TV Shows

Storied

Chill Movies, TV Shows

One of the reasons I love movies and TV shows and thinking about how they’re made — the immense care and craft that goes into them — is I spent so much of my life with others telling me how my story would go. What my limitations were and how I deserved nothing because I was weak and terrible. That’s the tale they had me signed up for against my wishes.

I like seeing how you can take control of the narrative, seize the diegesis and shape it to your own will. All the world’s a stage and all that. It’s a cliché but it’s also true.

Movies and TV shows taught me how I could direct my own story. And I did just that.

Tradeoff Tradein

Chill TV Shows

Appreciation post for Samantha Sloyan because Bev Keane in Midnight Mass is one of the most effectively deplorable characters I have ever watched.

Agreed, she is excellent there. Samanatha makes a great villain and seems like the uber-religious nutters I grew up with in North Florida, most of whom were absolute hypocrites as well.

There is no one more harmful than someone who thinks they are doing things for the best reasons and/or “for your own good.”

Tonality

Chill TV Shows, Video, Video (TV show)

This show was not completely successful, but I love this scene at least partially because it and the show itself feels really tonally different from all the other shows recently which seem so monotonous and ultra-pasteurized.

And here’s the same clip by someone who didn’t understand the “terrible” dialogue was intentional; this is two people interacting who are socially inept, stunted, having had very few normal interactions and both living in repressed, horrible societies. The woman is the extrovert side of that and the guy is the introvert. They have zero social skills and very little experience with anyone different from them. That’s the whole point of the scene — that is, them learning how to interact despite their chasm of inexperience and social cluelessness.

It’s fascinating how many people can watch something and just not understand it at all. Like, not in the least.

TVB

Chill TV Shows

My guess is that in moderation reality TV has no effect either way. Like most things. Some of the dumbest and some of the smartest humans I’ve ever met have been fans of reality TV shows of various stripes.

If anything, in small doses they are likely mildly palliative but it’d be hard to measure. And very individual-specific (I find them all annoying and they make me low-level angry).

In large doses, of course, yes reality TV shows make you dumber if for no other reason is that time devoted to one activity cannot be used for anything else.

Ryan Air

Chill Politics, TV Shows

Everything you love or hate about American politics in the year 2024 is the result of a TV cyborg from the late 1990s.

Regardless of why Jeri Ryan was added to the cast of Voyager, as an actor she was the best part of the show. The eps focused on her were better than all the rest, and she exhibited more range than the rest of the cast except perhaps Katherine Mulgrew (Janeway).

I couldn’t find it on YouTube and it’s been twenty years since I watched it, but there was one episode where Seven was talking about her difficulty in integrating back into human society after the trauma of being assimilated into the Borg and then the further shock of having to leave that behind and adapt to a now-foreign culture. It was just perfect and heartbreaking. Jeri did a lot with a little and I always appreciated how much she gave to what could’ve been just a trivial eye candy part.

Unfortunately, she helped elect Obama by accident. She didn’t mean to, so I don’t hate her for it.

Mass

Chill Review, TV Shows

Midnight Mass is pretty good but quite slow, even for me. And I am definitely one who enjoys plodding, methodical movies and TV shows. Also, I don’t care about religious themes very much and the show is perfused with those.

It’s still worth watching, though. And I do like that Mike Flanagan (the director) tends to use the same cast, so you get to experience their range and talent across various shows he makes. Overall, the work feels like a stage play on screen. I enjoyed this but will not be to many people’s taste admittedly.

Recommended, with caveats.

Unseen

Chill Culture, TV Shows

What depicts the most terrifying encounter with alien life in fiction?

The aliens in the TV show Colony. They are nearly unseen (and that makes them all the scarier), shipping people off to slave colonies on the moon after having effortlessly taken over the planet. Their goals are unannounced and inscrutable, their power nearly infinite, and resistance against them only succeeds because they don’t care enough to do anything about it — until they do.

And their henchmen (and women) are other humans, part of the Vichy-style world government that they control. And the really terrifying part is that they seem to believe they are helping humanity.