The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale's shocking season 4 ending shows that June Osborne is in a very dark place. I'm disappointed that it is over and we have to wait maybe 10 months for the next season. I hope that the show builds to some logical conclusion and just doesn't drag out indefinitely until it gets canceled.

Facebook question.

I saw these on Facebook...

LOST. Stargate SG-1. Battlestar Galactica. The Mandalorian. Deep Space 9. Babylon 5. Stargate Atlantis. Stargate Universe. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. M*A*S*H. Dark Matter. All 2 to 3 times. These are all great shows. LOST is in a league by itself. Battlestar Galactica and The Mandalorian are close.

Deep Space Nine has the best set of characters of any Star Trek show. Stargate SG-1 starts out a little rough but mostly gets better with every new season. The last two seasons are just amazing. Buffy starting around season 4 had one special episode every season that is experimental but also puts your jaw on the floor. Buffy takes midway into season 2 to get really good. Season 1 looks low-budget, and one only needs to watch the beginning, the middle, and the end. Babylon 5 had some amazing story arcs.

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Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

By a nose

I was watching Star Trek The Next Generation season 2 and I noticed that these two characters have the same nose.  It turns out that it is the same actress.  

In this case, it wasn't so obvious.   I used to get annoyed with Star Trek for recycling actors because it is pretty obvious...

Stargate: Atlantis 🔥 Then And Now - YouTube

Stargate SG-1 is a great series

https://www.fandom.com/articles/stargate-sg1-worked-well

Only rarely do I pay attention to broadcast television.  In the small city of Columbus, Indiana with an indoor antenna, I receive just a handful of stations, most of which are useless.  I get only one major television network.  There is a science fiction channel called "Comet" that I watch more than anything else, although I don't watch it very often.  About a month ago I noticed that they were playing an episode of Stargate SG-1 that I liked, so rather than watch it with commercials on television, I watched the same episode on Netflix streaming.

My point is that there is something very special about this series.  Even though I had already seen the entire series three times since its inception in 1997, I ended up rewatching the final two seasons again, which I think are really excellent, save for three or four episodes near the end that feel like filler.  (The truly magnificent show Battlestar Galactica had the same problem toward its end.)  Then Stargate SG-1 finishes off with a couple of made-for-TV movies that are really good.

The series is magical for me because I became attached to the characters.  If you love the characters on any show, then it is going to be addicting.

Stargate SG-1 also has some particularly good story arcs.  The first season starts a little rough, but it quickly gets better.  For the most part, this show improves with every new season.   The last two seasons deal with a new story arc that I like very much. 

Around 2009 the producers made an improved version of the pilot TV movie, "Children of the Gods".  It is better edited and looks better, and they took out a nude scene that some people might find objectionable.  This improved version is not available on Netflix.  

I complained to Netflix about the video quality of Stargate SG-1 on their service, because the resolution appears to be about the same as videotape.  

The spinoff series "Stargate Atlantis" is at least as good.  It has a more consistent quality.  The other short-lived spinoff series, "Stargate Universe", had a weak start, but over time got really good.

The Handmaid’s Tale

https://tv.avclub.com/the-handmaid-s-tale-briefly-slows-down-to-take-a-closer-1846920978

The Handmaid's Tale. Oh, my goodness. I felt at first that the episode was dragging on too long, but that ending packed a powerful punch. It is extremely rare that I would applaud an episode of a television show, but I also broke down and cried. Powerful stuff.

Craig Ferguson | About Last Night Podcast with Adam Ray

Craig Ferguson got his career started with a bad audition.  When they first put him on late-night, I wondered who this Scottish guy was doing late-night?  However, I ended up loving his show.

It's a good Calvin & Hobbes fan strip. It's real good! : TwilightZone

https://www.reddit.com/r/TwilightZone/comments/eju7rc/its_a_good_calvin_hobbes_fan_strip_its_real_good/

In case you didn't know, this is a take-off on...

https://www.google.com/search?q=it%27s+a+good+life+twilight+zone

It is a 1961 Twilight Zone episode about a small child with god-like powers who terrorizes a small town.

I read the original science fiction short story before I saw the Twilight Zone episode that was adapted from it.  When they remade the TV Twilight Zone Series in the early 2000s, they did a sequel to the original episode 40 years later.  Bill Mummy reprised his role as the "monster" with god-like powers, and Cloris Leachman reprised her role as his mother.  I thought that this was a brilliant idea.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734791/

Ironically, another 20 years have passed.  There is yet another new Twilight Zone series on CBS All Access.  It is time for another sequel.  It could set a record for having a 60-year story arc.  Bill Mummy is still alive, although Cloris Leachman died in January from a combination of stroke and COVID.  She played in "The Croods" animated movie that I liked and the very recently released "The Croods 2: A New Age."

Most impressive so far... (The Bad Batch: Episode 2 Spoiler Review & Discussion)

FYI.

Wrecker seems too much like Zeb.  I thought that the shootout scene lacked believability because a couple of clones fought off a dozen stormtroopers.  However, the show did hit a couple of important emotional notes, but none of it was earth-shattering.

