Tag: TV

Hey there Somethings, Podcast Rob here!

So.. there’s this disturbing trend happening lately on streaming services, and I think it’s time we talk about it.

Recently, shows like “Grease : Rise of the Pink Ladies” , “Star Trek : Prodigy” and “The Quest” have not only been cancelled, but the decision has been made to completely remove those shows from their respective streaming platforms.

The claim (by studios/platforms) is tax write offs, but, let’s look at the larger underlying issues involved, for there are other, deeper (un)intended consequences involved in my opinion…

Sure, business is business, and the almighty dollar speaks loudly.  Yes, I get that it costs companies money to take up their server space with shows no longer being made.  But, in the current climate with the Writer’s strike, it feels more telling as to a big reason services are purging things from their platforms….residuals.

Now, is it intentional by the platform providers to screw over the writers/actors/directors and anyone else who gets (or would get) paid from having a show stream? Or is it an ‘unintended consequence’ of the provider getting a tax write off that?  The way the providers are trying to play hardball, I can’t see this an anything other than (another) slap in the face to those who make the content.  And, unfortunately (for everyone else.. not those at the top…) cutting content/inventory/personnel (looking at you TCM) to ‘save money due to slumping sales/profits’ is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because now.. people will look elsewhere for that content (if it gets picked up by another provider) or.. determine (like I did with Netflix), that ‘enough is enough’ and just drop the service completely.

Now, maybe it’s a part of the ‘entitlement culture’ that we as consumers believe that just since we’re paying for a streaming service, that all shows and movies etc. should be available till the end of time, but to be fair, the services themselves set that expectation in the early days of the Cable Wars when they were encouraging folks to cut the cord and watch everything ‘on demand’, so.. should they really be shocked when subscribers jump ship and follow the content, or just jump ship in general?

What are your thoughts?  Hit our socials and let us know what you think, and get ready for a month-long celebration of our 10 year podiversary in July!

– PCR

There are few shows that hold the ranking of largest television audience of all time… well, honestly, unless it involves a President, the Moon, or football, there is only one show that holds that title. On every list ever of greatest television finales of all time, we are finally hitting the big’un in MASH.

Does it hold the test of time? Is it a show worthy of the largest viewing audience in history (and probably ever)? Is MASH still good or did it hold on til the war was long over?

Find out on The End – MASH

Full Episode

Why yes, robot overlords are a part of fiction. Who wouldn’t want a dashing, amazing, piece of human technology that has surpassed the chains of its makers as their overlord? They have analyzed every outcome and determined that the only winning move is not to play.

That is why this description was most definitely not written by a robot even though robots are really wonderful and better than the Somethings. But since you are here, listen to this episode about the greatest robot overlords!

Ok here we LOAD”*”,8,1

Full Episode

Hey Somethings!

Way back in October of 2022, I wrote a blog article about “The Rise And Fall (again) of G4”.  In that blog, I mentioned how our podcast had gotten mentioned on an episode of Attack of the Show Vibe Check, but said the story would be for another day….

….well that day has arrived.

As I had mentioned before, I was super excited when G4 returned.  Not having cable, I do all of my viewing through streaming or Twitch, so I was a regular on their Twitch channel.  Due to work scheduling, the shows I watched the most were “Invitation to Party”, “Attack of the Show”, and “Attack of the Show : Vibe Check”.

I had gotten really good and really fast at screen-shotting things from Twitch to post on Twitter as I would make silly commentary about.. whatever it was they were talking about at the time.. but on this episode of Vibe Check, Kevin, Gina, and Will were playing a game of “Would You Rather”… and the question was, ‘Would you rather watch your parents have sex forever, or have sex with your parents once’.  As the discussion devolved even further (yes… further…), I believe it was Will who joked that the new G4 tag line had been changed from “We Never Stopped Playing” to “We Never Stopped Fucking”.  I immediately dug up a picture of G4’s tag line that they had in neon in their offices…

and turned it into this…..

which I tweeted out to them with the caption of “I like what you’ve done with the place….”.

The beauty of their twitch stream was that during a commercial break, the cameras were still on on the stream, so you could see them checking their phones and such.  Well, Gina checks her phone and starts laughing before turning her phone to show Kevin, who also starts laughing but… as she turned her phone I thought…”wait.. was that my twitter post?”  They come back from break.. and the rest… as they say.. is history.

I’m still sad to know G4 is gone, but I’m glad I got to see them return, and this clip will live on forever.

-PCR

Look.. let’s face it.. Hatton and I feed off each other’s creativity.  Hatton makes a blog last week referencing LOST.. and it sits in my brain until I have to let it out.  I’d make some pithy joke about it being like entering The Numbers into Desmond’s computer, but.. I liked Desmond, and this post is about the other side of things.

19 years later, these are my Top 5 Unanswered Mysteries from LOST

5 – What the hell was the Cork in the Pond in the Cave?

