It's Only People Pretending: New TV thread

[Chet]

you better watch out or else someone will be titling the next tv thread over one of your anti tv rants.

good job you don't do it often.

[cold before sunrise]

oh no. wait a second, are you threatening me?

[Chet]

only if you want me to be, babe

[ellaguru]

Just finished season one of Community, on all y'all's recommendations. Pretty good stuff, got through it very fast and am going on to season two right now. I'm a little surprised, though, that LPTJ is big on a show that reminds me so much of Scrubs. 

[nonotyet]

I'm a little surprised, though, that LPTJ is big on a show that reminds me so much of Scrubs. 

How so? I've never made that connection, though I haven't watched Scrubs in years.

[Captain]

Ah, but if only Scrubs could have been more like Community.

[dieblucasdie]

Yeah, I sorta see the comparison. Community is sorta like if Scrubs had had a more appealing cast

[Ashley]

Season two is very different than season one though.

[elpollodiablo]

Definitely the pointless hamfisted moralizing is similar

[peacocks]

you mean handfisted

[peacocks]

jk

[Thermofusion]

Man the new Workaholics...

[elpollodiablo]

Good? I've only seen a few of the first episodes.

[jebreject]

TF I feel like I failed you by not sticking with that show. I watched the first couple and liked it well enough but just didn't have enough interest to stay with it. Maybe I'll give it another shot though, because I've been hearing a lot of good things about that new episode.

[Thermofusion]

It's not high art but it's funny! The acid episode this week was fantastic.

[Chet]

blake seeing the strippers dick as some kind of lizard monster thing and trying to choke it was stupidly hilarious.

[ellaguru]

Just finished season one of Community, on all y'all's recommendations. Pretty good stuff, got through it very fast and am going on to season two right now. I'm a little surprised, though, that LPTJ is big on a show that reminds me so much of Scrubs. 

Season two is very different than season one though.

Just finished season two, and, yes, season two is very different.

[Thermofusion]

blake seeing the strippers dick as some kind of lizard monster thing and trying to choke it was stupidly hilarious.

That was great! Also Alice tripping and thinking the desk was made of jello. Last night's episode wasn't quite as good but it had moments!

[milly balgeary]

It had moments, but it was, all in all, one of the worst workaholics I've seen.

[dieblucasdie]

I like how people got all cranky that the Mad Men finale was heavy-handedly "HERE IS THE MESSAGE OF THE SEASON." haha, suckers, that's what you get for mistaking opacity for depth all these years

[elpollodiablo]

Wow, Homicide got really good again in se. 6 after some weak runs in seasons 4 and 5. The endgame of the Mahoney stuff is fucking fantastic!

[Chet]

i watched the last quarter of parks and rec. gonna rly miss paul rudd and also wish louis ck was in it more. the super awkard episode with him, leslie and ben was hilarious

[ellaguru]

Wow, Homicide got really good again in se. 6 after some weak runs in seasons 4 and 5. The endgame of the Mahoney stuff is fucking fantastic!

Yes, I really like how the whole Mahoney thing goes, especially those final two episodes but also how it feels like the two full seasons to that point were leading directly there. And I like how Kellerman's arc goes over I guess it's 5 and 6. Most of my friends just think Kellerman was a doofus, but I enjoyed the particular kind of doofus he ended up being. And also whatsherface, the narcotics chick, I liked her too. Stivers. Maybe I should just watch Homicide again.

[jebreject]

I need to finish watching through! Which is the season where they introduce Kellerman? We finished that one this winter, but haven't picked it back up yet.

[elpollodiablo]

Kellerman gets introduced in 4, one of the characters they cycle in after Bolander and Feldman get written out. One of the things that really kind of put me off the later seasons of this show on the first watch-through was the way characters got written out so unceremoniously; this time I've been much more able (willing?) to find the new characters interesting in their own right, and I was reflecting the other day on how the random impersonal cycling of people is probably pretty close to the reality of a city bureaucracy like the BPD.

I'm ambivalent about Kellerman, in the final analysis. There were certainly stretches where I found his character needlessly angsty and maudlin and resented how much time I had to spend with him. The IID investigation into corruption in the arson unit and subsequent grand jury proceedings, for example, didn't seem to add up to much in the final analysis. I vacillated between thinking he was a poorly-conceived, contradictory character and granting that his motivations might be obscure because they remained largely unintelligible even to him; the generous reading being that his rage issues and moral ambiguousness were a stab at reflecting some characteristics of a certain type of person who gravitates toward police work. But I'd say that's meeting the writers more than halfway--Kellerman's final scene, for example, was on the nose enough to make me think there really wasn't any greater depth beneath all the brooding.

There are ways that this show eclipses the Wire, though, for sure. Its portrayal of women, for one thing. If you're the kind of Wire devotee who knows every scene and bit part in the series, there's some real fun to be had picking out bit players. In seasons 6 and in the first few episodes of 7, I've seen: Landsman, Shardene, Norman, Marla Daniels, Mahon, Polk, Krawczyk, etc.