The first episode was so good that I watched it a couple of times and I will likely watch it again.  This one not so much.  It was like watching the Star Trek The Next Generation Episode "Family", where the episode hit a couple of emotional notes and not much else.

Clone Wars: Battle of the Heroes | MAY 4th TRAILER! (Anakin vs. Obi-wan fan animation)

Although very short, it is hard to believe that this is fan-made animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rio2B5_-bSo

Chaos On The Bridge (Star Trek The Next Generation)

I really enjoyed watching this...

https://www.shoutfactorytv.com/chaos-on-the-bridge/5fd870015b336b0001356133

The Bad Batch Episode 1 Breakdown

From the first episode, The Bad Batch appears to be a very good sequel series to both The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels.  It has a great set of characters and the show fits nicely into the existing Star Wars lore.

Final Space and the Problem with Western Animation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHTuvspSmOE

10 Mind-Blowing Battlestar Galactica Facts You Didn't Know

New Battlestar Galactica is a "Punch to the Gut" for Tricia Helfer

I think that the 2003 Battlestar Galactica is one of the best shows that I have ever seen.  I have rewatched it a couple of times.  

My only complaint is that the early episodes try excessively to play up the sex appeal of certain characters, like the actress Tricia Helfer, and after rewatching the series a couple of times then this starts to feel like a gimmick.

Stranger Things

I've been somewhat skimming through Stranger Things on Netflix streaming.   The show as presented seems too slow to me.  I don't care about some of the characters, and the 80's E.T./The Goonies feel seems cheesy to me.  However, the story is interesting enough that I want to see where it is going.

The show has a similar feel to "The X-files", which I tried to watch years ago, but I concluded that the show was going nowhere fast.  The producers of "The X-Files" later admitted that their goal was to keep the audience in the dark for as long as possible.

Since the main characters are like 12-year-old boys, which gives the show its cuteness, it wouldn't take many seasons for these kids to lose their cuteness.

Remember warming up the TV before watching it?

For those who don't remember, on powering up really old televisions the image would start as a dot in the middle of the screen, and then expand. It might only take a couple of seconds to a few seconds to reach full size. The reason for this is that old televisions used vacuum tubes instead of transistors, and these needed warming up. I remember going to a repair shop that had dozens of different types of tubes for replacement parts.

Sometime in the mid-1970s, manufacturers began to advertise televisions that were "Instant On". Since many of these TV's still used vacuum tubes, I noticed that these TV's kept some of the vacuum tubes powered up even when the TV was "off". I could tell because most vacuum tubes glowed. Many old televisions had heat vents toward the back and an orange glow would emanate from these vents. It would light up the wall behind my television.  The TV also put out a great deal of heat.

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Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Grant Full Episodes, Video & More | HISTORY

Been watching the history channel biography of Grant. This is pretty good. https://www.history.com/shows/grant

Raised by Wolves TV series

I want to talk briefly about the HBO series Raised by Wolves available on the HBO Max streaming service. On HBO Max, I couldn't tell how many episodes there are, or even if there is more than one, which is a problem I think with their service. I had to look the show up on Wikipedia to find out. I thought that maybe it was a two-hour movie, but the first season has 10 roughly 50-minute episodes and a second season is also planned.

The premise is that after a religious war has destroyed Earth, two androids, called Mother and Father, land on Keppler-22b, which is a real planet about 60 light-years from Earth. They start a settlement using human embryos to create several children. Unfortunately, only one survives. The androids do not believe in religion because they were created by the atheist faction of the war, but their settlement is threatened by the religious faction when a large ship called an "Ark" arrives and also wants to settle on Keppler-22b. The two sides are immediately in conflict with each other. It turns out that Mother is also a powerful and very deadly war robot.

The first episode sets up the premise so slowly that I was thinking that I wasn't going like this show, but when the religious faction shows up things get going in a big way. The way the story is presented, neither side is particularly evil, but the two sides just don't get along. (If they would just agree to live together then there wouldn't be much of a story.)

I think that the show follows a formula that makes it very addicting. The series is mostly a soap opera, which is true of many science fiction shows, and this drags out the story, but every episode has one startling revelation and some sort of cliffhanger. This couldn't be a more addicting combination. They give you just barely enough story in each episode to keep you wanting more. Sometimes the plot seems thin, but it is the kind of series that makes you want to binge-watch. Since the show also has many flashbacks, the format is similar to LOST.

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Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Lost (TV series)

Lost has regularly been ranked by critics as one of the greatest television series of all time.  The first season had an estimated average of 16 million viewers per episode on ABC. During its sixth and final season, the show averaged over 11 million U.S. viewers per episode. Lost was the recipient of hundreds of industry award nominations throughout its run and won numerous of these awards, including the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 2005, Best American Import at the British Academy Television Awards in 2005, the Golden Globe Award for Best Drama in 2006, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Drama Series.

