Random TV Show Thoughts

[Totenkindly]

Marginal thumbs up on Loki s2e1.

It starts out a bit rough but settles into focusing on a single plot, the jokes and delivery actually are kinda quirky-funny, there's some real dramatic tension, and there's actually some character building especially by the end and with the post-credits scene.

I looked up the production staff after, and it looks like Benson & Moorhead (yes, actually decent scifi/horror guys -- they did Synchronic, Spring, The Endless, etc.) are directing most of the episodes, and Eric Martin who wrote the best of season 1 (including the finale) is now the showrunner. So I feel like they have all stepped up and the first episode shows it. We're still talking MCU style shows but at least this feels more polished and engaging, rather just a cluster. I think it was huge benefit to get rid of Renslayer at the moment, and if they bother to bring her in, they better write her a hell of a lot better.

For kicks, they threw Kate Dickie and Liz Carr into the mix. (I first saw Liz Carr when she was in an episode of DEVS.) Of course Ke Huy Quan is also in this season.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

because on some level all little boys want red eyes and to look so good in white. He was also charming and kinda sexy in the books. The boy crush is strong with this one. Plus he wasnt afraid to try to rule the galaxy with a tree weasel draped over his shoulders. back when the clone wars seemed like they were more fun and impressive than they actually were.

He was evil Picard, wasn't he?

 

[The Cat]

He was evil Picard, wasn't he?

He was a blue riker with the personality of having a beard, but not having a beard. He was like the emperor a fan of the arts and art. He was polite, calm, charming. Just really really fuckable.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

He was a blue riker with the personality of having a beard, but not having a beard. He was like the emperor a fan of the arts and art. He was polite, calm, charming. Just really really fuckable.

I guess Picard wasn't fuckable like Riker. I still really like my Thrawn-is-evil-Picard theory and and I'm sticking to it. I'm excluding the fuckable variable from my calculations, as important (and maybe even crucial) as that may be.

They never showed us a mirror universe Picard, did they? Skinny Tom Hardy in Nemesis doesn't count, that wasn't from the mirror universe.

I'll also note that Heir to the Empire came out in '91 when TNG was on the air. It's conceivable that Timothy Zahn was watching that show while trying to figure out the villain for his book, and then jotted down on a notepad: "Evil Picard?"

Also, my first encounter with Thrawn was in the game Tie Fighter, which I played before I ever saw ROTJ in its entirety (which didn't happen until it was on the big screen in 97). The interesting thing about that game is that the Empire is portrayed kind of like the Federation at first, at least until you start dealing with traitorous admirals. But it ties into the thing I always found most interesting about Star Wars (at its best, anyway), that it's completely fictional, yet appears to be rich and vast and unlimited in possibilities, as well as interconnected. It somehow is, at times, arriving at this middle ground where it feels both appropriately fantastical and yet, somehow quite real. It was a rich tapestry for the imagination to run wild. For instance I remember me playing this game with Thrawn, not knowing about the books, and then finding out about the books and having my mind blown.

(I still haven't gotten to Thrawn in Ahsoka so I can't comment on his appearance there.)

This statement about not seeing ROTJ is also an interesting reminder of a time before media was all-pervasive, and it wasn't necessarily easy to see things. I had rented ROTJ from Blockbuster and the damned VHS player ate it. I'd seen fragments of it on TV after that but must have been operating under the assumption that they wouldn't replace it with a new tape, because I never tried renting it again. I think I can recognize why Jedi is "not as good", but it took me so long to actually see it that it has a special place in my heart. I think it might be my favorite.

 

[The Cat]

I guess Picard wasn't fuckable like Riker. I still really like my Thrawn-is-evil-Picard theory and and I'm sticking to it. I'm excluding the fuckable variable from my calculations, as important (and maybe even crucial) as that may be.

They never showed us a mirror universe Picard, did they? Skinny Tom Hardy in Nemesis doesn't count, that wasn't from the mirror universe.

I'll also note that Heir to the Empire came out in '91 when TNG was on the air. It's conceivable that Timothy Zahn was watching that show while trying to figure out the villain for his book, and then jotted down on a notepad: "Evil Picard?"

Also, my first encounter with Thrawn was in the game Tie Fighter, which I played before I ever saw ROTJ in its entirety (which didn't happen until it was on the big screen in 97). The interesting thing about that game is that the Empire is portrayed kind of like the Federation at first, at least until you start dealing with traitorous admirals. But it ties into the thing I always found most interesting about Star Wars (at its best, anyway), that it's completely fictional, yet appears to be rich and vast and unlimited in possibilities, as well as interconnected. It somehow is, at times, arriving at this middle ground where it feels both appropriately fantastical and yet, somehow quite real. It was a rich tapestry for the imagination to run wild. For instance I remember me playing this game with Thrawn, not knowing about the books, and then finding out about the books and having my mind blown.

