What are you currently watching on TV?

[spike]

Yeah, that tracks with the character. She has this lower, bougie tone when she’s acting better than everyone and’s trying to get something by use of her influence.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[Mickey]

Adam's portrayed as a what now?

[Rangi Guy]

Just finished off Peacemaker and season 6 of Peaky Blinders.

Started Severance last night

[VinylGuy]

All caught up on WeCrashed. Great episode and we’re really enjoying it, but does anyone else get the sense this show has a misogynistic lense? Rebekah is portrayed as a vindictive cunt while Adam is portrayed as a swashbuckling entrepreneur. The one flashback episode didn’t do enough to garner much empathy for Rebekah, so now she’s the girl you love to hate.

Yay or nay?

nah, Adam is a tool and so are the guys who work with him. Rebecca is cunt yeah, the real was also that.

They are just awful.

[Mickey]

I truly cannot fathom watching that show and thinking "How come Adam gets to look so cool?"

[dad]

Started Severance last night

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[dad]

wife and i have recently started The Wire. i never watched it, and have heard endless takes on how good it is.

it took a few episodes, but we're liking what we're seeing.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[dad]

wife and i have recently started The Wire. i never watched it, and have heard endless takes on how good it is.

it took a few episodes, but we're liking what we're seeing.

ooh boy, just wait until the vampires show up

trag

[Mickey]

I truly cannot fathom watching that show and thinking "How come Adam gets to look so cool?"

it's not that I think he looks cool -- he looks like a sociopath. But I think the show endeavors to make him somewhat sympathetic, while it bends over backwards to make Rebekah look completely horrid. But I welcome an alternative view of this.

Can't sympathize with this. In my read, Adam is an asshole and a fraud from the very beginning--think about that early shot of him hawking the baby crawlers and yelling at the baby. And as VG pointed out, Rebekah is legitimately bonkers and incredibly unsympathetic IRL--she really said and did many of those things!. But if anything, I think the show does a lot of work to explain Rebekah's behavior in the later episodes--her isolation with the kids, her sense of being extraneous to everything that's going on (e.g. she's a muse who wants to be a maverick). I too thought the dad flashback stuff sucked but it was also unnecessary, there's already plenty of reason for her to try to assert herself because of how her relationship is structured and who Adam is.

[Mickey]

I mean, even the fact that Rebekah gets some dad flashback stuff. We actually don't get a real origin story for Adam, just the somewhat made-up one he delivers to Masa. That to me feels like a decision NOT to exculpate Adam's behavior.

[VinylGuy]

I mean, even the fact that Rebekah gets some dad flashback stuff. We actually don't get a real origin story for Adam, just the somewhat made-up one he delivers to Masa. That to me feels like a decision NOT to exculpate Adam's behavior.

yeah, the flashback stuff humanizes her more. Also, her trying to be an actress and failing, her desperate acting when she was dumped.

[Malloy]

my coworkers are watching billions; im trying to ignore the dialogue. is it the ultimate smart dumb-guy show?

ive been interested for some time in knowing why the show runners choose the music that appears in the show. i half-entertained the possibility that songs that aren’t diegetic are simply the kind of drab tunes business types would like. that the banal soundtrack is an expression of the characters’ tastes. that at every level this show commits to the reproduction of ideas & aesthetics whose depth is somewhere at the level of hammered shit. (or, like Succession, the characters are objects of contempt regardless of their (outdated) taste (thinking of Dizzee Rascal at Ken’s birthday).)

but a variety article quotes the show runners — it’s just shit these guys like. and i imagine the music is an example of a broader problem w this show, which it has no ironic distance from the thing it’s supposed to critique. that its relentless cultural references are thin cover for a shallow ditch of ideas. that it is fun trash. that showtime is fx w a larger budget. interested to hear why this is wrong, because i often hear how the writing on this show is great

[Mickey]

A number of very smart Marxists I know watch and love Billions. I dunno though. Seems kinda interminable. And there's no accounting for taste

[Malloy]

A number of very smart Marxists I know watch and love Billions. I dunno though. Seems kinda interminable. And there's no accounting for taste

same here on all points

[Malloy]

it does seem to degrade conventions of prestige drama, which is interesting. as an object it seems to resemble commodity form more so than other shows. just seems like its virtues and anything interesting are accidental

[Malloy]

and it’s totally antagonistic to character. could make an argument like wbm does re the wire. but the writing on the wire wasn’t such a slog.

it’s like, here’s an object, and it has a lot of interesting things to say about capitalism. and you’ll be in pain getting through it.

my god is billions just a dreiser novel?

[Malloy]

reconsidering every bad thing ive said about this show