What I've Watched 3

Don't really have anything to say, so let's just jump straight into the fray, shall we?

True Detective Season 2

In my first WIV. I wrote that hopefully, the second season of True Detective would pick up the pace and improve in its second half. So, did it? To be frank, not really. Granted, I did actually enjoy the penultimate episode of the season and it gave me some hope that at least there would be a satisfying conclusion to the whole thing. Ultimately, though, this was a dreary season, revolving around a group of characters I didn't care about most of the time, getting involved in a plot that failed to captivate me. Will I watch an eventual third season of this show? Probably, but I'll be going into it with much lower expectations than I had for this one.

Here's hoping season 2 of Fargo doesn't turn out a disappointment as well. The trailer at the very least has me hopeful.

Star vs. The Forces of Evil

The first season of Star vs. was enjoyable. Star and Marco both made for entertaining protagonists and they played of each other really well. The show is for the most part focused on fun, lighthearted escapades in the vein of early episodes of Adventure Time or Steven Universe, which actually serves to make the more serious season finale, in which Star finds herself up against a far more competent and dangerous villain than her usual nemesis, all the more effective. The finale ended with a lot of questions unanswered and I'm definitely looking forward to next season.

By the way, in case you were wondering, my favorite character is Toffee. How can you not love an evil lizard-man voiced by Michael C. Hall?

Mister Robot

I've only seen the first two episodes of this one (I'm watching it on SVT Play and they haven't put up the third episode yet), but so far, I'm enjoying it. Rami Malek, who I can't recall having seen in anything else, does a good job as the main-character Elliot, a genius hacker who finds himself the target of interest of both the world's largest corporation, E-Corp as well as a group of hackers determined to bring E-Corp down. The whole show has a strong Fight Club vibe to it, but it remains to be seen if Mr. Robot goes down the same road as that movie.

Stein:s Gate

Stein:s Gate is one of those anime that I've seen appearing on several "best anime"-lists, so naturally, my expectations going in were quite high. Judging from what I've seen thus far (nine episodes), I can't say I'm all that impressed. Granted, the time-travel stuff is pretty interesting and Okabe makes for a fairly unique protagonist (I can't think of any other lead quite like him in a Japanese cartoon, at least not off the top of my head). However, this is undermined by the fact that every other character in the show is some kind of anime stereotype: There's the pervy otaku-nerd, the tsundere, the moe-blob (who refers to herself in third person for maximum amounts of saccharine) and the cross-dresser. Its not exactly a bad show (if it were, I would have given up on it long ago), but I've yet to see anything that justifies the amount of praise this anime has received. Still, I'll keep watching and hopefully the show will get more interesting as it continues.

Brideshead Revisited

A high-quality mini-series of the kind I've come to expect from Britain. I must confess that I haven't read the original novel by Evelyn Waugh, but the mini-series has definitely made me interested in checking it out (that's something all adaptations should do, in my opinion; raise interest in the source-material). Jeremy Irons is great in the role of the main-character and narrator, Charles Ryder and the rest of the cast, which include among others, John Gielgud, is terrific as well. It doesn't hurt that I could listen to Irons narrating stuff all day.
Speaking of Irons, I'm so used to see him play villains, that it took me some time to get used to him portraying an ordinary, every-man sort of character like he does here.


That's it for now. Be seeing you.