What are you watching?

[Stan]

Chase and I just finished Carole and Tuesday and had recently watched Cowboy Bebop. C&T was cute but didn't have quite the impact or intensity of some shows. But maybe I'm not the target audience for a show about two girls trying to make it in the music business. Samurai Champloo was more up my alley.

Things I like about Watanabe shows (based on 3 series):
Works to illustrate an interesting world as well as have interesting characters. Like Star Wars, the background is a major character.
The music is great and plays a role. (Tank! is a fun song)
He tells a story in ~26 episodes and moves on. No slogging through 300 episodes to get resolution.
Semi-realistic art style, funny bits but doesn't fall into the common anime obsessions with being cutesy or having a ton of fan service.

Things I'm not as hot on:
The endings tend to be not as satisfying as they could be.
The story telling can be a bit vague on the plot points.

[Zen]

I think the ending of C&T ["To be continued.... In Your Mind"] might be Watanabe giving a tip of the hat to acknowledge the fact that the endgame of his shows are the style they are on purpose. He does "life goes on" endings. (I haven't watched all of Bebop, though and I know there is a lot of debate about whether the characters survive the ending of that... so maybe he doesn't ALWAYS do "life goes on" endings... there's also a lot of debate about how much Joss Whedon was influenced by it when he created Firefly, but that's a whole different ball of wax.)

It might also be an invitation to others to pick up the world he created and write other stories in the C&T universe. It would be interesting to see other anime or manga creators come out with stories set on the Mars of C&T with the characters from the show as background characters. With the emphasis on up-and-coming musicians for the songwriting in the show, I can't imagine derivative works would be discouraged.

[Mike]

[poorpete]

If you have Disney Plus, my kids and I really enjoy Forky Asks a Question. "What? No!" is said daily in our household

[Mike]

[Zen]

[Mike]

I misread you. I totally understood your meaning but I thought that final line was "I can't imagine how..." so I thought I was being funny.

Maybe next time.

[Phoebe]

Is that Picard show available yet? Anyone know?

[Mike]

I just shouted "Is that Picard show available yet?" at my phone, and it said "Available only on CBS All Access." I trust my phone in these matters.

[Phoebe]

Damn. It keeps presenting itself to me, CBS thing I mean, and it wants BIG $$$$ and that's crap.

[Mike]

I feel the same way about Starz. If I'm ever looking for a movie that IS available for streaming, but not on any of my services... 70% of the time it seems that it's on Starz. It's not worth $9 a month, but it's tempting.

As for CBS All Access, six bucks ain't bad, but not for just one show. So here's your plan: Picard is 10 episodes, and the first one airs tonight. So the last episode is... April-ish? That means that when summer rolls around, you set a time for yourself and get your 1 week free trial of CBS All Access and set a reminder so you don't forget to cancel it after a week. Then you binge Picard and cancel your subscription. If watching 10 episodes in a week is too much for you, then pay for that first month. Including the free week, that give you 5 and a half weeks during the summer to watch 10 episodes, and you got the whole season for $6. That's a bargain. Downside is that you have to wait until summer to watch and thus have to avoid spoilers when the show becomes hugely popular.

[Stan]

[Phoebe]

Watching "You" on Netflix with Penn Badgely and it's pretty darn crazeeee. How can I put this? It's "triggering" in an actually distressing way, but it's also a(n unintentionally) silly show on some level. So here one is, being vaguely nauseated and migrained up by a show that features a key Gossip Girl alum and has a thick layer of silly, but one cannot stop watching. Also very NSF kids roaming the house, even though "technically" little is shown, lots of scary freaky behavior, violence and much more implied violence, people apparently having sex, and generally mind-hurting subject matter! But I watch, so...

[Phoebe]

Still watching and still Love the Expanse and I love the old woman so much and she reminds me of a woman my husband and I know, but I am upset that I told him this because the similarity is so accurate and so unavoidably, obviously true that if he ever screws up and mentions it, and she does not happen to find it complimentary, 'twould would be terrible.

[Zen]

I keep lazily paying for CBS All Access without actually watching the shows that I got it to watch... Nether my daughter (who is a big fan of Seven of Nine, but, I mean... how many people who are attracted to females AREN'T fans of Seven of Nine at least in some fashion?) nor myself have managed to watch the first episode of Picard yet....

EDIT: And before you accuse me of being sexist, my daughter readily admits she thinks she's hot. But she also likes the character and the story-line she follows during the final seasons of Voyager... She also is a HUGE fan of Janeway.

[Phoebe]

Want to watch it but am going to follow Mike's advice and wait until we can purchase one big burst of tv access to it, which judging from free time levels will be in June 2021. I'm not attracted to Seven in That way (we could say, in the way I'm infatuated with The Doctor, rrrrowr!!) but do have a major platonic love for her and definitely think she would be attractive to most people, because of the reasoning!

Finished the Expanse but worry I missed too much when others watched whilst I was asleep. It's a great show though.

[Zen]

The "while asleep" dampens the positive review a bit...

[Ronster]

Finished last year:
Man in a High Castle
Extras (Ricky Gervais)
Afterlife (Ricky Gervais) ...all my Ricky G stuf was before he did his thing at the latest awards show
Good Omens
Vikings through season 5

This year:
Mandalorian


I started :
(All titles here are on Amazon Prime Video)
Electric dreams by Phillip K Dick
Parking Wars - my guilty pleasure...this says a lot about me
Travels by Narrowboat - One person in the midst of personal crises sells everything to buy a narrowboat and navigate the canals of England.
Family Tree - Chris O'Dowd After receiving some heirlooms following the passing of a relative he embarks on a journey to find his roots.

[Phoebe]

Crashing

I turned on Netflix; I saw an image of that other glorious Phoebe, Waller-Brooks, and of course immediately clicked on it without knowing what it was, and watched all the episodes of it straight through without so much as getting up from the spot, though I did have to satisfy the tv that I was still watching at some point. Of course I'm still watching, you silly creature, it's Phoebe, and the love is not really a choice! Anyway, the show is about a weird group of people who pay a low fee to stay in an abandoned hospital, and it is much what you'd expect from PWB be ause she is a genius. It's not a super duper good show like Fleabag, but still a wacky comedy about various oddball characters who cannot easily sort out or be honest about their feelings. However, Colin and Melody are an exception and thus also the main reason to watch. Now I am tired and shall sleep, despite the bright lights from above and the question whether this person is Meryl Streep. Oh dear, it is indeed. Well then, will check back tomorrow. But does she have some type of prosthetic... face on? At least chin(s)? Don't know. Aha, it is the Iron Lady movie, looks kind of interesting so shall watch later. Thanks to the dog demanding a trip outdoors, I discover the midnight is lit up like a ballroom due to reflections off the snow. How does one sleep under the circumstances?!

[Tahlvin]

McMillion$, the documentary on HBO about the fixed McDonald's Monopoly games.