What was the last TV show you watched?

[Fading Fast]

For our UK Loungers, my quite-a-talented-baker girlfriend and I have been watching "The Great British Baking Show" via Netflix (we're up to season 3 - so well behind).

In general, we avoid reality TV, but this one keeps the fake-drama quotient under control while providing some real insight into the skills and processes involved in baking some pretty complex things. Also, the amateur bakers' enthusiasm is contagious - and some of the breads and pastries are really fun to learn about and see being created.

That said, my enjoyment of this show is just another reason why I am not proud of myself - we have spent hours of our lives watching other people "compete" in a for-TV baking competition.

For my girlfriend, she can at least argue she's learning some things she'll use in her baking; for me, our oven is just a giant warming box that I only use to heat things up that super girlfriend has left for me if she's out for a night, so I am completely wasting my time watching other people bake , but heck, I am enjoying it and, "fortunately," my dad isn't alive to see me do it (which would only be one of five hundred reasons he'd be disappointed in me).

 

[MisterCairo]

Sharpe's Justice, set in 1814 during the brief pre-Waterloo peace. Second last of the 1990s series. I need to acquire the two later episodes shot during the aughts.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Last week's episode of The Orville, the new Fox Trek-lite series from Seth Macfarlane. You know, it's getting better! The story was about a culture much like our 21st Century one, a society which does nearly everything online . . . including deciding punishment for transgressions, a pure democracy. You commit some kind of crime -- the ones we saw in the episode were social "crimes," like not giving a pregnant woman your seat on the bus. The other society members "up-vote" or "down-vote" you. If you get 10,000,000 down-votes, you get mentally "corrected," brain damage not even the doctor on Capt. Ed Mercer's starship can reverse. And one of their landing party gets arrested and is caught up in this "justice" system.

It proved to be an exciting satire on our social media-driven culture and its snowflakes. The humor was mostly kept to the sidelines; the threat was real; the captain himself is not part of the landing party, so his role is to make a decision. Sort of a mix of original Trek and Next Generation. Sure, the satire was a little heavy-handed in places. But this was so much better than I expected when I considered Macfarlane's other series. Plus he himself is developing into a better live-action actor than I thought he would.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Disagree completely, I thought it was awful. Its main idea - letting people's like/not like clicks decide social status - is totally ripped off from the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive", and most of the other things in it were borrowed from classic TNG episodes (*)... notably one of my personal favorites, "Who Watches the Watchers?" where Picard has to deal with a first contact-gone-wrong situation by bringing a character from the planet up to the Enterprise.

(* E.g. a crewmember arrested for violating local standards, a plotline used multiple times across all Trek series.)

But the show's a hit and has been renewed for a second season. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, it has cleverly taken fifty years of Trek plots and ideas, dumbed then WAY down, and added enough pop-cult and sex jokes to make it appeal to folks who never liked Trek. But for me, between its total lack of new ideas and weak performance in both the dramatic and (surprisingly) comedic aspects, it's a pretty sad spectacle. (Of course, not everyone's been a dedicated Trekker since 1966 like me.)

 

[Feraud]

True. The Majority Rule episode of The Orville was ripped off from a recent Black Mirror episode. I felt both episodes were scarily relevant if not particularly entertaining. Considering how few people know or likely care how close to being reality the rating our fellow citizens on behalf of the government is, I give both a pass.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Well, I've never heard of the series Black Mirror. The flavor of The Orville, it's true, does seem like "Star Trek did this, now how can we play on it/with it?" But I'd thought, hearing that Macfarlane was attached to the project, that it was going to be a parody, perhaps affectionate like the movie Galaxy Quest. That it is actually trying to tell relevant stories, and is not afraid to have serious moments -- the ending of this one, and of the previous one I've caught, "Krill," were both sobering, and not played for laughs -- that the show is trying to be something more than a parody is kind of refreshing.

Like you, DS, I've been a Trek fan from the beginning, and realize when I see something like this how groundbreaking the original was. But there have always been fans of written SF who have sneered at Trek from the very start, saying it dumbed down many a basic SF idea.

I guess I just like that The Orville has a bunch of likeable, attractive characters and isn't dark and gloomy, with tortured, morally compromised people. There's room for that in written and filmed SF, certainly. This is just a nice change.

