Just finished S4 of Slow Horses, another good one. Fun characters all around.
I’ve just started in on MASH. I watched the original run, and then only sporadically in reruns. Don’t think I’d seen an episode in 20 years or more.
I’m only four episodes in, so I haven’t quite decided whether or not it holds up. There’s plenty of casual misogyny; I feel like that abated as the series went on, but my memory could be faulty.
It’s been a fun watch so far, though I don’t think this is necessarily a show for today’s binge-watching culture. There’s already a certain… sameness from episode to episode. In fact, twice in four episodes, there’s been a general (two different generals) who is angry at Hawkeye, then relents after seeing what a great surgeon he is. Less of a big deal on weekly broadcast TV than seeing both of these plots within two hours.
So I may just put this on for thirty minutes at a time now and then as a sort of comforting nostalgia. I’m in no hurry to speed through 11 seasons. And if I have any worthwhile insights as I go, I’ll post them here.
Sheldon is wierd in that he has a lot of quirks and idiosyncrasies…and a few other characters too. But Big Bang Theory is my all time fav comedy series.
We’ve been revisiting My Name is Earl. I think that’s my all-time favorite. Still slays me! Last night we watched the episode where Rosanne Barr played the bitchy trailer park owner who thought she heard the voice of God through her hearing aids (they were picking up the voice of Earl on his walkie-talkie). “Putteth thy left foot in. Now taketh thy left foot out.”
Finished S4 of Slow Horses. I knew there was a lot of fan disappointment. The first episode was good, with lots of Lamb-isms. That didn’t last. It just went south big time. Absolutely awful.
Over and over people were doing things that made no sense whatsoever. The final episode had trouble fitting all the idiocy in.
I made two guesses for what the Big Reveal might me. One was fun and would create a lot of interesting plot developments. The 2nd was not at all viable. E.g., the timeline wouldn’t work, Guess which one was right. Guess.
And of course handguns have infinite ammo. Even when there is explicit mention of how many bullets someone has they just keep firing.
The Big Action Scene in latter part of Season 3 was mega stupid. This season’s action sequences were giga stupid.
I think I’m done with this show.
First three seasons are kind of like that, but once Potter and BJ show up, the show improves in many ways.
That’s season 4 if you want to skip.
I had to read the novel S4 was based on to try to figure out plot holes that made no sense to me, even after watching the entire season twice. (TBF, a lot of things did make more sense on the second viewing.)
Specifically, why was the shopping center bombed? Turns out, it’s not well explained in the book, either.
The answer, in both: One of Frank’s solider/sons goes off the deep end – for unexplained reasons – and does it on his own. But we don’t know anything about this character or his motivations before it happens, and although the show does include a video manifesto from him (not in the book), the connection between the bombing and the rest of Frank’s plotting remains murky through the whole story, and, IMHO, is never satisfactorily resolved/explained.
That said, and agreeing with many of @ftg’s comments, we enjoyed all four seasons, mainly for the characterizations and acting, and are looking forward to Season 5, which will probably drop in mid- or late 2025.
@ftg: What was your first idea for the Big Reveal? (In a spoiler, of course.)
Disney+ has just offered the 10-part Shogun series that aired earlier this year on another service. We watched the first two episodes back-to-back in order to get into the story. Sumptuously produced, well cast and going into much more depth of story than the Richard Chamberlain/Toshiro Mifune/John Rhys Davies miniseries of the 1980s (which was pretty damn good for its time), we have thus far been very impressed.
One advisory: The Japanese characters speak their native language, which requires a great deal of fast reading to keep up. If you don’t like subtitles, this isn’t for you.
Oddly enough, I’ve never seen anything but an occasional episode of Big Bang Theory. I don’t know if it was something about the time it was being aired conflicting with something I preferred to watch, or what. But from what I’ve heard and seen it sounds like a show I’d like.
Sheldon waled that fine line between quirky and asshole.
For myself, my fave was Barney Miller, with WKRP a second.
I concur. Potter is a “fix the GIs first, bullshit later” kinda guy, And Winchester sometimes get the upper hand on Hawkeye & co.