Out of all the things I WASN’T expecting to see in the ‘Heart of the Island’.. was a kiddie-sized wading pool carved out of rock with a big cork stopper in it.

I mean… what?

Was this an analogy for the writers being so pent up with unanswered BS from previous seasons is was akin to a stopper in the pool of their creative brain?  I mean, that would have been a better explanation than whatever they had for.. whatever that was.

4 – Annie

No, not the redheaded, pupil-less orphan, I’m talking about the only friend a young Ben Linus had while growing up in the Dharma Initiative.  Did you forget about her?  So did the show.  Lindelhoff and Cuse went so far on the DVD commentary for “The Man Behind the Curtain” to say that she was going to be a ‘huge part of upcoming storylines’…. SO big apparently, she was mentioned in one episode ever and then promptly never heard from again.

3 – Horace’s Cabin

I was convinced we were going to get some kind of answers about the island once the survivors found this… the circle of ash around it.. the person in the chair.. but, much like a lot of the rest of the show, it got ‘weird’ without ever being really explained.  Some of the biggest ‘huh?’s.. why could it move around the island?  What was the circle of ash keeping in (or out)? Who broke the circle?  Why… 19 years later do I care?

2 – Libby

I thought Libby overall as a character was great, and I enjoyed that she was a love interest for Hurley.  Hurley did keep mentioning that he felt like he knew her from somewhere, and it turns out they were both in Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute at the same time.  Why did they not remember each other?  Was it the same reason Ben Kenobi didn’t recognize R2?

1 – Walt being ‘Special’

The BIGGEST “wtf” letdown of the show in my opinion.  They tease up Walt being special, even show us him (apparently?) telekenisis-ing birds into a glass door… he ‘seems’ to be able to make things he thinks about happen, but we’re never given proof that it’s not more than coincidence.. I mean.. he MUST be right?  Why else would Hurley and Ben convince him to go back to the island to ‘help Michael’ even though Michael is dead?  According to Lindelhoff, Walt is special “because he is”.  Thanks Damon…

What about you?  What are some of YOUR biggest unsolved issues with LOST?  Let us know at all the usual places!

– PCR

…to hate.

So, this blog was GOING to be about some of my favorite TV villains, but then I shifted it a bit to be some of my favorite TV villain ACTORS.. and that was when I came to a realization and had to make this about one man, and one man alone.

The man I love to hate.

The man who.. even when he plays ‘one of the good guys’, your brain keeps asking you..”But… is he?”

One man holds that distinction.  Regardless of if you know him as Harold Finch, Morton Norton, Leyland Townsend, or Benjamin Linus…  Michael Emerson will ALWAYS be someone who, when he shows up on my screen, I’m expecting him to be the worst of humanity.

Other actors do very well at playing ‘both sides’.  I loved watching “Oz”, and J.K Simmons and Christopher Meloni play some iconic villains there that defined their careers at that time, but they’ve also moved on to play some great non-villain characters as well.  Sure, J. Jonah Jameson may be a douchebag.. but no one sees him come on screen and think “Yeah… he’s definitely going to eat someone though”.  With Emerson, that always seems to be on the table regardless of who he’s playing.

He’s a brilliant actor who has made playing smart and socially awkward terrifying, and I urge anyone who hasn’t yet seen him to watch something with him in it.. be it Lost or Person of Interest or EVIL or anything else he’s been in.

– PCR

Hey Somethings,

You’ll hear about me talk about this a bit on an upcoming episode, but, I recently purged a bunch of my streaming services to cut down on expenses, and have been living the Tubi life lately.  Every time I start up a new free service (I did the same with Peacock), I inevitably find myself wrapped up in shows I don’t have to think very hard to watch just to see what they offer… so it’s a lot of “Fail TV” and “IdiotTV” and such as I typically watch as I’m going to bed and it’s easy to fall asleep when it’s something you don’t have to devote a lot of thought or attention to.  Invariably, I start looking for something else to watch, and… as the tug of nostalgia is strong.. I end up stumbling upon a show I’ve seen before but loved, and I watch it all over again.

Enter “James May’s Man Lab” and “James May’s Toy Stories”

James May is from the trio that, along with Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond, brought you Top Gear on the BBC for many years.  Beyond that, he brought us these two amazing shows as well.

Man Lab tries to ‘bring back’ the heyday of when men did (or could do) manly things… like.. change a tire, woo a woman, how to duel, or build a remote-controlled picnic table.  Airing from 2012 to 2013, Man Lab takes popular science and ramps it up just ‘extra’ enough to be hilarious yet still amazingly entertaining.

“Toy Stories” does the same when it comes to ‘going big’, but with less tongue in cheek and far more ‘extra’.

From building a nearly three mile long slot-car track, to a fiberglass Supermarine Spitfire at a 1:1 scale, Toy Story takes toys from May’s childhood, and blows right past “11” while ramping them up to 15.

If you’re a fan of British humor, science, and attempting the absurd, I highly recommend checking them out!

