Sunday, August 29, 2021
Ed Asner Merges With The Infinite
Thursday, August 26, 2021
Superman & Lois Season 1 - That Went Okay
Saturday, August 7, 2021
PODCAST: "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" and "Loki" (2021) - Marvel Television PodCast w/ Jamie and Ryan
Sunday, August 1, 2021
Watching the 2020 Olympics in 2021
- Women's Beach Volleyball
- Women's Soccer
- anything during Track and Field
Sunday, July 25, 2021
TV Watch: Ted Lasso (for the folks who haven't seen it, and maybe those who have)
Monday, March 8, 2021
PODCAST: "WandaVision" (2021) - Marvel Television w/ Jamie and Ryan
Wednesday, March 3, 2021
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.
Thursday, February 25, 2021
So, that "Superman and Lois" pilot on the CW
Monday, February 1, 2021
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
Sunday, January 10, 2021
Watch Party Watch: The Running Man (1987)
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Dawn Wells Merges With The Infinite
Wednesday, November 25, 2020
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.
Sunday, November 8, 2020
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.
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Watch Party Watch: Someone I Touched (1975)
Thursday, September 10, 2020
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.
Saturday, July 25, 2020
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.
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
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.
Thursday, April 9, 2020
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.
Sunday, March 8, 2020
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: