A Green Mushroom

I watched the first Mr. Robot episode and was really impressed by it.  I thought this was a show I can really buy into. But then I watched more. The show got worse with each episode.  It slowly becomes a story about drugs, addiction, mental health, and corporate america.  It becomes less and less about being a good guy hacker. I got to around episode 5 or 6 and just had to stop.  It seemed like the next episode was going to be about gang violence around the drug trade.  I've gotten my lifetime fill of those stories from watching Breaking Bad. So, sadly, Mr. Robot ended up not being for me.  After an amazing first episode it fades and turns into a show I'm not into.

The Genius Game is the best gameshow I've seen in a very very long time.  I hesitated to check it out after reading about it since it's in Korean and you have to read subtitles the whole time but... oh man, I'm so glad I pulled the trigger and watched it. They take a ton of modern game design and board game design principles, mix them with social situations, and do amazing things with them.  I can't recommend this show highly enough. The first season is on YouTube:

This has been one of the biggest hits for me that I picked up in the summer Steam Sale. Chroma Squad is basically Power Rangers behind the scenes of the show but as a turn based strategy game.  Your squad breaks off from the main show and forms their own studio.  You get to start making episodes of the show and it's hilarious. It includes all sorts of RPG mechanics like buying new gear, crafting, and upgrading.  Along with this are some unique things like studio upgrades, marketing agencies, and growing your fans to get a bigger audience watching the show. Battles are fun not just because the core of the turn based strategy is solid but also because you always get "Director Notes" of certain things you should do in battle to make for a better show which will in turn get you a bigger audience.  It's actually a really fun mechanic that pushes you to complicate battles while having fun with it. As of writing this I'm a little past the first chapter of the...

I've been meaning to write this since the Game of Thrones season wrapped up a few weeks ago. I loved Season 6 of this show.  I think it's the best season so far. Finally everything is paying off.  All these disparate plots, characters, and threads are finally starting to come together again after so much time pulling apart. Episode nine had some of the best cinematography of any battle I've ever seen in TV or film. And the season finale had so much payoff that it's unbelievable that was all in one episode. I absolutely loved this season.  I don't want to write too much more because I would start to get into serious spoiler territory.  But, if you're a lapsed fan and you still haven't watched this season you really should.  It's totally worth it.

So... I picked up an HBO Now subscription this year since they've finally gotten their shit together and are offering Game of Thrones streaming at the same second it goes live on air.  I'm happy to give them a little bit of money for the show I love. I figured I would play around with it and see if there are any other shows, movies, or specials I wanted to see.  I mean, HBO has been around since like the 80s, there must be a ton of good content, right!? No. I tried a bunch of pilots or watched the beginning of specials and just wasn't interested in any of it.  The only movies or TV series that looked good were the ones I'd already seen or ones I already own.  In this category is stuff like Band of Brothers. But I guess I'm just spoiled by how much content is on other streaming platforms.  In comparison HBO Now feels just so empty.  So, I'll be canceling my subscription now that the season is done. I'm actually really surprised by how little co...

Oh The Flash, how much I loved your first season. Season 2 has been... I don't want to say bad.  Inconsistent is probably a better word.  There have been really good episodes and interesting plotlines but mostly there have been slow or boring plotlines and episodes that fall flat. After the fantastic episode that was done by Kevin Smith I thought the series was in a great place to finish strong at the end of the season.  Instead there was a an overly convoluted plot that led to the final confrontation of the season.  I couldn't actually believe some of the sentences that the characters were saying with a straight face... and I'm not typically one who has trouble suspending disbelief. I thought the final few episodes were mostly dumb.  I wanted to love them but I just didn't.  I was really sad to see where the series was at the end of this season compared to how much I enjoyed the first season. But then in the last 60 seconds of the season The Fl...

I finally got through Season 2 of Agents of Shield.  It was tough. I really liked the momentum at the end of Season 1 but it felt almost entirely gone at the beginning of Season 2.  After struggling through almost ten episodes I decided to ask a friend if it was safe to just skip ahead. It was the best decision! After a few episodes it was obvious which direction they were taking the main storylines... they just needed to hurry up and get there! Episode 19 is where things really start picking up.  The main team is finally back together to run an interesting operation and then the episode ties into Age of Ultron also. At this point I'm starting to realize that Agents of Shield is best when it's tying into the greater MCU and at it's worst when it's biding time.  I really hope that Season 3 finally has better pacing when I give it a shot.

