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Forum namePass The Popcorn
Topic subjectProbably my second favorite 2020 show after Watchmen
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=6&topic_id=739750&mesg_id=739751
739751, Probably my second favorite 2020 show after Watchmen
Posted by Nodima, Thu Nov-05-20 02:00 PM
Granted, I haven't seen any of the other prestige stuff from HBO this year, but with Fargo just kinda being another season of Fargo I can't think of anything else I'd put up there with these two. Here's what I said over in GD



Been watching out for the star, Anya Taylor-Joy, since I caught her in The VVitch when I finally saw that last year. Or I should say I've wanted to, but I haven't seen Emma. yet (edit: I've now seen about 30 minutes of Emma. and the performances are great but I didn't have the patience for what that movie was) and most of the other stuff she's been in just isn't up my alley. She kills this thing, and then there's a couple of fun young character actors in here as well - the kid who played Jojen in Game of Thrones and Harry Melling - as well as Marielle Heller who directed Diary of a Teenage Girl and the Mr. Rogers movie but looks like she's been in front of the camera forever.


There is a lot of tropey bullshit at the front and back half of the show, in particular there's a downward spiral in the 6th episode that feels totally dissonant from the patient pace the first half of the show has, but even that's kind of fun in its own silly way. Plus it wouldn't be a movie/show set in the 60s starring an orphaned white girl if she didn't have a magical black friend to help her get back on track (to the point, she actually has a line of dialogue that points out that's NOT what she's doing while she's doing it).


But you get your Mad Men style set design, some real cool Rocky-but-it's-chess montages (if you play chess, it's almost worth watching just to see chess on screen look like chess in real life - Gary Kasparov designed a lot of the games' plots himself), a lot of interesting stuff between a pretty but socially inept girl figuring out what power she has in a world that's not prepared for her physically or mentally...but sometimes not for the typical reasons (!) and it's super brisk. First show I watched in a single sitting (while playing some video games and stuff, sure) in a long while and I'd totally recommend it with, again, a small caveat that it's got 80% prestige and 20% cheese but that cheese is some heavy, goat's milk-ass cheese.


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