 

[Worf]

"The Orville" has one other thing going for it. It's FREE!!!!!!! Unlike another Trek type show I could mention. I too preferred the "Black Mirror" take on the same subject. But how many "original" stories are left out there?

Worf

 

[Zombie_61]

"The Orville" has one other thing going for it. It's FREE!!!!!!! Unlike another Trek type show I could mention. I too preferred the "Black Mirror" take on the same subject. But how many "original" stories are left out there?

Worf

This is definitely part of the equation. They've been making sci-fi movies and television shows for decades, and every story has been told before in one form or another. According to Christopher Booker there are only seven basic stories to be told anyway; considering all of the repetition and duplication with so few new ideas out there, he could be right.

Getting back to The Orville specifically, if the last two episodes are any indication it seems they're going lighter on the humor and heavier on the drama. Perhaps still trying to figure out what they want the show to be? I can't say that's unexpected; even Star Trek: The Next Generation took a season or two to find it's feet. Maybe the "experts" were right--the show is Seth MacFarlane's way of being on Star Trek without actually being on Star Trek, so they're slowly phasing out the humor that was used as a selling point to get the show made. I'd rather they find a better way to blend the humor and the drama, but we'll have to wait and see what happens.

 

[MisterCairo]

Another two episodes of Fargo, season one. A really fun ride so far!

 

[Fading Fast]

Season finale of "The Deuce"

This has been an outstanding series. TV today knows how to do gritty realism, but the better shows weave it into a complex, multi-level story with three dimensional characters living in a swirl of moral ambiguity.

"The Deuce" does all of this as it connects the gritty daily lives of 42nd Street's (the "Deuce") sex-trade workers (pimps, prostitutes, peep-show operators) to the larger business-mafia-government construct that allows it to exist while also highlighting the cultural changes (new morality laws, more permissive social views, more empowered police internal affairs and a slowly growing crackdown on crime) that are chipping away at 42nd Street's tenuous stability.

We all know how the story ends - Times Square becomes a commercial success and tourist mecca that looks more and more like everything else in America just with more lights and signage; "The Deuce" reminds us of what it once was - with all its pathos, despair, ugliness, humanity and violence - and how the transition took root. With hookers, pimps, peep-show operators, the police and the mob all still profiting on the illegality, season two has plenty more transition to show.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Marvel's Inhumans - still terrible in its penultimate episode of the season... and likely, the series. Undoubtedly the weakest, worst conceived and executed of all the Marvel Studios-produced series on ABC and Netflix. I've stuck with it because I'm an old-school Marvel fan (*), and the Inhuman Royal Family is a classic Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four creation... but geez, what a mess. An embarrassing misfire that deserves to be canceled.

(* I had just given up reading Superman/DC comics when I was 11... and I happened to buy a couple of issues of FF wherein the Royal Family were introduced just before I quit reading comics entirely... until I got into Marvel in a big way years later in college. So I have history with the Inhumans all the way back to 1966!)

Getting back to The Orville for a second, I thought this week's episode was sorta okay, though as Zombie_61 observed, it was virtually entirely dramatic. I thought this show was primarily a comedy, not just a chance for Seth MacFarlane to cosplay Trek, but boy, it sure takes itself seriously. And I noticed that a bunch of former Trek guys were credited with this episode, notably Brannon Braga, who was a writer on TNG, then a writer/producer on VOY and ENT. His new gig is Trek for Dummies.

Of the other superhero shows I've been watching, most seem to be spinning their wheels, but Supergirl continues to be surprisingly gutsy in metaphorically tackling thorny real-world issues. In the new third-season opening narration, she describes herself as a "refugee" and the question of how to deal with (space) alien immigrants - whether to accept them into society, grant them civil rights, lock them up, or send them off - remains a central issue. And this week's episode - in which a guy whose life she saved starts a religion/cult that anoints her as savior - didn't shy away from asking what the difference is between a cult and religion, or what the power of belief can do, good or bad.

