Jamie Lee Curtis does heavy lifting in every scene she's in.

Cousin Richie: could he decide if he wants to have a beard or not. This facial hair style drives me fucking nuts.

I just started season 4, but so far it's kind of a relief. They've managed to get me to care enough about these emotionally dysfunctional people (turns out toxic masculinity doesn't always come in the ultra-aggressive flavor) that I get actual satisfaction out of watching these characters get their shit together.

It occurs to me watching yet another scene that's really just a restaurant meeting, or a discussion about how clean someone's station is, that they have pulled us along this far by stacking an incredible ensemble of actors. Richie, Syd, Marcus, Tina, Ibrahim, all absolutely magnetic. As much as we get skeptical of the Leo's and Chalamet's of this world, Jeremy Allen White can lean on the stainless steel counter in his apron looking pensive and hold the camera. Not sure if he's going to sell me on the Springsteen movie though.

I found the Season 5 announcement questionable... they can only drag me through the stress fest so many times. It would be good to get this business sorted and wrap the series in 4 seasons.

Heath wrote: Thu Jul 03, 2025 8:05 am As a guy who spent the better part of a decade in kitchens of varying degrees of fancy, I can't stand this show. Maybe I'm too close.

There are guys as fucked up and handsome as the main guy out there, though.

Yep, in a pre London life at university and after all my working life was spend in varying degrees of fancy. From hi end vegetarian to full on French silver service. I too was very triggered by the frenetic kitchen scenes.

Unfortunately after the Feast of the Seven Fishes the bloat started. I get the feeling it blew up unexpectedly and they’ve been playing catch up.

I’ll watch four. Fingers crossed there’s not a whole episode about that guy that washes the dishes

penningtron wrote: Tue Jul 01, 2025 11:47 am

hyljetronic wrote: Sat Jun 28, 2025 2:27 pm New season features Shellac over credits in one episode.

While probably not intentional, they used it after a scene where someone has a heart attack..

I think that was on purpose. Which I admire.

Haven't watched this whole season yet. It's, again, pretty good. I think that's my review--"pretty good."

The girlfriend is better written. This is weird, but i like that her eyebrows in the party scene are imperfect, as is much of the makeup on other characters and stuff. It's a nice touch, and it goes along with the whole thing being a love letter to Chicago, which isn't the kind of place where people fret the details of their appearance as much as a lotta places. They look like real people.

The whole "wow this family is crazy" thing gets a little old. It's not that crazy. They just yell a lot. I have to be in the mood to have yelling going on to watch it.

I just reupped for a month to watch season 4 of this show.

The first episode of which is presented to me by ... Taco Bell.

Just give the whole show to Ayo as a lead and put more emphasis on the cast; NOTHING interesting about Carmy who has become possible the least "resonant" lead in a supposedly good drama show I've seen in quite some time...

There's some interesting things going on. Ultimately, the main characters are annoying. The writing is more like a sophomore exercise on script writing. Some of the directing is interesting, but more in the film-school level of interesting. The first season is a bunch of generic shots of Chicago, taken by someone who had been to Chicago on vacation a few times and never left the loop. The acting has a lot of default to anger in it. It all culminates to a show that is as pretentious as the restaurant is in the show. It's even self-fellatiating at times. Season 4 ended in the most infuriating way. I only continued watching it because my wife likes it so much (even though we agree that the last EP of season 4 was total shit).

Getting through four. It’s a fine watch, Shellac finally made it in. The Sid crying in the hospital was phenomenal acting.

I get the feeling there’s a lot of improv going on especially around the Faks and some of the “witty banter” scenes. As is often the case, the cast having fun on set doesn’t always translate into a good watch for the audience.

Also… four episodes in a row without much cooking or plot progression…

Still enjoying but the short episodes help.

Okay the final episode made me want to fast forward through the whole thing.

I love and hate this show.