What was the last TV show you watched?

[Touchofevil]

The final four episodes of Marcella as well as the first two of Marco Polo. Marcella had it flaws (too many) but was entertaining enough. Will there be a second season to deal with the loose ends?
Marco Polo as just a momentary break from mystery/cop shows. It was okay, better than I thought it would be.

 

[Fading Fast]

A few more episodes from season one (via Netflix) of "The Time In Between" a Spanish TV show set in the '30s that follows the life of a young woman whose torrid love affair with a gigolo takes her away from home, alienates her from her only close relative - her mom, throws her into debt and into the gunsights of the police.

She is now on her own trying to (1) pay off her debts - she's opened up a high-end dress making shop in Morocco - (2) stay out of jail, (3) help get her mom out of the at-war part of Spain and (4) court as customers, but not get too engaged with, the wealthy Nazi wives who have the money to buy her dresses. Yup, she's got a lot going on.

But the show isn't at the pace or intensity of today's full-throttled TV offerings that emotionally whip you through an episode - it's more of a scenic journey (wonderful 1930's European Fedora Lounge eye candy in the clothes, cars, architecture, sets, etc.) where the risks come and go, but the day-to-day drives the story at a more languid and calm pace.

If anyone remembers the TV show "The House of Elliot" about two young women who open a dressmaking business in 1920s London, then picture this show as an improved version of that one with more international intrigue and better sets, etc. Anyone else familiar with this one?

 

[Ernest P Shackleton]

I've been wondering why folks have been worried about a Taboo season 2. I've read no indication that this was a mini-series, and BBC/FX is known to be dedicated to their series. It's rare that they circular file a series after a single season, even when it is underperforming, and I believe Taboo has been showing decent numbers.

Having said that, as of February 26th, there are conflicting reports whether it will get another season. I've read one article that says there will be and several others that say it is too soon to say.

http://metro.co.uk/2017/02/26/will-...en-made-but-they-havent-ruled-it-out-6473322/

 

[Ernest P Shackleton]

Big Little Lies. new HBO series. Star cast. I can't tell if the writing is poor or if the actors didn't find their timing. I think I said this last week. I appreciate the subject matter, but the conversations are awkward and unnatural. In particular, Witherspoon is terrible. She's a competent actress, too. The banter with her teenage daughter sound like they never rehearsed the material. Kidman's sex & violence arc is deterred by her unwillingness to be nude. It's glaringly obvious when a body double is used. I don't care if she's nude or not. I loved Mad Men because it didn't rely on nudity or trashy language to get there. But if you're going to play a role where sex is a huge element, and you're in these strong psychological sex scenes, you can't go from the breast of your body double to Kidman oddly covering herself while flowing through the same part of the sequence. I know this might sound like I just want Kidman nude, but no. It's not skillfully edited. It potentially jars the audience from that belief zone. Don't hire a huge star who doesn't want to fully invest in the role. It doesn't serve the character, the series, or the situations. I'm not a fan of premium channels and their gratuitous nudity, but as they've written this character and her twisted, abusive marriage, it seems to be necessary.

Girls. American Bitch. I'm not sure how this fits into the series, but as an isolated event, it was a good mind screw. Weird way to use an episode of your final season.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I only made it 20 minutes into the first episode of Big Little Lies. Famous cast, lavish production... but a thoroughly uninteresting-bordering-on-reprehensible bunch of annoyingly super-privileged characters. I had high hopes for the series, but it turned me off immediately.

I liked the Girls episode - sort of a companion piece to that earlier bottle episode with Hannah and a single guest star, "One Man's Trash" with Patrick Wilson. But I think Girls has steadily improved throughout its run, and I have enjoyed it all along - way more than a 62-year-old male is supposed to.

(For literally the first time in decades, I didn't watch a second of the Oscars telecast. I hadn't seen any of the nominated films (except Arrival) and didn't have any strong feelings about them, and I just couldn't work up the necessary enthusiasm.)

