Amph What was the last tv episode you watched?

Binged Fort Salem (aka Motherland), an alternate-reality series where witches were integrated into the U.S. military hundreds of years ago.

I really enjoyed it. There were a few plotting issues, but on the whole I thought it was good, much better than I expected.

 

I just started the show Homeland. I'm three episodes in. I'm really enjoying it so far, the two leads are great, especially Claire Danes. I've heard it goes off the rails in later seasons, but I'm not terribly concerned, I've watched much worse.

 

The Love Boat season 2.
Got it as a Christmas present from my sister. It's silly, very late 70's and just what I need right now. A hurricane comes and our group gets marooned on an island. It looked like they used the Gilligan's Island set ha. Lots of good guest stars on each show. Just a happy, feel good show.

 

Episode 4 Season 4 of Seal team( David Boreanz military show on CBS).

Fun fact about the show one of the kids from the movie the Pacifier where Vin Diesel plays a Navy Seal who has to protect the 5 children of a Navy Scientist plays one of the Seals on the show.

 

Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot & Marple: Dabunhaimu Shisso Jiken (2005) – Yumi Kamakura, Naohito Takahashi

This episode is the last of on the one-off adaptations from this series. The remaining four episodes are all dedicated to a multi-part novel adaptation, so this is the last of the self-contained episodes. It’s based on The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim, a story about a respected banker who walks out of his house one morning and is never seen again. Poirot sets out to prove that his detective powers are of the highest quality by solving this mystery without even leaving his office, which is a good premise for a story, but it ends up not feeling like a big part of the mystery itself, which is quite standard and predictable. 2 stars.

tl;dr – story has an interesting meta-hook, but it isn’t explored particularly well; a pretty middling and predictable episode. 2 stars.

 

American Horror Story: Murder House

Watched this first series of the show based on recommendations, but can't say I enjoyed it all that much mainly due to some awful writing and ridiculous plot points even for a horror soap opera.

There wasn't one likeable character that comes to mind and the highlight would be the acting of Jessica Lange who plays a loathsome character. The first ep was very scary and the music was pretty good throughout, but I can't recommend this as it only went downhill from there.

Debating about watching the second installment, Asylum, as I've been told by a couple people this is the best that American Horror Story has to offer. We'll see, but I'm taking a break for now as Murder House was unpleasant and kind of annoying overall.

 

Raised by Wolves Weird, surreal story about two Alien-like androids (they even have milky "blood"!) called "Mother" and "Father" fleeing an apocalypse in progress on Earth and settling on a semi-hospitable planet somewhere in the galaxy with human embryos to grow and raise. The apocalypse coincides with a religious war between "Atheists" and "Mithraics" (only very loosely associated with the historical Mithraism) and the androids were sent by an Atheist on a Kal-el-esque journey. I was afraid that the plot would be a shallow Religion Bad story, but it's more complicated than that-- though yes, the show doesn't take a kind view of the extremist Mithraic religion. I predicted one thing that would happen at the end of the season and I'm kinda disappointed I was right.

Spoiler

It might not be Earth, but there's some ****ery going on if human descendents are on the planet. Maybe their propulsion in space isn't FTL but rather propels them at speeds that cause extreme time dilation?

Anyway, it was a good distraction from our real world apocalypse in progress.

 

Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol (2010), not only my favourite episode of Who's entire 58-year run, it's also an inventive self-aware time travel take on the original novel. Captures the essential charm, quirkiness, and seriousness of the show in one single instalment, it's everything I love about Who.

Who can't love an episode where the Doctor rides a Shark driven sleigh

 

Torchwood: Out of Time (2006), which is my favourite episode of the whole show, where three people from 1953 end up in the modern day with no way back. Small scale human stories, with no real menace or danger, but it works brilliantly. Torchwood is a very inconsistent show, but when it succeeds it really hits it out of the park.

Also it's set at Christmas, which I'd completely forgotten, but I guess it makes it an appropriate time to have watched it

 

Whenever I'm home for a visit, which is often these days due to having time off and it's the holidays, I'll catch episodes of Agents of SHIELD with the parents who are watching it. They're finishing season 3. I'm really enjoying it so far, and it's pretty easy to follow, despite only able to watch random episodes.

 

X-Men: The Animated Series Season 1 "Cure": Rogue seeks out a cure to her mutant powers, not realizing that the scientist is actually Mystique who is working for Apocalypse.

 

SG-1 S5 Ep10

Wish Netflix had put up the entire franchise so I could rewatch them properly for the crossover stuff. I loved these shows.

