[psmith2.0]

I agree. Clint knows he's 176, Ford thinks he's still 46 (and seems to get severely injured on the set in recent years, throwing big wrenches into production/shooting schedules and logistics, etc.).

Anyone hiring Ford needs it in the contract "you ain't doing shit in the way of stunts...don't even ask. We have a timeframe and a budget to maintain, and you don't help with either lately."

[turtle]

I thought Stranger Things had its own thread but I can't find it. Anyway, here are the first 8 minutes of the new series that is about to release.. I have to admit I'm really looking forward to watching this series.

[kieran]

it feels like it's been 10 years since the last season came out.

Nothing will top the first season of this show, but the other seasons were pretty good. Definitely looking forward to this one.

[drewprops]

Since Brad is tardy, episode 3 of Star Trek Strange New Worlds was excellent.


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[709]

I caught up on all 3 episodes of Strange New Worlds over the weekend and yeah, I can see myself sticking with it. Looking forward to them even.

And Prehistoric Planet – narrated/hosted by David Attenborough (!) – is legitimately amazing. 🦕🦖

[chucker]

Haven't looked into PP yet. The trailer makes me go "uhhhh maybe he should retire at some point", to be honest. I get it, his voiceovers are iconic…

I've also read that it's definitely not safe for children.

Only seen two SNW eps so far and, yep, it's nice to have some 90s'-style Trek again but with much higher production values (but sadly much shorter seasons).

[709]

Originally Posted by chucker I've also read that it's definitely not safe for children.

If you mean like, nature is brutal, youngins get et, then yeah. I could see that upsetting some kids.

[psmith2.0]

Better Call Saul mid-season finale…took about 57 minutes to actually get to the point/have something happen.

Glad this show is winding down. This season has been a bit of a slog. It’s just all over the place.

Around the :40 mark last night I was *this close* to bailing, and I wondered, out loud (I’m the only one here), “for crying out loud, is anything going to happen on this episode - how many shots are we going to see someone sitting in a sewer?! - or are they just going to cram in some shocking bullshit into the final two minutes so they can get a ginned-up cliffhanger?”

Well…

I’ve genuinely enjoyed all the previous seasons. This one, somehow, comes across differently and has been more of a chore. I’m glad this is its final season. After the past 2-3 episodes, I’d hate knowing I was looking at investing in another whole season of all this atomic-level “quirk” (aka interminable buildup/meandering punctuated by cruel, random violence in the closing seconds).

Hard to feel bad/sorry for Jimmy or Kim at this point, which makes it an even tougher thing to follow. Even if the main characters of a movie or TV series are shitheads, there has to be some sort of redeeming, likable scrap to hold onto/root for. Haven’t felt that in a while, and certainly don’t today. Everything Howard said about them, to them, was 100% true. Kim wrecked her life, throwing in with Jimmy. For the first time in the show’s run, I no longer really care about what happens to her. She’s damaged and vile. By choice. She’s no innocent, helpless victim. I see that now. She might’ve been, years back. But she’s as much of a soulless lizard as Jimmy. If she winds up taking one to the head by the series finale…oh well.

[chucker]

Haven't seen any of season 6 yet. I wonder if it has the same problem as Star Trek Picard season 2 — COVID restrictions require scenes to have very few actors on set at a time, so the writers are forced to write them such that teams are spread out on their own little vanity quests.

Originally Posted by psmith2.0 Hard to feel bad/sorry for Jimmy or Kim at this point, which makes it an even tougher thing to follow. Even if the main characters of a movie or TV series are shitheads, there has to be some sort of redeeming, likable scrap to hold onto/root for. Haven’t felt that in a while, and certainly don’t today. Everything Howard said about them, to them, was 100% true. Kim wrecked her life, throwing in with Jimmy. For the first time in the show’s run, I no longer really care about what happens to her. She’s damaged and vile. By choice. She’s no innocent, helpless victim. I see that now. She might’ve been, years back. But she’s as much of a soulless lizard as Jimmy. If she winds up taking one to the head by the series finale…oh well.

