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DS9 was crammed full of wonderful theatre actors. Colm Meaney, Rene Auberjonois, Avery Brooks (who I was in a play with once, and who can drink more than any man alive). An embarrasment of riches there.
Agree with all the Community love. To my surprise I've really been enjoying Happy Endings. Caught an episode on a plane and its quite fun.
Oh I certainly agree. I'm not entirely familiar with Family Guy, but you're take of them as biting off a bit more than they can chew certainly doesn't surprise me.
It's delicate work, comedy. I imagine it's awfully tempting for someone who's been moderately successful at crafting a comedy to think they have the talent to get cute with it. The results aren't always great.
Because once you watch a show long enough you invariably start caring about the characters a little bit, even if you're just there for the ha-has. Otherwise, why even watch a sitcom structured around a plot? Plots just get in the way. Go see a stand up comic where you can enjoy rapid fire jokes without unnecessary plots and character developments.
@AG: I disagree - plots are integral to the comedy. I just like it better when they contribute to the comedy rather than detracting from it. Seinfeld is a great example - it had plots that both enabled and enhanced the characters' quirks and jokes, but didn't feel the need to also provide emotional attachment.
Bingo. A comedy *can* have such characters, viewers can naturally come to empathize with and root for them, and we have for the Simpsons. But they can't be designed and provided that way, audiences resist manipulation.
2001 Friends = 2011 Big Bang Theory.
Am I the only one on this board who doesn't get Community? My wife and I got the first season on Netflix, and after four or five episodes passed without either of us coming anywhere close to laughing, we decided it was time to wave the white flag and move on. Did the humor change after the early going? Otherwise, I don't get it ... I love The Simpsons, been loving 30 Rock, though the second season of Parks and Recreation was really good ... but Community just struck me as being a precocious kid shy of being some meh sitcom like Home Improvement or Two and a Half Men.
Whatever happened to documentaries?
Chevy Chase in it was a horrible decision IMO. Every second he's on screen reeks of contrived stunt; it completely breaks immersion to see him hanging around with these kids in college, and he does absolutely nothing funny to make it worthwhile anyway.
Exactly. NBC needs to concede 8 PM to Big Bang, and put 30 Rock at 8:30 to pick up the cerebral-comedy audience then. 30 Rock is great, but can't beat Big Bang on its own turf.
If anything, they should put The Office at 8; that probably has the least audience overlap with BBT and Idol out of the options.
Recently watched it, mostly for the first time. Very enjoyable. Much traditional sci-fi in the Star Trek mold, but very well done.
That episode is outstanding, easily the best of the third season. It was my favorite for a while, before "Welcome to Hank's" happened and blew my mind.
Justified is on tonight!
I like good slapstick as much as anyone, but there's something exhausting about watching shows where every character (even the supposedly smart ones) is an irredeemable idiot or worse. I don't care whether there's a moral but I do like to see the characters actually have character, even in a comedy. By that, I mean that I like some continuity and consistency from one episode to the next, and to have some ability to empathize with the characters. A show where everyone is indistinguishably selfish and stupid just isn't very interesting--I can enjoy an episode, but I rarely want more. Likewise, when the Simpsons just started repeating the "Homer does something terrible to a person he loves, but makes up for it in the end" plotline, I got bored.
I'm curious whether there has ever been a cartoon series where the characters aged. It seems like this would prevent things from getting stale, but it would also amount to tinkering with something that works, which people don't like to do.
You're missing the point.
The show doesn't become what it is until halfway through season one. Season two and three are where it really shines. If you've only done the first couple episodes of season one, you haven't really seen what it becomes. Try the paintball episode.
I'm also uncool enough to be really enjoying The Walking Dead. It could be a lot better. It's still gripping.
I've watched one episode of The Simpsons all the way through. It was pretty good. This makes me a bad person, right?
PS: Community will be coming back in March at 8pm on Thursday which will bump 30 Rock to 8:30. Parks and Rec will then come back at 9:30.
I've been reading the back strips of The Boondocks in the newspaper (actually the newspaper's web site), but haven't started watching the show yet. It's a truly funny strip.
