Yeah, I guess I could see that. He did need to constantly reinforce his glamour on Celebrimbor and it seems his loss of influence on Galadriel is permanent. It seems unlikely that most men would be able to shake off that sort of influence though.

The only real issue with that is that canonically he only really needed to subvert the eminently subvertable Ar-Pharazon to dominate Middle Earth. Which is in some ways a bit of a problem with the source material. If Sauron wanted to dominate ME, why send the Numenoreans off on what he must have known was a suicide mission to attack the Valar instead of just using them for the job? Because that's what happens in epic sagas, same as the perils of magic rings...

7 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

The Friday Night Lights sequel looks interesting.

Great, more shark movies.

At least Sharknado is supposed to be silly. Does everyone understand that Sharks don't do well in shallow water? At least not these monsters that they are showing in the movie. Highly unrealistic. :p

Good to know the scorpions didn't get Frankie Muniz. They were after him for a while.

The Pitt/HBO, ssn2, eps 8-9

Finally starting to get more interesting/compelling. Both in terms of hospital staff chrs, some patients, and a "tech/digital vs. analog" situation.
Robby's arc (lead/Noah Wyle) this season is seeming fairly dark. Not in an over-dramatic way, it's more of a continuation of his 1st season state.

Boyfriend on Demand/Netflix/k-drama
--I only tried this one because of the cast list. A rom-com, where lead gal goes through usual IRL trials while testing this virtual-reality-bf tech (you wear a skinny eyepiece, maybe it connects to your brain, not sure). Apparently the best VR ever. The first episode was IRL setup, then the VR boyfriend stuff takes stage for a couple episodes. Those scenarios are big visuals and sometimes funny for ppl familiar with kdrama or k-romance webtoon tropes - more often it just feels like retread cheese. Beyond the stacked/pretty cast list, not even really guilty-pleasure/lulz binge worthy. I won't continue.

On 3/12/2026 at 3:14 PM, Gfted1 said:

That looks good, a Jaws theme integrated into a massive flood disaster 🦈

TLDW: a new proposed animated Firefly series, most of the surviving original actors as VA's (including Adam Baldwin, who was not at the announcement panel). Set after Season1, before film Serenity. Fillion doing some writing. Whedon not involved. Still in development/does not yet have a distributor (they're shopping around for one now). I'd prefer live-action but animation is the only way to get Wash back I guess (actors got old, like me, after all). Can hope it doesn't turn into another pipe dream.

Edited March 17Mar 17 by LadyCrimson

14 minutes ago, LadyCrimson said:

I'd prefer live-action but animation is the only way to get Wash back I guess (actors got old, like me, after all).

I don't see it, Wash and Zoe could just play their old married couple spiel without being too young for it, and Alan Tudyk's still a total nerd at heart. Nathan Fillion on the other hand looks like Walter Sobchak and the Dude had a love child. Guess Captain Hammer didn't lie when he said he doesn't go to the gym. :p

Realistically, they've all grown too old for their roles. Inara could still work, because Morena Baccarin has this timeless beauty and charisma, but being young and quirky is a major part of Kaylee's and River's character, and Simon's just too old to be the idealistic young doctor.

Edit: Also, while there are some posters here who probably think it is a good thing, not having Joss Whedon attached to the project is also questionable.

Edited March 18Mar 18 by majestic

41 minutes ago, majestic said:

I don't see it, Wash and Zoe could just play their old married couple spiel without being too young for it, and Alan Tudyk's still a total nerd at heart.

Edit: what I meant, live-action and a storyline where they're simply older/the future, like original-cast Star Trek movies. But Wash died in Serenity while looking young. You cannot have him (canonically) back in a post-Serenity timeline looking way older without some Star Trek Khan-blood/alt-universe shennigans or something. Series is supposed to be set before Serenity, during the inbetween years I guess, so they'd all be "young".

I dont' really care about the Whedon thing. I think he got burnt out after the Marvel phases and even if not, I wouldn't assume he's "the same creative force" as during his popular heyday to begin with. Time can change things for anyone.

Edited March 18Mar 18 by LadyCrimson

I wasn't that keen on Whedon as a writer, but the group of writers he used was top notch and his shows were overall, excellent. He suffered hugely retroactively from (apart from the obvious, or other obvious) being so often imitated, badly. Not least by:

Marc 'Felicity and Friends' Guggenheim. Who is a colossal step down from Tim Minear as showrunner. And not just because that means a lot fewer Blake's 7 references.

