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Can we mention episodes that have aged incredibly well? On DS9 they had the two part episodes Homefront and Paradise Lost. The Earth of the Federation is a post-scarcity utopia where people can pretty much do whatever they want, which in the fiction leads to mostly constructive activity advancing civilization, and not locking themselves in holodecks. This is threatened after a conference on Earth is bombed by the mysterious shape shifting Founders. The Founders are a threat that can impersonate and infiltrate anywhere, and this places the Federation in a perilous state as everyone is suspect. The Federation begins implementing martial law on Earth and their opportunistic military uses the crisis to take power from the civilian government. There is fear that the Founders could be anywhere, and they have no known home world or bases upon which to retaliate. This climaxes with Starfleet ships firing on each other out of fear. As the Earth frantically tries to enact countermeasures to stop the shapeshifters, their ideas include low-level phaser fields (ineffective against intelligent foes) and blood tests (easy to fool). These extra security steps erode freedoms, and soldiers with phaser rifles become a common sight on Earth. The Founders are able to have a spectacular success at undermining the bedrock ideals of the Federation in exchange by sowing fear, despite (as we learn) they had almost no actual presence on Earth aside from a handful of infiltrators. The message is the real damage was done by a willingness of Earth to exchange liberty for security theater and cede power to the military. These aired in 1996, and were depressingly prescient.
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Aug 3, 2017 00:00
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I watched some episodes of Father of the Pride when it was on Netflix awhile back. For a show that sort of stars Sigfried and Roy there are a weird number of jokes where the punch line is "Look at that homo! Despicable." My girlfriend was particularly grossed out by John Goodman begging his lion wife for sex by explaining that she was "in heat."
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Aug 3, 2017 00:19
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The Moon Monster posted:I watched some episodes of Father of the Pride when it was on Netflix awhile back. For a show that sort of stars Sigfried and Roy there are a weird number of jokes where the punch line is "Look at that homo! Despicable." I love John Goodman and this makes me want to burn down all of broadcast television pre-2002.
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Aug 3, 2017 00:37
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Best (or "best") quote ever made about Father of the Pride:Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation posted:According to Katzenberg, Siegfried and Roy's reactions were more positive: "They laughed. A lot. They kept asking us to create more contradiction. Literally, one's blond and one's dark, and every aspect of their life is as black and white as that. They are always playful with one another, always playing tricks on one another. They encouraged us to have fun with that." There's the standard of comedy they were aiming for. Only thing I remember about the show is that Donkey from Shrek was a guest star in one episode.
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Aug 3, 2017 00:37
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Wheat Loaf posted:Best (or "best") quote ever made about Father of the Pride: I have a friend who saw their Vegas show and described it as "POOF! Here is ze tiger! POOF! ZE TIGER IS OVAH ZHERE!
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Aug 3, 2017 00:43
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cubicle gangster posted:did you just guess this in the hopes that that's what it was or what because they were both from modest backgrounds and were super big theater/performing nerds who were trying to make intentionally contrarian comedy from the age of something like 14. I don't disagree that they may have slowly realized that 'not giving a gently caress & being contrarian' does have adverse effects when people start taking it seriously but the idea of it being a libertarian conspiracy because they are Rich White Males® is bollocks. 
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Aug 3, 2017 00:54
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The Moon Monster posted:I watched some episodes of Father of the Pride when it was on Netflix awhile back. For a show that sort of stars Sigfried and Roy there are a weird number of jokes where the punch line is "Look at that homo! Despicable." How can a show age poorly when it was already awful from the moment it was conceived?
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Aug 3, 2017 01:29
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Guy Mann posted:How can a show age poorly when it was already awful from the moment it was conceived? I dunno, but we've been talking about South Park for a couple pages so apparently it's possible.
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Aug 3, 2017 02:30
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Mad Doctor Cthulhu posted:How about the SVU one where everybody is shocked that a guy can get raped by three women, and spend time just making GBS threads on him and trying to figure out if it works that way? Combined with American censorship on network TV, they had to find ways around the old 'but isn't getting hard considered consent' and 'but wouldn't a guy enjoy it' and all of that? Oh, and one of the women is a lawyer and cross-examines the guy on the stand and intimidates him and stuff.
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Aug 3, 2017 06:42
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SVU is awful for that sort of thing. Suspects are routinely abused, denied food and drink, and put under enormous pressure to confess but then end up being completely innocent. This keeps happening and nobody learns, despite the show trying to make us believe that the investigators are double true pinky swear remorseful this time.
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Aug 3, 2017 08:58
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poptart_fairy posted:SVU is awful for that sort of thing. Suspects are routinely abused, denied food and drink, and put under enormous pressure to confess but then end up being completely innocent. This keeps happening and nobody learns, despite the show trying to make us believe that the investigators are double true pinky swear remorseful this time. So, pretty accurate portrayal of US law enforcement, then?
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Aug 3, 2017 09:14
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poptart_fairy posted:SVU is awful for that sort of thing. Suspects are routinely abused, denied food and drink, and put under enormous pressure to confess but then end up being completely innocent. This keeps happening and nobody learns, despite the show trying to make us believe that the investigators are double true pinky swear remorseful this time. One of the episodes even opens with them prepping the interrogation room by cranking up the heat, putting in a flickering lightbulb and, I think, taking something from under one of the suspect chair's legs so that it wobbles annoyingly 
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Aug 3, 2017 09:24
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spog posted:So, pretty accurate portrayal of US law enforcement, then? Yes very edgy. Point is that the show repeatedly has characters be aghast at this, and a huge deal is made out of how it could cost them their jobs, etc, but then everything moves on and there's nothing learned from it. At least in NCIS Gibbs is shown to throw a fit over shady stuff and it isn't presented as a noble means-to-an-end cause, because, dammit we need a criminal even if they're not actually one!!!
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Aug 3, 2017 09:46
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poptart_fairy posted:SVU is awful for that sort of thing. Suspects are routinely abused, denied food and drink, and put under enormous pressure to confess but then end up being completely innocent. This keeps happening and nobody learns, despite the show trying to make us believe that the investigators are double true pinky swear remorseful this time. The bestworst one is still when Stabler stalks a rehabilitated pedophile, and constantly tries to get the guy to rape a kid. Like, seriously trying to make the guy find children sexually attractive again (poo poo like sidling up to him and whispering into his ear about how sexy little girls are), until he finally breaks and kidnaps a kid. The guy ends up jumping to his death.
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Aug 3, 2017 10:02
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When Stabler was replaced on the show, they talked about how his interrogation methods ended up with lots of verdicts being overturned.
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Aug 3, 2017 10:30
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Then other characters picked up the slack and it continued.
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Aug 3, 2017 10:31
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Can we mention episodes that have aged incredibly well? On DS9 they had the two part episodes Homefront and Paradise Lost. The Earth of the Federation is a post-scarcity utopia where people can pretty much do whatever they want, which in the fiction leads to mostly constructive activity advancing civilization, and not locking themselves in holodecks. With the priceless bit where an obvious Founder, taking the form of O'Brien (because that would be the most hilarious option) walks up to Sisko in a park, knowing Sisko knows the real O'Brien is light years away back at Deep Space Nine, and basically goes 'There's three of us on the whole drat planet not counting the friendly one and you're going this nuts, crazy eh?' Also Sisko's dad, who otherwise seems like he belongs in an entirely different show than Star Trek, figures out how Changelings could easily fool blood tests. And of course it's the star pupil cadets who unthinkingly and proudly follow orders to sabotage the planet's defenses. Just as well that they all die from their own hubris later on. Speaking of DS9, Kira's whole deal is basically 'drat right I was a terrorist, I was right to do it, and I'd do it again!' And then she ends up teaching terrorist/resistance tactics to the same people she used them against.
