Have you ever loved something, only to realize it’s a commercial flop or just obscure? What’s something that deserves more light than it got?
I think The Good Place is one of the best things to ever happen to tv. I know it’s not some secret piece of tv that nobody knows about, but it hit the right notes in my soul that I don’t think people are singing its praises loud enough, even a decade on from its release.
Agreed. One of the greatest shows of all time
CreamyJalapenoSauce figured it out? CreamyJalapenoSauce? This is a real low point. Yeah, this one hurts.
This hit the right notes in my soul 😁💙
I just suddenly had this calm feeling, like the air inside my lungs was the same as the air outside my body. It was peaceful. You know the feeling when you think a jalapeño popper is gonna be too hot, but you bite into it anyway and it’s actually the perfect temperature?
Totally agreed. My favourite get-to-know-you question is this: “if you had the very specific super power that meant you could make everybody into the world love a piece of media in exactly the way you do, for exactly the reasons you do, what piece of media would you pick and why?”
My answer is The Good Place, with a bullet. It’s about trying to be better every day and treat people well, and it’s hilarious and good natured.
The able to make the entire world feel the same empathetic message of togetherness would be way too OP of a super power.
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I found that Ted Danson’s new show, man on the inside, is also pretty good.
It’s warm and hilarious.
My wife and I go to watch it, open Prime, put it on. Watch for a bit, things seem odd, but I don’t question it. We’re having a tough time following exactly, but I’ve heard good things about the show so I’m letting it breathe.
We get like 20m in and I say okay what the fuck. I pause, it’s the season finale of season 1, prime just felt, when we start a new show, that it was best to start off on the most recent episode, despite not having seen the rest of them. Frustrating, to say the least.
Holy shit that must have been frustrating. I knew something was off but the main reveal was good the first watch.
It ended up happening one other time, on Hulu I want to say, but I caught it earlier, because fool me once and all that. And I’m the kind of person who likes to go into things blind, I enjoy watching the story unfold, so it really gets my goat.
Believe it or not, never happens on the things I host locally.
There is a theory about the meaning of life in this show that I found profound.
I went into the show blind and it was definitely outside of the typical stuff that I watch, but I enjoyed it a lot!
That’s a great show. At first I didn’t watch it because I thought it was gonna be some corny heaven show but it was really good. It ended on a very satisfying note and I hadn’t cried during shows for a while before that. Well besides Bojack horseman.
One of the rare “10/10, no notes” series from start to finish. Amazing finale too. Fantastic rewatch value.
It’s okay I thought, it belabors a lot of points. I mostly just liked the episodes where the plot moved fast
I also greatly enjoyed this one and think it’s a really well-made show with great actors. It was also one of the few shows I could watch with my wife with us both really liking it (we have unfortunately very different taste regarding TV shows). We often laughed at very different moments that the other one didn’t find super funny but that didn’t matter at all. Definitely recommend!
Look I’m not saying that it isn’t well rated, but too many people dismiss “Avatar: The Last Airbender” as a cartoon or a childrens show when it is in fact a masterpiece.
Idk, everyone I speak to about it agrees that it’s incredible. Doesn’t seem underrated. I’ve been wanting to rewatch it.
Right you’re talking about the people who HAVE seen it. It isn’t rated lowly, it is dismissed by too many people. Like I said originally…
Ah ok, well you might be right
You and the people you know are all in a similar silo of streaming and tech adoption. Ask the mail carrier or barber if they heard of Avatar the cartoon, not the blue people movie.
Korra is better in my opinion.
Existed for the third show, btw! Avatar - Seven Havens.
Korra was a bunch of nepo baby elites going around policing the world without the consent of anyone else, whilst discovering who they were.
Aang and his crew actually took time to go village to village to help out the local people, whilst training to take on an army.
These two shows are not the same.
The great thing about that, though, and the reason Korra is indeed a great show, is that the show itself explores whether they are a bunch of nepobabies, and whether they should even be doing what they’re doing. I loved that. It was a worthy successor.
