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I tried hard to like Gargoyles because superficially it's right up my alley, but aside from the novelty of seeing another kid's cartoon try to be brooding and atmospheric like Batman: TAS (which I don't think it achieved) and seeing a ton of TNG actors playing different types of roles, it was a big "oh that's it?" Speaking of cartoons in that vein, here's Wild C.A.T.S: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fUA6FLxtLI I only saw this intro once at 5 am while I had a genuine fever, so I thought I had imagined it for over a decade. and of course Fox Kids!'s "The Avengers" aka "The Avengers but without the big names because whyyyyyyyyy": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLD1yq7eVoY If you had told me in the late 90s that these characters would form the ribcage of one of the biggest media franchises in history while DC struggled to get Justice League off the ground, I'd have had you sectioned for case-study.
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Aug 8, 2017 16:59
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I loved watching this thread devolve from old TV shows having materials that don't mesh well with today's morals and philosophy to slap fights about people interpreting TV shows wrong 
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Aug 8, 2017 17:04
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Calaveron posted:I loved watching this thread devolve from old TV shows having materials that don't mesh well with today's morals and philosophy to slap fights about people interpreting TV shows wrong yeah, this thread didn't age very well
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Aug 8, 2017 17:23
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FactsAreUseless posted:It was always one of the show's worst episodes, arguably the worst. Really? It had a few cringeworthy jokes and I'm not a huge Fred Arneson fan but I thought the episode itself was pretty funny compared to a lot of the other early run ones. It's almost worth it for April and Donna taking advantage of the horny officials the whole time alone. ...The issue is how Venezuela is presented as this semi-utopia with tons of government money (at the expense of freedom) and not, y'know, a country in a death spiral towards a civil war due to years of hyperinflation.
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Aug 8, 2017 17:26
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food court bailiff posted:Really? It had a few cringeworthy jokes and I'm not a huge Fred Arneson fan but I thought the episode itself was pretty funny compared to a lot of the other early run ones. It's almost worth it for April and Donna taking advantage of the horny officials the whole time alone.
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Aug 8, 2017 17:32
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P&R's Eagleton stuff made me realize the showrunners really took "Lemon of Troy" to heart. Also I think the whole "rich shames poor" was part of the background metanarrative of the first 5 or so seasons of The Office. Jim and Pam fail and bail on moving up in the world and we see it happen in slow, painfully real detail where it doesn't really sink in how mediocre they are until it's pointed out by other people.
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Aug 8, 2017 17:38
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Dr Christmas posted:The Rick and Morty episode "Raising Gazorpazorp" had half of the plot be about how a civilization of women would HAVE FEELINGS and BE SHOPPING. Real fresh take there. I was wondering about that episode, the forums seem to love Rick & Morty so I watched a few episodes including "Raising Gazprpazorp" and was baffled about why the show was considered genius. As someone else pointed out, this was below average Futurama laziness. Good to know that was an outlier, I'll need to go back and watch a few more.
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Aug 8, 2017 17:47
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mind the walrus posted:Daria is still good but early episodes have this weird half-beat thing like they're in a sitcom without a laugh track, especially after Daria says anything. You also really have to watch Daria with all the specific late-90s MTV music choices that got taken out for rerelease--much like The Wonder Years and Northern Exposure--because it really contextualizes things.
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Aug 8, 2017 18:08
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Hyrax Attack! posted:I was wondering about that episode, the forums seem to love Rick & Morty so I watched a few episodes including "Raising Gazprpazorp" and was baffled about why the show was considered genius. As someone else pointed out, this was below average Futurama laziness. Good to know that was an outlier, I'll need to go back and watch a few more. Let me be another voice adding to the "that episode sucked" chorus, but it's kinda a shame because I think the beginning where Morty is spending all of his time loving that robot and his parents are afraid to comment on it is really, really funny.
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Aug 8, 2017 18:12
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Hyrax Attack! posted:I was wondering about that episode, the forums seem to love Rick & Morty so I watched a few episodes including "Raising Gazprpazorp" and was baffled about why the show was considered genius. As someone else pointed out, this was below average Futurama laziness. Good to know that was an outlier, I'll need to go back and watch a few more.
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Aug 8, 2017 18:13
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I honestly can't say I found R&M to be that great, frankly. It seems... very formulaic.
