series What series are you watching?

Yup. The point is, for me, not that these people are stupid, but that we, being people, are stupid.

Most people learn, I guess in high school, how to answer the question: what is the scientific method? But it wasn't until college that the beauty and power of it really hit me, really kind of knocked me out. It was in a class on the history of cosmology, carefully designed, by a really great guy, to make just this point.

So: Aristotle had decided, BCE, that everything in the heavens traveled in perfect circles, because the circle was, well, perfect, as everything in the heavens must be. Then, I guess, Jebus said that the earth had to be the center of everything. Ptolemy, in the second century, worked it all out in an insane model of the solar system, a crazy spirograph of circles upon circles that actually worked pretty well.

Anyway, some two thousand years of dark ages later, Copernicus moved the sun to the center, and shortly after, Kepler replaced the beautiful circles with homely ellipses. And then there was light.

My point, if I have one, is that everything would be so much better if it were common knowledge that powerful methodologies do exist that can determine the likelihood of something, of anything, being true.

anyway,

(yea, I know; I'm a little sententious this evening, lol)
 
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I agree, humankind in general has..... overestimated it's own intellect fairly consistently.

People hear me call this group or that stupid, and assume I think I'm smarter than them, but no one ever asks if I think I'm stupid. The reality is that by a certain metric, I'm extremely stupid. And that is the metric I use. THAT, might be the smartest thing I actually do, because it puts me in a position where I am consistently open to new information, but never taking any of it at face value. People that think they are smarter than everyone else commonly stop learning. In an ever changing world, that means that you're in a countdown to stupidity scenario, at best, more likely you didn't know as much as you thought you did in the first place. People that think they are less intelligent than everyone else are commonly susceptible to brainwashing, a ubiquitous part of our modern society, fertilized into it's current Godzilla sized state by advertising, with the progress on steroids ever since the age of targeted digital ads, which created what we call the "echochamber", a trade where we bartered our national sanity for the ability to hawk luxury goods.

It's a simple metric for what constitutes smart. A smart person would think things through, act on all of the information they have, not pretend to know things that they didn't know, and basically make decisions and plans using logic and reason. They would try to treat others fairly, no specific others, just any others, as a contribution to the valuable social contract we call civilization. They would think before speaking, listen to others even when the others didn't say what they already thought, and become aware of the flaws in their own reasoning organically. It's an endless road, trying to better yourself, and I'm weaving all over it, lol.

Here's probably the smartest quote I ever read, I honestly can't find much fault with it -

Treat other people the way you would like to be treated.
 
Finished Servant, I'd say 4/5 rating, really great series overall, would recommend all four seasons from start to finish.
Very nicely made with great performances, characters, writing and a suspenseful mystery that solidly concludes without any stupid twists

This Nell Tiger Free woman (played Jamie Lannisters daughter in GoT) is really a force, enough to carry a show four seasons, we are definitely gonna see more of her in the future.


The red headed mom actress screams "Seannnnn" way too much though, its my name, and it really grates on my nerves everytime she yells it lol

angry leave me alone GIF by Team Coco


contains spoilers, but the point is she yells her husbands name enough for it to be a meme lol

 
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sfoster said:
Finished Servant, I'd say 4/5 rating, really great series overall, would recommend all four seasons from start to finish.
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Servant was really great m night shamalan series and had a non-gimmicky, awesome ending.

Recently I've been rewatching south park and for some odd reason I can understand Kenny now but I could never understand him years ago when I used to watch the show. Anyway kinda nice, I get a little extra punchline added to the show now and again through kenny dialogue.

It's also interesting how much I disagree with some of the episodes, like there is one episode where they are shitting all over mel gibson for passion of the christ, acting like gibson is such a bad person for making the film... but meanwhile they have 20 years of the basically using hate speech against jews as a catch phrase of their main character. like dudes you do not have any moral high ground over mel gibson. so many people love and imitate cartman quotes over the years.
 