Well, I guess you could argue that for Walter White as well. That whole show is basically about the trajectory from someone you feel sorry for (cancer, too embarrassed to talk it out with his family, finds less legitimate ways to work around it but in doing so ruins his relationships) to someone you kind of don't. A descent into amorality. Arguably, that's what BCS has been about as well.

[drewprops]

Last night's episode of BCS was a "breather", but golly it was also tragically earth shattering. Let's not go into spoilers, but DAMN.


...

[psmith2.0]

That's what I'm talking about. Cruel and unfair, but that's how life goes sometimes, huh? The wrong (and undeserving) person pays for the sins/deeds of others. Was still a snail of an episode, though. After about that fifth sewer shot, I kept thinking "okay, is there something special about this sewer that I should be noting (besides the obvious, its location)?"

Chucker, I never watched Breaking Bad, so I only know the rough outline. But yeah. Still tough to pull for some characters when they just get so low and beyond redemption. Makes for good drama, but you still just want to take a shower afterwards. I know I couldn't watch BB or BCS-style fare all the time. Too draining and bleak.

It almost calls for an Al Bundy or Jack Tripper palate cleanser. '




No BCS spoilers below, but a semi-off-topic(?) rant centered around last night's episode and its coverage in the media this morning:

PS - I know I've griped about this during the runs of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, but just taking a random cruise around my usual sites this morning (including YouTube), I'm astounded by just how many inconsiderate, clue-starved boneheads - many of them so-called "professional" writers - are putting last night's details in their headlines (and photo captions, etc.). I can't think of anything more unprofessional, ill-mannered and jerkwitted, less than 24 hours - hell, less than 12 hours - after a show's airing. Can these idiots not a) reword their headlines/opening paragraphs or b) maybe wait 2-3 days before blabbing stuff in an impossible-to-miss way? How hard is that? And, as with the two Disney+ shows mentioned above, I'm not going to some genre-based, spoiler-oriented site where I'd expect to see such things openly discussed and shared. I'm just going to regular news/entertainment aggregators, and places like YouTube...where nobody can seem to exercise a bit of restraint and courtesy about how they write their headlines. Morons, all. And, no...the "solution" isn't "well, just stay off the Internet for 2-11 days". Uh...no. The solution is for people writing articles and reviews for publications, websites and blogs seen by gazillions of people to stop being such inconsiderate, unprofessional oblivitards and cunts.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by chucker Haven't looked into PP yet. The trailer makes me go "uhhhh maybe he should retire at some point", to be honest. I get it, his voiceovers are iconic…

This is really more of a comment on Macs than Prehistoric Planet, but I just got my M1 Pro MacBook Pro and… wtf?? The sound is surprisingly good for a laptop, but more than that, THE DISPLAY. OMG. Not only very sharp (slightly higher DPI than my old one, I think?), but then the HDR goes on and… what the hell. So bright.

Anyway, carry on.

[turtle]

There are so many shows that hit this weekend! I just don't have time to get all of them in even with the extra day!

I still have three episodes of Halo to watch. Stranger Things 4Pt1 dropped this morning. Obi-wan is out now with two episodes.

[Ryan]

Last two episodes of Bosch Legacy also just released today.

[psmith2.0]

I wonder if the big holiday weekend (here in the States, anyway) factored in to some of these release plans? There does indeed seem to be a lot going on in the streaming landscape right now.

Funny because the Disney+ Star Wars fare always airs on Wednesday, and Wednesday this year just happened to be on May 25. Would've been perfect. In fact, I think that was the original planned release date? But, for whatever reason, they pushed it back two days to the 27th. I think I would've left it on the 25th, to stand more on its own and not be overshadowed by a bunch of other stuff on other services this long holiday weekend (and to nicely honor/mark that date).

But I'm sappy that way.

[Ryan]

Hulu also just released Shoresy, the long-planned Letterkenny spinoff.

give yer balls a tug

[709]

Last night's episode of Strange New Worlds was very good, imo. Really starting to appreciate the cast and how fluid they seem to be with each other – like, not just the characters, but the actual cast seems to have chemistry to spare. It's refreshing. The episode had a little bit of Khan nebula fan service, some tense moments, real consequences, and some legit baddies, so I thought it was a lot of fun. The solutions to problems may still be just a squinch too obvious and/or quick, but hey, it's Star Trek and I'm enjoying it.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by drewprops Since Brad is tardy, episode 3 of Star Trek Strange New Worlds was excellent. ...

