TV Watch: Ted Lasso (for the folks who haven't seen it, and maybe those who have)

The pandemic has caused some major shifts to my television viewing.  I was not a binge watcher, and basically didn't follow all that much television until I was locked in my house for the better part of two years.  

I've recently watched the 10 episodes of Ted Lasso's first season three times through.  Kind of... all in a row.  This is not a thing I do.  You're lucky if I don't bail on a show after three episodes.  Season 2 has debuted on Friday, July 23rd.  I'm making my recommendation, so take it or leave it.  Also, the show was just nominated for a boat-load of Emmy's, so.  Someone other than me thought this was done well.

I, myself, had heard about Ted Lasso coming to Apple TV+ here and there, and then saw people yelling "I love Ted Lasso!" on social media, but, let's be honest.  People go nuts for shows all the time that are... not good.  None of us are to be trusted when recommending shows, especially unsolicited.  Hell, in the geek-o-sphere, I think we double-down on terrible shows, but that's a post for another day.  

PODCAST: "WandaVision" (2021) - Marvel Television w/ Jamie and Ryan

Watched:  03/05/2021

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2020's

Director: Various

Creator:  Jac Schaeffer

For more ways to listen

Jamie and Ryan talk the first of the Marvel DIsney+ programs - a nine episode story that turns the spotlight on everyone's favorite Sakovian and her robot buddy. It's been a social media hot topic for months, so we're going to put it into re-runs and get nostalgic for two terrific Avengers.

 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 139: "WandaVision" (2021) - Marvel Television Watch w/ Jamie & Ryan

Music: 

A Newlywed Couple - Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez, WandaVision OST

Agatha All Along - Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez, WandaVision OST

Playlist - Avengers/ Marvel:

The Signal Watch PodCast · Avengers Chronological Countdown (w/ Jamie and Ryan)

Second Episode of "Superman and Lois"

In the afternoon, before Episode 2 of the new CW show Superman and Lois even aired (on 03/02/2021), the CW renewed the program for a second season.  Those numbers on the pilot must have been really something, because that show cannot be cheap to make, and they didn't even bother to see how the show did Tuesday night when viewers would vote with their feet based on what they'd seen.  My guess is that streaming numbers were very good, indeed - and, I think it was shown on WB owned TV channels TNT and TBS to catch any cable-bound stragglers.

The notion of *why* the show was working for me kind of kicked in during episode 2. And it's both totally obvious based on the premise, but for me - as someone who has thousands of Superman comics, has seen countless hours of TV and movies, read multiple histories of Superman...  it somehow didn't quite resonate til it did.

Superman got to move on.  

So, that "Superman and Lois" pilot on the CW

So, yeah.  After 2 serials, 6 seasons of Adventures of Superman, 4 Christopher Reeve films, 1 Helen Slater film, 4 seasons of Superboy, 4 seasons of Lois & Clark, 10 years of Smallville, 1 Superman Returns, a handful of Henry Cavill movies (3?), and 6 seasons of Supergirl, it's time for one more go at live-action Superman.  

Tuesday February 23rd saw the debut of Superman and Lois, a show about Superman/ Clark Kent and Lois Lane, now well into their lives, married and with two 14 year-old teenage sons (fraternal twins).  

Television - some stuff I've watched

I'd originally started this post at the end of last year in order to relay what all we'd been watching.  At this point, it's kind of hard to remember through the haze that was 2020 and the endless hours in my spot on the sofa what I put my eyeballs on.  As you may know, I mostly watched movies, and baseball came back in July.  I even gave a go of becoming a fan of Korean baseball, but kinda failed at that.

In general, I don't binge TV shows (and quietly judge people on twitter complaining when shows come out once per week), but this year has been a year unlike others.  And I did plow right through some shows that I might otherwise have ignored.  

For example - I watched all of something called The Great Flower Fight, which I can't say I even liked, but at the start of the pandemic, it was the right show at the right time.  As was Love is Blind.

Frankly - I do not get how TV is funded in this era of a million channels and streaming services.  What constitutes a win versus a cancel.  It's all just a big mystery to me.  There's so much stuff out there, and while the same percentage of it is watchable, with the sheer volume, there's a lot of decent TV in existence at this point.  But, yikes, there's a lot of stuff on, and somebody is watching it.  

None of these shows are recommendations, but the list is what I've watched over the past 12 months or so between baseball and movies.  Some of it's pretty bad - but I somehow stuck it out. 

I'm also not looking for recommendations - and I know you all have them.  Good!  Say them very quietly inside your head and give a knowing smile to yourself.  Ahhh....  there's that familiar glow of a recommendation.