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Watching "The Night Agent" and its a pretty good show to laugh at.
It's like they did a first draft of each episode then just started filming lol, its not bad but all off the edges are rough as hell

I'm at the beginning of episode 2 dude is yelling "SHE DIDN'T GET A SCRATCH ON HER!" and that compelled me to post this.
The continuity is so bad, idk if they don't have a show runner or if he's too busy doing cocaine or what but she was bleeding FROM THE FACE in episode one after she got cut on glass lol she definitely got a scratch on her, and they made a point to even talk about it with dialogue but that just completely disappeared by episode 2. the edges are so rough. the pacing seems good at least. its better if youre prepared to laugh at it (not with it)

episode 3 now this shit is still making me laugh. this show is like a 24 fan fiction
 
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Been watching final season of PICARD, season 3 ( i skipped the first two seasons cause i heard they were slow)

Season 3 is awesome, it's got all The Next Generation cast, 7 of 9 from voyager, changlings from deep space nine, and even (spoiler) it feels like the 'avengers endgame' of Star Trek, and the writing is serialized like a movie.

Some of the phaser fighting is done VERY poorly, which is a shame bc with very small changes it could have been much better. But whatever phaser shooting is only like 5% of the story and it's a really great season to watch for anyone that wants to revisit some old trekkie buddies.
 
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sfoster said:
Been watching final season of PICARD, season 3 ( i skipped the first two seasons cause i heard they were slow)

Season 3 is awesome, it's got all The Next Generation cast, 7 of 9 from voyager, changlings from deep space nine, and even (spoiler) it feels like the 'avengers endgame' of Star Trek, and the writing is serialized like a movie.

Some of the phaser fighting is done VERY poorly, which is a shame bc with very small changes it could have been much better. But whatever phaser shooting is only like 5% of the story and it's a really great season to watch for anyone that wants to revisit some old trekkie buddies.
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Oh me too! It would be hard to say this season of the show didn't do some major fan pandering, but I haven't seen such good Trek TV since the Berman years, so I can more than live with it. Picard came in on a questionable note, but it's going out on an epic one!
 
I Agree, Picard season 3 really turned things around. Glad they got it together finally. I do hate it when a show goes off the air 5 minutes after they finally get it working, but in this case I think that Patrick Stewart has probably worked hard enough for one lifetime.

Any bets on Star Trek returning with an all star cast in their prime 7 years from now via an all deepfake cast? The studios already dipped their toe in with resurrected characters in Star Wars and a young Robert Downey in one of the Marvel films. It's only a matter of time now, and Star Trek is kind of an obvious place to try it.
 
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sfoster said:
Watching "The Night Agent" and its a pretty good show to laugh at.
It's like they did a first draft of each episode then just started filming lol, its not bad but all off the edges are rough as hell

I'm at the beginning of episode 2 dude is yelling "SHE DIDN'T GET A SCRATCH ON HER!" and that compelled me to post this.
The continuity is so bad, idk if they don't have a show runner or if he's too busy doing cocaine or what but she was bleeding FROM THE FACE in episode one after she got cut on glass lol she definitely got a scratch on her, and they made a point to even talk about it with dialogue but that just completely disappeared by episode 2. the edges are so rough. the pacing seems good at least. its better if youre prepared to laugh at it (not with it)

episode 3 now this shit is still making me laugh. this show is like a 24 fan fiction
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Algorithmic magic took me to "The Night Agent" when I checked out (and checked out of) "24" after you mentioned it in the attention-holding thread (could only cope with 45 minutes of "24" - don't know how you stuck it for 180 hours ... :scared: )

But jeeeez, was this really supposed to be a gritty drama? I never got as far as the continuity glitches - I was too busy reacting to the sheer stupidity of this supposedly highly trained FBI agent. Straight off, in Episode 1, they make the point that he's highly recognisable; yet half a series later, when he knows everyone's looking for him, the incompetent idiot sits in a parked stolen car (curiously the only one parked there) outside a significant public building, no hat, no sunglasses, no attempt at concealing his identity ... and then he's surprised when a bunch of "patriots" see him from across the street. :rolleyes:
 
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CelticRambler said:
Algorithmic magic took me to "The Night Agent" when I checked out (and checked out of) "24" after you mentioned it in the attention-holding thread (could only cope with 45 minutes of "24" - don't know how you stuck it for 180 hours ... :scared: )

But jeeeez, was this really supposed to be a gritty drama? I never got as far as the continuity glitches - I was too busy reacting to the sheer stupidity of this supposedly highly trained FBI agent. Straight off, in Episode 1, they make the point that he's highly recognisable; yet half a series later, when he knows everyone's looking for him, the incompetent idiot sits in a parked stolen car (curiously the only one parked there) outside a significant public building, no hat, no sunglasses, no attempt at concealing his identity ... and then he's surprised when a bunch of "patriots" see him from across the street. :rolleyes:
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Yeah the night agent is comicly flawed but i still was entertained.

