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| Syd |
 Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2021 9:57 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Finally catching up with Killing Eve, which I've been looking forward to because it stars Sandra Oh, and put off because I'm put off by serial killer plots. Generally enjoying it because it has Sandra Oh, is quirky and really is intriguing, but I don't know how they sustain this into what I believe is now the fourth season. I doubt Sandra Oh's Eve is going to die (at least till the end of the fourth season) or that the beautiful psychopathic killer will either since the novel series is named after her.
One of the big questions this series begs is when the hell is Sandra Oh going to win an Emmy? She's been nominated twelve times, including five times for this series (two as co-producer) and five for "Grey's Anatomy" (all as supporting actress) and has won all kinds of other awards. I look forward to seeing her in anything. Almost anything, anyway. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Jun 30, 2021 12:33 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| I remember Weeds and I both wrote brief favorable comments here, 2018, 2019. I recall watching one season, and then dropping out in season two. Could be serial killer fatigue, which has led to me skipping all such plots in the past few years. Haven't seen her on other tv, so can't speak to her Emmylessness. Having seen her in Sideways and Bean, I think of her as a comic actor. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| knox |
| Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2021 1:11 pm |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
Posts: 1246
Location: St. Louis
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Anyone see the Icelandic short series, Katla?
Given its fantasy and folklore elements, I could see Syd or Bart getting into it. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2021 2:29 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| Having been addicted to news (mostly MSNBC) for the past couple of years, about my only scheduled variation has been The Simpsons, but I just discovered Schitt's Creek recently and now I'm tracking its repeats. Darn, I love those people. So deeply disturbed in some ways, so truly relatable in others--and always something to make me laugh out loud. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 7:53 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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My daughter recommended that to me. Might have a look.
While I'm in TV thread, I'll mention Asner. My memories of Ed Asner on TV are sprinkled with weirdness. First time I saw him was when I was around ten, on The Outer Limits, where he's a cop investigating a weird being that escaped from a physics lab. He was also on The X-Files, paired with Lily Tomlin playing a ghostly duo.
He was so ubiquitous that I sometimes think I recall him in something he wasn't in, like the Sidney Lumet version of 12 Angry Men. I had to go look it up to convince myself that he was not in that movie, because it sure seemed like he was. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2021 3:47 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| Ed Asner will always be Lou Grant to me--even in "Elf," I was wondering why Santa reminded me of a friendly news executive. The first full-time job I had in New York was at Dell Publishing, and my boss, a stylish Jewish female editor, asked me once, "Do you think of me as Lou Grant?" Well, no... But of course I often felt like Mary Richards, or Rhoda. Never like Phyllis or Sue Ann, though. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2021 10:29 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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After eleven years, I decided to "go back to the island" -- the intricate muddle of myth, supernatural, science fiction and people with major daddy issues that was "Lost. " I'm fifteen episodes into the first season, and absorbing different things, being reamazed at the layers of meaning and plot complexities that are starting to get assembled. Happily, Therese Odell's blogs, from the Houston Chronicle, are still extant and I've been enjoying her wit, humor, perception and willingness to dig deep into the unconscious of Lost. A sample...
https://blog.chron.com/tubular/2007/10/looking-for-that-special-someone-on-lost/
A shout-out to Grace who contributed much to the Lost chat at escapefromelba.com and first acquainted me with Ms Odell. I don't know how much of the Lost discussion spilled over here, but will try to fire up the search engine and see where it goes. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2021 12:27 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| As I close in on the finale of Season 2, I am realizing that this is the end of the relatively normative plotting where a single timeline (with informative flashbacks) prevails and we can experience the Island as a modern version of Purgatory (constantly hinted at by characters who keep saying "I'm already dead" in various contexts, and various ordeals of characters confronting their past sins). Adhering to this scheme gave these two seasons coherence and a set of great existential dramas about the choices we make in our lives and the things we have trouble leaving in the past. It also has the highest ratio of pretty women murdered in the history of television, a medium in which (at least for those of us of a certain age) "too pretty to die" was long the unspoken rule. By the conclusion of Season Two, Libby, Shannon, and Ana-Lucia are all in the ground. Someone who had never continued past the second season might well ask how one can die if already dead, and if these deaths are merely transitions to some other phase of an afterlife. (or how an Island that can cure a severed spinal cord (Locke) or state four cancer (Rose) cannot seem to revive those pierced by a couple bullets) At least the first two seasons could still leave the viewer capable of formulating such questions. Beyond the magnetic finale lies a realm of time warps, flashforwards, "flash-sideways," and alternate realities in which an analytical mind can wander "lost" for eons. I will probably continue my Return to the Island, but not without some wistful backward looks. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Thu Nov 11, 2021 8:52 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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I really like "Station 19" and "Grey's Anatomy" when they destroy Seattle. Not that I have anything against Seattle, but it's fun when a sinkhole swallows several blocks, or, right now, when half the city is exploding.
