What TV SHOWS are you watching?

I think I have only seen one great show on Max (fka HBO) this year, and that was the second and final season of Tokyo Vice. The other great shows I have seen in 2024 were on Amazon (Fallout) or Paramount+ (Yellowjackets, Evil). I could probably stop my subscription to Max now to register my disapproval with the shift away from premium television to low-budget reality tv swill.

Speaking of Evil, I eagerly watched the season four and series finale, and it did not disappoint. Good TV shows often struggle to nail the landing, but Evil did a fine job of wrapping up the series-long storylines and bringing various personal stories to satisfying conclusions. The overall series was consistently entertaining and often surprising, and even managed to deliver the occasional chilling sequence. The lead actors were all excellent and the writing was strong. The practical effects were generally decent. Mike Colter was so good as Father David Acosta that I now need to watch Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and the Defenders.

Still continuing my long-term viewing of all things Star Trek in chronological order. I recently finished the original series and am currently partway through season one of the original animated series featuring voice acting by the original series stars. It's better than I remembered from my previous viewing of maybe a decade ago, and the episode Yesteryear remains one of the all-time great Star Trek episodes of any series. After this, I will start watching the first six movies, then Next Generation. I am not looking forward to some of these Star Trek movies, or the first two seasons of Next Gen.

I recently finished rewatching TNG and enjoyed it. The first couple of seasons showed Roddenberry’s involvement for sure, and it really took off in the third season. I don’t mind those early seasons though.

I was surprised at how disappointing season six and seven were to me. They felt like the writers were struggling to come up with ideas, and many episodes felt lazily created. The episodes that just copied popular movies at the time (John Mcclane Picard) or brought back old enemies. There was more reliance on technobabble solutions to problems.

I can see more clearly now why Voyager was already doomed to be bad from this tired team.

However, All Good Things is one of the greatest endings to a series, ever. And while I do like Generations and First Contact, after that they wrecked it.

I hear Picard tries to correct that sad ending. I plan on checking it out one day.

A coworker turned me on to GRAVITY FALLS which came and went when I didn't have TV and especially didn't have cable. I suggested it to the kid and now it's one of our favorites. Especially compelling as it's set kinda in our area (rural PNW) and there's any number of roadside tourist traps just like the one the characters live and work at. Very smart and genuinely funny writing, with a mix of jokes from subtle to slapstick. Just great.

Finished UMBRELLA ACADEMY S4 last night, the end of the series. It was okay. It's an interesting contrast to THE BOYS in the realm of "superheroes, but in the real world." The Boys focuses on political and corporate fuckery, with lots of over-the-top scenes for fairly crass shock value. It can be funny, and I especially have enjoyed the recent discovery of online edgelords that the Homelander character is meant to satirize their views, not venerate them.

UA, on the other hand, is much more of a family relationship drama against a background of superpowers and timeline weirdness. Lots of multiversal shenanigans, more hopeful than The Boys. The final season felt a bit rushed but it ended in a reasonably satisfying way.

My Amazon menu recently showed season two of Space: 1999. A couple of years ago, I watched the first several episodes of the first season via Amazon Prime, then hit a paywall to watch any further episodes via a different streaming channel. It was frustrating because the show was just starting to get good, but I decided not to sign up for another channel. Anyway, now I clicked on that link for season two and found that it free to me via Amazon Prime and that I could also navigate back to where I left off on season one. So I am taking a break from Star Trek and watching Space: 1999 again.

Space: 1999 is a moderately dark show. The improbable premise is that Earth's moon is now careening through uncharted space at high speed, and the people living in Moonbase Alpha are hoping to find a new inhabitable world to live on. But since achieving that goal would negate the premise of the show, they face disappointment in every episode. Unlike most other science-fiction shows, the characters occupy a ground-level installation instead of a spaceship. So instead of dramatic scenes taking place on the bridge or command center of a spaceship, the dramatic scenes often take place in a big room that looks more like NASA mission control in Houston, complete with the occasional lengthy countdown. The Eagle spaceships used by Moonbase Alpha also look like fairly realistic extrapolations of NASA shuttles if they had VTOL capability. The overall quality of the show is decent, though not as good as the best episodes of Star Trek.

