Law & Order is Terrific (And always will be)

[coldforge]

Continued.

Today I am watching Lie To Me. I had seen the name a couple times on Hulu and always ignored it because I confused it with that show about a psychologist starring (I think) Gabriel Byrne which was to all accounts dreadfully ponderous. But no! It's actually another light crime drama in the contemporary mold—which is to say that it stars a scientific virtuoso who is backed up by a team composed equally of barely-there lab technicians, and law enforcement officials with dubious if apparently universal powers and discretion. Rather than rotting bodies or crime scene fluids the hook is that Tim Roth is the world expert at detecting lies and other emotions by facial expressions and body language and the like. Which is much more accessible and interesting on a blow-by-blow basis than handwavey twaddle about metacarpals and gravel, though I'm surely it's not much more thoroughly grounded in reality. But Tim Roth is an incredibly entertaining actor, and has twenty times more charisma and intelligence than the dude from Buffy and the other Deschanel sister combined.

[Bernard]

Sweet, I will keep an eye out for this. This type of show has gotten me through a lot of long, painful hours of immobility and I was starting to run out of fresh episodes.

[diesel_powered]

Have you seen the Mentalist, and is it better or worse?

[Andrew_TSKS]

Forge, the show you thought Lie To Me was is called In Treatment. Also, Warren Ellis has mentioned multiple times in various places that he loves Lie To Me because it's basically a guy from London shouting at people. Which, I'm guessing, is what Warren Ellis's life is like on his best days.

Anyway, I saw the first episode of Sons Of Anarchy last night, and I was way into it. Have now queued it up on Netflix, which makes it the third TV series that I'm working through at the moment. The other two are Chuck, the second/third seasons of which I am hotly anticipating, and Gossip Girl, for which I am losing enthusiasm. I'm on disc 4 and I've had it from Netflix for two weeks. Not rushing to get to it either.

In fact, lately, I've been devoting what used to be Gossip Girl time to Full Color Football, a 5-part documentary series about the AFL which ran on Showtime in a big marathon on Christmas Day (I DVR-ed it). I've seen two episodes so far and it's pretty goddamn great, but, I hasten to add, only because I'm a huge football fan. You Friday Night Lights people would be bored to tears.

[davy]

I'm thinking about starting Farscape. Never really paid it any attention before tonight, when I read a rave review of the Complete Series box set on Popmatters. Now I'm kind of excited.

[ellaguru]

Farscape is solid. I think if you don't like sci fi, you won't like it (unlike Battlestar Galactica or Firefly, say, which, I don't know, transcend the genre or whatever. Farscape doesn't), and if you can't handle the fact that some of the effects are weak and some of the characters are Muppets, then you also won't like it. But if you do not fall into those categories, it's pretty good. Good enough that I've seen it once through and think I might keep an ear to the ground and pick up the complete set DVD next time it comes up super cheap, 'cause I'd watch it again.

Favourite line:

One of the little pint-sized repair robots rolls up to the main guy to warn him about something, and starts bleeping, blipping and flashing lights. The main guy replies: "Hey, slow down -- a little less Star Wars, a little more Star Trek: one beep for 'yes', two beeps for 'no', OK?"

[diesel_powered]

Anyway, I saw the first episode of Sons Of Anarchy last night, and I was way into it. Have now queued it up on Netflix, which makes it the third TV series that I'm working through at the moment. The other two are Chuck, the second/third seasons of which I am hotly anticipating, and Gossip Girl, for which I am losing enthusiasm. I'm on disc 4 and I've had it from Netflix for two weeks. Not rushing to get to it either.

Excellent. Excellent. I should probably finish the second season of Chuck in time for the third. I liked it well enough, but I haven't been in the mood for it.

[davy]

I don't know yet about Farscape. I'm only halfway through the pilot right now or whatever, but something's got to get better. So far there hasn't really been anything of interest--the acting is bad, the writing is bad, the spaceship is boring...and yet, I can see myself getting into it if only they'd pick up some slack. Which they must, eventually, if it was on as long as it was.

[DCDave]

I don't know yet about Farscape. I'm only halfway through the pilot right now or whatever, but something's got to get better. So far there hasn't really been anything of interest--the acting is bad, the writing is bad, the spaceship is boring...and yet, I can see myself getting into it if only they'd pick up some slack. Which they must, eventually, if it was on as long as it was.

It is a pretty slow show, TBH.

[davy]

I couldn't finish it. That motherfucking episode was awful, I ain't even gonna sugarcoat.

