R.CAllen

Terrible news! Titus Pullo in Rome (‘05-’07) — “XIII!” obviously but also sold the quieter stuff so so well, his conversation w/Lucius Vorenus about what stars are —, that pilot for the zombie show, Lexi Alexander Punisher, Volstagg, the baddy on that season of Dexter (‘06-’13, ‘21-’22), I still haven’t seen Black Sails (‘14-’17) but I hear it’s great and apparently he was Blackbeard on it guess I gotta give it a watch. Such a great actor!

Still haven’t seen the Obi-Wan Kenobi show. Haven’t seen the latest season of The Mʌndʌloriʌn. Haven’t watched the new show. That show everyone loves! Everybody’s out there banging their pots and pans for that show but I get the feeling these same people also liked Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) and in general the things these people bang their pots and pans for don’t always meet with my approval. I’m going to wait this one out. I’m going to see if Season 2 gets their pots and pans (fat chance!) or if they turn on it. If it ends up that The New Star Wars Show is Actually Good I’ll happily chalk one up in the official standings as a loss for me. I’ll have missed out! For years! That’ll be on me. That’ll be my cross to bear. But I had to watch this stuff! Couldn’t put it off! Couldn’t delay! I hope they keep making these. Can’t get enough of them. Bring on Season 3!

I’m not. But could be!!!!1!

Last episode! short version: did not like

Ninth episode. short version: I’m not made of stone!!!!1!

I’m all caught up on the first season. It’s not half bad! I watched the first few episodes all wrong. That’s on me. Once I started watching this show while cycling on my recumbent stationary bike and also idly reading or surfing the web it really improved. They make these shows as background noise for people on their phones or doing chores or whatever. There’s a good sort of tripartite mix of three different flavours at work here. They’re doing the episodes that anybody who watched Quantum Leap (‘89-’93) wanted them to do on the old show — they leap back to cowboy times, they leap repeatedly into the same situation over and over again until he gets it right, they leap into the future — alongside the sort of meat’n’potatoes episodes that just come with the concept as well as episodes that tie into an ongoing arc involving the mystery of why they leapt in the first place. Sometimes you get all three of these flavours stuffed together uneasily into a single serving! Does it always work? Well, I was entertained! I guess it helps that nearly every episode I see a favourite TV character actor or two. I also think watching Kevin Can Asterisk Himself (‘21-’22) gave me the push to keep going with the show when I initially dropped it after two episodes because seeing the guy who plays the new Sam Beckett on that show and noticing how good an actor he is — that show itself is pretty good! — made me give it another chance. Oh, and they explain away the thing where the old show was set in a future 1990s that no longer exists by just insisting that Al had a really weird fashion sense. I liked that!

Episode eight. short version : didn't really like it, big surprise

I’ve added this to the list of ‘Funniest Possible Outcomes For ערב פסח’.

seventh episode. short version: not too bad!!!1!

Sixth episode! short version: not good

What!? No? I don’t really understand what you’re saying. I mean, he’d be an alias of me. Looks like he joined long after I did unless he (too!) reregistered. I assume you’re talking about Primbud, here. The name rings a bell but I don’t really remember what his deal was.

Prediction/speculation/fanfiction now follows:

Oh dear! I hope you all feel better soon, of course!

can’t stop cracking myself up over who’s going to come back next just to die. Mot the barber choking on his own blue blood. Nurse Ogawa gasping for her last breath in the vacuum of space. Mr. Homn gone all peaceful like in his sleep! Vash vashed away by a strong current out to sea. Keiko and Molly O’Brien in a murder suicide pact while Baby Yoshi (oh wait he’s like thirty) looks on helplessly.

Halfway. short version: they made a kinda good one!!!1!

The show has two concurrent realities at play here : Riker has rejoined Starfleet to deal with the pain of his dying/dead child. Riker has quit Starfleet to deal with the pain of his dying/dead child. Sequentially speaking, we get the latter first but the former was foisted on us largely for the sake of an audience who were presumed to have not seen the latter. I don’t think it works but whatever. It’s possible to stretch so that both these things make sense, sure. It’s possible to do a lot of things!

