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

Also I was looking into Community and Agents of Shield
Are either good?
agents of shield: starts out slow and can be sloggy and a bit silly bordering on dumb for the first half of the season, gets really good towards the end.
community: utterly AMAZING for the first 2 seasons and then gets progressively worse each season as the show goes on, and the last season was rather completely flat, but the first 2 seasons are so good that it carries a tolerance for it through to the end.
 
community: utterly AMAZING for the first 2 seasons
So I finished Season 1 and while I wouldn't call it my favourite show ever, I thought the start was a bit slow, it did grow on me and I probably will have a look for Season 2 at some point
 
Just watched the 2nd episode of "The Strain".

Not getting any better.

Still very soap opera-ish with the main character. Yes, he's a self-centered jerk with marital problems but now they throw in

that he's a recovering alcoholic as well. Unless that's going to play into the future of this show, it was really a backstory that wasn't important and a waste of time. Unless the producers just want to make the CDC look bad - again.



They're still sticking with the

supernatural bent, with people sorta selling out their fellow human beings to get favors done. A main villain character is basically needing a new liver so accepts a deal with the devil. Even though we learn there is a transplant waiting for him, that as a wealthy man he can afford, he's willing to sell out his entire species for a certain kind of immortality. Like most characters with similar motivations I always wonder what sort of world he wants to live to see.



Stupid plot ploys are put into play - authorities don't listen to doctors, they listen to a web report of misinformation.

I was sitting there going, "OK, you guys are epidemiologists, scientists and doctors, whip out your reports. You have bodies to show, test results, they just have a story you can easily refute with forensic evidence..." and I waited and waited and waited.

Nope. Our hero doctors don't offer any defense. None. Zero. The main guy doctor just loses his temper about his personal life being brought up "You've been stressed out."

In another scene, a HUGE office is

overrun by zombies, but the huge office only appears occupied by 1 person. At the lack of communication from the office, the main woman character offers in explanation, "They have over 200 bodies to autopsy, they're probably busy..."

Who is this "they"? We only saw one pathologist in an otherwise empty lab. No assistants, no staff, no anyone else.



It's dumb and not getting any smarter.

I would stop watching but a co-worker keeps telling me it's supposedly going to get really clever and wrap itself up with a 'wow' factor.

It doesn't look promising.

It gets better, just keep your expectations low.

I've given up. The episodes improved, but just to 'average'.

The only character I like is the exterminator, the rest I couldn't care less about and since the show has been renewed for another season, I know nothing is going to be resolved.
 
Bill Maher crushes Charlie Rose...

[video]http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/09/11/bill-maher-absolutely-crushes-charlie-rose-comparing-islam-christianity[/video]
 
Ghost in the Shell: Arise 8/10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell:_Arise
http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/80002072

Like many, my understanding of the series comes mostly from the recent movies and from the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex television series, which were made specifically to appeal to Western audiences. Naturally, these hold a warm place in my heart and I will always compare other incarnations of Ghost in the Shell to those.

Arise radically reinterprets the backstories of all the characters, which I don't necessarily have a problem. Boma/Borma even has more of a personality this time instead of just being a faceless background character. I think I preferred Paz as a sleazy womanizing ex-mobster than as a veteran undercover cop.

I'm definitely not crazy about the Major in this newer more petite form, but the fact that she goes into battle with a really dinky firearm makes her even more badass.

I'm not crazy about the more Japanese anime/manga elements, such as tanks that transform into mecha. Ugh.

Overall, though, it still has all the things I like about Ghost in the Shell. It's a secret police force in an ostensibly free democracy doing things that are legally and morally questionable, the series has a very adult tone with complex politics and government corruption, and of course the Major has all kinds of uncomfortable questions about her own humanity.

And like the other incarnations of Ghost in the Shell, there is the subtext that any atheist will probably like: the overall conclusion of the series is that there is no ghost in the shell. The whole concept of a ghost is just a lie we tell ourselves to feel more special.
 
Gurren Lagann 3/10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurren_Lagann
http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70213196

I heard so much about this but didn't really pay attention. Now I'm wondering what all the fuss was about.

Cons
  • Stupid
  • Stupid characters, and I mean box-of-rocks stupid.
  • Silly
  • Giant robots, including the usual silliness of giant robots combining to form larger giant robots
  • Ridiculous caricature of homosexuals
  • Gratuitous T&A
  • Why in the [bad word] do the giant robots look like MODOK?

Pros
  • Silly
 
Also I was looking into Community and Agents of Shield
Are either good?
agents of shield: starts out slow and can be sloggy and a bit silly bordering on dumb for the first half of the season, gets really good towards the end.
[...]

Yeah, I gave up on Agents of Shield early on, then started watching again towards the end of the first season when you had all that story stuff interweaving with the story from Captain America: Winter Soldier.
 
Bill Maher crushes Charlie Rose...

[video]http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/09/11/bill-maher-absolutely-crushes-charlie-rose-comparing-islam-christianity[/video]

Sounds like both of them had good points.
 
It gets better, just keep your expectations low.

I've given up. The episodes improved, but just to 'average'.

The only character I like is the exterminator, the rest I couldn't care less about and since the show has been renewed for another season, I know nothing is going to be resolved.

Agreed. A few episodes ago these protagonist-vampire-pseudo-ninjas showed up to save the day...12 seconds of screentime, haven't seen them since. I had hope...
 
The Wire (First half of Season One) - Show was a little slow to get into in the beginning, but it is doing well into getting you to like the very flawed characters the show is absolutely saturated with.
 
The West Wing: 6/10
The Black List: 6/10


both of these are passable shows fit for being played in the background when i'm gaming or doing something else. nothing great, i don't think i could sit and just watch these shows directly while not doing something else, but it's reasonable entertainment.
 
Old School Doctor Who:D

The Rescue, The Romans, The War Machines and Day Of The Daleks

one even had a pretty fascinating special feature on how they restore the old black and white episodes and filled in some of the gaps
 
The West Wing: 6/10
The Black List: 6/10


both of these are passable shows fit for being played in the background when i'm gaming or doing something else. nothing great, i don't think i could sit and just watch these shows directly while not doing something else, but it's reasonable entertainment.

Disagree. Don't know the Black List, but The West Wing rewards attention. There's all sorts of subtle jokes and interactions that you would miss from having it as elevator music. But thanks for the reminder, haven't watched it in ages.
 
Psycho-Pass 8/10

I'm about halfway through this, but enjoying the heck out of it. While it is obviously inspired by Minority Report, frankly this TV show does it better.

It does have some silly anime cliches. For example the cops use silly "transformer" guns that transform into one of three modes depending on function. The tech on which the guns operate seem scientifically implausible, as does the hologram-based "instant clothes switcher" thingies everyone uses. The main villain and one of the protagonists seem destined for a "high noon" style showdown that is hyped up in the first moments of the series before you even know what's going on.

Otherwise, the story is not as chlidish as anime can often be, the story and characters are engaging, and it asks deeply disturbing questions about what society would be willing to do to itself in the attempt to construct a Utopia.
 
Addendum: finally finished Psycho-Pass. Rating remains the same, and I can't wait for season 2!
 
Still watching old School Doctor Who (Kinda, Snakedance, Mark Of The Rani and Robots Of Death)

Also Big Bng Theory Season 6 has just come out so going through that
And so far (First half or so) seems stronger then Season 6
Mostly because

It feels like Raj isn't getting run down like he was last season, which was always kind of a downer for me

 
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