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

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 hours ago, Keyrock said:

I think the problem is that the character Jean-Luc Picard is far too outdated. The show writers need to update Picard and make them an ethnically mixed, androgynous, pansexual, time-traveling, undead, semi-biological semi-synthetic, shape-shifting ethereal being that birthed itself during a quantum fluctuation in a parallel reality. Obviously.

/hides

That sounds way better than whatever they actually did.

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

Now you just reminded me that they killed him just to revive him as an android who ... is pretty much 1:1 like a human. What even was the point in doing that.

 

[Amentep]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

Now you just reminded me that they killed him just to revive him as an android who ... is pretty much 1:1 like a human. What even was the point in doing that.

Revived Picard believes there are 5 lights.

...

...

I'll get me coat.

 

[Keyrock]

Brisco County - EP6 Riverboat

Brisco steps in after Socrates has been fleeced by a riverboat gambler and boxing promoter who also happens to be one of Bly's men.

Mostly a side quest episode but tangentially related to the main plot. This was my favorite episide so far. It had gambling, a boxing match, and Brisco Roscoe Meriweather using his wits and silver tongue to swindle a swindler. The appearance of Dixie Cousins [Bobby Heenan]"But who's side is she on?"[/Bobby Heenan] threw a wildcard into the mix, creating a delicious web of deception and double crosses.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

Oh well, ending a series like that well is always the hardest part, and it was still a very good watch overall.

I think when a few of us (myself, majestic, and KP) all watched it fairly close to each other a while back, we pretty much agreed with you re: "how has literally nobody heard of [this thing that everybody knows about]", and that the ending wasn't necessarily the strongest narrative-wise, but was strong thematically. It can be tough to do both, especially for something like this - endings are hard even in the best of circumstances. Great show, but certainly not perfect by any means.

Spoiler

It might help to know that the series was written by a militant atheist that grew up in the Catholic church...or not, considering how respectfully the whole "religious" part of the show is treated, really. A lot of stupid tropes were very nicely avoided, while a select few others were...pushed to their limits, as in the case of Bev.

 

Edited March 17, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[majestic]

3 hours ago, ShadySands said:

I agree with whoever it was, maybe majestic, that said the problem isn't that characters are diverse but rather that there's not much else to them than what makes them different. It's that same shallowness that kind of permeates all of nuDrek.

Yes, and it's really problematic because it just gives the culture war brigade a readily exploitable point of attack. Almost 20 years ago, we were discussing Star Trek Enterprise on the Interplay forum and making fun of Ensign Mayweather, the token black guy on the crew, actually counting his lines and marking episodes down where he had more than one. He was so obviously a token character the writers wanted on the show for inclusivity's sake but didn't know what to do with - but at least the other characters on the crew felt a little more fleshed out.

Discovery, meanwhile, feels like the entire crew was made to check every box on the token minority list, and not many of them are real characters beyond that. There's a gay couple, a body positivity girl, Michael is of course the token black hire, Michelle Yeoh rounded everything out as the Asian lady on the show. Half of those weren't even real characters, and the half that were got mostly terrible writing to work with. Subsequent seasons added a token trans character and a token non-binary and it's painfully obvious that the writers don't know what to do with them either.

From there you can just so easily point to diversity ruining your show, while that has very little to do with it. These characters would all be crap even if they all were caucasian and cis-heterosexual. One could easily also get the impression that these shows are insulated from any professional criticism on account of their tokenistic approach, and I've argued before that this is perhaps one of the reasons to include them - or better put, to keep including more and more of them.

Discovery airs to raving critical reviews all the time, while the show is just plain terrible. While such things are always subjective, Discovery has a writing and direction problem, and had so right from the start. I watch that, look up reviews and wonder what's wrong with the world. Then you watch a YouTube video by Critical Drinking Billy 'I hate cuckservatives' of Akkad III telling you that in the past, your favorite shows used to be better because critics treated them fairly and writers worked hard on them because the culture war garbage didn't force them to include every minority under the sun, and you might actually find yourself agreeing with it. It's insidious. Especially because in the case of Star Trek, it's a franchise that was always very progressive for its time. It would be the perfect vehicle, but they're just making an utter mess of it. 

Also, because I'm contractually obligated (but also want) to, I need to once again point out that most of these things were done better by a now 30 year old cartoon adaptation that had a group of girls transform into superheroes by putting on makeup and nail polish and fight evil in the name of love and justice - and yes, that was more than occasionally just about as campy as it sounds, but it also had real characters, almost always treated everyone as equal (and if anyone did not, it came from the villains) and never felt as if it was pushing an agenda. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was a damn sight better representing equality and acceptance than Star Trek Discovery or that Captain Marvel film.

