Looks good so far

Severely lacking Vince Vaughn

I thought the VV season sucked?

It was inferior to the first season, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as people said.

Season 2 was REALLY bad.

Terrible acting, bad dialogue, a stupid story and 752 aerial shots of Southern California freeways.

Season 1 10/10
Season 2 7/10

Fixed

yeah season 2 was really bad

My wife and I would like to thank you for having us over to your dinner party.

I thought those 2 hours were really good, although in retrospect doing a 2-episode premiere was a slog I wish they hadn't attempted. I am glad the series returned to a lot of the quiet, contemplative moments of the first season instead of the frenetic pace and crowded story of the 2nd, but asking us to do that for 2 hours was a lot. I had to split it up between 3 viewing sessions.

I think Ali is great--really not familiar with his work, have wanted to watch Moonlight, but have never gotten around to it. Dorff has also been good. Ejogo's character has some legs, too. Not many other characters stood out, which is fine--I enjoyed how Season 1 had like 3 deep characters at the center and then fanned out to the interesting people they met week-to-week, and this seems to be taking a similar approach. Some other thoughts, which I haven't dug too deeply into (I also haven't read/listened to any recaps yet):

--Despite the fact that a number of series have used post-Vietnam manhood as a backdrop before (I think Season 2 of Fargo has quite a bit of this, as did a number of early-season X-Files episodes), I think there is still some interesting stuff to pull out. Hayes being in recon means he's a loner among loners; some of the other characters we meet get to share their war stories and get brief moments of reprieve when they realize others had it just like them, but his time over there was spent alone, so there's no release valve. There's a Tim O'Brien story that goes into what happened on listening posts, and it reminded me a lot of that.

--I am fine with the structure being eerily similar to Season 1 (i.e., someone sorting through his memories of what happened years before) and sort of wish Season 2 had something like this going on as well. The added wrinkle of Hayes being an unreliable narrator inside of his own head helps.

--That being said, I wish they weren't dropping so many hints about what's going to be revealed as things go along. I wish we didn't know that the missing girl and her dad had something happen in 1990.

I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting, but I do want to highlight that I am looking forward to the next few episodes and to seeing how the season unfolds as a whole.

fuck , impressive start. I loved it. Ali was amazing...he really brought a something into that guy in the three stages of his life. Im betting he will be awesome in this..that face at the end of chapter 2 was so fucking good.

I loved it. Kinda sorry Salunier is not going to return but Daniel Sackheim will do it next week and he has an impressive resumé too.

Episode one was amazing. Ali was flawless.

Ok so I listened to one podcast on the way home and the 3 Yellow King / Carcosa references I missed in Episode 1 almost have me convinced this is a shared universe with Season 1.

I missed those as well, but I believe it was confirmed in the past that it's the same world between all seasons.

which podcast?

Please, lets not start the new ¨shared universe thing¨. Lets say its the same city.

My wife and I would like to thank you for having us over to your dinner party.

did you wrote season 3?

sarcasm, my good wease