Annara Snow

Man, did most juries this year have a dull and unimaginative taste. God forbid they vote for anything interesting. I love how the public vote once again trampled all over the juries, and this time they really deserved it. Ukraine clearly got a lot of the sympathy votes from the public, but without that it was still one of the songs that stood out. I'll take it over the generic UK pop song any day.

She is supposed to be flawed and messed up as most of the characters are in that show*. You get more of her character development and backstory later, and she's equal parts sympathetic - as in, you feel sorry for her - and annoying. *some more than the others obviously, with the whole murder thingy

While working (translating; I work at home), I've been listening to YouTube compilation videos, mostly of new wave music, and I've discovered some 1980s gems I had never heard of before:

How do you not chew scenery when you're playing Cleon(s)?

Really? Of all the cast members, this is who they nominate? Not Lee Pace, not Laura Birn, Terrance Mann .

I found season 1 to be a big improvement on itself when rewatched. And I liked it fine enough the first time.

It just feels very performative. "Imma club you for insulting my wife because my wife is displeased so I can play a hero in front of her and the audience, instead of my wife getting angry at me for laughing". It also looked like barely a punch, so I'm not surprised by some people thinking it was staged. I',m not saying it is, but it seemed kind of like putting on a show in the moment. I mean, if punching if the right answer, surely Jada could have done it herself...

Yes.s It's not really so much that this or that season is better than another, but each one of them builds on the previous ones and develops the characters and their dynamics and the themes further.

Ah yes, I suspected it may be this one. It was in 2x09. Big climactic moments usually happened in episdoes 9. Maybe the only thing the show has in common with GoT.

Which one do you mean? Please tell in spoiler tags. There's a twist in 2x08 and a bigger one in 2x09, and another one at the end of the season 2 finale.

You don't have to link any reviews, I've heard all of that before, it seems to have been a popular narrative by reviewers/orders who were trying to hype up season 2, which I get as a motivation. But I find most of that criticism to be an example of reviewers being incredibly lazy and their need to always compare shows to other shows. It's like when every fantasy show and every pre 1800s period drama is compared to GoT. Donna is not even remotely similar to Betty Draper. She's not a housewife nor a trophy wife, nor is she emotionally repressed. She is a working woman who also has to deal with children and home and a husband who's frustrating her not just because he is work obsessed but mainly because he is a mess and feels like a failure. Donna didn't set aside her professional dreams to be a mother and a wife, she and Gordon worked together in the past and their dreams crashed 3 years before with the failure of their computer, Symphonic. Donna is never too shy to tell Gordon how she feels, and she expects him to do some work with the kids too, but he is too much of a mess to do it She is supportive of Gordon's work, but that's in part because this is the first time he has been excited about something in years, and it makes him less depressed and apathetic (she basically tells him in the pilot, you may work on this project with this guy, if you also promise to be there for us at home from now on) though over time his obsession with it starts being a problem in itself. She has a job of her own (and works hard at it) and ambitions, but that job is not fulfilling or rewarding enough; but she also gives a big contribution to the development of Giant, and is very visibly frustrated when her contribution cannot be openly acknowledged. It makes even less sense to call season 1 Cameron "just adjacent to Joe". You may as well say that Gordon is adjacent to Joe, or Joe is adjacent to Gordon. Their interpersonal dynamics are all important, but they all have their own arcs and backstories, and Cameron is the one who is always championing the most forward thinking ideas and comes up with things like an innovative and interactive operating system, on the opposite end of Gordon, who tends to be more conservative in that respect. (Season 1 Cameron, that is. I love her character,but I don't think she's the most forward thinking of the main characters when it comes to tech after season 1. It's much more often Joe or Donna. But maybe that's because I'm not all that into gaming. Especially season 2 Cameron is a bit gatekeepy at times and needed a long time to understand the value of a broader online community that's not all about gamers, as opposed to season 1 Cameron who was hoping to build a computer/OS for everyone, including people previously uninterested in tech ). Now, it's certainly great to see the women centered even more and their relationship explored, and have them become even more complex, but I find it weird when people try to do that by disparaging their indiviidual character arcs in season 1. It makes me wonder, if one didn't care about Cameron or Donna in season 1, why would they suddenly start caring in season 2? It almost sounds like, well their arcs aren't worth a thing unless they're heading their own company. Anyway, what really strikes me about seasons 1 and 2 is that they are like mirror images of each other and complement each other. The characters almost swap roles. Gordon becomes season 1 Donna and Donna becomes season 1 Gordon, and while Joe is struggling with who he is and trying not to be Joe MacMillan anymore, Cameron increasingly becomes her own version of Joe MacMillan (and is called out on ir) even while she thinks that's the last thing she wants to be. Then the finale and season 3 reshuffles everyone's roles and interpersonal dynamics again.

