Whatcha Bleedin' Watchin'?

[Avaitor]

Part of the reason why I haven't got to Cobra Kai yet is that I'm trying to get the most out of my Apple+ trial. I recently got a new phone, so I have 3 months of it for free.

So far I've seen the first season of Ted Lasso, which I liked better than I was expecting, even though the character himself grated on me, and Calls, which I really enjoyed. That had a pretty cool idea for a show, relying entirely on audio to tell its stories, and I like how each episode had their own little sci-fi twists added in while still connecting us to reality. It's still easy to feel for the guy who keeps losing his grasp on time, or the young woman who gets a chance to save her mom from a fatal car accident. It's basically a radio drama with some background visuals, but it's good! It held my attention more than most podcasts I've tried.

I also want to get to For All Mankind and Mythic Quest, as well as see what I can of the new Fraggle Rock when that starts. Oh, and movie wise, I should get to Wolfwalkers and The Tragedy of Macbeth, even though the Coens generally just make me shrug.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I keep hearing really good things about For All Mankind since it's got Ron Moore showrunning. Whereas for Mythic Quest, I tried getting into it, but it lacked the spark It's Always Sunny has.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Why do I get the feeling Robert Rodriguez had a spiritual experience watching Attack of the Clones? Because besides shit like the Sarlaac or Max Rebo, everything from Book of Boba Fett is thematically from that one specific Star Wars movie. And I get why this show's had a rougher reception than The Mandalorian, because whether the show sucks or not relies on whether you hated the Dexter Jettster scene from AOTC, or what your thoughts were on the scene where Dooku hired Jango to hire this other lady to hire some worms to kill Padme.

[Avaitor]

I really used to love How I Met Your Mother. I fell for the romcom cliches it indulged in, dug how it played with the form of a sitcom, and really liked the characters, but more important for me was how I was able to connect with my friends about it every week. The finale definitely hurt my perception of it, but even if they didn't fuck it up that badly, there are some elements that don't hold up.

So I tried the pilot for How I Met Your Father anyway, and it's whatever. I'm all in on a good multicam sitcom- still bitter that One Day at a Time ended- but very few of the jokes landed. I just checked, and there are five writers, so it really feels like a case of too many cooks, but I wouldn't be surprised if Thomas and Bays just received honorary credit or something.

The characters just aren't there either. HIMYM's pilot wasn't too much beyond your average debut, but we got a major sense of the five main characters right away, as well as why Ted is yearning to find The One and why Marshall and Lily have maintained the relationship they have. Hillary Duff's character has some hints at something to dig into, but she's kind of flat and annoying otherwise, while the other characters are mostly just there. Pam Fryman's direction is the only thing saving it from being below average, although keep in mind that I haven't seen the other episodes yet, and I'm not sure if I will.

I do see that Dan Levy wrote an episode, and that would excite me if I didn't bail out of Schitt's Creek almost immediately.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, no offense to Hillary Duff, but there may have been more pragmatic reasons why Disney+ put the kibosh on her Lizzie McGuire sequel.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm not going to lie, I checked out of Book of Boba Fett after the first two episodes. It's kind of astounding to me how boring this show is for how much it has to work with, with the exception of how unintentionally funny some scenes are. I do still appreciate the practical effects and music, but this show is otherwise the biggest mass of nothing that I've ever felt from watching something in quite a while.

But I went ahead and skipped over the check out The Return of the Mandalorian episode after it got some buzz. I should note that I quite liked the show, but didn't exactly love it, but the Lone Wolf and Cub vibe to his relationship with Grogu is what stood out to me and really anchored that show. Putting aside the irony of the best and possibly only good episode of the Boba Fett show being the only episode with literally no Boba Fett in it, this genuinely worked as a great follow-up to The Mandalorian's own series, in how he struggles to find an identity for himself ever since completing his mission for Grogu. I was also pretty impressed with Bryce Dallas Howard's directing here, and she has improved quite a bit since her debut episode a couple of years ago.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, Book of Boba Fett's funny, but not intentionally so. I can kind of appreciate what it's trying to do and show Boba trying to fix a post-ROTJ society (the problem with the main Star Wars movies is that they seldom explore what life's like during the Old Republic/Empire/New Republic days so if it weren't for the books or the shows filling the holes in, you can easily imagine civilians living their whole life and feeling no systemic change from what the main characters or villains do), but then there's all the scenes where he's learning Tusken Raider culture. And all the scenes that bring to mind the weaker films in Robert Rodriguez's career.  Howard's directing in the latest episode made his flaws stand out even more.