24 is awesome though I've seen every episode. did you try watching the orginal 24 with Kiefer sutherland or the spin off 24: Redemption?
 
sfoster said:
did you try watching the orginal 24 with Kiefer sutherland or the spin off 24: Redemption?
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The original. I didn't warm to any of the characters (at all) and it felt like Episode 1 was setting up too many different storylines for no reason other than to fill 23 more episodes.

At least The Night Agent only employed flashbacks and red herrings to move the main story forward.
 
CelticRambler said:
The original. I didn't warm to any of the characters (at all) and it felt like Episode 1 was setting up too many different storylines for no reason other than to fill 23 more episodes.

At least The Night Agent only employed flashbacks and red herrings to move the main story forward.
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I don't remember exactly S1E1, but flashbacks are not a staple of the 24 series, theyre basically not used at all.
And all of the storylines intersect with relation to the main plot, it's very well done, order of magnitude better than the night agent.

sorry you didn't like it, or warm to any of the characters, didn't mean to waste your 45 minutes.
I have seen a lot more than 180 hours of it lol, shit counting season 2 alone I've probably seen that 7 times.

In particular I loved Dennis Haysbert's character from season one playing senator David Palmer

Dennis Haysbert Shut Up GIF



And in season 3 they add Mary Lynn Rajskub. Gail the snail from it's always sunny in philadelphia.


jack bauer fox GIF


Carlos Bernard does a great job too as tony almeida, there are no gifs for him. poor guy.
 
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CelticRambler said:
The original. I didn't warm to any of the characters (at all) and it felt like Episode 1 was setting up too many different storylines for no reason other than to fill 23 more episodes.

At least The Night Agent only employed flashbacks and red herrings to move the main story forward.
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I think that 24 is one of those shown that you really needed to see at the time it came out to be a fan. It's major psychological hook going in was that it was the first TV show that represented it's story in real time. That seemed fresh and new and exiting at the time, and got people watching for long enough to bond with the mediocre characters. It was also a "water cooler talk" show for a while. Basically it had some novelty, and a social life when it first ran, and that feeling is missing now on a rewatch. The formulas required for the real time got constraining after years, and despite a strong effort, it eventually succumbed to the the limitations of it's format. In example, I think his daughter gets kidnapped 3 times in one day at some point.
 
Yeah that was the single biggest fault of the show, the season where too much happened with kim, but they phased her character out after that and seasons 7 and 8 ended extremely powerfully. I think it holds up today, I rewatched season 8 last year and it was awesome.
 
It outperformed it's native limitations, no question. Most novel concepts have a short shelf life, but they went the distance and stayed fairly strong through a long run.

Everyone here already knows this, but for the noobs, here is the map of tv show success -

1 season - this is the actual average length a show lasts. You just don't remember all of them, but there were thousands.

3 seasons - this is how long a pretty good show lasts. If you make it past this, you have a lot of advantages developing, fanbase, built sets, refining the fiction with feedback, etc. Many that find their groove by this point continue, many are cancelled right as they found their footing by executives that watched a spreadsheet instead of the show.

5 seasons - You made it! That's a good show that enjoyed a full life, a total success.

8 seasons - You wanted to retire 3 years ago, but everyone likes you so much that they doubled your pay and begged you to stay. You're killing it!

11 seasons - You've been tired of this a long time, but you can't find another job that pays 10,000 a minute for you to crack jokes and hit a mark.
 
mlesemann said:
Almost done watching Jury Duty, and it's the funniest thing I've watched in a long time.
I generally stay far away from "reality tv" but a friend of my husband's recommended it, and it's been a joy.

It's about a civil jury trial where everyone is an actor except the lead character - and he's delightful.

It's on Amazon FreeVee.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0054696/?ref_=tt_rv_t1
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The premise sounds like Muderville on netflix.
Everyone is an actor, and then they bring in the lead character (usually a famous actor that isn't acting/isn't in on it) to go through the crime scene and try to figure out who was guilty of the crime
 
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