TV Series

[Shades of Deivi Cruz]

I love having ESPN+ on my Hulu Live subscription. There's a lot of out of market baseball that shows up there in the summer, and I can watch my Ohio Bobcats during basketball season. If you don't care about college basketball though, then it's usefulness definitely takes a big hit.

VEEP is pretty great. I need to add Max back at some point. There's quite a few shows there that I enjoy, but for now I'm still getting caught up on ones on other services (Silo and Severance, mainly).

[Deleterious]

The final season.

 

[Shades of Deivi Cruz]

Oh I will definitely need to add Max back for that. I love that show.

[IdahoBert]

Aside from Star Trek Strange New Worlds I’ve never been much interested in the many other iterations of the franchise after TOS. But I’ve recently started DS9 thirty two years after the fact due to a tip from a friend and I really like it even though the first season has some stinkers in it.

I tired of the first season of Next Generation, although I understand the writing picked up in the third season. Never got off the ground with Picard. I also stopped watching Discovery in the second season. But DS9 is now my welcome escape from reality. I really like Sisco and Odo and Dax and even Quark.

I wish the Disney+ picture didn’t look like a dupe of a bad VHS tape but I guess that’s all there is. I hope later years provide a better picture.

[Shades of Deivi Cruz]

Well, I was greatly enjoying Silo on AppleTV right up until Steve Zahn showed up in season two. That guy annoys the crap out of me, which I understand is often the point of his character (as it is on Silo), but I just find him sooo grating. I can't wait for his scenes to be over. I'm now trying to get through season two even faster, in hopes that his character suffers a grizzly fate.

[Motown Bombers]

Now that I have Max, I'm getting caught up on shows and finally got around to watching The Sopranos. I'm through three seasons, and I have to say it's good but not as good as I thought it was going to be. It seems like it gets into these ruts, and I drift off and then something good happens. I've gotten a little lost in the plot at times. I still think Breaking Bad is a better show, but the shows aren't really the same. 

[oblong]

That opinion doesn’t surprise me. I think that show had to be experienced in real time to like it as much.  TV shows can be like music. You take what it or them great for granted since it has been done by those who came after. 
 

[Motown Bombers]

I didn't realize how old it was. When I saw the Trade Center in the opening credits, I had to look it up. I didn't realize it came out in 1999. Then I saw the daughter on a prescription drug commercial, and she's like 40. Can't think of many other shows that came out before it. Really did pave the way for shows like Breaking Bad. 

[oblong]

The actor that played AJ is older than Gandolfini was when the show started. He and Jamie Lynn do a podcast and are very close.  He’s a poker player. 

the show reminds me of my early days of marriage.  It came out before we got a dog or had kids.  Just two twentysomethings. Very nostalgic.  
 

in the first season when Tony kills the guy he comes across in the witness protection program HBO fought David Chase on him doing that. “You can’t have your main character kill someone”. That’s how far things have come since. Chase told them “if this guy doesn’t kill him the audience will not buy into this show”. 

seasons 2-4 were my favorite.  

[chasfh]

On 1/15/2025 at 2:34 PM, oblong said:

I don't know what happened with Boardwalk Empire in terms of planned seasons or whatever but thats another show that went haywire in my mind. I don't remember enough to know when but at the time I remember feeling like they boxed themselves in.

Of course that was omething Vince Gillian and team did to themselves intentionally but brilliantly found ways aroudn it.

 

I remember at the time thinking they could have done 14 or so seasons, one for each year prohibition actually ran for. They certainly could have gotten a lot more mileage out of it, and maybe that was their stretch goal for the series. I seem to remember they had to wrap it up in a hurry because it was suddenly canceled, so the time jump from the early middle of prohibition all the way to the end was pretty jarring. I’ll probably go back and rewatch it at some point because it was otherwise so damn great.

[chasfh]

On 2/13/2025 at 3:12 PM, Motown Bombers said:

Now that I have Max, I'm getting caught up on shows and finally got around to watching The Sopranos. I'm through three seasons, and I have to say it's good but not as good as I thought it was going to be. It seems like it gets into these ruts, and I drift off and then something good happens. I've gotten a little lost in the plot at times. I still think Breaking Bad is a better show, but the shows aren't really the same. 

The funny part to me about this assessment is that the Sopranos is being compared to a show that exists in its current form only because of how the Sopranos influenced and changed TV. I don’t mean this as a knock on the post or the poster, just that, to oblong’s point, it is hard to fathom just how groundbreaking the Sopranos was at the time it came out, since there had been literally nothing like it before.

[chasfh]

On 2/13/2025 at 5:30 PM, Motown Bombers said:

I didn't realize how old it was. When I saw the Trade Center in the opening credits, I had to look it up. I didn't realize it came out in 1999. Then I saw the daughter on a prescription drug commercial, and she's like 40. Can't think of many other shows that came out before it. Really did pave the way for shows like Breaking Bad. 

Speaking of the opening credits, it was shot at a very specific moment in time when gasoline, which had been well into the dollar-something-a-gallon range for several years, suddenly experienced a drop in price and for a very short time, maybe a few weeks, gas across the country was sub-a-dollar a gallon before going back up and eventually into the stratosphere, never to return.

