What's on the idiot box?

[BruceVC]

 

 

The characters all level out towards the end of the season. Even Penny isn't as much of a jerk.

Also I have heard this criticism several times so I'm missing something, what for example is wrong with Quinton?

 

What is wrong with his personality ....what do people expect him to act like?

Seriously Bruce?

 

You didn't see anything wrong with his behavior? I'm glad the show has gotten better since I stopped watching but he was a pretty horrible person in the first couple of episodes

 

Here is the actor even saying the character starts off as unlikable

 

Ralph added that he enjoys playing Quentin on "The Magicians" because he starts off as being a very unlikable character for many viewers.

 

"I am drawn to the unlikablility of him," the actor explained. "At first he is and should be unlikable, but in time he grows on you. He will begin to become the man you want him to be. I love that he's not your classic hero and he's never really going to be. That's the thing that makes him relatable."

 

"The Magicians" star revealed Quentin will reunite with his childhood friend Julia, although she's going to be jealous that he was able to join the magical world.

 

"Quentin and Julia are best friends, and for most of their lives, were the only people there for each other," Ralph said. "I think Quentin finally gets one step ahead of her in a way by getting into Brakebills. He's so excited by this new life that he kind of throws everything out about his old life, including Julia.

 

No I honesty didn't think there was anything wrong with him because his flaws made him believable and human

 

But its clear my view is in minority so its probably not accurate ..like this post you made  that highlights the actors own view so it must carry credibility 

[ShadySands]

Well, making him a bad person to start may make him more "human" but he lies, cheats, steals, goes from being needy and clingy with his best friend to abandoning her when he no longer needs her, and acts despicable and cowardly in the first few episodes... I wouldn't want to know him

 

That's not to say deeply flawed characters are inherently bad but he wasn't even interesting either. I'm sure the show got better after I stopped watching (because it couldn't get any worse) but there wasn't enough to keep me interested

 

But that's just me and maybe you are too nice so you like everyone

[Oerwinde]

His treatment of Julia was his biggest down mark. She was his best friend since childhood and as soon as he got into Brakebills he tossed her aside like she was nothing. After he finds out his dad has cancer and Julia puts that dream spell on him he gets better though, as he sees how badly he hurt Julia that she was willing to do that to him and realizing magic can't do everything. His relationship with Alice really made him more likeable too. After the truth test and Brakebills south everyone became much more likeable. Julia was really the only character I liked from the beginning, as you saw how much she cared for Quentin, and you sympathized with her not making it into Brakebills and her life collapsing afterwards due the the revelation that magic exists and outside the school access to magic requires a lot of underhanded methods.

Edited April 29, 2016 by Oerwinde

[BruceVC]

Well, making him a bad person to start may make him more "human" but he lies, cheats, steals, goes from being needy and clingy with his best friend to abandoning her when he no longer needs her, and acts despicable and cowardly in the first few episodes... I wouldn't want to know him

 

That's not to say deeply flawed characters are inherently bad but he wasn't even interesting either. I'm sure the show got better after I stopped watching (because it couldn't get any worse) but there wasn't enough to keep me interested

 

But that's just me and maybe you are too nice so you like everyone

Well I did think The Beast was twisted, nefarious and unlikable ....so I'm getting more hardcore 

[BruceVC]

His treatment of Julia was his biggest down mark. She was his best friend since childhood and as soon as he got into Brakebills he tossed her aside like she was nothing. After he finds out his dad has cancer and Julia puts that dream spell on him he gets better though, as he sees how badly he hurt Julia that she was willing to do that to him and realizing magic can't do everything. His relationship with Alice really made him more likeable too. After the truth test and Brakebills south everyone became much more likeable.

