Like I said, I never watched CT, so I wouldn’t recognize them, which is likely the idea. Just like people that never saw Community may very well have not even noticed Abed in the background and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t have understood why he got up an ran away mid-scene.
Mamma Mia. Not the movie, but the Broadway show. I’m a big fan of musicals, but not Abba, so planned to skip it until a friend assured me non-fans still liked the show. They were right.
Lucifer. The premise sounded like it was borrowed from ‘God Cop’ (the fake show idea on 30 Rock). I gave it a try because I was in the mood for some light-weight fare. The beginning of the first ep didn’t do much to change my mind, but it made for easy viewing. But the development of the story was well done, and Tom Ellis does an amazing job with his gleeful portrayal of the devil. A few eps in I was hooked.
Apparently Lucifer was actually based on a Marvel comic book series, but they of course changed some things and toned it down for TV. But yeah I’m a fan too, great cast and Tom Ellis does a great job.
Reno 911! I caught a few minutes of a few different shows and just by chance caught the few really spots in the whole show. Not sure why I eventually came back to it but I’m glad I did. Nothing complicated there, it was all done for laughs and now I’ll just start watching shows randomly as they come on.
Dredd (2012). I skipped it initially because the previews made it seem like it was a low-budget direct-to-video sequel of the Sylvester Stallone movie from the 90’s, with some “Now in 3-D!!!” gimmicks thrown in.
But the movie itself is probably one of my favorite movies in the action/sci-fi genre. Karl Urban nails the character, and the script (by Alex Garland, who did Ex Machina and 28 days later) is pretty seamless. It’s a shame it never got a sequel.
a couple of things that turned out to be really big didn’t appear so impressive when they first appeared.
Star Wars – I first saw a trailer for this about six months before its release, when I went to see Network. It didn’t have the now-iconic “Star Wars” logo in yellow piping, and it didn’t yet have its John Williams score. Instead you had a light blue title in some random font and really ominous, repetitious music, and they didn’t choose the best scenes to show it off. I didn’t think it was gong to be all that great. But I saw it on the day after it opened and sat through it twice.
The Terminator – From the ads, it looked like a cheap SF yarn . I was sure it was going to just be people in rubber masks shooting each other up on a highway chase. Then I went to the theater, saw the impressive opening, and was immediately blown away.
The Fly – the 1986 Cronenberg remake. I wasn’t that fond of the original film. I knew Cronenberg’s reputation, having seen lots of his films by this point “The Master of Venereal Horror” someone called him. I didn’t think that was a good mix. I was very surprised with what the film turned out to be.
GLOW
I went in for the wrestling and ended up watching one of my favorite shows of all time.
NCIS - I never gave it a chance until the Covid isolation.
It’s surprisingly good. It is hard to jump into because the characters all have backstories. A lot of references from prior seasons go over my head.
It is frustrating that I finally give the show a chance and several characters left this season. Gibbs seems bored out of his mind.
I’ll start streaming season 1 this summer.
Same thing with The FBI. It’s pretty good.
The Doberman Gang A movie about training a group of doberman pinschers to rob banks. I never would have watched it except my GF loved anything that had to do with dogs. Turned out to be an entertaining little film that made the most of the concept.
Didn’t see the sequels. I don’t think they could have caught lighting in a bottle again.
Misfits I watched it way back when it was free on Hulu and only because I liked science fiction. It was incredibly good, especially the first two seasons.
Mr. Robot - the thumbnail on Netflix for it is Rami in a hoodie with, “Democracy has been hacked” written over it.
I didn’t know who he was, I thought it was some ridiculous conspiracy theory documentary. For over a year it kept getting pushed to the top of my ‘recommended for’ list and I’d skip right passed it. One night I relented and after 10 minutes I was hooked. The show declined in quality seasons later but at least the first two were solid gold.
Requiem for a Dream an ex girlfriend had a box of her fathers old VHS tapes lying around and alone one evening I put it in the player for background sound while I played Civ IV. 15 minutes later I turned the computer off, rewound the tape and cooked popcorn. Fantastic movie.
Schitts Creek Chris Eliot is obnoxious, but the title was such a childish pun years went by before I watched the first episode. Binged watched the rest in an absurdly brie amount of time.
I tried Alias and gave up after a few episodes. Gave it another shot a few years later and wound up binging it. It’s irredeemably dumb, but also bizarrely entertaining.
There are a few other shows I simply never got around to watching when they aired. Currently, because I finally got Prime via my Roku, I started both Smallville and Supernatural, neither of which I’d ever seen an episode of. In fact, I think I used to get Supernatural, Lucifer, and that other show about the devil that starred Ray Wise all jumbled together. At any rate, I’m on season five of both and quite liking them.
I bet you’re how I heard of this movie. I’d love to see it, but haven’t caught up with it yet.
Totally forgot about movies. I held out on Fight Club for a while. I’m not generally an ‘action movie’ guy, I’ve never seen Rocky or Rambo or Top Gun or any of those. I had zero interest in watching a movie about a fight club. Then, back in college, some friends and I were about to walk out the door to go over to someone else’s dorm and make a quick stop to tell my roommates we were leaving and found ourselves getting sucked into a movie he was watching. Which, as you can guess, was Fight Club. That was 99-00ish, and it quickly became one of my favorite movies. I couldn’t even guess how many times I’ve seen it since then.
That’s a gouda way to do it.
One Sunday night back in the Early Oughts, our kids disappeared after bath time, and we found them in our bed watching commercials. So we jumped in with them, and a pilot for a new show came on.
My wife kept saying “Oh, dear. Should you kids be watching this?” (Doesn’t it start with Jennifer Garner being tortured?)
(Then later, her fiancé being found bloody and dead in the bathtub?)
Kids and I would yell “Yes!”
We spent every Sunday night for four years in that bed, watching the cool cast working together (Bradley Cooper, Carl Lumbly, Gina Torres… and Victor Garber as her Spy Dad), discussing JJ Abram’s cliffhangers, and laughing at some of the Handy Plot Devices.
But we loved it, and a decade later, my daughter told her guidance counselor that she couldn’t decide between becoming a doctor, a designer, a teacher, or a CIA agent.
(Oh, she and I recently watched the first season again, unbeknownst to each other…)
A science fiction shoot-em-up with robots - do I have to?
And indeed, Blade Runner kinda is that - but it’s many other things as well. And one of my favourite movies.
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Reading through this thread reminded me… I was totally unimpressed with the promos for some new NBC show a few years ago. But about a month after the series started, they repeated the first four episodes back to back one Saturday night when there wasn’t much else on, and that is how I got hooked on The Good Place.
I love movies about dogs – especially dachshunds. But do not watch the Wiener Dog International movie. Absolutely horrible. Even cute dachshunds couldn’t save it.