We have streamed for about a year. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has been our favorite thus far. Most of our friends agree. I tried watching Fleabag twice and gave up. Probably too old to 'get' the humor.
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I’m 70 and Waller-Bridge is a genius. But I like weird stuff. There’s enough out there for everyone’s tastes.
7
Could only watch one episode of Mrs. Maisel, but loved every second of Flea Bag, to each his own!
1
You ever wonder why ratings keep dropping for award shows? Crowd favorites not winning, This is us. Niche short run shows, winning, Fleabag, award show running too long, even without a host? Just plain boring. All these and so much more. Do you understand why fortunes are being spent on Friends and Seinfeld reruns? This is what the people want to watch and not award shows about tv shows or movies that are not seen. Maybe just put the Emmys and Oscars with Tonys with Golden Globes on cable and leave the rest for the Peoples Choice Awards.
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@Chef Dave How could "crowd favorites not winning" be a cause of low ratings when the winners aren't announced until the actual broadcast?
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@Jeff, because people tune in year after year, hoping to enjoy seeing their favorites bring home honors, but then see that their favorites aren't winning, and so don't tune in again next year. My best guess.
3
'Fleabag' is tasteless and not terribly funny whatsoever. How did it win in the Comedy category.
I barely made it through the first episode, however with a triple espresso I was able to endure.
If that garbage is the best out there things are worse than I imagined.
6
@Plennie Wingo You're well in the minority on this one. Critic consensus of 100% and average audience score of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's sharp-witted, original, and hysterically funny. If only we could get more seasons of it. We need more Fleabag-esque shows and far fewer Big Bang Theories. The era of laugh track stage sitcoms is over, and thank goodness for it.
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@Plennie Wingo
Every show isn't for every viewer, but I'd say give Fleabag a second shot. I shared your impression after watching the first episode. But something in the second episode made me laugh til I cried (a rarity, I assure you), and as the storyline progressed, it revealed itself to be deeper than first meets the eye.
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@Nathan
I can do without both. Clever comedy like Seinfeld, Mary Tyler Moore, Cheers is no longer available. I can do without crass comedy that needs too much visual sex and sexual innuendo rather than brainy comedy.
Mrs. Maizel has some foul language, but it is part of the story and doesn't rely on constant sex, but relies on a clever story and good actors. Good creative comedy is possible.
3
thought the sketch re whether or not bob newhart was dead or alive was in deplorable taste.
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@vg rosenwald
and I thought it was hilarious!
1
we watched for about a half hour but the amount of ads, both commercials and in the program, made it seem like one big fox promo.
1
It was all rather tedious, aimless and like a huge one-room train station with bored people in unflattering and very inelegant garb waiting for their train, with occasional, but still too frequent, bungled loudspeaker announcements and insignificant musical snippets. Ultimately, a trainwreck.
1
The BBC made Fleabag. That simple fact seems to me to undermine this entire argument
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That’s a fair point, and I was planning to mention it parenthetically but couldn’t find a good way to do it. But “Fleabag” is a full co-production with Amazon, not an acquisition — they put in money upfront and as far as the U.S. market is concerned, it’s destined for streaming from the get-go.
2
Can we please have the brilliant Phoebe Waller-Bridge write/host the 2020 Emmy’s?
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She’s too brilliant for that, why waste her time? 😀
3
Love how the award for Chernobyl exposes how bad your review was.
1
TV or streaming? Both are 90% dreck. Netflix is just as bad as Fox.
"You could feel the indifference, bordering on hostility, when Ben Whishaw won a supporting-actor award for “A Very English Scandal” over three nominees from the popular mini-series “When They See Us.” "
This is a disturbing trend in Hollywood. That if the most Woke nominee doesn't win, it's greeted with hostility. First, when you have multiple nominees from the same show in the same category, you are almost certainly going to split the vote. But, more importantly, to not acknowledge these things are highly subjective is ridiculous. I thought both Veep and "Maisel" were far superior to Fleabag, yet I'm not planning to storm the castle. I appreciate others felt differently.
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It would seem that awards shows themselves are also falling victim to streaming. I don't watch them. Instead, if I want to see someone's acceptance speech, I find it the next day on YouTube. That saves hours of my life for more productive pursuits.
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Platinum age for streaming, Iron Age for networks.
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@Greg Hudson. Creatively, absolutely true. But the networks still deliver far larger audiences than the streamers by most measures.
To me, the real tragedy is that as the more sophisticated audiences have abandoned the broadcast networks for cable and streaming, network fare has become ridiculously dumbed down (and it didn't start from a particularly high perch to begin with).
8
Very fair points. Streaming already has your money, with more services to come. When will they reach a saturation point and merge? Networks do have larger audiences but look at the demographics? Would networks exist without drug company money?
Sam Rockwell was robbed.
His Fosse fueled Michelle Williams’ Verdon and vice versa.
Come on, with the other acting awards. Really?
The Rockwell-Williams combo was the finest American screen acting since Dunaway-Nicholson’s Chinatown.
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@DD
Wow - am I ever with you on that! Williams could not have done what she did without Rockwell. Period.
2
Winner in the category, Most Excruciating to Watch Awards Show of the Decade: Emmys, 2019.
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The worst Emmy production ever. No host, no entertainment, sound/microphone issues and 10,000 commercials.
Bring back an the days of an amusing host and put on a real show. Otherwise, just release the list of winners with their recorded speeches.
26
You left out Mrs Maisel's Alex Borstein, who gave a tribute to her grandmother for stepping out of line at a concentration camp to save her life, and calling on women to step out of line. Touching memorable story.
53
The couture alone speaks for the weirdness of TV at the moment. Most of the actors and actresses (Naomi Watts is a lovely exception) look as if they've been abducted by aliens and forced to wear some tribal garb against their will-truly horrible.
19
Would've been better without the long interruptions by ads.
5
The Emmys broadcast should be a celebration of artistry. Instead of taking the time to show clips of the nominated actors' performances, clips that help us to appreciate genuine talent, we're asked to sit through one tedious, witless presentation after another.
24
It was less than spectacular and extremely telling when the best examples of of the witless and talentless and boring receive the best and most spontaneous laugh of the evening through no fault of their own, writers included.
10
The Kardashians?
1
Is it the light or the photographers? The red carpet slide show was the most unflattering bunch of photos as if specially selected on that criterion..
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