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Aug 3, 2017 10:31
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Inescapable Duck posted:With the priceless bit where an obvious Founder, taking the form of O'Brien (because that would be the most hilarious option) walks up to Sisko in a park, knowing Sisko knows the real O'Brien is light years away back at Deep Space Nine, and basically goes 'There's three of us on the whole drat planet not counting the friendly one and you're going this nuts, crazy eh?' Also Sisko's dad, who otherwise seems like he belongs in an entirely different show than Star Trek, figures out how Changelings could easily fool blood tests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbsCevg1Vuc Hard to take it too seriously, even when written out it's brilliant. How did they end that plot thread again? I can't recall seeing any sort-of progression on that story afterwards, even in a subtle way, which is unlike DS9. ------------- If we're doing "90s Star Trek episodes that the military-industrial complex really needed to see" you have to mention TNG's 2-part Chain of Command. The first episode is borderline nonsense where the Captain of the Flagship in his fleet is pulled from duty to go on a black ops recon mission, but it's necessary to get the Captain into the enemy's torture chamber while on the ship a new hard-nose Captain is whipping the lazy crew into shape for hostile negotiations. The meat is that the Captain doesn't have any information the enemy could want, and at first the enemy doesn't believe that and gradually grows to not care. Their dynamic quickly evolves to nothing more than a battle of wills-- how long can the Captain hold out? Can the torturer break him? Meanwhile the Flagship is in tense negotiations. Both sides have done covert ops and they each know about the other, but cannot admit it and there is a lot of overt posturing... before cutting back to this one room where one man tortures another for no real reason aside from both men's egos. The day is saved because Captain Hardass was 100% right to be a dick and stand firm until the enemy licked his balls, and Captain Picard gets released with one defiant cry against his torturer before leaving. Then during the coda. The Captain sits down with the ship's therapist as part of regular post-trauma treatment. The first thing we hear is that not only did the Captain feel he was going to submit immediately before rescue, but that he truly believed the things the torturer wanted him to as the condition for release. Flash forward a decade or so-- Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and a whole bunch of national hand-wringing over whether torture is justified. And all Star Trek was doing was rehashing old military wisdom dating back to Napoleon! gently caress this dumb gay country and humanity! Here's an awesome trailer narrated by the Colonel from Metal Gear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCkoQL-6cdc E-- Bonus Vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09TySF0FN6Y It's a turbonerd doing a recap of the B-Plot involving Captain Hardass and how he's 100% in the right even if the crew and audience are poised to hate him. The first 30 seconds with the guy's face is pretty crappy, but stick with it. It's a fun watch if you've seen it or not. mind the walrus has a new favorite as of 11:11 on Aug 3, 2017 |
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Aug 3, 2017 10:58
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Schubalts posted:The bestworst one is still when Stabler stalks a rehabilitated pedophile, and constantly tries to get the guy to rape a kid. Like, seriously trying to make the guy find children sexually attractive again (poo poo like sidling up to him and whispering into his ear about how sexy little girls are), until he finally breaks and kidnaps a kid. The guy ends up jumping to his death. The real bestworst is when Elliot & Stabler go to Europe to bust up a child smuggling ring. They're interrogating a dude and Stabler realises he's not subject to any NYPD rules and just beats the poo poo out of the guy. SVU is a weird show.
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Aug 3, 2017 11:03
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poptart_fairy posted:SVU is awful for that sort of thing. Suspects are routinely abused, denied food and drink, and put under enormous pressure to confess but then end up being completely innocent. This keeps happening and nobody learns, despite the show trying to make us believe that the investigators are double true pinky swear remorseful this time. mind the walrus posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09TySF0FN6Y
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Aug 3, 2017 13:12
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well why not posted:The real bestworst is when Elliot & Stabler go to Europe to bust up a child smuggling ring. They're interrogating a dude and Stabler realises he's not subject to any NYPD rules and just beats the poo poo out of the guy. SVU is a weird show. How could any writer think that's how the law works?
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Aug 3, 2017 13:42
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Sunswipe posted:How could any writer think that's how the law works? It was cool and tough and 'justified' so it works. People think that if you're a cop outside of your home country, you can basically just murder fools. My personal fave is when Horatio Cane guns down like eight people in the jungle of Brazil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntaWlFdc62g&t=181s Crime Scene Investigators probably don't ever carry guns, but it's entertaining, so who cares?
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Aug 3, 2017 13:56
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I'm fairly sure CSI: Miami was pitched as a parody of modern crime shows, and the scripts got switched with a genuine CSI show. There's got to be a regular crime show that lasted half a season beacuse it was called "Crime Detective Force Strike Alpha" and never got any laughs.
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Aug 3, 2017 14:02
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The colours of the CSI Miami office always weirded me out. Pretty sure someone was tripping when they painted that place.
