It's not the size of the screen...

[Ellie]

...it's the cohesion of the season?

(a TV shows thread)

I just started watching Revenge on Netflix and am lazily enjoying it. It's full of beautiful spoiled people doing beautiful spoiled things; exactly the sort of mindless soapy entertainment I like for my background noise while I'm working on editing. Plus, the title is really fun to shout. REVENNNNNGGGGGE!

[Ayn_Randian]

I have been hitting The Tudors pretty hard. I thought it was going to be pretty bad, but it is thoroughly decent. Wouldn't rely on it for history so much as I would rely on it for truthiness.

[Warren]

New seasons of Swam People and Worst Cook in America are underway. I'm watching Swamp People out of habit, it's pretty much the same thing every episode and the HOLYFUCKINGSHIT aspect of it pretty much wore off half way through the second season.

Worst Cooks OTOH never gets old. Last week they had a guy that tried to make grilled cheese by grilling cheese. Like literally putting cheese right on the grill. Said he was hoping to "get a nice sear". Bwaa ha ha ha

[thoreau]

Worst Cooks OTOH never gets old. Last week they had a guy that tried to make grilled cheese by grilling cheese. Like literally putting cheese right on the grill. Said he was hoping to "get a nice sear". Bwaa ha ha ha

I choose to believe that this guy is acting. What's to stop a talented cook from blundering his way onto the show and then running away with the competition? They probably make contestants sign something certifying that they aren't professionally trained, and I am sure that they do some background research on contestants, but what about a really good self-taught home cook faking their blunders to get on? How do you prevent that scenario?

[Highway]

Worst Cooks OTOH never gets old. Last week they had a guy that tried to make grilled cheese by grilling cheese. Like literally putting cheese right on the grill. Said he was hoping to "get a nice sear". Bwaa ha ha ha

That was unfreakingbelievable. I couldn't believe how completely inept everyone was at that. And everything about that guy was so wrong, from just slapping the cheese on the grill pan (not even a skillet or something with a flat bottom!). And how many different fires did they start on those griddles?

[tr0g]

Worst Cooks OTOH never gets old. Last week they had a guy that tried to make grilled cheese by grilling cheese. Like literally putting cheese right on the grill. Said he was hoping to "get a nice sear". Bwaa ha ha ha

I choose to believe that this guy is acting. What's to stop a talented cook from blundering his way onto the show and then running away with the competition? They probably make contestants sign something certifying that they aren't professionally trained, and I am sure that they do some background research on contestants, but what about a really good self-taught home cook faking their blunders to get on? How do you prevent that scenario?

I don't know. From the episodes I watched early on in last season, if somebody pulled that trick, they're a hell of an actor. I couldn't screw up believeably under pressure. My inner cook would come out at some point.

[Highway]

Worst Cooks OTOH never gets old. Last week they had a guy that tried to make grilled cheese by grilling cheese. Like literally putting cheese right on the grill. Said he was hoping to "get a nice sear". Bwaa ha ha ha

I choose to believe that this guy is acting. What's to stop a talented cook from blundering his way onto the show and then running away with the competition? They probably make contestants sign something certifying that they aren't professionally trained, and I am sure that they do some background research on contestants, but what about a really good self-taught home cook faking their blunders to get on? How do you prevent that scenario?

That guy wasn't acting. And he wasn't acting when he kept picking food out of his sprout salad, eating it, licking his fingers, and then going back to the mix the salad with his fingers.

It'd be an awful lot of work to fake it enough to show that you're really bad from the beginning, but then only improve enough to keep impressing, not show that you're a ringer.

I know that they got around that problem in the first version of the series by basically misrepresenting what the people were there for. They were supposed to be not that great home cooks, but the initial challenge was to try their best. They then took the worst people out of that, where they were supposed to be trying their *best* dish, and apparently weren't told that the show was going to be a worst of the worst.

[Warren]

I've watched every season of Worst Cooks and I haven't gotten a hit of anybody sandbagging.
Last season they added a segment to the first episode where they showed part of the selection processes. It's kind of like America's Got Talent, or in this case no talent. People line up down the block with something they've cooked in tupperware, and a family member going "For the love of god, please please please, teach this person to cook".

EDIT
I've got it on DVR and just had to rewatch it now. At least four people started a fire on their grill and in all the various fun filled attempts to put them out, I don't think anyone thought of turning off the burner under the grill. So Much Fun.

[Kolohe]

middle of season two of Downton Abbey. Total downers across all story arcs at the midpoint.

[JasonL]

You know what makes HBO's Girls look even worse? Putting it on right after the HBO BBC Parade's End with Cumberbatch etc.

[Dangerman]

Game of Thrones is way better when you know what's going to happen to Theon.

[Painboy]

Game of Thrones is way better when you know what's going to happen to Theon.

Hehe. There was a guy on another forum that I frequent that had Theon as his avatar back around S1. I kept meaning to ask him if had read the books. My suspicion was that he hadn't.

