What TV SHOWS are you watching?

If you are a Gen-Xer or older like me you no doubt have fond memories of the show called Kung Fu with David Carridine from the early 70's. I used to watch that show every week as a kid and loved it. Now that doesn't say a lot because we also used to watch The Dukes of Hazard every week and loved that as well.

Amazon Prime is currently streaming the original Kung Fu series and I watched the pilot/movie and the first episode and I'm happy to report that it holds up really well. The story of the pilot is really excellent and while the fight scenes are not going to blow your mind seeing as they were done 50 years ago on a TV budget they are still dramatic and serve the story rather than exist, as so many modern day fight scenes do as nothing but senseless action. The first legit episode was also very good dealing with inter racial romance, bigotry, exploitation, and betrayal.

The series, as I remember, becomes a retread of The Fugitive with the loner wandering from town to town righting wrongs and evading a pursuing nemesis and may well become boring but I recommend these two episodes at least.

My wife, who while indulging our grandson, has watched Kung Fu Panda about a million times was watching with me and at a point where the animalistic styles used by the Shaolin Monks (mantis, snake, tiger, etc) said "Hey...those are the Furious Five from Kung Fu Panda!!!" I was amused.

I didn't see much of Kung Fu when it was on the air. Might have been a conflict with some weekly activity at the time. Weird to think that there used to be such a thing as appointment tv, where you had to watch it while it aired because there was no vcrs, no tivo, no video stores, and no internet. Thanks to the local library, I was able to check out and binge watch season one of Kung Fu a couple of years ago, and it holds up well. Carradine doesn't look like an action hero, but he sells the moves well. The ongoing tension between the western setting and his eastern philosophy is good. I feel like the show had a major cultural impact at the time, as there were soon several martial arts comic books, and quite a few martial arts movies in the U.S. The pop hit Kung Fu Fighting also came out around this time.

Kung Fu was great back in the day.

My childhood memories are of seeing Kung Fu: The Legend Continues coming on, and changing the channel.

More football, as the World Cup enters the knockout stages with the Round of 16. Tje round kicked off with France v. Argentina, a high-scoring game with drama right to the death.

Yeah, great match. By contrast, the Spain-Russia game was *dire* today. Just a horrible game of football, despite the dramatic win.

Kung Fu is one of my strongest memories of childhood with my dad. He loved that show.
Along with Godzilla, Star trek, Cosmos and Nova on PBS.

My dad was/is a jerk, but he had good taste in entertainment that I'm glad he shared with me.

It also is gladdening to hear that Kung Fu holds up still.

I love Kung Fu.

The irony about a show that tried to teach peace and tolerance is that it was supposed to star Bruce Lee-- but the network didn't think an Asian could (should?) headline a tv series.

Shellhead wrote: Season two of The Wire is still great television. On first viewing, I was initially frustrated because season two seemed to be getting too far from the story of the Major Crimes Unit, but it became compelling as the season went on. Plus the show doesn't abandon the unfinished business of season one, and keeps it simmering. Really, none of the seasons are optional if you enjoyed season one, and season four is incredible. Season five is shorter and less enjoyable than the rest of the series, but still worth watching to see how various storylines play out.

The important thing about The Wire that isn't obvious from just season one is the focus of the show. Jimmy McNulty is not the star of The Wire. Neither is Kima Greggs, or Avon Barksdale, or Stringer Bell. The main character of The Wire is the City of Baltimore. This series will show you the institutions of the city through the people that work for them. The city is dysfunctional because the institutions are dysfunctional, and change is difficult. Many elements of the series are based directly on real people and events from Baltimore.

All the pieces matter

- Lester Freeman

Binging on handmaid's tale. Halfway through second season now.

This show is a switch that just constantly pisses me off.

20 years ago, I would have called it a decent bit of dystopian fiction.

I'm pissed off at the potential likelihood of this being a dystopian non-fiction.

Michele Wolf is right. Sarah Sanders is Aunt Lydia.

And how could one not view it as potential non-fiction when Kelly Anne Conway, shortly after Trump is inaugurated, set the tone for the entire presidency with the ill tiding of the now seemingly forgotten quip of:



...that the press called her out on, only for the responding silence of crickets chirping by the public?

As a former methodist pastor turned apostate, this is only fuel for my fire.
I wonder how the religious see this. I know what the fundamentalists think, as this is directly aimed at them. But I also wonder what the southern Baptists think of it. Or Pentecostals. Or the Jehovah's witness. Or Eckankar.

