Random TV Thoughts

[Tabe]

Some other stuff I fondly remember is the season two premiere, or maybe season three, but Julie works at the pool and has the hots for the guy she doesn't even know while Saracen twists in the wind. I liked that plot because of how realistic it felt. I also loved the Landry/Tyra relationship that ended with Landry getting stood up. Landry would later wind up with the suuuuuper cute girl in his band.

 

And I'm surprised you didn't mention the biggest plot hole, which was Saracen having a massive apartment in Chicago as a student. Downtown, or hell, even in a surrounding neighborhood, that place is at least $3000 a month. Couple that with tuition and one wonders how he's making his money.

Saracen's apartment wasn't massive.  It wasn't tiny by any means but it wasn't massive.  But, yeah, that's a pretty big hole.  And you're right about the other two storylines - they felt realistic and played out that way.

 

Another that I liked was the storyline with Epic.  Well, I didn't actually like the storyline but I liked that the resolution was "Tami didn't end up helping her".  Was a nice change from the standard "white lady helps the downtrodden minority girl" thing we've seen a million times.  Ya know what bugged me about that storyline?  Besides how cliche the whole thing was?  That I'd seen that actress play that exact same part before.  It's so cliche that the actress is repeating the part in different shows/movies.

 

Landry didn't end up with the (I wouldn't say suuuuuper) cute girl in his band - she was a lesbian.

[Tabe]

It's always an interesting read when a poster here catches up on a show I love.  Good stuff, Tabe.

I'm kinda kicking myself for not watching it when it was on originally.  I just assumed it would be ridiculous like the movie or would be an exaggerated version of the book and never even gave it a chance.  It checks off all the boxes for me - football, hot women, a drama - and I still ignored it.  Shame on me.  The upside is that I got to watch the entire series in like 3 weeks instead of 5 years.  Thank you Netflix!

[Craig H]

Oh man, I forgot that about Landry's friend. I also just went back to watch the series finale and that's a pretty big studio apartment/loft for Chicago. He had high ceilings and everything. I have a couple friends who would kill for a space like that in the city.

[odessasteps]

When Tabe said "series finale," i had to stop and think "which one?"

Sepinwall always talks about how the show ended up having three of them, never being sure about renewal/cancellation.

[Tabe]

Oh man, I forgot that about Landry's friend. I also just went back to watch the series finale and that's a pretty big studio apartment/loft for Chicago. He had high ceilings and everything. I have a couple friends who would kill for a space like that in the city.

 

Possible he was using some of the cash from his father's death to pay for it.

[Craig H]

Maybe. Well, anyhoo, I still wish Berg would do a follow-up on the series at some point. More than Buffy, Firefly, Angel, etc., I want to know how Coach and Coach's Wife are doing in Philly.

[Tabe]

Maybe. Well, anyhoo, I still wish Berg would do a follow-up on the series at some point. More than Buffy, Firefly, Angel, etc., I want to know how Coach and Coach's Wife are doing in Philly.

There was a script/proposal for a movie that followed up on the series but it got canned.

[Reed]

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2013/12/14/tv-ratings-friday-grimm-falls-hawaii-five-0-nikita-the-carrie-diaries-down-shark-tank-steady/222501/

 

I knew The Carrie Diaries was doing miserably but a 0.2 is a disaster, even on a Friday night. Is there a reason it's doing so crappy beyond just being a bad show? You'd think you'd have some of the teenybopper demographic watching.

 

And Nikita should offer hope to fans of cult TV shows eveywhere. Your favorite show,too, can do dismal ratings for most of the time it's on and still somehow get a decent and lengthy run due to syndication and overseas production companies. 

 

On, and Blue Bloods gets almost 11 million viewers (more than Scandal or Modern Family!) and does a 1.2. CBS = TV for old people.

[mco543]

Does anyone know the name of the actor that got sodomized by the banana on Mob City? He looks so familiar and I can't find him credited for the show.

[Reed]

Jordan Peele?

[RandomAct]

Penny made me feel some kinda way on Big Bang this week. 

[Jrag]

I watched the first few episodes of American Horror Story tonight. Not really my style, but it was better than I expected.

