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Back on Daria

I don’t want this source of comfort to have ended. But it did.


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Also?

As is tradition?

Babylon 5.

We finally agreed our son was ready to watch this. We started with the pilot movie, The Gathering, the TNT version without the puppets, and it’s surprising how refreshing it feels. We are partly through the first season, and the characters all feel like real, interesting people who act like professionals and handle conflict like adults. Episodes like The War Prayer and By Any Means Necessary feel even more relevant today than they were back then.


I had always remembered the first season as being slow and bad, but I’d take a thousand weak episodes like Grail or TKO over a good episode of modern Sci Fi like Picard or Obi-Wan.

B5 is a thorny one for when it comes to introducing youngsters.

On one hand? It. Is. Su. Perb. Arguably the first ‘mature’ sci-fi TV show, which more than my beloved DS9 literally changed what serialise Sci-Fi could be.

Ongoing arcs! Genuine and permanent character development from trauma! Fallibility! Chaos! Disorder! No simply warping away from a pretty staggering sociopolitical situation having applied a metaphorical Elastoplast!

But…..on then other? I think I’d want to let smols see what came before. So they can better appreciate just how different and better B5 did it.

Also? Its CGI was crap at the time. Like….proper crap. I appreciate its ambition, sure. And to the best of my knowledge the first TV show to embrace pure CGI for effects. But, dear reader, I’d argue it was on the wrong side of brave/foolhardy equation.

Sure I don’t think it would be possible to do it’s ‘realistic’ space physics using models. I say ‘realistic’ as acknowledgement of my limited understanding of such. But…the CGI is still super dated.

Thankfully that’s a minor quibble in the overall wonderfulness.

The CGI on the DVDs look worse than the show did on the air because of the crap transfers. However, the CGI is not an issue for any of us. I don’t know if it’s because we’re all used to Godzilla movies and low budget movies of the time, or because we have suspension of disbelief, but the effects are enjoyable for us and not a distraction.

EDIT: In my experience, children are much less discerning about special effects. Even the fakest, cheesiest monster effect can give them nightmares if all the actors take the monster seriously.

La Brea

Weird supernatural thriller type thing.

Sinkhole opens near the La Brea tar pits. Lots of people fall in. But they’re not ded, because they instead fall through a dimensional rift type thing. But it might be a tear in time.

Mum and son fall through, Daughter and Dad didn’t. Oh and the Dad is psychic, because…reasons.

Peeps that fell through meet up, and there’s a pleasing coming together rather than mass freak out. The Wolves attack, messing up the son who is probably toast but an ambulance had fallen through and there’s a car boot full of heroin as well - which I understand to be very moreish.

A few grumbles, such as the wolves not using pack tactics and uncharacteristically attacking a mass of Strange by…..running into the middle of it. Creature effects are bit ropey too.

But you know? This is rather fun, in a hokey, sort of thing I’d watch in the 90’s of a Saturday afternoon.

Nancy Drew (TV Series)

Garbage show.

All the horrible cliches of a YA television series . Stupidly overdone reactions to mundane things, sentimental idicocy, and general characters being too dumb to live. So dumb, I actually wanted them dead because jesus the characters in this show are fething dumb.

The girl in this show is too dumb to believably be a brilliant detective and too emotionally obnoxious and casually cruel to have any friends. In episode 2, she breaks into a morgue and literally steals body parts to run her own autopsy! Nancy Drew belongs in prison >.>

The most pleasant and relatable person in the show is Nancy's dad. He's the only reason I bothered to watch a few episodes instead of just one.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur

It’s more Marvel fare, animated this time.

Gonna give it a whirl. Initial impression is…ambivalent. Which for clarity is distinctly better than Meh.

It’s very stylised art wise, and I’m not sure I’m into it. It’s definite teen/young adult target audience. But oddly, the episodes are 45 minutes long. Granted I’ve only just started the first episode, but that’s striking me as…excessive? Ambitious?

Bit reminiscent of Teen Titans I guess, which admittedly is another show I just didn’t get on with due to art style and that. But hey, as a 42 year old Grognard, im not exactly the target audience, so my opinion is almost certainly slightly less worthless than normal on this one.

Half hour in? OK I’m charmed.


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Binged all the episodes. It has a serious charm I cannot explain.

Nancy Drew Review 2

Alright.

It's still trash... But I honestly can't tell you why but it's trash where you watch it, hate every moment of how stupid the characters and the plot are, and are somehow entertained by the fact that you are smart enough, and sensible enough, to realize how blindingly dumb it all is.

First show where I've ever understood and appreciated hate-watching.

Masters of Horror

I am about half way through season 1, and moving on. I have seen stuff from Dario Argento, Stuart Gordon, Joe Dante and many, many more.

This looks like it must have been HBO or something because every story is dripping with nudity, sex, violence, with a smattering of horror too.

Like any anthology series, individual episodes vary a lot in quality. Some are more slasher horror, some more horror comedy, some are supernatural horror, and others are clearly using a Horror theme to deliver satire.

