Category Archives: TV
TV Tuesday now takes a slight detour from the public airwaves and shows of our past to consider what’s been happening in the cable TV world. Some of the shows mentioned here deserve their own article, but in this post I’m going to fly over the landscape as quickly as I can manage (those who know me are laughing their ass off about now). If I don’t (at least try), this will be even longer than my usual lengthy longitude.
The problem is that the landscape has gotten huge! Even taking just the “premium” cable channels, such as HBO and Showtime, I find a large selection of shows to mention. In fact, HBO and Showtime each offer so many shows, either one alone offers much territory to explore. With that in mind, the flight won’t be stopping at any one destination very long. We have a very tight schedule today!
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6 Comments | tags: Aaron Sorkin, cable shows, Game of Thrones, HBO, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, news, Nurse Jackie, television, The Big C, The Newsroom (TV series), Veep, Weeds | posted in TV, TV Tuesday
Before TV Tuesday can proceed to the television I love, I need to clear the airwaves regarding an entire genre of television I cannot stand.
I suspect I’m about to offend some people while causing others to cheer. To those who cheer, you are clearly members of a discerning, intelligent television audience. To those who are offended, your presence in the gene pool is no longer required, please hit the showers.
As you may have gathered, yep, it’s another opinionated rant. This one is about what I consider the worst thing to hit television since Manimal or The Ropers. In fact, it’s worse, far worse, than those two combined, plus Cop Rock and Mr. T. and Tina.
It’s about the form of video excrescence known as “Reality TV.” And that really does need to be in quotes, because there isn’t one thing “real” about it. Quite to the contrary, a more accurate term is “Unreality TV.”
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6 Comments | tags: reality shows, television, trash, voyeurism | posted in Rant, TV, TV Tuesday
Welcome to TV Tuesday here at Logos CC. Today begins a series of posts concerning that daily invader to most of our lives: television. For good or ill, television has become a fact in the fabric of our families. And there certainly is both much good and ill to be found on the video airwaves. That is an ongoing topic on this blog, but this series is about the shows I love (and some that I don’t).
I suppose TV Thursday might have been a more logical choice, though it doesn’t have quite the same ring. I say that because Thursday nights was the NBC Must See TV night that brought us such classics as The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, Friends, Night Court, Mad About You, Seinfeld and Wings.
(How many old friends did you find in that list?)
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34 Comments | tags: Cheers, House M.D., JAG, Mad About You, MASH, Must See TV, NCIS, Night Court, Star Trek, television, The West Wing | posted in TV, TV Tuesday
When I wrote the first rant about television commercials over a year ago, I promised I would return to the subject repeatedly. Better late than never, here’s another entry towards keeping that promise.
As I mentioned last time, I’m not a big fan of marketing and advertising. Of course companies need to market and advertise their products.
It’s the way they go about it that I sometimes (in all honesty, make that frequently) find repulsive.
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1 Comment | tags: Arbys, AT&T, commercials, Klondike bars, McDonalds | posted in Rant, TV
Before the age of blogs (or even web pages), those of us on the internet had other places to hang out and exchange thoughts.
In fact, in many regards, the “Bulletin Board Systems” (BBS) and “internet news groups” (USENET) were more conversational than blog or Facebook comments. They were more like chat rooms where conversations took place over days and weeks (and months).
Like chat rooms, they involved a group of people having a conversation. I miss those days… blog comments are too brief and passing to be a conversation. At best, brief remarks are exchanged for a half-dozen rounds or so, and then the river flows on.
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2 Comments | tags: Borg, Captain Picard, Star Trek, The Next Generation, transporters | posted in Life, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
Okay, any Star Trek fan knows that Gene Roddenberry invented the transporters so he wouldn’t have to deal with the special effects necessary to show a landing every time the crew visited a planet. It also cut out any time needed to show the launch, travel time or landing, and that moves the story along. Both of those are smart and good, so let me start by saying, “Gene, that was awesome! And so is the horse you rode in on!”
There’s also the simple fact that, in science fiction, you have to grant a few “gimmes” in order to tell the story you want.
The canonical example here is warp drive. Do you want to explore strange new worlds, and seek out new life and new civilizations? Well, you’re gonna have to find a way around Mr. Einstein, who laid down the Universal Speed Limit, a little thing we like to call c.
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7 Comments | tags: Dyson sphere, Earl Gray, it's green, Picard, Realm of Fear, Relics, replicators, Scotty, Spock Must Die!, Star Trek, transporters | posted in Physics, Rant, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
This has been a stick in my craw since the earliest days of the original Star Trek series. This one way predates my notorious Holodeck Hatred. And there is no hyperbole when I say “earliest days” because we’re talking about the third Star Trek episode ever aired, Where No Man Has Gone Before.
(While this was the third episode aired, it’s actually the second pilot, which is the one that got the show on the air. Did you know we can thank the great Lucille Ball for that? Read the linked Wiki article!)
The stuck stick is none other than the [big space voices] Barrier At The Edge Of The Galaxy (the BATEOTG, or maybe you prefer BatEotG).
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Leave a comment | tags: galactic energy barrier, Loretta Swit, Margaret Houlihan, Star Trek, The Naked Now, The Naked Time, Where No Man Has Gone Before | posted in Rant, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
If you knew immediately what the title of this article means, you are almost certainly a Star Trek fan. You also know that a full list should contain DS9 and VOY. (And that, actually, there should be a ST: in front of each of them.)
If this all seems alphabet soup, here’s the deal. They’re all three-letter acronyms (TLAs) for the six different Star Trek TV series. This first article today begins “Star Trek Saturday” (a one-time event) here at Logos con carne. There are two or three ships still in dry dock… (big voice: …In Space) getting finishing touches for a launch later today.
To tantalize your taste buds, I’ll just mention that they concern galactic energy barriers, transporters and replicators. Those are ships of war; photon torpedoes loaded and primed. There is a third ship with a different mission that may also launch today. (Tantalized? Terrific!)
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18 Comments | tags: Doctor Who, Judith Stone, sci fi, science fiction, Star Trek, Stephen R. Donaldson, The Land, Thomas Covenant, trilogies | posted in Books, Movies, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
The other evening, I finally went to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. The punch line (and never was the term “punch” more appropriate) is that I have to give it a definite thumbs down. It is, without question, my least favorite Christopher Nolan movie, and that’s saying something, because (unlike some), I quite like Nolan’s work.
I’m a life-long comics fan and a life-long fan of the Batman. I’ve known the worlds of DC and Marvel for over 40 years. For me, Superman has a slight edge, but the Batman has always been a close second. Those two comprise a full quarter to one-third of my comics and gnovels (graphic novels) collection. Frank Miller‘s The Dark Knight Returns is one of two seminal works I hold in the highest esteem. (The other, of course, is Alan Moore‘s Watchmen.)
And, as I mentioned, I’m a fan of Nolan’s work, and I liked both his first two Batman movies. I fully expected to like his latest.
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Leave a comment | tags: Alan Moore, Batman, Christopher Nolan, superheroes, The Dark Knight Rises, violence, violence in movies | posted in Movies, Rant, The Interweb, TV
You may have heard about the recent meme battle between Princess Leia (played by the very interesting Carrie Fisher) and Captain Kirk (played by the equally interesting William Shatner).
The battle prize: which is “better,” Star Wars or Star Trek?
It began with a photon torpedo fired from the Enterprise. The warhead contained an anti-Wars payload of roughly one-quarter Mega-grin:
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6 Comments | tags: Carrie Fisher, sci fi, science fiction, Star Trek, Star Wars, William Shatner | posted in Movies, Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
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