EDIT: Though if they kill off Dean Thomas, they're dead meat.
EDIT: They're dead meat. |
Last edited by Syd on Wed Nov 17, 2021 6:37 pm; edited 1 time in total
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| grace |
| Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2021 2:19 pm |
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Joined: 11 Nov 2005
Posts: 3214
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Hi bart. Hope all is well with you and yours.
Though I stuck out LOST to the end and swear I didn't feel betrayed or disappointed by the experience, whenever I cave to sentiment (plus boredom with what else is on) and go back to watch some, I almost always choose an episode from S1 or S2. Unless it's the one where Sawyer and Miles are cops in an alternate universe; that one never gets old (for me).
Tangentially, I thought I'd seen the strangest thing last week when Terry O'Quinn was billed in a Hallmark move. Until this past weekend when Bruce Campbell and Peter Gallagher showed up in one. (I know, everyone needs to work.) |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2021 11:12 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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Hi, Grace. Yeah, it shows the grip the series can have when one encounters actors out of their island context. As I keep marching through a retrospective, I am approaching the big cast changes of season four, where Miles, Faraday, and others arrive. I had forgotten about the alternative cops ep, will have to look for that. Season three, which I'm concluding now, seems to me where some basic plot threads begin to tangle. The first time jump to a bearded Jack on a bridge was fairly jarring. Much of what the Others do seems unnecessarily violent and self-defeating in its approach to conflict resolution (sort of a Big Metaphor). The multiple enigmas of Jakob the invisible in his cabin.
The way Ben has to do Machiavellian tricks to get things he could have just asked for. Etc.
Nice to hear from you. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| grace |
| Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2021 11:30 am |
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Joined: 11 Nov 2005
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bartist wrote: Much of what the Others do seems unnecessarily violent and self-defeating in its approach to conflict resolution (sort of a Big Metaphor). The multiple enigmas of Jakob the invisible in his cabin.
The way Ben has to do Machiavellian tricks to get things he could have just asked for. Etc.
Definitely yes to the Others / metaphor. And I think that Ben's antics were a type of joke in that (as you point out) he went to all this trouble and evil* manipulations when he didn't have to. Sort of like a human Rube Goldberg contraption.
*If you have occasion to catch Emerson in Evil (on CBS pre-pandemic, now on Paramount+ I believe), he's excellent as the human embodiment of, well, evil. I really enjoyed S1 and will some day cave and buy P+ for a month to binge on S2. If you're already familiar with and love or hate, never mind.
Happy feast day, happy Thursday to any international readers, and apologies/condolences to the indigenous people who regret having offered any help at all to our forebears. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Dec 02, 2021 8:55 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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https://youtu.be/W0pzwC_4zZk
Apparently, while the band was fictitious (one of the Dharma Project guys in season five was a former member), there is an actual SF band, The Donkeys, who performed this for the show's soundtrack. I tip my hat to Damon Lindelof who evidently went to considerable effort to promote the notion that Geronimo Jackson was a real, albeit obscure, seventies band.
Enjoying the temporal weirdness of season five more than I did back in 2009. Ain't time travel (the slow forward kind) grand? It was nice, though, when the nosebleeds stopped. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Dec 16, 2021 9:03 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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I recently was able to rewatch all of the later seasons, and was surprised at how much more I liked them, navigated the temporal shifts, and more fully grasped the Sideways World in season six. I found it easier to handle the mystery of the Island, as a sort of big cork on a vast evil, and was a little more in tune with how moral and emotional layers were peeled off characters. And our sense of where Purgatory is located is properly shifted from the island to LA. Well of course.
I really wish Cuse and Lindelof had had another shorty season in which we could really see some of the Sideways characters work their shit out a little bit more before going into the church and its glowy portal. And maybe have some glimpses at the island after Jack dies in the bamboo grove, and Lapidus & co. fly off to Guam or wherever. The Island Slash Cork is now in Hugo's capable hands, and it would have been worthwhile to see how he got along and kept his Number Two in line. I care less about them all ending up at Eloise Hawking's church (with Ben left outside in contemplation) and more about how their realworld lives played out. Miles, Kate, Sawyer, Claire, and Richard Alpert...what were their real remaining lives?
Maybe a reboot with a grown-up Aaron and Walt? |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Dec 16, 2021 9:08 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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In case Grace or any other Lostophiles look in here, here's a cheery little postcard from season two for youse....
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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