Annoyingly, the episodes are not close captioned which makes it hard for an old guy like me to hear sometimes. Lately, I have preferred to watch my shows on mute, and read the captions. Sound design and audio volumes are much too wonky for my tastes now-a-days.

Hawkeye
Took two goes but I finally got through this one. It was actually pretty good once I got into it, I think I just needed a break after finishing Falcon and the Winter Soldier, so I'm going to take my time before tackling the next one (Moon Knight isn't it?).

Although I am wondering why Maya is getting her own series, she was okay in this as a minor antagonist, but I can't see what more she has to offer story-wise.

Probably isn't now that Iger is back in charge of Disney.


Edit: Still slogging through Masters of Horror S1. The quality varies a lot, as one would expect with this kind of show. I think Carpenter's Cigarette Burns has been the best one yet, and Tobe Hooper's Dance of the Dead has been the worst.

Still watching through Babylon 5. The episode Voices of Authority hits a little too close to modern times. Hard to believe it was written almost 20 years ago.

You mean nearer 30 years ago (2003 was 20 ago) horrible but true - makes me feel old as well as I saw it on original release in my teens!

That is what I meant. The mind really is first to go, it seems.

The Bear

After the death of his brother, a highly successful chef returns to run the struggling family diner in a deprived part of Chicago.


My inner contrarian normally stops me watching anything this highly decorated on principle, but given I'm caught up on most things, I've got a little TV time available to explore so I figured I'd give this a whirl.

It's not hard to see why this has done so well at the various award ceremonies either. Having spent a few years working in commercial kitchens, I can testify to the authenticity of those scenes (especially the episode where things go wrong and everyone is losing their minds!) That authenticity is just one symptom of what is a cleverly observed and artfully crafted show.

It's important to emphasise how strongly character driven this is, there's some elements of story, but those who like to follow a strong plot are likely to be disappointed. With the limited locations, heavy focus on character, how those various characters and all their faults interact and exploration of big themes grief, doubt and insecurity The Bear could almost work as a series of short plays.

For all the things it does well, and the list is long, I struggled to love this show. I was entertained by it, sure, and I can respect the level of technical excellence both in front and behind the camera, but the characters on show are so flawed, and so well observed, it kinda made it difficult to root for any of them completely. That said, it's easy to argue that the whole of the show is about the cast struggling with that very same thing, and certainly as that moved towards a resolution towards the end, I also found myself moving in the same direction. Season 2 has already been commissioned, and there's little doubt that I'll be watching as soon as it drops.

I enjoyed The Bear a lot as a survivor of Kitchen work and food prep entrepreneurship.

A show I also think really nails the atmosphere of a work place is Superstore. A completely different tone, but still a mostly character driven comedy series about working at a Wal-mart type store. As a survivor of that as well, this shows nails it pretty well.

Despite my workplace drive above, I have never watched more than 1 episode of The Office (either version) despite also being a survivor of working in one of those too.

Now, what show is about working in a Distribution Center? That is the next workplace comedy of our time.

The Last of Us

Yeah, there's a thread dedicated to this show, but here's some general views. I was close to giving up on this show by the end of the second episode as it didn't seem to have anything interesting going for it. Then we had the gay third episode which convinced me to stick with it and fortunately that marked an uptick in theme.

A man and a girl-coming-into-womanhood going on a journey is not an original concept. The show doesn't focus too much on its mushroom zombies as there is a clear intent that it is the relationship we should care about. This is no bad thing but I think this interaction has been done better. A favourite of mine is Upright, a series by Tim Minchin that also explores a broken older guy escorting a tween girl across country. I think that series is much more capable at what TLOU is trying to be. Later on I'm also reminded of the film Leon.

This isn't to say it's not a worthwhile series. The last couple of episodes are particularly good at clarifying motivations for the two leads that were not obvious early on. Ellie's seemingly sociopathic stabbing of an infected in an early episode is made more sympathetic when we are given a deeper understanding of her history.

I do like this show and I think if the second season doesn't succumb to the producers making everything bigger, louder, more expensive, then the second season should also be good for the money.

But if you like to see a better series of misplaced man and girl going on a journey of discovery then I do recommend the first season of Upright ("I, wanna swing: from the chandelier!").

Transformers: Earthspark
Another block of episodes down.
It's still good but the way P+ is releasing this show is absolutely bananas. Block chunks rather than weekly and the release schedule is seemingly just "Oh we forgot we had this show, quick put up like four episodes".

Finished Masters of Horror S1.

Cigarette Burns by Carpenter was the best for sure. There were a couple of other interesting episodes:

- Haeckel's Tale- From Mick Garris but based on a Wes Craven story

- Imprint - A japanese themed horror

- Deer Woman - A monster from American Folklore. Kind of a disappointing ending.

- Jenifer - By Argento and very Italian with an obvious twist, but I still enjoyed it.

Not so good was:

- Dance of the Dead- By Tobe Hooper. Way too 90's for me.

- Homecoming- By Joe Dante. It was like getting hit with the allegory hammer.

- Sick Girl- Super obvious and a fast forwarded through most of it.


The rest were fine, but not great.