[YojimboMonkey]

Speaking of bad old sci-fi TV, I've been watching SG-1 from the beginning.  I'm about 2/3 through the second season.  It's not great, a lot of episodes are TNG season 1 level bad, but they're starting to build a pretty good universe, I guess you could differentiate the episodes similarly to the X-Files, monster-of-the-week eps and mythology eps, and the mythology eps tend to be better than the MOTW ones but some of the MOTW ones are good too.

My buddy Chris talks up farscape sometimes.  Not worth bothering, huh?

[davy]

I honestly couldn't find any reason to watch another episode. The sets were boring, the characters were stupid, the writing was awful...and I wanted to like it!

[jm]

I think that was the show I saw an episode of, years ago, where they used an obviously repainted N64 controller as some kind of ... device.  That put me off ever watching any more of it.

[davy]

Haha, I can totally see them doing that.

[Thermofusion]

I've scarcely watched TV in weeks, but we had a great time watching The Life & Times of Tim early new year's morning. I'd never seen that show before, it's fucking hilarious.

[Greg Nog]

I only saw a few episodes of Farscape here and there, but I remember enjoying it.  One that I was particularly impressed by was an episode that took place inside the Human's head, as a series of dreams/visions, and it frequently expressed those as Roadrunner-style Warner Brothers cartoons, which I thought was wicked rad.

[davy]

There was certainly nothing in the pilot that even hinted such creativity might come into play in the future.

[ellaguru]

Yeah, large chunks of the series (or rather, lots of little chunks of episodes throughout much of the run) take place in the human's head. The early bad guy implants himself there and doesn't leave. Basically like What BSG did later with Six and Baltar.

[crystalcakes]

criminal intent is the best law and order!  it's like a farce of a crime drama with vincent d'onofrio, who knows everything, speaks every language, and reads souls. 

[ellaguru]

I have started watching Make It Or Break It, which I probably don't recommend to anyone other than blucas, for blucas is the only person around here who is more of a thirteen year old girl than me. For the rest of you I think I am going with "surprisingly not terrible" as my review. Basically, it's Friday Night Lights, but with girls! They're gymnasts, because that's what girls do instead of sports. Which is why I started watching it, for I have spent far too much of my life in gymnastics gyms (and every time I try to get, they pull me back in -- it looks like I'll probably spend a few weeks this summer developing a coaching training program for the gym I worked at for many years). Anyway, while they do get some technical stuff wrong (the one girl made the Olympic wannabe group by performing a vault that is, essentially, worthless), they get a big chunk of the feel right. And, four episodes in, they still have the right balance for the "bad girl" -- they've gone as far as showing us that she's bad because she's weak and insecure, but they haven't yet hit the schmaltz point of really she has a heart of gold. I don't hold out much hope that they'll be able to maintain that line, because, really, Freaks and Geeks is the only show that towed it well, but at this point they're still doing a good job, and I like it because it's so, y'know, what people are like. But anyway, if anybody feels the need to watch a not-as-good-but-still-pretty-decent Friday Night Lights ripoff starring teenage girls in leotards, Make It Or Break It just might be the show for you.

[ellaguru]

criminal intent is the best law and order!  it's like a farce of a crime drama with vincent d'onofrio, who knows everything, speaks every language, and reads souls.

I have so no need to ever watch an episode of Law & Order ever again, but Vincent d'Onofrio appeals to me on many levels.

[crystalcakes]

i have been watching make it or break it!!  you make not know me, but i am as much of a 13 year old girl as blucas. 

are you a lady?  if so, do you dream of sleeping in a d'onofrio hibernating spoon position?  i mean... i don't anything about that.  i bet it would be super cozy though, just sayin'.

[YojimboMonkey]

criminal intent is the best law and order!  it's like a farce of a crime drama with vincent d'onofrio, who knows everything, speaks every language, and reads souls.

I have so no need to ever watch an episode of Law & Order ever again, but Vincent d'Onofrio appeals to me on many levels.

Vincent D'Onofrio appeals to me on the level of Thor in Adventures in Babysitting

[elpollodiablo]

CI is the absolute worst. It's the only L&O I don't watch.

[Greg Nog]

I watched the first couple episodes of Farscape the other day.  I dunno, I kinda like it.  The characters are perhaps a bit one-dimensional so far, but certainly no more than early TNG.  And truth be told, I kind of like how they're so archetypey that the whole thing comes off like a big RPG:  "Okay, you got your barbarian, your paladin, your knight, etc.  Also, I like the use of Muppets as aliens.

It ain't the greatest show I've ever seen, but it's definitely fun to have on in the background while I'm doing other stuff, which I what I was looking for when I was doing some drawing yesterday.  It's worth noting that it beat out Modern Family in that regard.