Pages Tagged “TV”
Reviews
- Agatha All Along ★★★★★ The best Marvel TV I’ve seen since the first seasons of Daredevil and Jessica Jones. Solid cast, with Sixth Sense-level twists that grow organically over the course of the show.
- Babylon 5: The Lost Tales ★★★☆☆ It’s mixed. The first segment is essentially a bottle episode. The second is much stronger, and feels like a real return to Babylon 5
- Doom Patrol ★★★★☆ An absurd, character-focused, darkly humorous, psychological take on people with the super-power/body horror combo.
- Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog A campy take on the super-hero genre, from the point of view of a D-list villain trying to make it to the big leagues.
- Earthsea (TV) Every once in a while I’m reminded of SyFy’s notoriously bad TV adaptation of Earthsea, and think, maybe I should watch it just once, like the Star Wars Holiday Special. This is not a review. This is why I still haven’t seen it.
- Flash Forward (TV Pilot) ★★★★★ The first episode of Flash Forward is one of the best-constructed pilot episodes I’ve seen in a long time, especially of an arc-driven series.
- Heroes Volume 3: Villains I liked the start of the season, but by the end it had gotten to the point where I was alternately ready to jump for joy and throw things at the screen in the space of the same episode.
- Justice (ST:TNG, Season 1) ★☆☆☆☆ Some old TV shows are better than you remember. Planet of the Jogging Bimbos…isn’t.
- Paradise The ST:DS9 episode “Paradise” tries to make a point about self-reliance without technology, but misses the mark by not actually showing any benefits.
- The Sandman - Season One ★★★★★ The Sandman has been brought to life. And it’s amazing.
- Scott Pilgrim Takes Off ★★★★★ The cartoon is both wackier and more introspective than the source material. Sort of a mash-up of the movie and comics, sort of a reunion, sort of a remake, and sort of a What If.
- Star Trek: Discovery - Season 1 ★★★★☆ Star Trek with the pace of Farscape, weaving through existing lore and focused on one crew member’s quest for redemption.
- Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2 ★★★☆☆ The stand-alone episodes are good, and the Burnham/Spock family dynamics, but the main arc gets really frustrating in the second half.
- Star Trek: Discovery - Season 3 ★★★★☆ I liked Season 3 a lot better than season 2. It finally got to be its own Trek. And they did some really interesting things with the future of the 'verse and how the Discovery crew adapted to it.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks ★★★★★ Hilarious self-parody of TNG-era Star Trek. Funny on its own, but even better if you know the shows it’s riffing on.
- Star Trek: Picard - Season 1 ★★★☆☆ I have mixed feelings about the first season of Picard. But later seasons have given me a new appreciation for it.
- Star Trek: Picard - Season 2 ★★★☆☆ Hard to pin down, with a weird start, then a few good time travel episodes, before throwing in not just the kitchen sink but everything in the sink.
- Star Trek: Picard - Season 3 ★★☆☆☆ If season one was like The Last Jedi, this is The Rise of Skywalker, complete with gratuitously resurrected villains, young characters freaking out about their genetics, a family/found family theme that only sort of makes sense, and a galactic-level threat that can only be defeated by taking out that one resurrected villain.
- Star Trek: Section 31 ★★☆☆☆ As a Star Trek pilot it’s merely OK. As a stand-alone movie, it’s a mess. It could have been retooled as a good heist film, but wasn’t.
- Star Wars: Andor - Season One ★★★★☆ A more serious take on Star Wars, with a bit more personal scope showing how oppression grinds people down, and what sacrifices rebellion can require.
- Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett ★★★☆☆ The flashbacks were great! But I couldn’t get into the present-day story.
- Subspace Rhapsody ★★★★☆ The first time through my reaction was: OK, that was fun. The second time I really appreciated the way it was put together and immediately went looking for the soundtrack.
- Tin Man ★★★☆☆ The Wizard of Oz meets The Dark Crystal by way of 1930s scifi was fascinating as a concept, but they managed to make it dull and tedious.
Tech Tips
- Vizio E422VA: Connecting that Internet-Connected TV to Wi-Fi Update the firmware over wired ethernet first, and use a WPA password without spaces.
Les Misérables
- Review: Les Misérables TV Miniseries 2000 Stand-outs: unusual character choices and the Thénardier family as a real menace. But I wanted to like it more than I did.
Blog Posts
- LOST, but Not in Purgatory
People are still arguing over whether the Lost castaways were “in purgatory the whole time?” The finale was very clear on that: everything on the island happened. The afterlife didn’t come into play until the final season. That last season featured glimpses of what looked at first like an alternate timeline in which the plane […]
- Genre TV Update: Fall 2015
Somehow I’ve managed to end up watching mostly shows based on comic books this year. And amazingly, there are enough of them out there that I have to pick and choose. It seems I’m able to keep up with about 3 shows on a weekly basis, and still fit in family, work and other hobbies. […]
- Quick TV Thoughts: Flash, SHIELD, Grimm, Castle, Once Upon a Time/Frozen
Now that the fall 2014 TV season is underway, a few thoughts about some shows I’m watching.