I do admit the last season does a great effort in deconstructing itself
They lost me when it turned out they made the jocks the good guys and spent a whole episode playing sports ball.
I was like, “I’m not watching a whole series of this.” click.
So you got like 3 episodes in and bailed?
That’s not even close to what the show is about lmao
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I tried but like most children’s shows I just can’t deal with (at least the early seasons’) pacing. It’s excruciatingly slow, full of obvious filler content, and doesn’t seem to be trying to get anywhere.
Typically those children shows’ pacing tends to get a lot better in the latter seasons as the audience ages out and the showrunners are trusted with bolder story arcs, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are tens of hours of slop to get through before that point is reached.
Sounds like an attention span issue on your part.
Or it’s the opposite. I refuse to watch shows without giving them my undivided attention, but that kind of pacing begs to be background noise while you do something else.
Sometimes there is nothing significantly plot-relevant happening for entire episodes at a time, both for bad reasons (the incentive structure for children’s show rewards empty filler slop with zero plot value because it’s easy to re-run) and less bad reasons (children like repetition). Both of which are painfully evident throughout the whole experience.
Good for you if that’s your jam, if you find it comforting or like it as background noise or like it because it leads to better paced seasons down the line or whatever, but I refuse to accept that it’s an issue for me to dislike objectively horrendous pacing.
When other people enjoy it and consider it good and you’re like “No, trash, horrendous!” I think the issue is on your side. Also it’s okay if you don’t like it, but if that is what you’re citing as the reason then you clearly do have a short attention span, and struggle to focus on things. That’s also okay, but don’t expect people to listen to your denials while you rip on other things and blame those things. Enjoy what you want. But I disagree that the show has “horrendous pacing”.
i simply do not hear enough people talking about Outer Wilds, i know it released in the same year as the AA game by Obsidian - Outer Worlds, the title of which is different by whole two letters, which provided a very good distraction but
AAAAA
Outer Wilds is a lighting in a bottle video game that the majority of those who have played it wish they could experience for the first time again. it’s a stunning piece of art that makes you cry and you’re not even sure what exactly just happened. but there’s always a point where it all just hits you - and all you can do is cry
it doesn’t handhold you, in fact it doesn’t give you any objectives at all, you’re lead through the entire game by sheer curiosity alone - and oh boy will that curiosity make you zoom across the space back and forth until you get to the bottom of it. when you utter your first “oh what’s that? i’m going to check it out” it’ll have you, you might not realise it yet but you’re now primed for adventure
this is the only game i’m not afraid to overhype. i watched that game sit in my library, for over a year, and in that time i hyped it up in my head to unreachable levels, to the point where eventually i was close to afraid of playing it because how could it possibly meet that standard i’ve envisioned? and you know what? it was better than i’ve ever imagined. it waited for me to be ready to sit down and play it, and then it delivered and experience that i’ll forever treasure
maybe it won’t hit that exact sweet spot for you as it did for me, but bloody hell can i assure you you’ll never forget it - even though you’ll wish you did, to play it for the first time again
oh and if any of my vague praise made you interested - rule #1 of Outer Wilds Club: don’t talk about Outer Wilds. don’t look up anything about it, you want to experience it as blind as you possibly can, some people even go as far as buying their friends a copy so they never have to look at the steam page screenshots
I enjoyed this game but I didn’t love it as much as I see people gushing about it do. It makes me wonder if I might have enjoyed it more not having heard it hyped up all the time. I did manage to completely avoid spoilers so it wasn’t that
fair enough, for me it struck all the right chords inside, but not everyone has the same chords
I heard amazing things about Outer Wilds, was under the impression it was an adventure game but “make sure to go in blind!” was the universal advice so I didn’t look up more, downloaded it, started to play, and really struggled with the controls. I wasn’t raised with video games as a kid and I don’t play platformers and such so my coordination is shit. When I went to the net to find a solution (because a lot of games have at least mods you can download to make things easier) but all I got was “get gud.” I asked a friend who was like “oh yeah, I watched a stream of someone playing and it seems like a technically difficult game.” So that’s a pretty important warning to include with any Outer Wilds recommendation.
