The TV and Streaming Thread: Where is Ricky Gervais when you need him???

[majestic]

Weekly Discovery post #... dunno, don't really care. Episode is called RUBICON because Book is probably going to step over a line from which his relationship with Michael isn't going to recover. Or maybe it will if she just cries hard enough.

Maybe Michael will eventually clasp an asp to her chest. Wouldn't that be something?

Spoiler

Okay, so the isolynium thing Book bought is enough to destroy the DMA and then some (5 light years in diameter, keep that in mind) and McKay is telling Book to be careful when he pours that stuff out of its container into the explosive device. Careful. CAREFUL.

This is a bog-standard scene from any other show, indeed, and here it's nothing but annoying. For crying out loud, if this the Star Trek "let's destroy everything in a five year light radius" equivalent of nitroglycerin, then for crying out loud, handle it with some gadget or another. Not by just pouring it out. Ran out of money for a gadget thing?

Oh, great, Ms. Yum Yum is back, and Levi Shur assigns her to Discovery to step in and MURDERDEATHKILL Book and McKay in case Michael and Saru can't make the call. Nice one, I hope they really go all the way. Please MURDERDEATHKILL everyone!

More of this ongoing "romance" of a sort between Saru and the President of Vulcan. At least it almost looked like the president asked him out for dinner. Saru was suitably confused too. This is probably the only really good thing about this season so far, Saru and her interactions. Let's see how they ruin them in the future.

Discovery has a cloaking device. I'm actually unsure if that's new or an upgrade from last season, but that's just one more thing that's conveniently not going to be used if not using it means more drama or action scenes, like the personal transporters. Yep. Good idea. Docking with a cloaked shuttle on booker's ship goes wrong. Of course it does. Also, the shuttles can cloak too. Uhm... great.

Huh, Michael is telling random blonde lady that she has the "Conn" after Yum Yum requests a private meeting between her, Saru and Michael. They still didn't look up what the conn on a ship is, right? Are we going back to saying First Officer is a rank too? Because that was back in season one and it was supremely stupid.

To quote McKay here:

Quote

"This mission is 10 years in the making for me."

Okay, so he is talking about what he wants to do with the DMA's power source, not blowing it up, but it's still... stupid.

Michael is position Discovery between the DMA's controller device and power source and Book's ship. Hey guys, even if you just see spae as a flat 2D plane, you cannot position yourself between two points without either of these points being able to go around you. Who wrote that stuff? Books ship shows up and Discovery keeps jumping into Book's ship's firing arc. Because this isn't just a flat 2D plane, it's a cul-de-sac of some sort with invisible walls or something... like the brains of everyone involved in this show.

Book and Michael are playing cat and mouse and McKay conveniently gives them a way out when he just starts shooting at Discovery in earnest. It's also a little silly that a small ship like Book's that's barely above shuttle size can go toe to toe with the upgraded, state of the art Discovery, but hey, nothing needs to make sense in this sh*tshow anyway. In a surprise twist McKay firing at Discovery in earnest soured Book's disposition a little and Michael convinces him to stand down. Yay. Right, they stand down because the DMA miner is going to stick around for a week. If they don't make first contact in a week and manage to get its builders to stand down, they'll blow it up.

No head of Pompey on a platter and no civil war. Why is this called Rubicon again?

Oh, McKay decides to fire at the controller. How unexpected. Nobody saw that coming. None of these dipsh*ts at least.

Poof, DMA is gone, and they actually find out why there's a wormhole. It's because the miner was powered through it. Surprise! Maybe this'll end with species Ten-C ROFLSTOMPING the Federation. At this point, I'd actually take that. Please come and press the reset button.

Oh, right, with Ten-C being outside the galaxy, hands up, do you guys think that's maybe the Techno-Cthulhu guys from Picard?

Saru and Culber talk about his upcoming date, and the DMA reforms... well, what a cornucopia of "surprises" this episode was. Oh my.

Too tired of this to be properly annoyed with how stupid everything is. Not the worst way to watch this. This episode also was only 44 minutes long, skipping the "last week" segment and the intro brought this down to a manageable 20 minutes.

