What TV shows are you watching thread.

Chat about stuff other than Transformers.
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Tetsuro
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Post by Tetsuro »

Unicron wrote:Most recent thing I watched in bulk was Mobile Fighter G Gundam, after getting the full series in two box sets the other week.

A little heavy on the whole burning justice and power of friendship/love clichés, but fun in it's way. I mean you have to love any series that has a character who practices German Ninjutsu and treats it completely seriously. Still can't believe how ridiculous (read as stereotypical/possibly racist) a number of the Gundam designs were though.
I have this kind of weird love/hate relationship towards G Gundam. I genuinely love it for it's ridicilous, over the top aspect (such as the German ninja you mentioned), but I hate it for the tournament content.

I generally I hate tourney anime because it always boils down to "bland and generic shonen protagonist beats up characters more interesting than himself", but in G Gundam the excuse for them doesn't even make sense. Why force every single nation into an arbitrary deathmatch when you could just organize it between whichever colonies that happen to have a grudge over something at any given time?
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Post by Unicron »

Tetsuro wrote:I generally I hate tourney anime because it always boils down to "bland and generic shonen protagonist beats up characters more interesting than himself", but in G Gundam the excuse for them doesn't even make sense. Why force every single nation into an arbitrary deathmatch when you could just organize it between whichever colonies that happen to have a grudge over something at any given time?
It's not to settle grudges, it's to select which colony is the ruler for the next 4-ish years. To quote a thing from a different anime 'it's like a presidential election, but with fists'. I think theory being that the collateral damage from the assorted tourney fights is deemed more acceptable than what you would see in a full scale war. Plus it only wrecks parts of the Earth instead of the colonies, where all the important people live.

Ridiculous concept but hey, any excuse for giant robots to beat the crap out of each other, right?
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

I've been watching some of Marvel's recent animated series Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Avengers Assemble, and The Ultimate Spider-Man.

I got to admit that The Ultimate Spider-Man is the animated show that is probably the most fun except for the Deadpool episode because I hated Deadpool's voice.

I got a sense that both of the Avengers shows might (and then again they might have not) have been in the same universe but they didn't do as good job making sure it sure it lined up as well as Timm and company did on Justice League and Justice League Unlimited shows. I liked the characters designed and voice acting on Avengers Assembled second series, but the actually animation (you know when characters actually moved) looked cheap and lifeless as opposed to The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes which had solid animation. Both Thor and Captain America's classic looks didn't work for me. Jennifer Hale as Ms. Marvel was the best casting on both shows.
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Post by Tetsuro »

Unicron wrote:It's not to settle grudges, it's to select which colony is the ruler for the next 4-ish years. To quote a thing from a different anime 'it's like a presidential election, but with fists'. I think theory being that the collateral damage from the assorted tourney fights is deemed more acceptable than what you would see in a full scale war. Plus it only wrecks parts of the Earth instead of the colonies, where all the important people live.
And everyone just goes along with it because this was the best they could come up with, I'm just not buying it.

That's right, in a world where people have kung fu superpowers capable of taking down giant robots, it's the political angle that kills the suspension of disbelief for me.
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Post by Notabot »

I've been watching Twin Peaks for a few weeks now when the family isn't around. It's got some great stuff, and some really awful stuff. Parts of it are genuinely scary, and parts are like some really badly acted soap opera. One thing that it made me very aware of though... opening credits were ridiculously long back then! When I started the first episode, I had nearly finished my supper before the actual show started!
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Post by Tetsuro »

Okay, in the thread about the G1 cartoon, I brought up the subject of how it compares to the other cartoons of the era, and I think it was Dalek who pointed out the writing in cartoons got better in the 90's.

Well, I'm now watching Street Sharks (since for whatever reasons we never got a full DVD release of Biker Mice From Mars), and it has the exact opposite problem to what I complained about in that thread, about how the villains frequently fell victim to being written as a joke so they came off as less menacing and more a sorry bunch you just kind of felt sorry for.

In this one, the villain suffers from the "holy crap, somebody just beat this guy already" syndrome; he practically gets away with murder constantly, and the best the heroes manage to do is foil his latest plan but never wreck the villains high approval rating among the general populace. Unlike Lawrence Limburger, the big bad of the BMFM cartoon, he never even experiences the humiliation conga at the end of each episode on top of that. Hell, he even practically wins in a few episodes. Meanwhile all the titular heroes can do is maintain status quo at best - a status quo in which the popular opinion is that they're the villains.

It's a kind of frustrating thing to observe at length.
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Post by Skyquake87 »

I had a couple of Street Sharks toys. They were actually pretty cool. Like with He-Man, Mattel did some nice packaging for them (painted images of other characters available on the back etc etc). Don't think the cartoon made it to the UK - or if it did, I wasn't paying attention. And judging by how cheaply I picked up the figures back then, neither was anyone else.

I've been watching the new Supergirl TV show. Its brilliant! Its so perky and energetic and like TV shows used to be, before everything got elongated to the point of bugger all happening for weeks end. Its such a fun little show that its kind of a shame that Sky haven't tried it on a Saturday tea-time. Instead, its on at 8pm on a Thursday.

Last series of Peep Show has also just started, so that's got my attention to. The ever excellent Tim Key pops up in the first episode :)
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Post by Hound »

I finished KR Agito and watched the first ever Sentai, called Goranger, and they were both really good. Well, I watched about half of Goranger, as it's only been about halfway subbed.

I'm now on to watching Kamen Rider V3, it's the second series. It's from the 70s and it shows but the lead is really good and I like that every story is in two parts, it breaks up the formula a bit.
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Post by Tetsuro »

Skyquake87 wrote:I had a couple of Street Sharks toys. They were actually pretty cool. Like with He-Man, Mattel did some nice packaging for them (painted images of other characters available on the back etc etc). Don't think the cartoon made it to the UK - or if it did, I wasn't paying attention. And judging by how cheaply I picked up the figures back then, neither was anyone else.
I didn't own any of the toys; I think they came out right about the time I was deciding I was "too old for toys" or something...despite I habitually scrounge toy aisles to this day. Maybe it was my parents who decided I was too old for toys...
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Post by Skyquake87 »

I picked them up when I was at college. I ended up with some right old rubbish from pound shops from around this time. Some Tyco (who they?) 12" mech-suits with various missile launchers that were piloted by 3" M.A.S.K. style figures, something from some TV show I'd never seen that looked like Hoarde Trooper, A couple of Batman : TAS figures (Harley Quinn and Catwoman - kind of wish I'd kept them, but the friggers wouldn't stand up) and two Gundam model kits (Epyon and uh, another one). The Street Sharks were nice, chunky toys. I liked the gimmick that pulling the fin on their backs made their mouths open and shut. I put the line's failure down to being the latest in a long line of Turtles rip-offs (c.f. Biker Mice From Mars, Bucky O'Hare, Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters etc etc)
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Post by Tetsuro »

It wasn't even the last, Extreme Dinosaurs was a spinoff of it.

It's kind of strange I don't even see beat up samples at flea markets anymore, they're not exactly something with a big collector base that would turn them all to ebay or it's equivalent.

Actually thinking back, I think the biggest reason I didn't want them was simply because I wasn't crazy about the style; even as TMNT came and went, I was still a TF kid to the core. Plus the cartoon wasn't broadcast here either; BMFM at least had that benefit.
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

I've been watching Xena: Warrior Princess on Netflix and for all it's faults it's just pure 100% fun. It's a show that knows what wants to be from episode 1 and gets there even in season 1 whereas some shows like any of Star Trek shows takes anywhere 1-4 seasons to find their direction Xena: Warrior Princess pretty knows what it is by the end of episode 1.

Some of the CGI special effects have aged very poorly especially in the first 3 or 4 seasons thankfully it's not used as much as other shows of the same time. IMHO the CGI on Xena is bad but nowhere near as bad as Babylon 5 is though. While some of the fights are poorly staged look stupid, although some really good like the ladder battle in the S1 episode "Callisto" is really good and could easily rival some Hong Kong martial arts films of the late 90s/early 00s though. The production values are good but not what great but they do seem to improve greatly in seasons 5 and 6.
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Netflix's Jessica Jones series is good.

Not as good as Daredevil, but still good. Ritter absolutely nails the essence of the character. Plus it's got that Australian chick from the first Transformers movie, but she's doing actual acting in this.
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

IMHO Jessica Jones is a lot better than Daredevil. The series is much better paced the supporting cast is used a lot better and David Tennant as Kilgrave is the best Marvel villain to date and was much more fun to watch than Kingpin who is just vastly over-rated gangster, and to be honest Kingpin is my one of my least favorite villains in any version of the Marvel Universe.

I liked the question of in a world where mind control exists who is responsible is it Kilgrave or the people he controlled? I liked that it tried to tackle rape and PTSD and showed the damage that Jones and Kilgrave both physical and mental leave in their wake and how Jones tries to deal with it. I liked that it introduced several new characters Luke Cage, Hellcat, Nuke (who maybe will become US Agent). I'm also glad it drag out her origin story across the whole damn season like Daredevil did. I loved the nods to The Avengers and other Marvel characters.

What I didn't like was the subplot of Carrie-Anne Moss' character getting trying to use Jones and later Kilgrave to get a better divorce settlement. It felt out of place and became to convoluted and mostly felt like padding even when it does come to ahead it didn't make me care for her character, her ex, or her girlfriend one way or the other. Also I don't know or care about Moss' sexuality but this is the second time I've seen her trying to play a lesbian and it's the second time she's where she is supposed to be sexy with her girlfriend she comes off as the exact opposite.

Plus this series didn't seem to be ashamed that it was a based on a comic book where Daredevil seemed to ashamed to be a be a comic book show.
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Post by Dead Man Wade »

Cyberstrike nTo wrote:Plus this series didn't seem to be ashamed that it was a based on a comic book where Daredevil seemed to ashamed to be a be a comic book show.
Um...what? You're gonna have to explain that one.
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Just ignore him dude.
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Post by Tetsuro »

At last, Batman! Yes, the one with Alan Napier! :D

I feel kind of silly about the fact that I actually got the fancy box set a whole year ago and it's taken me this long to actually start watching it. What was kind of funny was the first episode where Bruce Wayne lectures his guests about his parents being murdered by "dastardly criminals", and just the whole line, the way he delivers it, made me go "this is ridicilous!" - and then I remembered what I was watching.
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

I bought myself that for Christmas last year.

I got maybe eight episodes in.
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Post by Tetsuro »

Never had the time or just learned the hard way it wasn't your type of show?
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Post by Brendocon 2.0 »

Neither.

It was (obviously) never designed to be watched in more than one episode at a time. So I ended up with a horrific overdose.
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