Anyway - here's my best possible stab at a list

• Doom Patrol
• Filthy Rich
• The Righteous Gemstones
• Supergirl
• Star Trek: The Next Generation (select episodes)
• Star Trek:  Picard
• Star Trek: Lower Decks
• Star Trek:  Discovery (Season 3)
• Fargo Season 4
• The Great Flower Fight
• The Vow (the NXIVM  doc)
• The Mandalorian
• Imagineering Doc
• One Day at Disney
• One Day at a Time
• Disney Galleries - Mandalorian
• Into the Unknown: Making Frozen 2
• DuckTales
• On Pointe
• The Expanse
• The Good Place
• Lego Masters
• Brooklyn 99
• Love is Blind
• WandaVision
• What We Do in the Shadows
• Schitt's Creek
• The Amber Ruffin Show
• Reruns of The Nanny
• Reruns of Seinfeld
• a whole lotta KXAN News @ Noon

I'm just listing things here that I watched enough of to say I enjoyed it by finishing the series or season.  Unlike, apparently, a lot of you, I don't generally watch shows for a few seasons to see if they get good.  

So, yeah, I also tried a lot of shows, watched a few episodes and stopped.  For whatever reason, they just didn't settle with me.  Of the best items - probably Fargo Season 4, which was goddamn art, people.  So, there you go.

I want to go back and try a few shows now that I'm numb to COVID times.  It was not the best time to be watching Tales from the Loop, for example.  I avoided catching up with Chernobyl altogether.  I couldn't even muster the willpower for Lovecraft Country, which I may pick up soon.

Watch Party Watch: The Running Man (1987)

Watched:  01/08/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  Unknown

Decade:  1980's

Director:  Paul Michael Glaser

The Running Man (1987) - for being a kinda goofy movie about a gameshow where the contestants are framed-up convincts and convicts with crimes like "not teaching the curriculum to school kids", this movie has some uncomfortably prescient stuff baked in as our janus-faced gameshow host plays to his base of folks who *won* in a prior civil conflict, and are joyfully taking part as people are killing each other for our entertainment.  Not surprisingly, such a dynamic show has cross-demographic appeal, and it's not just the folks who came out on top economically, it's also the folks on the streets who can't look away as desperate men run for their lives.  

Dawn Wells Merges With The Infinite

 

Actor Dawn Wells has passed at the age of 82.  

In an era of very few channels and endless repeats of syndicated shows 20 years old, Wells' portrayal of Mary Ann loomed so large in the minds of multiple generations that any  reference to "Mary Ann" was immediately understood (and continues so today with people born before a certain year).  

Godspeed, Ms. Wells.  

Today is the 100th Birthday of Noel Neill

Today is the 100th birthday of the late Noel Neill, the original live-action Lois Lane.  

Neill mostly famously played Lois Lane for five seasons of The Adventures of Superman alongside actor George Reeves.

Neill was active on the convention circuits and became a fixture at the Metropolis, Illinois Superman Celebration each summer until her very last years.  

Alex Trebek Merges With the Infinite

I can't remember any version of Jeopardy! that didn't feature Alex Trebek.  I know that by 1987-ish and the time I was in 6th grade, we all had our Alex Trebek impersonations, or at least knew how to imitate his cadence when delivering an answer/ clue.  

While I was a Wheel Watcher and had an odd affinity for "Sale of the Century", Jeopardy! was clearly the thinking-person's gameshow - because it was one of the last surviving quiz shows on TV.  And, it was hosted by the thinking-person's gameshow host.  Trebek ran a tight ship - foolishness was not creeping into the world of Jeopardy!.  Demographic-pleasing plebes were not going to find their way onto the contestant's stand - he needed people who could answer a medley of trivia questions, and not lose their cool.  

Trebek grounded the show with a cool, dry, breeziness that was polite, maybe a tad formal, and was unimpressed with credentials even when touting those of his guests.  He was far more impressed if you made a run on the board.  And, his giddiness (which amounted to a small smile at the best of times) shown through during returning champions weeks where he could count on a battle royale instead of watching middle school librarians fall by the wayside early in the game.

Most game show hosts you kind of just shrug at - goofy entertainers with a gift for hucksterism.  But Trebek outsurvived almost all of them (Sajak is still doing his thing, along with Vanna).  And he did it with a certain poise and sincerity about the show that gave gravitas to 30 minutes daily of people being asked random-ass questions for money.  That could have been dumb, y'all.