[Fin Fang Foom]

SPOILERS FOR GAME OF THRONES! Season 3.5, Book 3 and further on (expected).








I just finished Season 2 of GOT. They need to change how it plays out for Shae and Tywin Lannister. Both are too likable in the show for the way it plays out in the books,and I don't know if the show will be able to turn it. My solution: Tywin does what he says always said he would do, that would make what happens to him go down easy. What happens to Shae in the books is too creepy anyways.

[Ellie]

I just started watching Revenge on Netflix and am lazily enjoying it. It's full of beautiful spoiled people doing beautiful spoiled things; exactly the sort of mindless soapy entertainment I like for my background noise while I'm working on editing. Plus, the title is really fun to shout. REVENNNNNGGGGGE!

On to Season 2! The show is pretty fun still. It suffers for having the potential to be really over the top ridiculous (like Dirt or in a classier vein The Riches) but I think perhaps since it was on ABC they tried to keep it a little more ... non-racy? Family-friendly? Which makes their having a bisexual male main character all the more refreshing; they don't treat his dalliances as any more titillating than the het characters'. The heroine having a Magical Oriental is BEYOND ridiculous. I love skinny nerdy sarcastic rich two-popped-collars Nolan so very very much.

[Kolohe]

Well, thank you, Julian Fellowes, for being a complete dick with the 3rd season of your show.

[Ayn_Randian]

Well, thank you, Julian Fellowes, for being a complete dick with the 3rd season of your show.

Heh. Isn't that just super?

[Hugh Akston]

So what's the over/under on a Vera Farmiga/Freddie Highmore sex scene before they cancel Bates Motel?

[dbcooper]

I don't think I can bring myself to watch a Jane Campion TV show.

[JD]

So what's the over/under on a Vera Farmiga/Freddie Highmore sex scene before they cancel Bates Motel?

Dunno, but I give Bates Motel maybe half a season. I watched the first episode last night, and the show looked pretty good, and the acting was decent, but the writing stank on ice.

[Highway]

Tried something new this week: Otona Joshi no Anime Time- "Anime Time for Adult Women". Basically, a story of the week format with different art styles and authors. The first episode was a look into the life of a woman who ran away from her loveless marriage without a divorce and started living with a hunky, reliable garbage man, and the contrasts in her perceived joy in domesticity between the man who is appreciative of her and the man who would never even look at her. The second was a woman looking back on her life from the perspective of single, almost 40, and thinking about the best moments of her life, with number one being her first love in junior high school, with the 25th reunion of that class coming up.

Quite a change from usual anime, slower, more deliberate, more relaxing, but very engrossing stories. I'll watch a lot of stuff about interesting people, doesn't really matter the intended audience, and this was really enjoyable.

[Kolohe]

The Americans - two episodes in, and I like it. Like I think someone said here, the only problem with it is it doesn't seem quite period enough - particularly since I was the son's age in the neighborhood one over ostensibly where and when they are supposed to be living. (and New York doesn't look enough like 80's DC). (and super nitpick, one of the very first scenes have them talking about getting on I-66, which was not open inside the Beltway in 1981). But I like it.

Doctor Who - Moffat has written the best episodes of Nu Who, but he as also written some clunkers. This was one of the latter. Why did you explain the entire plot mystery in the cold open? There's also been something wrong in the pacing in both this episode and the Xmas special, which, in my complete ignorance of film criticism, I'm going to blame on poor directing.

[Pham Nuwen]

SPOILERS FOR GAME OF THRONES! Season 3.5, Book 3 and further on (expected).








I just finished Season 2 of GOT. They need to change how it plays out for Shae and Tywin Lannister. Both are too likable in the show for the way it plays out in the books,and I don't know if the show will be able to turn it. My solution: Tywin does what he says always said he would do, that would make what happens to him go down easy. What happens to Shae in the books is too creepy anyways.

Pretty sure they are going to get around that by exposing Shae as the spy she is on the show. Cuz she IS a spy, ya know. On the show anyway.

[Kolohe]

I've detected nothing nothing in the show, though, that indicates that as a character development. However there was nothing in the book either, as far as I could tell. Maybe I missed it in either or both places. (and I skipped over vast parts of Clash of Kings because I had seen the TV show before the reading, and thought it was redudant. (I might have been wrong about that, as I have come to learn) Also I haven't read Dance of Dragons)

[Painboy]

I wrote this elsewhere about Shea:

I'm actually kind of concerned that the show might mess this up. In the book Shea is kind of enigmatic and even shown to be petty from time to time. You never really get a handle on who she is and there is always a kind of uneasiness about her motivations. When the betrayal happens it makes sense in hindsight. Something you didn't want to happen but seems almost obvious in retrospect.

In the show Shea comes off as a much stronger personality and even comes off as kind of principled. Her devotion to Tyrion comes off as a little too genuine at times. Not really some one who is going to lie down with whoever gives her the most pretty jewels. I'm worried that the whole betrayal will come off as contrived for viewers of the show.

[Kolohe]

Yep, exactly.