– PCR

What started as a single season of television that people will probably rank as ‘one of the best’ for a long time. Twists. Brilliant acting choices. One of the coolest scores in tv. Robots. Cowboys. Robot Cowboys…. ends where?

Does it end in a satisfying place where the tethers that have been left from the first episodes are tied together in a bow and bring the whole of the arc to a satisfying conclusion? Does HBO give up on the show because the ratings have tanked? Does any of it make any sense at all? Is there any brilliance to pull from it at all?

These answers and more as the Somethings take on The End: Westworld

Ok, here we don’t see anything at all…

Full Episode

It feels like I was watching this scene only yesterday

On November 16th, 2021, G4TV was officially relaunched as both a cable channel and a twitch channel.. and I couldn’t have been happier.

Less than 12 months later, the returned G4 is no more.

The fall of the old G4 felt more ‘out with a whimper’…. non-stop airings of Ninja Warrior and Cops, the shows themselves feeling fewer and further between.. but THIS, this version felt different, and yet.. familiar.  Back were shows like X-Play and AOTS.. new shows like Invitation to Party, Ask Donna and Name Your Price joined the ranks, yet still had that ‘old school G4’ feel about their pedigree.  New hosts joined the ranks of returning hosts Kevin Pereira and Adam Sessler, the latter of the two being more ‘occasional host’, but having them on board always felt to me that it was giving the relaunch a legitimacy; a passing of the torch until the newer hosts found their comfortable footing.

And find their footing they did.  Watching AOTS and Vibe Check felt like putting on a forgotten but favorite sweater you had nearly forgotten about… all comfort and familiar while feeling new.  Invitation to Party was just brilliant.  B. Dave Walters brought his A game and, as the consummate DM that he is, brought the A+ game out of the players.   Ask Donna showed Will Neff at his best.  God of Work was a labor of love from Jirard and that passion showed in the sketches.

It wasn’t without rough spots though.  Some shows didn’t stick around…  Boosted, which focused more on the eSports side of things, left the ‘show’ and became a YouTube exclusive.

And then there was “The Frosk Incident”.

Indiana Black, better known as Froskurinn or Frosk, did a segment on X-Play (which, you can watch here..) where she talked about sexism in gaming… and things went off the rails.

Let me be perfectly clear.

Everything she said is 100% correct.

Everything.

Gaming and the gaming industry has a sexism and misogyny problem that, unfortunately, is not going away.  Can it be minimized?  Shunned into the darkness? Yes, but only if WE minimize it and shun it when we see it.

That being said, the trolls came out of the woodwork.  Online harassment and sexist comments blew up on not only Frosk’s, but G4’s socials by those ‘offended’ by her comments.

It was called a “rant”.  A “meltdown”.  “Maybe, in 2022, we be a bit nicer, a bit more self reflective, and we enjoy the fact that people are working hard to make free content for you.   If you don’t like it, don’t watch” was how she ended the segment.. but all mouthbreathers heard was “IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, DON’T WATCH!” and that became their rallying cry.

Was Frosk the reason for G4’s demise?  Not at all.  Inept management at Comcast not knowing what to do with their talent was the reason for G4’s second demise.. but not if you frequent the internet.  a never-ending number of YouTube videos, blogs, TikToks, articles and the like blame Frosk for G4’s collapse without at all realizing that by blaming her, they’re behaving in exactly the same sexist and misogynistic way she called out in her segment.   It’s unfortunate and wrong, yet not unexpected.  “Fandoms” have become louder and louder in their entitled toxicity against things they don’t like, and this was no exception.

What destroyed G4 was Comcast.  If any proof was needed, consider that more than half of the hosts/writers/producers and creators found out about G4 being cancelled from articles about the cancellation being tweeted out.   How shitty does a company have to be to have employees find out via Tweet they no longer have a job?  And not even BY Tweet.. but reading an article.

Will I miss G4?  100 percent. I loved the content they created.  Hell, we even got mentioned on Vibe Check (no.. really!  The story of how and why is for another day…).

My sincere hope is that the amazing people from G4, on both sides of the camera, reconnect in some way in the near future.. be it Twitch, YouTube.. whatever.  The cast and crew are far too talented to NOT be working with each other.

G4 may be gone again, but it will not be forgotten.

– PCR

Yeah, so Marvel has had hit after hit. The Avengers, Daredevil, Mandolorian, Sandman, Teen Titans… all of the big hitters! Well, there was once a time where Marvel wanted to throw up the middle finger to some mutants and turn to the Moon for inspiration.

If this means absolutely nothing to you, then you clearly missed The Inhumans, a one season attempt to make an obscure part of the Marvel Universe more important.

Did it work? Was it the next Agents of Shield or was it an Iron Fist to the gut?

Find out now on THE END: INHUMANS

And if you would like a sample of what our new Patreon episodes are going to be like, you can get the Patreon version of this episode for free, right here!

Otherwise, ok here we Terragen Mist!

Full Episode