Tag Archives: Television

by Ben Trube | May 10, 2016 · 12:05 PM

What I watched while I was sick

What I thought was just bad allergies on Friday turned into a full-blown head-cold throughout the weekend and even into Monday. Yay, 3-day weekend spent barely being able to move off the couch. Woohoo!

Seriously, there needs to be a sarcasm font.

I’m a comfort food kind of a guy when it comes to sick TV. For me that’s episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Buffy (with some Angel and an odd 30 Rock and Excel Saga thrown in for flavor).

You can tell I was sick by the fact that my TNG watching mainly focused on Season 1 and 2 episodes, which my wife mistook for TOS episodes from the other room. No blame there. Also, there’s really no justified time to be watching Excel Saga even in small doses.

I don’t tend to consume new things when sick, but I did pick one off the back-burner to try, and it was by the far the best way to distract myself from being miserable: BBC’s Luther staring Idris Elba.

Pros:

Morally ambiguous main character. “Does dirty things but isn’t a dirty cop.”
Opening theme by Massive Attack, title sequence kind of reminds me of Jessica Jones.
Female foil equal parts antagonist and ally.
Crime procedural focused more on psychological elements rather than CSI’ing everything. We’re not trying to figure out who did the crime (we’re usually shown this pretty early). We’re waiting for our characters to find the baddie and figure out how they’ll ultimately take them down.
Wonderfully shot from the first scene. Mixes old and modern London.
Series long arcs particularly in the first series with great payoff and confrontations.
Characters experience some growth and change between series, particularly DS Ripley.

Cons:

Seriously! Only 16 episodes for 4 series! We’ve watched 12 of the 14 on Netflix and will probably buy the remaining two from Amazon. Pay Idris whatever he wants and make more!
Not really a con, but I do think I liked the six separate case structure of the first series as opposed to the two 2-part episodes in Series 2 and 3. Might feel different if there were 6 episodes (three stories) in series 2-3 (more in the Inspector Lewis model).

One other thing we noticed is that the show doesn’t always have the positive outcomes that American shows always do. In America, if we see both the abduction and later scenes with the character still alive in captivity, we know the detective is going to get to them in time. Don’t assume the same thing for Luther. The show doesn’t operate in a fantasy world, even though some fantastical things happen.

I know this has been out there for a while, but if you have a Netflix account and have never seen it, you really should try it out. We were hooked by the first few episodes.

Here’s to getting through the day then collapsing back on the couch.

The Best and the Worst of Both Worlds

I was raised on Star Trek.

Saturdays in the 90’s were spent with pizza and Star Trek, first Next Generation, then DS9 and finally Voyager. My mom taped reruns of the original series when they aired on Fox after the noon news so I could watch them after school (and homework). One of the best decisions I ever made as a college student involved dropping a database class after the first day, selling back the textbook, and using the money to buy all three seasons of the original series (before CBS decided it needed a CG update).

So naturally you’d assume I’d be pretty excited when CBS announced it will produce a new Star Trek series, airing in January of 2017.

And yeah, I think it’s pretty cool that there will be new Star Trek in the world. The new movies have been fun, and as a comic book enthusiast, I’ve been pretty stoked at the revival in Star Trek comics that’s been happening for the last 9 years.

That said, I suspect I’m not alone in really kinda hating how CBS is doing this.

The first episode will air on the traditional CBS network. After that, the rest of the episodes will be distributed exclusively on the CBS All Access platform, a Hulu-like service carrying CBS content exclusively for $6 a month.

According to executive VP Marc DeBevoise: “This new series will premiere to the national CBS audience, then boldly go where no first-run Star Trek series has gone before…”

Behind a pay-wall.

At least in the United States. World-wide it sounds like the series will air via traditional over-the-air networks as well as the all-access app.

All 28 seasons of previously aired Star Trek (not counting 2 years of animated series because who would) were available for free over the air. I know we live in a “different era of television” but this feels a lot like asking us to pay for something we’ve always been able to count on for free.

I can’t decide if CBS’ logic is that the exclusive content will attract more users to the service, or that the series is niche enough that it might be better to go the way of other streaming series like Arrested Development, Community and The Mindy Project. All of those shows had original broadcasts runs and were later revived by Netflix, Yahoo TV and Hulu respectively.

But there’s something about the CBS service that has always felt less than other services like Hulu and Netflix, even Amazon Prime. It sets a precedent for a la carte channel services. I like that my $8 a month to Hulu buys me current and past ABC, FOX, NBC, CW shows (and countless other networks). Just today I was marveling at how much obscure Anime, British television and Korean drama came with my $8 a month. I’m sure CBS has some of the same, but after a while it feels like we keep spending money to buy the same things over and over again with only slight differences.