Fourth episode. short version : still bad but got good toward the end

I only scrolled down a little while on that there Instagram link before the page froze up and demanded my phone number, username, or email. It told me I had to use the Instagram app to continue! Couldn’t really get a good sense of what’s what from all that I saw up until that point — I liked the little ant! good on your friend for getting the San Antonio Dept. of Arts & Culture to fund this! — but I assume the stuff I didn’t manage to see was. even. better!!!!!1!

Third episode. short version: still don’t like it but as always can’t help but hope for better

cracking myself up now @ the idea of a guy who loves Scott Adams — agrees w/him about the power of affirmation technique, agrees w/him that the best thing for white people is to get the hell away from black people, agrees w/all his hard right political viewpoints, agrees w/him about everything involving women — but can’t stand Dilbert. Thinks it’s dreck! Thinks it’s painfully unfunny! Thinks it’s badly drawn! Separating the art from the artist, indeed. I feel bad for this poor imaginary guy!!!1!

Every episode runs long! They have all the time in the world! Not a good enough excuse! A proper episode of Star Trek would have the situation sliced and diced from every angle by a series of unique choleric characters who’d share their particular avenue of approach with an authority figure who’d have to make the final call. This was just a morass of people making dumb dumb quasi-relevant half-points about what to do until Picard makes the ultimate decision on — admittedly a well-executed moment, have to give them credit — a whim.

I don’t want to defend the show — it’s bad! — but the idea of a captain being entitled to do basically whatever it takes to protect their ship when it is outside Federation space is something that was emphasized again and again for seven years on VOY. There’s even a line of dialogue in the episode itself from Shaw (something like “Regulations are clear on this.” etcetera) to drive it home. That sort of thing was dumb and bad then and it’s dumb and bad now but Shaw is just following in the example of Seven’s former captain here — she merked Tuvix, she annihilated Species 116, she tortured that crewman who later showed up on BSG, she unleashed the Vaadwuar on their victims, she did like ten other things — and Starfleet made her an admiral so it seems like it’s fine as far as they’re concerned that he’s handing over a guy to be killed maybe in order to protect his ship’s crew from being killed maybe too. The episode is bad, well, it’s bad for a lot of reasons but it’s bad in this instance because the terms of the moral dilemma aren’t made super duper clear the way they’d have been in a good episode of TNG and DS9. Nobody on the show even argues that they can’t trust Christopher Plummer’s daughter to not blow up the ship once she has Wesley 2.0!

short version: I’m not made of stone!!!!1!

oh yeah forgot to make the following point too, found in it my notes from sometime around July ‘22: Probably another wrinkle in the J.K. Rowling thing is that she was a primary beneficiary of a massive and extended experience of child labour with all its attendant consequences. The movies! Like, didn’t at least one of those kids — not any of the main ones, obv., but somebody with a name in the books and a presence in people’s fan fiction — die at a tragically young age? I’m not saying that’s the only thing. Children, movie sets, the entertainment industry in general, it’s a nightmare. You can see all of her concern about the children and the pressure the children are being put under to transition as just an act of displacement for what she did, what she profited from. She has to think of herself as more responsible than parents, than doctors, than anybody ever because if she didn’t then guilt and shame over the movies (which she has maybe been confronted with if there’s, like, anything going on with the big stars below the surface or just anything happened to anyone that the larger public is unaware of) would hurt her. She can’t allow herself to feel that pain so instead she’s gotta dish it out to everyone else!

I’m pretty sure they give the Discovery an A because they have to pretend it’s a new ship and not the old one in order to avoid public involvement in the Temporal Cold War from ENT. They don’t want to admit these guys came from the past. Time travel is illegal. re: the aging thing; it’s been inconsistent through the years (we see that Data in ‘All Good Things’ is basically the same but has chosen to put the skunk stripe in his hair) but I think it was established maybe in the episode where we meet Data’s mom and she turns out to be a robot that Soong-type androids age naturally. It’s like the contractions thing with him. It changes depending on the needs of the episode.