Yeah… I was trying to resist posting my reaction to every episode in this thread.

Episode 3? Good!
Episode 4? Also good!

My only real disappointment recently is learning that Strange New Worlds has an anemic 10-episode first season. Hopefully the studio only committed to the short run due to uncertainty about its reception, and I really hope that the overwhelmingly positive reviews will lead to a longer season 2, at least matching the count of 13 that Disco has gotten for each of the last four seasons.

Rotten Tomato audience scores may not be the ultimate be-all-end-all metric for a show's reception and success, but they align pretty closely with my observations:

- Star Trek TOS: 89%
- Star Trek TNG: 89%
- Star Trek DS9: 88%
- Star Trek VOY: 76%
- Star Trek ENT: 79%
- Star Trek DIS: 36%
- Star Trek PIC: 41%
- Star Trek SNW: 81%

[psmith2.0]

Originally Posted by Brad My only real disappointment recently is learning that Strange New Worlds has an anemic 10-episode first season...

Speaking of which, that seems to be the going thing now. I remember, as a yoof, network fare - cop shows, sitcoms, hospital/medical dramas, etc. - being about 26 episodes a season. And it was understood that a "season" was the time between September-ish through about May or so, roughly eight months a year. They'd kinda allow for occasional pre-empting from sports, holiday programming and political/election horseshit, but you pretty much got a steady diet of Starsky & Hutch, Dallas and M*A*S*H* from fall to spring (and then reruns all summer long, as you eagerly awaited the return of Huggy Bear, Enos and Mork.

Now a "season" is 7 episodes of something (which is why fairly recent Thumb Wrestling with Network Has-Beens type of dreck can tout its upcoming "19th season" (despite having only premiered in 2017). Better Call Saul, The Walking Dead and all there other shows that have popped up and hit big since about 2010 are shorties...6-10 episodes a "season". Same with the Disney+ stuff.

I guess we're right on the cusp of that period where traditional network fare, with 20+ episodes a pop, will be fading away as more of these streaming shows - ostensibly with better writing and higher production value, so they're more interested in quality vs. quantity...10 episodes of something well-made vs. 26 of whatever McLean Stevenson or Judy Landers was showing up on at any given time - take over and entertain folks for no more than 2-3 months a year, and then go away for God-knows-how-long. 12 months? 18 months? 24+ months? When you factor in a pandemic and leading actor medical scares, it could be any length of time.

Not sure which I prefer...a constant, reliable nearly-year-round stream of mostly shit (entertaining or otherwise), or a quick in-and-out of halfway-decent show (and then marking the calendar for 11-26 months until another batch shows up).

[Ryan]

Originally Posted by Ryan Hulu also just released Shoresy, the long-planned Letterkenny spinoff. give yer balls a tug

Holy shit this was good.

If you haven't seen it, Letterkenny is a Canadian sitcom showcasing the exceptionally vulgar "problems" of the titular town's hicks, skids, hockey players, natives and Christians. Mile-a-minute quips and insults with Frasier levels of intelligence. Shoresy was a recurring character played by the same actor as the main character (Jared Keeso) but we never saw his face. We mostly saw him ruthlessly insulting the other hockey players.

He was written him out of the show and moved to northern Ontario to set up a spinoff. I went in cold—I knew who the main character would be, and figured the humor would be similar, but that was. Mostly expected a more hockey-ish clone of Letterkenny.

Hoo boy I was wrong.

Instead of a Seinfeldian show-about-nothing, we get a classic underdog sports tale, shot in cinemascope. The show is really a film. A miniseries, I suppose. It's easy to compare it to Ted Lasso but that's not quite right. Beautifully choreographed fight scenes on ice, rapid-fire dialog and running jokes about getting hand jobs in lakes Honestly, well done to the creators behind this. Rare to find a spinoff that isn't just a cheap attempt to stamp out a knock-off.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Brad My only real disappointment recently is learning that Strange New Worlds has an anemic 10-episode first season. Hopefully the studio only committed to the short run due to uncertainty about its reception, and I really hope that the overwhelmingly positive reviews will lead to a longer season 2, at least matching the count of 13 that Disco has gotten for each of the last four seasons.

