What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Not sure what season, but I liked the episode where we find out Dr Bashir was genetically engineered against the law by his parents. One of the reasons DS9 is my favorite Trek is that is shines a light into the cracks of the Federation's "perfect utopia" and Picard's claims that humanity has moved beyond selfish motivations.

My response to the first episode of Picard is interesting in light of that comment. It was never really insightful to argue that "x was the show/book/movie/whatever we need right now," but I feel like Alex Kurtzman feels Picard is the show we need right now, and I think he couldn't be more wrong--not surprising in and of itself. What I feel "we" don't need is another "lone person fighting against a system" in which, as one reviewer put it, the Federation has faced Katrina + 9/11 and found itself failing. I don't want a retread of TNG--I also wasn't one of the people cheering when the new show was announced, either--but making the Federation (I guess we'll see) either indifferent or fearful or evil must seem to some on the creative team as edgy but is really just jejune. I think it's fine to poke at the cracks, and obviously there were bad actors--rogue commodores and admirals and the like all the way back to the original series--but the purpose of the Federation in all incarnations up till the 2009 movie was to act as an ideal, not as a mirror of our own shortcomings. We just have to open our eyes for that. I could vetch about yet another show turning Star Trek into a visually slick but poorly staged and scripted actioner--the fight scene about midway through the first episode of Picard is almost LOL level of execution--and what not, but can't we just leave this kind of thing to Discovery?

No deep thoughts right now but I enjoyed Picard and look forward to more of it.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina season 3 was kind of a mixed bag and overall I'd have to say it wasn't very good. Too many plots going on at once with too many characters. The show really needs to slow down and focus on the main characters more. Not sure why they put a musical number in every single episode but the cheerleader songs were cringe-worthy.

@Christopher

We are nearly finished with Season 3 and I would have to agree with your assessment. All the damn singing was rather pointless, so much so that my wife was wondering if someone on the cast had an album coming out. The Hare Moon setup was off and in sharp contrast to a satanic witch coven (also, singing). I was not entirely pleased with the way they wrote the relationship between Sabrina and Scratch.

PICARD Ep 1 is free on YouTube, so I checked it out. It's… fine. I liked TNG a lot, and was a DS9 fan, but this seems off in a way I can't quite formulate. The story beats just aren't… TREK. Also, the exposition, lawd. Everyone has a chance to talk for ten minutes about what's going on. Gimme a captain's log or something and get on with the show. I might watch more if it's free, but it in no way moved me to think about CBS+PrimeNow or whatever it streams from.

Pet peeves:

It seems off because in a show spawned off a series set in space, it all takes place on Earth.

The dog was funny.

Picard's Frenchman-Vintner thing was dead by episode 10 of Tng's first season. They keep trying to go back to it when Stewart is about as French as Winston Churchill. I never understand why they keep trying to resurrect that. "Tea, Earl Gray, hot."

The Trek universe needs to explore backwaters, not keep covering the same ground. This is a cash cow show, expect Spock to show up next.

I'm only watching the show because "he's Jean-Luc Picard and if he wants to go on one more mission, that's what we're going to do."

Locke and Key dropped on Netflix yesterday so I'm binging it because I love the comic book which it is based on.

Weird goings that span across time, a dose of magic , a dose of Lovecraftian horror and decent characters (at least that's the comic book). Got high hopes for this if they manage to tell the story properly.

ThirstyMan wrote: Got high hopes for this if they manage to tell the story properly.

Same. I really want this to be good because, like you, I really liked the comic.

Locke & Key is one of the very best comics that I've read in the last decade. There have been two previous attempts at a Locke & Key tv show that both failed quickly. Hope they get it right this time.

Just watched the first episode of the HBO documentary McMILLIONS. This is the story of how the popular McDonalds Monopoly game was rigged for about a decade, the culprit being caught by the FBI in 2001. During this time frame, all the big prizes - million dollar cash prizes, cars etc were claimed by friends and acquaintances of the perp, who diverted the winning tickets and sold them off for a percentage . First episode is pretty entertaining as they interview most of the key law enforcement personnel on how the case started.

Amazon Prime now has 21 Jump Street, so I watched a few episodes from the beginning of season one. I sort of watched the show back in the day, but was never quite a fan. No great '80s music so far, though the theme song featured the same saxophone that dominated that decade. I remembered the show as an ensemble cast, but actually Johnny Depp is clearly the star in the early episodes. I also remembered the really cool Steven Williams as the police captain, but actually some aging hippy white dude was the police captain in the early episodes. Anyway, Depp wasn't a great actor yet but showed considerable potential and had already buried his Kentucky accent completely. A very young Josh Brolin shows up in one of the early episodes.

Some older shows have had trouble securing the music rights because the original rights didn't take into account streaming, etc . I think is what held up MIAMI VICE for so long - or in some cases, I think they replaced the music.

Depp was clearly on the move; he bailed on the final season as his movie career took off.