i wouldn’t worry about it too much, we all struggle with the ship at first :) even the best of us! piloting it becomes second nature after some time though, just gotta learn through practice
I feel like I gave it enough of a try to know that this isn’t an “at first” issue, and as a grown-ass adult I’m not going to throw an unknown number of hours at practicing something I don’t know if I’ll ever get the hang of enough to properly play the game.
This is an accessibility issue; many games include “cheat” modes so as to allow a much larger audience that may otherwise be physically or otherwise incapable of playing the standard mode to still enjoy it. As far as I know, this game has provided nothing of the sort. Given that OW is marketed as an adventure/exploration game rather than a technical game, I don’t know why they refused to provide this, but regardless this is a gate-kept game, which is fine, not every game has to be easy or accessible, but please don’t pretend otherwise.
idk what to say man, the game literally has an autopilot, all you need to learn is how to take off, and land. but you can’t relay on the autopilot to do the exploring for you - being able to control your ship when needed is necessary
what other accesability options can you think of adding to a space exploration game that needs 360° of movement?
An absolute masterpiece.
I like outer wilds, but I just don’t have enough time to play games unfortunately
Tour de Pharmacy
It’s a mockumentary about the Tour de France, but everyone’s been kicked out for doping.
There are only 5 competitors left, Andy Sandberg, John Cena, Daveed Diggs, Orlando Bloom, and Freddie Highmore.
They’ve got the actual Lance Armstrong doing a “hidden informant” bit.
Each of the racers has a wacky backstory. Hijinks ensue. It’s a great time.
Not the best movie ever, but I had an absolute blast with it.
“People dope… yeah… You know this is a sport with literally hundreds of dollars on the line and dozens of fans… STAKES ARE MEDIUM!”
Seeing John Cena keep up with comedy heavy weights convinced me that he’s a pretty good actor.
Peacemaker was pretty fun. I had basically no familiarity with Cena other than the meme and the Make a Wish status. His acting was sufficiently entertaining to convince me to continue the show.
The way he really sold the emotional scenes in that show convinced me he’s got some serious acting skills.
I have to watch this, thank you!
Better off Ted. I dont think it is underrated, but it definitely seems to be not well known and only got a couple of seasons. It’s the first time I got mad at Netflix canceling a show I loved.
It’s an excellent show.
But don’t be mad at Netflix. It aired on ABC, and they cancelled it (presumably because it had lower ratings than the network’s other comedies). Netflix just picked up streaming rights after the fact.
Great show, but the Veridian Dynamics commercials are my favorite part.
For me, it’s when the octochicken comes down from its web.
I’ve never met someone IRL that has seen this show. I work in the biotech industry so I recommend it to all my coworkers.
Movie wise:
- Logan Lucky - “Trying to reverse a family curse, brothers Jimmy and Clyde Logan set out to execute an elaborate robbery during the legendary Coca-Cola 600 race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.”
I really found myself loving this movie, which was a surprised to me. But I believe that I found myself loving the characters and how they were shown on screen. I also loved the pacing of the movie. I never felt like there was a moment that had over stayed it’s stay. The story it’s self was interesting enough for me to keep wanting to watch as well. And no, it’s not a film, it’s a fun movie. It’s not trying to be the next Heat or The Sting.
- Kubo and the Two Strings - “Kubo mesmerizes the people in his village with his magical gift for spinning wild tales with origami. When he accidentally summons an evil spirit seeking vengeance, Kubo is forced to go on a quest to solve the mystery of his fallen samurai father and his mystical weaponry, as well as discover his own magical powers.”
It’s a powerful film IMO. There was a lot to love from the experience and it’s one of my all-time favorite stop motion films ever.