In the sequence, as Tony is driving back home to Jersey, he passes a Sunoco or a Texaco or something, and the price on the sign is ninety-something cents, so that specific point in time is captured for posterity.

[oblong]

Tonight is SNL’s 50th anniversary show. according to this the first episode wasn’t on channel 4  or anywhere in Detroit. For the first two seasons Channel 50 aired them but it’s not clear when they started. My earliest memories of the show in real time are Eddie and Buckwheat. 
 

Check out this article from Detroit Free Press:

Detroit TV will air 1975's 'Saturday Night Live' premiere on Saturday — unlike 50 years ago

https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/television/2025/02/15/its-the-50th-anniversary-of-detroit-tv-not-airing-the-snl-premiere/78761425007/
 

 

[chasfh]

 

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

Tonight is SNL’s 50th anniversary show. according to this the first episode wasn’t on channel or anywhere in Detroit. For the first two seasons Channel 50 aired them but it’s not clear when they started. My earliest memories of the show in real time are Eddie and Buckwheat. 
 

Check out this article from Detroit Free Press:

Detroit TV will air 1975's 'Saturday Night Live' premiere on Saturday — unlike 50 years ago

https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/television/2025/02/15/its-the-50th-anniversary-of-detroit-tv-not-airing-the-snl-premiere/78761425007/
 

 

I was in high school at the time, and I don’t remember this to be the case, although I don’t think I got into SNL until I started delivering pizzas when I was a junior in high school, Because the guys would put it on the small TV in the back room while they were making dough and folding boxes. That would’ve been during the 1977-78 school year, which would’ve been season three, so it was definitely running on channel 4 at that time.

[oblong]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

 

Chronologically my range of feelings and memories watching that is “guys I saw on reruns or Comedy Central… then elementary and middle school with the Brad  Hall/Eddie/Piscopo and Billy Crystal era. High school was a clean break with the Hartman/Carvy era. College was the Myers and Sandler realm.  Then the Ferrell era was my adulthood with no responsibility time period.   I remember all of it. 

[romad1]

watching the special.. The first sketch was zany...bizonkers.

[romad1]

Eddie Murphy doing Tracy Morgan was awesome!!!!

[romad1]

Eddie Murphy and Kenan in the Scared Straight sketch...  Kenan says..."first thing its shoplifting and the next thing..."

Eddie responds "GENOCIDE!"

I swear to God I blacked out from laughing.

[oblong]

I thought the 50th was great. I’d give it a B.  It’s hard to pull those off with 50 years of things to consider. My only complaint was too many comedy sketches relied on music. I don’t like that. The Lawrence Welk one went on too long. Kristen Wiig could have been used better as an all timer.  But other than that it was great. Seeing Eddie and Will almost break in the same sketch is legendary. That sketch might have been my favorite. It stuck to the ensemble history of the show.  Also really liked Murray on update.  

[romad1]

7 hours ago, oblong said:

I thought the 50th was great. I’d give it a B.  It’s hard to pull those off with 50 years of things to consider. My only complaint was too many comedy sketches relied on music. I don’t like that. The Lawrence Welk one went on too long. Kristen Wiig could have been used better as an all timer.  But other than that it was great. Seeing Eddie and Will almost break in the same sketch is legendary. That sketch might have been my favorite. It stuck to the ensemble history of the show.  Also really liked Murray on update.  

B+ for me but Paul McCartney's number was historic but unlistenable.  

[Edman85]

Nathan Lane's Hakuna Matata parody was great. Eddie Murphy doing Tracy Morgan also.

 

I thought it was enjoyable, and wonder how many other people will join me on my slow burn binge. Just started S3 yesterday.

[romad1]

13 hours ago, Edman85 said:

Nathan Lane's Hakuna Matata parody was great. Eddie Murphy doing Tracy Morgan also.

 

I thought it was enjoyable, and wonder how many other people will join me on my slow burn binge. Just started S3 yesterday.

thinking on this... John Mulahny's ode to his previous NY iconic thing/musical theater sketches are excellent (Lobster Diner) to really good (Bodega Cat) to ok (everything after).  John must have been needing to pad out the Broadway talent to bring in Nathan Lane who I don't think had any previous appearances on SNL...but then google voila...yeah he hosted in 1997. 

[romad1]

Just now, romad1 said:

thinking on this... John Mulahny's ode to his previous NY iconic thing/musical theater sketches are excellent (Lobster Diner) to really good (Bodega Cat) to ok (everything after).  John must have been needing to pad out the Broadway talent to bring in Nathan Lane who I don't think had any previous appearances on SNL...but then google voila...yeah he hosted in 1997. 

Holy crap...it says Metallica was the musical host for that episode.

[oblong]

The in memoriam to jokes that didn't age well was really good too.  Rewatched the Scared Straight again and in that sketch you get a sense of the perils of live sketch comedy.  The audio wasn't great, maybe because the crowd was too loud but I had trouble picking out what they said.  That's where rehearsals come in.