What TV SHOWS are you watching?

hotseatgames wrote: Season 2 of Tokyo Vice continues to delight, and I like it even better than season 1. Possibly because less time had to be spent introducing people. The most recent episode even finally revisits the opening scene of season 1. If you have Max and don't mind subtitles, or can speak Japanese, you should check this show out.

I really enjoyed season one of Tokyo Vice, and was looking forward to season two. But it has been a couple of years, so I decided to start over and re-watch season one first. A couple of days after watching the excellent first episode, I happened to go on a date with a woman who resembled and talked a lot like Samantha the hostess. It was a great first date and I was very disappointed when she finally decided that she didn't want a second date because she didn't feel any chemistry. So I didn't continue with Tokyo Vice for over a month, because I knew that seeing Samantha would remind me of that date. But I have since gone on a nine dates with four women, so it finally felt safe to continue watching season one. Great show, better than I remembered.

My Trek trivia team is competing again next Wednesday, so I am continuing my chronological viewing of all things Trek. I just wrapped up season two of Strange New Worlds and began re-watching the original series of Star Trek. Unfortunately, Paramount didn't have the pilot episode, The Cage, or the second pilot episode, Where No Man Has Gone Before. So I started in with The Man Trap. Episode debuted 60 years ago, so I'm going to assume that everybody who cares has already seen it.

The show comes out swinging, with a potentially boring intro scene on a desolate planet immediately thrown into intrigue as we viewers notice that a woman appears dramatically different to each man viewing her. Within minutes, we already have a dead crewman. The show spends a surprising amount of time showing us the viewpoint of the salt vampire as it stalks about the Enterprise. Some interesting ideas are raised. Yeoman Rand is apparently just a waitress, or perhaps stewardess. Uhura flirts a bit with Spock on the bridge, causing me to wonder if this was the only episode that J.J. Abrams ever watched. The pacing is good, and leads to a dramatic finale. This show holds up amazingly well after 60 years.

That was the first episode to air, and it didn’t get the best reviews.

There’s a lot to like about TOS, but I enjoy the horror episodes the most. They are usually done very well, offer some flipping of expectations.

I just finished my rewatch of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I forgot how abruptly it ends. A little too tidy too quickly for my tastes, but it wasn't bad. They also lean quite hard into Vic Fontaine storylines in the last season, which I had completely forgotten about. I didn't mind it, it was just unexpected; I thought he was a one-episode character.
I'm five episodes into Voyager. I'm just now getting re-acclimated to the non-stationary setting after DS9.

Star Trek: Enterprise was better than I expected, but I am still dreading seven seasons of Riker Smugface and however many seasons of Neelix antics.

Binge watched all of season 2 of Loki last weekend. Worth doing if you're thinking about it I think

Disgustipater wrote: I just finished my rewatch of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I forgot how abruptly it ends. A little too tidy too quickly for my tastes, but it wasn't bad. They also lean quite hard into Vic Fontaine storylines in the last season, which I had completely forgotten about. I didn't mind it, it was just unexpected; I thought he was a one-episode character.
I'm five episodes into Voyager. I'm just now getting re-acclimated to the non-stationary setting after DS9.

When I’ve rewatched DS9, I always skip over the Vic Fontaine shit, other than the one ep where the crew go up against a mobster in the holodeck. The rest of it struck me as effects light low cost filler to offset all the special effects heavy battle scenes that the last season had.

If you liked the Guy Ritchie movie The Gentlemen, the show is more of the same, a little less intricate plot-wise, the violence toned down and generally adjusted for tv. It's fun and as always has several memorable characters doing crime and dropping quotable lines in the lush English countryside.
Except for prison wardens police doesn't exist in this ultra-rich world, which is kind of realistic I guess as the fun is usually over when they show up, at least in Ritchie's universe.
The British and their nonchalant way of just keeping their class society into the 21st century is always a little strange to me, but when someone's birth is used to explain why he is good at something and naturally above others, I can't help but think of the Guillotine.

Shellhead wrote: I am still dreading seven seasons of Riker Smugface

Maybe the Riker Maneuver will offset it?

Still on Star Trek. Charlie X annoyed me when I was a kid, but I appreciate this episode as an adult. Shatner really sells the scenes where he get this omnipotent adolescent to back down in the face of Kirk's great charisma. And Yeoman Rand is definitely a stewardess, but now I get the feeling that she was a mean girl in high school. Not saying that she is mean on Star Trek, just that you can see that she has experience with wielding her appearance like a weapon when needed. Uhura is flirting with Spock again.

The third episode on Paramount is Where No Man Has Gone Before, but you can tell that they are showing it out of order, for several reasons. There are no red shirts in sight, just gold, blue, and beige shirts. Spock is wearing gold, while Sulu is wearing blue, the reverse of their usual shirt colors for the rest of the series. Scotty is present, but wearing the beige shirt. McCoy isn't in the episode at all and some really old white guy is the ship's doctor.

Though I have watched nearly 8 seasons of various Star Trek shows in the last six months, I am still not pulling my weight on my Trek trivia team. Last night was themed as Our Man Bashir, so I knew I was in trouble. I only made it partway through the first season of Deep Space Nine a few years ago, so I can pick Bashir out of a police line-up but can't tell you much about him. Our team, The Wesley Crushers, managed to come in 6th place out of 10 teams, with 30 out of 50 possible points. The worst team got 16 points, and the winners got 42 points. The winners actually came over to our table to congratulate us for two things: our co-captains announced their wedding engagement at the beginning of trivia and handed out invitations to the engagement party. Oh, and the winning team said that we are always the best-dressed team. Our co-captains were both wearing Star Trek-themed shirts, and I was wearing my Disco t-shirt which is a deep cut referencing a Discovery episode where Michael and Tilly are jogging while wearing Disco shirts.

The trivia organizers get all their questions from Memory Alpha, a deep repository of Star Trek information. How deep? Yesterday, I found a function at Memory Alpha that pulls up random topics. I used it to prepare a little Trek party game (see next paragraph), and one random entry was "Onion Soup." Wtf? A Trek character once mentioned that their favorite soup was onion soup, so some dedicated Star Trek fan wrote up a few sentences on that topic for Memory Alpha.

For the party game, I randomly selected a number of topics from Memory Alpha, printed them off, and cut them up in fortune cookie-sized slips of paper. Each player randomly selects a slip, reads the topic like a question and then launches into a short rant starting with the words "Don't get me started!" For example, "Romulan ale? Don't get me started! If it's an ale, why are they drinking it out of wine glasses? And why is it so blue? The Federation was right to ban that swill!" Don't Get Me Started isn't really a game so much as an amusing social activity, like Eat Poop You Cat.

The Wesley Crushers is a name doomed to be annoying to everyone else.

The winning team also has a good name, based on a quote from Scotty: "Treat her like a lady, and she'll always bring you home." That's their team name, and it always gets some applause at trivia.

I just finished the first season of Star Trek: Voyager and so far I am enjoying it. Neelix being really irritating only lasts for a handful of the initial episodes and then settles down.
The thing I don't understand is why Tuvok was doing undercover work in the Maquis. He's the security officer of a science and exploration ship. Surely Starfleet intelligence has dedicated people for this?

I finished season 2 of Physical: 100 on Netflix. This South Korean show puts 100 athletes through unbelievable challenges until only one remains. It is way more exciting than you might imagine, even if some of the techniques used in production are annoying, such as replaying the same short clip several times from different angles, which in itself wouldn't be so bad if they weren't also replaying the ooohs and ahhs of the competitors.

Give it a shot if you want to feel really bad about your physical fitness level.