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What TV are you watching and how would you rate it? [Revive from FRDB]

DrZoidberg said:
Drunk History 7/10

Great idea for a show; interview extremely drunk regular people off the street and have them explain something historical, and then have A-list Hollywood actors act it out. The drunkards get a lot of the details wrong, which is the hilarity of it.

A boring bit about it is that it seems to only be American history, which... ok fine... but there's quite a lot from history which also is interesting. That would make great stories.

Last Ship (2/10)

So I watched all three seasons of this (I jumped a bit in the episodes). I don't know why I kept watching it or why I cared to see how it ended. It's completely idiotic. The basic story is great. The world is ravaged by a pandemic decimating the world and all the world's governments have collapsed. While society still was intact a warship was sent on a research mission and has been isolated for three months in the Arctic. When they are on their way back they notice how things have gone tits up. All the world's governments have collapsed and it's complete anarchy. On the ship they also have all the research facilities and staff to come up with a cure. They have to figure out what to do next. So far so good.

Here's what's bad with it. It's "USA saves the day". As soon as anybody speaks with an American accent you know they're good guys. Anybody speaking in a foreign language or with an accent you know they're evil. It's on that level. And the evil of the bad guys knows no bounds. There's a couple of semi-interesting plot twists. But none of them are executed especially well. The level of it is also dumb. Ok, so the president swears on the Bible that he'll be a good president and defend the constitution. Oh, well, then it's all fine and dandy then and we know he won't abuse his power or make himself a dictator. Of course he won't because he's good looking and talks with an American accent = good guy. So much of this series is mind-numbingly idiotic. This series taught me that all Arabs/Muslims are fanatic fundamentalist terrorists who always fight to the death. Love the oriental music that always plays when an Arab is on camera. So incredibly lame and stupid. I also learned that anybody British is a cockney thug plotting to overthrow America by giving disease infected teddy bears to little children. I never understood that entire story arc. A very kick-the-dog theme. Ok, I get it, bad guys. Way to hammer it home. All Russians are psychopaths. They dropped an atomic bomb on France wiping out everybody in the entire country because they wanted to scare the ship a bit. I mean... really. You don't think that's over-playing the evil?

In every episode, like clockwork, there's a thing that breaks ten minutes in. That they then have to spend the rest of the episode fixing that causes problems. They also manage to fix it just a few seconds before some complete disaster that will spell doom for the ship. So every episode has an extremely predictable pattern to it. Which ends up being boring. Which is a shame, because the series has a progressive story arc. The captain takes stupid risks with the ship all the time. Gets boring after a while.

The only interesting character is the main scientist on the ship. She's clearly a self-obsessed narcissist who doesn't understand or care how many toes she trods on. Just a bitch who gets shit done. She's a good guy without being an angel. Which I liked. But there was so much else that didn't work in this series.

I think it was made for children. I don't think anybody over the age of twelve will enjoy this. It's just too dumb.
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Why do you hate America?
 
blastula said:
DrZoidberg said:
Drunk History 7/10

Great idea for a show; interview extremely drunk regular people off the street and have them explain something historical, and then have A-list Hollywood actors act it out. The drunkards get a lot of the details wrong, which is the hilarity of it.

A boring bit about it is that it seems to only be American history, which... ok fine... but there's quite a lot from history which also is interesting. That would make great stories.

Last Ship (2/10)

So I watched all three seasons of this (I jumped a bit in the episodes). I don't know why I kept watching it or why I cared to see how it ended. It's completely idiotic. The basic story is great. The world is ravaged by a pandemic decimating the world and all the world's governments have collapsed. While society still was intact a warship was sent on a research mission and has been isolated for three months in the Arctic. When they are on their way back they notice how things have gone tits up. All the world's governments have collapsed and it's complete anarchy. On the ship they also have all the research facilities and staff to come up with a cure. They have to figure out what to do next. So far so good.

Here's what's bad with it. It's "USA saves the day". As soon as anybody speaks with an American accent you know they're good guys. Anybody speaking in a foreign language or with an accent you know they're evil. It's on that level. And the evil of the bad guys knows no bounds. There's a couple of semi-interesting plot twists. But none of them are executed especially well. The level of it is also dumb. Ok, so the president swears on the Bible that he'll be a good president and defend the constitution. Oh, well, then it's all fine and dandy then and we know he won't abuse his power or make himself a dictator. Of course he won't because he's good looking and talks with an American accent = good guy. So much of this series is mind-numbingly idiotic. This series taught me that all Arabs/Muslims are fanatic fundamentalist terrorists who always fight to the death. Love the oriental music that always plays when an Arab is on camera. So incredibly lame and stupid. I also learned that anybody British is a cockney thug plotting to overthrow America by giving disease infected teddy bears to little children. I never understood that entire story arc. A very kick-the-dog theme. Ok, I get it, bad guys. Way to hammer it home. All Russians are psychopaths. They dropped an atomic bomb on France wiping out everybody in the entire country because they wanted to scare the ship a bit. I mean... really. You don't think that's over-playing the evil?