(I still haven't gotten to Thrawn in Ahsoka so I can't comment on his appearance there.)

This statement about not seeing ROTJ is also an interesting reminder of a time before media was all-pervasive, and it wasn't necessarily easy to see things. I had rented ROTJ from Blockbuster and the damned VHS player ate it. I'd seen fragments of it on TV after that but must have been operating under the assumption that they wouldn't replace it with a new tape, because I never tried renting it again. I think I can recognize why Jedi is "not as good", but it took me so long to actually see it that it has a special place in my heart. I think it might be my favorite.

Feel free to do with your imagination as you wish, i never thought you would do otherwise. The empire is to most people in the galaxy the government for better or worse.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Feel free to do with your imagination as you wish, i never thought you would do otherwise. The empire is to most people in the galaxy the government for better or worse.

Well, the Federation is just a benevolent version of the Empire, IMO. The mirror universe is the Empire without the Dark Side of the Force, filled with murderous passion.

Also, if you take the Force out of the equation, I imagine the rebellion falls apart due to factionalism.

 

[The Cat]

Well, the Federation is just a benevolent version of the Empire, IMO. The mirror universe is the Empire without the Dark Side of the Force, filled with murderous passion.

Also, if you take the Force out of the equation, I imagine the rebellion falls apart due to factionalism.

If you take the force out of the equation not much happens different, there's literally two featured force uses in the entire rebellion and that's like only six years of it, now that the new canon is what it is. And if you want to include the new cannon, the force did jack all shit to keep the rebellion together. Star Wars works like it does because its a romantic concept in a space opera. the bad guys are carnoonishly bad, and the good guy are insufferably innocent despite being political terrorists. Star Trek is the love boat in space with a more serious spin. And the mirror universe of Star Trek is essentially just the universe we live in albeit with less qualms about being upfront about what it is. Because Star Trek is a science fiction serial about what we could be if we would let go of the mistakes of the past and embrace the new lessons of the future.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

If you take the force out of the equation not much happens different, there's literally two featured force uses in the entire rebellion and that's like only six years of it, now that the new canon is what it is. And if you want to include the new cannon, the force did jack all shit to keep the rebellion together. Star Wars works like it does because its a romantic concept in a space opera. the bad guys are carnoonishly bad, and the good guy are insufferably innocent despite being political terrorists. Star Trek is the love boat in space with a more serious spin. And the mirror universe of Star Trek is essentially just the universe we live in albeit with less qualms about being upfront about what it is. Because Star Trek is a science fiction serial about what we could be if we would let go of the mistakes of the past and embrace the new lessons of the future.

This is what I like about Star Trek.

What I mean about the Force keeping the rebellion together, I mean that it secured a big win that was a huge morale boost that people could rally behind. And I think we're supposed to conclude that feeling attached to the Force in some way can have an affect as well. If you watch Rogue One, it appears that the Rebellion is on the verge of collapse due to internal dissension until Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor step in, and it's suggested that Erso has some connection to the Force. Sometimes a group needs one thing to keep it motivated, and denied that thing, it begins to fall apart.

I think people actually can be cartoonishly evil, which is why I've softened on Avatar. I need to write a long review of the second film articulating how I feel about it. \

Also, did you watch Andor? The rebellion does some not-so-innocent things in that.

 

[The Cat]

This is what I like about Star Trek.

What I mean about the Force keeping the rebellion together, I mean that it secured a big win that was a huge morale boost that people could rally behind. And I think we're supposed to conclude that feeling attached to the Force in some way can have an affect as well. If you watch Rogue One, it appears that the Rebellion is on the verge of collapse due to internal dissension until Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor step in, and it's suggested that Erso has some connection to the Force. Sometimes a group needs one thing to keep it motivated, and denied that thing, it begins to fall apart.

I think people actually can be cartoonishly evil, which is why I've softened on Avatar. I need to write a long review of the second film articulating how I feel about it. \

Also, did you watch Andor? The rebellion does some not-so-innocent things in that.