Kubo was really good. Only reason it isn’t better known is because it wasn’t a major studio. If they slapped a Pixar logo on it, it would’ve been huge.
yes! Kubo was such an amazing movie. And while on the topic of amazing stop-motion I’ll add Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio.
“Cauliflower”
Adam Driver in LL was great
Bryan Fuller’s TV opus, primarily Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies, although the first two seasons of Hannibal are really excellent writing and storytelling. All his work deals with death, but each has something slightly different to say about it.
Came here to talk about his show Wonder Falls. It only aired 3 episodes on Fox, but the whole season was released on DVD later. I think I’m one of thr few people who watched the live broadcast, because I was recovering from 2 surgeries for like a month, and had nothing to do. Led me to discover the whole Fullerverse.
I watched the broadcast, but even those who remember that it existed at all is a small club. It’s one of my all time favorites. If you haven’t already, look up the plans that they had for the future seasons of the series. There were fantastic ideas to develop the storyline that sadly will never be written.
Oooo! I’ll definitely look that up, I had no idea they got that far in development.
If I had a mouse for every time I’d seen Pushing Daisies mentioned on Lemmy, I’d probably have like hundreds of mice, because I’ve seen it mentioned twice and those things breed. It was absolutely excellent though and I was so gutted it never got another series. Maybe it was hit by a writers strike? Can’t remember how long ago it came out now.
Good news (from December):
“Absolutely,” [Bryan] Fuller told The Mary Sue recently about wanting to revisit Pushing Daisies. “We have a season three pitch, and the entire cast wants to come back, and we’re hoping we get to return to them. We just have to find somebody who wants to make it.”
Not so much underrated as it was rated well, but mostly because it didn’t really do well in theaters. Annihilation (2018) which is based on the novel of the same name is often overlooked when talking about great scifi movies. The book is great too.
I kinda bounced off the books. I read all three, but I felt like they were just trying a little too hard to be vague. The second in particular is an absolute slog. I thought the movie was much better than the books, and I’m 99% of the time the other way-round.
His next book: Borne was amazing. Probably my favorite of his.
Foundation on Apple TV is a visually beautiful show and follows the books generally well with a few caveats.
I haven’t read the books, so I can’t comment on that, but wow, Lee Pace kills it as Day.
And shout out to Jared Harris for being in this and The Expanse
As a fan of the books, I was initially pretty upset with some of the changes, but I’m glad I stuck with it. The show is it’s own thing that goes to some fascinating places.
I’ll have to give it another shot. Love the books but couldn’t make it through the first season of the show.
This show keeps popping on my radar and I mean to snag it, and then, as with many things in my life, it disappears into the void.
Absolutely check it out.
have you read the books? because the show does not follow them at all.
That said, the show is pretty interesting and incredibly beautiful.
Cloud Atlas is my usual mention.
Favourite movie and it’s usually a fairly even split between people like myself who love it and people who think it’s garbage.
Not much middle ground
Rewatched it with my wife recently
Sat on the edge of my seat as the stories came together… Wife was completely non-plussed
Couldn’t stop thinking about that film for weeks after watching it.
I went into it blind, and immediately had to go read the book.
This isn’t alone as a movie steering me towards a book. But nothing else has spurred a drop everything else response like that.
Avenue 5
Armando Ianucci is a genius
Loved that show! Wife and I laughed so hard at it.
I remember wanting to watch this at some point, but I think I got it confused with The Orville. I should check it out again.
That show is weirdly accurate to my experiences working in the tech industry.
Norsemen was a great series but I understand why people didn’t get into it or even tried it. The humor is very special and maybe takes a little time to settle. It all feels like the cast didn’t know what’s going on and was making it up on the go, which is part of the fun.
