What are you watching these days?

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sun Oct 13, 2013 3:52 am

As middling as AoS has been, Precinct 99 has actually beaten my expectations. I thought it was going to be a show entirely about Andy Samberg goofing around as a cop. Instead it's a pretty solid ensemble sitcom, where Samberg's lowbrow goofiness is probably the worst part.

K · Post by K » Sun Oct 13, 2013 1:36 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote: The show is going to lose my interest if it doesn't start being more interesting to watch. Ep 2 was abysmal, ep 3 was passable, but it's on life support because there's seriously no excuse for this show to be less interesting than Fringe.

Whedon has a problem where he tries to do seasons of backstory before things get interesting.

Sadly, this means that his shows tend to get cancelled before anything interesting happens.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Tue Oct 15, 2013 4:12 pm

Phineas & Ferb season four!! Somewhere around episode 13, Disney did a P&F/Marvel crossover that I'm dying to get see.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Oct 16, 2013 1:41 am

I somehow didn't know about The Newsroom until this week despite it being in its second season. I mean, I'd heard about it, but I didn't know.
Episode 1 is available for free viewing legitimately to those who may wish to attempt being enticed.

It's West Wing for the news! With profanity! A fantasy fiction where instead of having an honorable government, we have an honorable news show. It has all the right elements to make you feel good as you enjoy the fantasy for a brief while.

I know it was mentioned many pages ago on this thread, but it being on pay-cable, which I lack, I never really investigated it at all until Youtube suggested a clip of the show to me and I was thus ensnared.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Oct 17, 2013 2:28 pm

So, my household has had the option to watch AoS or watch Arrow(we're catching up on season 1 on netflix) and we've all basically picked Arrow as the show we'd rather watch.

I want to like AoS, but currently the only characters I like are everyone but the 2 main characters. Course, I felt that way during the first season of Warehouse 13. So hopefully they will get better.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Thu Oct 17, 2013 3:22 pm

erik wrote:I somehow didn't know about The Newsroom until this week despite it being in its second season. I mean, I'd heard about it, but I didn't know.

I like The Newsroom, but I liked Season 1 a little bit more than 2. Season 1 was a little more preachy, but until the last three(ish) episodes, every episode of Season 2 left me depressed enough that I immediately turned around and watched Devious Maids to get some semblance of positivity back.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Oct 17, 2013 6:51 pm

i just watched the movie "The Last Unicorn" again and got reminded of much i liked it some time ago.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Oct 19, 2013 12:13 am

Sir Neil wrote:Episode 3 of SHIELD was a tremendous improvement last week's disaster.

Sadly episode 4 is looking even worse. I haven't even finished it yet, but I choked on the premise that SHIELD has been operating for decades, in the Marvel Universe, the Avengers movie actually happened, but they don't believe in ESP. An actual agent was mindcontrolled with a glowy stick, they fought alongside and against gods, and they... don't believe in paranormal abilities? What?

K · Post by K » Sat Oct 19, 2013 12:43 am

Voss wrote:
Sir Neil wrote:Episode 3 of SHIELD was a tremendous improvement last week's disaster.
Sadly episode 4 is looking even worse. I haven't even finished it yet, but I choked on the premise that SHIELD has been operating for decades, in the Marvel Universe, the Avengers movie actually happened, but they don't believe in ESP. An actual agent was mindcontrolled with a glowy stick, they fought alongside and against gods, and they... don't believe in paranormal abilities? What?

Yeh, the fourth episode is not good.

I'm hoping that the series picks up at some point when they figure out that people really want supernatural/sci-fi mash-up adventures in a spy backdrop and not... whatever they are doing.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Oct 19, 2013 12:57 am

Yeah, the personal travails of a one-off character that I have no reason to care about who's vaguely connected to a main character that they haven't convinced me to care about made for a really boring episode. Particularly with the absolutely shocking reveal that Coulson was apparently once a hard-ass. Gosh. I am amazed.

I'm guessing the bit with the pee break and snacks in the van was supposed to amusing in some fashion, but it just made half of the team look like idiots. Again.

For a brief moment at the beginning, I thought there would be a compelling action sequence with a couple dozen Red Skull minions in exotic locations in Sweden, but I guess that would be too interesting.

