Category Archives: TV
Snip!
I just took the plunge and cancelled my Comcast cable!
I’ve been on the cable since 2002, so they were sorry to see me go. I’m sure they are. Cable companies have been losing a lot of customers as technology shifts to a streaming environment. For me, an additional consideration is that, while Comcast has definitely improved how they roll, I have many bad feelings from the earlier years when they seemed always on the Ten Worst Company lists.
The combination of those feelings, plus the economics and logistics of it all, made it exactly the right choice for me now.
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24 Comments | tags: Amazon Prime, cable cutting, cable shows, cable TV, CenturyLink, Comcast, cut the cable, Hulu, Netflix, streaming video, Xfinity, YouTube, YouTube TV | posted in TV
I think I’ve reached the breaking point with The Orville. Watching episode five of the new season, I found myself yelling at the TV for the fifth time, because the writing seems so stupid and the characters seem so lame. I’m angry that a show with so much potential is so infuriating and dumb. I had to turn the episode off and start this post.
When the second season started, I re-watched the entire first season as an appetizer, and my conclusion was that there were many more good episodes than bad. There’s really only one I found a stinker (and couldn’t watch all of), but overall it was positive. I was looking forward to the second season.
Sadly, I’ve really hated all five episodes so far. I’m really torn about watching the show anymore.
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19 Comments | tags: Adrianne Palicki, Seth MacFarlane, The Orville | posted in Rant, TV
The Doctor is in!
I’ve written before (twice) about how much I love Doctor Who (even more than Star Trek, and that’s saying something). I’ll tell you right now: nothing’s changed; it’s still my favorite TV science fiction show, hands down. I am enjoying the big changes this season: a new The Doctor and a new show runner, Chris Chibnall.
The big change to The Doctor, of course, is the first ever female incarnation, played by Jodie Whittaker. For some this is a bit like a female James Bond, but the idea that Time Lords (slash Ladies) are gender-fluid is canonical. (Statistically speaking, it’s past time The Doctor was female. As the season promos put it: It’s about time!)
In many ways, I find the fan reactions to these changes as interesting as the show itself!
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13 Comments | tags: Bradley Walsh, Chris Chibnall, Dalek, Doctor Who, Graham O'Brien, Jodie Whittaker, Mandip Gill, Ryan Sinclair, Steven Moffat, TARDIS, The Doctor, Tosin Cole, Weeping Angel, Yasmin Khan | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
Nope. Never liked’m.
Watching the Thanksgiving episode of the rebooted Murphy Brown on CBS, where Murphy decides to cook dinner with easily anticipated and well-worn results, it struck me exactly why I don’t find the show very funny. And why I really don’t find any of the CBS comedies since the 1990s very funny: Idiot Clowns.
In general, it’s why I don’t find a lot of comedy very funny. Idiot Clown comedy requires an idiot clown — someone so stupid they are unaware of basic reality, a blindness forced on them to enable a (typically) lame joke. I find it cheap and easy and without much value.
More to the point, I just don’t like idiots or clowns in my entertainment.
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6 Comments | tags: Adam Sandler, clowns, Dave Chappelle, George Carlin, idiots, LA Story, Melissa McCarthy, Northern Exposure, Robin Williams, Sarah Silverman, Seth MacFarlane, Steve Martin, Tracy Morgan, Will Ferrell | posted in Movies, Opinion, TV
As someone whose high school and college education focused on writing and storytelling (through stage, film, and video), I’ve long been askance at how much culture reveres actors while not paying as much attention to the writers who provide their words or the directors who control much of what they do.
I do not at all mean to suggest actors aren’t also artists who bring important skills to the table. In college, I had to find people willing to act (for free!) in my productions — I couldn’t tell my stories without them — so I’m well acquainted with their importance and skills.
My point is only that the stories we love owe as much, if not more, to the writers and directors who create them in the first place.
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Leave a comment | tags: actors, Atomic Blonde, Bebe Neuwirth, Bilbo Baggins, Charlize Theron, directors, Doctor Who, Eddie Murphy, Elijah Wood, Frodo Baggins, George Burns, Idris Elba, James Bond, Johnny Carson, Loretta Swit, Martin Freeman, Racisim, The Doctor, writers | posted in Movies, Rant, TV
Loving art is not the same as loving your children: with art, you’re allowed to have favorites. Within any beloved medium or genre, there are always favorites. Of interest here is a long-time favorite of mine, the late-1990s graphic novel Preacher, written by Garth Ennis and drawn by Steve Dillon. It’s a violent, gory, wonderfully original story involving: a southern preacher, an Irish vampire, the Saint of Killers, the off-spring of an angel and a demon, and God himself (not to mention Tulip, the Grail organization, and a, pardon the expression, “host” others).