- A Wicked Weekend
Somehow I ended up listening to Wicked, watching Oz: The Great and Powerful, and catching up on Once Upon a Time…on the weekend of Emerald City Comicon.
- Better Off Ted is Complete!
When ABC canceled Better Off Ted back in February, they left two episodes unaired. They’ve sat collecting dust…until now. The whole season is now streaming online.
- Farewell to FlashForward, Heroes & Better Off Ted
So, the last few TV shows I was waiting to hear about have been officially canceled. FlashForward is two episodes away from its season — now series — finale. I’ll miss it a little, but I think I’ll miss what it could have been a lot more than I’ll miss what it actually was. The […]
- Breaking the Castle’s Fourth Wall
Hah! It turns out those ads for Heat Wave during Castle aren’t fake: ABC actually had someone write the Nikki Heat book as a tie-in. The first time I remember seeing something like this was with (appropriately enough) Murder She Wrote, with a paperback mystery novel credited to Jessica Fletcher. In that case, though, the […]
- Rereading FlashForward
I’ve been re-reading Robert J. Sawyer’s original Flashforward novel…for obvious reasons. It’s been interesting to compare the TV adaptation…
- Ads Should Not *Break* Streaming Video
After finishing season one of Leverage on Netflix, we’ve started watching season two on TNT’s website. Netflix’s streaming video has been great, and TNT’s has been decent enough aside from dropping out of full-screen for commercials…until yesterday. Last night, while watching “The Order 23 Job” on our MacBook, we got to the final commercial break […]
- Crepe on TV
There’s a TV on the wall of the crepe cafe where I’m having lunch, bigger than the TV I have at home. Right now it’s showing a live view of the kitchen. This might be more interesting if the kitchen weren’t open to the dining area. I can see the same thing (from another angle) […]
- Bosley, John Bosley
I’ve just started re-reading Neverwhere. When Richard and Door first meet — after her injury has started to heal, anyway — he introduces himself as “Richard. Richard Mayhew. Dick,” A page or two later, Door calls him “Richardrichardmayhewdick.” IIRC Neil Gaiman said he stole the joke from Douglas Adams, who had someone refer to “Dentarthurdent” […]
- Too Short a Season
Pushing Daisies DVD box proclaims: ââ¬ÅThe Complete 2 Second Season.ââ¬Â I know it was short, but Iââ¬â¢d swear it was longer than that!
- Immortality
Hah! “the only advantage of living forever is having the time to read all of TV Tropes.”
- Rethinking the Electric Car
Started watching Leverage. Amused by a sight gag in which a responsible electric car is revealed to be a Tesla Roadster sportscar.
- Flash Forward Looks Incredible (Comic-Con)
They showed 2 acts of the pilot at Comic-Con, and it looks great. Different from the book, but they’re adapting the concept, not the story.
- Roomba Path, TV Campaign Advice, and…NINE
Long-Exposure Shot of a Roomba’s Path Shows Beautifully Organized Chaos (src: SignalTheorist) Things to consider when running a “save our show” campaign & what NOT to do. (via @johannadc and @mikesterling) Whenever I get order #9 or take-a-number, I imagine the disembodied voice saying “Number 9…Number 9” from the Beatles’ song Revolution 9
- Cardassian Reality TV
Every time I hear an ad for “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” It sounds like “Keeping Up With the Cardassians” Does the Star Trek universe have reality shows?
- Pushing Daisies Resurrected in Comics
DC will publish a 12-issue Pushing Daisies comic book by Bryan Fuller, featuring Chuck, Ned, Emerson and Olive versus 1,000 corpses.
- Pushing Daisies Season 2 DVD coming in July
TV Shows on DVD has the news (dated April 1), and it’s actually listed on Amazon, so it looks legit.
- Pop-Ups & Cake! 11111!
Glanced up at server monitors. It was 11:11:11 on the 11th, tiled 3 times. OMG!11111111 Cake Wrecks: The Problem With Phone Orders. Now back to work… How appropriate: BNL’s “Shopping” in background of a Kohl’s commercial! Also: the pop-up summary bits on the LOST rerun are seriously annoying. Fortunately I’m managing to tune them out.
- Midseason TV Watching
Battlestar Galactica As we move into the second half of the final season, will all really be revealed? Season Four has been good, definitely better than Season 3 (which IMO got bogged down by the Starbuck/Apollo “plot”), though the logic of the Final Five Minus One doesn’t make much sense. — Returns Friday, Jan. 16 […]
- Fringe at Two Episodes
Somehow, we’ve found ourselves watching a lot of shows on Fox this fall. And two out of three are returning, so we can be confident that they’ll actually finish out the season. The third is Fringe, and I’m still trying to decide whether I want to keep up with it. So far it basically seems […]
- TV Shows that Should be on DVD
One nice thing about the DVD market is that it seems like just about every TV show imaginable has gotten released on DVD over the past few years (to the point where, in some cases, it feels like studios are scraping the bottom of the barrel). But if you look at the full list at […]
- Recovering Lost âDriveâ
The show about an illegal cross-country race only lasted six episodes, and only four were broadcast on TV. The last two can now be seen on Amazon & iTunes.