 

[LizzieMaine]

Growing out of a recent discussion in the "Old Gas Stations" thread, I've spent the past week watching as many kinescopes of Milton Berle's "Texaco Star Theatre" as I've been able to find, and I've found myself reevaluating my position on this landmark TV series.

Most of us here, I imagine, are familiar with the legend of Berle as "Mr. Television," but he's a comic whose reputation has generally not worn well over the years -- to pretty much anyone born after 1950, he's remembered as a corny, out-of-date performer who was popular only because he was the only thing on the air at the time, and few over the past half-century or so have given him much thought except as a figure out of the antediluvian past who somehow lived long enough to make a fool of himself on stage with RuPaul on an MTV awards show. Personally, I'd never cared a whole lot about Berle's work -- it didn't have the warmth of Jack Benny or the satirical edge of Fred Allen or the inventiveness of Sid Caesar, and while I'd seen an episode or two of his Texaco show, it didn't make much of an impression. But now, having watched several programs from this series, and thought about them, I think I've long missed the point. The real appeal of Berle's "Texaco Star Theatre" isn't the comedy material itself, or even the fact that it was on the air when there was very little of substance to compete with it -- rather, it's the utter sense of anarchy that prevails, during a time when anarchy of all kinds was very much being suppressed in American life.

The Berle Texaco shows are structured over the first three seasons like a vaudeville show. Berle is primarily a master of ceremonies, introducing a succession of guest acts which run the gamut from major celebrities to unknown variety acts -- acrobats, specialty dance numbers, classical musicians, hotcha singers, you name it, and if it was available in New York on a Tuesday night it could show up. Usually Berle appears in at least one comedy sketch featuring a guest star, but otherwise he hosts the show like Ed Sullivan on Dexedrine. His material on these shows is utterly inconsequential -- the jokes were bad, and usually deliberately so, playing off Berle's "Thief of Bad Gags" persona. But the absolute manic energy with which he delivers this material is genuinely funny -- in the time it would have taken someone like Henry Morgan to set up and deliver single a satirical line, Berle bangs off half a dozen rapid-fire gags and forces you to laugh at them in spite of yourself. The gags are done in a very self-aware style -- Berle *knows* his material stinks, and he knows that you, the viewer, know this as well. And yet here he is, on television, making big money with this stuff, and the viewer is complicit in the scam. The whole attitude he projects on camera is "Can you believe we're getting away with this stuff???" At exactly the moment -- 1948 thru 1953 -- when the fist of social, cultural and political oppressiveness was closing about the American throat, every Tuesday night if you were among the minority of Americans who owned a television set you could join Berle in sticking a big fat thumb in The Man's eye. He never did overtly political material, and he probably never uttered the phrase "social critique" in his life, but there's a definite undercurrent of "up yours" running thru these shows. Even the Texaco commercials delivered by "comedy pitchman" Sid Stone contribute to this attitude -- the idea of a commercial pitch being delivered by a character portrayed as a flim-flamming street-corner con artist is deeply subversive. Either that subversion went over the Boys' head -- or someone at the agency wasn't entirely on board with the Agenda.

There's also a delightful raggedy shabbiness about these shows. The cheapness of the production is never out of eyeshot -- the settings are shoddy painted backdrops or canvas-and-cardboard flats, the stage is clearly small and cramped, and the cameramen struggle to keep the performers in frame. In one broadcast, a "South American" dance speciality parades across the stage, only to have one of the senoritas slip and fall on a banana peel left on the stage floor during an earlier routine. She visibly laughs, gets back up on her feet, and goes on. In another, Sid Stone smashes a tomato on the head of a stooge, and it splatters all over the canvas backdrop hanging behind them -- and the stains are still obvious and visible when the backdrop reappears behind the singing Texaco Men at the end of the show. Even the Texaco Men themselves are a bit shabby -- there's nothing slick or "chorus boy" about them, and in fact they look like the kind of guys who you might actually find working in a gas station. One is a bit pudgy, another seems to be missing several teeth, and they all seem on the edge of busting out laughing every time they appear. All this combines to give the show a sense of "what the hell" spontaneity that would be utterly lost to all of television by the middle of the 1950s, and which fits in well with the anarchic spirit mentioned earlier.