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Aug 8, 2017 18:16
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Samovar posted:I honestly can't say I found R&M to be that great, frankly. It seems... very formulaic. It's kinda hit or miss, with the caveat that the hits usually nail it outta the park and the misses stink like rancid burrito farts. The dimensional-TV episodes in particular are mostly trash - I get that those are pretty much improv, but a lot of it is just absurd for the sake of it without any humor attached.
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Aug 8, 2017 18:21
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Samovar posted:I honestly can't say I found R&M to be that great, frankly. It seems... very formulaic.
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Aug 8, 2017 18:24
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Futurama was a lot more novel before the internet showed that making math jokes and Star Trek references isn't particularly hard or original.OldTennisCourt posted:I can't loving stand those stupid "HEY YOU KNOW THIS CARTOON? LEMMEE TELL YOU HOW IT'S REALLY ABOUT DEAD KIDS/KID IN A COMA/DEMONS/HELL." It's the laziest poo poo in the world. And then the kids who loved those theories grew up to make Adventure Time and for like a decade after every other cartoon had to have some needlessly complex tragic backstory dragging down their fun adventure shows. FactsAreUseless posted:I'm pretty sure the Gazorpazorp episode sets out to be a self-aware parody of those sorts of "planet of women/planet of men" sci-fi tropes, I just don't think it's clever enough to pull it off. It just ends up being the same thing. Listening to Harmontown ruined that episode for me because Dan Harmon talks at length about having a mannequin fetish and using his Heat Vision and Jack money to buy a mannequin that he hosed to pieces, which puts a really creepy tilt on him having a scene of a pubescent boy loving a space mannequin in his show. Same with the gag in Community where Senor Chang's girlfriend is a mannequin leg.
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Aug 8, 2017 18:36
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Holy poo poo. Here's one. loving MTV's "The Real World". In almost every way it was the precursor to the current model of "reality TV", so right there I can't forgive it. The first few seasons were interesting in a guilty pleasure kind of way - the sort of poo poo everyone watched but didn't admit to - probably peaking with the "Puck" and "Pedro" season, but as it went on it became more an more obvious how calculated and scripted it was and the whole premise became about casting it to create maximum provocation and to basically invent cheap "celebrities". Then it all amalgamated into the abomination that became "Jersey Shore" and everything horrible associated with that poo poo so gently caress The Real World. Jesus, I didn't realize they still did this dumb show.
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Aug 8, 2017 18:37
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Full House episodes are hard to watch nowadays as it was a show for children and I am not a child anymore
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Aug 8, 2017 18:37
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Arivia posted:It's true for Sesame Street by way of John Munch, so why can't it be true for other shows? Oh, sur-- wait, what?!
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Aug 8, 2017 18:48
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Gargoyles totally holds up.
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Aug 8, 2017 18:55
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CannonFodder posted:One good thing about Clone High is they had their own music that was a spot on parody of the music from Dawson's Creek/Party of Five, but since they wrote it they got to keep it, as opposed to Daria. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6opadkWj6YI Samovar posted:I honestly can't say I found R&M to be that great, frankly. It seems... very formulaic.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcPViGu3vUoAlso like South Park there's a huge contingent of teenage fans who suuuuuuuuuuuuuuck and will ruin your perceptions of the show if you let it. food court bailiff posted:Let me be another voice adding to the "that episode sucked" chorus, but it's kinda a shame because I think the beginning where Morty is spending all of his time loving that robot and his parents are afraid to comment on it is really, really funny. FactsAreUseless posted:I'm pretty sure the Gazorpazorp episode sets out to be a self-aware parody of those sorts of "planet of women/planet of men" sci-fi tropes, I just don't think it's clever enough to pull it off. It just ends up being the same thing. BiggerBoat posted:Holy poo poo. Here's one.
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Aug 8, 2017 19:03
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There's an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation which asserts that Fermat's Last Theorem was still unsolved by the 24th Century. However, a proof was found in 1995 - six years after the episode aired.
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Aug 8, 2017 19:03
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Guy Mann posted:And then the kids who loved those theories grew up to make Adventure Time and for like a decade after every other cartoon had to have some needlessly complex tragic backstory dragging down their fun adventure shows.