It’s hard to talk about season three of The Bear since it’s so clearly just the first half of something more. Outside of Sugar’s pregnancy, absolutely nothing was resolved. Will Carmen and Richie reconcile? Will Sydney leave? Will the restaurant survive? What about the haunting that somehow had more screen time than Marcus? I guess we’ll find out next year. The creative team has bought a lot of goodwill and demonstrated their ability again and again such that I have no doubts they’ll stick the landing, but it’s still frustrating.

I’ve seen the complaints that this season has lacked unity or urgency. I kind of agree. There were too many episodes that didn’t advance the story, but that’s always been The Bear’s style. It’s more a short story collection than a novel. It’s a series that invites returning to favorite episodes rather than binging whole seasons. Sugar’s delivery and Tina’s job search had nothing to do with whether the restaurant will go on another day, but they were showcases of acting, writing and direction.

A friend mine coined the perfect term for THE BEAR : anxiety porn.

Maybe a year ago, I started leaving subtitles on, all the time. Every movie, every show. Sometimes, it is a little annoying, like when Paramount+ shows the subtitles before the spoken lines. Other times, it is helpful or even funny. Whoever did the subtitles for Space: 1999 had a bit of fun with the theme song, variously describing it as [dramatic music], [epic music], or [dramatic disco music]. All accurate, by the way.

My wife’s first language is not English and we started using subtitles in movies to help her understand what was being said when we were dating. We never stopped using them and I have grown to appreciate them for some movies and shows.

Even after upgrading to a surround sound system with clear speakers, some movies are hard to understand dialogue and it’s been a problem with sound mixes lately. I think they are moving away from this trend, but I’m not the only person annoyed by this.

Two Netflix shows I'm watching right now:

The Terror - this AMC show came out a while back but I didn't have access then. Based on a book of the same name, British explorers get their two ships stuck in the Northern Atlantic ice. Things go awry.

I really am enjoying this one. A couple of familiar faces, including the Georgia cop from Warrior.

Terminator: Zero - a Terminator anime that is well done? Yes please!

Am also watching The Terror when I'm exercising in the morning. I agree. It's well done. And a lot of familiar faces, especially from HBO shows of the past (Jared Harris, Ciaran Hinds, James Fitzjames, etc.)

I saw that ad for Terminator: Zero pop up. Looks cool. Will likely be next on the Exercise Show list.

n815e wrote: My wife’s first language is not English and we started using subtitles in movies to help her understand what was being said when we were dating. We never stopped using them and I have grown to appreciate them for some movies and shows.

Even after upgrading to a surround sound system with clear speakers, some movies are hard to understand dialogue and it’s been a problem with sound mixes lately. I think they are moving away from this trend, but I’m not the only person annoyed by this.

I am now dating someone whose first language is not English, though she has a Master's degree in English Literature, so I expect to continue with the subtitles. My sound bar for my big tv died a couple of months ago, and your post made me realize that I have had less trouble recently making out dialogue due to sound mixes. But maybe I am relying more on the subtitles than I realized.

I watched The Terror a few years ago. I don't remember the year, but I distinctly remember that it was winter. Got a heavy load of snow at one point while I was binging The Terror, and spent a Saturday clearing snow while taking warmup breaks to watch another episode.

dysjunct wrote: A coworker turned me on to GRAVITY FALLS which came and went when I didn't have TV and especially didn't have cable. I suggested it to the kid and now it's one of our favorites. Especially compelling as it's set kinda in our area (rural PNW) and there's any number of roadside tourist traps just like the one the characters live and work at. Very smart and genuinely funny writing, with a mix of jokes from subtle to slapstick. Just great.

My oldest has fallen hard for this show. NO IDEA how he heard about it (some youtuber most likely) but he's burning through it fast. The bits I've seen make it seem like a more kid friendly Rick and Morty, which is a pretty good thing.

They also ripped through the latest (last?) season of Hilda, season 3. The gang seems slightly aged up, or maybe some voice actors are different. They move to a different Noreigiswedish town with a different set of folklore creatures. It's pretty good, quite a bit more restrained than the zany antics of season 2 with a stronger Hilda focus. Could stand to see more.

I've returned to watching The Girl from Nowhere, Thai mystery thriller. It's centered around the Thai private high school system and the main character, Nanno, shows up at various high schools as a new student and things start to go pear shaped. I finished up the first season last night, and will start the 2nd season tonight. The best way to describe it is The Hitcher mashed with high school. Fucked up things occur when she shows up.

I am NOT watching Rings of Power. The first season looked amazing but the writing was awful and I didn't like any of the characters enough to care what happened to them.