[TV] Talk about the last TV you watched, the catchall thread

Word on the street is that season 3 of Star Trek Picard is better than the previous two. Is this true?
It is.

It still has issues, but it manages to (mostly) work in spite of them. The overarching plot is so much poppycock and nonsense, but the cast and the nostalgia rises above it. It is the first season of the show that feels like it was made by people who actually like Star Trek.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Sweet Tooth season 2

This is damn good storytelling. The characters, the action, the humor, it's all just as good as the first season, and sometimes even better.
 
I watched the most of the first episode of Andor a month or two ago and then never picked it up again. I had trouble investing in everyone in the first episode. I finally came back to it after watching season 3 of Mandalorian and craving some more Star Wars. I finished the first episode and then watched the second. And then binged the rest. By the end I was all in. I love it. More than Mandalorian, maybe. It is at least as good as season 1 of Mandalorian, IMHO, except instead of a space western it is a slow-boil, tense spy thriller with genuine moments of character in each nook and cranny of its storytelling. I am ready for more.
 
*sigh* why oh why must we always have crossovers?! Even in this era of internet on demand viewing, series still aren't available at the same time all over the world. Even if both/all series involved are good and of interest, there's no guarantee a viewer can watch them in the right order - and even if they can, it's a pain in the butt to go and figure out what started where and concludes where etc.
An appearance by characters from A in B? Sure. Have Enterprise dock in DS9. A faux-pilot intro in another series? I guess. Have Pike first appear in Disco.
A story without a resolution ( fuck you and figure out for yourself this gets resolved by a completely different cast in S5E13 in a show you didn't even know existed) or a half story where half the back story doesn't make sense because it's all referring to things and people you don't know? Yuck.
We'll see what happens, I guess.
And yes, i do understand the thinking behind trying to expand the audience for both shows and creating a bigger shared universe. It just doesn't sit well with me and it's annoying as fuck.
 
A story without a resolution [that] gets resolved by a completely different cast in S5E13 in a show you didn't even know existed? Yuck.
[…]It just doesn't sit well with me and it's annoying as fuck.
Man, don’t ever get started reading comic books.

—Patrick
 
Cross-overs are one of the major reasons I never even tried to read print comics on a regular basis.
It's why I gave up on most DC & Marvel books. Said it a million times, but there's TONS of quality, self-contained books out there that don't require additional reading.

I can totally get where Bubble is coming from on this. I started watching Strange New Worlds, thinking I could just jump right into it. But they kept referencing stuff Pike experienced elsewhere. I look into it and I learn Strange New Worlds is, in fact, a a spin-off from Discovery. I didn't even know, because I gave up on Discovery after the first two episodes and stopped paying attention to it. And because of that, I found it difficult to stay invested in Strange New Worlds.

I think this crossover is clever, though, I'm not gonna lie. I don't know how it'll work, but apparently when they're on the Enterprise, everyone is live action, including the actors who voice their respective characters on Lower Decks. When they're on the ship from Lower Decks, though, it'll be animated just like the show. That just sounds neat. I've kept up on Lower Decks, so hopefully I can jump into this episode as a self-contained thing and enjoy the ride as a Lower Decks fan.
 
Guess I’m just different, crossovers don’t phase me at all. Never bothered me in a comic that I would never see the “other parts” of the story, because I was only interested in the characters I liked and didn’t worry about the rest. Same with shows. If it isn’t something I watched anyway I’m not worried about “missing out.” I knew that Strange New Worlds was spinning out of Discovery, but didn’t really tag that the characters were referencing another show. I just chalked it up to “they had a life before this and it’ll fill itself in over time. TOS made references to things that happened before, but I always just accounted it to the characters had a career before this show and let it go.
 
Guess I’m just different, crossovers don’t phase me at all. Never bothered me in a comic that I would never see the “other parts” of the story, because I was only interested in the characters I liked and didn’t worry about the rest. Same with shows. If it isn’t something I watched anyway I’m not worried about “missing out.” I knew that Strange New Worlds was spinning out of Discovery, but didn’t really tag that the characters were referencing another show. I just chalked it up to “they had a life before this and it’ll fill itself in over time. TOS made references to things that happened before, but I always just accounted it to the characters had a career before this show and let it go.
I wouldn't mind it so much if they would at least explain or provide SOME context to what Pike was talking about. I can't even remember the exact details of what it was, but it was an ongoing character development thing with him in the episodes I watched. Explain it, flashback to it, SOMETHING.