The "Texaco Star Theatre" itself lost its spontaneity before it ended in 1953 -- the show was completely restructured, with the vaudeville format replaced by a sort of backstage situation comedy setup where Berle became a frustrated Jack Benny-like character who was the butt of his "gang's" jokes. Berle didn't like this format, and neither, apparently did the audience, because the changes sent Berle's TV career into a decline from which it would never recover. The anarchy was gone, and that anarchy was the one ingredient that made the show work in the first place. The 1948-52 "Texaco Star Theatre" was an emphatic rejection of the ethos of postwar conformity -- there was more genuine rebelliousness in one hour of the show than in an entire season of "Saturday Night Live," a series which packages rebellion and cultural critique as a cynical piece of merchandise. But from the fall of 1952 onward, Berle was forced to fall in line with that conformity -- and it basically killed everything that had made him "Mr. Television" in the first place. He was, if you will, early TV's equivalent of Woody Woodpecker -- a character who began as a force of utter chaos, and ended up as just another gelded suburbanite.

There's only a handful of Berle's Texaco shows in general circulation, but there's nearly two hundred kinescopes in NBC's vault which will probably never see the light of day again. Which is a pity, because I think with all their yelling, whooping, bad jokes, con men, smashed tomatoes, and banana skins they could reveal a lot about the mindset of early postwar America, and would very likely generate a lot of cathartic laughs besides.

 

[Bushman]

Big Little Lies. new HBO series. Star cast. I can't tell if the writing is poor or if the actors didn't find their timing. I think I said this last week. I appreciate the subject matter, but the conversations are awkward and unnatural. In particular, Witherspoon is terrible. She's a competent actress, too. The banter with her teenage daughter sound like they never rehearsed the material. Kidman's sex & violence arc is deterred by her unwillingness to be nude. It's glaringly obvious when a body double is used. I don't care if she's nude or not. I loved Mad Men because it didn't rely on nudity or trashy language to get there. But if you're going to play a role where sex is a huge element, and you're in these strong psychological sex scenes, you can't go from the breast of your body double to Kidman oddly covering herself while flowing through the same part of the sequence. I know this might sound like I just want Kidman nude, but no. It's not skillfully edited. It potentially jars the audience from that belief zone. Don't hire a huge star who doesn't want to fully invest in the role. It doesn't serve the character, the series, or the situations. I'm not a fan of premium channels and their gratuitous nudity, but as they've written this character and her twisted, abusive marriage, it seems to be necessary.

Girls. American Bitch. I'm not sure how this fits into the series, but as an isolated event, it was a good mind screw. Weird way to use an episode of your final season.

I feel the same way about the characters myself. Every one of them is a "new age parenting" snob that backstab each other every chance they get. They're each horrible people, except for Ziggy's mother who is the only one to seem genuine, and of course the only one not from the area. But the rest of the characters... I literally turned to my girlfriend and said "This is why I wouldn't live in SoCal." I don't know if this is how people in California actually act, but enough shows and movies portray them like this that it's enough to make me wonder.

 

[Ernest P Shackleton]

I feel the same way about the characters myself. Every one of them is a "new age parenting" snob that backstab each other every chance they get. They're each horrible people, except for Ziggy's mother who is the only one to seem genuine, and of course the only one not from the area. But the rest of the characters... I literally turned to my girlfriend and said "This is why I wouldn't live in SoCal." I don't know if this is how people in California actually act, but enough shows and movies portray them like this that it's enough to make me wonder.

Drama TV represents this region like that, and if you watch any reality TV based around LA, they are this narcissistic. I laugh with them more than I loathe them. The ego is a nasty thing, and though we all struggle with it to some degree, some can never escape it for even a moment (look at our president). It's a real mental illness, and as weirdly as me/myself/I is obviously inherently selfish, they need an audience as well. Social animals of a different breed. They gather to speak at each other. I'm thankful I don't live there, but I say that about a lot of places.

