What TV SHOWS are you watching?

I'm finishing binging The West Wing for like the third time. It's a much different show in our era of completely unhinged politics. Originally produced as a response to the Bush era, it feels ridiculously optimistic now. Every time the White House staff, in the Sorkin seasons, goes off on how it's ok to be an elitist and use language to manipulate the masses in order to give them what they really need, I keep thinking about how we got into Vietnam, and the perils of system thinking. At some point, on the third viewing, The West Wing became a show about idealistic people doing terrible things in order to stay in power so they could do Good Things at some later date, and then sort of failing.

I'm a good liberal, but it really started to feel like an argument against a particular flavor of liberalism. Leo McGarry ends up being completely, disturbingly wrong on a number of issues, a congenial grandfatherly career politician who, despite an entire episode devoted really to Jon Spencer, is almost completely forgotten once Bartlett leaves the White House. His whole life was about wielding power behind the scenes. Sort of Rumsfeldian. Also, I think that CJ, temporarily on the outs with her reporter boyfriend, was on the verge of making out with Toby, something I either missed or repressed during the first two viewings.

My wife and I, although reasonably happily married, have gone through a TV divorce, so I watched it this time by myself.

I'd like to rewrite some episodes. It would be fun if that military space shuttle dropped ice loads from space onto those bickering Chinese and Russian troops gathered in Khazakstan and calmed them down a little.

As an aside, could someone Google up a recent image of Dick Cheney? I have this recurring nightmare that he's growing younger each year.

If you want an almost identical "this is fine" vibe that is completely disconnected from the last 10 years of U.S. politics, Madame Secretary is also consistently laughable.

My wife and I, although reasonably happily married, have gone through a TV divorce, so I watched it this time by myself.

Haha.
I almost want one of these, but to be fair on a weeknight that's our cup of tea and watch some comfort tv (for her) which enables a bit of a chat as well so, maybe not.

Although I have said that this is the last time we're watching Buffy together. Next time she can watch it with my daughter.

I'm slowly working my way through the Ken Burns stuff, which is on Netflix over her, when she is out. I have a thing for rostrum photography and Americana.... :/ Prohibition was the last one I watched. I mean, you know what you are going to get. I guess that's effectively some comfort tv too.

I also watched They Shall Not Grow Old, which I liked and will be useful for a class I teach so that's good. Some great stuff in there although I think it got a little repetitive, and, I know what his focus was and that's fine, and he had to make it with the interviews etc etc, but, it would have been great for a bit of a wider scope. But that's also why it will be useful for my class so.

Politically, I am moderately liberal. But somehow I have always found the writing of Aaron Sorkin to be intolerable.

I somehow missed that Disney+ had every episode of The Simpsons until the other day, at which point I signed up for Disney+. Hey did y'all know that the good years of The Simpsons are still real real good?

THE SIMPSONS is going to get better. They lopped off the top and bottom of the frames to "make it widescreen" and a bunch of off the edge jokes get lost. The classic example I've seen cited is Duff, Duff Lite, and Duff Dry tanks are all being filled from the same pipe being split, but the WS version chops all that off and they look distinct. Disney is sourcing the uncut material and will rebuild the series next year to include viewing in the original aspect ratio.

I think what my wife and I have isn't so much a TV divorce as TV separate vacations. I just internet surf through most stuff I don't care about, but I have to go elsewhere in the house when the Twilight Saga (recently watched by wife and daughter*) or True Blood (you can feel your brain cells dying) is on.

Anyway, we watched Greatest Events of WWII in Colour on Netflix. Standard WWII stuff that I already knew, but for some reason my wife got interested and wanted to watch the whole thing. It's not a bad WWII primer if you've never looked into WWII history much, or if black-and-white footage is a dealbreaker. Interesting intersection between TWBG and that show - Jonathan Parshall, author of Shattered Sword, was one of the SMEs discussing the Battle of Midway. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Then a couple of nights ago, we watched the first episode of The Feed. People get memory-recording and experience playback modules implanted, a'la Black Mirror. It was kind of a snoozer so we'll probably not pick it up.

Then finally, a genuine bucket list item - we watched the first episode of The Wire last night. I've heard from more than one person, "Best show on television ever." I'm not ready to canonize it after one episode, but I'm interested.

*And my daughter's boyfriend. Either her boyfriend needs to man up some, or he's putting up with a lot to be near my daughter.

The Wire remains my all-time favorite tv show. I admit that I struggled to follow the action for the first two episodes due to the size of the cast, but I was completely hooked by episode four.

Shellhead wrote: The Wire remains my all-time favorite tv show. I admit that I struggled to follow the action for the first two episodes due to the size of the cast, but I was completely hooked by episode four.