I know, I know: isn't Supergirl just an adventure show for kids? Nope, it's sharper and more ambitious than the other CW superhero series.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've been watching a bunch of "What's My Line?" broadcasts from 1955-56, and am now convinced that this was hands down the funniest show on television in the 1950s. I grew up watching the 1970s version, which had too much Soupy Sales and not enough Bennett Cerf, but these early shows are a real revelation. The panelists during this era were Cerf, Dorothy Kilgallen, Arlene Francis, and Fred Allen -- and this strikes me as about as perfect a mix of personalities as ever came together on a single program. WML was Allen's only decent work on television, and even though he was not a well man -- and it shows in his face -- he is really in his element in this type of spontaneous, unscripted environment. His random dropping of old show-biz names in odd contexts -- introducing Francis as "the only woman who knows whatever became of Wendy Barrie" -- cracks me up every time. And John Daly is the perfect moderator for this bunch -- he knows just when to let them ramble and when to pull them back and seems, himself, to be completely entertained by the whole proceeding.

The "Mystery Guest" segment is always hilarious, especially when the personality is forced to resort to a weird voice to prevent premature identification. When Buffalo Bob Smith, as mystery guest, brought Fred Allen up short by responding to a question in a perfect imitation of Allen's own voice, I had to pause the playback until I got control of myself.

WML is also a great place to hear a dialect that's completely vanished from the 21st Century world -- the "educated" New York accent. Bennett Cerf is a perfect example of this, stretching out his vowels, flattening his "r's" and transposing his "ers" and "ois" without the slightest self-conscious attempt to purge these habits from his speech.

 

[Touchofevil]

No more new episodes of Game of Thrones at the moment so it was an episode of Ripper Street last night.

 

[Worf]

No more new episodes of Game of Thrones at the moment so it was an episode of Ripper Street last night.

Where you been Bro? I was bout to send out the Mounties! Don't disappear like dat... makes me worried!

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

Where you been Bro? I was bout to send out the Mounties! Don't disappear like dat... makes me worried!

Worf

Had the same thought and was about to PM him if he didn't pop up soon.

 

[MisterCairo]

Some older Big Bang Theories, season three. Howard has just started dating Bernadette, and he's concerned she isn't "good enough"!

 

[Touchofevil]

Where you been Bro? I was bout to send out the Mounties! Don't disappear like dat... makes me worried!

Worf

Thanks for the worrying. It is nice to know that you care. Between being sick, preparing for and correcting school work, and helping Lady ToE with the final touches to her Big Halloween Extravaganza (She prepares nonstop for a year), I have neglected my duties her at The Lounge. Oh, and then there was the cleanup of a tree which fell across my garage and covered my backyard. I wasn’t going to pay a tree service (outrageous quotes) to do something I was able to do. Although the blow to noggin’ by a pretty good sized limb slidding off of the roof put me out of commission for a day. Now it is done finished and I am back.

 

[Touchofevil]

Had the same thought and was about to PM him if he didn't pop up soon.

Thankfully, all is okay. As stated (in a long winded manner) above, Life has kept me busy and away from The Lounge. Thank you for caring and I am happy to be back in the company of great people.

 

[Touchofevil]

Another episode of Ripper Street. Only one more episode to go and then it is all over.

Oh yeah, and some UFC 217. What a night of fights!

 

[Worf]

Thanks for the worrying. It is nice to know that you care. Between being sick, preparing for and correcting school work, and helping Lady ToE with the final touches to her Big Halloween Extravaganza (She prepares nonstop for a year), I have neglected my duties her at The Lounge. Oh, and then there was the cleanup of a tree which fell across my garage and covered my backyard. I wasn’t going to pay a tree service (outrageous quotes) to do something I was able to do. Although the blow to noggin’ by a pretty good sized limb slidding off of the roof put me out of commission for a day. Now it is done finished and I am back.

Well, you at least have REASONS and not EXCUSES for not being around! LOL! If I may be serious for a second... ahem as a Forester by education (B.S. and A.A.S) and after hours occupation I always warn non-pro's against grabbing a Homelite Saw and having at it. I buried one co-worker 2 years ago who didn't listen. The tree, nor the fall killed him... but the stay in the hospital finished him off. Logging/Woods work is considered by most insurance companies as THE most dangerous profession on earth! I think they're absolutely right. Now you survived that "widowmaker" to the noggin' but next time you might not be so lucky. Money you can replace... you we can't replace. End of lecture... glad to have you back!

Worf