31 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I think when a few of us (myself, majestic, and KP) all watched it fairly close to each other a while back, we pretty much agreed with you re: "how has literally nobody heard of [this thing that everybody knows about]", and that the ending wasn't necessarily the strongest narrative-wise, but was strong thematically. It can be tough to do both, especially for something like this - endings are hard even in the best of circumstances. Great show, but certainly not perfect by any means.

  Hide contents

It might help to know that the series was written by a militant atheist that grew up in the Catholic church...or not, considering how respectfully the whole "religious" part of the show is treated, really. A lot of stupid tropes were very nicely avoided, while a select few others were...pushed to their limits, as in the case of Bev.

 

I had a good chuckle at RLM's comment in their Midnight Mass video that I watched after the fact when they said it was the best Stephen King adaptation ever that wasn't based on an actual work by Stephen King. I made the same point very early in my posts about it, I think.

Edited March 17, 2022 by majestic

[Zoraptor]

That's a really good comparison. If I had to compare my reaction to Midnight Mass to a book something like The Stand would be closest. I really enjoyed the build up, and was a bit disappointed by the ending- but I'm not quite sure whether that was because the ending was 'bad' or because it simply couldn't match the quality of the build up.

Slightly OT, but literally the only ending to a Stephen King book I unequivocally liked was The Dead Zone's. I was going to say that that book doesn't make many King top 10s except mine, but apparently it makes just about all of them...

[majestic]

So, there it is, the final episode of Discovery, season four. The way the show meandered through being really stupid in the first half now paid off with an utterly rushed conclusion that has elements that make no sense, everything is resolved instantly and gets no time to breathe, but at least Michael cries twice in the episode.

Spoiler

When she thinks Booker died, but ho, surprise, he didn't!

They also seem to have reused art assets for the new species they introduced there, because it sure feels like I've seen those before. I guess they really bought leftover Mass Effect assets from Bioware.

Every frame is so dense. Wait, wrong franchise. I wonder if the Reapers ever assumed direct control over those guys...

The conclusion:

Spoiler

Species Ten-C agrees to redirect the DMA to uninhabited worlds only, but Booker is like NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! your device is still creating space litter and subspace anomalies, that's just bad for the environment, and they're like "but then we would not have energy for our energy barrier" and everyone is like "that's fine, ignore that some of us just wanted to kill every last one of you, let's join hands and sing kumbaya!" and they're "yeah, fine" and switch off their energy collection device.

They also apparently have zero energy storage because they shut off their protective "hyperfield" immediately.

Yeah, it was dumb.

 

Edited March 18, 2022 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 minutes ago, majestic said:

So, there it is, the final episode of Discovery, season four. The way the show meandered through being really stupid in the first half now paid off with an utterly rushed conclusion that has elements that make no sense, everything is resolved instantly and gets no time to breathe, but at least Michael cries twice in the episode.

  Reveal hidden contents

When she thinks Booker died, but ho, surprise, he didn't!

They also seem to have reused art assets for the new species they introduced there, because it sure feels like I've seen those before. I guess they really bought leftover Mass Effect assets from Bioware.

Every frame is so dense. Wait, wrong franchise. I wonder if the Reapers ever assumed direct control over those guys...

The conclusion:

  Reveal hidden contents

Species Ten-C agrees to redirect the DMA to uninhabited worlds only, but Booker is like NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! your device is still creating space litter and subspace anomalies, that's just bad for the environment, and they're like "but then we would not have energy for our energy barrier" and everyone is like "that's fine, ignore that some of us just wanted to kill every last one of you, let's join hands and sing kumbaya!" and they're "yeah, fine" and switch off their energy collection device.

They also apparently have zero energy storage because they shut off their protective "hyperfield" immediately.

Yeah, it was dumb.

 

[Gfted1]

On 3/17/2022 at 10:08 AM, Hurlsnot said:

Eagly is the best sidekick ever.

Eagly is hardcore, man!

[majestic]

On 3/17/2022 at 2:27 PM, kirottu said:

Picard season 2 episode 3

Episode that boldly asks "what if everyone was stupid".

I expected nothing and had my hopes dashed, and it was incredibly lazy to boot.

Spoiler

Writers: "Guys, we have no idea what to do with Legolas and he's going to be an issue in the past, can we just kill him?"
Alex Kurtzman: "Sure."