- Sylar Industries
Altered photo. The original sign is for Syar Industries in Napa, California, but as Heroes fans, we couldn’t resist changing it to Sylar.
- Those Glowing Red Eyes
So, how appropriate is it that Lee Thompson Young, who played Cyborg on Smallville, would show up in an episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles? (Not, as far as we can tell, as a cyborg this time.)
- Pushing “Pushing Daisies”
What with all the media buzz surrounding Pushing Daisies, it seems to me as if you’d have to be pretty dead not to have heard of it. Not to worry, though: protagonist Ned can help with that. Temporarily, at least. You just have to get him to touch you before 8 pm (7 central) tonight, […]
- Prim(a)tech Sighting
In honor of the Heroes DVD release, here’s a truck that’s almost, but not quite labeled for Primatech Paper: Interestingly, it’s been a month for timing pop culture releases with relevant astronomical events. First Stardust, all about catching a falling star, arrived in theaters the same weekend as the Perseids meteor shower. Today, the Heroes […]
- Lost Finale
That makes two very good season finales this week. Lost was more plot-focused, while Heroes was more character-focused. And we learned some very interesting things about the fate of the islanders. Spoilers follow.
- Thoughts on Heroes: “How to Stop an Exploding Man”
The Heroes season finale was excellent. They did a good job of resolving the main story arc established at the beginning of the season (the bomb threatening New York City), balanced action and characterization, answered some questions while still leaving things open—and set up a really interesting situation for season 2. It’s also nice to see […]
- Mohindiana
Ever notice the similarities between Mohinder Suresh on Heroes and Indiana Jones? His first arc is straight out of The Last Crusade.
- LOST Renewal / Story Arcs vs. TV Scheduling
Here’s a surprise: Lost has been renewed for a three-season deal… but each season is only 16 episodes long. The writers are glad that they have an endpoint, because now they know how long they have to tell the rest of the story they have in mind. (Call me credulous, but I’m inclined to believe […]
- The Secret Life of the Invulnerable Cheerleader
I was browsing the DVD releases at Target this weekend, and saw the box for Bring it On: All or Nothing. I did a double-take, because right there on the cover was Claire Bennet from Heroes: Yes, shortly before Hayden Panettiere played a cheerleader with super-powers on Heroes, she played a cheerleader in a direct-to-video […]
- Smallville Flash
With Bart Allen returning to Smallville tonight—alongside Cyborg, Green Arrow, and Aquaman—I find myself wondering about the best way to hang onto just a few episodes. Last night I went looking for my tape of “Run,” the first episode in which he appeared, and I couldn’t find it. I have no interest in buying full […]
- Hey, Kids!
Start your own cable company like Jack and Jill* did! This showed up in our latest cable bill. Time Warner is taking over from Comcast, and while their “Hello, my name is ____” campaign makes sense in a sort of cutesy way, I can’t figure out the logic of this one. Though I imagine many […]
- Lost on the Internet
CNET has an article on various websites related to Lost. Among them are official sites for Oceanic Airlines and The Hanso Foundation and fan sites for Mega Lotto Jackpot and Charile’s band, Drive Shaft. I’d seen the Drive Shaft site last year (or at least a Drive Shaft site), though it seems to have exceeded […]
- Zombie Attack!
Finally, something light-hearted in the news: A bunch of people decked out as zombies crashed the American Idol auditions in Austin, Texas last week, groaning things like “Television rots your braaaaaains!” Reportedly the contestants didn’t get it. Ironically, the event organizers had read about the protest in advance on Craigslist, and quickly got the “zombies” […]
- Reality TV and Remakes
On seeing an ad for the upcoming Dukes of Hazzard movie, I started thinking of other 70s and early 80s TV shows that Hollywood might remake. Then I started thinking of late 80s and 90s shows. I’m certain that, 10-20 years from now, there will be a Beverly Hills 90210 movie. But what about the […]
- Desperate in Decency
It looks like the FCC isn’t completely insane. After four months, they concluded that the now-infamous Desperate Housewives locker room promo isn’t indecent after all. “Although the scene apparently is intended to be titillating, it simply is not graphic or explicit enough to be indecent under our standard.” I saw the spot—or at least something […]
- Not where I was expecting it!
The mystery of where the Farscape miniseries will air has been answered! From Sci-Fi Wire [archive.org]: SCI FI announced it will be bringing back Farscape with an all-new miniseries — called Farscape: Peacekeeper War — slated to air in the fourth quarter of this year. WTF? OK, it’s not the last place I’d expect – […]
- Well, that sucks.
Miss two weeks and they pull the rug out from under you: …the cast, crew, writers and producers of Angel deserve to be able to wrap up the series in a way befitting a classic television series and that is why we went to Joss to let him know that this would be the last […]
- “Birds of Prey” at 3 episodes
When I heard they were turning Birds of Prey into a TV series, I wasn’t sure what to think, having never picked up the comic book (although I do follow various comics news sites). Having seen 3 episodes, I’m still not sure. The premiere episode was pretty good, for a pilot. In fact, most of […]