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TV Series Thread

Started by PickelledEggs, August 26, 2014, 06:28:36 PM

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Blackleaf

Caught up with Falcon and Winter Solder today. My interest in the series was waning a bit after the last two episodes, but it won me over again with episodes 4 and 5. I don't know where they're going, but I'm okay with that, because the execution and the way they handle certain subject matters has me engaged. Now for some slightly spoilery stuff:

[spoiler]The new Captain America is obviously not supposed to be a guy we root for. He's supposed to be annoying, but goddamn. He really goes full Karen mode in these two episodes. Jesus Christ. Wonder what he's going to do with that thing he picked up... Seems like he's obviously not going to continue under the façade of a hero any more, but I have no idea what he's going to do next. Is he going to try to kill the main two? Is he going to try to complete the mission anyway, despite being dishonorably discharged? Who knows?[/spoiler]
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

GSOgymrat

Quote from: SGOS on April 18, 2021, 05:52:58 PM
I started watching Star Trek:  The Next Generation, which I have not watched in years and years, so I remember very little.  I just finished Season 1 Episode 11:  "The Big Goodbye", which deserves the an award of something or other for the best something or other of a Star Trek Episode. 

"Jean Luc Picard stars as Dixon Hill, a fictional Private Detective in 1941" now playing at the Holodeck Theater in Downtown..(somewhere near a harbor, of course).  It's charming fun.  I was on the edge of my seat laughing while I was wondering what diabolical fate was awaiting Dixon and his crew. Dr. Crusher gets roped into playing the dame because every private eye in 1941 needs a dame, but you know, the classy kind of dame, not some cheap floozy, and she seems to be throwing herself into the part.

Coincidentally, I too have been rewatching Star Trek: TNG. I am in the middle of season 6. The holodeck safety protocols seem to fail with alarming frequency.

Hydra009

IIRC, the Picard as a detective holodeck episode inspired a slew of holodeck episodes of decent to questionable quality, including the infamous one where Crusher gets it on with a ghost.  The lesson: don't chase that previous high over a cliff.

SGOS

Quote from: GSOgymrat on April 18, 2021, 08:46:38 PM
Coincidentally, I too have been rewatching Star Trek: TNG. I am in the middle of season 6. The holodeck safety protocols seem to fail with alarming frequency.
I think it's two episodes past the one I wrote about, when the holodeck gets hacked by these little space people that think in binary codes, and create this sexy siren in the holodeck to detain Picard and Riker, while they steal the enterprise.  Yeah, they probably could have built a better holodeck with a Norton Security System.

Hydra009

#1159
Quote from: Blackleaf on April 18, 2021, 08:35:19 PM
Caught up with Falcon and Winter Solder today. My interest in the series was waning a bit after the last two episodes, but it won me over again with episodes 4 and 5. I don't know where they're going, but I'm okay with that, because the execution and the way they handle certain subject matters has me engaged.
I was kinda iffy on the show in episode 1, and episode 2 really rubbed me the wrong way with some moronic tactical blunders.  But I fell in love with this show in episode 3.  I will never look at a shipping crate the same way, lol.

[spoiler]Yes, John Walker fully intends to complete his mission anyway.  He has zero chance of success.  When the whole world tells you that you're fired and to sit this one out, you say, "No, you move!".  True heroism right there.  :P

The reaction to Walker is fascinating.  On one hand, his ...err...party foul, let's call it and subsequent irrational aggression was obviously super duper wrong.  But on the other, this dude was hated by fans from literally the first moment they laid eyes on him.  That's not fair.  And then on the other extreme end, you have some fans trying to unironically defend summary execution, an already fairly repugnant position made even more repugnant by its similarity to current events in the real world.  And the actor gets death threats for things his fictional character did because of course he does.  What an emotional firestorm!

I will say that I don't exactly feel bad for the international terrorist cell losing some members, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do these things.  And while Walker definitely has some extenuating circumstances to factor in, and I really feel for him there, he definitely crossed a line.

I gotta give props to the writers for making a very realistically flawed character and putting him in an almost impossible situation of trying to live up a guy who was practically a saint.[/spoiler]

Blackleaf

It's moronic that fans harrass the actor of John Walker. You're not supposed to like his character! That's the point! If you hate his character, that means the actor did his job well!
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

SGOS

Continuing to watch TNG.  I was so enamored with the original series and used to the old cast, that TNG just seemed like more of the same with a different cast, but I've been watching some of the old original series while I'm doing TNG.  How did I miss this?  How many times better is TNG than the original?  I simply can't do the math. TNG is leaps and bounds ahead of the original so far, except in my opinion about the way they seem to go over board with their romantic crap.  It's kind of lavish kiddie porn that really goes nowhere and seems like it was written by the writers of Harlequin Romance Novels with censors, which I have never actually read but the way I imagine them to be.

But I don't want to tarnish the original series, as outdated as it might be.  Some of the stories are quite entertaining and may have looked better with better sets, and of course there was Mr. Spock, whose acting and character may never be bested.  But the original Star Trek, probably did more to make science fiction into the respectable genre it is today.  Back then it was "before it's time."  Just go back 10 years before that and take a look at some of the older science fiction.  There was some really bad stuff mixed with some passable, but the bad was horrible.

