Category: Television

Fear the Walking Bad Writing

SPOILERS AHEAD, though probably not actual plot spoilers, just scene spoilers. I’m not really sure there is a plot.

I’ve been watching Fear the Walking Dead even though it’s inexcusably awful. Over the last few weeks I haven’t been nearly as offended by the terrible quality because I’ve barely been paying attention. It’s better that way. I just popped on last night’s season finale and I just can’t ignore it anymore.

Example 1: Truck driver speeding down the highway slams on the breaks and comes to a screeching stop. When asked why, he says because the breaks just went out. Really. He slammed on the breaks to stop the truck because the truck had no breaks. Really. Honestly.

Example 2: This isn’t so much a bad writing thing as a they never learn from their mistakes and we all saw this coming thing. Season four, a pre-teen girl murders one of the main characters. The response to the crime is that there is no response. No consequences. The other characters just forgive her and move on. Including the victim’s last remaining family member. (This is definitely a spoiler right here) Season six a pre-teen girl murders one of the main characters. The response is that there is no response. No consequences. The other characters just forgive her and move on. Including the victim’s wife and father. Urgh. Now there’s still a chance that that could change (I’m only half way through the episode) but come on, assholes.

Example 3: So woman I thought we’d never seen before is in the middle of the road with a baby in a back pack on her back. She’s hurt bad and is about to die. She has a dog that randomly happens to be there and she ties herself to the dog, gags herself, and then stabs herself. The dog turns out to be Morgan’s dog even though we haven’t seen it in 100 years. It walks to where Morgan is, even though the dog has never been there before and Morgan had never been there before prior to last week’s episode. The zombified woman follows the dog because she’s tied to it. The baby is still on her back and crying like crazy. The dog manages to find Morgan even though for all we know he’s on the opposite end of Texas (Texas is big, in case you didn’t know) without the baby starving to death, suffocating in the backpack, or the zombie reaching over its own shoulder to grab it. Also, when the woman died there was a missile in the air that had just dropped the first of a handful of nuclear warheads. The woman zombifies and the dog makes it to Morgan, all in less time than it took that first warhead to explode. I mean, there is such a thing as suspension of disbelief and all but this is just friggin’ ridiculous.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that Morgan knew the zombie woman? There have been 10000 characters in the last two years. Most appear once and then magically come back at the end and we’re supposed to know who they are?

The whole damn show is written like it’s some half assed Rube Goldberg machine.

Season six is finally over. It was better than season five but only because season five was the worst piece of shit ever filmed. This was better, but not by much. Please cancel this idiocy and put us out of our misery.

SundaySundaySunday

We’re going to see Bellana for a bit today. It’s like Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, back in December when Covid-19 ruined the traditional extended family Christmas we talked about having a Christmas party in July. Literally Christmas in July. I don’t know if that’s going to happen as we planned it, but I’m still game if everyone else is.

HoHoHo in the sunshine and all that? It could work. We can look back on it as a test drive if we ever find ourselves spending Christmas in Australia.

It could happen, right?

Harry’s not getting the standard graduation party, but we are going to take him back to Disney at some point. We have a date in mind which means we also have a date when we can actually buy tickets for the dates we want to go. There is an entry on our family calendar right now that marks the date when we can first book the dates we want to go… I want to find a way to celebrate that date as a sort of screw you to Covid-19. The ‘Rona messed up Harry’s last two school years and we need to go as overboard as humanly possible on the corrective overreacting. If that means celebrating the day we buy tickets then let’s do it!

I’m trying to write this while watching an episode of Community and my concentration is all over the place. Can you tell or does this post read like it was written by someone with Changnesia?

Loki

Loki has begun. We watched it together today. I’m at my parents tonight but we were able to sneak it in on a break.

I’m hooked. I can’t wait for episode 2. How many will there be? I’ve heard six. Can’t wait. Feel that hype. Bring it.