Writers: "How about we rehash a time travel plot from Deep Space Nine?"
Alex Kurtzman: "That's a great idea!"

Writers: "We also have half a script left from Orange Is The New Black's final season."
Alex Kurtzman: "Yeah, just don't do prison, how about a semi-illegal clinic?"
Writers: "Great, we'll add a romance for Rios too!"

Okay, so Legolas dying has the emotional impact of accidentially stepping on a stink bug, the only way your eyes are going to water is the smell. In the case of the stink bug it's their defense mechanism, in the case of Star Trek: Picard it's the combination of laziness, bad writing and that incredibly bad performance of Michelle Hurd. Wow, I'm really believing you're so totally mad about Legolas dying here.

The rest of this episode was a whole lot of nothing, some silly Borg technobabble and the obligatory melee action scenes. Rios of course has to get himself arrested because he can't resist a 21st century piece of ass he enjoys looking at, because screw professionalism, bring on the machismo, although I'm willing to admit that Sol Rodriguez gives the best performance in the episode, and she's in the strongest scenes too. I wonder if they'll take her to the future with them, just to copy something from Star Trek IV. Rios is clearly head over heels in love.

Do I want to comment how nothing about these interactions between Jurati, Picard and the Borg Queen made sense in the established context of Star Trek? Probably not.

Borg Queen already hooked up to the ship demands the ship in exchange for information. Yeah, uhm... why not.

Man, really, I thought this would go down the crapper, but this was inexplicably even dumberer-er than last week's episode and even less fun. Except for the clinic scenes, those were fine. I'd watch Ramirez' Anatomy, but only if it was written, produced and directed by someone else.

I'm going to contradict Rich here and predict that Picard's mother is the mysterious Watcher entity they're looking for right now. Look up, Jean-Luc!

Although one doesn't rule out the other. She could be the Watcher and become the Borg Queen.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

8 minutes ago, majestic said:

I expected nothing and had my hopes dashed, and it was incredibly lazy to boot.

  Reveal hidden contents

Writers: "Guys, we have no idea what to do with Legolas and he's going to be an issue in the past, can we just kill him?"
Alex Kurtzman: "Sure."

Writers: "How about we rehash a time travel plot from Deep Space Nine?"
Alex Kurtzman: "That's a great idea!"

Writers: "We also have half a script left from Orange Is The New Black's final season."
Alex Kurtzman: "Yeah, just don't do prison, how about a semi-illegal clinic?"
Writers: "Great, we'll add a romance for Rios too!"

Okay, so Legolas dying has the emotional impact of accidentially stepping on a stink bug, the only way your eyes are going to water is the smell. In the case of the stink bug it's their defense mechanism, in the case of Star Trek: Picard it's the combination of laziness, bad writing and that incredibly bad performance of Michelle Hurd. Wow, I'm really believing you're so totally mad about Legolas dying here.

The rest of this episode was a whole lot of nothing, some silly Borg technobabble and the obligatory melee action scenes. Rios of course has to get himself arrested because he can't resist a 21st century piece of ass he enjoys looking at, because screw professionalism, bring on the machismo, although I'm willing to admit that Sol Rodriguez gives the best performance in the episode, and she's in the strongest scenes too. I wonder if they'll take her to the future with them, just to copy something from Star Trek IV. Rios is clearly head over heels in love.

Do I want to comment how nothing about these interactions between Jurati, Picard and the Borg Queen made sense in the established context of Star Trek? Probably not.

Borg Queen already hooked up to the ship demands the ship in exchange for information. Yeah, uhm... why not.

Man, really, I thought this would go down the crapper, but this was inexplicably even dumberer-er than last week's episode and even less fun. Except for the clinic scenes, those were fine. I'd watch Ramirez' Anatomy, but only if it was written, produced and directed by someone else.

I'm going to contradict Rich here and predict that Picard's mother is the mysterious Watcher entity they're looking for right now. Look up, Jean-Luc!

Although one doesn't rule out the other. She could be the Watcher and become the Borg Queen.

[rjshae]

Next up will be a time travel show in which the troupe goes back to fix social injustice throughout history. That'll keep the writers busy for years.

[ShadySands]

Please don't give them any ideas

[InsaneCommander]

13 hours ago, majestic said:

Man, really, I thought this would go down the crapper, but this was inexplicably even dumberer-er than last week's episode and even less fun.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

14 hours ago, ShadySands said:

Please don't give them any ideas

Picard setting phasers to Mother ****er and shooting Romans would be an improvement over Mass Effect 3 Redux.

