The Official Television Thread

[Foxaèr]

Thank you for fifteen wonderful years!



Going to miss this show.

[Rev. Rye]

The Reverend's official reaction to the Third Season Premiere of Westworld after not having watched Season 2 in about a year:





I think this might be why I almost never watch TV shows in the traditional "one episode per week" manner anymore...

[Foxaèr]

@The Valkyrie

Dean tap dancing. hehe

[Foxaèr]

Throwback to classic Castiel:

[Rev. Rye]

Alison and I are taking advantage of the pandemic and watching Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Somehow, this sketch seems relevant:




Can't put my finger on why, though.

[Rev. Rye]

Now that I'm caught up with The Venture Bros. and Bojack Horseman, I'm currently Netflixing Anne With an E.

So, this version of Anne really ramps up how dark her past was and how effected she was by it, and it can really hit home with my dark past. So, how do you blunt the impact?

Whenever one of these scenes starts,




I scramble for one of my other devices and play this (or something like this) at the same time:




It's kind of incongruous to imagine this 11-year old Canadian girl with the unusually large forehead as a Vietnam vet. Then again, a lot of fans of the original novel are kind of put off by the change of tone, even if half the shit they complain about was actually in the original books.

[Foxaèr]

@The Valkyrie

[Foxaèr]

Not sure how I ever overlooked Portlandia, but I'm four seasons in.

[Rev. Rye]

Been watching Succession on Hulu now that HBO unlocked a small part of their library.

I recently watched the episode where they had to deal with hiring a Nazi for their news network (and it's really a testament to how fucking insane the political scene is right now that I don't know exactly who he's supposed to be based on) and there's even a scene where he's being interrogated for damage control reasons and he keeps digging himself in deeper. And somehow, I found myself wanting to create my own answers for those questions, as a Third Reich buff who doesn't sympathise with their goals (and indeed, spent a good portion of a recent Anglotopia article mocking them because they're unsympathetic):

Q: Did you really name your dog Blondie after Hitler's dog?
A: Actually, I named her after Clint Eastwood. You ever watch The Good The Bad and The Ugly? What's his character's name? He actually does have a name: Blondie. (The only truly fake answer answer of the three I wrote; the other two are my honest answers.)
Q: Have you ever read Mein Kampf?
A: I've skimmed it a few times, but I've never been able to read it cover to cover. You ever try reading that shit? It's 700 pages long, and half of it's just whiny rambling about his past and the other half is his long-winded rambling about his bullshit ideology. If you're into that sort of thing, Elliot Rodger's manifesto is a fifth of the length and his grievances are frequently so petty that it becomes humourous. Frankly, if you're at all curious, there's a nursery rhyme version that's a hell of a lot easier to read and tells you everything you need to know about the book. I wouldn't recommend the full thing unless you were really interested in that period of history, and even then, you'll be tempted to throw the damn thing at the wall and the only thing that'll keep you from doing it is it's so fucking huge you'll probably damage the wall.
Q: What specifically do you find interesting about that period of history?
A: Simple: how the fuck did a nation that brought the world Schopenhauer and Goethe (and had helped cinema come into its own as an art form a few years earlier in the Weimar Republic) descend into barbarity and plunge the world into the biggest bloodbath in its history? And frankly, with the rise of Trump and the Alt-right, I believe the last few years have turned my interest from a morbid curiosity to a moral duty to figure it all out so at least some of us can recognise fascism and stop it before it spreads.

And now, an illustration of the Reverend's chances at a job at Not-Fox News while speaking that last sentence:

[arewethereyet]

I watched the first season of 'The Handmaid's Tale' over the last few days. I know, late to the party.

Pretty sure I am appropriately horrified by the story. The series didn't draw me in the way some others have but now I want to keep going to see what happens.