I kept imagining an alternate reality version of the show where Coach Taylor is married to Connie Briton's character. He would tell all the patients to "shape up, son." and there would be none of this murder nonsense.

[piranesi]

Watching the 2005 BBC version of BLEAK HOUSE and Charles Dance is magnificent as Tulkinghorn.  It's perfect for him.

 

So many great performances.  Honorable mentions to:

Nathaniel Parker (who astoundingly I recognized most as the bad guy from BEVERLY HILLS NINJA) as Skimpole
Pauline Collins (familiar from maybe every BBC drama ever) as Mrs. Flite
Natalie Press (unknown to me) adorable as Caddy
Matthew Kelly as Old Mr. Turveydrop
and a guy named Peter Guinness who I've never seen before who was awesomely gross as the coroner

and a wistful glimpse of Richard Griffiths doing his thing as Bayham Badger

Also, really tense, slick directing by Justin Chadwick who went on to direct THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL and now MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM.

 

He did some great stuff veering between a warm, suffocating super-closeup style that lets these fantastic faces shine and captures the stifling atmosphere of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, and weird moving long-shot style with grey colors and oddlighitng that suddenly makes things look super real and grimy.  It kind of reminded me of the style of David Yates fantastic work in HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1  (by far the best directed of the bunch).

 

Also, when directed like this BLEAK HOUSE seems like the prototype for TWIN PEAKS.
 

[Brian Fowler]

I'm not even sure Deathly Hallows part 1 is Yates best work in the series, given how fucking beautiful Half Blood Prince is.

[piranesi]

I thought is was the boldest departure from what people were used to and expecting and came closest to standing alone as a great film in itself.  At the very least is was the most challenging for the audience and the one that asked them to deal with something stripped of most of the whimsy.  It was the only one that left me emotionally engaged with something other than, like, wonderment or something.

[Brian Fowler]

Hm...  I found the big problem with DHP1 was that it basically pointed out just how damnably little in terms of plot actually happened in the first half of the novel.  It is beautifully atmospheric (Shot in a way that, to me at least, invoked a lot of 70's horror) but I didn't feel like it really held up well by itself as a movie.

 

The gorgeous autumnal colors of HBP, on the other hand, I thought fit the story at hand incredibly well, invoking the changing of the season in the lives of the main three characters, as they really were becoming adults, more or less, in that book/film.

 

Overall, outside the first two, which were shot by that absolute hack Columbus, I find the whole series massively fascinating in terms of directors and cinematography, in a way that giant tentpole blockbusters never, ever are. 

[piranesi]

I really liked how well the magic got sort of "domesticated" or simplified once it was being done in the muggle world.

 

Dammit, Fowler, just go watch BLEAK HOUSE.  It's on Netflix.  It's immeasurably better than the GREAT EXPECTATIONS they did last year. The only good part of that was when Gillian Anderson went up in flames.  That was magnificent.

 

That goes for all of you!

[ChesterCopperpot]

So Family Guy last night

 

Brian is alive again

 

[Antacular]

And Seth definitely doesn't smoke pot.

 

Didn't see the episode, but being that Brian is my favorite character (Shocking I know), this does not sit well with me. Haven't heard anything about Pauly W. Becoming a permanent cast member, so I assume they'll bring Brian back eventually.

 

Ta-da.

[MarcosLoura]

Caught an episode of GIRLS on the tele, watched it, enjoyed, decided to watch the next one. Forward two days later and I've binged watched the 2 seasons.

 

I feel my boobs growing by the second.

[supremebve]

Did anyone watch the latest 30 for 30?  It was basically the story of Maurice Clarett, who I'm very interested in based on the fact that we are essentially from the exact same place.  I never met him, but my cousin was his running back coach in high school and I had another cousin who was his teammate.  I don't know if I've ever witnessed someone come off as incredibly intelligent as him while talking about his incredibly stupid actions.  The fact that he is probably the only player ever to get suspended for an NCAA violation, except no one ever said what rule he violated is more than a little questionable to me.  His downward spiral from being the workhorse, in every sense of the word, running back on the National Championship team to a horrible criminal is sad as hell to watch.  If there was a way to go back in time to get him to not call the athletic director a liar, and he could have played the rest of his college career, is there any way he wouldn't have been a quality pro?  (by the way, he was an absolute monster if you played NCAA football after that championship season, and if you uploaded his draft class on Madden he was even better.)