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Aug 3, 2017 14:04
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it's funnier than NTSF:SD:SUV:: IMO. Yeah the colours are blasted up to differentiate it from original other CSI shows. Vegas CSI is neon-list and more often shot at nighttime, Miami has the cranked-up saturation and wild colours but is mostly during the daytime. New York I believe is super-desaturated, with a blue tint. I'm pretty sure they all mostly shot in Los Angeles, anyway. I think CSI Miami uses the same colour grading that Arrested Development used for scenes set in Mexico. well why not has a new favorite as of 14:09 on Aug 3, 2017 |
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Aug 3, 2017 14:07
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My favorite moments in any SVU is when Stabler's at a crime scene and some random cop will say something like "The stiff's over here!" and suddenly Stabler has to go on a loving 10 minute rant about how jokes like that are just as bad as murder and the cop is a piece of poo poo and nearly hits him. Meanwhile ever single biography/documentary about police officers makes it clear that they have to have a sense of gallows humor to get through the horrific poo poo they see on a day to day basis. I will honestly give SVU some credit when it comes to IA guys. They pull the "INTERNAL AFFAIRS ARE EVIL ASSHOLES!" thing a lot in season 1, but they manage to slowly say "yeah cops tend to look down on em, but they aren't demons' and the IA guy actually gets portrayed pretty reasonably. I loving devour all forms of Law and Order and the episode the one poster described that had them set up the interrogation room is one of the absolute best episodes. I'm pretty sure all that stuff is standard procedure for intense interrogations and like 85% of that particular episode is taken up by just Stabler and the dude talking. OldTennisCourt has a new favorite as of 14:35 on Aug 3, 2017 |
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Aug 3, 2017 14:32
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well why not posted:It was cool and tough and 'justified' so it works. People think that if you're a cop outside of your home country, you can basically just murder fools. Setting aside the whole "extrajudicial execution" issue here, what the gently caress is going on with that editing? Slowmo! Fastmo! Bright flashes! Fades! Sound cutting in and out! It's like the editor had only just bought adobe premiere a day ago and went hog wild on all the effects.
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Aug 3, 2017 14:41
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OldTennisCourt posted:My favorite moments in any SVU is when Stabler's at a crime scene and some random cop will say something like "The stiff's over here!" and suddenly Stabler has to go on a loving 10 minute rant about how jokes like that are just as bad as murder and the cop is a piece of poo poo and nearly hits him. I don't know what SVU you were watching but they(Stabler included) usually make some sort of quip before the opening credits.
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Aug 3, 2017 14:42
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Gaunab posted:I don't know what SVU you were watching but they(Stabler included) usually make some sort of quip before the opening credits. That's more CSI. With SVU it's usually some line about how awful the crime is or whatever. Lenny on vanilla Law and Order would make a joke, but SVU usually dealt with rape/child molestation so you'd rarely get a funny quip. Plus I know for a fact Stabler and Benson have jumped on cops for making jokes and whatever at crime scenes a lot of the time.
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Aug 3, 2017 14:53
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Perestroika posted:Setting aside the whole "extrajudicial execution" issue here, what the gently caress is going on with that editing? Slowmo! Fastmo! Bright flashes! Fades! Sound cutting in and out! It's like the editor had only just bought adobe premiere a day ago and went hog wild on all the effects. CSI Miami is a very special program, and that's a very special episode. It's like one of the Rick & Morty interdimensional TV shows, sanded down just enough to fit into our world. OldTennisCourt posted:Plus I know for a fact Stabler and Benson have jumped on cops for making jokes and whatever at crime scenes a lot of the time. Yeah, the regular L&O cops make some glib jokes, but SVU rarely looks down upon the victims due to the subject matter being so dark.
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Aug 3, 2017 15:29
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There is something very wrong when a TV show does a trashy-oughties-remix of an Ennio Morricone classic.
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Aug 3, 2017 17:14
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Dragnet is so old that it was airing when the Miranda rights were instituted and there's an episode of the cops complaining about how it's so unfair and way harder to do their jobs now that they have to read people their rights.Sunswipe posted:How could any writer think that's how the law works? Why would a network television crime show writer focus on realism over entertainment in a show like CSI where the dudes who are dusting for fingerprints also personally apprehend suspects and act as judge and jury? It's like cops having to tell you that they're cops if you ask or getting a phone call when you're arrested or insanity pleas acting as get out of jail free cards, it's good drama that a lot of people take as fact because they get all their knowledge from pop culture.
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Aug 3, 2017 18:32
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I know CSI and other shows have made the jury process hell because all of them got this impression that forensic evidence is the end all be all slam dunk 100% of the time.
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Aug 3, 2017 18:45
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Guy Mann posted:Dragnet is so old that it was airing when the Miranda rights were instituted and there's an episode of the cops complaining about how it's so unfair and way harder to do their jobs now that they have to read people their rights. Read 'em their rights. Read 'em their rights.
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Aug 3, 2017 18:48
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Were there a lot of crime shows that dealt with evil cults and rituals during the satanic panic of the 80's and 90's? I know at least two episodes of X-files Die Hand Die Verletzt made in 95 and Syzygy in 96 had satanic cult stuff. The first pretty much played it straight and had an actual satanic cult summon a demon and poo poo, but by the second Scully is telling Mulder that the satanic ritual scare is just a bunch of paranoid bullshit used by the suspects in the episode to cover up what was really going on. Buckets has a new favorite as of 20:03 on Aug 3, 2017 |
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Aug 3, 2017 20:00
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Guy Mann posted:Dragnet is so old that it was airing when the Miranda rights were instituted and there's an episode of the cops complaining about how it's so unfair and way harder to do their jobs now that they have to read people their rights. Dragnet is so old they did their best episode about being helpless in the face of completely legal Imagine four balls on the edge of a cliff. TCC works the same way. https://youtu.be/2eBPWwxOKwQ
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Aug 3, 2017 21:25
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Buckets posted:Were there a lot of crime shows that dealt with evil cults and rituals during the satanic panic of the 80's and 90's? I know at least two episodes of X-files Die Hand Die Verletzt made in 95 and Syzygy in 96 had satanic cult stuff. The first pretty much played it straight and had an actual satanic cult summon a demon and poo poo, but by the second Scully is telling Mulder that the satanic ritual scare is just a bunch of paranoid bullshit used by the suspects in the episode to cover up what was really going on. Walker: Texas Ranger was almost as big on ritual child sacrifice as it was on casual racism and terrible editing
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Aug 3, 2017 21:33
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shame on an IGA posted:Walker: Texas Ranger was almost as big on ritual child sacrifice as it was on casual racism and terrible editing There's one I remember watching with my dad when I was little where Walker investigates a Satanic cult, purely from its cold opening. A mother sends her son out on Halloween night to go trick-or-treating. She goes back into her house, turns on her radio, and hears that a Satanic cult has been kidnapping children in the area. She rushes outside and to her horror discovers that the Satanic cultists have kidnapped her son. How does she know this? Because in the 10 seconds or so between her going back in and coming back out, they've painted a giant, perfect pentacle on her driveway, and are driving away in their van, while cackling. The other one I remember is when Nazis are menacing an African-American church (but Walker can't actually roundhouse kick them or anything because they haven't technically committed any crimes) and at the end of the episode they burn a cross on its front lawn, but Walker and the minister are able to put the fire out by praying.
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Aug 3, 2017 22:48
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Hahahha terrible Walker moments, so many. I remember an episode where a killer used knives made out of ice and this was nearly unstoppable, because where's your proof? In another one I don't remember what the problem was, but Walker made a high school start wearing uniforms and that fixed everything. We've been going through Stargate SG1 and overall is a good time. We're up to season 6 and I think it the best series of episodes yet. I like how the show respects their own canon. Great show, except when they don't leave Earth and become NCIS: Stargate. The SG1 team of an Air Force officer, an Air Force scientist, a civilian anthropologist, and an alien warrior, would be sent around the United States to investigate government conspiracy and hack computers. These episodes are the weakest of the series as they rarely have science fiction elements, and at worst resemble cop shows, right down to SG1 chasing perps down alleys or interrogating suspects. This also led to the unfortunate squandering of a precious Star Trek actor guest appearance. Armin Shimmerman and René Auberjonois had appeared in early seasons and were used well (with Auberjonois' episode being the best episode of the series), but unfortunately John de Lancie was cast as a leader of a shadowy group of conspriators who sit around desks and threaten people in suits, waiting for Richard Dean Anderson to show up and shoot everyone with a stun gun. Fortunately mid-6th season they seem to have figured out Earth is boring and moved on from these types of episodes (and de Lancie's fate was kickass).
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Aug 3, 2017 23:23
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evobatman posted:When Stabler was replaced on the show, they talked about how his interrogation methods ended up with lots of verdicts being overturned. they should call him Detective *Un*stabler
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Aug 3, 2017 23:34
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