I dont have Disney +rn. I think its great about Andor, and I would have liked for it not to be a one off for a one off character. Rogue oone introduced some of the most interesting and enjoyable characters in star wars and just kaked them all just so Dark Forces wasnt cannon anymore. The win for star wars is moving into giving us more of characters like in rogue one without constantly whiplashing us back to the same few people.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I dont have Disney +rn. I think its great about Andor, and I would have liked for it not to be a one off for a one off character. Rogue oone introduced some of the most interesting and enjoyable characters in star wars and just kaked them all just so Dark Forces wasnt cannon anymore. The win for star wars is moving into giving us more of characters like in rogue one without constantly whiplashing us back to the same few people.

Oh, Dark Forces was truly an awesome experience in the mid-90's. Kyle Katarn was awesome. He started out as basically Han Solo crossed with James Bond, and then they later made him a Jedi, because, well, why not?

It's too bad he doesn't exist any more, although Andor is like him in some ways, if more cold-blooded than Katarn is ever seen to be.

Remember fighting Boba Fett on Coruscant? That was hard. My friend for some reason told me that you could punch him and his helmet would come off, revealing a green-faced creature. I tried this with the help of cheat codes (damn jet pack), and this did not happen. Anyway we now know he looks like Temura Morrison, and should have starred in a better show.

I liked the ice level, because of the ambience, and because it was terrifying as hell. You just get finished fighting off this gigantic stormtrooper with a jet pack, bringing health down to almost nothing. Then, you find yourself running through tunnels being chased by terminators. Because you have nothing left, your only option is to run and hope you find a way out, which is naturally on the side of a narrow ledge looking out into an icy abyss. So awesome.

 

[Totenkindly]

Gee, Marvel -- no shit.

‘Daredevil’ Hits Reset Button as Marvel Overhauls Its TV Business

Launched during the pandemic with a playbook to shoot $150 million-plus seasons with no pilots, the Disney unit is undergoing growing pains and seeing the logic of "traditional TV culture."

www.hollywoodreporter.com

It didn’t take long to see the problem after Marvel Studios’ Daredevil: Born Again paused production in mid-June during the writers strike. Fewer than half of the series’ 18 episodes had been shot, but it was enough for Marvel executives, including chief Kevin Feige, to review the footage and come away with a clear-eyed assessment: The show wasn’t working.

So, in late September, Marvel quietly let go of head writers Chris Ord and Matt Corman and also released the directors for the remainder of the season as part of a significant creative reboot of the series, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. The studio is now on the hunt for new writers and directors for the project, which stars Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer turned superhero.

The Daredevil revamp is the latest in a series of growing pains for Marvel television. Since debuting the Emmy-winning WandaVision in January 2021, the studio, which dominated the film industry in the 2010s, has released more than 50 hours of TV programming after creating a small-screen division from the ground up during the pandemic.

Through it all, the company eschewed the traditional TV-making model. It didn’t commission pilots but instead shot entire $150 million-plus seasons of TV on the fly. It didn’t hire showrunners, but instead depended on film executives to run its series. And as Marvel does for its movies, it relied on postproduction and reshoots to fix what wasn’t working.

Even though they remain, along with Star Wars titles, the most watched shows on Disney+, Marvel series have recently faced a number of creative challenges and cries of diminishing returns from critics and audience metrics, causing a major shift at the studio to move to make TV shows the more traditional way.

Hilarious -- it's traditional to have writers and a showrunner?

Not that the listed "showrunners" for almost all the Marvel shows were any good, but if the shows were taking notes and direction from film execs as the bottom line, welp, maybe we can just lay that whole sorry mess at their feet as to why the writing and story coherence was so bad.

I guess they realized they can no longer just throw millions of dollars at a show and get a return, especially if it's just going to their streaming service.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

I’m considering rewatching BCS and BB (and El Camino) in chronological order. So BCS up to most of season 6, then switch to BB, then El Camino, then the rest of BCS season 6. All in one binge run

Words can’t really describe how much I love this TV universe, and I’m not even really a big tv watcher

 

[Totenkindly]

‘Loki’ Season 2 Shows Why Marvel’s Multiverse Doesn’t Work

In Loki, the multiverse was only spawned…two episodes ago. These branches did not exist before two episodes ago.

www.forbes.com

soo... three episodes in....

• Loki Season 2 is better than Season 1 IMO.
• Loki is leaning into his villain nature but using it for more positive results -- that's better than defanging him or softening him up.
• Sylvie has mostly been annoying when she's involved in the plot; her stuff about wanting to just have a regular life is fine, but she just keeps showing up on her one-trick pony of revenge. It gets old.
• Renslayer got some character development in Season 3, but at times it just still feels unnuanced and still unclear about what her goals are. All in all, this show seems to not really know how to write women... the women characters are noticeably weaker in the writing than male characters and they don't seem to know what to do with them.
• Miss Minutes actually might have gotten the most interesting role, which is amusing as she's just a cartoon AI right now. I guess we'll see if this is going anywhere useful.
• I have mixed feelings about Jonathan Majors' version of Kang in e3. I think I'm okay with it but I know others complained about the clumsy pacing/oddity of his speech pattern.

