The Glass Teat, or 'Television'

Medical Police. This is funny enough to stick with. Some very good jokes.

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For All Mankind, Apple TV+. Alternate history set in the space age with great acting, enough drama, and a very cool story. Highly recommended.

The Morning Show, also on Apple TV+. Very well done drama of, as the name suggests, a television morning show. Starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, and if you haven’t heard of it by now do you even internet? Very watchable, predictable in places, and I wish they’d given Witherspoon the ability to sell her character without having to actively sell it, if that makes sense - instead of verbalizing how your character flaw is that you can’t get out of your own way and self destruct, show me. Minor quibble, recommended nonetheless.

See, also on Apple TV+, with Jason Mamoa. First episode was… interesting. Didn’t grab me the way I initially thought it would, but didn’t turn me off either. Will definitely watch the next episode, at least.

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Just got Disney+. It may only last a month, but we started The Mandalorian (satisfactory so far), and got the kids started on Gummi Bears. It’s delightful to me that this is on the service, and has been well-received by both kids. The PS4 app needs some quality-of-life upgrades, though. It would be helpful if, in the app, it was possible to find a chronology of the MCU. Similarly, it’s very difficult to tell the order of the episodes of Marvel Rising; they’re largely listed separately under names, not numbers. Scrubbing is absurd; about two seconds after you start fast-forwarding, your location and time stamp disappears. That would be bad if it were showing key frames from time to time, but they don’t, so it’s egregious. You’re fast forwarding completely blind if you go more that about two minutes, which is even worse because, if you get to the beginning of the credits, it starts another movie. What it ought to do for Marvel movies is skip you to the mid-credits/end-credits scenes, or at least offer that option. I find it kind of astounding that they designed the app with such little regard for the content it would be delivering.

This follows Endeavor, Season 4. Tragic mustache (complaints about which are making me think my wife has a bit of a crush) and rather less opera, but probably my favorite season.

Also watched The Witcher recently, which has me thinking that messing with time can actually be a nice way to present a situation from multiple perspectives, because you can give the audience the experience of both not having context and later gaining it. Which basically means I haven’t watched Memento recently enough.

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We are only up to episode 3, and while I was on the fence for the first episode of The Morning Show, I am all in after eps. 2 and 3. We will watch 4 and possibly 5 tonight.

We only made it through episode 2 of The Witcher and could not go on. I heard that it picks up around episode 7, but that is just way too late in a series these days for me to wait for you to get rolling. Too much to watch.

We just finished The Umbrella Academy and I LOVED it.

Just before that we did Daredevil season 3 and I thought it was very solid.

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I thought The Witcher was pretty lame.

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We’re up on episode 6 and I think Cavill is doing a fabulous job with it. He and the bard make it watchable through some otherwise laughable dialogue.

For us, it’s just kind of fun and enjoyable, though I wouldn’t call it “great” necessarily.

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Yes, Cavill is great, Dandelion is needed comic relief, but the world-building is needlessly vague, pacing is off, and some of the effects were often cheesy. The show can certainly be redeemed, but it also isn’t the replacement for Game of Thrones that it was hyped to be.

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Umbrella Academy was good stuff. Looking forward to seeing if season 2 can maintain.

Recently finished Chuck with my wife, we tried a couple of other shows with poor results and currently have landed on Malcolm in the Middle while we try to find our next big binge. It’s hard because she doesn’t like TV-MA stuff, which is really like most of what there is these days. Oh, and we breezed through The Mandalorian, which is my favorite Star Wars anything in fifteen years. My wife loves it too, despite never really caring for any of the movies outside of Solo.

Similar tastes at the House of Pow, so we’ve been really enjoying The Good Place lately and finally watching Parks and Rec. If you never saw 30 Rock, I can also recommend that. It is indeed challenging to find interesting comedy these days that isn’t MA.

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We discovered Brooklyn 99 on Hulu and really enjoyed it after warming up to the type of comedy.

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Parks and Rec is very solid. Make sure you give it through the second season; the first one is probably the worst outside of season 7.

We might try 30 Rock; I remember it being a little grating, though. Was more partial to Earl back in the day.

Brooklyn 99 just didn’t click with Michele. It often gets suggested because it is so similar.

We like comedies but also dramas if they have an ongoing narrative; Agents of Shield and Better Call Saul are two of our favorites.

The timelines being so off was annoying, but I understand what the Exec Producer said about how, if they did the timelines in a linear fashion, many of the characters wouldn’t have even been introduced until very late in the season.

And yeah, the effects were off too at some points.

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Dracula, the new BBC one. Well, that was certainly a thing, with some great moments of horror, but overall, a miss. Claes Fang (sorry) is a quality Dracula, but there’s too much added here that Moffat appears to have pulled wholesale from his arse. I do wonder what exactly you have to be thinking, to be making something good and then apparently shit on it partway through. If you can’t better the source material, or previous adaptations, don’t bloody do it.

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Almost everybody I’ve heard talk about it says that it’s great until it all crashes horribly in the final episode.

Would you agree with that?

Yes. The end of the second episode is a terrible set up for a worse follow up. The third episode gets just about everything it does wrong.

Another non-MA comedy that my wife and I enjoyed in the past was Psych, which streams on Amazon. We also enjoyed Eureka.

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The fact I have managed to get the kids randomly singing the Gummi Bears theme means Disney+ is worth every penny for me. My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed The Mandalorian. Although she called me a nerd when I was able to explain the dark saber at the season finale because I watched Rebels with the kids.

Brooklyn 99 is probably my favorite comedy on TV right now.

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My wife and I were both huge Psych-Os independent of each other before we got married. It was probably the only show we had in common at the time. Shame they delayed the movie, even if the first one was only good rather than great. We tried Eureka a couple of months ago but it just felt a bit too cheesy. Same reason we bounced off SG-1.

The Mandalorian was great. My favorite Star Wars anything in fifteen years. And the only SW media other than Solo that appealed to my wife; she already got a Baby Yoda bumper sticker (it says On Board a Child Is) and I ended up with a I Have Spoken shirt for Christmas.

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Finally got around to The Mandalorian myself. The first scene of the final episode is my favorite scene in Star Wars.

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Yes! I reminded me a lot of something you would see in a Star Wars spoof, like from Family Guy or Phineas & Ferb. But it also was not out of place.

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