Do I dare hope? https://variety.com/2026/gaming/news/wheel-of-time-animated-series-movies-video-game-thomas-vu-1236693410/

This is the format it should have been in from the start.

Edited March 19Mar 19 by Sarex

RLM's new video:

I haven't watched all of it yet, but I have rewatched Voyager recently and pretty much agree with the intro. Voyager, even though it is my least liked of the old Star Trek shows (not counting ENT and including TOS), is leaps and bounds better than anything nuTrek. Even the stuff that's supposedly good - I pretty much didn't like SNW for the same reason Mike doesn't, f*** those characters. Janyway also doesn't suffer from being a bipolar nutjob best locked away in the loony bin in the earlier seasons.

The crew also had some wildly unprofessional moments, but at the end of the day it's not all military professionals, they do have to partner with freedom fighters terrorists. And when Nicholas Locarno Tom screws up, he gets punished for it, and besides, he is a convict who came into conflict with Starfleet rules before.

It's not all roses though. I still dislike that Janeway ordered Tuvix killed, the back to back episode where she flip-flops between casually breaking the Prime Directive and then berating others for breaking the Prime Directive are highly annoying and that Chakotay is a ludicrous walking stereotype created by a huckster that the writers had no idea what to do with most of the time. Still, as Confucius once said: even old clothes look like new when put next to even older clothes (read that in a casually racist Chinese accent for added effect :p)!

So after rewatching a whole bunch of red letter media Star Trek reviews due to current events, I finally decided to dip into Picard season 3... Never watched s2, because 1 was so terrible, I couldn't bear it any longer.

I just finished ep4 of s3 and damn, this is what the first season should have been. There's still stuff that annoys the hell out of me, but it's still so much better than whatever crap came before. Like, jeez, what the hell happened here suddenly? Did they fire some stupid people? Did they kick Kurtzman from the set?

Either way, I'll for sure keep watching this one for now.

Terry Matalas took over as show runner He had some experience on old(ish) Trek- Voy and Enterprise- and ran the far better than it should have been 12 Monkeys TV show. While technically he ran S2 as well due to the shooting schedule he had limited influence, but had far more on S3, and it shows.

(In slightly related news, the planned Mass Effect TV series has been sent back to the writing room to make it 'more appealing to non gamers'. Much like Halo was made more appealing, or The Witcher more appealing, or Wheel of Time more appealing, no doubt)

Don't fall for the trap. Picard Season 3 wasn't good, it just looks better next to the dumpster fires of the first two seasons*. That Borg storyline alone is dumber than anything Voyager did to the Borg, and that was a lot. Not going to lie, seeing Species 8472 one-shotting Borg cubes was quite a shock after TNG, but it marked the beginning of some really bad villain decay. Well, actually, I suppose First Contact did start it a year earlier.

Actual spoiler for Lexx, click at your own discretion

It also ends with the Enterprise D doing a Millennium Falcon Death Star II attack at the end, which, well, sorry, but no, just no. Was actually expecting Wedge to show up to shoot torpedos at the Borg's power regulators.

2 hours ago, Lexx said:

So after rewatching a whole bunch of red letter media Star Trek reviews due to current events

They really liked Picard Season 3. They almost noticed that they fell for the same nostalgia spiel that they made fun of in Rogue One, but only almost. It's the most disappointed I was in a review from RLM ever since they made fun of Kung Fury for a minute - for having weak characters, as if that was the point of Kung Fury.

Edit: *like Rings of Power season two, which was a marked improvement over season one to the point where I didn't hate watching it. Mostly. That is more positive than I ever thought I'd be about Rings of Power, but it really doesn't mean it was a good season.

Edit 2: Anyone else being not-really-excited about The Boys season 5 starting tomorrow?

Edited April 7Apr 7 by majestic

Personally, I thought Picard S3 fell apart near completely at the end. That's a flaw a lot of shows have though, and was far less a flaw than... well pretty much anything and everything in S1; where the plot (such as it was) fell to pieces well before the end. Maybe around TNG S2 sort of level for Picard S3 ; wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again, don't regret the time spent though.

Now to something I do regret watching. Or do I? The new Robin Hood show- with Sean Bean as the sheriff. Does he die, or does he not? Until you watch (or look it up on wikipedia) who knows.

