Topic: The TV Show Thread

My friends recommended chasing Supacell with another British superpower show called Extraordinary. This one is more of a sitcom / comedy than Supacell is. On the surface, Extraordinary is fantastic, a genuinely laugh out loud, lovely and feel good story, that manages to find the ordinary magic in a world where everyone has a super power.

However, what really made it special for me - and this is gonna sound so morbid - is this ever growing reflection on loss that runs through the show. I am fascinated by the presentation of grief on screen. Grief is unique to everyone, but at the risk of sounding like I am gatekeeping being sad - which is absolutely not my intention - anyone who has experienced true grief knows the difference between a genuine presentation of grief on screen and someone writing grief without having experienced it.

Light spoilers here - protagonist Jen is initially introduced as this quite chaotic figure. She is messy, bratty, rude, just generally quite unpleasant and unlikeable. We learn she has lost her Dad, and crucially this isn’t initially used as a tool for sympathy, it's just a part of her fabric. In a fun use of the show's twist, rather than really facing that grief, Jen gets to push it aside as her best friend’s power is channelling the dead. This means Jen can act like her Dad is still alive, and just sort of live in that lie, even though its stunting her growth (quite literally in the mechanics of this world) because this means she never really has to face what happened and let go.

The show touches on this throughout, a few poignant scenes like when she is reminded she still has a parent, alive, right there she is pushing away for the one who is gone, but it is always so carefully woven into the overall fabric of the show, so the show never gets lost in the misery and drama. It really helps us slowly learn why Jen is the way she is, and grow to organically appreciate the person she is, without it just cheating our sympathy with a dead parent card, it really makes sure to earn this.

It all comes to a head in the final episode of season 2, there is a brief goodbye sequence and I ugly cried like a monster at that sequence and it was all so brief, so perfectly tuned for the overall vibe of the show. Just perfect man.

So I love an adult animated comedy, and from time to time I'll watch anything ranging from fantastic to bang average and maybe even highly questionable at times...

I was really in the mood to get stuck into something new, but I watched a couple of episodes of Exploding Kittens last night and just felt incredibly empty. It felt like it had barely any redeeming factors, and I couldn't put my finger on why. I guess I was expecting an 8 out of 10 type show and it just fell completely flat. And this was while mildly inebriated too, when you'd think anything could get a laugh 🤷

I suppose I'll ask if anyone has any recommendations for soemthing much better, but there's a chance I'll have seen it already, possibly multiple times 😅

(It's really bad, it's really, really, really, really bad. It does not get any better, just much, much worse. Maybe the worst thing ever put on netflix 🤢)

@FuriousMachine That's very high praise and I'm starting to feel the same way as it has gotten me really hooked! The last time a TV show has gotten me this hooked was when I watched The Boys for the first time. Genuinely looking forward to watching more soon.

@LtSarge Like @FuriousMachine said, I thought Shogun was great. You obviously already know, but for a show that is 95% just them sitting there and talking, the episodes are really engaging and fly by.

No, I don't say that just because Anna Sawai is a beautiful woman either.