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BiggerBoat posted:you'd almost expect a Ned Flanders or Moe's Tavern sitcom. There was an idea back in around season 8 or 9 of The Simpsons to do a 'Springfield' spinoff, where every episode focused on a totally different side character with no connection to the core family at all. It never really got off the ground, sadly. The Simpsons spinoff that got the closest to happening was a live-action Troy McClure movie. But then Phil Hartman died, so...
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Nov 3, 2018 02:25
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Pocket Billiards posted:The ABC in Australia has been showing Dr Who for forever. There's definitely a multi-generation fandom that goes back decades. I remember when they started airing old Doctor Who episodes every weeknight in like, 2004-ish; shortly before the revival started. There was enough people watching it in my primary school that a club started forming, and it was a substantial club. Of kids watching black and white TV shows from the sixties! Doctor Who is a niche thing in most parts of the world. But in the places where it's not, it's ENORMOUS.
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Nov 4, 2018 14:17
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The Simpsons eventually landed on Smithers being openly gay in his personal life, but generally hiding it at work, and of course absolutely having a huge crush on Mr. Burns. And it works, they turned what was an acceptable if not tasteful joke from the early 90s into representation as positive as you got from The Simpsons. I think the reason you saw that with Smithers but not with Apu, was because the showrunners that let that happen with Smithers (I think that the switches were mostly flipped during the Bill Oakley/Josh Weinstein years but I'd have to check) were willing to shake up the status quo, especially with a fairly minor character. 'Fixing' Apu would be a lot of effort by people who really don't want to expend it at this point in the show's life, because such a huge amount of his character is built on stereotypical jokes about Indians. That's a lot to handle, and at this point the Simpsons is only really willing to shake up the status quo if they have to, like when Mrs. Krabappel's VA died. Also cureent showrunner Al Jean is on record as neither understanding nor respecting the concerns about Apu, so that shoots any attempts at character rehabilitation dead in the water.
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Nov 5, 2018 00:25
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Pookah posted:Apparently he and Freddie Mercury took Princess Diana (disguised as a man) to a gay bar one night in the mid-'80s Is this a scene in Bohemian Rhapsody, and if not, why not?
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Nov 5, 2018 12:08
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Accordion Man posted:Really early on in the show's run there was an idea floated around the writers' room that Homer's job was actually being Krusty, because the crew liked the idea of Bart unknowingly idolizing the dad that he otherwise disrespected when he wasn't in clown makeup. It never left the concept stage though. I feel like it would've been a great series finale if the show never went beyond, like, season 3.
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Dec 1, 2018 06:03
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purple death ray posted:Smithers is always coded as gay but the jokes at his expense start out as "Smithers is obsessed with this decrepit, abusive old monster" but gradually became "lol he gay" as the series drags on, to the point of having him cower in fear confronted with scantily clad women. If anything it's the opposite of this, his being gay was taken less seriously over time until that became the whole joke. I would say Smithers wrapped around in a weird way. He went from 'general kiss-rear end' to 'weirdly into this awful old man' to 'general font of gay jokes' to 'actual respectful depiction of a gay man'. It's a progression that makes sense only for what he is: a side character in a really long running show that's been taken in a lot of ways while never being the center of attention for any of it. It's weird, but I can't think of any episode where Smithers is the central non-Simpson character. He's always a sideliner. They've given starring status to characters who don't have real names before they've given Smithers some.
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Dec 1, 2018 14:51
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the_steve posted:Wasn't there a story about that where the writers talked about how they had to make season 1 all edgelordy like that in order to get renewed past the first season, and once they knew season 2 was a lock, they were able to make the "real" Bob's Burgers? I don't really know Bob's Burgers, but what I do know is that the first pitch for the show to Fox was that the Belchers were actually cannibals. The show's creator was a little too used to working with Adult Swim and had to learn to tone that down, and I wouldn't be surprised if that took a few seasons to completely happen for him.
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Dec 3, 2018 09:21
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LIVE AMMO ROLEPLAY posted:The best X-Files episodes are the goofier ones, but they only work so well because they're playing against the serious stuff. Doctor Who is similar; its best episodes are when it goes off-the-wall, high concept and being unafraid of looking silly, but those episodes only work if they're few and far between. I'd say that's because you can't be off-the-wall in every way, all the time, you lean on certain tools to make that work. When the guy that was really good at those sorts of episodes took over as showrunner for Who, that started showing, because suddenly what worked for one or two episodes a season was going on all the time, it quickly wore out its welcome. Doctor Who aging badly, as an aside, is a whole different thing. The first few seasons of the revival alone are like mainlining the mid-00s in all the best and worst ways at the same time.