 

Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot & Marple: Kumo no Naka no Shi (Sono Ichi) Sora Tobu Mis****su (2005) – Joji Shimura, Naohito Takahashi

Well, with four episodes of this series remaining, we start out last story, a four-part adaptation of Death in the Clouds. In this episode, Poirot flies from France to England on a small plane and, seemingly like the rest of the passengers, is shocked to find that during the short flight, one of their number has been murdered. I think it would have been cool if this story, and the novel that inspired it obviously, had confined things to the plane. Like a murder happens and now Poirot has only an hour to solve the murder before the plane lands or something. But, no, the murder is discovered when the plane lands and Poirot sets out to solve it after the flight. Still, this episode has one of the best sequences of the series so far which is the flight itself which is nearly ten minutes of very slow, mostly non-verbal story telling as Poirot is just kind of quietly watching all the other passengers and you’re starting to kind of figure out what their personalities are and what their relationships are to one another just by the way they behave. I was shocked that this went on as long as it did. There’s a sequence involving a wasp flying around the cabin that lasts for a minute or so all by itself as the various characters just watch it buzzing around. Now this is great television. I loved that it just took its time and just unspooled at this very slow pace. This was a great opening to this adaptation. Hopefully the series ends on a high note. 4 stars.

tl;dr – part one of this series’ final four part adaptation is slowly paced and methodical in a very interesting way; we’re poised to end the series on a high note with this one. 4 stars.

 

I keep trying to watch Star Trek Discovery S3 , but it's hard work , all the techno-babble and jargon is doing my head in and I can't warm to any of the characters.

 

Matlock

Some racists terrorize a Vietnamese fisherman and when the ring leader of the slime ball bigots turns up dead, the Vietnamese man is framed for murder by the corrupt police department.

Until Matlock shows up to get the facts sorted and justice is done.

 

just finished S1 of Cursed . I didn't like it at first but I stuck with it and ended up rather liking it. Its like GoT but not so heavy handed.

 

Season 2 of the Love Boat.
Julie's class reunion. Raymond Burr of Godzilla/Ironside fame stars as the old drama teacher with a drinking problem. The captain helps him with it. Gavin McCloud overcame this disease in the 70's so it feels personal and moving. Also some great Saturday Night Fever style disco dancing. Isaac has some moves. Just a happy show with some great scenery.

 

Ratched, Episode 1 (Director's Cut)
Started watching this relatively new series on Netflix about the infamous nurse from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; a prequel going back to when she wasn't the one making all the rules at the local mental-health facility. I won't get into details to prevent spoilage, but her character from the movie isn't exactly the same as is portrayed in this series.

Spoiler

She seems inherently conniving and evil; in One Flew Over she was as strict as humanely possibly - but at the end of the day you had to at least appreciate that she was doing what she thought was best for the patients at her facility (we'll leave the lobotomies out of it for now).

 

"Blackadder Back and Forth" (a very neat conclusion to the Blackadder saga), followed by the "TV-23 23rd Annual New Year's Extravaganza Golden Jubilee" from 1988 (co-hosted by Bob Bagadonuts, featuring several MST3K alumni from the KTMA days).

 

The Stand episode 3. It's hard to believe that anyone could do worse than the Rob Lowe/Molly Ringwald adaptation, but believe it! Terrible casting, convaluted and botched writing updates the original material in all the wrong places. Stephen King seems to be looming over the script trying to reclaim it from any effort to coax it into the 21st century.

 

"The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe" on "Perry Mason".

Spoiler

Leonard Nimoy plays the murderer. Great scene as he's hauled away, after both Mason and Burger destroy his testimony.

 

Sky Atlantic is currently running through Chernobyl. I missed episode 1 last time around so I finally caught up to it. Am on episode 2 now.

 

Oh man this is disappointing. I'm a huge fan of the book.

 

I'm not surprised. Has there ever been a decent to good show/miniseries based on a King property? Under the Dome was absolute garbage.

 

Episode 3 of The Stand. Ugh, so far this is a huge disappointment, but I thought the 3rd was at least a little more bearable (perhaps because I put it on then did other stuff around the house while it played). I really don't get how they decided telling the whole first third of the book through flashbacks was ever going to work. I was so excited for this and it is utterly disappointing. I don't think the casting is as bad as others (and the actual acting is better than the 90's series), but the characterizations the actors have been given are terrible. I was looking forward to Whoopie as MA, but so far it is a huge flop. I would love to know King's real thoughts on this.