Oh, and I know I'm in the minority here, but I find the Jeff-Annie sexual tension a bit... weird. He's supposed to be nearly twice her age and while that sort of thing is more accepted now, the writers address the huge age difference so often that the "will they or won't they" vibe seems more sleazy than anything else.
Yeah, the show really does morph about halfway through season 1. When I look back at the list of Season 1 episodes, it's very hit and miss up to about episode 15 (Romantic Expressionism). Which isn't to say it's not good (there are some great moments in some of those early episodes), but it's not at the level that's driven the internet to go crazy over it. If you start there and watch through the end of Season 1, you'll be hooked.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, but I find Mac to be one of the most complex characters on television.
I basically can't watch TV with a studio audience, or worse, a laugh track.
The only shows with a studio audience that would be in my top 10 comedies would be "Seinfeld" and "WKRP". In both cases, the ensembles were so strong (and in Seinfeld's case, the writing so amazing), they still were great, even with the laughter interruption.
I think you just showed me why Seinfeld was a great show that I didn't watch as much as I should have. The laughter really throws me off.
I was contemplating including Mac in that assessment as well. Initially he appears quite similar to Dennis, but as the show progresses he hits some subtle, and disturbing, depths.
The commentary on Mac and Dennis Break Up has the doctor for Celebrity Rehab (for some reason) analyzing the nature of these guy's relationship. It's enlightening.
Some of them are.
I really thought the musical number in the pot legalization episode was fantastic, and the FCC song, and Prom Night Dumpster Baby. The barbershop can do no wrong after "You've Got AIDS" and "Vasectomy."
Here's a link to IGN's top 10 song moments. It has almost all of those, so it's worth a watch even if I wouldn't even put their #1 in the top 10.
The entire Planet of the Apes musical is one of the greatest things in the history of comedy. Has there ever been a better line of comedic song written in English than "I hate every Ape I see from Chimpan-A to Chimpanzee?"
I believe that episode contained another one of my all time favorite Simpsons jokes; Troy McClure's celebrity fragrance: "Smellin' of Troy"
EDIT: the loss of Phil Hartman really hurt the show.
Anyone who thinks those two episodes are sentimental drivel has no heart. I can't even watch "Jurassic Bark" again, it's heartbreaking.
Well, there's The Venture Bros.
Both of the boys are older and significantly more mature now than they were when the show started.
"Jurassic Bark" is the second saddest thing I've seen in a cartoon behind the opening montage of "Up".
Disagree - 'Advanced Dungeons and Dragons', 'Cooperative Calligraphy' and 'Remedial Chaos Theory' are superior, particularly if you've been watching the show from the beginning. Paintball was great, but it's character-free, pretty much.
You might really, really like 'Archer', then.
The loss of Phil Hartman hurt ALL of comedy. He was the best thing on "News Radio", "SNL", and Troy McClure/Lionel Hutz were the best two secondary characters on the Simpsons.
The "what might have been" tragedy is that the Simpsons writers were all gung-ho for creating a live-action Troy McClure television show starring Phil Hartman, but then he was murdered.
Yes, although those were not "prime-time" cartoons. They were shown in theaters and then Saturday-Morning syndication.
By the way, IGN once did a list of greatest Cartoons, the Top 3 were Looney Tunes, Batman:The Animated Series and The Simpsons. I can't argue with that, although I can argue with the fact that they had the Flintstones way back at number 9!
Other funny shows that are just about being funny, not redeemable characters - "Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and I found "Workaholics" to be surprisingly funny although I don't know if it was renewed. You could also probably toss in "The League" although Andre is a bit sympathetic and I thought the show really went downhill in the "lost" season.
Yes. I'd add the ending of "Leela's Homeworld" to the list as well.
Good show, probably deserved more love than it got.
I always thought either Gillette or Pam were the most sympathetic characters. Lana is a better person than Archer, but she's still vindictive, vengeful, and prone to explosive acts of violence when annoyed.
I thought Cyril was a bit sympathetic until he started banging everyone while dating Lana.
I do want Krieger to find love with his anime holograph.
And while it's not quite a tearjerker (the description, not the fine American Dad episode) -- my vote for Futurama episode would be "Godfellas" (Bender grows a civilization while hurtling through space alone).
Yeah, I'd agree with that. Paintball is a good entry point, as it'll be funny without too much knowledge of the characters. Remedial Chaos Theory might be my favorite episode of a half hour comedy ever (partly because my wife loves those tiny Norwegian trolls and had them on the tables at our wedding).
Also, someone who watched Phantom Menace and said they hated Star Wars probably should watch Empire Strikes Back before they judge people for loving wookies.
As others have mentioned, I believe that Charlie on It's Always Sunny is a "redeemable" character. Sure, he's immature and has no direction, but he is actually a pretty decent person who is in over his emotional head with the rest of the Gang. Dan mentioned Mac as a complex character, and I would also agree with that. It's harder to sympathize with Mac, but I still one can become emotionally invested in his character.
As someone who hasn't dabbled in the Star Wars expanded universe, I wish there was more material covering the events before the end of the Old Republic. I feel like there is such an opportunity to explore the backstories on characters like Qui-Gon Jinn and Yoda in addition to unmentioned (and yet-to-be-invented Sith-Jedi conflicts).
The ending of "Lisa's First Word" gets me every time. Every. Damn. Time.
I just see him as a wild card. YEEEEEE-HAWWWW!
I don't see them as gimmicks as much as tributes.
Oh come on, we know Gillette was a former minister who tried to "pray the gay away," we know he was a bronze medalist Olympic skier, we know he was married once, and we know he's not so gay that he wouldn't bang Lana. Other than maybe Archer and Mallory, we don't know any more than that about any of the characters.
Anyway, Pam is morally depraved, but she's also cheerful and friendly and doesn't go out of her way to be a jerk to anyone. She's just a promiscuous, gluttonous drunk who can't keep a secret to save her life. If you had to go out for drinks with any Archer character, I can't see how you'd pick anybody but Pam or maybe Gillette.
Yeah, it really is.
If you compare it to all movies (and especially all action/adventure/Sci-Fi movies) it's at least average.
Really the whole end of the series is pretty deep and jarring.
I was about to argue this point but Dick Groat beat me to it.
There's actually only a few situations in which Charlie's motives are anything but pure.
Off the top of my head...
Lying about having cancer to get the waitress' sympathy
Using the black girl to prove to the waitress he's not racist
Orchestrating the "Dennis banging Mac's mom" fiasco to convince the waitress to drop him
Maybe you could add reneging on his promise to leave the waitress alone if she'd just come to the musical. (Though to be fair that's just love! Come to think of it, there seems to be a running theme of when Charlie does morally dubious things.)
George Lucas? Is that you?
It's technical aspects alone make it average, but strip away half the production budget and it's... I don't know... Ice Pirates without the laughs.
There are at least 5 mortal sins to PM --
- Mean as it may be, young Annakin has to be the worst child acting in the history of movies... nice that he found work after being rejected for that guest shot on Full House, I guess
- Enough has been said about the comic foil with the flappy ears
- Turning the 'force' into a supervirus
- You pretty much had the plot for the remaining movies figured out the moment we meet Palpatine
- Deciding halfway through PM would be an intergalactic political thriller... then changing your mind again
PM is total drek... it's watchable with the sound off and a FF available to skip ahead to the best effects though.
How could they not have "Give Up the Toad Now" on that list? That's insane.
Don't forget the musical version of A Streetcar Named Desire.
That plus Archer is my Tivo queue.
(Note on Community: I did not like Remedial Chaos Theory. Go figure.)
Boondocks was a great show. So is Venture Brothers - not sure why I don't actively seek it out more.
I found Fry a bit annoying in Jurassic Bark - but I don't want to take away from its power ... really, really strong television. I've argued before that Futurama had a higher peak than the Simpsons (no knock on either show, believe me), though I no longer watch either.
Ren and Stimpy - not my cup of tea, but there's a lot of there there.
And the Sherry Bobbins episode.
The last shot of 'Mother Simpson' with Homer sitting silently looking out at the stars is poignant, too.
It's worth watching just for the bad acting. "But mom, didn't you say the problem with the universe is that nobody helps anybody anymore?"
The amazing thing to me is *not* that Plinkett (Red Letter Media) could find 70 minutes of material to eviscerate tPM with, it's that he could have easily added another 30-40 minutes of plot issues, character issues, acting issues and structural faults to his take down without breaking a sweat.
While Charlie has done some questionable things in pursuit of the waitress I chalk those up to: a) Charlie being desperately infatuated and not having the emotional intelligence required to express it properly, and b) the waitress being pretty manipulative herself. The interplay between those two characters is even funnier when you learn that Charlie Day is married to the waitress in real life.
#170
I'm serious though. It seems to my uninformed self that most of the novels and whatnot focus on events following the original trilogy (Han & Leia's children and whatnot). I don't understand that. Han, Leia, Luke, etc. are already well formed in our minds. We don't need anything more about them. It's not going to rate with or add to the original trilogy. I'd much rather writers take a crack at redeeming some of the weak character development of the prequel trilogy and giving us a better glimpse of the Old Republic.
#171
I think it's aged well. Granted, I didn't see too many episodes when it first aired (my family was very late to get cable/satellite TV). Rocko's Modern Life is the other Nicktoon that is still funny. Whenever I catch an episode of Rocko I find myself laughing out loud a couple times per episode, minimum. I don't know how the writers/producers crammed so much material for adults into those episodes. Doug and Rugrats have aged horribly. I wouldn't recommend revisiting those shows.
#172
- I agree that child acting was terrible.
- Check.
- I agree.
- I agree, but that's the danger with any prequel. You could argue we had figured out the plot of the prequels whenever people discovered they were going to focus on Anakin.
- That's probably a fair criticism, too.
I personally enjoy learning more about Obi-Wan, and I like the Qui-Gon Jinn character, too. I like the pod race (loved the spinoff N64 game). The action sequences were neat. The planet-scapes were amazing. I thought Darth Maul was great, and I still don't see why they killed him off so quickly. He would have been a much more interesting villain in Attack of the Clones than Count Dooku proved to be.
I really do understand why people don't like the Phantom Menace. It's not one of my favorite movies or anything, but once I stopped comparing it to the Empire Strikes Back I've come to enjoy it for what it is. It's a decent enough summer blockbuster with cool action sequences. The plot and character development are weak, but they tie into the original trilogy enough to keep me interested.
As bad as Jake Lloyd (was that his name?), Hayden Christensen, and Natalie Portman were in those movies, a lot of the blame still has to fall on the writers. They absolutely left the actors out to dry with some of that sentimental drivel.
Has there ever been a better line of comedic song written in English than "I hate every Ape I see from Chimpan-A to Chimpanzee?"
Between that and "You've finally made a monkey out of me," that really is an all-time classic.
Uh, you mean George Lucas?
Like Harrison Ford told Lucas during the filming of Star Wars, "You can type this ####, but you can't say it."
[edit] Which is only partially true, a quality actor can sell a badly written script in many cases. Of course, since Lucas ALSO was responsible for the awful CASTING of the prequels and the awful DIRECTING of those actors, that doesn't hold true in this case ...
My wife (The Yankee Belle) is a Williams scholar and gave a talk on this episode at a conference in New Orleans. I served as her Simpsons-ologist in developing the themes while she did the real work, it was surprisingly well-received. I say "surprisingly" because I thought serious Williams scholars would be sick to death about the episode and find the very idea frivolous and beneath consideration; in fact, perhaps half the professorial contingent in the audience had never heard of it before (all the grad students had, of course) and judging from the feedback she received everyone thought it was funny and worthy of discussion.
No, it's not.
The special effects are technically impressive, though they're utilized ineffectively within the film. The plot is nonsensical, the pace is uneven (and in general, glacially slow), the dialogue is awkward, the characters are two-dimensional cutouts punctuated by the occasional uncomfortable ethnic stereotype, the acting exists on a continuum stretching from "tepid" to "embarrassingly amateurish", and the big digital action set pieces are too confusing and crowded to easily follow.
There was not a single moment of the film when I was emotionally engaged in what was happening on screen, unless a vague sense of unease and growing disappointment counts as emotional engagement.
One of the best things on the Internet is the sequence in the Plinkett review of The Phantom Menace where they ask people to describe characters without mentioning their jobs/titles/roles or their appearance. Very easy, even exciting, for the original Star Wars characters, utterly impossible for The Phantom Menace.
Ironicly, Ford, and the very young Carrie Fisher do a great job with their lines. It wasn't until ROTJ, that Solo becomes an emasculated, ####-eating grin wearing eunuch.
What new information did we learn about Obi-Wan during The Phantom Menace? I can't think of anything.
I agree that it looked like something Michael Bay would have made. The problem is that I loathe, loathe, loathe those kinds of movies. As such, your point doesn't really do anything to redeem it for me.
Let's define an average action movie. What do you think an average action movie is?
That he was a crashing bore in his youth.
I wasn't really referring to the cancellation of the series, but more along the lines of the popularity and cultural impact of the show being far less than I would have anticipated based on the quality of the first season. Yeah, I know it airs at midnight but you can find episodes on Cartoon Network's website and elsewhere and I'd have thought the internet word-of-mouth just from "The Trial of R. Kelly" alone would have been enough to make it must-watch TV. The Martin Luther King Jr episode is still required viewing every year.
A third or fourth Steven Seagal, Van Damme, Chuck Norris movie might just be replacement level.
But the problem with PM is that it didn't aim to be an action movie nor was it an action movie. It was a drama that was done very badly. As far as Sci-Fi goes The Last Starfighter was more engaging than PM.
Do you mean all characters, or just any characters? Lisa was 7 in the Simpsons first season, had her birthday in the second, and has been 8 ever since. Joseph from King of the Hill went through puberty sometime during the shows run, grew half a foot or so and was very noticeably older. Cleveland Jr aged (and gained a lot of weight) from when he was a bit character on early Family Guy episodes compared to how he is now on The Cleveland Show.
Don't forget the musical version of A Streetcar Named Desire.
And the Sherry Bobbins episode.
The Stonecutters song is just awesome. That's still probably my favorite episode. Patrick Stewart's seemingly serious character calling out, "Now let's all get drunk and play ping-pong!" cracks me up every time.
It's nice to know that John Williams still had it after all those years. "Duel of the Fates" and "Battle of the Heroes" are just as well-done as "Imperial March".
I don't know if anyone else played The Force Unleashed, but I nearly crapped my pants when half-way through the game, "Duel of the Fates" started playing.
I read somewhere (probably in one of the recent Onion AV, George Lucas related threads) that Ford was upset that Lucas didn't kill off Han Solo after the carbonite freezing in tESB and therefore essentially mailed in his performance in RotJ. I hadn't seen that related anywhere before, so who knows, but it certainly isn't out of character from what we know of Ford around that time (cough, cough, theatrical release Blade Runner voice over, cough, cough).
Average quality?
I dunno. The third "Die Hard", maybe?
I find many of the infamous "Censored 11" episodes to be absolutely brilliant, especially in terms of the musical accompaniment. These were works from the giants of 20th century animation - Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Tex Avery, and whatever aspects of their comedic representations may clash with contemporary mores shouldn't overshadow the cultural value of the work itself.
In addition to those 11, the now-controversial WW2-themed episodes "Herr Meets Hare" and "Bugs Bunny Rips the Nips" are still damn funny.
You don't think learning about Obi-Wan's apprenticeship with Qui-Gon was the least bit interesting? Or that Obi-Wan was so brash as an apprentice? Is it great character development, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it keeps me occupied enough between the action sequences. That's really the weakest part of the Phantom Menace. In the original trilogy, the action sequences supported the plot and character development whereas the plot only served to link action sequences together in the Phantom Menace.
Michael Bay is terrible, I agree. I think Phantom Menace is a step up from that. I'm not saying Phantom Menace is great. It's about a 2 or 2.5 star action movie.
OK, I'll give you that one.
I like soundtracks - I'm just not a huge John Williams guy.
But if you show me one like Basil Poledouris's soundtrack for "Conan the Barbarian"? Or some good Morricone? Yeah, I'm all over that.
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