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Dec 8, 2018 11:34
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:It’s probably aged really poorly even aside from the pedophile. Was there more than one? If you're talking about Kevin, I think he's just wearing that in a 'small town teenager needs something to define himself' way. There's other gay characters who are much less like that, and it's by the same team that's generally been pretty solid on gay characters in their DC shows. He does have a few things that dated him immediately, though, the writers... can't quite get a reasonable reference point on what a kid like him would be into in the present day.
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Dec 12, 2018 01:22
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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:Which always makes me wonder what rules changed between season 2 and 3 because... yeah going from "we can't show any non silly violence" to "our main character now brutally executes people with a gun" is a big tone shift. They changed networks.
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Dec 13, 2018 22:14
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uvar posted:I've seen maybe ten minutes of the US version but a common refrain on Reddit is that it's a great show to put on in the background or fall asleep to, I get what they're saying but that seems like a hell of a backhanded compliment. I dunno, that's something you don't really get currently. I noticed this when I was back home for Christmas, there aren't really any good, inoffensive, 'put on in the background' sitcoms anymore. Chuck Lorre's stuff debatably, but even Big Bang Theory is ending soon, and that doesn't have the right 'pleasant white noise in the background without needing full attention' that stuff like Friends or apparently The Office does.
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Jan 6, 2019 08:05
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Krispy Wafer posted:Yeah, the ABC shows are a good choice. If you want to inject a little controversy you can always include Blackish. Modern Family did jump out at me as one of the more recent ones of these, but even that's been going on for ten years now; it sorta feels like 'the last one that's still going on'. I can't speak for any of the other ABC stuff, though, because I actually live in Australia where that stuff's all scattered and I haven't seen most of it. I found a good run of shows on something like Discovery is great for it, too, if what you want is 'inoffensive background' and 'comedy' doesn't really factor in. Mythbusters or something like that is perfect.
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Jan 7, 2019 11:32
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Der Kyhe posted:Seem that even originally, Lisa was usually written as (sometimes poorly informed) idealistic self-appointed moral authority who mostly wins by annoying people to resignation. For example, in another "classic era" episode she ruined a perfectly normal BBQ event for selfish reasons just because she wanted everyone to stop eating meat, and was a real jerk about it. I think the mood in the episode was on side of Lisa, which I think was a bit odd choice. Lisa the Vegetarian is sort of an interesting episode like that, because it was fairly vegetarian-friendly and respectful at a time when society and media generally wasn't. Lisa's still not perfect because she's kind of insufferable for admittedly good reasons, which you can kinda get from some people, but overall the episode's really respectful of vegetarianism. This actually might've been in part because when Paul and Linda McCartney agreed to guest, they only did it on the condition that they make Lisa a vegetarian permanently, which meant that it (perhaps rightfully) couldn't be a total punchline. The show has had a weirdly dim view of Lisa in the long run, though. There's this low-key but constant theme that she gets slapped down for aiming higher, or for having ideals, because Springfield around her just doesn't reward goodness or competency.
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Jan 8, 2019 13:13
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bobjr posted:Is Lisa still Buddhist? I would have thought that would have gotten some outrage if a kid on a show had a big spiritual change like that and started practicing a non-Christian religion and didn’t go to church as a permanent story change I know she is, but she might still go to church sometimes for the family. I'm not surprised that didn't get much ire, because Buddhism is a religion that doesn't get the side-eye by western culture so much. It's just like this friendly, slightly odd neighbor of a religion without anything to actually hate about it.
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Jan 8, 2019 22:48
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Sparky2 posted:In that vein, just about every single 1970's action show (Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, etc) was filmed on the same sound stage and/or southern California street, warehouse area, or stretch of hillside property. I feel like this is gonna be something that dates the modern crop of action shows, too. Although it's Vancouver instead of California, you see a lot of the same buildings turn up again and again. I've been watching the Arrowverse shows, and while you can occasionally see that Star City and Central City have some conspicuously similar-looking architecture at times, the best part is when you can see them re-use major sets. Bits of the Queen house from Arrow turn up just enough to be noticeable when you're watching them in a more compressed timeframe. Then there's how Supergirl hit season 2 and conspicuously stopped going to the California-looking desert outside National City every goddamn episode.
