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The All-New TT: Television Time Mini Reviews

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Got to the end of season two in BSG and that was kind of A Lot in the last few episodes there. I did like the Baltar/Six dynamic inversion in the ep on Caprica where we meet Caprica-Six. Then the whole election -> colonization -> time-skip stuff accelerated so fast it was a little whip-lash-y. Guess they wanted a big status-quo shake-up, 'cause that's certainly what they did.

(We're also in the part of Parks and Rec with dumb rich baby Ant-Man, so that's fun (also Agatha Harkness which I'm spoiling only because the reference I'm making is recent). The guest stars on this show, man.
 
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Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
We blitzed through the Adama-has-a-mustache arc of BSG. The complete change of scenery/formula didn't last very long after all. Granted we lost the Pegasus but I'd been expecting that anyway. What happened with Kara was just downright mean though (and Tigh too for that matter). Interested to see what the heck the Cylons decide their doing from here. This whole recent plot has really shifted them from a monolithic, implacable force (barring a few outliers) into more of just a normal enemy that's fallible and is riven by its own internal conflicts.

Oh, the requisite "badass unexpected combat maneuver" kicking off the last battle there was pretty sweet, though.
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
My girlfriend and I have been slowly trucking through The Big Bang Theory. We're about in the middle of season 6 now, and I surprisingly don't hate it? It gets a lot better once the major female characters actually become main cast members (and once the writers tweak Amy into something more interesting than "girl Sheldon"). One big thing that still bothers me though is the show's refusal to acknowledge that Sheldon is on the autism spectrum; I don't know if this will ever happen, but in lieu of that label, the show has instead treated it as a personality quirk as a consequence of his massive levels of arrogance. I know it's probably foolish to expect a healthy treatment of psychological disorders from a sitcom, but this show is in a unique position to actually do it given the premise and subject matter. There's even a joke that stood out to me as a good example of ableism, so it's possible for the writers to be both insightful and funny about this stuff! They just don't really get there very often at all.
 

jpfriction

(He, Him)
They never formally diagnose him, to my recollection, but they do treat it more and more like "that's how his brain is wired" and less "he's just an asshole" as the show goes on and there is at least one heart to heart with Penny that I remember where he spells out his difficulty interacting with people and how that affects his relationship with Amy. I thought it was treated reasonably well. Maybe the spin-off about him as a boy goes into deeper, I haven't bothered watching it.

My main issue with the show was always that the nerds are just 100% nerds. They only really have nerdy interests and they seem to have every nerdy interest. Get a group of 4 obsessive dudes together like that and one of them is going to be really into baseball. That's just math.
 

muteKi

Geno Cidecity
My main issue with the show was always that the nerds are just 100% nerds. They only really have nerdy interests and they seem to have every nerdy interest. Get a group of 4 obsessive dudes together like that and one of them is going to be really into baseball. That's just math.

The fact that a CBS show about obsessive grad student nerds didn't include at least one of the four being really into The Price is Right feels like the most hilariously wasted opportunity (this post may or may not have been inspired by me reading some probability research papers on TPIR games)
 

Büge

Arm Candy
(she/her)
Pop Culture Detective did a few videos on the way the Big Bang Theory positions itself vis-à-vis misogyny and masculinity.

 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
Yeah, my only interaction with it has been "haha, you're awkward like this guy, you should check it out"! This Danielle Corsetto comic is pretty accurate to the milder interactions. I cannot recall where I read it but there was an author who said something like "I can't enjoy a piece of media where being me is the punchline".

I remember people telling me how I should check it out because it mentioned Flatland (one of my favourite books as a kid) and it reminded them of me so I was curious. But uh yeah no, he's just there to be laughed at. It made me wonder what I'm like to them.
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
Pop Culture Detective did a few videos on the way the Big Bang Theory positions itself vis-à-vis misogyny and masculinity.
Oh it's really reductionist on this front, I won't argue that at all. Honestly there's a lot to hate about the show! Which is why I was surprised I didn't end up hating it as much as I expected. But it's still a "turn your brain off" sitcom and I can recognize it's an aspect of privilege that I can sit through 6 seasons of it and not be affected by its treatment of nerds and women.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
The guest star game of later season Parks & Rec is just kinda off the chain, huh?
 

Patrick

Magic-User
(He/Him)
We just finished season 1 of Ted Lasso. It's over the top saccharine, but that's what we needed right now. Just a super good, positive show. Highly recommended.
 
I watched season 1 & 2 of Inkmaster on Netflix. I like it. Seems like the creators had the formula down for that show pretty early on. Earlier seasons and later seasons have similar if not exact formulas.

Inkmaster is my second favorite reality TV show. My favorite reality TV show is and will probably always be the Amazing Race.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Hit the end of season 3 of Battlestar. That was.... different.

The whole courtroom drama sequence was a bit out of the show's usual wheelhouse, but I thought they pulled it off pretty well. Then there's the actual ending/cliffhanger stuff. The obviously weren't gonna leave Starbuck dead but I'm still mulling the possibilities there. And I really don't think I'm buying the purported batch of Cylon reveals just now. My current theories run along the lines of something about/in the nebula mucking with everyone's heads. But anyway, what I really wasn't expecting was All Along the Watchtower. Huh.

(I know I"m probably not gonna spark a lot of discussion with speculation that was topical 15 years ago, but sometimes I just gotta vent it somewhere. 😅)
 

Exposition Owl

more posts about buildings and food
(he/him/his)
I recognize that this is unusual, but I’m a big fan of late Battlestar. I think the way they build in All Along the Watchtower as an ageless song that spans many cycles of human history is fantastic, and I love what Bear McCreary does with it in his score.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
I think the concept would have worked better if they had picked a traditional song with no known writer than one that we know the origin of.
 