Sir Neil · Post by **Sir Neil** » Sun Oct 20, 2013 4:27 am

Episode 4 of SHIELD is better than 2, in a strictly literal sense. The opening left me ready for a battle between SHIELD and a Red Skull cult. Instead I got ... whatever it is they had the nerve to put on TV in its place. When that was cruelly taken from me, I guessed that the cybernetics would be a product of Spiral's Body Shop, like Psylocke had. Nope. Once I stopped expecting it to be connected to the Marvel Universe, I tried to get some enjoyment from watching generic white guy infiltrate, and Coulson try to nab the bad guy solo like Gibbs.

The producers know they won't get sued for using Marvel properties, right? Has that been explained to them?

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sun Oct 20, 2013 7:13 am

Considering it is a Disney property on a Disney network, I don't know how they can't.

The irony of the 2vs4 argument is that at least 2 was connected to the marvel universe in some way- the magic device was built by HYDRA. But that sort of got buried under the idea that it would allow them to somehow utterly exterminate rebels (not sure how they'd find the more effectively, or how an entirely dangerous-to-the-user superweapon is the best option for dealing with small groups of people in the jungle.

But then it is feeling painfully obvious that at some point whatever passes for the climax will happen and we will all be very 'surprised' to learn that pretty much all the subplots have been connected to HYDRA in some way (with a low probability of being some other group, but defaulting to Nazis seems to fit with the lack of imagination inherent in this show).

As for Coulson going after the bad guy, that was underwhelming from the word go, since they deduce him to be an

overweight (to the point of barely able to type) and aging brit who shouldn't be a threat to anyone over the age of 6. Though for some reason, he wasn't all that overweight, and not particularly old, certainly not that he'd be confused about the differences between a disk and a thumbdrive

K · Post by K » Sun Oct 20, 2013 7:36 am

Voss wrote:
But then it is feeling painfully obvious that at some point whatever passes for the climax will happen and we will all be very 'surprised' to learn that pretty much all the subplots have been connected to HYDRA in some way (with a low probability of being some other group, but defaulting to Nazis seems to fit with the lack of imagination inherent in this show).

This is Whedon's slow burn. Don't be surprised if the end of season 1 is just someone mentioning the word "Hydra" and the end of Season 2 will be the first actual reveal of a Hydra villain.

He never really learned the script-writer's lesson of "never keep a bullet in the chamber."

Hell, it's a good thing that someone else did the backstory for Avengers for him by making seven movies of backstory, otherwise he'd make two movies of origins before we finally got to a good story.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sun Oct 20, 2013 5:20 pm

Sir Neil wrote:Episode 4 of SHIELD is better than 2, in a strictly literal sense. The opening left me ready for a battle between SHIELD and a Red Skull cult. Instead I got ... whatever it is they had the nerve to put on TV in its place. When that was cruelly taken from me, I guessed that the cybernetics would be a product of Spiral's Body Shop....

....or at least a villain name pulled from either version of Deathlok or an honest tell that this whole series is building backstory for the movieverse origin of Ultron who will be the big bad in Avengers II. (which Whedon wrote the script for)

Sir Neil · Post by **Sir Neil** » Sun Oct 20, 2013 8:12 pm

Yeah, Josh, something.

Voss wrote:As for Coulson going after the bad guy, that was underwhelming from the word go, since ....

True, I didn't think the handler would be a physical threat, but I was hoping they would have a wonderful verbal showdown that would give us another look at the agent so formidable he will blow up your warehouse with a missile before you make it down the stairs if you don't put Natasha on the line.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Mon Oct 21, 2013 2:22 am

Eh. They've pushed the 'he's different now' button so many times that he might as well be a completely different character. I don't actually know how he's different, but characters in the show are repeatedtly addressing the fourth wall and telling us that he is, so it must be true.

Sir Neil · Post by **Sir Neil** » Mon Oct 28, 2013 12:15 pm

SHIELD Episode 5. I'd say it's about as good as 3.

One of my major complaints was answered this episode: when they have to storm a building to rescue someone the Rising Tide endangered, they do it with a swarm of agents, instead of just Coulson, May, and Generic. The agents actually make use of the fact they're an agency, so yay.

They fight an irrational full-blown supervillain. It shows how SHIELD handles people that just roll initiative instead of talking. Not a regular Marvel character, but he could have been.

