The TV Thread: Wait, you can use TVs for NOT video games?

If you’re into cooking/cooking shows and the science behind it (and if you can find it), Good Eats can satisfy that craving. Love Alton Brown’s approach to it.

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Man, I am still watching Cutthroat Kitchen where Alton Brown plays this evil Mad Sciencist forcing contestants to get their ingredients by digging for them in a graveyard. Somehow there is always a pineapple.

Also I am now watching HUNTED on CBS

Contestants have to stay in hiding for 28 days as a team of FBI, CIA and Surveillance OPs have to track them down. Essentially one giant game of Hide and Go Seek.

I might have accidentally binged the entire first season on the last three days based on this recommendation.

I certainly did not regret the time spent.

Specially because of the finale. If anybody is reading this, you deserve to let yourself watch the entire show. I don’t think I’ve seen such a well crafted finale since Elementary Season 1.

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I may or may not have done an actual, real-life fist pump when they announced the show was renewed for season 2 a few days ago. I haven’t wanted a second season of a show this badly in a while.

NBC gives their sitcoms a surprising amount of rope, ratings-wise, and they really like Michael Schur after Parks and Rec. I think people are still mad that they canceled Community when they did, but it was insane that it got as many seasons as it did in the first place. And they gave 30 Rock, a niche sitcom that spent a significant portion of each episode mercilessly making fun of NBC, seven entire seasons. So I have a reasonable amount of hope that The Good Place will get all the seasons it needs to tell its story.

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I finished watching The Magicians on the weekend!
I don’t know why I did cause it was horrible. They literally took the idea “Harry Potter but for adults” and just added tons of “edge”.

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I’ve seen a lot of ads for that recently and it looks about as bad as you say, but is it bad in a fun way? Bad in an incredibly easy to consume way?

It started off bad in a goofy way, imagine everybody doing weird, almost jazz hands movements to do magic. There’s a lot of silly bits and as much as students in the non-hogwarts are warned by teachers how dangerous this stuff is they don’t seem to care that students are dying constantly. Also everyone treats one of the characters like shit cause he reads fantasy books that are not the Narnia chronicles.

The last third of it started to get into it’s “edge” stuff way more and just wouldn’t stop and I’m actually annoyed about it.

Trigger warning on the spoilers below

Turns out the writer of the Not-Narnia chronicles molested kids, we find out via actually showing the guy taking pictures of a kid undressing. It’s an awful scene.
The third last episode added a suicide hotline number after it ended because they had a guy shoot himself in the head with a shotgun on screen.
The last episode involves a god/demon raping a character and said character getting pregnant and giving birth like right after the attack.

I really liked The Magicians book series, though for what it’s worth, it has a couple of the things @GoldenGoat found objectionable in the show (the first and last in the spoiler list, though we get a lot less detail about the first one and we don’t find out about the last one until the second book). And Quentin’s Fillory (the Not-Narnia book series) obsession isn’t made fun of nearly as much in the books, though it also doesn’t help nearly as often in the books until the last one. Weirdly enough, they actually graduate Brakebills, which is a five-year school in the books, halfway through the first book, before they go to Fillory, so they massively accelerated that plotline in the show, probably so they could keep the characters at Brakebills and keep selling it as “Harry Potter in grad school.” The books drop the Potter thing halfway through the first book and after that it’s much more “Narnia, but about unfulfilled grownups.”

I enjoyed the show in a sort of guilty-pleasure, I-know-this-is-trashy way, though. Eliot and Penny both amuse me a lot and the show’s campy sense of humor carried it through a lot of bullshit.

One thing about GoldenGoat’s spoilers: Julia didn’t get pregnant or give birth. There is a weird thing with god semen giving people powers in the show that isn’t in the books that I found really off-putting. Though in the books, she does become more powerful after being raped by Reynard, because he tears out her “shade” and makes her less human. It’s easily the worst part of the books and one of the worse portrayals of rape I’ve read in an otherwise good book series.

Yeah when they go to Fillory in the last episode it feels squished, like tons of stuff happened but since it was the last episode they just started to quickly mash in details before they get to the confrontation with the beast.