Jeopardy! existed before Trebek, and it will exist after Trebek.  But it will not be the same without him.  Nor will the television landscape as I've known it my entire life.  And, yes, I will be quietly very judgey of whomever tries to fill Trebek's podium.

Here's to a well deserved rest and may he never have to hear a response in the form of a question ever again.

Watch Party Watch: Someone I Touched (1975)

 

Watched:  09/22/2020
Format:  Amazon Watch Party
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1970's
Director:  Lou Antonio

Well, this falls squarely into "something I probably wouldn't have watched on my own".  A 1975 TV movie about syphilis and the people in Southern California who get it.  However, it does star Cloris Leachman making 1970's outfits actually work.  

It's easy to forget - we live in an era of media that's deeply scrubbed and sanitized.  Sure, sure, we've got gritty heroes and complex moral subplots, but a movie torn from the headlines about how sleeping around on your spouse isn't just naughty, it can give you a debilitating (but treatable) disease would be considered un-airable on network TV.  In an era where we had basically three networks and PBS, this was what a network decided would make for good all-purpose viewing.  

And, it's surprisingly good, helped along by Leachman turning in a rock solid performance and bringing some realism to a melodrama that includes infidelity and the impact beyond our immediate group of characters.  In fact, it starts far out from Leachman and works it's way back.  

I don't want to oversell the movie, but there's some willingness to deal with real-life unpleasantness and leave things a bit ambiguous that could exist in today's landscape, but it's hard not to imagine it getting glossed up and the audience missing the point and turning it into a game of "who do we blame here, because everything is about winning and losing?"

Diana Rigg Merges With the Infinite

Diana Rigg, actor and icon, has passed at the age of 82.  

Rigg was a cult favorite in the U.S. and a bonafide star in the U.K., and would have been well remembered just from her work on the UK whack-a-doodle adventure show The Avengers as Emma Peel - which laid the foundation for about 10,000 imitators and arguably indirectly to the most popular iterations of Black Widow in the Marvel Universe.  She also has the most solid of Bond-girl credits as Traci, the woman who Bond would marry in On her Majesty's Secret Service (and a favorite of the PodCast).  Most recently she'd been on Game of Thrones (which I didn't watch, but I know she's a fan favorite).  

She, of course, did so much more and was just one of those actors it seems everyone could agree upon.

Regis Philbin Merges with The Infinite

How odd.  I always thought of Regis Philbin as.. a permanent fixture.  He'd seemed sort of ageless all his years on TV. 

But he seems to have passed. 

For the kids - Regis was a sort of gadfly of the media industry who had his greatest success with "Regis and Kathie Lee" back in the 90's, a softball morning show where he drank coffee and met celebrities and clearly had no idea who they were or what they were pitching.  He was a great default guest for late-night talk shows (I always suspected he was on speed dial when they had a cancellation) because he'd been a sort of Jiminy Glick for so long that he had tons of crazy stories. 

Anyway, he was someone I always found pretty funny.  He had a certain joie de vivre that made him a kick to have on.  And, when he hosted the game show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, our own Nathan Cone got to meet him as a contestant. 

Grant Imahara Merges With the Infinite

Last night the news hit that Grant Imahara, one of the main cast members of Mythbusters, had passed at the age of 49.

This one shook me.

The Mythbusters cast never came across as celebrities - they came across as people you might know who someone had bestowed a budget and granted time to answer all sorts of questions you might think about but never be able to pursue.  To this day, I can't tell you how many times per month I still say "I think Mythbusters covered that" when we're pondering a question.  And those questions are not just whether and to what degree something might explode.

Imahara was the purist engineer of the crew, and seemed genuinely more interested in the process and data than being on TV.  He made a great third side of the triangle for "the build team", ensuring engineering and data driven practices were part of what they were up to.  And he did it with a joyfulness that was positively inspiring. We should all strive to have Grant's excitement about opportunity and discovery.

The cast seemed to be roughly of my generation, and so of course it's a shock when someone your own age suddenly goes.  We aren't really there yet.  But especially someone who had become famous somewhat by accident, who never became a jerk or let it go to his head, and never seemed to lose his curiosity.  We *liked* Grant.

I can't imagine what his family and friends are going through.  It seems incredibly unfair.