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Aug 8, 2017 19:27
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Seven Days was a time travel sci-fi show on UPN. The NSA had alien technology from Roswell and could send a sphere back in time seven days to fix disasters. This gave the show an excuse to blow up monuments each week then hit the reset button. The first season was alright (by my 14 year old standards), but there were some wonky moments in the series. Keep in mind this was a late 1990s show that finished in May 2001: -In the pilot, bad guys fly a light aircraft into the White House and wipe out the Executive Branch and the visiting Russian president, combined with a huge chemical attack on Washington D.C.. Despite this national catastophe, television networks continue regular programming and the NBA doesn't postpone games (for a minor gambling subplot). -For a show that only lasted three seasons we got psychics, three evil dopplegangers, a gremlin, aliens, pyrokensis, freaky Friday with the Pope, gorillas with nuclear launch codes, etc. Although the Groundhog Day episode is delightful. -There were at least four occasions where the world would have ended without the use of time travel, raising the question of how they had survived until then. -The hero is the only person who can pilot the time machine, as PTSD is a superpower that lets him tolerate the pain of the journey. Although he only should need to pick up a telephone to deploy the resources of the US government against problems, he is routinely sent to get into shootouts with bank robbers or inflitrate royal weddings, despite being irreplaceable. The show must have been a joy to write individual episodes as you could destroy whatever you wanted and kill off main characters, but this hampered character development and story arcs. Whatever a character besides the time traveller did in the first half hour would be erased in the final five minutes, so no development or learning. And because the show's premise was a seven day time span, nearly every antagonist was a one shot that couldn't have a long term plan.
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Aug 8, 2017 20:32
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Zamboni_Rodeo posted:Oh, sur-- wait, what?! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Munch https://thetommywestphall.wordpress.com/about/
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Aug 8, 2017 21:17
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RareAcumen posted:Anyone else see that episode of Courage the Cowardly dog where hyper-realistic blood started shooting out of Courage's eyeballs and Muriel was a corpse and my television started leaking rivers of blood from the outlet and it killed my parents? I have the whole series still unopened on DVD so I don't know if the whole thing holds up but Xanatos is def still a boss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzu3IT590h4
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Aug 8, 2017 21:25
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FactsAreUseless posted:I just don't think it's clever enough to pull it off. It just ends up being the same thing. This is how I felt about community and why I was really hesitant to try Rick and Morty for a long time
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Aug 8, 2017 21:48
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BiggerBoat posted:Dragnet is sort of a funny one because it's fantastic as camp, so in that sense it's aged really well, but it was meant to be taken 100% seriously and played completely straight. It's star, Jack Webb, was a notorious commie hatin', hippie bashin', stiff, conservative square who was actually really like Joe Friday in real life and thought that's how cops and criminals really acted and poo poo. Columbo holds up really well, except now at the end, a lot of times I find myself thinking "Yeah, I don't think that's going to hold up in court."
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Aug 8, 2017 22:13
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EmmyOk posted:This is how I felt about community and why I was really hesitant to try Rick and Morty for a long time Yeah, I thought seasons one and two, and most of three, of Community were good, but then the show abandoned any grounding and became a bizarre meta mess. It was interesting when Shirley needed to balance school and a family, and Abed had to respect his traditional culture while loving pop culture, but not when nothing matters and Abed is a snowman now. Without decent stories and writing, Danny Pudi and Ken Jeong are Big Bang Theory caliber actors. It was weird hearing friends saying it made sense if you listened to Harmon playing voicemails from Chevy Chase, his feuds with NBC, and how the fourth season shouldn't count, etc. For a show meant to be progressive and modern, their lazy gay jokes wouldn't have been out of place on Three's Company. I dropped out around the video game episode when any sense of reality was being tossed out the door. I did watch the GI Joe episode from the 5th season, that was garbage. I don't think they knew Adult Swim had scraped the 80s animation barrel.
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Aug 8, 2017 22:18
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Davros1 posted:Columbo holds up really well, except now at the end, a lot of times I find myself thinking "Yeah, I don't think that's going to hold up in court." Ah, that's the thing what makes Columbo timeless. It's not necessarily about justice, it's about the perp knowing they've been rumbled and that they're about to a ton of poo poo in their life. Watching the later episodes is depressing as hell though. Falk shouldn't have looked old. 