When a favorite literary work (such as Preacher) is adapted for film or TV one has a sense of both anticipation and trepidation. On the one hand, seeing the work come to life can be wonderful. But on the other, it can be awful if (you feel) the adaptation doesn’t honor the source.
To me, the AMC adaptation of Preacher is the latter: awfully awful.
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Leave a comment | tags: AMC, Ender's Game, Garth Ennis, graphic novels, Jesse Custer, Peter Jackson, Preacher (graphic novel), Preacher (TV series), Steve Dillon, Zack Snyder | posted in Rant, TV
The other night, I watched the first episode of the CBS reboot of Murphy Brown, and my first thought is that I hope it gets better. A lot better. The only part I liked was the cameo by Hillary Clinton playing “Hillary Clindon,” a potential secretary for Candice Bergen’s Murphy Brown. (If I remember the original show correctly, Brown had a long and troubled history with secretaries, which puts a bit of icing on the scene.)
Seeing the main characters again, for me, was awkward and close to cringe-worthy. They seem very much a product of their era (1988-1998) and didn’t translate well across the two decades that have brought so much social and technical change.
Part of the problem might be that I find CBS half-hour sitcoms tediously dull, cliché-filled, totally unfunny, marshmallow realities.
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4 Comments | tags: Big Little Lies, Candice Bergen, Murphy Brown, Patrick Stewart, Star Trek, Steve Carell, The Office, Will & Grace | posted in Movies, TV
In an almost weird bit of prescience, I broke up with Michelle Wolf’s The Break just days before Netflix did. The several articles I read announcing it reported that Netflix hadn’t offered a reason for the cancellation, and speculated on connections with an apparent history of failed talk shows. Netflix just bad at talk shows, was the implication.
Let me offer another reason, perhaps the real reason. The show was awful. It was painfully not funny, nor was it terribly creative. It tried hard to be, but the result was usually more like a bad SNL script. And, regrettably, Ms Wolf may not be a good choice for talk show host.
After hanging in there since the beginning, I just couldn’t any more. I had to bail.
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Leave a comment | tags: John Oliver, Jon Stewart, Last Week Tonight, Marlon Bundo, Michelle Wolf, Netflix, Rick and Morty, Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, The Break, The Daily Show, Trevor Noah | posted in Rant, TV
Roseanne Barr is still generating the occasional headline with her antics in reaction to the cancellation of her ABC show, so I thought that, rather than just delete this post (which has been sitting in my Drafts folder), I’d set it free to roam the web. “Better out than in,” I believe the saying goes (and, yes, I’m well aware of what that then compares this post to; I stand by that comparison).
One thing I found interesting about it all was the contrast between Barr’s transgression and one made by Samantha Bee on her TBS show. There were some similarities in that both involved personal insults made by popular entertainment figures from their chosen platforms. There are also differences in content, as well as in how Barr and Bee handled themselves after.
Currently we’re in a very reactive, very polarized environment, and the Barr and Bee fracas put it all on mini-display.
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2 Comments | tags: Roseanne Barr, Samantha Bee, Valerie Jarrett | posted in Opinion, TV
I should probably start by hastening to add: I don’t dislike dinosaurs, either! It’s an ambiguity of English that when one says, “I don’t like X,” it can mean one has negative feelings about the ‘X’ in question, or it can mean just that one has no positive feelings for it — that one is neutral (or perhaps not interested enough to have an opinion).
It’s an easy jump from “don’t like” to “dislike,” so the phrase, “I don’t like X,” is usually taken that way. But I have wiring in my brain that makes me see it more literally — as failing to have a liking for ‘X’ — so I often have to clarify what I mean.
And what I mean is that I have zero interest in dinosaurs.
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1 Comment | tags: clowns, coffee, dinosaurs, Game of Thrones, ginger cookies, Jurassic Park, molasses cookies, pirates, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Tom and Jerry | posted in Life, Movies, Opinion, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
