Amph What was the last tv episode you watched?

Face Off - Breaking Bad - Season 4

Bound for Rescue - Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Season 5

 

Vinyl, Ep. 10

Like the series. I like the NYC 70's rock scene. Worth watching if you're a music lover.

 

The Night Manager: Episode 1

Really intriguing start. Hugh Laurie is the main reason I wanted to watch this miniseries, just a fantastic actor all around. Tom Hiddleston doesn't hurt either, of course. Looking forward to where the story goes.

 

sixties, episode women's lib

the people vs. blow j, the jury ep

 

An episode of Tanked

 

Miami Vice: S2, Ep. 15 "Little Miss Dangerous" (1986) - They don't make a soap strong enough to wash the layer of sleaze this episode left on me. Set in and around a strip club and focusing on an underage dancer/prostitute/serial killer (yes, you read that correctly), "Little Miss Dangerous" is perhaps a bit too ambitious for its own good. The serial killer aspect in particular just feels like one too many cards that ultimately send the house tumbling down.

On the plus side, we get a Tubbs-centric episode, and Philip Michael Thomas is really good here, reminding us that he can indeed carry an episode on his own. Johnson plays sidekick in this one and shows a lighter side of the often brooding Crockett that's really refreshing. But even with a sledgehammer to the heart ending, "Little Miss Dangerous" is simply spinning too many dramatic plates here. - 6.5/10

 

Veep: Debate



What do you think of the new cut, huh? Do you like it?

Of course I don’t ******* like it! It’s the worst use of scissors since my failed vasectomy.

So, this episode debuts Selina’s new awful haircut and the litany of abuse heaped on it is good for several laughs. But the highlight of this episode is the lengthy debate sequence that just absolutely nails the absurdity of political debates. Isiah Washington is great as Defense Secretary Maddox, losing his cool absolutely and Paul Fitzgerald is phenomenally good as a painfully awkward Congressman running for the nomination. His perpetual stumbling and awful metaphors kept me laughing. I will say that this season the show has been great at finding wonderful guest stars. Dan Bakkhedal and Phil Reeves are back as Senators Furlong & Doyle, but unfortunately all the episode does with them is stand them in a corner and has them make obscene wisecracks as they watch the debate. I mean, it’s clear that they were brought back because they’re really great comedic performances and they land a few laughs, but it was disappointing that they didn’t do more with them. Oh and yes, Selina develops an eye twitch in this episode. Does Louis-Dreyfus knock some brilliant physical comedy right out of the park? Oh, yes, oh, yes indeed. Solid episode, a bit of a step down from the run of masterpieces we’ve had, but still a lot of fun. 3 stars.

tl;dr – episode skewers political debates to perfection; some of the other plots are less successful. 3 stars.

Veep Reviews!

 

A Necessary Bond - Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Season 5

Secret Weapons - Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Season 5

 

The Young Ones, episode 1 "Demolition." Hence my new signature. God that show is still WTF hilarious 30+ years later.

 

Last night I saw the last two episodes of OJ vs The People.
Being white, you know which side I was on.

Anyway, we had a couple of Scientology adverts, which I don't think we have ever had in Australia. They used to be on the streets offering their Personality Tests years ago, but that has long disappeared. The ads were so vague that I thought they were for insurance, until the last moments. A quick flash of e-meter cans in there.

 

Gatchaman episode 1. I had a good time and am glad I went in for the full season. My adult kicked in a few times particularly over the added Alan Young narration and the whole "white shadow" speech, but still great fun as the pre-teen in me asserted herself and said "shut up and enjoy!" And I still dig Ken / Mark - G-1.

I love when they get their ninja on: "Bird Go!"

 

Ouroboros - Fear the Walking Dead - Season 2

 

The Girlfriend Experience: Season 1, Episode 4 (Crossing the Line)

I really enjoyed the Steven Soderbergh movie with Sasha Grey, so I was looking forward to the series. Immediately hooked after the first episode.

 

Antiques Roadshow: New Mexico

 

The Wire - Season 3 - Episode 11 - Middle Ground
AKA RIP Stringer Bell

 

Gotham: S1, Ep. 3 "The Balloonman" (2014) - After blazing through the first season of The Flash, I decided to go back and pick up where I left off with Gotham. Looking back at my IMDb reviews for those first two episodes, my feelings seemed to be that the pilot got things off to a reasonably strong start, but that things faltered just a tad in the second episode with what I classified as a scattershot focus and treading narrative water.