Another one: Minesweeper. I feel like most people never understood how this game even works and just clicked randomly until something exploded. It’s actually purely logical! In the classic Windows version there is unfortunately always a high chance to encounter fields that can’t be solved by logic. This is what Mineswifter solves. If you want something more complex, there is the Hexcells series. Get the last one, Infinite, as it has a puzzle generator integrated.
It’s actually purely logical!
What’s the logic that can guarantee your first move won’t be a mine?
Edit to add: Norsemen was great, loved it.
I think some versions such as Antimine will generate the field once you pick a starting tile.
True, the first one you have to guess. Windows Minesweeper is far from perfect.
It was coded to never allow the first pick to be a mine.
I recently played a roguelike minesweeper that was really interesting https://store.steampowered.com/app/3719980/BroomSweeper_Demo/
I had a friend that was amazing at minesweeper. Watching him play the hardest levels and clearing them in under 30 seconds was incredible.
I was never into speedrunning anything. My father is crazy fast with Hexcells though. He bought a new mouse just for this game!
That’s wild lol. I love when someone is absolute pro at the most random things like hexcell or minesweeper.
Tametsi is my favorite Minesweeper clone. Every level is crafted - not randomly generated - and is completely solvable by logic. Some of the later puzzles are insanely difficult. It’s so satisfying to take one down.
Thanks for the tip!
Tetris beats minesweeper every day. People pack their vacation cars/suvs and refer to tetris-ing them. No one every says, “I minesweepered that.”
I find myself saying “its like fucking minesweeper” usually because something is as tedious as it is terrifying.
I also never heard anyone say „I marioed that“ or „I minecrafted that“. It’s also a completely different game. So not sure where you’re going with this comparison.
Better Off Ted I feel is reasonably well known and did manage to get an unexpected second season. I feel like a chunk of its potential audience had already left Television for streaming even back when it first aired.
The Shadow (1994) is delightful. It’s fun, atmospheric, and does a great job of capturing the quaint charm of old timey pulp storytelling in a more modern action movie. It’s just a treat, and I honestly can’t believe it bombed, and as far as I know, never even got a cult following.
The Adventures of Brisco County Jr only got one season and has mostly passed into obscurity. Which is a shame because it’s fun and can be a great little time capsule from the days when people thought the future might actually be something to be optimistic about.
Cabin Boy is not what you’d call… good. BUT it is still weirdly enjoyable. It’s an experience. One other people should have. Whether they want it or not.
Advent Rising was so unsuccessful it helped kill the publisher, and it got terrible reviews. And yeah, the game feels like there are glaring omissions due to it being rushed out. But I absolutely love it. The powers are cool, the story is simple but works, and it definitely left me wanting more.
Also, Babylon 5 will always be underrated because it’s not possible to rate it highly enough.
I had forgotten all about The Shadow.
What evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows…
I had a dog named Shadow and would frequently quote this at him. Never seen the movie but had tapes of the radio show.
Duuuuuude. Brisco County Jr. Is a name I haven’t heard in a LONG time. I liked it a lot as a kid.
Cabin Boy is fucking weird and wonderful. Very weird tho. But wonderful too, while being super duper weird.
I love that weird wonderful movie.
These pipes… are cleeeaaaan!
Haha! I remember loving the shit out of Cabin Boy when I first saw it years and years ago. I tried to give it another watch a little while back and gave up. It’s awful!
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, it was made by alumni of Interplay. The developers also made Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, which probably is why it gets overshadowed.
Anyways gameplay is effected by build, equipment, and even race because of course it is this is a game made by Fallout 2 devs. If that sounds interesting but not convincing go watch Mandaloregaming, Warlockracy, or Ssethtzeentach for better reasons, though if you aren’t familiar with any or all of the YouTubers I mentioned I ordered it by least to most batshit.
Also if any Eastern Europeans try to say “Oh this was a big game when I was in school” yes I’m aware I know about how your bootleggers charged by the disk resulting in everyone having Fallout 1, 2, and Arcanum. Sadly the game didnt do nearly as well here in the US in my experience.