Harry has one more graduation rehearsal before the real thing on Friday. I’m so freaking excited for him!!!

Random Stuff at Lunch Time

Epically busy day today. Sneaking in a short post during a short lunch break. What’s going on, Robert?

When the Covid-19 lock down started I had to grab a webcam so that I could join in on the video conferencing fun. Last week I was on a Google Meet meeting and my camera started flipping out like a crazy person. I tried a couple of USB ports and it was a problem in more than one, but eventually it stabilized itself. That leads me to think there is something breaking loose within the cable. This morning I was on a Zoom meeting and my camera kept shutting off. Turns out it was basically the same issue. I ended up opening up my clam shelled laptop and using the built in camera. It’s working. Folks can see my mug when I am speaking.

Still… a Covid-19 specific tech gadget purchase failed to outlive the lock down. I’m probably going to replace it someday so that I can go back to clam shell. When I go back to the office (which is imminent) I won’t have my gigantic monitor and I’ll have the lappy open anyway, so a replacement camera will just be a home office guy.

I don’t know why but I redid my Spotify Mood Music playlist. I put this together ages ago with the intent being I would update it all the time. Any time I was drawn to a new band or song or whatever I would add something to the playlist. I kept that up for about a minute. Maybe this time I’ll stay active. I don’t use Spotify but it’s easy to share on the blog so that’s why I do it. Whatever.

Jen spoke to Harry a little bit today. He has had his first graduation practice session! We got the details on the ceremony. Masks optional and no socially distant seating. Oh good. The pandemic is over, folks. You made it through! I guess the 11,277 new cases and 245 new deaths yesterday were imagined.

Sorry. This is not a bitch about Covid thing. This is a Harry is a Legend who is graduating from High School in three days post!

Legen…

Wait for it…

We get a new Marvel show on Disney Plus starting tomorrow. Loki. Wednesdays instead of Fridays, that’s new. I think I liked Fridays better in general, but Wednesdays work too. While watching WandaVision we got into the groove of having burgers and fries for dinner while we watched the new episodes. That carried on through The Falcon and The Winter Soldier too. It will continue with Loki. I have no idea what this show is going to be like. I just know that all of us are psyched. Come on, Marvel. Live up to the hype, people! Bring it!

…dary! Legendary!

Game Night

It’s game night. Bruins and Islanders game #3 from Long Island. The Bruins need to bounce back after the overtime loss and regain the home ice advantage.

I’m at home right now, starting the work day, but tonight I will be at my parents’ house. I was a day late but I was able to watch this week’s The Handmaid’s Tale this morning before work, so I won’t be distracted by that come game time tonight. Of course, I have the attention span of a gnat these days so I will probably find something to watch at the same time I watch the game. So many choices, so many screens.

Tomorrow I’ll sneak in this week’s episode of The Bad Batch before work, then I’ll get through most of the work day, and then my father will come home. I have no idea how things will work once he’s home, but we will continue as we currently are for a while. The goal is to get him back to a point where he doesn’t need us at the house 24/7. Once things level out we’ll have to have some hard conversations about how we avoid letting this happen again.

Until then, work… and then Bruins.

Go Bruins.

Sunday Morning Thoughts

The Bruins won game one of their second round series last night. The Maple Leafs lost game six of their first round series last night. A Bruins win and a Leaf’s first round lost sounds about normal to me.

What else is going on? It’s a dad weekend for the kids but they are coming over for lunch to celebrate our Anniversary. Jen and I just came back from the bakery. There will be cake. Oh, such cake.

I need to shave, but the Bruins are in the playoffs. Oh, what to do.

I don’t know what brought it on, but a couple of weeks ago I had the urge to watch a little Mystery Science Theater 3000. I joined a Facebook fan group too. I knew that Netflix had dropped the current incarnation of the show, but I did not know that on the day I joined that BookFayce group they were kicking off a Kick Starter (hehe pun) campaign to fan fund a new season. They hit their goal on the first day. How cool is that? It made me want to watch the show even more.

