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2014 RANDOM TV THOUGHTS


RIPPA

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I'm a little over halfway through the second season of Law & Order now.  The changes from season 1 to 2 are interesting to see.  For one thing, they switched to what I would guess is video tape for season 2 instead of film.  The episodes on Netflix are all in SD in 4:3 rather than the 16:9 HD we got for season 1.  Weird to see that kind of backtracking change.  It's also obvious they got a budget boost for season 2 as things are just a little more polished, a little slicker.  What didn't improve, however, is the stories.  While still good, there's a general drop in quality of stories for season 2.  

 

Another part of season 2 that I'd forgotten: Before he was Lenny Briscoe, Jerry Orbach was a defense attorney.  I love that at least two of the regulars (Orbach and S. Epatha Merkerson) debuted on the show originally as other characters in tiny roles.  

 

I was aware that Orbach had done Broadway as well as all the TV work he's known for.  I had no idea he was such a huge star - a hall of famer, Tony Award winner, the whole nine yards.  I wish he'd been able to live long enough to actually do the L&O spinoff he so richly deserved.

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Just when I thought Greg couldn't be more annoying he brings back the fucking cop show dreck.

I always wondered who watched these shows because no one I know ever did. Turns out everyone else does. Christ.

Let me be your guide here. You are clearly a Caruso/D'onofrio man. This is good because they are awesome and you can avoid wasting time on all that other junk.

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All his L&O chatter led to me seeking out another fave of mine on Amazon Prime... and so shall my marathon viewing of NYPD Blue Season 1 begin!

 

James

That's a show I need to binge watch someday.  For awhile, I was really, really into it.  But at the same time it seemed to wildly fluctuate in quality.

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Didn't that show suffer from focusing so much on the one guy that it became absurd how much horrible stuff was happening to him.  Like, how many times can he get cancer? How many of his kids can die?  How many of his partners can die/get cancer?  How many of his wives can be murdered?

 

Like, once the answer to each of those questions is > 1.5...you've got a problem with your show.

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Its one of the biggest "What ifs" in TV.

What if David Caruso hadn't gone prima donna and stayed on NYPD Blue as the primary?

It could've been a modern version of Crime Story

 

James

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CSI: MIAMI becomes incredibly enjoyable if you pretend the show is actually called FUTURE COPS.  It exists in a version of our world, 20 years in the future, when most things are basically the same except for a few things like:

1) Of course all that ridiculous tech, like computer walls that you move things around using your hands and fingerprint databases that immediately pop up a picture of the person with their home address, and cameras that take pictures that get higher resolution as you zoom in.  All that shit.

2) Global Warming has had the effect of altering the light spectrum.  All light is bright yellow, orange and green.  Interior buildings must be lit yellow, green, or blue to offset the higher temperatures.

3) Miami is a Utopian civilization independent of the rest of the USA, made up of only wealthy people, in which all races have achieved equal wealth, but through means specific to their ethnicity as assigned by computer:

White men - corrupt corporations
Latino and Black men - running massive drug cartels headquartered in Russia and Brazil
Asian men - Computer stuff

Women - Bikini pedestrian (all women are employed by the city of Miami to wander the city dancing in bikinis until married off to one of the white men in the corrupt corporations)

4) There are no lawyers.  All interactions with FUTURE COP PATROL will be done without counsel

5) All citizens retain the physical capacity to lie to FUTURE COPS, but only once.  If you lie and they call you on it, you are physically compelled to shrug, roll your eyes, and immediately tell the whole truth.

6) If Future Cops guess right and explain to you how they think you did it, you must immediately admit it.  What else could you do?

7) After you confess you immediately board a bus for jail for the rest of your life.  There are no courts.

8) Future Cops tech includes physical teleporters.  This means that as soon as your face appears on one of their computer walls, you immediately re-constitute in their green-lit interrogation room.  Also, if you are innocent, future cops can read it in your face and will immediately believe your story. You will then name another person who might be involved and that person will immediately re-constitute in the orange interrogation room.

Now, enjoy the show!

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2) Global Warming has had the effect of altering the light spectrum.  All light is bright yellow, orange and green.  Interior buildings must be lit yellow, green, or blue to offset the higher temperatures.

This is the greatest explanation of the incredibly stupid lighting in CSI: Miami ever.  Well done, sir.

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It's just too damn easy to add color filters in post these days.

 

It used to you had to gel up the lights, and get it all perfectly lit with the exact right color combinations and you only did when it had a serious (at least in the minds of the director and DP) artistic reasons.

 

Now, you shoot it in normal light, and can just fiddle with color filters on the computer until you whatever looks cool.

 

 

 

Yes, I am bitching about modern technology right now.  Get the hell off my lawn.

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Is it better or worse than the shows shot through a blue filter?

They're all tied with garbage like Party of Five where they act like nobody ever turns on a damn light so the whole show is just one big shadow.
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They should use black filters so all you end up seeing is a black screen the whole film.

That's how they used to shoot night scenes to save money. "Day for night" stuff always looks goofy to me because you can still see shadows, etc. from the non-existent sun

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Going through Law & Order, I have decided that People v Molyneux (sp?) must have been the most interesting, complicated, complex, convoluted case of all-time because pretty much 99% of all case citations on the show are from that one case.

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Is no one else watching the Colombian BREAKING BAD remake in between Copa Mundial games?

 

They just got to the part where Hank is transferred to Texas and runs into the super scary Mexican cartel guys and is made fun of for not speaking Spanish.  This is a problem because the show is in Spanish...

 

So they flipped it.  Colombian Hank is transferred UP to near the U.S. border.  He is mocked by the Mexican agents for not speaking English and runs into the super terrifying U.S. Cartels.

 

They're doing the whole show as a novello.  One episode a day for three months.  Colombian Skyler is super hot too.  As is Colombian Marie.  Colombain Jessie is just a bland dude, though.  He's pretty charming, but too buff.

 

It has a Telenovella look to it.  The sets seem kind of fakey.  But they are compensating by using a single moving camera and some shaky-can stuff to make it feel more real than a normal soap.

 

Oh, shit. Colombian Jane looks like Mary Louis Parker.  Disappointing.

 

AH...here comes the turtle-head scene...Colombian Danny Trejo is pretty amazing.  He's a big fat Rio Grande goof in a huge cowboy hat with a giant belly.  Perfect.

 

I really can't wait to meet Colombian Lydia.  The Gus I've seen in commercials is a chubby little guy.  Weird choice.

 

Colombian Ted wears a pullover sweater and jeans to work.  I already hate him.

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I did not enjoy the pilot to Tyrant. Stereotypes galore and a little too Godfathery with the premise. I might give it a couple more looks but wasn't thrilled.

I was just coming in here to post about Tyrant. I thought the premise seemed really cool, but goddamn did they fail in the execution (no pun intended). The ending to the pilot left me thinking, "What the fuck did I just spend 40 minutes watching?". I'll give it another try, but only because I'm too lazy to change my DVR settings at the moment. Who knows, it could get better. Agents of SHIELD started out horrible too.

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