The Glass Teat, or 'Television'

Agreed on both counts. But Stargate Universe is much, much better. Give that a try. Better acting, better writing, and a lot of really interesting concepts/characters.

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That single scene did more to draw me into the world of Star Wars than the last eight movies combined.

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I was gifted Disney+ for Christmas (no kids in the house, for families with kids I figured it was a no-brainer but I had thought that for me I’d do a free trial to binge The Mandalorian and also evaluate the service).

I agree The Mandalorian was amazing, I suspected Jon Favreau would once again deliver, and I was squarely in his target audience for a great show. :slightly_smiling_face:

A friend had also recommended The Imagineering Story documentary series on Disney+ to me, as well. I was unaware that it was done by Leslie Iwerks until I saw her name on the credits; years ago I thoroughly enjoyed her documentary on her grandfather, Ub Iwerks, and she once again hit a home run … perhaps being an engineer helped put me solidly in her target audience, as well, but I could not stop watching. I loved the six one-hour episodes and recommend others who think they might be interested to give it a try. :sunglasses:

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So I guess you’ve never seen Troops? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HO70-Rk3jE
That scene heavily reminded me of the fan spoof.

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You. Fairly entertaining, despite the lead being far too good looking, and people’s lives being made up out of convenient nonsense in order to give them the smoothest life possible. I enjoyed it for the way it explored stalking, but there’s really not a lot more to it other than a creep fucking up over and over again like a complete idiot, and it’s not even due to his sick behaviour half the time. It would be a bit better to see him attempt to construct a relationship from obsession and have it fail miserably, rather than the plot interceding.

The bit with the Lars’s always bugged me; seemed to deviate from the wonderful life-outside-the-movies element. I expect I’ll feel similarly once I get around to watching Rise of Skywalker. But, still, Troops was great.

I gave up on You for much the same reason I gave up on Scandal (the Shonda Rhimes series that isn’t Grey’s Anatomy). The viewpoint. characters are not flawed-but-interesting rogues who might happen to do a little light murder but hey, we’re on their side. No, they’re just assholes and criminals, in a bad way. (Cf Breaking Bad for doing repellent but understandable criminal in a good way, where by the end Walter White is meant to be repellent, terminal moment of redemption aside.)

Hmmm,

I just recently started Scandal and some plots are tiresome (that might be just a me thing since I universally hate romance plots in American TV productions because they are ALWAYS™ so corny, stupidly presented or only to jumpstart the naughty fanservice scenes and shipping discussions) I am enjoying myself the ~66% of the show the Schmaltz™ isn’t on.

I also liked the Good Wife and the Good Fight a lot despite the occasional Schmaltz™ but that is because I am a sucker for legal/courtroom drama.

Sooo…since I am halfway trough Scandal season 2…is it getting worse in your opinion?

Messiah, on Netflix.

Despite the trashing it got by critics and the religious right, I really enjoyed this one. Granted, some of the criticism is not misplaced - there are some plot lines that don’t make sense, and some acting could be better or characters better fleshed out. Show me a show that someone hasn’t critiqued for those as well, though…

All in all, I enjoyed the ten episodes. The overarching question of is he / isn’t he, combined with some good intrigue and sprinkled with a dash of pre-apocalyptic salt made this a good watch imho.

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Just finished The Morning Show on Apple TV+ and really thought it was excellent. I had not expected much at all, and ended up feeling it was very powerful overall.

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I actually quite liked season 1 - a team of morally dubious but highly competent heroes in a compromised world. Then it progressively vanishes up its own posterior with twists and reveals. I stuck with it up to mid season 5 (I think) and then our heroine killed a paralysed man by beating him to death with a chair and we were supposed to empathise? cheer? This was after actual mass murder and torture has been shrugged off as one of those things you have to do, and not really that bad on the whole. I would like to think this is Shonda Rhimes having a very black view of what passes for American democracy, but unfortunately it very much does not come across like that.

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Complete gold.

Speaking of which, Avenue 5. A passenger liner spaceship full of tourists has an unfortunate accident, and all Hell breaks loose. An incompetent crew has to cope with the passengers and the idiot billionaire owner making everything worse. Just excellent.

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Def on my list of shows to watch. Could not get into Medical Police though; think I laughed twice in the 8 episodes to which I subjected myself

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Fair enough. I think I was laughing more because I couldn’t believe the stupidity on display. But I laughed.

I thought it was an excellent example of them presenting clear examples of behaviour that are accepted in genre works, but are clearly ridiculous. Didn’t enjoy much of the first episode, but after that it really hit a groove for me, and from the third episode onwards (“Oh hello, I work with you also.”) , I was sold. It is skilled mockery.

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I had the opposite reaction, which was very strange. I watched five or ten minutes of the first episode, and laughed kind of a lot, but didn’t enjoy it? I wouldn’t have thought that would be possible. It seemed like an impressively daring show, but struck me much the way that discomfort comedy (like The 40-Year-Old Virgin) does—I just dislike the experience it gives me.

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Chernobyl. Fucking good shit man. Watching the creaking Soviet state go into action against a disaster like this, and the human cost it entails even at best, is not something I can look away from.

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I watched White Dragon on Amazon Prime this week. For those who enjoyed John Simm in the earlier, excellent, BBC series State of Play, he’s back in another British (this one is from ITV, which I gather is an independent alternative to BBC for the Brits) eight episode series with White Dragon.

While the plot is not quite up to the excellence of State of Play (which was so good that Hollywood made a two-hour movie of it from the six BBC episodes, with Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck), it does have the great benefit of taking place in Hong Kong, which I really enjoyed. As State of Play benefitted from the great Bill Nighy, White Dragon benefits from the excellent Anthony Wong also being a principle star.

In related news, we can now finally turn off auto-play while browsing Netflix! I was one of those who found auto-play so incredibly distracting that I’d have to mute the volume on the TV so that I could browse the catalog of shows in peace. It took them years to give us the option to disable it, but now we can by using a web browser to connect to our account: Account > Manage Profiles, select the profile you want to manage, and on the next page, uncheck “Autoplay previews while browsing on all devices" and hit “Save.”

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Don’t you love when the solution to a problem that shouldn’t even exist is overly-complicated? I mean, it’s not hard to log in online, but there should have be an on/off toggle in the app settings from day 1.

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