Agreed on all counts. The show is a slow burn, and doesn't hook you immediately. I initially found the jargon and language to be difficult to penetrate, and the show does NOTHING to help you out. What the hell is the "Deputy Commissioner of Operators?" What's a "rip and run?" You just gotta muscle your way through it. The payoff is so worth it.

Some random thoughts on a couple of ongoing shows ...

Silicon Valley. Fuck, remember when this show had jokes and was funny?? Me too. What an unfunny pathetic shell of a show this has turned into. Thankfully only one episode left.

The Mandalorian. I'm digging it. I love the standalone adventures and "side quests." I love the slice of life bits we see of everyday life in the Star Wars galaxy. The production values are terrific. And yeah, Baby Yoda. He's cute.

Watchmen: Possibly the weirdest, but also the most compelling and fascinating show I've seen in ages. It's been quite a ride so far. I generally hate flashbacks as a storytelling device. I tend to think that if you have to rely on a flashback to tell a story, you probably didn't start your story in the right place. But that being said, if you ARE going to do a flasback, then do it as a trippy, drug-induced hallucination where your character's own memories are being supplanted by someone else's. At least it's unique!!

His Dark Materials: I'm a couple of episodes behind on this one, and ... I don't love it. I don't hate it, but I don't love it either. The writers made a debatable decision to VERY quickly expand the scope of the story, including pulling plot threads from the second book, and putting them into the second EPISODE. The idea of moving between worlds is the stunning cliffhanger to the first book. The show just dumps it out there right away. I guess the idea was to make this fictional world feel very big and exiting right away, rather than starting with a very small scope and expanding outward over time. But, the downside to that approach is that it sidelines Lyra. She's not the main character anymore, and that feels like a mistake to me. We'll see.

Dang, that's a lot. Lotta good TV right now. And season 4 of The Expanse kicks off next week!!

Silicon Valley has been fairly bad for quite a while. At least they brought back Russ Hanneman to wrap things up. His antics are funny.

Shellhead wrote: The Wire remains my all-time favorite tv show. I admit that I struggled to follow the action for the first two episodes due to the size of the cast, but I was completely hooked by episode four.

Def takes a few episodes to find your bearings, but SO worth the effort in the long run.

Joebot wrote: The Mandalorian. I'm digging it. I love the standalone adventures and "side quests." I love the slice of life bits we see of everyday life in the Star Wars galaxy. The production values are terrific. And yeah, Baby Yoda. He's cute.

I don't think I'm going to be able to deal with the lead character always having their helmet on. I don't know if the intention is to create mystery or to not have to pay a lead actor the wage they deserve, but it's kinda hokey. Although I think the production values on the show have been really good, three episodes in I'm not knocked out by the story. The fact that it has a Boxey in it isn't closing the deal for me personally.

My seven day trial of Disney ends tomorrow, and I think I'm cancelling. No one in the house has given it a second look since last Saturday.

RobertB wrote: Then finally, a genuine bucket list item - we watched the first episode of The Wire last night. I've heard from more than one person, "Best show on television ever." I'm not ready to canonize it after one episode, but I'm interested.

Just an early heads up: the second season is quite bad (though it becomes more watchable by the end). I just rewatched that season this past week and it was even worse than I remembered.

The rest of the series is superlative, though. The first episode of season 3 was a wonderful reminder of how good the show normally is. So worth sticking through it.

I thought that season two of The Wire was great. It was important to break away from the high rise tenements to show that there were other forms of organized crime in town, and that some of the criminals are white. The plight of the labor unions is real, and a story worth telling. I also enjoyed that the first season storyline continued to simmer, and that it took quite a while to bring to bring the special unit back together. And the second season story does tie into the overall story of The Wire in a meaningful way. To the extent that The Wire has a bad season, it might be the last season, when writer David Simon seemed to be working out some old grudges from his journalism days.

I would have liked season 2 (and I did like the last few episodes quite a bit after the drudgery of getting there) if it wasn't for a) the huge focus on Ziggy and Nick, who are two of the worst written and acted characters from any show that I can think of, and b) a few other fairly cheesy characters that don't mesh well with the realistic credibility of the vast majority of characters and situations.

David Simon seemed to be working out some old grudges from his journalism days.

I haven't gotten to that season in my rewatch yet, so it's not really fresh enough to comment. Having worked in municipal government and policing in the past 12 years, and having developed some disdain for simplistic and superficial news coverage from the side of organizations being covered by poor reporting, I'm looking forward to watching that element.

I do remember McNulty having some eye-rolling moments in that season, though.