[Bartimaeus]

3 minutes ago, majestic said:

Too tired of this to be properly annoyed with how stupid everything is. Not the worst way to watch this. This episode also was only 44 minutes long, skipping the "last week" segment and the intro brought this down to a manageable 20 minutes.

Did you count the time it took to write the post? Because I don't think you counted the time it took to write the post. Remember what I said about "insidious forms of trolling" that cause us to write paragraphs for naught? You are being trolled by Alex Kurtzman, . Although this week it appears he was a lot less successful than usual, so at least there's that!

[majestic]

2 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Did you count the time it took to write the post? Because I don't think you counted the time it took to write the post. Remember what I said about "insidious forms of trolling" that cause us to write paragraphs for naught? You are being trolled by Alex Kurtzman, . Although this week it appears he was a lot less successful than usual, so at least there's that!

No, I didn't, but it took considerably less time than the posts I made before the mid-season break. So yes, definitely a MAJOR improvement.

[LadyCrimson]

Re: Netflix watchlist

Is there still any way to order your watchlist the way you want? Used to be in a browser there was an actual list and you could shuffle them around. Now it appears it's just the image blocks and you cannot anymore, thus you're at the mercy of the random order netflix likes to do. I swear they shuffle things around periodically - it's not even alphabetical or "last one watchlisted first/on top" order. Just all over the place. Drives me nuts.

[Bartimaeus]

30 minutes ago, LadyCrimson said:

Re: Netflix watchlist

Is there still any way to order your watchlist the way you want? Used to be in a browser there was an actual list and you could shuffle them around. Now it appears it's just the image blocks and you cannot anymore, thus you're at the mercy of the random order netflix likes to do. I swear they shuffle things around periodically - it's not even alphabetical or "last one watchlisted first/on top" order. Just all over the place. Drives me nuts.

I would settle for at least understanding *how* they organize it. It's not alphabetical, it's not by date, it's not in the order that I added them in... I'm once again thankful that streaming is not really my primary method of watching things (and I usually only have 20 items on my own personal Netflix list at any one time anyways), but if it were, I would be very annoyed with it.

45 minutes ago, majestic said:

No, I didn't, but it took considerably less time than the posts I made before the mid-season break. So yes, definitely a MAJOR improvement.

Progress is progress, I suppose... You know, it might be possible that if you waited long enough (like, say, years), whatever company is responsible for running this show (I know it's been mentioned many times before, but it's slipping my mind right now) might realize how terrible and embarrassing it all was and take it off the air and rob you of the opportunity to ever be able to finish it. Just a thought...

Edited February 18, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Huh, Michael is telling random blonde lady that she has the "Conn" after Yum Yum requests a private meeting between her, Saru and Michael. They still didn't look up what the conn on a ship is, right? Are we going back to saying First Officer is a rank too? Because that was back in season one and it was supremely stupid.

You know, I was going to say those are pretty pedantic objections. But then I remember that every time I see a class designation of Destroyer I get an urge to ask where the torpedo boats it's meant to Destroy are. So, maybe not.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Zoraptor

[Lexx]

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I would settle for at least understanding *how* they organize it.

Tell me about it. Last week they suggested me a new korean show, I thought it looked interesting, but I had other watch-plans that evening. Nontheless I started it for 10 seconds and then backed out of it again. Now I can't find the show anymore, it seems to be completely gone from my suggestions.

That said, the tv app doesn't seem to have some sort of "save this for later"-function, only a "like", which would put it on my list ... but how can I "like" something that I haven't even started watching yet.

[Hiro Protagonist]

Season 1 of Legend of Vox Machina finished. Bring on Season 2!

[majestic]

8 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

You know, I was going to say those are pretty pedantic objections. But then I remember that every time I see a class designation of Destroyer I get an urge to ask where the torpedo boats it's meant to Destroy are. So, maybe not.

If the rest of the show was any good that wouldn't matter enough to be picked on, indeed. That is fairly pedantic, on the other hand, I've been doing that ever since the first post about the first episode. Same for them getting distances wrong all the time, like when the Klingon fleet in the first season was threatening "the Fedetation" with the location of the Klingon fleet just outside the solar system. Good job.