13, maybe. 26 like the 1990s, probably not.

It was a different time. Seasons were syndicated, so episodes sometimes weren't even aired in the correct order. Thus, serialized storytelling didn't work well.

Actors and crew also didn't particularly like it. You had seven days to finish the writing, shoot the entire thing, do post-production, etc. That's why a lot of TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT episodes have "well, we would've preferred to do X, but there just wasn't time" commentary. Lots of 14-hour workdays. (Now imagine, on top of that, shooting in the desert, as VOY occasionally did. Oof.)

And, of course, budget. If you spread budget X over 10 episodes than over 26, each gets 2.6 times as much the production values, and it really shows with SNW. Quite a change from early-TNG planets made of cardboard and styrofoam.

But, yes. I miss those days. It was great particularly in DS9 how what was ostensibly a "bottle episode" (no new sets; budget-saver) introduced minor nuggets here and there about characters, or just had little fun moments in it. SNW does not have that luxury, and we can see that — the way they squash character details in there feels unnatural at times. DS9 would've been far more patient to eventually tell us backstory — we wouldn't have found out about the Gorn attacking La'an in literally the pilot, for example.

To me, the jury is still out on whether I'll remember SNW eps as fondly as I do some of the Berman era's classics.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by psmith2.0 ]I guess we're right on the cusp of that period where traditional network fare, with 20+ episodes a pop, will be fading away

I mean, that's already been happening. Most of the good stuff was on "premium cable" in the 2000s, then premium cable became streaming in the 2010s. Fewer and fewer good shows make it to networks.

Originally Posted by psmith2.0 ]Not sure which I prefer...a constant, reliable nearly-year-round stream of mostly shit (entertaining or otherwise), or a quick in-and-out of halfway-decent show (and then marking the calendar for 11-26 months until another batch shows up).

There's so much good stuff out there, though. It's really only a bummer when you care about one particular fictional universe and want that one to have more content. (And even then, there's new Star Trek all year. Too bad most of it is mediocre )

[Capella]

I reallly want to watch Prehistoric Planet but I don't have AppleTV. *sulk* Worth subbing for 1 month?

[drewprops]

Originally Posted by Capella I reallly want to watch Prehistoric Planet but I don't have AppleTV. *sulk* Worth subbing for 1 month?

It shows graphic scenes of predation. As long as your cool with that, then do it. Have you seen Ted Lasso yet?


...

[Ryan]

Still working through it but damn this season of Stranger Things is good.

Can't wait to see what the Duffer Brothers come up with next.

[turtle]

I finally got to watch the first episode of season 4 so Stranger Things. It was good and I'm looking forward to watching the rest. The second volume won't be as long though.

The first volume of Stranger Things season four was released last week, and now we know, once and for all, just how long volume two is going to be. Episode eight will clock in at just over an hour, while episode nine, the season finale episode, is two hours and 19 minutes long.

[psmith2.0]

That's like a movie! A longer-than-usual movie.

[turtle]

No kidding. Each episode is about an hour and fifteen minute too. This is why I haven't stopped to watch it yet. I have more things to get done than sit in front of the TV. Delaying it even more, I have two order kids who want to watch it with me, and no one else in the family who wants to be near it. My viewing of this show is complicated.

[turtle]

I really enjoyed Stranger Things 4 Vol1. I'm looking forward to the last two episodes at this point. Things are pulling together nicely right now. Some expected things happening too. Just kinda interesting to see how it is pulling together. I will say, it is pretty splintered though. That makes it relatively tough. Three distinct shows happening at the same time really. They are on a collision course, but will very distinct at this point.

[drewprops]

Took me a while to get into this season, but it's coming together. The crew members I know that worked on this show pulled some hellish hours. Some were super crunchy after it was over. Burned out. Twenty million per episode. Lots of VFX. I'm glad it's ending. It's been a fun ride.


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