 

[Zombie_61]

I've lived in southern California my whole life; don't believe everything you see on television.

 

[Ernest P Shackleton]

I've lived in southern California my whole life; don't believe everything you see on television.

I lived in a small town with a known summer playhouse. New groups of actors, directors, and technicians every year. They're very social people, so they integrated into the community. I'll take your word for it, but they were consistently a strange lot. A likeable lot, but a strange lot. Enjoyed the energy while it was there, but was happy to see it go when the summers ended. Beautiful, creative, talented people, but my summation was that few of them could handle that responsibility. They were blessed and a mess.

 

[Touchofevil]

The Academy Awards

 

[Worf]

The Academy Awards

SPEW! Don't leave until the end.. trust me!

Worf

 

[Zombie_61]

I lived in a small town with a known summer playhouse. New groups of actors, directors, and technicians every year. They're very social people, so they integrated into the community. I'll take your word for it, but they were consistently a strange lot. A likeable lot, but a strange lot. Enjoyed the energy while it was there, but was happy to see it go when the summers ended. Beautiful, creative, talented people, but my summation was that few of them could handle that responsibility. They were blessed and a mess.

I'm not saying southern California doesn't have it's fair share of "strange" people, but no more so than the ones I've encountered in Arizona, or Nevada, or Illinois, or Georgia, or Alaska, or...well, I'm sure you get the idea.

 

[MisterCairo]

The Walking Dead.

Go Eugene!

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Trouble with Tribbles" "Star Trek" episode.

Only one short comment today (and the crowd breathes a sigh of relief: "when does that blatherer ever have just one comment...on anything"), the scene where Kirk is beginning to get exasperated with all the tribbles on the ship is punctuated perfectly when he sits down in his Captain's Chair - his seat of authority - and accidentally sits on an unobserved tribble that gives off an adorable squeak of surprise. Anyone with a pet knows that experience when they've sat or stepped on one of their dog's or cat's squeaky toys. I've found myself apologizing to the inanimate thing that usually looks like a happy anthropomorphized something or other.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That episode has my favorite moment in the original series, where Spock quotes the Bible at McCoy in explaining his view of tribbles. "They toil not, neither do they spin.."

 

[MisterCairo]

I hear they make good eatin' though....

It was also the only episode to my knowledge that mentions Canada. When they reference the wheat being shipped - quadrotriticale - it was mentioned by Spock I believe that it was developed in the 20th century by Canada.

Odd, because triticale was first developed by the Scots and Germans in the late 19th century, though the University of Manitoba did develop the first large scale breeding program for the grain in 1953. Perhaps this is what the script writers referenced.

So, Chekov was incorrect either way when he insisted it was a Russian "inwention"...

 

[LizzieMaine]

There's an episode of ST: Deep Space Nine where renegade security officer Eddington, a Canadian by birth, comments that he carries a three hundred year old family heirloom as a lucky piece -- "my lucky Loonie."

 

[Fading Fast]

That episode has my favorite moment in the original series, where Spock quotes the Bible at McCoy in explaining his view of tribbles. "They toil not, neither do they spin.."

The entire episode has a different feel than most of the other original episodes. Kirk is pretty flippant in his attitude toward the mission and the overall tone of the episode is just shy of tongue-in-cheek. Even the Klingons play it lightly (and I know that they hadn't fully developed their persona yet, but even still, their commander is almost comedic). And the Kirk, McCoy and Spock one-liners and banter is upped as is all the pro-Russian / pro-Scottish Chekov / Scotty play. A fun episode, but not typical.

 

[Edward]

Last night we watched the latest (the second) episode of the BBC's adaptation of SSGB. Superb stuff. I love this alternate-history type stuff. I'm hopnig eventually one day somebody writes a great one for more of the UK - e.g. what happens in Northern Ireland with a Nazi-ruled Britain? Do the ancient tribes unite to fight a common enemy? In doing so, does the politico-religious symbolism fall out of place in favour of a more conventional left / right struggle?