I'd kind of actively avoided watching it, since the promos made it look awful. Watched the first episode to see how bad it was and ended up watching the whole thing. As expected, it felt rather like it was cobbled together from bits of other shows- and one presumes deliberately, a certain Fellowship of the Ring scene featuring Boromir- but was okay enough that I can be bothered writing something about it and given the dross a lot of shows put out in their first season. Indeed, I'd even go so far as saying it was enjoyable. Probably needs to decide whether it's going for the old Robin of Sherwood approach or something a bit more... Spartacus* and stick to one or the other. The Herne the Hunter analogue is a hot naked blonde, so it's somewhat less PG than the old series. OTOH, the violence is pretty Hercules/ Xena most of the time. Norman mail is about as useful as stormtrooper armour it seems.

Pedant complaint: saxons converted to Christianity about 500 years before this is set, so christian vs pagan is a bit odd. Plus Henry d'Anjou (Henry II) and Eleanor d'Aquitaine were not Normans- it's in their names, to coin a phrase. Also, you can charge a walled town's gate successfully with cavalry, ho hum.

There's certainly a lot to take issue with but I'm feeling generous.

*also watched Spartacus: House of Ashur, which I outright enjoyed in a guilty pleasure sense. Plus it's always nice to see local actors having a great time dressing up and overacting. Slight departure from history in the last fifteen minutes or so, but made me lol so I'll allow it.

The Boys, season 5 - first two episodes.

Neatly picks up where it left off. Which is to say, that the season was written before the 2024 election and tries to be satire, but fails insofar as reality has become much worse - never mind dumber - than what the showrunners came up with. Or, sometimes, they came way too uncannily close.

This is depressing

Like when Homelander starts to have people locked away (or downright killed) for liking Starlighter posts or Anti-Homelander memes. I get that this sounded properly satirical before Trump was put back in office, but here we are, a couple of dead protestors, serious infringements on freedom of speech, people locked away for looking the wrong way, and people having their social media accounts checked and serious problems if they have posted or liked content critical of Mango Mussolini's regime, later.

Firecracker is even more disturbing when you have Laura Loomer in a position of political influence and Karoline Leavitt on TV every day.

Also kinda saw the surprise at the end of season two coming from a mile away:

Spoilery stuff

They'd not bring back Soldier Boy just have him die in more or less the same episode.

Also, foreshadowing, probably...

Huh

Homelander standing in Soldier Boy's cryo tank. Now that the virus is apparently not strong enough to kill the really strong super heroes, I don't think they can make it even more powerful, and who knows, Soldier Boy might just provide anti-bodies. Homelander, therefore, could just get locked away in cryo. Which is going to make for a really unsatisfying ending. The show's Black Noir is rather unlikely to be able to kill Homenlander and has a different background than in the comics.

Ah well, who knows, maybe Butcher will kill a virus weakend Homelander just before croaking himself.

Also, like, still laughing at it taking almost three full seasons for the conservatives to finally figure out it makes fun of them. Even if this is already shaping up to not having a good finale, that'll always be a rather memorable achievement.

Edited April 9Apr 9 by majestic

On 3/17/2026 at 4:04 PM, LadyCrimson said:

TLDW: a new proposed animated Firefly series, most of the surviving original actors as VA's (including Adam Baldwin, who was not at the announcement panel). Set after Season1, before film Serenity. Fillion doing some writing. Whedon not involved. Still in development/does not yet have a distributor (they're shopping around for one now). I'd prefer live-action but animation is the only way to get Wash back I guess (actors got old, like me, after all). Can hope it doesn't turn into another pipe dream.

I have this hunch that AI (with human guidance *COUGH*slop cleanup*COUGH*) is not far from being able to convert animated video into live action, so maybe it'll happen anyway.

Malcolm in the Middle - Life's still unfair. It's very good, or as good as it can be. The show feels like just another season with the family.

Watched it today as well. The only thing I thought was weird is the last episode. Almost felt like Hal had died or something, especially with all the random people showing up which never really had any connection with him and Lois at all.

I finally got around to watching Nobody 2. The first one as a lot better. Sequel tried, and had a few fun moments, but it kind of went nowhere. Oh well. :)

The Pitt ssn2 continues to improve and I'm liking it a lot, again. The season overall is more uneven than the 1st, but still good. Final episode was yesterday/gonna watch it right now I think.

Edited April 17Apr 17 by LadyCrimson