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Jan 10, 2019 14:03
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I watched Angela Anaconda, and I feel like the worst crime of the show was that it was too twee. The collage artstyle honestly wasn't that bad in action and let it stand out from the crowd pretty well; it's jarring now, because it's kinda the only one that tried and it didn't do great at it, but it definitely called out for attention. But oh my god, watching it. I can best describe it as 'if Scrubs was a children's show, and had absolutely no charm whatsoever while thinking it was super-quirky'. It's totally grounded except that it has these absurd one-note secondary characters (but unlike Scrubs it can't hit those notes very well), was utterly in love with its own weirdly idiosyncratic vocabulary, and while it's got some fantasy sequences all they ever really serve to do is make Angela look like a psychopath.
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Jan 13, 2019 11:35
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Scrubs generally holds up okay minus a few offensive jokes, but it's probably more 'important' than it is 'good'. It's a pretty key link in the chain of network sitcoms, and modern comedy probably wouldn't look the same without it. It's always going to be the most accurate depiction of doctor life and hospital work, too.
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Feb 21, 2019 10:06
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Scrubs is a pretty clear case of characters being caricatured parodies of themselves as the show goes on and the writers run out of ideas. I think that's mostly notable because it's across almost all characters having that happen, at the same time. Usually when a show does that to a character, it's one or two at a time. Like, Brooklyn 99 has clearly gone into that with Amy, but nobody else is treated that way. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 05:42 on Feb 24, 2019 |
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Feb 24, 2019 05:38
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Australia's ABC had a hell of a grab bag of cartoons. Roger Ramjet, Daria, Lil' Elvis Jones... Holy poo poo Roger Ramjet's flooding back to me. I also just remembered that Cartoon Network (I think) down here aired totally scattered episodes of Batfink in the late 90s-early 00s, for some reason. You could get some really weirdly scattered stuff on Australian TV, especially once you took into account Foxtel (Australian cable) channels. I remember that middle of the weekday on the Comedy Channel was a goddamn graveyard of short-lived American sitcoms that I presume they got cheap broadcast rights to. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 09:15 on Mar 6, 2019 |
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Mar 6, 2019 09:12
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Rugrats is an interesting one, because with most shows the 'eras' are usually fairly vague and undefined; a 'jump the shark' moment is rarely the exact point when a show had changed, but more of a tipping point when people realize that it had. People's images of where the 'golden age' of The Simpsons begins and ends, for example, wavers by a season or two in both directions because that sort of change takes time. But not with Rugrats. Rugrats changed on a loving dime when the first movie happened and Dil joined the cast, and Rugrats before and after that point might as well be entirely different shows. It's honestly kinda weird.
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Mar 7, 2019 04:52
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bobjr posted:Rugrats also had plots with focus on the parents in the early episodes that I remember. There's a recycling one and also another one with a Jeopardy rip off where the mom picks a dumb prize with the money I think. The show was always focused on the babies, but the early years had a lot of stories that were about the parents doing things, told largely through the babies' eyes. I also remember one where Tommy's mom was talking about going back to school, and for some reason there's a parents-focused episode that I know happened, but my only memory of it is the twins' mom shouting "I LOVED CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG!" And tangentially related, but those parent-focused scenes in the early seasons are when you can see that it's unquestionably the same animation studio that did early Simpsons. That's not a sign of age, that's just a happy, familiar flavor that goes away over time.
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Mar 10, 2019 02:31
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Aesop Poprock posted:Didn’t Nickelodeon do all it’s 90s original animation in house and early Simpsons was going through a Korean animation studio? Klasky Csupo animated The Simpsons from the Tracy Ullman shorts through to 1992, when the Simpsons switched to Film Roman. A quick Wikipedia scan suggests that Klasky Csupo had their animation houses in the States while Film Roman outsourced theirs to Korea, though. In-house might've been true for other Nick cartoons, but Klasky was doing their own work for their shows.
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Mar 10, 2019 02:56
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There's interesting side-effects of how Captain Planet was written that made it kinda bad at doing the thing it was setting out to do. They made the villains cartoonishly, absurdly evil so that kids wouldn't turn against their parents for working for a car company or whatever, but their villains became so unreal that pollution itself started seeming like something not to be afraid of. Because nobody's doing a Hoggish Greedly plan, we have nothing to worry about! Captain Planet himself also didn't really help, because little kids would just be super cavalier about littering and the like and think Captain Planet would clean it up. The one thing I'd say it actually did right was having the Planeteers all be pretty cool, attainable people, rings aside. It's fair enough you want to be with someone like Kwame, or be someone like Linka, with the exception of the kid with a monkey that's all totally realizable and healthy! Except for Wheeler. Don't pine for Wheeler.
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Mar 13, 2019 03:31
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BrigadierSensible posted:The way that TV used to talk down to kids, with their "very special episodes" was always annoying to me, even as a kid. Sometimes that energy comes through in more recent shows when they do an episode about some specific, real-world issue. There's an episode of Arrow that's about gun control, and it's kind of stunning how blatant it gets about this issue in one episode, tying it to a new-ish character's backstory (who is a minority, funnily enough), and not only doesn't touch it again but also never connects it to the show's main concepts, like how the protagonist is a vigilante with a deadly weapon. That episode also ends with an attempt to make both sides happy by passing gun control legislation that's explicitly stated makes it no harder to buy, own, or use guns, so I'm not sure what it actually does. Which in retrospect might be the most realistic part of the entire run of Arrow.
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Mar 17, 2019 05:11
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Maxwell Lord posted:Honestly I’m not fond of the term “Flanderization”, or rather its overuse- broad comedy is just as valid as the subtler stuff and it’s all about how a character fits with the dynamics of an ensemble. In the early days of a series writers aren’t always sure how everyone fits. Hell, the Flanders' definitely became more engaging and interesting characters when they leaned into them being super-religious. Rod and Todd benefited more than Ned, though.
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Mar 23, 2019 00:45
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:The original point of Ned Flanders was that he was just a neighbor whose life was somewhat better and more successful than Homer's and Homer resented him for it. The religion stuff came later. Yeah, Ned came about largely as a foil for Homer. A better person in every way, including being a better Christian.That version did last a surprisingly long time--we even got an episode about Ned Flanders with no mention of religion, the Leftorium episode. But I think as they stretched out what they wanted the show to be they realized that interpretation didn't have a whole lot of mileage in it, the only characters he's really got material when clashing with is Homer and maybe Bart. Making him super-religious does lessen that character's depth a bit, but it gives the writers a whole lot more to work with, including actual personalities for his kids and a wealth of off-notes to play about outside-church American Christian life. They were very rarely actually vicious about Christianity with Ned, that's more reserved for Reverend Lovejoy.
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Mar 23, 2019 02:10
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The other feasible headcanon is that Flanders went religion-crazy to cope with Maude's death. He actually has two dead ex-wives at this point. He married Edna Krabappel, who died off-screen as a result of her voice actor's death in 2013. I don't know exactly how that timeline lines up with Ned's turn towards hostile fundamentalism, but two dead ex-wives (especially when it's implied both deaths were caused by Homer) would probably explain him going off the deep end. For the record, while Ned and Edna getting married sounds like a really awful 'they've run out of ideas' plot, they actually stuck with it and apparently it's considered one of the better ideas of late-stage Simpsons.
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Mar 23, 2019 10:49
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Bogus Adventure posted:Sara Lance on Arrow/Legends of Tomorrow is bisexual. She also gets to sleep with Guinevere when the gang visits King Arthur. Lol. Sara Lance sleeps with a lot of women through the ages. In fact, I think the only man she's slept with is Oliver Queen; I haven't caught up to all the shows yet though, I'm still in early 2017.
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Mar 26, 2019 06:31
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Grillfiend posted:and he and Sara have hooked up This is unsurprising. And also, I did remember that she and Snart did have a moment in the first season of Legends where they both basically went 'yeah, I'd go there'. EDIT: While you'd think it from saying all this, Legends is not the horniest show in the Arrowverse; that probably generally goes to Supergirl, surprisingly, unless somebody's really into those leather outfits on Arrow. Although Supergirl and Legends are definitely different kinds of horny, Legends' outright sex versus Supergirl just having everyone be hot for someone. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 11:49 on Mar 26, 2019 |
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Mar 26, 2019 11:45
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Bogus Adventure posted:They're all good I'm personally not fond of Supergirl, but that's mostly because I feel like they only think of about 12 good episode ideas per season and spin their wheels for the rest.
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Mar 26, 2019 22:14
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FactsAreUseless posted:The casting in Supergirl is mostly really good. The sexual chemistry between Kara and Lena Luthor is off the charts, even if the writers are in denial. I think the main flaw of Supergirl is that they've got all these great characters and performances but by themselves have very little to engage with. The show gets great with guest stars or a curveball concept (part of what makes their Martian Manhunter so good is that he has both the potential to throw those and to handle them) but without that it's really plain. I'm only into season 2, but that season's a huge improvement mostly through having more fun with the Martian Manhunter, and by introducing Maggie to give that central cast a more interesting 'standard state'.
