I think it holds up. Some are certainly better than others. It is striking how slower paced shows seemed to be then. Most of the time I see that as a feature.
A few months ago I tried watching some episodes of Batman: The Animated Series after hearing how great it was back in the day.
On the plus side, it absolutely blows the 1960s Spider-Man cartoon (one of my favourites as a kid) out of the water. But I still couldn’t help noticing the limited animation, mostly static backgrounds, and mysteries that had to wrap up in 22 minutes. I gave up after 3 or 4 episodes.
You have chosen… wisely.
That movie is just one entertaining scene after another. So many fun little details. Breaking the floor of the library in in sync with the old librarian pounding his stamp. Hitler signing the diary. The chemistry between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery. I don’t think it’s as purely well made a movie as Raiders, as it’s all a bit sillier and lighter, but damn it’s a fun movie to watch.
A lot of good stuff, but there’s one scene that always bothers me. When Indy and Henry are talking on the airship, Henry says something like “you left just as you were becoming interesting”. Really, that’s how you view your son; not as someone who needed your love and guidance to grow into a happy and healthy individual, but as someone who exists to entertain you? What an asshole.
I thought Samantha married him without telling him she was a witch and she was the one who decided not to user her powers. Though it’s been many years since I’ve seen an episode, so I either be conflating with another program or different episodes gave different stories or I may just inventing stuff.
You are correct.
I will tell you the perspective of someone who watched it from the beginning.
The show degraded significantly at or about season 4. The early episodes were clever, and often followed a “formula” where about act 3 something would be revealed that put the case in a whole new light. Not all, but enough.
Magnum was a competent detective. But somewhere about season 4 the show developed what someone once called “hardening of the arteries”; the show tends to lose its originality and falls back on simple plots and simple and overused characterizations. Plus, Magnum got more annoying and less clever. Rick got more annoying and assholish. Higgins became a lying buffoon. They gave TC an annoying family and annoying family stories.
Bring in the whole “let’s kill Mac and then oops bring the actor back(1) as another character that looks just like the first guy, but this time make him annoying(2)”, and add in the “is Higgins really Robin Masters”, and a lot of season 5-8 are annoying.
(1) Jeff MacKay left to be in a new Bellisario show “Tales of the Gold Monkey”, a show ripping off excuse me going for the feel of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It disappeared without a trace after one season.
(2) Jim “Mac” Bonnick was too much like Jim Rockford’s buddy Angel Martin(3), who I have grown to despise after all these years. I won’t watch Angel episodes, and there sure are a lot of them.
(3) Magnum had an episode with Stuart Margolin where he played an equally annoying con man/ grifter.
I caught one ep. while in a hotel somewhere a couple of years ago.
David Hedison, the captain of the Seaview in Voyage to the Bottom of the Barrel, played an old flame of Julie’s.
Except that she was no older than her mid-20’s as of said reconnection, and he was pushing 50. Meaning their original fling happened when she was 20 or even younger. Those shows simply came from an era when writers and producers simply never paid any attention to such stuff, but I still found it disturbingly squicky, and that is before we acknowledge that such ship crew/passenger hookups would have been verboten to begin with, even back then most likely.
Watched Honey I Shrunk the Kids with the bean. Hadn’t seen it since I was a kid. Spouse Weasel and I both agreed it held up pretty well. Lots of kids in peril and snarky dialogue, and my kid was freaked out by the kids getting swept up and thrown in the trash, but otherwise he seemed to like it. This isn’t a film I would necessarily want to see over and over, but it was sufficiently entertaining for a family movie.
I can understand that, but don’t agree. Angel usually got Jim neck-deep in trouble before Jim knew what was happening, and the only way out was to work together in some fashion. It sort of fit with the milieu of the show where Rockford got swept up in things through no fault of his own. Short of killing Angel, Jim was stuck with him.
Angel was probably not an easy character to play. Stuart Margolin managed to thread a needle of annoying, sad, funny, and hopeful.
And I think in one of the reunion movies Jim finally decked him.
I think it had a small, but dedicated, fan base who think it was cancelled much too soon. I remember finding some fan site or other reference to it not very long ago. It may have been the Firefly of its day.
I think I was about 11 when it came out. I only remember it had a seaplane, and a dog. I think the dog could answer yes/no questions by the number of barks. I remember liking it, but… I was 11.
Once for yes, and two for no. Or the other way, if he felt like it.
Re: Tales of the Gold Monkey
Similar. I remember it being one of my favorite shows as a kid, for the year it was on. Like all TV back then, usually you had no idea what happened to a show, it just didn’t come back in the fall.
I really don’t want to go back and watch it, and rather just enjoy a pleasant memory of some guy with a seaplane. I’m sure in one rewatch I’ll notice something annoying like all of the flying scenes being the same bit of footage, like the original Battlestar Galactica.
The temptation to flog a winning formula into the ground meant too many shows went on for too long and became stale and repetitive (MASH being the obvious one).
The early TNG ones look a bit shaky now, with some too obvious looks back to TOS (necessary at the time before TNG established its own brand).
But that’s who Henry was, so I wasn’t bothered.
MASH improved dramatically with Colonel Potter. A MASH unit needed a experienced officer that could work the system and get medical equipment and supplies.
Blake was a better comedic character. But they already had the doctors cracking jokes and chasing nurses.
MASH got too serious in the last seasons.
My wife and I are about two episodes left in our current rewatch.
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Agreed that season 4 on is much better. Potter and BJ are great. Trapper was fun, but BJ was better. Blake was comical, but Potter felt more realistic
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Charles is better than Burns because he is a human and of course, learns to hate the war as much as anyone due to the brutality and waste of young life
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I don’t mind the final seasons, but would agree 4-7 are about the peak
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Radar begins as a great character and is ruined. He starts as a weasley little wheeler and dealer who can get them anything, drinks Henry’s alcohol and smokes cigars. He ends as a baby boy who is more innocent and only drinks Grape Nehi and calls people “Ninny’s” as his insult. Only boy to go to war and come back more naive and innocent.
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The final season is one of the weakest. You can tell they agreed to make 10-12 episodes only and most effort was focused on the finale. They directly reused the “Potter has a friend who is an incompetent leader getting kids killed” storyline from season 5. Feels like they were ready to go with only the finale.
Independence Day It’s just supposed to be a stupid CGI thrill ride, it was even in 1995 when I first saw it. And for that, it’s still alright. But god damn is much of the dialogue dumb as hell and that has gotten harder to endure.
I’d still put this in the WATCH category, but not for much longer.
Right, Indy’s father was consistently portrayed in the movie as a self-absorbed, narcissistic asshole. Which is not to say he was malevolent, just lost in his books and research to the exclusion of everyone and everything else in his life.
I may be misremembering (happens a lot these days), but ISTM that MASH also got rather political towards the end. And when I say political, I mean anti-war. Is that correct, or am I way off base?