I only watch two CBS shows currently: The Big Bang Theory, which I binge watch on DVD, and NCIS, which just got 12 seasons streaming on Netflix. The only other CBS shows I’ve been watching have been available on other services, Elementary on Hulu, Numb3rs on Netflix, etc. I’d watch more CBS shows when they come on services I already own, including CBS owned back episodes of Star Trek. I would even go back to appointment television if CBS aired the new series traditionally. I’ll probably buy it if/when they release it on DVD. But until then I’ll have to wait.

Unless we can change CBS’s mind…

If you think the new Star Trek should be available over the free airwaves for all, as it has been for 50 years, send a message using the hashtag #StarTrek4All to @CBS or @StarTrek. Tactics like forcing Star Trek fans to pay for a new series, run the risk of dooming that series before it starts.

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Tagged as CBS, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Streaming, Television

by Ben Trube | October 22, 2015 · 12:15 PM

The Simpsons – Best Episodes for Writers

People who know me well, know that I try to keep up an encyclopedic knowledge of The Simpsons, and have a belief that a list of episodes can be created for just about any topic imaginable (something I often do at holidays or whenever some topic comes up in conversation, most often with my wife *sorry*).

Writing isn’t a topic you’d think would be well covered on The Simpsons, but actually there are a number of references to almost every member of The Simpson family putting out a book or two.

Bart Gets Famous – Season 5 Episode 12

A future jump ahead finds Lisa at the typewriter as a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist with Bart polishing all her awards. Best quote “Impaled on my Nobel peace prize. How ironic” after Lisa gives Bart a swift kick.

They Saved Lisa’s Brain – Season 10 Episode 22

Several episodes involve impassioned letters by Lisa to the populace of Springfield, this one inspired by the riotous behavior at a low-fat pudding gross out contest. Her plea for more dignified discourse earns her a place in the local chapter of mensa.

Treehouse Of Horror VII (The Thing and I) – Season 8 Episode 1

Though not officially canon, unsold copies of Homer’s autobiography are seen in the attic. Apparently the book wasn’t very popular.

Bart of Darkness – Season 6 Episode 1

Bart is trapped in the house with a broken leg, and TV is all reruns. Apparently his only alternative is writing his own play. “Is it St. Swithens day already? Tis!”

Diatribe of a Mad Housewife – Season 15 Episode 10

Marge writes a popular romance novel in which Homer is portrayed as a boor, and Flanders her sexy lover. Confrontations at the edge of cliffs ensue. Apparently all you have to do to succeed is write and you’ll immediately be popular.

I’m sure there’s many I missed. Any other flavorites?

The Old Ways are the Best Ways

I just want to watch a little TV at the end of my day. Why must it be so hard?

See if any of these stories sound familiar:

The Netflix app on both the Wii and the Wii U “gums up” (for lack of a better term), after a while and needs to be uninstalled and reinstalled to be watchable.
After futzing with trying to get John Oliver to stream on the Fire TV stick, I plug in my computer which works, but only after I stop streaming in Opera and use Chrome instead. Ironically, the quality is much better than even when the FireTV is working.
I increased my download speed, which I’ve tested, yet shows seem to stream worse. Why don’t shows let me set the quality rate instead of trying to calculate what they think is best? They are almost always wrong!
A show on Netflix becomes randomly unplayable two minutes from the end and will not reload even after you reboot all your hardware.
A video on YouTube is easy to find on a computer, and impossible to find in an app.
I try to use my Roku and the TuneIn radio app to listen to the 24/7 stream of This American Life, only for it to stutter and fail after five minutes.
Both my Roku and FireTV stick are hot and can only be turned off by unplugging them which causes a really slow boot the next go around.
Hulu shows me that damn Windows 10 commercial for the 100th time. I am not going to raise my children to “lick the internet”. It’s just an OS, get over yourself! Also some weird girl who likes “orange crem” yogurt.

That last one might just be me.

I love the convenience of being able to pick any episode of Star Trek and watch it without having to pull out my DVD’s, and I’m kind of bummed the same service doesn’t exist for Babylon 5. My wife and I started watching MASH because it came on Netflix, even though I also own all the episodes on DVD. And I’m glad I still have those disks because there have been several nights where I’ve had to use them instead when Netflix was being a butt.

I have yet to find a dedicated streaming device that is the equal of even a rudimentary laptop. And none of them compare to actually having the physical media. For all our cord cutting, we still aren’t getting the same reliability we used to get for free over the air, or for an exorbitant fee over the wire, or for a mid fee for a spinning disc. Don’t get me wrong, whenever I go back to over the air I’m shocked by the quality dip. But at least I can watch. I like solving computer problems for fun, but not network issues. That kind of stuff just needs to work, or I get cranky.