[Zoraptor]

59 minutes ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

Picard setting phasers to Mother ****er and shooting Romans would be an improvement over Mass Effect 3 Redux.

Sorry guys, not supposed to post this but someone leaked me a still from the set of Picard S3 on the hush hush. Apparently he's posing as Sejanus and infiltrating the household of the Emperor Tiberius.

(You'd think they would have learned that de-aging tech is still uncanny valley tier, and look at that risible wig...)

 

[Amentep]

TNG "Eye of the Beholder"

Troi investigates a mysterious suicide and once again this season we delve into a Gothic horror style story - in this case a Trek version of ghosts and, arguably, possession.

[Sarex]

Finished Fringe. I kind forgot it's flaws, in that it suffered from the detective and the buddy formula, but it grew out of that as the series progressed. All in all it holds up well.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Norsemen s1 and s2. Apparently they shot this in Norwegian and English by doing two different takes. It's pretty funny for a low stakes show to just relax with, shame it got canceled.

What Did Jack Do? David Lynch interviews a monkey.

[majestic]

Fresh out of the oven:

 

[Chairchucker]

I just recently finished watching Galavant which is old as heck but still great.

 

Gotta finish watching Agents of SHIELD so I can move on to watching all the Netflix Marvel shows that just came to my streaming platform of choice.

[ShadySands]

Watching the latest season of that F1 show on Nefflix. I still hate Red Bull, but so far they've not been going much into them since they're probably saving them for the last/later episodes. Horner has still gotten some decent screen time and he still very much comes off as a massive dbag. At this point I'm starting to think less of the Spice Girl that married him. Might have to get my Spice Girls tattoo removed.

 

Ugh, finished the series and the last couple of episodes were all Red Bull. I heard what happened already but seeing it was worse. I don't even like Hamilton and Mercedes but I thought they got robbed. I guess it's time to get my Spice Rushmore tramp stamp lasered off. Or at least just Geri.

 

Now firing up Project Adam

Edited March 24, 2022 by ShadySands

[majestic]

In the middle of the new episode of Picard, and I had to stop and post about it. I know I should expect dumb things from this dumb show, but this is yeah, well, dumb:

Spoiler

So Picard goes to 10, Forward Ave in Los Angeles - just like in the future, only this time in 2024. He meets a young Guinan, who curiously enough is not a de-aged Whoopi Goldberg. She does not recognize him and threatens him with a shotgun.

The TNG crew visited Guinan in Time's Arrow in 1893. Even if El-Aurians forget a whole lot during their long lives, and quite frankly, even though Patrick Stewart grew a bit old, he still looks very much like Picard, she should have some spark of memory looking at Picard. Yes, forgiving fanboys who - heaven forbid - like this trash are probably yelling: TNG NEVER HAPPENED IN THIS TIMELINE, SO SHE DOESN'T KNOW, SHE CAN'T KNOW! at the top of their lungs now, but Guinan has been shown to be able to recognize wrinkles in time (Yesterday's Enterprise). This Picard very much already met Guinan a 130 years in the past. She told Tasha that she died a senseless death in the real timeline in Yesterday's Enterprise, plus she retained the knowledge of both timelines after they fixed them. She would know Picard, or at least get the feeling that she did, and that something's wrong.

Even if we discount the idea that she'd be able to see past the timeline shift, Guinan would never behave like that - she didn't 130 years in the past, she never did in the 2300s, so what?

Hey Alex Kurtzman, please go and copulate with your knee. Thank you.

edit: Guinan ends up having a nervous breakdown and starts crying over unequal wealth distribution, climate change and wars. Okay. Thanks, I hate it.

Edited March 25, 2022 by majestic

[ShadySands]

Don't forget  the Star Trek 4 dude who seems to have some recollection of his encounter with Spock.

I didn't watch it but I saw people arguing about it on Reddit.

Edited March 25, 2022 by ShadySands

[majestic]

12 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

Don't forget  the Star Trek 4 dude who seems has some recollection of his encounter with Spock.

Oh, I thought the guy on the bus that was just a throwaway stupid reference, given the time difference, or is that something that's coming up? Not finished with the episode yet, just felt like venting. Also wanted to hit Jurati with something for telling Picard that he's a regular Dixon Hill.

edit:

Picard doesn't tell Guinan his name so it doesn't mess up the timeline that's messed up, but if it is fixed, she'd know Picard, Data and a bunch of others in 1893 from Time's Arrow. Yes, time travel makes for silly contrivances and paradoxes, but this... this is actually dumber than season one's mechanical space Cthulhu.

Edited March 25, 2022 by majestic