Do they view any of this as a warning sign of what could happen if their dogma were to become state thinking?

Rsp kind of territory, I know. The questions are meant to be rhetorical here, but quite pointed IRL.

Saw the entire season of Secret City, an Oz based government cover up show.

Really a good show.

I'm sick. That means binge watching season DVDs or movie series that are guilty pleasures to make my waking fever dreams entertaining.

I've chosen Sam Raimi's Cleopatra 2525 dvds from my collection.

You may recall this from nearly 20 years ago. It was the 2nd half of the "Back2back action hour", with Jack of all Trades starring Bruce Campbell headlining the first half. Then after all this was Andromeda. I miss those Friday nights.

Anyways, it's an Uber schlocky show about aliens that subjugate mankind, and humans are forced to live and travel in what is essentially a subterranean necromunda hive in order to escape the aliens who are apparently too stupid to burrow.
Don't ask too many questions of this show. It's not that high brow. Just dumb fun in an attempt to have a sci-fi show at the tail of end of Sam Raimi's tv success prior to Spiderman.
It's a cheesecake factory that just wouldn't be made anymore.
This half hour show starring the titular Jennifer Sky certainly didn't hurt its success.


Sadly, this show doesn't hold up nearly as well as Jack of all Trades, but they are both just as silly. I do wish I still owned Jack ofall Trades to watch that instead.

But it's good enough to watch while you feel like your on your death bed with a cold.

Feel better Crayons!

My girlfriend doesn't like horror, so I save my binge-watching of American Horror Story for times when she is out of town on business. I just finished American Horror Story season 6: Roanoke.

Normally AHS is overstuffed with plots and subplots and characters, which often pays off with really shocking twists. But season 6, starts out with considerable restraint, especially compared to the wild spectacle of Season Five: Hotel. The core cast is really small at first, with a married couple, the husband's sister, and her young daughter. The married couple buys an extremely haunted house, and like the family in season one, can't afford to leave. Most of the usual AHS favorites show up, including Sarah Poulson, Kathy Bates, Evan Peters, Angela Bassett, Frances Conroy, Lily Rabe, Denis O'Leary, and Taissa Farmiga, but newcomer (to AHS) Adina Porter ends up stealing many scenes.

The story stays very focused for the first half of the season, and I wasn't feeling it for the first two episodes. But by episode three, I was hooked again. A big change in direction happens mid-season, but builds directly off the story of the first half. The cast gets bigger, the subplots start showing up in quantity, and things get very chaotic. A character from season two comes back for a surprise cameo. The overall story was decent, though the ending seemed a bit flat. The restraint of the first half of the season was discarded in favor of a high body count.

True to the name, Roanoke addresses the spooky story dating back to colonial times. In real life, a colony on the island of Roanoke did completely disappear, leaving behind just one clue: Croatoan. That was the name of a nearby island that was carved on a tree near the Roanoke colony. Oddly enough, there was no sign of the missing colonists on Croatoan. The show fills in the considerable blanks in that old story. Although this season isn't about witches, the strongest influences appear to be The VVitch, The Blair Witch Project, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

I have now seen five seasons of American Horror Story: Murder House, Asylum, Coven, Hotel, and Roanoke. Murder House was the scariest season. Asylum was kind of a mess, combining serial killers, alien abduction, nazi science, and demonic possession. Coven was fun. Hotel was wildly creative and fairly gay. Roanoke plays it safe but eventually turns wild. I don't even know how to rank them, as they all have good and bad points. Roanoke might not be the best, but it's good enough that I would recommend it to anybody who liked another season of AHS.

After you're done with AHS, go through Channel Zero if you haven't yet. Yeah, it's the show based on Creepypasta. Yes, it's a million times better than you'd think.

It's an anthology series like AHS, with each season loosely based on a Creepypasta story, but then going off in a very different direction. The first season, Candle Cove, is the most straightforward, and definitely the weakest. It's also the longest, and they spend their entire 10-12 episode run on the one story.

For the second season, they decided to split it into two halves, doing two stories in six episodes each. That was a fantastic idea, since it lets them keep things very focused. The first half of season two, No End House, is a meditation on guilt and memory. The second season, Butcher's Block, is ultimately about the fear of losing yourself to psychosis. Both are totally worth watching, and have both depth and really fantastic imagery.