When I started going movies at the age of 9 or 10, there were two theaters within 3 blocks of my house. So I saw a lot of Saturday afternoon movies with my friends that were double features, two films for 25 cents, and I thought the stuff was pretty good, but back when you could find almost any film ever made when Netflix was sending the stuff by mail, I looked up some of the old sci-fi  films of the 50s that I remembered liking.  Netflix had most of them too.  Now just 10 or 15 years before Star Trek, we are talking utter crap for most of it.  And I was paying a quarter to watch this stuff?  Yeah, the original Star Trek, gets points for being ahead of it's time, and it deserves all the hype and Trekkie fans that followed it.  But it doesn't compare to TNG much at all.

Blackleaf

Finished season 5 of Clone Wars. Jesus. There's so much going on in the later half of the season. Characters die, Darth Maul executes a brilliant plan to take political power, there's a badass battle between Sith rivals, and there's a murder mystery with a conclusion I didn't see coming. I feel like this is what they were building up to all this time, and the rest was just filler until they got to the good stuff.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Hydra009

I read a good headcanon for Falcon and the Winter Soldier:

[spoiler]Bucky is noticeably less powerful in the TV series than in the Winter Soldier movie.  Why?

In the TV show, he's not under external control.  And most of the time, he's full of regret and sadness.  This hampers him a lot.  In the movie, his mind is shackled and slaved to a singular purpose.  That naturally makes him far more formidable.  Plus, his assassin training is naturally geared towards landing the killing blow.  Fighting to defeat but not kill your enemy is much more difficult and he's pretty new at it, so he's not yet very good at non-lethal combat.  He could probably decapitate or fatally slam half the people he fights but intentionally holds back.[/spoiler]

drunkenshoe

I've started to watch the X-Files. I haven't seen it before. Never been into the UFO thing. It looks OK for now, but I can't tell if I like it because there are no cell phones, just cute fat computer screens...you know nostalgia or I just like it. It's just a fresh old classic to watch, so that is good. 
"science is not about building a body of known 'facts'. ıt is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good." - tp

SGOS

Quote from: drunkenshoe on April 21, 2021, 11:21:18 AM
I've started to watch the X-Files. I haven't seen it before. Never been into the UFO thing. It looks OK for now, but I can't tell if I like it because there are no cell phones, just cute fat computer screens...you know nostalgia or I just like it. It's just a fresh old classic to watch, so that is good. 
I'm still watching it but, it will take me forever, because I think it had one of those 10 year spans.  As far as I've got, maybe season 2, I can't remember if they have actually proven any UFOs, and when they do get really close, it seems like something goes haywire at the end of the episode, and they miss out on that crucial piece of hard evidence.  It also deals with supernatural stuff much of the time.  It's fun, and worth a watch.  If I had to think hard to find a complaint, it would be that too much of what they do is sneaking around in the dark and whispering.  They're always in the dark.  If it's during the day, their sneaking around in a tunnel or an abandoned building.  The producers must have saved a bundle on lighting.  OK, I exaggerated, but I had fun doing it.

Hydra009

Quote from: SGOS on April 21, 2021, 01:04:16 PM
I'm still watching it but, it will take me forever, because I think it had one of those 10 year spans.  As far as I've got, maybe season 2, I can't remember if they have actually proven any UFOs, and when they do get really close, it seems like something goes haywire at the end of the episode, and they miss out on that crucial piece of hard evidence.
Get used to that.  Mulder proving that aliens are real is like Wile E. Coyote eating the roadrunner or Invader Zim successfully taking over the Earth.  Never going to happen, because it would effectively end the series.  Don't worry about success or failure, and just enjoy the trip on the story train.  Tickets, please!

drunkenshoe

Quote from: SGOS on April 21, 2021, 01:04:16 PM
I'm still watching it but, it will take me forever, because I think it had one of those 10 year spans.  As far as I've got, maybe season 2, I can't remember if they have actually proven any UFOs, and when they do get really close, it seems like something goes haywire at the end of the episode, and they miss out on that crucial piece of hard evidence.  It also deals with supernatural stuff much of the time.  It's fun, and worth a watch.  If I had to think hard to find a complaint, it would be that too much of what they do is sneaking around in the dark and whispering.  They're always in the dark.  If it's during the day, their sneaking around in a tunnel or an abandoned building.  The producers must have saved a bundle on lighting.  OK, I exaggerated, but I had fun doing it.

LOL...Yeah, probably I'll get bored and stop soon. I thought the lack of hard evidence was actually a bit of implying that there is no hard evidence, lol.
"science is not about building a body of known 'facts'. ıt is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good." - tp

SGOS

Quote from: drunkenshoe on April 22, 2021, 06:49:11 AM
LOL...Yeah, probably I'll get bored and stop soon. I thought the lack of hard evidence was actually a bit of implying that there is no hard evidence, lol.
I don't think so. Doesn't every episode start with a caption, "SOMETHING IS OUT THERE."  Yeah, yeah, we know something is out there, just look at the night sky, but when the caption is up, they play the Alien National Anthem,   "Oooh-eee-ooooh."  This is most ominous, and obviously intentional.  We know what they mean.

trdsf

Re-watching the original Cosmos.  I needed something to make me stop hating humanity.
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan