I mentioned in my post about The Librarians that I felt there was a lack of cool geniuses on TV these days. When I started thinking about it though, there were a few that I did like, so I wanted to call them out and say what worked for me. Continue reading Cool Geniuses on TV
Category Archives: TV Shows
The Librarians
I recently finished watching The Librarians as my show-with-evening-meal show. It was enjoyable and lighthearted, and managed to capture the bombasticness of The Librarian (who did happen to show up on occasion) into a cast of many, which I wasn’t sure that they would be able to pull off. I think the thing that bugged me the most though, was the reliance on such harsh smart-person stereotypes. Continue reading The Librarians
Dark Matter
I recently finished the first season of Dark Matter on Netflix, and I found that I had a few things that I wanted to write about. My goal is to make this as spoiler-free as possible, but there is one spoiler that really turned around the show for me, and will be the focus for this post. My spoiler-free review is that I really enjoyed the first season, and gets a solid recommendation from me. For some minor spoilers, read on, but if you want to go into this show blind, stop now. Continue reading Dark Matter
Stranger Things
Based on a tip I got from Gamerstable, Jessa and I decided to watch Stranger Things over our evening meal. Like Boogiepop Phantom, I was looking for something with a bit of mystery but also elements of the fantastical, so as to turn that mystery into horror.
For me, I think Stranger Things misses horror, but really nails dark fantasy. This may seem like an odd quibble, but for me horror is about struggling against evil… …and failing or living with the despair that you will fail. Stranger Things is about horrible things… …and the heroes that rise and overcome them. This is not a criticism of the show, I actually find that I enjoy dark fantasy a bit more than horror most of the time, as it is typically better done. Continue reading Stranger Things
Boogiepop Phantom
While Jessa and I have been watching Scrapped Princess lately, I have been watching Boogiepop Phantom by myself. This is an older anime that I watched right around the time that I saw Neon Genesis: Evangelion and Trigun, and really shaped my expectations around the kinds of things one gets from this form of entertainment. Watching it again now, over ten years later, my perception of it has changed somewhat, but I still really enjoyed it. Continue reading Boogiepop Phantom
Scrapped Princess
I have recently been watching Scrapped Princess with Jessa over dinner (that’s when I get in most of my TV watching these days – an hour a day, two to three times a week, over dinner). It’s one we’ve both seen before, and one I remember fondly from my days in the Anime Club back at Mesa State College. This time around, there were a couple of things I looked more closely for as I watched, but the most interesting was watching out for the various anachronisms from the setting and plot of the series. Continue reading Scrapped Princess
Tsukihime, Lunar Legend
I recently decided I wanted to watch some of my old favorite anime shows, so I decided I would pick up Shingetsutan Tsukihime. It’s been long enough since I’ve seen this one that I remembered very little beyond a few plot points, which made watching it again quite a bit more rewarding. I also decided to get this on DVD and watch it dubbed, rather that the fansub I watched back in the day, which allowed me to pick up further details and nuances that I hadn’t before.
One thing in particular I noticed in watching it this time around was the very nuanced relationship Shiki has with the women in his life – Akiha, Ciel, Arcueid, and Hisiui. Continue reading Tsukihime, Lunar Legend
What hunting was like after Supernatural
Where videos from 2002 are difficult to find, videos from Supernatural are nearly too many to sift through. Still, this one caught my eye as worth posting – now that we have a major network show about hunting that has lasted 11 seasons, what does hunting look like?
So if Hunter: The Reckoning gets a credit card commercial and Supernatural gets a comedy movie, what does that tell you? I don’t know either. Maybe that I need to spend more time writing.
Twin Peaks
Jessa and I recently finished watching Twin Peaks, as well as the follow-on movie, Fire Walk with Me. As with almost all of our TV watching, we watched this on DVD, especially as this came out in… …1991. At a high level, I enjoyed the series, it was quirky, had a cool mystery with supernatural elements, and did some really interesting things with a large cast. However, this is one of the cases where I feel that the series was lacking something in the later episodes (and, to a larger extent, the movie) that made it so much less awe-inspiring than what we got in the pilot. Continue reading Twin Peaks
Reaper – Not What I Expected
While Jessa was away in New Zealand, I decided to watch Reaper. When I initially watched the pilot episode, the show came off as “So dumb it’s funny, with SciFi elements”. While that is certainly part of the fun of the show, I found that I kept watching it due to rather clever writing and interesting plot elements. It was clear to me fairly early on, that this show actually had decent writers.
Not sure that I have a whole lot more to say, except that it was fun.