Two egregious examples of crossovers that bothered me:

1) The Spider-Gwen comic. It was trotting along fine as its own self-contained thing. I was borrowing the collected editions from the library. And I was digging it, going from Vol 0 to 1...only to start Vol 2 and she suddenly lost her powers in between issues. Turns out, there was this whole crossover called Spider-Women, which included two of her own issues that weren't collected in this series of numbered books, where she lost her powers. Marvel collected those issues a second time in a different format and didn't include that crossover again. No editors note of where this happened. No advertisement for the crossover anywhere in the previous volume. It was poorly marketed and only left me confused about a PRETTY major event for the character that's just glossed over.

2) The Mandalorian. Remember how The Book of Boba Fett show, a spin-off, dedicated two entire episodes to The Mandalorian? They were basically Season 2.5 in all but name. It became incredibly important events for both Mandalorian and Grogu, to the point that if you didn't watch Boba Fett and started Mandalorian Season 3, you wonder 'Wait a second, where the hell did all that stuff they're showing in the recaps? That wasn't in Seasons 1 or 2!"

Again, it's not really a problem if they provide some context and explanation. But to use the comic book analogy, I want to go from Vol 1 to 2 without suddenly needing to do homework on what should be important character events that should happen in that book.
 
2) The Mandalorian. Remember how The Book of Boba Fett show, a spin-off, dedicated two entire episodes to The Mandalorian? They were basically Season 2.5 in all but name. It became incredibly important events for both Mandalorian and Grogu, to the point that if you didn't watch Boba Fett and started Mandalorian Season 3, you wonder 'Wait a second, where the hell did all that stuff they're showing in the recaps? That wasn't in Seasons 1 or 2!"
I maintain that was a decision made halfway through Boba Fett when they realized it was bad.
 
I maintain that was a decision made halfway through Boba Fett when they realized it was bad.
There's probably some truth to that. Even with the finale, the biggest emotional beats came from Mando and Grogu, to the point that everyone else was secondary by comparison.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Guess I’m just different, crossovers don’t phase me at all. Never bothered me in a comic that I would never see the “other parts” of the story, because I was only interested in the characters I liked and didn’t worry about the rest. Same with shows. If it isn’t something I watched anyway I’m not worried about “missing out.” I knew that Strange New Worlds was spinning out of Discovery, but didn’t really tag that the characters were referencing another show. I just chalked it up to “they had a life before this and it’ll fill itself in over time. TOS made references to things that happened before, but I always just accounted it to the characters had a career before this show and let it go.
If the cross-over is just "character from other show/comic appears and then leaves" that's fine, but I've seen a fair number of TV show crossovers where the first half of an episode is from one show, and the second half is from another. If you're trying to watch just the one show you'll either end up watching the first half of an episode, and get no conclusion, or you'll come in mid-plot and have no setup for the ending you watch. I'm pretty sure some print comics have done the same thing, and I know some webcomics have.
 
Is that Brad Boimler and Beckett Mariner? In Strange New Worlds??

My two favourite new Treks collide? Yessir, I'll have another.
 
Jesus Christ, people were (and still are) way too hard on Willow. I liked it, despite some criticisms. Is a perfect show? Hell no. Is it the worst thing to ever exist? Hell no. It was perfectly acceptable entertainment.
Ah, I see you are new to the internet.
Outrage drives engagement, ergo, everything is the best/worst ever, with no middle ground allowed.
 
Ah, I see you are new to the internet.
Outrage drives engagement, ergo, everything is the best/worst ever, with no middle ground allowed.
Oh I know. "Nuance" is a dirty word on the internet. It's why you get things like death threats because a video game reviewer gave GTA 5 a 9/10 (that happened to Carolyn Petit).
 
I finished Mighty Ducks: Game Changers before Disney+ removes it. This is definitely a series parents can sit down and enjoy with their kids. I'm sorry to see it go and I hope it finds its way back to streaming one day.

The second season takes place at an elite summer hockey academy. I taught at a summer program for gifted and talented kids for several years, and I must say they nailed the atmosphere perfectly. The rigorous schedules, the pushy parents, candy being used as currency, etc.
 
I finished Mighty Ducks: Game Changers before Disney+ removes it. This is definitely a series parents can sit down and enjoy with their kids. I'm sorry to see it go and I hope it finds its way back to streaming one day.

The second season takes place at an elite summer hockey academy. I taught at a summer program for gifted and talented kids for several years, and I must say they nailed the atmosphere perfectly. The rigorous schedules, the pushy parents, candy being used as currency, etc.
I'll bet it comes back and something else goes away for a while. It will reduce residuals payments and allow them to advertise that new content is back "out of the vault". This will be the new model, especially if the writers win some major gains on streaming content residuals.
 
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