You guys do raise some good points about his character....its interesting how I seemed to overlook that as he did  become a better person as the show went on and thats what I tended to focus on  

[Oerwinde]

 

Well, making him a bad person to start may make him more "human" but he lies, cheats, steals, goes from being needy and clingy with his best friend to abandoning her when he no longer needs her, and acts despicable and cowardly in the first few episodes... I wouldn't want to know him

 

That's not to say deeply flawed characters are inherently bad but he wasn't even interesting either. I'm sure the show got better after I stopped watching (because it couldn't get any worse) but there wasn't enough to keep me interested

 

But that's just me and maybe you are too nice so you like everyone

Well I did think The Beast was twisted, nefarious and unlikable ....so I'm getting more hardcore 

 

 

Finding out the Beast was a molested child giving up his humanity for the power to punish his abuser and keep the magical land that rejected him from rejecting him again made him a little more sympathetic, but the whole no humanity thing makes him pretty much irredeemable now.

[BruceVC]

 

 

Well, making him a bad person to start may make him more "human" but he lies, cheats, steals, goes from being needy and clingy with his best friend to abandoning her when he no longer needs her, and acts despicable and cowardly in the first few episodes... I wouldn't want to know him

 

That's not to say deeply flawed characters are inherently bad but he wasn't even interesting either. I'm sure the show got better after I stopped watching (because it couldn't get any worse) but there wasn't enough to keep me interested

 

But that's just me and maybe you are too nice so you like everyone

Well I did think The Beast was twisted, nefarious and unlikable ....so I'm getting more hardcore 

 

 

Finding out the Beast was a molested child giving up his humanity for the power to punish his abuser and keep the magical land that rejected him from rejecting him again made him a little more sympathetic, but the whole no humanity thing makes him pretty much irredeemable now.

 

And we can be even more sympathetic if we want because as you mentioned  drinking from the magic stream also destroyed any remnants of his humanity...so you could argue he wasn't even human anymore. He was consumed by magic?

Edited April 29, 2016 by BruceVC

[Zoraptor]

Quentin is basically what you'd expect an actual Harry Potter type to be like at school when he was a teenager- a bit of a richard. That works for me as it's a counter to the theoretically Potter-esque/ Narnia-esque setting and I rather like the whole through a glass, darkly, vibe. Having said that, he's solidly anti hero rather than a villain protagonist like a direct antithesis of Harry Potter would be. He's certainly not 'nice' though, even at the end of the season let alone the beginning. He's just matured a bit.

 

Heh, I was spoiled on who The Beast really was because I knew the actor playing him and he was credited for every Beast episode without visually appearing. Kind of ironic, while he has a Brit accent for the show he always plays americans here as that's his natural accent.

[Oerwinde]

So Netflix did the obvious and ordered a Punisher spinoff series. Since he was the best part of Daredevil S2 I am excite.

[Guard Dog]

I binge watched Penny Dreadful all day today. I still can't decide if I like this show or not. Beyond the interaction between Dr. Frankenstein and his Creature (who changes his name too often to keep track of) the show is kinda hit and miss. The Frankenstein plot line is very interesting though. 

[BruceVC]

I binge watched Penny Dreadful all day today. I still can't decide if I like this show or not. Beyond the interaction between Dr. Frankenstein and his Creature (who changes his name too often to keep track of) the show is kinda hit and miss. The Frankenstein plot line is very interesting though. 

Its is brilliant, I loved the series.

 

Season 2 was my best with the hot witches   ..and I see Season 3 has just been released 

[Gromnir]

I don't hate it, I'm disappoint-watching. 

we can't do that for tv shows... which is kinda funny when you consider how many "disappointment-watching" seasons o' white sox, blackhawks, bears, bulls and notre dame football and basketball that Gromnir has endured over the years.  is particular amusing in regards to the white sox as we gave up on MLB after the strike year and then white sox actual improved and eventual won a world series.  but for tv shows we gots near zero patience for disappointment.  heck, we stopped watching snl in 1995.  replace phil hartman with chris elliott? no... just, no. ain't been a regular viewer o' snl since 1995.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Hurlshort]

The greatest thing to happen to SNL is the fact we can watch clips on hulu now instead of watching the whole show. It is much easier watching a few minutes here and there and skipping the ones that look bad.