[Amentep]

 

[Bartimaeus]

Speaking of Netflix doing weird stuff:

Netflix has some sort of thumbnail-picking AI that tries to pick the best thumbnail to appeal specifically to you. This is apparently the one that they thought was best for me, immediately after finishing an episode of Gilmore Girls. Yeah, okay, Netflix.

...

*starts watching Seinfeld*

Spoiler

Nah, just kidding - Netflix has the garbage widescreen-cropped versions of the show, so I wouldn't even watch it on there anyways.

 

[majestic]

I'd be fine with Netflix not trying to get me to watch "Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai", which it does like every time I log on. It also told me Komi Can't Communicate has a new dub now. That's going to fix everything, huh?

Spoiler

Actually... it might really be an improvement because the original voice acting ranges from neurotic to insane, but it'll still be Komi Can't Communicate.

Let's see what else is in the recommendations then. Steins;Gate 0. Nope. Designated Survivor, apparently a TV show where Jack Bauer plays the only person left of the US government after a terrorist attack, and apparently the Harry Potter films are on Netflix now. Okay.

Heh.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

16 minutes ago, majestic said:

I'd be fine with Netflix not trying to get me to watch "Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai", which it does like every time I log on.

That's not as bad as the Kanye documentary series. 

[majestic]

6 minutes ago, KP the Torque Dork said:

That's not as bad as the Kanye documentary series. 

If Netflix ever recommends that then they lost a subscriber.

[Maedhros]

The Kanye documentary was solid though, and rather insightful  for someone like me who isn't familiar with the hip-hop culture of the early 00s.

[Amentep]

TNG 'Sub Rosa' - Yet another episode where a characters begins acting out of character and everyone ignores it. 

Your appreciation of the episode probably depends on your ability to appreciate 70s Gothic romances more than Star Trek. Which makes it a bit of a bust as a Star Trek episode.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

On 2/18/2022 at 6:45 PM, majestic said:

If Netflix ever recommends that then they lost a subscriber.

Eh, usually I just ignore Netflix recs and search for what I want. Back Street Girls: Gokudolls is probably worse.

11 hours ago, Maedhros said:

The Kanye documentary was solid though, and rather insightful  for someone like me who isn't familiar with the hip-hop culture of the early 00s.

While I haven't seen it, I grew up with hip-hop in the early aughts so I don't think it would be much I haven't heard. Kanye is inescapable, between production and features he has been everywhere and continues to be one of the biggest figures in music, and even discounting that he is constantly doing stuff to make waves (most of which reflect very badly on him). The problem is that the dude is really insecure and somehow manages to look like a loser when he's winning.

[Lexx]

God damnit, I did the same mistake again .. Netflix suggested me something, I clicked on it to check it out for later, then backed out of it again ... and now it's gone and I can't find it again. Netflix, NO, just because I don't watch it right away, doesn't mean I'm not interested in it!! ****ing hell.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

5 minutes ago, Lexx said:

God damnit, I did the same mistake again .. Netflix suggested me something, I clicked on it to check it out for later, then backed out of it again ... and now it's gone and I can't find it again. Netflix, NO, just because I don't watch it right away, doesn't mean I'm not interested in it!! ****ing hell.

At this point if I'm even remotely interested in something I add it to my watchlist.

[Malcador]

https://www.vg247.com/amazon-signs-first-look-deal-for-disco-elysium-it-takes-two-and-life-is-strange-tv-adaptions

Hopefully Scooter will do the OST.

[Gfted1]

I binged the rest of The Legend of Vox Machina and really enjoyed S1. I had to laugh at myself though, I think the last time Ive seen cartoon breasts was when me and Methuselah watched Heavy Metal together.

[Hurlshort]

On 2/18/2022 at 1:34 PM, Amentep said:

 

It is good to see Eagly getting more work, but after Peacemaker and this, I am worried he is being typecast as a superhero flick animal actor.

[uuuhhii]

looks like superhero tv show finally find a working formula

embrace the absurdity

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Isn't the Daily Wire Ben Shapiro's rag? I guess everyone is getting into streaming these days.

[Amentep]

4 hours ago, KP the Torque Dork said:

Isn't the Daily Wire Ben Shapiro's rag? I guess everyone is getting into streaming these days.

Yes it is, apparently its the third film they've bought to stream.