What's on the idiot box?

[algroth]

 

 

So you are one of those weirdos who have never seen The Godfather or The Wire and whose duty it is to be constantly reminded of this particular failing of their life.  

 

Well, at least it's something that can be easily remedied. I'm also pretty slow on watching TV shows so I still haven't seen The Wire.

 

 

Whoever hasn't seen The Wire needs to stop wasting their time on whatever other inferior shows they are watching and start with The Wire right now.

It literally is the best television ever created. The only bad thing I can say about it is that no other show afterwards will ever compare.

I still can't believe why Breaking Bad rates higher at imdb (well actually I can, it's because of people downvoting The Wire even though they've never even seen it, just so their favorite BB would rate higher). I thought BB was fun for sure, but The Wire is on a whole other level. It's reality disguised as fiction. It's an indepth social analysis of the struggle between the individual and the system. It's absolutely essential for anyone with half a brain.

 

 

Not sure where the Breaking Bad tangent comes from, but as far as I'm concerned that's well within the finest shows I've seen. To just say it's "fun" is to miss the point about it entirely as a Bataille-inspired study on the human compulsion towards self-destruction. It's absolutely deserving of any praise it receives. I'll get around to The Wire eventually, I'm just slow at watching series in general.

Edited October 13, 2017 by algroth

[ShadySands]

I've never seen any of those shows (Breaking Bad, Rick and Morty, The Wire) and don't plan to. They just don't appeal to me. I might check out the Vampire one for an episode or two.

[Gfted1]

The only one of those three Ive seen is Rick & Morty, which is laugh out loud hilarious to me.

 

Shameless is pretty awesome too.

[Gizmo]

I've never seen any of those shows (Breaking Bad, Rick and Morty, The Wire) and don't plan to. They just don't appeal to me.

 

The only one of those three Ive seen is Rick & Morty...

 

Ignore the subject matter, and watch Breaking Bad; it's too good of a series to miss; in the very least watch the pilot episode; (and the rest will surely follow). 

[Rosbjerg]

Rick and Morty is kind of a strange show, it's infantile and crude and at the same time some of the funniest social critiscism I've seen. Kinda like The Simpsons when it found its stride 20 years ago.

[213374U]

So there's a new Trek show, and everyone and their dog is hating it? slowpoke.jpeg

 

Seems like as good an excuse to try Netflix as any. First month is free anyway.

[majestic]

So there's a new Trek show, and everyone and their dog is hating it? slowpoke.jpeg

 

Seems like as good an excuse to try Netflix as any. First month is free anyway.

 

Critics love it and reviews on Netflix are raving as well (mostly).

 

I gave up on it being Star Trek after the pilot episode but even without that it's just so hopelessly and relentlessly stupid. And I mean in the "It's the last episode of Stargate Atlantis and we need to get the station back to Earth so let's pull a wormhole drive out of Zelenka's butt" sort of dumb.

 

The writers can't come up with a way to make super genius Michael Burnham lookt smart on the screen so everyone else around her just acts like a class of special needs children, except they get to play with the hottest Starfleet tech available. Which while being set 10 years before TOS is leaps and bounds ahead of the 24th century Borg travel tech. *sigh*

[Rosbjerg]

Ironically The Orville is a lot close to original Trek, albeit with more infantile humor.

 

Discovery is pretty much a classic case of style over substance, it's extremely visually impressive, but they don't really know how to write engaging drama without explosions and shallow-evil motivation.

 

In short, more Fantasy than Sci-Fi and if you can forgive that, it's a decent enough show. But if you're looking for the old light-hearted sci-fi fun with a dash of moral/ethical dilemma, see Orville instead.

[Hurlshort]

I am having trouble just finding these shows. I don't want to subscribe to hulu just for Orville and I have no idea how to watch Trek.

[Rosbjerg]

I can imagine.. They are luckily a lot more centralized here, so we don't have to subscribe to 8 different services.

[Fiach]

I am having trouble just finding these shows. I don't want to subscribe to hulu just for Orville and I have no idea how to watch Trek.

Trek is on Netflix

[Fiach]

Ballers a TV show from the people that did Entourage.

 

Whereas Entourage was set in the Hollywood environment, Ballers is based in the NFL. I was attracted to it because of Entourage and the current NFL controversy cos I know bugger all about US Football other than what I saw in Friday Night Lights (highly recommended) Anyway i like it alot!

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2891574/

[Hurlshort]

Ballers is pretty great. The Rock is a damn good actor. 

[Gorgon]

Ironically The Orville is a lot close to original Trek, albeit with more infantile humor.

 

Discovery is pretty much a classic case of style over substance, it's extremely visually impressive, but they don't really know how to write engaging drama without explosions and shallow-evil motivation.

 

In short, more Fantasy than Sci-Fi and if you can forgive that, it's a decent enough show. But if you're looking for the old light-hearted sci-fi fun with a dash of moral/ethical dilemma, see Orville instead.

Yeah, the first few bread and butter episodes after the pilot and intro episodes and they were, well, not very good. The pacing is off for Star Trek. Eye candy stops being interesting pretty quickly, you need good actors and you need Star Trek type things happening.