[ManifestedISO]

 

I don't hate it, I'm disappoint-watching. 

we can't do that for tv shows... which is kinda funny when you consider how many "disappointment-watching" seasons o' white sox, blackhawks, bears, bulls and notre dame football and basketball that Gromnir has endured over the years.  is particular amusing in regards to the white sox as we gave up on MLB after the strike year and then white sox actual improved and eventual won a world series.  but for tv shows we gots near zero patience for disappointment.  heck, we stopped watching snl in 1995.  replace phil hartman with chris elliott? no... just, no. ain't been a regular viewer o' snl since 1995.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Oh good, was afraid Gromnir were curiously anti-preferential.

 

Course, I could probably use a lesson in bringing it down, not wearing face paint and a foam finger to the forum every day. 

[Amentep]

In 1920 a 54 year-old Harry Houdini and a 61 year-old Arthur Conan Doyle met.  They shared an interest in spiritualism (Houdini trying to contact his mother; Doyle trying to contact his first wife, son, brother and two brother-in-laws).  They became friends.  But Houdini - knowing a thing or two about cold reading amid other stage magic misdirections - couldn't let fake psychics stand and so began exposing their tricks.  He was so good that Doyle became convinced that Houdini was an unwitting pyschic who was blocking other psychics from using their powers.  They had a falling out, ruining the friendship.  And then Houdini died in 1926.

 

By 1920, the first woman with arrest powers in the English police force, Mrs. Edith Smith had been vested as such for 5 years and was 2 years in service as head of the Metropolitan Women Police Patrols (whose first 25  members, unlike Mrs. Smith, did not have arrest powers).  This development had been started in 1914 when Margaret Dawson and Nina Boyle convinced the Commisioner at the time to hire women officer (as the Women's Police Volunteers - later Women's Police Service) to deal with wartime manpower shortages as well as to specifically deal with female prostitutes.

 

This brings me to the rather anachronistic Houdini and Doyle - already aired in England and Canada and premiering on FOX last night.  Presumably so no one would have to see an aging and bald Houdini team up with an aging Doyle, the grand meeting of the 2 is recast in 1901.  Houdini, 35, had ended his 6 month run at the Alhambra Theater and would have been touring the rest of Great Britain. His press for a handcuff escape that baffled Scotland Yard would have been a year old at that time is still a sore point with the local police (but apparently Houdini is pals with the Commisioner of Scotland Yard).  Doyle, 42, had published his book on the Boer War.  Holmes had been gone for 8 years and its unclear if this is prior to The Strand serializing THE HOUNDS OF THE BASKERVILLES (Aug 1901 - Apr 1902) but I suspect before given the talk with the book seller.

 

The premier has the pair - already knowing each other and a bit antagonistic towards the other's beliefs.  Houdini is presented as a high level skeptic.  Doyle as someone desperate to believe.  They are joined by Adelaide Stratton, the first woman at Scotland Yard who is assigned to babysit Houdini and Doyle who are both interested in a Ghost Murder case.  The trio argue, bumble around and eventually all figure out the mystery separately in time to reveal what really had happened.

 

If you accept that the setting is wrong/alternate universe with respect to history^[1] for any of the events portrayed and ignore the modern dialogue (at one point Houdini anachronistically dismisses a claim by Doyle with 'Garbage in, Garbage out' a term applied in Computer Science and here created 57 years prior^[2] to its first known appearance in print leading to some guffaws from this viewer), the mystery is actually not bad.  For a first episode, considering they have to sell us on the characters as much as set up a mystery, it does its job of defining the main characters and their conflicts (Houdini and Doyle with each other, Stratton with her superiors) fairly well.  And the mystery buff can always appreciate settings that play up the need for clues/clews as opposed to jamming trace evidence in a machine that shakes and using a computer to blow up a picture image far past the amount of data it contains to get the vital information to solve the case ala modern Forensic-based mysteries.