In every episode, like clockwork, there's a thing that breaks ten minutes in. That they then have to spend the rest of the episode fixing that causes problems. They also manage to fix it just a few seconds before some complete disaster that will spell doom for the ship. So every episode has an extremely predictable pattern to it. Which ends up being boring. Which is a shame, because the series has a progressive story arc. The captain takes stupid risks with the ship all the time. Gets boring after a while.

The only interesting character is the main scientist on the ship. She's clearly a self-obsessed narcissist who doesn't understand or care how many toes she trods on. Just a bitch who gets shit done. She's a good guy without being an angel. Which I liked. But there was so much else that didn't work in this series.

I think it was made for children. I don't think anybody over the age of twelve will enjoy this. It's just too dumb.
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Why do you hate America?
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I hate freedom
 
Harry_Bosch said:
Shadowy Man said:
I really enjoyed Alias, though it greatly suffered from JJ's weakness of not really thinking his stories through. Similarly with Lost.
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Totally agree with your analysis. I hope that Fringe has a better ending! I'm in the fifth season.
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As a physicist, I couldn't stomach Fringe for more than a few episodes. Season five, eh? Wow...
 
Harry_Bosch said:
Shadowy Man said:
I really enjoyed Alias, though it greatly suffered from JJ's weakness of not really thinking his stories through. Similarly with Lost.
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Totally agree with your analysis. I hope that Fringe has a better ending! I'm in the fifth season.
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Ya, Alias really does seem to start a lot of things which don't go anywhere. Also, it only took me a few episodes to start cringing anytime somebody said the word "Rambaldi" and then they just kept hammering that dumb-assed idea all the way through. None of the magic devices ever really ended up doing much beyond causing trouble in a single episode, though.

Enjoyable to watch, but gets tiresome after a while. They could have done a lot more.
 
Just started watching:

Lucifer - Satan takes a vacation and is appearing to grow a conscience. Like Dexter, except with a supernatural bent. Very enjoyable. Lucifer is charming and fun and someone who could be your bud.

2nd season Agent Carter - very enjoyable romp, though the producers want very much to avoid any realistic 1940s culture issues. e.g. The season starts off with Agent Carter falling for a black scientist. The biggest complaint her co-workers can come up with is that she will ruin her professional life and develop a reputation hanging out with....wait for it ... a communist.

X-Files - jury is still out. Bloodier than the TV series, and it appears Agent Mulder (yes, they're still employed, though not really working regularly) is ready to throw away 10 years worth of work on his latest conspiracy theory.
 
Manhattan 5/10

An American drama series about the Manhattan project. The problem with it is that there's no science here. It's all just drama and politics. Yeah, cool to have a show with Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr in it. But they did nothing with it. Silly to make Werner Von Heisenberg out to be the silliest caricature of a Nazi. Why not have him in a wheel chair shouting "Mein Führer.. I can valk"?

They could have taken the same script and transferred it to any setting and it would work. There's almost nothing in the story that's specific for the Manhattan Project, which is the reason I'm watching. The physics and sciency is like spicing thrown in now and then. They could just as well have had the line "Chewie, pass me the hyperspanner".

I contrast this to "The Immitation Game" about Alan Turing set during the same period. While also heavily fictionalised ("inspired by a true story") it does explain wtf they're doing. It also makes an effort to explain implications and aspects of the research. Manhattan glosses over it. At some point early on Chris Isaacs has a moral conundrum about making an atomic bomb regarding the inevitable civilian casualties. How does he work through this anxiety? He just shrugs it off and gets on with it. Way to go writers... They certainly dropped the bomb on that one.

My favourite thing about it is that whenever I heard Theodore Sinclair I was thinking Theodore Sturgeon. Which isn't particularly high praise.

I would recommend this to anybody who has a thing for historical dramas set in the 40'ies. If you're a science nerd with an interest in the actual Manhattan Project I would look elsewhere.

Watching this I felt the same way as I did watching Reign (about Mary Queen of Scots). I have an interest in the history of this period. Happy that somebody had finally done a series there and then finding that it's too superficial to be informative and then just making me sad. Because now that slot has been filled by film makers for a while.
 