[Fiach]

Ballers is pretty great. The Rock is a damn good actor.

 

Indeed! I like The Rock, but only ever saw him in his usual action man mode, he is given the ability to show more depth in this!

[majestic]

 

I am having trouble just finding these shows. I don't want to subscribe to hulu just for Orville and I have no idea how to watch Trek.

Trek is on Netflix

 

 

Not in the US. For that you need CBS All Access or whatever the name is. Which is pretty awesome because then you can watch Discovery and... a whole lot of NCIS. And the only thing fans of NCIS have in common with Trek is the age.

[Fiach]

 

 

I am having trouble just finding these shows. I don't want to subscribe to hulu just for Orville and I have no idea how to watch Trek.

 

Trek is on Netflix

 

Not in the US. For that you need CBS All Access or whatever the name is. Which is pretty awesome because then you can watch Discovery and... a whole lot of NCIS. And the only thing fans of NCIS have in common with Trek is the age.

That unusual, here we just usually get the dregs of Netflix, very limited catalogue compared to even other EU countries, let alone the US.

[Zoraptor]

It's the same situation with The Expanse and Riverdale as well I think- nearly everywhere except the US they're on netflix next day, in the US it's on SyFy/ CBS paywall and a very few other places have special deals like The Expanse being on Sky here.

 

Orville ought to be very easy to watch in the US though, it's bog standard Fox network, 930pm Thursdays after Gotham.

[Fiach]

Watching Nashville. Great show, politics, drama and great music! If you are into guitars, it's like wall to wall with vintage Gibson guitar porn!

 

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2281375/

 

 

Edited October 20, 2017 by Fiach

[Guard Dog]

You know what annoys me about the Wallking Dead? Poor marksmanship. So many unproductive rounds fired every week. If I was the leader of a group I'd have two rules:

 

1) No guns for you unless you can hit the center of the target 8 of 10 times from 100 meters.

2) Use semi auto fire for crying out loud. Unless you are laying down supressing fire to cover movement you are wasting ammo. Battles are won with aimed shots.

[Lexx]

Well, they never seem to have problems with finding ammunition and stuff, so why care?

 

I tried to continue watching Fear the Walking Dead a couple days ago, but this Madison Clark character is just so unbearable for me. I can't stand her voice, I can't stand her face, I can't stand her always being the one who is right, I can't stand her always forcing her crap on other people (and then everything goes down the ****ter, obviously), I just want her to die since season 1, but it just doesn't happen.

In that last episode I've seen, she is like "hey, how about we arm the native people who just arrived here a few days ago and nobody really trusts them! It makes totally sense to give them our automatic weapons, so they can disarm the rest of us, because this is how we make peace and trust!" ... god, I SWEAR she is sabotaging everything on purpose, otherwise I have no explanation for this behavior.

[Blarghagh]

You know what annoys me about the Wallking Dead? Poor marksmanship. So many unproductive rounds fired every week. If I was the leader of a group I'd have two rules:

 

1) No guns for you unless you can hit the center of the target 8 of 10 times from 100 meters.

2) Use semi auto fire for crying out loud. Unless you are laying down supressing fire to cover movement you are wasting ammo. Battles are won with aimed shots.

You would restrict their rights to bear arms? Gasp!

[Gorgon]

Is walking dead back on. 

[Zoraptor]

Yep, Sunday night US time.

 

You know what annoys me about the Wallking Dead? Poor marksmanship. So many unproductive rounds fired every week.

 

They have used proper tactics with short bursts and aimed shots in the show before, but their marksmanship is precisely as good or as bad as the plot demands and the tactics amount to what looks cool (and is needed for the plot) most of the time. I enjoy TWD well enough, but if I ever lost the ability to suspend disbelief I wouldn't last long watching because it isn't either very consistent or very logical if you think about it.

 

Then again, I've seen a fair number of real world videos from actual war zones (eg Libya and Syria) where every single unrealistic and stereotypical 'tv' trope with regards to firing guns can be seen. About half of them feature the classic spray and pray of firing over a berm without even looking let alone firing an AK from the hip like they're Rambo.

[Guard Dog]

 

You know what annoys me about the Wallking Dead? Poor marksmanship. So many unproductive rounds fired every week. If I was the leader of a group I'd have two rules:

 

1) No guns for you unless you can hit the center of the target 8 of 10 times from 100 meters.

2) Use semi auto fire for crying out loud. Unless you are laying down supressing fire to cover movement you are wasting ammo. Battles are won with aimed shots.

You would restrict their rights to bear arms? Gasp!

 

 

  If they bring their own and their own ammo they can keep them! But if it's "community" weapons and ammo and I'm the leader of that "community" then you better not be wasting my bullets!

 

Seriously though, last night they pull up in front of the savior's compound and Negan walks right out with his whole command staff in the face of automatic weapons in covered fighting positions. He ought to know better than that! And why talk at all Rick? Assign three gunners for each target and it's all over. And then, Rick unloads a half a clip at 20 yards and hits nothing! Grrr! Bad marksmanship!

 

But all in all is was a good show and a solid opening. If I can suspend disbelief in a world where zombies walk around I can look the other way on bad infantry tactics too.