Right out of the gate, the gimmick of Gotham's first vigilante is somewhat silly, even for a show based on a comic book. He ties them to weather balloons and lets them be pulled up, up and away (sorry, wrong character). Anyway, setting that aside, the hook is that Gordon fears that if citizens can't trust their police department to protect them, it could inspire some to become vigilantes, and that people will embrace them. You can see where this is going. For most of the episode the Bruce Wayne/Alfred stuff felt forced or tacked on, but the final scene with young Bruce watching a news report about the apprehended would be vigilante puts a nice little bow on things as the seeds continue to be planted for the future Caped Crusader. We also see the return of Oswald Cobblepot (the future Penguin), and I have to say Robin Taylor's take on the character is growing on me. I also quite like Jada Pinkett-Smith as Fish Mooney. I seem to recall her performance getting some blowback from fans when the show debuted, but I think she brings an icy cool charm to the role. But the strength of the show thus far for me is the contentious relationship between Ben McKenzie's Jim Gordon and Donal Logue's Harvey Bullock. The former makes for a solid true north, and the latter is a perfect foil as his rumpled, sorta good but not exactly squeaky clean counterpart.

Less successful here is the soap operaish domestic situation with Jim Gordon and Barbara, the latter having a romantic past with another (female in this case) member of the GCPD. I'm willing to believe this could all go somewhere interesting, but right now it feels a bit out of place.

Like any show starting out it's still a work in progress, but there's certainly more that works here than doesn't, and I'm looking forward to my time in Gotham. - 7/10

 

God I ****ing hate Gotham. Such wasted potential.

 

I'm not yet "hooked" the way I was when I recently watched S1 of The Flash, but I'm more of a fan of Batman and the Gotham mythos appeals to me more, so I'm going to stick it out and see if (for me) it takes off.

 

Oh my God WTF that is the stupidest thing ever.

 

I know, right? Actually when you see it in context its execution is better than it seems possible to be on paper, but only just. The hook was right; Young Bruce seeing a vigilante at work (and commenting that killing the criminals is wrong, but...) and Jim Gordon saying in effect that if the cops don't do their job, vigilantes will, but surely they could've come up with something better.

Not sure if Balloonman is part of the actual Batman canon, but still.

 

The X-Files Season 7 Episode 4. Didn't like this episode. It was shoehorned into The X-Files as a cross over from the TV show, Millennium.

 

Yeah, I think at that point Millennium had actually been cancelled and Carter wanted a way to actually tie up the show's loose ends. So it's a crossover, but also kind of a Millennium series finale. And, yeah, pretty bad as memory serves.

 

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero: S2, Ep. 76 "Ninja Holiday" (1986) - When you hear "G.I. Joe" and "Ninja", a few names come to mind. Storm Shadow. Snake Eyes. Sgt... Slaughter? Introduced at the beginning of season 2, Slaughter quickly came to symbolize much of what was wrong with the property as it reached its mid-80s zenith. When it first rebranded itself "A Real American Hero" in 1982, Hasbro's G.I. Joe was certainly heightened (featuring a Jet Pack and a Laser Rifle Trooper), but relatively grounded, with much of its tech based on real world military gear. The Marvel comic (written by the great Larry Hama) in particular tried to at least keep a foot in the real world and was filled with authentic military strategy, jargon and nomenclature.

From the start the cartoon (which launched as a mini-series in 1983 and then became a daily series in 1985) had more fantastical elements and soon the toy line followed suit. By 1986 Cobra was lead by an emperor created from the genetic material of history's greatest tyrants, and the Joes roster was supplemented by a popular professional wrestler named Sgt. Slaughter. Voiced by his "real world" counterpart, Slaughter was about as subtle as a kick to the taters, yelling every line (the Sarge has no indoor voice) and consistently facing 10-1 odds without breaking a sweat. There's a tipping point with such ventures and by season 2 Sunbow's G.I. Joe had reached it.

"Ninja Holiday" is even more ridiculous than it sounds, with the Sarge finding himself (through preposterous circumstances) in an underground martial arts tournament whose aim is to find someone worthy of being a Cobra assassin. What follows is Slaughter smashing his way through a sea of ethnic stereotypes until Cobra arrive, and then he smashes his way through them.

Despite my rather lengthy diatribe, "Ninja Holiday" isn't a terrible episode save in contrast to the series at its best. If that sounds like a backhanded compliment, it is. At its best, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero is an exceptionally entertaining cartoon. Filled to bursting with colorful characters, globetrotting adventure and what I term "cheerful heroics", it wasn't, as its critics claim, just a 22 minute toy commercial. Even at its worst it endeavored to tell a story, to entertain, and to reinforce the notion that the good guys always win... even in the 80s. - 5.5/10

 

Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 1.

 

Person of Interest, Season 4 episode 11 - If then Else - I'm really enjoying this season, I think the slight changes they made have improved it from season 3. This episode messes with your head as they play out the possibilities that the machine has come up for our heroes to get out of the situation alive, a bit like Source code in a way. The ending is good and has left me wanting to know whats happened to Shaw.

I was disappointed to see its going to be cancelled after season 5 though.