InfestedKerrigan Posted December 1, 2019 Report Share Posted December 1, 2019 46 minutes ago, dalmer said: over the past few months wifey poo and I watched all 8 seasons of Scrubs. she loved it, already misses it ha ha Your lack of opinion of your own suggests you did not enjoy it, and are hiding behind her enjoyment instead of addressing what sucked about the show. 😄 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dalmer Posted December 1, 2019 Report Share Posted December 1, 2019 15 hours ago, InfestedKerrigan said: Your lack of opinion of your own suggests you did not enjoy it, and are hiding behind her enjoyment instead of addressing what sucked about the show. 😄 Oh my bad, let me expand I guess I think it was a great show, having also watched it with my sons when they were growing up. I felt that the main character's compassion and drive were heartfelt and enabled him to survive in a cynical microworld... and the show also showed how different types of folks cope with difficulties/life. The comedic side to it was great, especially when centered on the two best friends. Thoroughly enjoyable show. Sure, there were down points (as anything that goes on TV for eight seasons must) but nothing to write off the entire series. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 17, 2019 Report Share Posted December 17, 2019 The Expanse (4 seasons watched in only a few days) 4/5 It's pretty good. It's like Mass Effect as a TV show but mostly only humans. There's nothing terribly original about the show, but it's good and well done. They take lots of existing sci-fi tropes and weave them into a good show which takes itself seriously. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ish Posted December 17, 2019 Report Share Posted December 17, 2019 7 minutes ago, paxmiles said: The Expanse (4 seasons watched in only a few days) Started this show myself about two weeks ago, I'm about a third of the way through season two right now. The first few episodes of season one were kind of bland, it felt like it took the principal cast a while to find their footing, but it's been going great since that point. Reminds me a lot of The Jovian Chronicles roleplaying game (only without mecha) or maybe a really well plotted Traveller campaign (albeit without interplanetary travel). I'm a huge fan of "hard" science fiction and The Expanse is about the hardest sci-fi I've ever seen on television, other than interplanetary travel being really fast and really, really, really efficient (but not faster-than-light) and the You-Know-What-If-You've-Seen-It thing that I won't spoil by naming, there really isn't anything in the show that isn't "hard" sci-fi. Plus, I gotta give props to a show that contains a Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra shout-out in every single episode. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 17, 2019 Report Share Posted December 17, 2019 36 minutes ago, Ish said: Reminds me a lot of The Jovian Chronicles roleplaying game (only without mecha) or maybe a really well plotted Traveller campaign (albeit without interplanetary travel). I'm a huge fan of "hard" science fiction and The Expanse is about the hardest sci-fi I've ever seen on television, other than interplanetary travel being really fast and really, really, really efficient (but not faster-than-light) and the You-Know-What-If-You've-Seen-It thing that I won't spoil by naming, there really isn't anything in the show that isn't "hard" sci-fi. Do you watch much anime? There's some pretty good anime portrayals of "hard" sci-fi. Instantaneous travel isn't really any different than switching to the "3 months later" scene, at least from a storytelling standpoint. And getting stuck along the way is more something that happens in a drama, and less about the sci-fi end of things. Been watching the Vampire Diaries, too. I actually thought the two shows were rather similar. Problems never really get resolved because every thing resolved creates at least one more problem. And then we get hope of a solution to everything, but it's lost or delayed or that big secret finally gets revealed at the most in opertun time...Oh, and the main characters never really die. The Expanse is definitely better than Vampire Diaries, but they remain similar. I did really appreciate the lack of romantic focus in The Expanse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ish Posted December 17, 2019 Report Share Posted December 17, 2019 I’m a certified “OldTaku.” I was very much into anime from junior high through to university. Kinda lost interest around ‘05 or so... I still dabble and still pick up on the major trends through my friends who are still active in the fandom and due to general “geek culture osmosis.” My relationship with anime is weird. It’s like, the easier is has become to get ahold of it in the States, the less of it I watch. I’ve gone from buying whole series sight unseen on VHS from sketchy ads in the back of fan ‘zines from Hong Kong bootleg fan-subbers back in the Nineties, to binge watching entire series on laser disc and/or DVD in the ‘00s, to having a paid CrunchyRoll account in the early ‘10s, to now just occasionally watching something on Netflix... It’s mostly about time, more than anything. Work, family, and “real life” eats up most of the week... And my other hobbies are all pretty time-consuming, so I’ve got to pick and choose how I spend the few free hours I’ve got. I did binge watch several Gundam series this past year, killing the doldrums of my weekly graveyard shift with Gundam Build Fighters, Gundam Build Fighters Try, Gundam Build Fighters: GM’s Counterattack, and Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans. The Build Fighters series are good fun, light-hearted romps that should resonate well with all war gamers and model builders. Bonus need points for any “OldTaku” fans who will geek out over the many, many, many, many, many shout-outs and Easter Eggs. Iron-Blooded Orphans is a great show, but it is a radically different tone. I’ve called it “Robert A Heinlein’s Tom Clancy’s Gundam” before and meant it. It’s probably the most grimdark the Gundam franchise has ever gotten and the most brutality emotional since 0080: War in the Pocket. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 17, 2019 Report Share Posted December 17, 2019 1 hour ago, Ish said: My relationship with anime is weird. It’s like, the easier is has become to get ahold of it in the States, the less of it I watch. I’ve gone from buying whole series sight unseen on VHS from sketchy ads in the back of fan ‘zines from Hong Kong bootleg fan-subbers back in the Nineties, to binge watching entire series on laser disc and/or DVD in the ‘00s, to having a paid CrunchyRoll account in the early ‘10s, to now just occasionally watching something on Netflix... In fairness, I don't really think anime has gotten better. They release more than they used to, but there's still only a small handful of good stuff every year and it's a grab bag which genre it's in. And when thinking of "hard sci fi" anime, I was thinking exclusively of older anime anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ish Posted December 17, 2019 Report Share Posted December 17, 2019 Sturgeon's law applies to anime as much as any other medium. Planetes is probably the hard-est science fiction I've ever come across, the manga ran from 1999-2004, with the anime coming out during the last year the manga was running. I consider it a "new" title, but your mileage may very. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 17, 2019 Report Share Posted December 17, 2019 7 hours ago, Ish said: Sturgeon's law applies to anime as much as any other medium. Maybe, though I think it's more an issue of quality control. Not sure if it was intentionally implemented, but I think quality used to be more present in all anime and it just isn't as present now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duckman Posted December 17, 2019 Report Share Posted December 17, 2019 Ok, let's not forget the obvious.... 20+ years ago all anime in the US was being smuggled in and bootlegged and copied. People were not going to that effort for the stuff that was mediocre. There was a selection effect in place. Now it is easy and more stuff is being imported. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 17, 2019 Report Share Posted December 17, 2019 3 minutes ago, Duckman said: Ok, let's not forget the obvious.... 20+ years ago all anime in the US was being smuggled in and bootlegged and copied. People were not going to that effort for the stuff that was mediocre. There was a selection effect in place. Now it is easy and more stuff is being imported. So you're saying that anime should only be smuggled and bootlegged? I could get behind that. You figure out how to word the petition and I'll add my name, alongside yours, to the list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duckman Posted December 17, 2019 Report Share Posted December 17, 2019 4 minutes ago, paxmiles said: So you're saying that anime should only be smuggled and bootlegged? I could get behind that. You figure out how to word the petition and I'll add my name, alongside yours, to the list. No, I was saying that Sturgeon's law applied back in the 80's and 90's but that the crap was not worth bootlegging and smuggling so it was not here and as a result there was a false impression that the quality of anime was higher because drek was not available. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 17, 2019 Report Share Posted December 17, 2019 4 minutes ago, Duckman said: No, I was saying that Sturgeon's law applied back in the 80's and 90's but that the crap was not worth bootlegging and smuggling so it was not here and as a result there was a false impression that the quality of anime was higher because drek was not available. Sorry. I did understand your point. Was giving a tease as an answer. Thought you were Ish. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ish Posted December 17, 2019 Report Share Posted December 17, 2019 Another aspect of Sturgeon’s Law is that in addition to 90% of everything being crud, most of us don’t remember the crud... or we only remember it in a vague: “Oh, yeah, I watched that. I think...” kind of way. The good stuff sticks with you. You want to remember it. Some stuff is truly great crud and we remember it because of how bad it was. We tend to forget the mediocre and the bad. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duckman Posted January 2, 2020 Report Share Posted January 2, 2020 Over the holiday I managed to binge 5 seasons of Boston Legal and 4 seasons of The Expanse. I had never watched either (or read any of The Expanse). Boston Legal - Overall I'd say 3.5 or 4 stars (out of 5). Denny Crane is too over-the-top most of the time which is as often a distraction as an amusement. It is always comedy as social commentary with a liberal lean (which suits my politics so I only found it occasionally preachy). The first three seasons were pretty solid however the 4th showed its age and the 5th was almost unwatchable but I was willing to wade through the 13 episodes (only a half-season) to see them wrap up the characters in a final pair of episodes that were fairly redeeming for the season. The Expanse - Excellent for effects, decent for writing. 4 out of 5. I like the hard-science bent but since I have a masters+ in the subject many of their orbits are clearly wrong (not deducting points for that but making the observation). They have done well with their weightless scenes but not so well with their decompression which makes sense because they want characters to have last words, etc. and they allow that in contrast to using helmet-to-helmet contact appropriately when radios are scrambled, etc. For seasons 1 and 2 I was enjoying it for what it was and probably overlooked some of the things that bothered me in later seasons. By seasons 3 and 4 I was noticing that the main characters seemed to claim they were trying to react to what the universe was throwing at them but my take was that they were causing a lot of their own problems (Capt. Holden in particular). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ish Posted January 2, 2020 Report Share Posted January 2, 2020 Just finished binge watching all four seasons of The Expanse a few days ago myself. Had never watched it, but several friends swore it was the best thing going, so I gave it. Pretty much agree with @Duckman’s take on it. To borrow the classification from TV Tropes, I’d call it a 3.5 on the Mohs Scale of Sci-Fi Hardness. A solid 4 in the early seasons, where the only major departure from current science and technology seems to be the really, really, really efficient Epstein Drive which isn’t FLT, but does allow travel from Earth to the Belt to take place in time spans that aren’t too boring for television... Everything else: terraforming, fusion reactors, rail guns, and so forth is mostly just a logical extrapolation on current tech. Season 3 Spoiler In Following Paragraph The end of Season 3 kicks the show from a 3.5 to a solid 3. But that’s kind of expected once your story shifts from local political struggles to first contact with dead(?) alien civilization. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InfestedKerrigan Posted January 2, 2020 Report Share Posted January 2, 2020 @Ish [ spoiler ] [ / spoiler ] without the spaces to trigger the coding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ish Posted January 2, 2020 Report Share Posted January 2, 2020 55 minutes ago, InfestedKerrigan said: @Ish [ spoiler ] [ / spoiler ] without the spaces to trigger the coding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InfestedKerrigan Posted January 2, 2020 Report Share Posted January 2, 2020 Now you just need some lasers, and the battle is yours. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yarbicus Posted January 3, 2020 Report Share Posted January 3, 2020 S3 was when SyFy gave up on it and S4 is based upon the weakest book in the series imnsho. Really looking forward to S5 since that is my favorite of the books. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ish Posted January 3, 2020 Report Share Posted January 3, 2020 I just want to watch Frankie Adams and Shohreh Aghdashloo sitting around in a deli or something, complaining about people. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yarbicus Posted January 3, 2020 Report Share Posted January 3, 2020 26 minutes ago, Ish said: I just want to watch Frankie Adams and Shohreh Aghdashloo sitting around in a deli or something, complaining about people. Those two are examples of how perfect casting can really elevate a show. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ish Posted January 3, 2020 Report Share Posted January 3, 2020 Avasarala was pure gold the moment she showed up on screen. I've seen Aghdashloo in a bunch of other stuff and it always felt like she was being criminally under-used... Avasarala feels like the role was written expressly for her. It took me a couple episodes to warm up to Bobbie, in hindsight, I think it's because the other members of her platoon weren't being played by the most invested of actors. However, as soon as Draper and Avasarala were in the same room together, magic happened. But then came this moment... And I fell in love. Look at the sheer wonder and ecstasy on her face. Cucumbers are an incredibly water intensive vegetable to grow and contain virtually no nutritional value. Growing up on "MaHZ," Bobbie never would have had them. Maybe only read about them in old Earth books like Pride & Prejudice as some exotic rich-people food. So, yeah, this moment made me fall in love with her. And then they followed it with this... And this... Combine that with her Kiwi accent, real-life skills as a boxer and MMA fighter, and being goddamn hilarious on Twitter... Frankie Adams is officially my ideal of a perfect woman. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yarbicus Posted January 3, 2020 Report Share Posted January 3, 2020 Have you read the books? She is described as more Samoan than Kiwi but the character is very well written in both the books and show. And Avasarala is even better in the books now that I have a voice in my head. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ish Posted January 3, 2020 Report Share Posted January 3, 2020 Haven't read the books, yet, but they're definitely on my to-do list. Frankie Adams is Samoan, she was born and raised on Savaiʻi, the largest of the islands in the country. She moved to New Zealand as a teenager to further her acting career. The New Zealand film and television industry isn't exactly a large one, but it's a fair bit bigger than Samoa's. [Citation Needed.] It's my understanding that the books describe Bobbie as being something like 6'6" and built like a battleship. Frankie Adams is merely 5'11" and built like a battlecruiser... I guess we'll just have to chalk that up to artistic liberties. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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