don't normally care about, like baseball or psycho killers, because his characters care. But in this case I never really got why the main character cared, so I didn't either.