[Territorial]

So Family Guy last night

 

Brian is alive again

 

 

I had heard a rumor that was going to happen last night, which is why I watched the episode, basically.

 

The real surprise would have been if the episode was actually funny.

[Tabe]

Caught an episode of GIRLS on the tele, watched it, enjoyed, decided to watch the next one. Forward two days later and I've binged watched the 2 seasons.

 

I feel my boobs growing by the second.

I tried an episode and just couldn't get into it.  Found the characters to be unlikeable in that "can't stand watching" kind of way and not in the "you're supposed to hate them" kind of way.

[Tabe]

Did anyone watch the latest 30 for 30?  It was basically the story of Maurice Clarett, who I'm very interested in based on the fact that we are essentially from the exact same place.  I never met him, but my cousin was his running back coach in high school and I had another cousin who was his teammate.  I don't know if I've ever witnessed someone come off as incredibly intelligent as him while talking about his incredibly stupid actions.  The fact that he is probably the only player ever to get suspended for an NCAA violation, except no one ever said what rule he violated is more than a little questionable to me.  His downward spiral from being the workhorse, in every sense of the word, running back on the National Championship team to a horrible criminal is sad as hell to watch.  If there was a way to go back in time to get him to not call the athletic director a liar, and he could have played the rest of his college career, is there any way he wouldn't have been a quality pro?  (by the way, he was an absolute monster if you played NCAA football after that championship season, and if you uploaded his draft class on Madden he was even better.)

I haven't seen it yet but did see an interview with Clarett on ESPN's "First Take" show while I was laid up last week.  He did come across as pretty intelligent but some of it was the "I'm trying to sound smarter with a big vocabulary than I really am" kind of thing.  He honestly didn't have all that much to say in the interview.

 

As for him as a pro?  I don't think he'd have been a superstar or even a star.  He simply wasn't fast enough to be a great back in the NFL.

[Elsalvajeloco]

 

Did anyone watch the latest 30 for 30?  It was basically the story of Maurice Clarett, who I'm very interested in based on the fact that we are essentially from the exact same place.  I never met him, but my cousin was his running back coach in high school and I had another cousin who was his teammate.  I don't know if I've ever witnessed someone come off as incredibly intelligent as him while talking about his incredibly stupid actions.  The fact that he is probably the only player ever to get suspended for an NCAA violation, except no one ever said what rule he violated is more than a little questionable to me.  His downward spiral from being the workhorse, in every sense of the word, running back on the National Championship team to a horrible criminal is sad as hell to watch.  If there was a way to go back in time to get him to not call the athletic director a liar, and he could have played the rest of his college career, is there any way he wouldn't have been a quality pro?  (by the way, he was an absolute monster if you played NCAA football after that championship season, and if you uploaded his draft class on Madden he was even better.)

I haven't seen it yet but did see an interview with Clarett on ESPN's "First Take" show while I was laid up last week.  He did come across as pretty intelligent but some of it was the "I'm trying to sound smarter with a big vocabulary than I really am" kind of thing.  He honestly didn't have all that much to say in the interview.

 

As for him as a pro?  I don't think he'd have been a superstar or even a star.  He simply wasn't fast enough to be a great back in the NFL.

 

 

To be honest, the crew didn't have much to ask him. Also, it sounded like Maurice didn't want to give away the whole documentary. I think he was just overwhelmed by the moment and seemed to be on the verge of tears when he got on the set. That had to be the first time in a long time he has been on live television where he wasn't getting buried or his name being brought up and dragged through the mud. He was also on the UFC Road to the Octagon show that aired on Fox two weeks ago doing strength and conditioning with a fighter that part of Ohio. He came across well on that too.

 

If you want to talk trying to upgrade your vernacular, Plaxico on First Take the week or so before was a prime example. Then again, it isn't that hard to sound intelligent sitting next to man who firmly believes all football games should be played indoors.