Also yes I definitely misunderstood that Julia did not become pregnant or give birth, it looked like it at that particular scene where she looks to be having pains.

It’s fine if you like the show, sometimes there’s actually funny jokes and fantasy stuff is interesting but when it hit the edge it was unbearable for me.

Oh no, don’t worry, the show is trashy as hell. You’re not wrong to dislike it. It’s a guilty pleasure thing for me and something I don’t know that I’d ever actually recommend to anyone.

The books are good, though. Not amazing or anything–some people really oversell their subversive qualities–but definitely good, quick reads if you think the premise of the show is good but you’d like to see it executed with less… well, trashiness. If nothing else, any of the beings that are supposed to be animals are actual animals and not people in weird satyr costumes. Julia’s story is definitely better in the books, though I really can’t decide whether “god semen gives her power after she was raped” or “a fox-god raped her humanity out of her” is worse, because they’re both awful.

The confrontation with the Beast is way different in the first book, too. For one thing, Alice goes at him on her own merit, not with a magic knife or the help of god-semen. But I’ll leave the rest unspoiled in case you ever decide to read the book.

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Jesus Christ I stopped suffering through that show when they killed off the immortal puppy and it gets WORSE?

I’m excited about the second season of The Expanse, but If you aren’t watching Riverdale, you’re missing out.

I never read any of the books at all myself but I also super enjoyed this so far. Maybe I’ll curl up with one of the books sometime? My little sister was right in the target age group when they were coming out and it was one of the few things she’d bother reading, and we still have most of the series kicking around.

Also going to nth the recommendations for The Good Place!

Crime procedurals are definitely not everyone’s thing and that’s just fine, but I also semi-recently really enjoyed Murdoch Mysteries - Canadian crime drama set in late Victorian-era Toronto. It’s on both Netflix and Hulu in the US but they still haven’t gotten anything past seasons 7 and 6 respectively - looks like only Amazon has the most recent seasons, and not even on Prime, only purchase or yet some other subscription service.

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TV! Mostly I watch things as they come to Netflix (except when they don’t come to Netflix and don’t air in my country :frowning:).

Currently the only show I catch as it airs is Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. because I’m a Stan for Marvel. Brooklyn Nine Nine great tho.

Riverdale has so much going on, especially since I think the Cheryl and Jason Bloom’s whole deal is literally just the plot of Cruel Intentions. Also the reveal that Ms. Grundy is a hot teacher who fucks Archie left me confused and honestly a bit worried about how the show is going to treat something like that.

The only TV shows I really tend to watch are the comic book shows on The CW and whatever Marvel puts up on Netflix. I tried to watch The Young Pope but couldn’t get into it after the second episode. I’m also watching Riverdale because I love trashy teen drama.

I also watch some cooking shows from time to time on the Food Network but not often.

I’ve been watching Stargate SG-1 on and off. Window of Opportunity is without a doubt one of the funniest episodes of any live-action show I’ve ever watched.

…and then I found out what happened to the other series. MGM whyyyyyy (also thank god the Emmerich “reboot” is probably canceled)

If you haven’t watched it yet, check out Terrace House: boys and girls in the city, it’s on netflix and it’s gradually percolating through the nerdsphere. It’s hard to explain why it’s good in a satisfying way because it’s a reality show but actually good and interesting and like real life rather than a weird dramafilled show. It’s quite slow but really worth your time.

Recently I’ve been catching up on Supernatural and it’s sure… something now. I binged the first 7 and a half seasons(got to s8e10) a few years back and got bored, finally came back now that season 12 is wrapping up(With season 13 greenlit already lol??)

I can’t say it’s particularly great and a few things do bug me, but I still love it so much? It’s a cyclical spooky soap opera at this point and it’s so dumb, I eat it up. Crowley is still(and always will be) the best thing about it. The show’s been going on so long its gotten Naruto fever where they kept powering up the heroes and villains over and over to the point of nonsensical(tho season 11 seems like its going in a good direction since dean lost the mark of cain)

A new show that I’ve gotten hold of in it’s infancy and love already is American Gods. It’s just… so fucking good. Made me even start Hannibal too.

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Twin Peaks returns on Sunday, May 21st, 2017 on Showtime.

I need this in my life so much right now.