Also a lot of fan appreciation. I graphed each episode on IMDb, not unexpectedly every season starts at its own low, and then the final gets a lot of love. I think the overall trend is up though, even ignoring S1?
I still love that show!
I might like to do that! “Earl” has been almost forgotten today, but it was a show with an original, offbeat premise. A no-count doofus who was a pain in the ass to seemingly everyone he ever met has an epiphany, sending him down a road to make right all his previous wrongs. And it was very, very funny for the first season or two, when it was just Earl doing his thing, aided by his halfwit brother Randy. Then it kind of went off track with too many episodes about the peripheral characters, like his really annoying ex-wife, often forgetting the original premise. Still, it was good for a while there.
I love Earl too. I bought the series on DVD just to make sure I’d always have it available, sidestepping the vagaries of streaming service offerings.
That said, I’d agree it eventually “went off track,” even if those aren’t quite the words I might choose. But that’s the problem with a series like that. As great as the episodes are when he simply does something to cross an item off his list, the formula holds up only for so long before people start feeling like they’re watching the same thing over and over again but with different supporting actors in different locations. I think it’s inevitable that they (producers, show runners, writers, or whatever decision makers are there) would reach a point where they feel they have to branch out, so to speak, and try something different if the show is to continue.
I’m enjoying NCIS Origins. They did a nice job capturing the camaraderie and feel of a 1980’s office The set in a Quonset Hut is awesome. NIS is low budget and gets cases taken away by the Feds.
The show is in good hands with Mark Harmon involved.
The only misstep is the guy they cast as Gibbs. He’s huge. Plus he’s always standing next to scrawny Franks (seeing his ribs in the tighty whities left me unimpressed) and the female agent. Reminds me of Alan Ritchson, the muscle bound actor that plays Reacher on Amazon Prime.
Mark Harmon isn’t that big of a guy. He’s very intimidating as Gibbs, but that’s his attitude. Not muscles.
Just started watching Man on the Inside last night with my wife, but we weren’t able to get very far. Both of us are in our 70s, we’ve each lost a spouse, we’ve each placed parents in assisted care to have them pass away there, we’ve each had experience with family members with diminished mental faculties, and so forth, but the show did not ring true for us at all. It seemed to be written from the perspective of a 30-something. We also had a hard time swallowing a retired “professor of engineering” being as clueless as Danson’s character. His surprise at an electric blanket, of all things, was a bit much. Anyway, we abandoned the show. As my wife said, “Way too Hallmarky.” (Almost forgot…and I was a licensed private investigator for over ten years, so I know a bit about that, too.)
After that, we started on The Madness. It’s at least holding our interest, though one wonders how so many people make can so many obviously bad decisions (in the mind of the writer, that is). The original Three Days of the Condor (1975) made a whole lot more sense, and it was pretty over the top.
I binged the 8 episodes. It was okay, but would have been better as a 90 minute movie.
I get that impression, Kayaker. We will probably finish it up tonight.
Recently finished ‘Murder Mindfully’, a German import on Netflix. A lawyer is treated poorly by his law firm because his clients are mobsters, but the firm (barely) tolerates his presence because of the mob money he pulls in. He is estranged from his wife and daughter since he’s constantly at the beck and call of the mobsters. Then, at the insistence of his wife, he takes mindfullness lessons from a therapist, which inadvertently teach him how to take charge of his life and the mobsters who were controlling it.
It was silly at many points, but pretty watchable overall. Not sure how I’d classify it-- comedy? dramedy? Comedic police procedural? It wasn’t really a laugh out loud comedy, but it had moments of black humor. Maybe kind of a German ‘Breaking Bad’ (not to oversell it-- it’s not as good as BB). One 8 episode season so far.
Forgot to mention that we recently watched Wolf Hall on PBS, it being re-aired before the debut of the second season early next year.
Wow. Very powerful. Highly recommended. Mark Rylance is one hell of an actor. If anyone doesn’t know about it, the series features Thomas Cromwell Henry VIII’s chief minister and all the machinations going on at court. The first season ends with the death of Anne Boleyn. Claire Foy was also excellent as Anne. She made her a more complex figure than I think I’ve seen before. She was hateful, infuriating, charming, and ultimately sympathetic.