 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_(TV_series)

Kualoa Ranch - Google Maps

Also a filming location for LOST.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kualoa+Ranch/@21.5209508,-157.8380037,17.33z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x7c004401d5b06d6b:0xfd4ad05c61e8fe78!8m2!3d21.5206574!4d-157.837261

69 Farrington Hwy - Google Maps

A YMCA camp served as the housing for the "others" antagonist characters on the TV show LOST.  In the series, it appears to be a remote location, but it is actually next to a road.

https://www.google.com/maps/@21.5780519,-158.224412,3a,75y,215.16h,80.08t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1san2u66Gw2axJq84MgUSVoQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

Lost Survivors Beach Camp

https://www.google.com/maps/@21.6136026,-158.0942037,3a,75y,25.66h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNf9-FzvcSAl_eKKtC4ZRhPzvmsEpyXmCG04c4C!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNf9-FzvcSAl_eKKtC4ZRhPzvmsEpyXmCG04c4C%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya266.06924-ro0-fo100!7i4000!8i2000

Mash film location

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0965004,-118.7447815,3a,87.5y,331.31h,86.97t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMgCDwgMnL1klwaJSIxkva5UwwOTqR9fZLY_xE!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMgCDwgMnL1klwaJSIxkva5UwwOTqR9fZLY_xE%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya118.6638-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352

Senet

Senet is the world's oldest known board game and is likely the precursor of Backgammon.  It is a game of chance where you try to reach the number one spot before your opponent, but you also have to get your other "pawns" behind your leading man.

Most websites admit that they don't know for sure what the rules were and that the rules probably changed over time.  I have heard that the game was based on a chariot race.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senet

http://www.gamecabinet.com/history/Senet.html

The game of Senet is featured in a last-season episode of LOST, which bookends the first episode where Locke tells Walt that Backgammon is the world's oldest board game dating back thousands of years.  He tells Walt that there are two sides, one light, and one dark, which we are lead to believe is maybe a reference to Locke being white and Walt being black, but this conversation actually foreshadows the final season which is a battle between the supernatural forces of good and evil.

The Stand 2020 vs. The Stand 1994

Comparing the 2020 CBS All Access miniseries of Stephen King's most popular novel, The Stand, to the 1994 ABC miniseries of the same novel, I like the 1994 version a little better.

The original series doesn't look as good. It looks like it was filmed in the 1980s or the 1970s.

Despite the new series having a higher production quality, I have a few problems with it. The pacing starts out really slow. It takes longer to tell the same story. However, it redeems itself in the last three episodes which are really good. The final episode is nothing but epilogue, but very intriguing.

My biggest problem with the new series is the adult content. There is quite a bit of nudity and other mature content, which can be okay, but I don't think that it works here. There is so much of it that it serves as a distraction, and doesn't seem to add much to the story. Perhaps if they had toned it down a little then it would have worked better.

Both miniseries tell a very good story. The original had a kind of creepy tone that worked well, and I think that the characters were better.

Daniel Jackson Teased for a NEW Stargate Series

In the past, I always thought of Stargate SG-1 as being on the low end of Sci-Fi shows.  However, I kept going back to it.  I have watched the entire Stargate SG-1 series at least three times, and at least a couple of times for the spin-off series.  (Stargate Atlantis is really good.)  I came to realize that this is a really good show.  It is mostly the characters that kept me coming back, but there are also some surprisingly excellent story arcs. 

The show is significantly better than the movie it is based on.  Some of the early episodes in season 1 are not the best, but then the series gets consistently good.  There are very few bad episodes in the entire ten-season run.

I had a similar experience with Star Trek Deep Space Nine.  It has the best set of characters of any Star Trek Series.  These characters feel like long-lost friends.  Some of the episodes are kind of hit or miss, but more hits than misses.  The series is less serial than other shows, and that hurts it a little bit.

In passing, I should mention Babylon-5.  I don't think that the characters are as good as Deep Space Nine, although still good.  It looks lower budget, but it has some really impressive story arcs.  The overall story is more complicated than most shows.  Season 1 was a little rough.

Ask Adam Savage: How Lead Balloon Changed MythBusters

Cutting to the chase, after 10 minutes and 40 seconds, Adam Savage gets to the point:

https://youtu.be/h70kbIzPgig?t=640

Stephen King's THE STAND - 1994 - HD

Just in time for 2020, Steven King's pandemic novel The Stand was adapted to a TV series by CBS All Access.  However, the 1994 TV version of this story is higher rated.  Some critics say that the new version a bit of a mess, although about half of the critics call it passable entertainment.  

I watched some of the 1994 version, but I didn't get to finish it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtS72J9qEs

there will Never Ever be another Simpsons episode like Homer's Enemy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq-qU_GCCLI

I had seen at least part of the episode "Homer's Enemy", but never gave it much thought.

I only on rare occasion watch the Simpsons, but I enjoy it, and I especially enjoyed the early years.  I had never seen the show until I had a chance in the 1990s to work a little on a Simpsons videogame, so I took an interest in it.  

There is an almost universal consensus that starting with Season 9 Episode 2, "The Principal and the Pauper", with an absurd storyline about Principal Skinner being an imposter, the show went into decline.  

I am amazed that the show has lasted 32 seasons.  In one of the episodes celebrating something like the 500th episode, there is some text in the end credits that says, "Think of all the things you could have accomplished if you hadn't watched this show."