JBear

Internet's foremost Bertolli cosplayer
(He/Him)
(I know I"m probably not gonna spark a lot of discussion with speculation that was topical 15 years ago, but sometimes I just gotta vent it somewhere. 😅)
I mean, I have thoughts, but can't really share them with you without spoiling.
 

Exposition Owl

more posts about buildings and food
(he/him/his)
I think the concept would have worked better if they had picked a traditional song with no known writer than one that we know the origin of.

I was happy to suppose that, in the Battlestar universe, the song just showed up in Bob Dylan’s mind from the collective unconscious or whatever, and he only thought he wrote it himself. In the show, it seemed to me more as though the song just appeared at a certain point, rather than being a common thing that everybody in the world already knew. Your mileage may vary, of course.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Well dang, I was looking at a BSG episode list and evidently for broadcast order we should be watching the TV movie Razor between season 3 and 4... which apparently just isn't available on Amazon (where we've been buying the rest streaming) at all. I fucking hate content delivery balkanization.

I understand it's a semi-standalone flashback thing that isn't crucial to the plot going forward or anything, but I'm still annoyed. Grumph.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
I was happy to suppose that, in the Battlestar universe, the song just showed up in Bob Dylan’s mind from the collective unconscious or whatever, and he only thought he wrote it himself. In the show, it seemed to me more as though the song just appeared at a certain point, rather than being a common thing that everybody in the world already knew. Your mileage may vary, of course.
I'm not saying that in BSG everyone knew the song. I'm saying that the concept of a song that exists in the collective unconscious being some sort of key makes more sense if you pick a song that we don't know the full origin of. Like House of the Risin' Sun or something.
 

John

(he/him)
Well dang, I was looking at a BSG episode list and evidently for broadcast order we should be watching the TV movie Razor between season 3 and 4... which apparently just isn't available on Amazon (where we've been buying the rest streaming) at all. I fucking hate content delivery balkanization.

I understand it's a semi-standalone flashback thing that isn't crucial to the plot going forward or anything, but I'm still annoyed. Grumph.
Yeah, and Razor "chronologically" fits somewhere in Season 2, so all it does is flesh out Pegasus stuff. SyFy did a bunch of stuff that both pissed off writers/casual viewers and made streaming rights complicated/impossible. You can hardly ever find the Miniseries streaming at the same place as the show, plus there's the TV Movies (Razor, The Plan), and a whole bunch of webisodes including a failed stealth prequel pilot (Blood and Chrome). None of those are essential except for the Miniseries, but I did like Razor because Michelle Forbes is awesome.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Well the BSG watch just got up to them finding Earth, which I suppose went about as well as could be expected for this show. The last four Cylons really still feel kinda like someone threw darts at the cast list still, but I guess I'll save discussion for when we wrap the whole show.

Meanwhile we *did* wrap all seven seasons of Parks and Rec - damn, what a great show all the way to the end. I don't have sniffles, you have sniffles. (Anyone know if the special COVID fundraiser reunion is available streaming and worth tracking down?)


Edit: Gah, so I went looking for the special, and its official NBC page just says "no longer available" (https://www.nbc.com/a-parks-and-recreation-special/video/a-parks-and-recreation-special/4160656), there's references to it having been on YouTube but I can't find it there anymore, and there's no trace of it on Prime where we bought the rest of the series. God I hate streaming rights. Do I have to spool back up my pirate ship for this shiz??
 
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Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
I've seen wildly different reactions to how people felt about the special; I gather that it's very of-the-moment early COVID lockdown and may hit or miss depending on how you're feeling.

Anyway I poked around a bit and couldn't find it officially available anywhere, so I said screw it and snagged myself a copy on the high seas. Even if it's not amazing, another half hour with these characters can't be that bad.
 
Friends and family COULDN’T stop asking me if I was going to watch prestige murder drama Mare of Easttown and for weeks I was like, “no, lol? I didn’t watch The Undoing and I won’t watch this.” But I suddenly had a lot of free time and two podcasts I regularly listen to (Who Weekly? and Time to Say Goodbye) put out episodes about it (haven’t listened) so I unexpectedly watched all 7 episodes at once; really fucking up my sleep schedule. It’s good.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Don't have a lot of time to write out reactions right now, but after a bit of hiatus we finally finished BSG. I didn't *hate* the ending and it had a lot of beautiful moments, though there were certainly a lot of things about it I didn't love either. But anyway, if anyone wants to talk spoilers, feel free.
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
Finally caught up with all of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Man, good show from beginning to end and still keeps its humanity and warmth even when things grow increasingly cartoonish. Its such a great cast running on all cylinders throughout (Though one Chelsea Peretti took a leave of absence, even before having a real goodbye, it became apparent as fun as her character is, her leaving didn't hurt the dynamic too much). Looking forward to what it is going to do with its last season that apparently felt the need to handle its elephant in the room sooo much that they had to throw out all the scripts.
 
Have binged Netflix's Never Have I Ever recently. It's Mindy Kaling's best show yet. (say this as a big fan of all her others) Maitreyi Ramakrishnan gives an incredible performance. My jaw dropped when I realized a 30 year old actor (well, probably 29 when filmed) was supposed to be 16. Ridiculous. But fun! First season has a really hateful strain of fatphobia focused on one character which is modified in the second, at least. (the character gets a gf; few if any fat jokes)

Also been watching American Horror Stories. As always, don't really understand people who watch AHS and hate it. Have enjoyed all three episodes so far. The first story is a two parter and should be commended for being tonally distinct in its two episodes. (both are good, but the second is also incredibly stupid because it's once again about how boring it is to be a ghost in the AHSverse)
 
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