 

[Totenkindly]

So Gen V continues to knock things out of the park with S1e6. A lot of backstory gets filled in, which is good -- but the acting by the students is just tremendous, and they also feel like teenagers. The last two episodes are going to be nuts. They were all great, but Lizzie Broadway as Emma (who seems to be viewed as a B-tier hero in the public and school view) is just blowing the gauges off -- her acting and line delivery is so nuanced, she's so much better than needed for this role.

It's just bizarre to me that a show with such a cynical/realistic view of heroes and just over the top satirical sex/violence quotient is blowing Marvel out of the water in the drama department, there's nothing Marvel is doing on TV that even comes close.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

Apparently Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot) is working on a new Battlestar Galactica. Not a new version of the same story, but somehow adding to the story - though I don't see how it's possible, since the series gave a relatively definitive beginning (cylon attack) and end. And I know there was already a different series about events leading up to the cylon attack. I haven't found any further details.

But I loved Mr. Robot, and BSG, so hopefully it'll be good.

 

[The Cat]

Apparently Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot) is working on a new Battlestar Galactica. Not a new version of the same story, but somehow adding to the story - though I don't see how it's possible, since the series gave a relatively definitive beginning (cylon attack) and end. And I know there was already a different series about events leading up to the cylon attack. I haven't found any further details.

But I loved Mr. Robot, and BSG, so hopefully it'll be good.

Im glad there's going to be a third incarnation of Battlestar Galactica. I like how the Ronald Moore reboots was different enough from the orginal to feel like a new story, which was fun. Especially when you took into account the Leobon Dialogue of the lore into account. "All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again." Im pretty excited about this, and the Babylon 5 reboot.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Apparently Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot) is working on a new Battlestar Galactica. Not a new version of the same story, but somehow adding to the story - though I don't see how it's possible, since the series gave a relatively definitive beginning (cylon attack) and end. And I know there was already a different series about events leading up to the cylon attack. I haven't found any further details.

But I loved Mr. Robot, and BSG, so hopefully it'll be good.

I'm wary, but the guy does have experience on shows about robots (dumb joke, feel free to shoot me), so maybe I'll give this a chance. People thought this way about the aughts series, so I supposed it's only fair.

 

[The Cat]

So Gen V continues to knock things out of the park with S1e6. A lot of backstory gets filled in, which is good -- but the acting by the students is just tremendous, and they also feel like teenagers. The last two episodes are going to be nuts. They were all great, but Lizzie Broadway as Emma (who seems to be viewed as a B-tier hero in the public and school view) is just blowing the gauges off -- her acting and line delivery is so nuanced, she's so much better than needed for this role.

It's just bizarre to me that a show with such a cynical/realistic view of heroes and just over the top satirical sex/violence quotient is blowing Marvel out of the water in the drama department, there's nothing Marvel is doing on TV that even comes close.

I'll take a passionate team of creators with a vision, than a corporate report driven big budget vanity project that has to inclued an algorythm's imput about what influencers say is trending there fore must be in the movie.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

Im glad there's going to be a third incarnation of Battlestar Galactica. I like how the Ronald Moore reboots was different enough from the orginal to feel like a new story, which was fun. Especially when you took into account the Leobon Dialogue of the lore into account. "All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again." Im pretty excited about this, and the Babylon 5 reboot.

Yeah, it's practically another genre. They're as different (if not moreso) as Adam West's Batman and Christian Bale's. I grew up watching the original BSG, so my fondness is from nostalgia. The barely recognizable remake is just really good on its own. It'll be really interesting to see what Esmail does with it.

 

[Totenkindly]

If true, this hurts a lot. I haven't read this book and wanted to see the limited series. I am guess the critics are more informed + are harder on cliche / melodramatic adaptations of books they've probably read and adored. The negative part of the audience score is likely the 1/3 of people who read the book or hate this stuff anyway, and otherwise the typical Netflix audience that made Tiger King so popular is the other 67%.

I have loved Louis Hoffman ever since seeing him in "Dark" and this is a huge disappointment.

If anyone has actually read the book and watches this, let us know what you think about it.