What are you watching and enjoying?


SuaveStar

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Re-watching Harvey Birdman, as that was one of my favorite Adult Swim shows ten years ago when I was in high school. It can be very hit/miss, but on average it's still really funny. The show's knowledge of every Hanna Barbera cartoon is impressive, and I had not idea half of these characters existed. Even when they go for the easier, lowbrow jokes like Dr. Quest and Race Bannon being in a relationship, it's played just low key enough that it's still pretty funny. The animation in season two gets a major step up, making the physical gags hilarious. The voice acting is all terrific, from pitch-perfect impersonations of the old characters to hilarious understated, realistic voices. Both surprisingly and unsurprisingly, Stephen Colbert is the best part of the show as Phil, who takes irreverent to a whole new level. This is a great show to re-watch.

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The latest episode of DS9 I watched was great. It offered characterization of Ragebunny Kira, made Sisko look like a leader and featured Mike from Breaking Bad as the leader of a sectarian group of penal colony Mad Max ripoffs who were unable to die so they committed endless war. Fantastic.

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The latest episode of DS9 I watched was great. It offered characterization of Ragebunny Kira, made Sisko look like a leader and featured Mike from Breaking Bad as the leader of a sectarian group of penal colony Mad Max ripoffs who were unable to die so they committed endless war. Fantastic.

Must have seen that ep a dozen times but this year was the first time I saw it since Breaking Bad. Love revisiting stuff and finding the hidden guest star.

Rewatched Waltz and Duet this week. Goddamn, this is why DS9 is the best Star Trek.

Edited by Stavros
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The latest episode of DS9 I watched was great. It offered characterization of Ragebunny Kira, made Sisko look like a leader and featured Mike from Breaking Bad as the leader of a sectarian group of penal colony Mad Max ripoffs who were unable to die so they committed endless war. Fantastic.

Must have seen that ep a dozen times but this year was the first time I saw it since Breaking Bad. Love revisiting stuff and finding the hidden guest star.

Rewatched Waltz and Duet this week. Goddamn, this is why DS9 is the best Star Trek.

Just saw Mike from Breaking Bad as the deputy in Gremlins too. Crazy.

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  • 1 month later...

This year at SDCC I bought a bootleg of the 1977/78 Amazing Spider-Man series. I watched it on the Sci-Fi channel twenty years ago and haven't seen it since. Now that I'm older with a much vaster knowledge of the character, it's way better than I was expecting, and a hell of a lot of fun.

Two episodes in(90 minute pilot and two 45 minute eps), and its luster hasn't faded. Nicholas Hammond is depressingly underrated as Peter Parker. He's sincerely shy, supremely intelligent, brave, responsible and burdened with glorious purpose. He has so much wonderful energy, his performance is a progenitor to Grant Gustin and Melissa Benoist's styles in their respective roles. In episode 2, he has a monologue that one the one hand is hilarious because it makes it obvious he's Spider-Man, but is additionally very well written and incredibly acted. He nails Peter Parker, and my brother made the call that he's better than all three big-screen actors at this point in our viewing. J. Jonah Jameson is played by different actors in the movie and series, but both are written and acted on point as the character. Robbie made a surprise appearance in the pilot and although cast much younger than Jonah, was very well acted and it's a shame he didn't continue in the series.

The worst bits are 1) No Uncle Ben. Peter becomes Spider-Man after a series of hijinks. Aunt May's there though. 2) No costumed supervillains, because of course not. 3) the wall crawling effects are limited. But sometimes they go all first-person camera and it's very cool. The action's solid as well. It's dramatic and builds to a frenzy, and although Spidey should be picking these dudes apart with a quip, it's not as uninteresting as I thought it might be. The first time he web-swings, falls off a building and saves himself with a net, it's a lot of fun.

But the real value in the show is that it's clear either Stan Lee was insistent on certain elements or the writers knew the comics. Peter is constantly broke, always into science, and has horrible luck. One of the best scenes thus far is him falling off a building as Spider-Man, grabbing onto a gargoyle and wrenching his arm. He tries to get a taxi in costume but has no money to pay the guy, so he's forced to jump into a dumpster truck to go home. I mean...THAT'S SPIDER-MAN. This show is stunningly faithful to the source material, and I'm having a blast watching it.It's so much better than its reputation says it is.

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This year at SDCC I bought a bootleg of the 1977/78 Amazing Spider-Man series. I watched it on the Sci-Fi channel twenty years ago and haven't seen it since. Now that I'm older with a much vaster knowledge of the character, it's way better than I was expecting, and a hell of a lot of fun.

Two episodes in(90 minute pilot and two 45 minute eps), and its luster hasn't faded. Nicholas Hammond is depressingly underrated as Peter Parker. He's sincerely shy, supremely intelligent, brave, responsible and burdened with glorious purpose. He has so much wonderful energy, his performance is a progenitor to Grant Gustin and Melissa Benoist's styles in their respective roles. In episode 2, he has a monologue that one the one hand is hilarious because it makes it obvious he's Spider-Man, but is additionally very well written and incredibly acted. He nails Peter Parker, and my brother made the call that he's better than all three big-screen actors at this point in our viewing. J. Jonah Jameson is played by different actors in the movie and series, but both are written and acted on point as the character. Robbie made a surprise appearance in the pilot and although cast much younger than Jonah, was very well acted and it's a shame he didn't continue in the series.