Watched the first three episodes of Wednesday. It's mostly fine, but there are some instances of poor writing. Not related to that, but I really dislike Bianca if only because a girl with close-cropped hair would never be the "it girl" in anything remotely resembling modern society. The actress for her isn't any worse than Tyler, Rowan, or other secondary characters, but Enid and Wednesday seem much better than the rest of the cast.

Edit: Finished Wednesday. It's far better than Sabrina IMO. Joy Sunday (Bianca) is pretty without the contacts in the show, but I don't like her acting. The white guys (Xavier, Tyler) are really quite awful.

County Fire

I heard the firefighters hated it so I wanted to see what was what.

*main characters acting like absolute fething morons being treated as heroes*

Okay yeah that explains it. Drama's pretty good though gotta say. In the cheap 'what stupid thing are characters going to be stupid about this week' sort of way. Gonna go get some popcorn.

As Baby Boomers age, I am becoming more convinced that the next great Medical Drama (Like ER, St. Elsewhere, etc.) should be set in a Nursing Home.

That or the next great office comedy ala Superstore, The Office, etc. Either one would work just fine.

The Boomers already have Golden Girls.

I say they make a sitcom for Zoomers, about four gig employees sharing half a studio apartment.

Narcos

I can't believe it's taken me so long to get around to watching this series, it's been on my list for what feels like forever. It's very good, the casting is great and the mix of real footage really sells it.

I would say Seasons 1&2 are far superior to Season 3 though and you can honestly skip Season 3 if you wanted to (as although a continuation of the story, it's a different story).

Youtube has been recommending clips from The Blacklist. I'm about 10 episodes into the first seasons and I am enjoying it a fair bit. It reminds me of the GIJOE comics for some reason. Something about the plots and how it's put together.

x-23 in Bizarro Narnia aka His Dark Materials

I came to the books lale as was picking up any old fantasy whilst another author, lets call him George, was taking his well earned victory lap

Really liked the world building of book 1 but felt the later books was diminishing returns, although if teen Turnip had read them they might have been the best thing ever

The TV show if pretty faithful in that regard and whilst it changed a lot of things I sort of felt Mr Pullman was sort of making it up as he went along so none of the changes bugged me (although having the fairy spies have their dragonflys would have been cool)

The cast is solid with young Ms Keen putting in a good turn (even if Lyra got smoothed out a bit for telly) and TV Serrafina being very easy on the eye

The FX are a mixed bag, I think a lot of the money rightly went on the deamons who are stunning and I even felt a bit bad for the evil Monkey with its human-like expressions, meaning some of the others was a tad Dr Who level

Overall its worth a watch

6/10

Time Team

Classic and new, on YouTube.

I cannot explain just how much I adore this show. I’ve always been interested in archaeology, and my primary schooling involved lots of stuff about Roman Britain.

Time Team makes it all so accessible. Whilst it doesn’t go into detail to academics may find it a bit too light? It’s not over simplified. The difference between accepting and knowing your audience isn’t particularly knowledgeable, but not treating them as if they’re stupid.

Hosts (classic is Sir Tony Robinson) act as surrogates for the audience. When a find is…erm…found, and explained? The host’s job is to task “but that’s just a shard of pot, how do you know it’s X”.

You also get expert predictions on what might be found, sometimes they’re on the money, other times just flat out wrong.

The original series ran for many years, and provided extra fascination in retrospect as you see the tools used develop over the years.

I can’t imagine it’s region locked on YouTube, so I heartily recommend you give it a whirl if you haven’t already.

A new addition to the genre of independent internet animation following Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel;




I can't tell if the lingering skeletons for the characters you can see are a deliberate choice or an error in post but I don't really like them. They're a giant flaring flag that you're watching something and it sucked me out of the story at times.

Other than that, I liked it.

Shrinking

A therapist starts to move on with his life as a single father after the death of his wife.

Not the most compelling synopsis for a comedy show, which is why I was a little slow on the uptake with this one, but the reality is that it knocks home runs all over the park.

Starting with the casting, which is on the money from top to bottom, but Harrison Ford as Jason Segel's grumpy mentor/boss/business partner is one of the most inspired choices since Robert Downey put on a gold and red flying suit.

Ford alone is worth the watch, his dry and deadpan delivery perfectly matching his real life demeanor. I doubt he's acting too hard, but it doesn't really matter.

You're not going to find much here if you like your comedy angry and edgy, but this show is littered with experienced talent and excellent newcomers, all supported by a witty script that's by turns funny and heartwarming.

Apple TV seems to be gradually building a stable of comedies that manage to be entertaining without being cynical, and while this may not quite match the mightyTed, it isn't far from it.

Just finished season two of The Black List this week.
It's been fun. different complaints from season one if I were to have any. But the fun out weighed any negatives. Hopefully I will have time for season three next month.

It still reminds me of the GIJOE comics as far as the level of plot and how characters are related or relate to one another. I especially like seeing the same mercenaries in Reddington's employ turning up every so often. I like that it implies his organization is there in the background and larger than I would have expected from a TV show. Good stuff.