Last night I went looking around to see which streaming services had episodes. Netflix used to, but now they only have the Netflix version of the show. Hulu had the movie. HBO had nuttin’, but that was expected. Amazon Prime Video had a bunch but I was signed in as me and our Prime account is Jen’s. I tried to log in as her but got prompted for two factor authentication and just gave up.

Last night, just before bed, as the Bruins game was wrapping up, someone posted a list of free streaming services that had episodes. What the hell, let’s check one out. I downloaded the Pluto TV app on my iPhone. Not only do they have episodes, but they have a continuous channel that only runs MST3K episodes. Jackpot! WOOHOO! Turns out they have a channel for RiffTrax episodes too! (RiffTrax is made up of former MST3K writers and they riff on movies in the same way. It’s basically MST3K without the cut scenes… or maybe they have cut scenes too… I can’t remember. I’ve only seen a couple of episodes) Safe to say I am going to be using the Pluto TV app pretty frequently for a while.

Nana sitting over night tonight into tomorrow. Packing up the cars and having a little Memorial Day cookout after I get home tomorrow. Driving to Vermont and helping Bellana move in on Tuesday. It’s gonna be a busy couple of days and that doesn’t even include the Bruins tomorrow night and oodles of MST3K.

Addendum: I edited the post. I originally said that Pluto TV had a Cinematic Titanic channel. It doesn’t. It’s RiffTrax. I fixed it. Also, they have a desktop app for Mac too!

Tuesday Night Nana Sitting

Last night was okay. My brother told me that my mother had slept most of the day so I was a little nervous that she’d be up all night, struggling with back and leg pain. Nope. She went to bed not long after her 8pm meds and slept most of the way through the night. I was ready for sleep around 10, but ended up staying awake until 11. I woke up to go to the bathroom a bit before 5:00am and ended up sitting up for half an hour before trying to sleep again. All together I got about 6.5 hours of sleep, and that’s pretty good for a night on Mom and Dad’s two-seater.

I did manage to watch this week’s Handmaid’s Tale this morning before work. So the misery porn show switches gears and gives us a tear jerker that at the last minute morphs into something really dark and scary. In other words, a pretty friggin’ great episode. Again.

Okay, it’s 9:00am now and I am signed in to work. Let’s get this day rolling, shall we?

Movie #2 and More Bad TV Writing

The Godfather II was a success. The kids were more into the Vito story than the Michael story. The question now is, do we eventually watch Godfather III too? Undecided. I honestly feel that if that movie was called Random Old Mafia Guy instead of Godfather, then it would be considered a classic. It’s good, just not good enough to live up to the name. We’ll see.

Bellana asked if we could watch the first episode of Indestructible. I didn’t know anything about the story, but I did know that there is a twist at the end of the first episode that was surprisingly violent. Jen and Harry did not know that. Bellana waited until the scene in question started before she gave the warning. What a stinker, eh? It was a good episode. I’ll watch more.

So that’s the good movie/TV part of the story. Now for the bad. I’m watching last night’s Fear the Walking Dead. Why do I do this to myself? Season six episode 14 features the second appearance by this season’s big bad. That’s right. The bad guy has now been in two episodes. All of the other episodes were apparently just filler? Much like Stairway to Heaven it makes me wonder (get it? hehe)… Is this guy the big bad for season six, or is he really the big bad for season seven? Are they going to let this stupid, stupid story line go for another year? Good lord, please no!

I’m sure John Glover is a nice guy. I’m sure he has a family and loves them and treats them well. I’m sure he gives a little money to charity when he can. I’m sure if the opportunity arose he would help an old woman cross the street, and I’m sure he would never kick a puppy. I just think maybe… just maybe… it’s time for him to put the bad acting to rest for a while. Maybe it’s time to move behind the camera, or get an office job, or open a fast food restaurant franchise or something.