Skye's Rising Tide Betrayal Score: 2. She warned her boyfriend that the Feds were on to him, so he ought to meet her for a quickie before he gets Gitmo'd. Whoopty doo. SHIELD was on to her the whole time, and that mitigated the damage she did. She even defended SHIELD to her boyfriend while they were in lockup.

I was expecting her inevitable betrayal to be a lot more damning than it was. I figured she'd get agents killed, but at most she caused a traffic collision. I'm almost positive she had no connection to the files her boyfriend sold, but I might have missed a line.

Spoilers on SHIELD and civil liberties:

Despite what Skye and the boyfriend said, they didn't violate any until the end of the episode. They had evidence showing the guy had committed felonies, so they can snatch him up and hold him for two days for investigation. They can also interrogate him without Miranda, they just can't use what they learn in court. RICO even lets them take his money. The only things that were shaky are the bracelet and dropping him off in Hong Kong. For a black-ops international spy agency, that's a pretty good record.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Mon Oct 28, 2013 3:19 pm

It was definitely a better episode, though Skye is turning out to be as ridiculous as I originally thought, though not for the reasons I expected. Her actions in this episode were just... pathetic. Weird dependency issues, and her motivations aren't exactly interesting, and don't seem all that coherent to me.

Really, she became a super AA hacker to find her parents? But didn't have any real reason to suspect super-secret things until after she found the redacted SHIELD document, and somehow Emo Genericus taught her the super hacking skills of 'poking at a PDA.' Eh. Good thing the A plot actually went somewhere, because the backstory plot was filled with nothing but empty rhetoric, stupidity (don't shag somewhere you're chasing) and meaningless bedraggled kitten crap

Sir Neil · Post by **Sir Neil** » Mon Oct 28, 2013 4:23 pm

Oh, right, I'd forgotten that. I knew there was a reason I thought it wasn't as good as 3, but couldn't remember why. My brain must have blocked it in self-defense.

Sir Neil · Post by **Sir Neil** » Fri Nov 15, 2013 9:14 pm

Agents of SHIELD. Are we on episode 6? 7? Christ, I don't even care anymore. Kadnod of RPGnet wrote a better summary of 6 than I ever could, "We saw the Avengers beat up a million zillion aliens. Coulson's team spent an entire episode trying to defeat a hat dropped by one of those aliens. The hat almost won." On the bright side, the science twins' acting is improving. Coulson comforting one of the hat's victims was the best scene.

7 has SHIELD betray the team for no reason, leading the science girl to proclaim that she wouldn't be part of the hacker's "bad girl shenanigans."

She is quickly seduced by the hacker tugging on her heartstrings, but it just leads her to shooting a supervisor in the chest. Again we get the twins improved acting, but the last minute save by that lumbering cargo plane was pitiful. Should have borrowed a Quinjet, "Cavalry".

I might watch it next week, but I can't imagine why.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Fri Nov 15, 2013 9:34 pm

Stahlseele wrote:i just watched the movie "The Last Unicorn" again and got reminded of much i liked it some time ago.

You can never go wrong with Rankin-Bass.

rampaging-poet · Post by **rampaging-poet** » Sat Nov 16, 2013 2:11 am

I need to watch that again. I'm actually in the middle of a short story by the author of the novel right now.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sat Nov 16, 2013 3:11 am

Sir Neil wrote:Agents of SHIELD. Are we on episode 6? 7? Christ, I don't even care anymore.

Penny Arcade gets it right.

That show seems to be like The Walking Dead. Nobody is watching it for what it is, but for what they wish it was.

Sir Neil · Post by **Sir Neil** » Wed Nov 20, 2013 5:37 pm

That Penny Arcade comic spoke the words of my heart, Angel.

Sir Neil wrote:I might watch it next week, but I can't imagine why.

Oh, because 8 is Coulson vs. the Goddamn Wrecking Crew Fuck Yeah, that's why. Go watch it.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Wed Nov 20, 2013 10:30 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:That show seems to be like The Walking Dead. Nobody is watching it for what it is, but for what they wish it was.

I really wonder how any military in the world got overrun by zombies, when a horde of 20-30 zombies has one guy with a melee weapon surrounded and he makes it out alive on his own.