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Aug 8, 2017 22:23
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Yeah, I thought seasons one and two, and most of three, of Community were good, but then the show abandoned any grounding and became a bizarre meta mess. It was interesting when Shirley needed to balance school and a family, and Abed had to respect his traditional culture while loving pop culture, but not when nothing matters and Abed is a snowman now. Without decent stories and writing, Danny Pudi and Ken Jeong are Big Bang Theory caliber actors. I felt like this from the first episode to be honest, I watched the whole first season thinking it'd get better because everyone was so into it and it didn't. Either they were making jokes about jokes and patting themselves on the back or just straight up doing. There didn't seem to be anything ironic or clever about the Britta/Jeff/Annie love triangle and most of the other humour left me cold. Also the best television show mocking television shows had already been made 
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Aug 8, 2017 22:34
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All I've ever seen of Community was about the last 3/4ths of something about a bunch of adults playing The Floor Is Lava
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Aug 8, 2017 22:39
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Yeah, I thought seasons one and two, and most of three, of Community were good, but then the show abandoned any grounding and became a bizarre meta mess. It was interesting when Shirley needed to balance school and a family, and Abed had to respect his traditional culture while loving pop culture, but not when nothing matters and Abed is a snowman now. Without decent stories and writing, Danny Pudi and Ken Jeong are Big Bang Theory caliber actors. quote:It was weird hearing friends saying it made sense if you listened to Harmon playing voicemails from Chevy Chase, his feuds with NBC, and how the fourth season shouldn't count, etc. For a show meant to be progressive and modern, their lazy gay jokes wouldn't have been out of place on Three's Company. quote:I dropped out around the video game episode when any sense of reality was being tossed out the door. I did watch the GI Joe episode from the 5th season, that was garbage. I don't think they knew Adult Swim had scraped the 80s animation barrel. It really is one of the best examples for this thread. shame on an IGA posted:All I've ever seen of Community was about the last 3/4ths of something about a bunch of adults playing The Floor Is Lava mind the walrus has a new favorite as of 22:46 on Aug 8, 2017 |
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Aug 8, 2017 22:43
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Krispy Kareem posted:There was a Waltons episode where Mary Ellen got hooked on Depression-era speed to pass her nursing finals. So broadcast TV had at least a good decade of actors-taking-meth storylines. It's not as pervasive as circa-1980's-Christmas-Carol episodes, but it's not far off. This reminded me of Little House on the Prairie where Albert, the adopted son, gets hooked on morphine and is dragged into the wilderness by Michael Landon's Pa Ingalls in a two-parter that ends with them praying and screaming in the rain. Can't recall if this is before or after he leaves a burning cigarette behind that ends up torching the blind school, which kills a series regular and a baby in the process. This was definitely after his pregnant romantic interest is revealed to have been raped, blamed by her father for tempting the rapist, then dying in Albert's arms when she falls off a ladder trying to escape her rapist though. Little House was a hosed up show. mind the walrus posted:The only thing I really remember about The Real World was Judd Winnick being a person on it, who went on to do a lot of comics-related stuff I read. It wasn't bad either. I recall he did some decent work on Green Arrow. Winnick was on the same season as Pedro. He married Pam, the med student-now-doctor on that series, and I believe one of his early indie comics pre-DC was a Pedro tribute. His work on The Outsiders, a Teen Titans spinoff featuring adult characters related to the team, felt like a 1-for-1 nostalgia trip for his Real World season. What I remember from The Real World is a moment from the 4th season, something extremely ugly, racist, and misogynist, especially when it was likely completely staged. A woman on the show was diagnosed with Lyme Disease, citing it as the reason for her erratic behavior, and was leaving mid-season for treatment. Before she left a male resident she'd butted heads with quite a bit walked up to the passenger side of the car she was leaving in, called out her name to get her to turn, and he slapped her right before the car pulled away. Put me off MTV and reality programs for good.
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Aug 8, 2017 23:34
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SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:This reminded me of Little House on the Prairie... Just a side note - it's weird to know that Laura Ingalls Wilder died in 1957.
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Aug 8, 2017 23:44
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Mister Kingdom posted:Just a side note - it's weird to know that Laura Ingalls Wilder died in 1957. Sort of like how Wyatt Earp died in 1929 and spent the last decade of his life in Hollywood working as a consultant on western movies?