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Mar 27, 2019 04:49
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Do any of you think this era of 10100 superhero series in like 2-3 franchises will age well? Oh, hell no. It doesn't even work well now in a lot of countries, because since they're different shows the rights fragment. Ten years from now you're gonna be hosed, because you'll have no idea what's happening when. Arrowverse rights in Australia, for the record, are bonkers. Arrow's on Netflix, the first few seasons of The Flash are on one other streaming service, the rest are with Legends of Tomorrow on a third streaming service, and Supergirl is on no streaming services. VPNs are straight-up the only option to follow it all.
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Mar 27, 2019 05:00
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I think the strength of the good parts of the Arrowverse isn't actually related to what they do right, but rather how much fun they can make a bad episode. Legends after the first season is consistently great fun, because they lean into 'dumb comic book time travel' and spend even their weaker episodes doing stuff like meeting J.R.R. Tolkein or giving a samurai power armor. Even a bad episode of Arrow will have some pretty slick martial arts scenes in there, as well as some solidly charming actors. Like was said, Supergirl digs itself out of holes with some great central performances, and The Flash's greatest strength is actually being able to do fantastic 'monster of the week' filler episodes. The Arrowverse can be bad, but very rarely is it boring.
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Mar 27, 2019 08:45
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Groke posted:Black Lightning is the only of these shows I'm all caught up on; I've seen nothing in it so far to indicate that it's actually connected to the Arrowverse at all. Sure the original comics are all in the same universe (or whatever you call the eleven-dimensional mess that is DC comics continuity these days, I dropped out of that thing many years ago) but the show seems to be its own thing. The people behind these shows said that they aren't currently set in the same universe, and have no plans to fold Black Lightning in, but they've also got nothing against the idea down the line. So I'd expect it to come in sometime, but not soon. Which'll throw a massive curveball into Arrowverse 'chronological watch' efforts like I'm doing, because at any given point they could suddenly slap a couple seasons into it retroactively. Hell, they've already done it, their recent big crossover event means that if you're sticking to pure airdate order then you technically have to start with the Flash TV show from 1990.
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Mar 28, 2019 11:37
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Aesop Poprock posted:For something even weirder there’s an entire animated series about Pocohantas that was a combination Italian/North Korean production and its just as bizarre as you’d expect from that You could probable do a whole niche marathon of movies and TV series made by one country based on a story/genre that is very much another's. Last year there was a joint Australia and New Zealand TV series that was based on a 70s-80s Japanese TV show, that was itself an adaptation of Journey to the West. I didn't watch it, but it was apparently really weird.
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Apr 1, 2019 04:35
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Doggles posted:You didn't even have to look for this thing. It seemingly appeared in everything sci-fi related in the 80s. Its best appearance was in Airplane 2.
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Apr 3, 2019 22:40
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The reunion season they did a few years ago was surprisingly good. Not great, Red Dwarf was never great, but it feels exactly like those middle seasons of the show. They also leaned pretty hard on practical effects and the same sort of 90s props, so it looks great rather than trying and failing to update.
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Apr 4, 2019 04:20
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Westerns have been kind of a thing in video games. Red Dead, Fallout New Vegas a bit, Call of Juarez? Not Fallout, but yes to the rest. All the Fallout games are inspired by Mad Max, which only really has cursory resemblance to westerns. I would say New Vegas does have some western influence external to the 'core' of the game, though; you're kinda walking into what would probably be the setting of a western, and then being a very different kind of character inside of that. Although open world games can, at times, take on some elements of westerns just as a quirk of their separate genre designs. I don't know a lot about westerns, but at times Breath of the Wild felt like a western with a very different coat of paint.
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Apr 5, 2019 09:33
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Krispy Wafer posted:I saw one episode a million years ago so I don’t remember anything except she looked like a high schooler and she died by meteor. Actually, it was a toilet seat that broke off of a space station that was being retired. The space station itself I remember checking out and learning it was real and being retired when that show got made, which is perhaps the weirdest instance of real-world accuracy I've ever seen on a TV show.
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Apr 8, 2019 01:58
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Jedit posted:It was Mir, and like most things in space the de-orbit date was well known. Life wasn't imitating art; Fuller was looking for a weird and amusing way for George to die and he read about Mir. Oh, I know it wasn't life imitating art, but rather just an oddly specific piece of real-world research and accuracy that I never would've expected. This weird, slightly whimsical but mostly macabre show about death needs a way for its main character to die, and somehow ends up with a real-world space station being de-orbited sometime near when the show's going to air. That's an association of disconnected ideas far beyond what I would've ever thought of. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 13:52 on Apr 8, 2019 |
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Apr 8, 2019 13:48
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