The worst bits are 1) No Uncle Ben. Peter becomes Spider-Man after a series of hijinks. Aunt May's there though. 2) No costumed supervillains, because of course not. 3) the wall crawling effects are limited. But sometimes they go all first-person camera and it's very cool. The action's solid as well. It's dramatic and builds to a frenzy, and although Spidey should be picking these dudes apart with a quip, it's not as uninteresting as I thought it might be. The first time he web-swings, falls off a building and saves himself with a net, it's a lot of fun.

But the real value in the show is that it's clear either Stan Lee was insistent on certain elements or the writers knew the comics. Peter is constantly broke, always into science, and has horrible luck. One of the best scenes thus far is him falling off a building as Spider-Man, grabbing onto a gargoyle and wrenching his arm. He tries to get a taxi in costume but has no money to pay the guy, so he's forced to jump into a dumpster truck to go home. I mean...THAT'S SPIDER-MAN. This show is stunningly faithful to the source material, and I'm having a blast watching it.It's so much better than its reputation says it is.

I was pretty young when that show was on, but the thing I remember most about it was how you could see the wires when he was climbing the buildings. They didn't even try to hide them. 

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Four episodes into season 3 of Harvey Birdman, and this season is knocking it out of the park. Every episode has me in tears. Stephen Colbert is a vocal comic genius, and Peter McNichol is massively underrated as well.

Only semi-related but Adult Swim's been re-airing some old episodes of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and I am loving every second of it.  I wouldn't go as far as to say that Adult Swim's gone to shit, cause... y'know, Rick and Morty, but I do miss the daring and improvisational edge of their early shows.

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I ended up shotgunning all of A Series of Unfortunate Events. I found it mostly enjoyable. It was a fun show that was also dark as all hell at the same time.

As a person who had read the books, I also liked the little touches to fill some of the plot holes. The entire plot thread with Colby Smulders and Will Arnett's characters were interesting and threw me for a loop. They had already taken some liberties so maybe keeping the parents alive, while inadvisable, would still have been interesting. The fact that they turned out to be the Quagmires's parents instead and things still went to hell for them was just the grey frosting on the stale cake.

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Been on a DS9 kick lately, making my way through Season 3 for the first time. In light of recent events, I saw the two-parter "Past Tense" yesterday, which features the homeless and mentally ill being ghettoized in the U.S. in 2024. The bOrgCast episode covering this story is titled "TrumpTown Riots". I'll say no more.

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I ended up shotgunning all of A Series of Unfortunate Events. I found it mostly enjoyable. It was a fun show that was also dark as all hell at the same time.

Hidden Content

The show was not bad... necessarily, but when it comes to pure filmmaking craft the movie adaptation was so much better.  It was like a character-actor's paradise.  Jim Carrey, Timothy Spall, Jude Law, Billy Connolly, even Thomas Newman's score are just palely imitated in this version.  Barry Sonnenfeld went so tongue-and-cheek with the style that I wouldn't even call it dark.  There were some genuinely heart-felt moments in the film but nothing struck a chord with me in the series. 

The benefits here are that the whole series feels more thought out, less crammed together, and all things considered a little better written than even the books were.  There's certainly a lot to like but it really made me realize how much stronger of a director Brad Silberling is to Sonnenfeld (although that's not saying much).

Oh, and anything to do with Sunny, K. Todd Freeman's Poe, and Olaf's henchmen is cringe-inducingly bad.

EDIT: Having said all that, if I had seen this show when I was eleven it would've been my favorite thing ever.

Edited by Gareth
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Finished the 13 episode series Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine tonight.

It's a prequel/reboot of the classic anime series who's tone hearkens back to the original 60s manga in strong adult content. It's darker than the Geneon series that aired on Adult Swim ten years ago, but it only gets really twisted near the end. Throughout the show there's a ridiculous amount of nudity from the main character and some barely-there double entendres. I went back and forth on whether I was liking it or not, and by the end I decided that I was. The art design is immaculate, going for a classic, hard-edged illustrative look. It's one of the first anime series that's directed and written by women. That being said it's really hard for the seemingly feminist show to escape some of the worst anime tropes, specifically when it comes to a prominent gay character being a twisted, jealous, revenge freak. A lot of good things and bad things about the series constantly rubs up against each other, but it settles down with its overarching plot in the final four episodes, and I really dug it.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I somehow managed to never see Steven Universe until last night. Since then I have mainlined about thirty episodes.

And yes, it's doing really great and important things in regards to family dynamics, and gender, and sexuality. But also, it is fucking adorable.

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You should be coming up on an episode that seriously made me bawl the first time I saw it. This is also about the time that the show starts to shift to building it's mythology and the slice of life episodes start to be only every other episode or so.

And yes, it never stops being adorable.

Also, Sugilite, the Fusion of Amethyst and Garnet, is voiced by Niki Minaj. I know, mind blown.

Edited by dc20willsave
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The Amazing World of Gumball- Season Five went out the gate with such a bold statement critiquing the Peoples Republic of China. But I had to applaud their Valentines day. I did not think they could top "The Shell" which had even Jonathan Enter praise it for being a good love story. It would not surprise me if someone in the top argued against having a love story in a children's series teach the lesson that if you really love someone you should be able to let them go, even when it breaks your heart. 

...

A ten minute children's cartoon made me cry over a ghost that was in love with a walking goldfish. 

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I somehow managed to never see Steven Universe until last night. Since then I have mainlined about thirty episodes.

And yes, it's doing really great and important things in regards to family dynamics, and gender, and sexuality. But also, it is fucking adorable.

WHY AM I ONLY SEEING THIS A WEEK LATER?!!!

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