Depends on what you liked and what you didn't like about season 1. I personally don't see much of a difference in quality between seasons 1 and 2, though I think seasons 3 and 4 are better (but all the seasons were great IMO) but there are others who disagree and think season 2 was much better than season 1. But I'm speaking as someone who loved the show after just a few episodes and thinks season 1 was great. One of the reasons given is that the show focuses on Cameron and Donna more, which si true as they are the ones running a company that's the focus of season 2 - but it's not like the show was not focusing on them at all in season 1. Every season reshuffles the character roles and interpersonal dynamics, but they build on what happened before. But did you like / feel interested in any of the characters to begin with? It's always those same main characters you met in season 1, although they change and develop a lot. The other reason often given is a preference for the setting. Season 1 is mostly about Cardiff Electric, and the characters trying to move this old dinosaur of a company into the future and dealing with the the old boy Texan business network (or being a part of it, as Toby Huss' Boz). In season 2, the main focus is more on this new,, unconventional startup company Mutiny that you saw getting founded by Cameron in the season 1 finale. So, were you excited by that? Did you like what you saw of them, the young coders she recruited and the prospect of Cameron and Donna working together, teased in the finale? If yes, then you have a bigger chance of being interested in season 2.

Season 1 was already about all 4 of them and Cameron and Donna had big arcs of their own and reflected in different ways (as the two very different women) the reality of women trying to make it professionally in the 1980s. Sure, they get more screentime as they found their own company in the season 1 finale*, but it's not like they needed to run a company before they had a meaty character arc. The show being just about Joe and Gordon is only mostly true in the pilot episode and nowhere else. BTW, I tried my best to calculate the character screentime during my recent rewatch (finished season 2) and Donna is the character with the most screentime in episode 1×04 (unsurprisingly, as that episode largely revolves around her, and to a lesser extent Cameron). The season finale has Gordon with most screentime and Donna with second most screentime. ETA: Also, I'm confused by your wording "becomes as much about Cameron and especially Donna". That makes it sound like Donna becomes a more prominent character than Cameron, which is most definitely not the case.

Yes, of course a lot of shows are a mix of genres, and there are many dramedies on TV, but The Sopranos isn't one. The amount of humor is nowhere near enough to balance the amount of drama and downright tragedy that happens. Putting a certain amount of humor in dark themed dramas is not a new thing, Shakespeare and the other Elizabethan/Jacobean playwrights did it all the time. Romeo and Juliet probably has a higher % of comedy in its overall runtime, but it's still considered a tragedy, and Henry IV probably has as at least as many comedic scenes as dramatic ones, but it's still not considered a comedy by anyone I'm aware of. Heck, ASOIAF also has many funny moments and witty lines. If it were a happy lightweight story about some nice people looking for love, those funny moments might be enough to make a dramedy, but it being dark AF, that's obviously not even a possibility.

Gunn's formula is doing perfectly fine. Why fix what's not broken? He has his very specific and recognizable style, which can't be said of that many people doing superhero films and shows. And if he were to change something, it certainly shouldn't be to imitate other creators. The idea that he needs to try to make a The Sopranos 2.0 is just weird. He is making dramedies that are predominantly comedies with dramatic elements. It sounds like it's been suggested that only dramas are "prestige" enough and are automatically better/ greater than comedies- which is, of course, nonsense.