Television.Funny how we still use that word.well TV,but you know.Have not had cable for over twenty years.There has not been broadcast tv in my town for a long time.
Hulu,Netflix .Amazon,Youtube.
And I can get Medicare next year!
 
bleubird said:
Television.Funny how we still use that word.well TV,but you know.Have not had cable for over twenty years.There has not been broadcast tv in my town for a long time.
Hulu,Netflix .Amazon,Youtube.
And I can get Medicare next year!
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It's not that bad of a word. A television is a window for seeing things recorded far away. That's literally what it means (in latin). An intercom with pictures. And since the TV is seldom the source of the feed, it's a very apt word indeed IMHO.

...and we also say car (from chariot) instead of automobile (which it's actually called). Historical usages of analogous items are more important to common usage than the new fangled words.
 
The Walking Dead: I started watching after several people kept telling me how good it is. So I did a bit of binge and rattled through season 1 and I'm a couple of episodes into season 2. It's pretty good at leaving cliff hangers to keep you interested and I'll keep watching but some of it is quite pedestrian, the pace is not quite right. Things will plod along for a while and then a confrontation with zombies is thrown in for some action to break up the drama going on between the characters. Some of the acting is so over the top and the drama so cliche ridden that it's difficult to hang in there and keep watching.
 
TSwizzle said:
The Walking Dead: I started watching after several people kept telling me how good it is. So I did a bit of binge and rattled through season 1 and I'm a couple of episodes into season 2. It's pretty good at leaving cliff hangers to keep you interested and I'll keep watching but some of it is quite pedestrian, the pace is not quite right. Things will plod along for a while and then a confrontation with zombies is thrown in for some action to break up the drama going on between the characters. Some of the acting is so over the top and the drama so cliche ridden that it's difficult to hang in there and keep watching.
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It really is a very uneven show. Some parts are great and then other parts are just ... meh. It makes it difficult to get into it.
 
Colony 7/10

Aliens have invaded Earth and now we're enslaved by them in a police state. It's about a couple trying to live though it. What's interesting about it is that they waste no time on the aliens or trying to explain it. It's clearly just a frame glossed over. And it's not about flawless humans willing to die for a cause. It's real people. I love that.

This is all about what happens to the human mind when in a police state. This might as well have been set in 1940'is France or 1950'ies East Germany. But they set it in modern day Los Angeles. And it's well made. Dark as fuck and cynical. I like it.

There's a couple of negatives though. The actors aren't particularly impressive. And the budget is clearly lacking. Writing is so-so. I spite of it's flaws I'm eating it up.
 
Watching Law and Order. I'd rate it a 6.5/10. I'm actually quite used to waking up at 6 AM to watch reruns of Charmed which I have seen a dozen or more times before. (Actually, it's common that I sleep in much longer than that; but being awake at 6 is also quite common and possibly the majority of days). And so it feels a little strange to find that just because it's President's Day (how many of us really care about PD?), even the 6 AM time slot has been coopted for Law and Order. But actually, I have lately become obsessed with Simpson-mania, so really I'd rather be watching The Simpsons. (That might make a good bumper sticker.)
 
11.22.63

It's an adaptation from Stephen King's book of the same title. What happens is that a guy is shown a "hole" which takes him back to 1961. Eventually the plan becomes the prevention of Lee Harvey Oswald from killing JFK.

It's so great when a TV or movie gets it right. And so far, this one does. All the important characters are there, the tone is right on, and there's no idiotic deviation from the book like what happened with the visual tragedy that was the Under the Dome TV series.

The only problem is that you have to have Hulu to get it. But I'll be damned if Hulu hasn't been my favorite internet entertainment source since I got it. I had it for a while a few years back and it was awful. But for an extra $3 a month, you can get it without commercials. It's very much worth it.

9/10 (so far, after one episode)
 
My plan is to wait for the series to air, then subscribe to Hulu for a brief time, long enough to binge the series, then cancel Hulu.

Is that a workable plan?
 
James Brown said:
My plan is to wait for the series to air, then subscribe to Hulu for a brief time, long enough to binge the series, then cancel Hulu.

Is that a workable plan?
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If they still have the 30 day free plan, you're totally in business. But at most you're looking at 12 bucks for what looks to be around 10+ hours worth of programming even if the free 30 days thing isn't around then.

But as a temporary shill for Hulu, I encourage you take a look around once you're there. It's a lot better than it used to be. But then again, I finally shitcanned DirecTV last week because it got too expensive and the less I give to AT&T the better, so I'm all about the alternative TV sources now.
 
I watched a couple of specials on the OJ Simpson secret tapes which was pretty good. There was some footage from OJ's deposition given during the civil case and OJ really is quite different to the affable buffoon his public persona projects. Lots of little tidbits from other people involved in the case including the Goldman family. I have a lot of admiration for Fred Goldman who refused to accept the not guilty verdict of the criminal case and continues to this day to harass OJ for money, not because he wants the money but he wants to make that SOB squirm.
 
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