What are you watching?

[Ronster]

Doc martin is my treadmill friend now
Also the early 90s "Robin of Locksley" on Prime

Going to drop Hulu. it won't pick up at the gym and you can't download eps

[Phoebe]

TV writers were like, imagine a world where a huge number of people with rare diseases live in this one place and have a bizarre emergency leading to their imminent deaths unless they get a proper diagnosis. Now imagine that each one of these people is morally degenerate in some way - they all lie or have done something bad, usually both. Often their lies have contributed to their medical condition in some sinister and unpredictable way. Even the innocent sick children are implicated in some way, whether because their parents or guardians are lying about them, or they're concealing their illness in some way that may seem Innocent but is actually evidence of a sinister criminal mind, or they are child sex perverts who want to lure the doctors.

Now suppose there's a doctor who can diagnose them, but the twist is, he too is a moral degenerate. He's an absolute sexist, racist pig of a man who thinks he's smarter than everyone else even though he's not, and he and his team constantly fuck up their jobs to the point that they almost kill people. But since they usually manage to pull out a win in the end, everybody thinks they're brilliant. Usually the win comes not from any stroke of insight on the part of the doctor but from some completely lucky happenstance, apart from which the patient would end up deader than a doornail. Nevertheless, the doctors use this sheer luck to lord their insights as diagnosticians over the rest of the hospital, where they rule as legendary bullies.

Along the way this medical team almost always violently assaults the patients or their family members, breaks an entire series of ethics rules that would get them barred from their profession for life, or actually breaks into the patient's homes, and sometimes into co-worker homes as well. There is at least one scene in every episode where the doctor berates the sick person, often as they cry because they think they are about to die, or when they are a child, generally. The doctor sometimes appears without the patient even knowing that he's a doctor and then he begins berating them and asking them bizarre psychotic questions for some reason that the patient can't discern, and that the doctor deems unworthy of explanation. Surprising and upsetting and disorienting the patients are all highly recommended because, as I say, every one of these patients is also a sick moral degenerate in some way that needs to be addressed before they can receive the miracle lucky cure. The team that works for this doctor is simultaneously abused by him and learning how to implement his illegal and immoral methods. When one of them is particularly nasty to a patient or their family, a scene shows the doctor having tender feelings for them.

The doctor himself, as you might expect, is not only sexually harassing many people around him at work, but leaves a trail of broken relationships behind him, and then has an affair with his now remarried ex-wife. He is not attractive, but it is clear that he is a psychopath who manages to manipulate people with his lies, so in that way it is more realistic that anyone would pass the time of day with him for 5 minutes. He uses a cane that he supposedly needs, and milks for sympathy and the affection of women, yet will jettison at various times when it is less convenient. Oh AND he's a drug addict and everybody on the hospital staff knows it, and they just let him go on doing surgeries and treating patients despite the fact that he's high as a f****** kite all the time, and that's a major plot line of the show, so you never forget that this drug addled man who sexually harasses his patients and their families is also permitted to make medical decisions and perform procedures.

There isn't a catchy way to express "sick, unethical idiot doctors torturing patients until a stroke of luck helps them live", so we'll just name the head doctor and call the show House after him.

[akiva]

I just watched the first episode of “Robotech: The Macross Saga.” I have seen very little anime, but discovered that this one is streaming on Amazon. I liked It enough to watch another episode at some point.

[WillyGilligan]

They just moved Sherlock Holmes into a hospital and built off the structures of Doyle's stories. (House=Holmes, Wilson=Watson). Other than the medical practice and the limp, it's straight Sherlock.

Drug abuse? Check
Belittles everyone around him? Check.
Superiority complex? Check
Train wreck of a human that can't handle normal relationships? Check
Vaunted reasoning skills that are really just lucky inductive guesses? Checkity check.
Surrounded by enablers? Check
All of this nonsense is somehow justified by results? CHECK.

The moral failings angle is to highlight that House is a pessimist who keeps having that rewarded.

None of this is to say that you're wrong for disliking it. Those are absolutely fantastic reasons to hate the show. I remember watching to see the where the limits of his behavior were. He would keep pressing the line with everyone until it broke, then there would be fallout, and he might learn a bit. Most notable was when his self destructive actions led to Wilson's girlfriend dying. It was a great dramatic storyline. But it's television and they weren't going to fire Wilson's actor, so it all eventually reset. It was distinct from other shows at the time, which is something I like in television, even if it's not all good.

[akiva]

I didn't like House that much, but the season 1 finale is a superb episode.

[SumDumTrim]

House was good but by the end of the third season I personally was able to perform a lumbar puncture.

[Phoebe]

The important thing is that you were able to perform it on the lying family member of the patient, who was tricked into being in the room at the time so that your assistant could ransack her house, and sniff her underwear.

The Sherlock Holmes comparison is intriguing, yessss... It makes me wonder if house and holmes are intentionally similar names.

[Mike]

[WillyGilligan]

That's actually from the show's creator. It was intentional. The first few seasons even had various "villains" who were trying to outwit or control House in different ways, like a hard-nosed hospital administrator who had the audacity of trying to force House to conform to policies like wearing a lab coat or showing up for his clinic hours and follow standard protocols. One time it was a police detective who was on the trail of House's illicit drug behavior and other issues. The cop, of course, had his own variations on House's flaws, but they were more legal. Kept chewing nicotine gum instead of popping vicodin, for example. Which is okay from a story structure angle, but still leaves you with the fact that House is actually the bad guy in the scenario. I think they "dealt with" that by having the cop cross the line in trying to catch House in his lies.

Like I said, I liked it for what it was, but it had some massive issues if you ever think about it.

[Ronster]

Deathnote - anime

In hindsight my question about our deadpool motives seem strangely coincidental.

[Ronster]

[WillyGilligan]

Robotech was the most bonding thing I did with one of my brothers. He would wake me up every Saturday morning to watch it. I vaguely remember Starblazers being a thing back when I still heard it called Japanimation.

Honestly, Robotech is a bit hard to watch now. There are things that bother me as an old man that didn't even strike me as that odd at the time, like the worship of Minmei, or the young girl in the second series. Really cool fight scenes for it's time, though.

[El Jefe]

If you haven't checked out Bodyguard on Netflix yet, you should remedy that as soon as possible. I'll admit that I'm super biased, when it comes to British cop shows, but it's a lovely surprise wrapped up in some fun packaging. Well worth checking out.

[SumDumTrim]

I just pounded down two seasons of Handmaid's Tale and now I want to FIGHT SOMEONE!

[mimekiller]

Ya all ever watch Documentry now? IFC parody series of popular documentaries. The first episode of season 3 is up(a parody of wild wild country on netflix) just amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7ZFxdicRgA&t=777s

[buckett]

Documentary Now! is a work of actual genius. The level of specificity of the parodies is a wonder to behold.

[El Jefe]

No clue how the rest of the series is going to turn out. But the first episode of the Umbrella Academy is an absolute blast. Also, I know nothing about this comic, other than Gerard's involvement.

But really, I'm just here for the Tiffany scene.

[Walrus]

Re-Watching the Babylon 5 and the associated movies, with the idea of running a Babylon project game for the upcoming gaming conference. Maybe developing a campaign

[SumDumTrim]

Russian Doll. Solid 4 stars.

[Phoebe]

Still slogging through House, because that's what other people have placed upon the menu. He's still a frothing sociopath and now the show just makes fun of it because it's so obvious that the audience is horrified. They moved on to growing him a new batch of sociopaths.