f13.net

If you haven't watched the first season of this show, you really should. It's excellent. First season is based on a novel by Dan Simmons about English explorers trying to find the Northwest Passage through the Arctic in 1845. It's well-written, incredibly well acted by guys like Jared Harris and Ciarán Hinds with an impressive set of effects. While it is a horror/supernatural story, the supernatural elements are very subtle for most of the season. The monster is very much a background terror while there's all sorts of more important shit in the foreground that the main characters must try to survive. It's excellent television.

The second season, subtitled Infamy is... not. I'm six episodes in and struggling to maintain any desire to watch the rest. It's another historical horror story, this time based around a Japanese internment camp in California during World War II. Maybe it's because the main character is a bit of a douche. Maybe it's because one of the writers used to write for True Blood. The season just doesn't feel nearly as good. It feels like it was written as part "terrible thing that white people do to ethnic minorities like internment camps 101" and "superficial Japanese-style horror film paint by numbers" all mushed together. I know that sounds like it trivializes the internment camp aspect, but that's kind of the impression it leaves me with. Maybe it will improve in the next few episodes and while there have been decent parts, it's been a huge letdown from the first season.

I second the recommendation of the first season If you liked that I recommend the book it's based on of the same title.

I was waved away from the second season and that makes me sad. I'm hoping that, like True Detective it'll rally for a third.

I dunno. I really liked the first season while watching it, but after the fact it didn't digest well. I actually thought the supernatural aspect was overdone and cliche (white man messes with natives and gets cursed) and also the characters (gay Irish dude becomes over the top bad guy).

The cinematography was brilliant though, and I've always loved arctic imagery. And it is a helluva mystery exactly what went wrong up there.

I'll spoiler plot elements here.

As much as the "white man messes with natives and gets cursed" trope is cliche, it feels like the second season is so much worse in that aspect. It really feels like someone saw The Ring and decided they wanted to do something with that, but didn't really try to push it past the surface level stuff.

The second season pays off. If for nothing else, for the Hiroshima scene.

That said, as descendants of internees, it hit me and the missus very differently than it will probably hit most of you.

Somewhat related, I want to pay AMC to watch their shows but they make it really hard. Our DVR botched a Terror episode and we spent nearly an hour trying to find someplace to stream it.

I do like the 2nd season.

Doesn't AMC have an AMC Premiere ($5/month) service? Or even better, get a Shudder subscription?

They do, but:
1. I already pay for AMC via cable sub
2. Terror wasn't in the list of shows, but maybe I just didn't see it.

We just paid Amazon for the one episode we lost.