[GregX]

I'm one of those weirdos who never understood the fandom behind Boba Fett to begin with. He shows up, he stands there with a gun, has maybe four lines of dialogue... and then dies in the most comical way... and this guy is some cool, deep badass? He's so popular that Disney makes a high budget TV show centered around him? I just don't get it.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I just think it's hilarious the show took 4 episodes before deciding to become Mandalorian Season 2.5.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I have to say, I've pretty much completely fallen out of modern wrestling over the past few years for just how atrocious the angles have gotten (this is especially true with WWE but even AEW pretty much wore out it's luster very quickly). That said, the CM Punk and MJF feud on AEW is probably some of the best story-telling I have seen in professional wrestling in a long time, and not just by modern standards. It reminds me of why I was once a fan to begin with. They don't rely on any cheap gimmicks or catch-phrases, all of the heat between them felt like a real, personal grudge, and it climaxed last Sunday in a pretty excellent blow-off match. It kind of goes to prove that wrestling can be taken seriously and doesn't just have to be full of dumb, goofy stuff simply because it's common knowledge that it's all a work. Just like any other form of story-telling, people still want the illusion of reality, and when done well it can really suck you in.

I also do still watch the bits of AEW with Brian Danielson, who's probably one of the best current modern technical wrestlers around. Having William Regal come into the picture as a mentor figure in AEW was also a nice surprise. Most other parts of the show can't really hold my attention, but I always do tune in for the segments that I actually care about.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Someone I know's been watching Squid Game, so it finally convinced me to finish the show.

Spoiler

It's hard not to pity Il-Nam while also thinking "If you wanted to relive being a kid, why not just adopt some grandkids and play games with them? Why go for the 'Start Your Own Battle Royale and Murder Innocent People' option? And don't give me that bullshit that you look down on poor people, because you could clearly empathize and develop a friendship with Gi-Hun."

[close]

[Dr. Insomniac]

Our Flag Means Death was all right, but I prefer What We Do in the Shadows a lot more.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Latest season of The Boys feels like late Season 4 of Game of Thrones to me, where the show's still fun to watch, but the cracks are beginning to show and you're not sure if the producers know that yet. Like how the show's running out of ways to keep Homelander alive or still superpowered without making the main characters all look embarrassingly stupid, but the show knows Homelander's the most popular character in the show so they kinda need to keep him on for as long as possible.

[Avaitor]

Oh, so I've been watching Star Trek: TOS on and off for the past year, and finished it just before I went back to work. The last season is as legendarily sloppy as has been reported, but even some of those episodes are enjoyable for how stupid they get, and some are even almost decent.

The first two seasons also show their age, but it's fun to see how many tropes it invented or redefined, and the cast is always entertaining. Like a lot of older shows, it's not really meant for binging, because you'll notice how many times it reverts to the same few ideas. Like how many times Kirk can fall in love with a gorgeous lass who he swears he'll always remember, but will never come back up. Or how often another member of the Enterprise has to cross a line when Kirk screws up to save him. Or how many different worlds they'll discover which seem wonderful until they revert to some form of fascism or whatever theme Roddenberry wants to talk about this week. But whatever, you end up watching to see Spock and Bones clash, or at least that's what I did.

I'll probably do full watches of TNG and DS9 some day, but I'm not sure of anything else. What I've seen of Discovery and the first season of Picard largely left me flat, and everything I've heard of their recent material doesn't entice me to come in. I hear better things about SNW, but I'm still skeptical.

[Avaitor]

The Underground Railroad is one of the best TV shows I've seen in a while, and it's a shame on me to have taken so long to get to it. I don't think Amazon will ever catch up to Netflix or even Hulu, but when they hit- besides this and everything I keep hearing about The Boys, Fleabag is incredible, Invincible does the comics justice, and Tales from the Loop is one of the stronger anthology shows we've seen in a while- they're responsible for some very good stuff. They're all better than Mrs. Maisel, anyway, whose most recent season I heard was pretty bad, or Transparent, which time has already not been kind to.

On that note, I really should read more of Colson Whitehead's works. I have a copy of The Nickel Boys just staring at me to pick it up, but I keep slacking on it.