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Aug 8, 2017 23:56
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Seven Days I haven't watched it in ages, but I remember loving that show, especially if/when his attempts to low-key use his time travel for personal gain to backfire. Like, one time he found that his Russian handler (I think she was?) liked a certain breed of flower and type of chocolate before going back in time to stop that threat. He gets her those flowers at the end of the episode, and she throws them away because shame on you for using information she told him from a timeline that would be erased.
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Aug 9, 2017 00:17
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SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:Winnick was on the same season as Pedro. He married Pam, the med student-now-doctor on that series, and I believe one of his early indie comics pre-DC was a Pedro tribute. His work on The Outsiders, a Teen Titans spinoff featuring adult characters related to the team, felt like a 1-for-1 nostalgia trip for his Real World season. I remember his "My Friend Pedro" or w/e mini too. I hear it's good. I do recall a lot of the backlash on him writing Green Arrow was that he made the new Speedy sidekick Mia a street urchin who was HIV+. It was a valid angle and I don't recall him being too obnoxious about it, but there was vitriol. I like to believe it was the same reason people were turning on RENT as a culture-- it was no longer viable to just say "Hey this character has HIV let's sermonize" and readers were fed up with it, but that's probably not it. quote:What I remember from The Real World is a moment from the 4th season, something extremely ugly, racist, and misogynist, especially when it was likely completely staged. A woman on the show was diagnosed with Lyme Disease, citing it as the reason for her erratic behavior, and was leaving mid-season for treatment. Before she left a male resident she'd butted heads with quite a bit walked up to the passenger side of the car she was leaving in, called out her name to get her to turn, and he slapped her right before the car pulled away. Put me off MTV and reality programs for good. SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:This reminded me of Little House on the Prairie where Albert, the adopted son, gets hooked on morphine and is dragged into the wilderness by Michael Landon's Pa Ingalls in a two-parter that ends with them praying and screaming in the rain. Can't recall if this is before or after he leaves a burning cigarette behind that ends up torching the blind school, which kills a series regular and a baby in the process. This was definitely after his pregnant romantic interest is revealed to have been raped, blamed by her father for tempting the rapist, then dying in Albert's arms when she falls off a ladder trying to escape her rapist though. Little House was a hosed up show.
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Aug 9, 2017 00:19
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mind the walrus posted:Holy gently caress this is Little House on the Prairie? I always thought it was about like, a little girl in pigtails watching goats fart while she milked them then telling poppa. It was a way to get modern problems on TV. See also: M*A*S*H and Star Trek.
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Aug 9, 2017 00:26
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Speaking of old detective shows, watching the Rockford Files I was surprised at how the show ground to a halt every time someone needed to make a phone call. You had to put Jim Rockford in his trailer or at a pay phone, so the show was essentially two or three acts separated by the need to use a telephone. SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:This reminded me of Little House on the Prairie where Albert, the adopted son, gets hooked on morphine and is dragged into the wilderness by Michael Landon's Pa Ingalls in a two-parter that ends with them praying and screaming in the rain. Can't recall if this is before or after he leaves a burning cigarette behind that ends up torching the blind school, which kills a series regular and a baby in the process. This was definitely after his pregnant romantic interest is revealed to have been raped, blamed by her father for tempting the rapist, then dying in Albert's arms when she falls off a ladder trying to escape her rapist though. Little House was a hosed up show. I could have sworn Albert died and sure enough looking it up, the last Little House on the Prairie TV movie had Albert sick with cancer. I remember him crying about he never courted a woman, which had to be code for dying a virgin. Every goon’s worst fear.
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Aug 9, 2017 00:35
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I remember that little house episode with the morphine. It was some cancer patient's and the kid used like half of it to get hosed up. Don't recall the ending, just the kid being all "I just couldn't help myself pa!" There was another where the girl is chase by an Indian in a cave or something. I just remember some creepy looking fucker. I did not watch much of that show.
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Aug 9, 2017 00:47
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mind the walrus posted:Holy gently caress this is Little House on the Prairie? I always thought it was about like, a little girl in pigtails watching goats fart while she milked them then telling poppa. That show was bonkers, everyone on it went blind at least twice I think. And the dad was a total hunk, even with his anachronistic 70s hair  Also the series finale was some rich gently caress buying up the town and them blowing it up with dynamite rather than let him take it from them 
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Aug 9, 2017 01:00
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