What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Castle Rock... what a rollercoaster of expectations, multiple reversals, occasional flashes of awkward writing and a twist that is hard to for me to discern as either brilliant, cliché, or just a setup for another carpet to get pulled out from under my feet. They kinda nail King with many of these aspects, come to think of it.

It really whiplashes, though, between King homages as American Horror Story style vignettes, sometimes blending them skillfully like the entire episode titled The Queen, or lurching forward with almost motion sickness-inducing fits & starts like tonight’s episode.

The one week wait for each episode has been difficult.

Also... are like everyone’s pupils getting insanely dilated in this show or am I just seeing things?

Ivanhoe is a six part mini series from way back in 1997 streaming on Amazon Prime.

Two episodes in and I'm really digging this. Ivanhoe, if you don't know, is a knight unjustly dishonored on his way home from the 3rd Crusade. He must fight to restore his name and defend the kingdom from the evil King John ala Robin Hood.

Production quality is pretty good making medieval England seem a bit dirty as it should be. They might have had a limited budget but they used the money wisely. The joust in the second episode as pretty cool with a couple of the obligatory "knight charging right at you" shots but they managed to make the onrushing evil Templar seem very intimidating.

Couple familiar actors in this. Ciaran Hinds, who played Caesar in HBO's Rome, is the vile Brian De Bois Guilbert. I just love this actor. He plays arrogance and menace so well.

James Cosmo also is kicking butt as Ivanhoe's father. You'll know him from Braveheart where he played the indestructible Campbell and got to deliver the great line when he was having an arrow pulled out of him: "That'll wake you up in the morning!"

It's a fun and well done (so far) show.

Finished Disenchanted. I liked it. Started slow but ended up with good characters, a decent plot, and some jokes along the way. If I were to rate the Groening oeuvre, from best to worst:

Simpsons (s2-s8)
Futurama (s1-s5)
Life is Hell
Disenchanted
Futurama (Netflix episodes)
Simpsons (Tracy Ulman- s1)
Simpsons (s9-present)

I recently finished the final season of Face/Off and I'm going to miss that show. I can't stand 99% of reality shows but I always enjoyed F/O because it focused on their work and the challenges instead of making us sit through scenes of the contestants socializing and/or fighting.

My wife and I also watched season 2 of GLOW. She saw Season 1 several months ago but I never got around to watching it until recently. I figured it going to be a light, wacky comedy but I was pleasantly surprised at how nearly every character is multi-dimensional and not just a "type". Despite essentially playing himself, Marc Maron is really good in it, as are the two lead actresses. I grew up watching wrestling in the 80's and 90's so I geek out whenever they drop some jargon, and I've already bored my understanding wife several times with explorations of things they tend to only hint at in the show (shoots, worked shoots, working stiff, etc.). GLOW got renewed right around when we caught up so we're both stoked for Season 3.

I've succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome and been sucked into watching The Great British Baking Show due to my wife binge-watching it on Netflix. This show is so much better than those ridiculous "decorate a cake with fondant Disney characters" cake decorating competition shows where they don't even taste anything. As much as I like seeing the seemingly endless variety of cakes and pastries that apparently exist, my favorite bits of the show are when Paul dissects their food to critique it. We're not just checking for done-ness, no, we're also checking texture, the amounts and uniformity of filling(s), and even how the knife passes through when it cuts. Apparently Mary's not in Season 5 so Paul will have a different partner and the two hosts look different. Seeing as how I'm not a big fan of either of the two previous hosts, I can't say that I really care.

I don't have much to say about Detectorists other than to say that you should watch it if you haven't already. It's one of my favorite shows now - we're caught up through the series 2 Christmas special - and it kind of reminds me of a scripted version of one of Christopher Guest's better movies, but with affection and understanding of the main characters rather than mockery.

I wasn't in the mood for Star Trek TOS, TNG or Voyager so I decided to try Star Trek: The Animated Series. It's not that bad and I like how they condense a typical Trek plot down into a 30 min. episode instead of making me endure some interminable Neelix subplot. The show still focuses a surprising amount on exploration and investigation which becomes hilarious when a bunch of bombastic music is playing over Spock just reading results off a tricorder. The technobabble also hasn't reached the heights they'd achieve by Voyager, so most of the jargon is just variations on different kinds of made up magnetism and magnetic effects. So far I've seen an episode where Spock has to travel back in time to undo a previous time travel trip where he accidentally erased himself from existence and created a parallel universe where only Kirk remembers him, as well as an episode that Voyager copied, intentionally or not, almost exactly. It's a nice diversion and it's worth it if only to hear the original actors all reprising their roles instead of being voiced by mediocre soundalikes.

I loved the animated Star Trek series when I was a kid, and finally had a chance to binge re-watch it a couple of years ago. It was not as good as I remembered, but it was really nice to hear the voices of the bridge crew from TOS again. There were a couple of outstanding episodes. One focused on Spock's childhood, and the other ("The Slaver Weapon") had a Larry Niven script based directly on one of his Known Space short stories.

Shellhead wrote: One focused on Spock's childhood, and the other ("The Slaver Weapon") had a Larry Niven script based directly on one of his Known Space short stories.

That was the time travel one I mentioned and I liked it a lot. It handled his backstory really well and Spock's conversations with his parents - as a distant "cousin" - about his younger self were really well done with more emotional impact than I was expecting.

Another thing I like about the show, and TOS in general, is how the crew of the Enterprise is always encountering these outlandish lifeforms that are incorporeal and have godlike powers and they're all nonplussed to the extreme: "Well, I'm off to talk to the being who's a rotating ball of energy so it will allow us to do some time travel sight-seeing."

Catching up on season 3 of The Magicians. Love.this.show. Wish Jamey Stegmaier would have persisted in trying to get this license. But I'm sure he would have based it in the books and not the show.

New Netflix show, The Innocents. I anticipated it being another teen drama, but there seems to be more to it. My wife and I have only watched a couple episodes, but I would recommend it.

the_jake_1973 wrote: New Netflix show, The Innocents. I anticipated it being another teen drama, but there seems to be more to it. My wife and I have only watched a couple episodes, but I would recommend it.

Saw the first ep, looks interesting.

Also started CrazyHead, which has potential too. Also on Netflix.

SebastianBludd wrote: I wasn't in the mood for Star Trek TOS, TNG or Voyager so I decided to try Star Trek: The Animated Series.

I LOVED these as a kid. Because it was animated, showing the spaceships in action was not an expensive task, so we get to see much more in terms of spaceship battle scenes and weird alien vessels. Yes they are inconsistent, reaching incredible highs and deplorable lows. Much like TOS. I feel these are much better than they get credit for.

I too loved these as a kid. I even remember the coloring book I had with drawings from the Animated Series.

The problem I find is that the pacing is often off. They have some great ideas but they try to cram an hour show into a half hour so what you have is 20 minutes of setup and 4 minutes of resolution without anything really in the middle.

SebastianBludd wrote:

Another thing I like about the show, and TOS in general, is how the crew of the Enterprise is always encountering these outlandish lifeforms that are incorporeal and have godlike powers and they're all nonplussed to the extreme: "Well, I'm off to talk to the being who's a rotating ball of energy so it will allow us to do some time travel sight-seeing."

I seem to remember a remark from Harlan Ellison (I think) about Gene Roddenberry. That Roddenberry only had one SF idea, and it was that the Enterprise meets God, and he's crazy, a child, or both. Which explains quite a few episodes. Stll love TOS though.

RobertB wrote: SebastianBludd wrote:

Another thing I like about the show, and TOS in general, is how the crew of the Enterprise is always encountering these outlandish lifeforms that are incorporeal and have godlike powers and they're all nonplussed to the extreme: "Well, I'm off to talk to the being who's a rotating ball of energy so it will allow us to do some time travel sight-seeing."

I seem to remember a remark from Harlan Ellison (I think) about Gene Roddenberry. That Roddenberry only had one SF idea, and it was that the Enterprise meets God, and he's crazy, a child, or both. Which explains quite a few episodes. Stll love TOS though.

Roddenberry is much like Lucas in that people have given him personally way too much credit for what evolved out of their original idea. People often complain about the first couple of seasons of TNG but those are most likely the closest thing to Roddenberry's "vision". TNG didn't really take off until he was out of the picture creatively. He sold the narrative of his vision of Star Trek for years, and he sold it well enough to get the show resurrected, but at the end of the day his ideas were pretty silly. This is partially why I get bent out of shape when people argue over whether one Star Trek property or the other "fits" with Roddenberry's vision for the future. Who cares, I say. His vision was pretty dumb and it took a whole host of better writers to make it into something actually watchable. I can't the all-powerful energy beings have ever been favorite stories of mine in Star Trek and there are so many of them. See: the Futurama Star Trek episode.

RobertB wrote: SebastianBludd wrote:

Another thing I like about the show, and TOS in general, is how the crew of the Enterprise is always encountering these outlandish lifeforms that are incorporeal and have godlike powers and they're all nonplussed to the extreme: "Well, I'm off to talk to the being who's a rotating ball of energy so it will allow us to do some time travel sight-seeing."

I seem to remember a remark from Harlan Ellison (I think) about Gene Roddenberry. That Roddenberry only had one SF idea, and it was that the Enterprise meets God, and he's crazy, a child, or both. Which explains quite a few episodes. Stll love TOS though.

Not to mention Star Trek V, probably the lowest point of Trek.

“WHAT DOES GOD NEED WITH A STARSHIP”.

Ironically, I just saw Walter Koenig today.