 

While the first episode explains all the supernatural events in the mystery Scooby-Doo style, there are hints the supernatural might be real in an X-Files sort of way.  Logically able to contain the series in a End-of-the-Victorian-Era-That-Never-Was reality, there's enough here that I want to see if, in future episodes and having set up the setting and characters, they manage to make something of the series concepts and improve the central relationships to more than shouty matches between Houdini and Doyle.  But if one is looking for an alternate-history mystery series, Canada's Murdoch Mysteries does it better (if you can deal with Murdoch creating just about every scientific advance to criminology for several decades well before it actually happened and the on-again/off-again romance between Murdoch and female pathologist Dr. Ogden with all their longing stares and inability to actually talk about what they feel).

 

^[1]To further the idea that this is an alternate universe Houdini and Doyle, Houdini's wife's name is changed from Wilhelmina Beatrice ("Bess") to Cecilia.  Also I'm not aware of Doyle's wife being in a coma; she died of tuberculosis in 1906 but I don't recall her being incapacitated more than typical with that disease.

 

^[2]It should be pointed out that the concept was recognized by Babbage in 1864, but not articulated as GIGO by him; so Houdini saying it here strikes me as a huge anachronism.  In fact no one really talks much like they're in Victorian England and Doyle doesn't sound Scottish like he should.  I'm not sure what Houdini sounds like, his accent is weird but then Houdini family was from Budapest and he spent his developing years in Detroit.  But hey, alternate universe.

[Sarex]

Person of interest started again, I wanted to catch an episode to see if it had improved any, but alas, same old same old...plus a supercomputer made from PS3's...

[Zoraptor]

Bro, you are dead to me.

 

Much like the eponymous character on The Flash Show Formerly Known as The Flash. I wonder if they'll actually bother changing the opening monologue this time.

 

Though on the positive side I've now remembered I need to watch PoI.

[Gfted1]

Barry entered the Speed Force, right?

[Zoraptor]

 

Presumably- they'll probably go the whole hog and have speedforce Barry 'electrocute' his younger self as well. After all, one doesn't simply atomise the lead character, well, unless it's a Ray Palmer spin off show.

 

[ManifestedISO]

 

Barry entered the Speed Force, right?

 

 

 

Does this mean Earth-2 Barry is the Man in the Iron Mask ... I can't remember what happened to E2B

 

Edited May 5, 2016 by ManifestedISO

[Gfted1]

 

I dont remember what happened to E2B either but for some reason I assumed that the Man in the Iron Mask is the original/real Jay Garrick.

 

[Vaeliorin]

So I've watched some more of The Magicians and it's gotten a lot better.  The characters have gotten a lot more likable, but it seems like they've overly compressed some of the story.  That whole foxes thing with Alice and Quentin was just terribly handled if it really was an important moment from the books.

[Zoraptor]

 

I dont remember what happened to E2B either but for some reason I assumed that the Man in the Iron Mask is the original/real Jay Garrick.

 

 

 

Barry's dad mentioned his grandmother's (may have been Barry's grandmother or Henry's grandmother) maiden name was Garrick. Assuming it's the same in the alternate universe then Jay could/ would be Barry's uncle or cousin. They also seem to like references to the 90s Flash series so I wouldn't be surprised if it's Henry's actor actually in the mask playing Jay Garrick.

 

[Leferd]

Watched the end of the Miami v Toronto game and checked my DVR. Saw I still have the last four episodes of Agents of Shield unwatched. Decided the show was garbage and made the decision to jump ship. But I'm still tempted to press play. Someone talk me out of it!

[ManifestedISO]

Lincoln might die, you don't want to miss it. Plus, Kree in the flesh.

 

 

Also, my girl White Canary taking three shots of 17th-century Scotch in ten seconds, Legends of Tomorrow. 

Edited May 6, 2016 by ManifestedISO