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Comment by onlyrealcuzzo | Hacker News Reader

Funny - I find Netflix content keeps getting better. Dark, Ozark, Unorthodox, Russian Doll, Sense8, Love Sex & Robots, The OA.

Not as good as HBO - but honestly it seems close. If anything - HBO's content seems to be on the decline more than Netflix. It's still top notch, but it used to be outstanding.

Netflix is really mastering the wide appeal & good enough content: 13 Reasons Why, Elite, Bridgerton, Bird Box, etc...

It seems like the shows everyone is talking about are always either HBO or Netflix.

Disney is obviously dominating in popularity at the box office with Marvel.

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I wish more people would watch Dark. Horrendously underrated.

Dark was infuriating to watch. Visually stunning, great characters and performances, but ultimately an intentionally obfuscated and meandering story that only ends up disappointing you.

It's kind of similar to Westworld season 1 or Lost -- there's this style of storytelling where you drop a bunch of interesting clues to lead you towards possible theories about whats really going on, and then all of those threads are dropped on the floor as if they never mattered. I find it abusive and disrespectful to the viewer.

I think the first 2 seasons of world building was great in Dark, but unfortunately very few people are able to close such complex series well.

The notable exceptions being Vince gilligan for BB and hopefully BCS, and the Americans team.

Unfortunately the dub for this one just wasn’t good enough to keep my attention. It constantly failed to match the expected tone of the scene to the degree that it pulled me out of the story and I shelved it. I, like a majority of Netflix subscribers, don’t enjoy movies with subtitles as it also destroys the immersion to be constantly reading. No doubt this is at least one of the primary drivers for its low penetration into the English zeitgeist.

Feels like (IME) there's a rather high incidence of discontent over decisions "from above" among the shows listed: The OA being cancelled, 13 Reasons having three seasons too many, speculation(?) that Dark's wonky pacing at the end was due to being approved for too limiting a number of episodes...

Game of Thrones had a horrible final season. The first six seasons were maybe the best in all of television.

It's rare for a TV series to be excellent and stay excellent it's entire life.

This doesn't really seem unique to Netflix.

There's a ton of movies, shows, books - where the first installment is outstanding and the rest are trash.

My favorite example as a kid was Maze Runner. The first book has terrible prose - but is actually pretty well paced and a good story. The second two are utter garbage (fun fact: the editor quit after the first book AND the publisher dropped the author when the first one was the next best selling sci Fi / fantasy since Harry Potter... That's how bad the sequels were).

This happens more times than not.

(Can't edit) Ah, how did I forget, in this context, about the suicide being censored out of the first season of 13 Reasons Why, years after its release?[1]

That was along with the addition of 1) a disclaimer in the form of the actors talking directly to the viewer before the first episode and 2) an intertitle after every episode reminding of it, again with narration from the actors. 3) Trigger warnings before episodes were also added, but to no surprise at this point. What I certainly haven't seen before is such mutilation of a work as accompanying it with material so expressly immersion-breaking!

A song in the soundtrack was also replaced for reasons unknown, but I suppose that falls more into the general topic of silent alterations to published media that online consumption facilitates, an entire discussion to be had on its own.

[1] https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=378736

Yeah, I find Netflix content to be fairly high quality. I often have to watch a couple of pilots before I find something that hooks me, but I always find something. And I'll recommend Maniac to anyone who will listen...

The OA is amazing... to bad they cancelled it!

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