PODCAST: Quarantine Media 01 - "Love is Blind", "Tiger King", "McMillions" and more - w/ Jamie, Maxwell and Ryan

Watched:  I mean.. kind of since March 13 - April 5
Viewing:  Firstish
Format:  Netflix, HBO, etc...
Decade:  2020

Things have gotten really strange as we've sheltered in place in our homes. Life is upside down, and we're all worried for the state of the world. But in a time of existential crisis, it doesn't mean we aren't watching some TV. Maxwell joins us to talk "Tiger King", "Love is Blind", "McMillions" and whatever else we're watching as part of our self-care regimen. Or what our kids are putting on, at least.

Trek Watch: "Picard" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation"

I am not a "Trekker" like I'd consider some of my friends.  I do not have a tattoo of the Enterprise on my forearm (hi, Stuart).  I do not know the names of episodes as chapter and verse.  I mostly only watched Star Trek (the Original Series) and Star Trek: The Next Generation.  And I quite liked both.

Y'all can go to bat for DS9, Voyager and Enterprise.  I'm aware they all have their plusses, but I didn't really watch them.  And I honestly mostly watched ST:TNG out of order in syndication after season 4 wrapped up (why our local channel showed them out of order when I was in college, I will never know, but I generally knew what season it was by which uniform they were wearing).

When Picard was coming on, I realized it'd been a while since I spent much time with ST:TNG.  In theory, I liked the show, and I'd watched bits here and there on BBC America during lunchbreaks when I worked from home, but I was genuinely not sure the show held up.  Further, I wasn't ready to wade through 22+ episodes per season of 7 seasons of TV (plus a few movies) to catch up and be ready for Picard.

Thus, I turned to Stuart, who gave me the following watch list:

TV Watch: 911 - Lone Star

Sometimes when you're making network TV, not a goddamn person can be bothered to try.

PODCAST: The SIgnal Watch Talks About The Oscars! w/ Maxwell, MRSHL and Ryan

It's Academy Awards Season! Our panel of experts sits down to talk about the Oscars! What are they? Why are they? How did they come to be? It's a four hour program full of tiny clips of movies, awkward shots of celebs, and where you walk away with a paper weight, so what's the deal?



Music:
The Oscars Theme - Greg Hulme

Links:

• 2018 article from NPR: in 2016 after it was revealed that 92% were white and 75% male -  
• 2018 article from MotionPictures.org - in 2014, the Academy voter was on average 63 years old, with 76% of the members being male, and 94% of the members being white. 
•  Preferential voting explanation

Signal Television Watch - 2019

This isn't a comprehensive list of what I watched in 2019.  Like the movies list, it doesn't include all the partially watched Hallmark movies.  It also doesn't include local and global news (some of us still watch the news).  It doesn't include Seinfeld and The Nanny reruns.  Nor shows I watched part of and gave up on.  I may have even missed entire series in here.  I don't really track TV watching or I'd probably have to have a moment of self-reflection.  It doesn't include the hours and hours and hours of baseball, soccer, volleyball, and football I'll watch in a given year (with hundreds of hours of baseball to account for as I probably watched 60-70 games last year.  Go Cubs!).

But when I sat down to think about what I'd watched, this was what came to mind:

Hallmark Watch: The Christmas Club (2019)

The amazing Elizabeth Mitchell, partially blocked by some guy

Watched:  11/27/2019
Format:  Hallmark Channel, baby!
Viewing:  First
Decade:  2010's

Mostly I don't write up the Hallmark Christmas movies that I watch, because I don't really watch them.  I put them on and do other things, how I'll sometimes watch a 4 hour baseball game on a Saturday or Sunday.  You do some work or check email or talk on chat to someone while the movie is on.  And when you do look up, it's mostly a game of Hallmark movie bingo, teasing out what the new formula themes are this year (military, servicepeople - mostly men, and veterans have been big the past two years).

But The Christmas Club (2019) was one of the more expensive version of the formula, where they'd hired actors you may have seen somewhere before rather than the usual "who is that?" stars of other than Hallmark movies, assembled from spare parts found in a vat of pumpkin spice, Coach purses, bedazzled iPhones, Lululemons and Uggs.

PODCAST: "WKRP in Cincinnati" A Thanksgiving Special, w/ Maxwell, Motolove and Ryan!

Watched:  11/1/2019
Format:  Amazon Streaming
Viewing: Unknown
Decade:  1970's

We welcome special guest, Eric S, as Maxwell and I discuss one of the greatest episodes of TV of all time, from one of the greatest sitcoms of all time! It's a 2019 Thanksgiving edition of The Signal Watch! We talk about the series in general, but all through the lens of one turkey of an episode. Oh, the humanity! (We recommend watching S1: Episode 7 of "WKRP in Cincinnati" before listening)





My entries for The Signal Watch Challenge!