I went into The Expanse not knowing what to expect except that it's a Sci Fi show.  And for that matter it's also a Syfy show... which usually doesn't bode well. But Syfy has been talking about how they're revamping their lineup lately to actually attempt to make good science fiction again and not just mass produce the low hanging fruit shows anymore.  The Expanse is part of that initiative and it shows. Instead of trying to set up a sci-fi premise that they can do weekly procedural episodes off of, The Expanse is based on a book series.  Season 1 has ten episodes and covers the first book in that series.  It has a story to tell and doesn't waste the viewer's time with filler. I really like it. Don't get me wrong, I can enjoy schlocky sci-fi too, but The Expanse is actually good sci-fi and it's a very nice change of pace for it. It sees Earth, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt miners as the three main divisions of humanity.  All of them are at od...

Star Wars Rebels Season 2 just wrapped up the other week and it was another solid season of the show! The main Jedi storyline continues to be the highlight with the overall rebellion storyline coming in a close second.  Whenever an episode is pushing one or both of these stories forward it's a really good episode. When Rebels instead decides to do a one off or side-character focused episode it's much more "meh".  It's never as bad as the worst episodes of Clone Wars were but I constantly want them to get back to the main storylines. And the main storylines are just great!  The season ended with a fantastic finale that sees Kanan, Ezra, Ahsoka, and Darth Vader all in interesting places.  It also manages to re-introduce Darth Maul into the universe and opens up lots of potential for him in the future. I continue to be really happy with Rebels and if you're a Star Wars fan you should definitely check it out!

I just finished up Agent Carter Season 2 and overall it was kind of a disappointment. Season 1 grabbed me and held my interest for the entire season.  Season 2 feels like they wanted to make a movie and stretched it out into ten overly long episodes instead.  It doesn't feel like they actually were trying to write it as a TV show. The episodes flow together but no individual episode actually has a good payoff and it bugged me a lot.  The end of each episode felt very arbitrary.  I forced myself through the season because I enjoyed the first one so much but I didn't really like it. I would love to see them take another swing at the franchise for a third season as long as they don't follow this format again.  Season 2 was a big letdown.

I heard great things about The Man in the High Castle on Amazon streaming and since I'm a prime member I took a look. The premise and the worldbuilding are really interesting.  Essentially, the Allies lost WWII so Germany and Japan divided up the United States and now occupy them permanently.  This is 15 years after that, with tensions rising between Japan and Germany while a resistance group is sneaking around with film reels that have footage of the US winning the war. I really like the world they've set up but after a few episodes I had trouble connecting with any of the characters.  I haven't been able to get invested in any of them fully. It would have been enough to keep me going because of the worldbuilding but then I started feeling really squeamish.  I mean, we're talking WWII axis tactics which are just brutal and gross.  It freaks me out because it's based on things they actually did. So I tapped out.  I gave up.  This show might be ...

Mythbusters just wrapped their final season and it was fantastic! I've followed the Mythbusters for as long as they've been around.  It's been almost 15 years and it's finally come to an end. There were some seasons that were better than others and occasionally an episode or two wouldn't quite hit the mark but overall it's been one of the most consistently good shows on TV. I stopped keeping up episode to episode around the time where they were testing 4-7 myths every episode.  I've heard from a lot of friends that they did the same and only watched the show sporadically since then. If that's you... you should know that this final season has been amazing.  All 11 episodes were fantastic and I was excited every week to see what was coming up next! Not to mention they went out with a huge bang.  After rocket-sledding Buster in oblivion they drove a giant wedge truck through props from all the seasons of the show and then had the biggest explo...

I don't know what I expected from Fuller House, but it blew away whatever those expectations were.  I had no idea if this show would click with me... but it definitely did. It's weird in a way because it's a 90s show made in 2016 through and through.  The production values and topics have been updated but the characters and the structure of a given episode feel straight out of the 90s. It's basically the same show as the original Full House... but somehow it works.  It just works. I was a TGIF kid.  If you don't know, TGIF was a block of shows that aired on prime time every Friday night.  Most people from my generation would tune in for at least one show in the block, if not all of them.  I remember many Friday nights ordering pizza and watching TGIF. Fuller House sees almost the entire old cast return to make cameos and be part of the story.  But the new main cast of the show are three of the kids from the old show (played by the same ac...

I've still been working through my list of shows to try and I've found myself bouncing off a few more after a couple episodes. Legends of Tomorrow I liked the premise of this one.  A team of B-List superheroes and villains from the current DC superhero shows team up to fight and enemy that is going to destroy the timeline.  It's a superhero time travel show!  The pilot had me interested and then the first few episodes after it completely lost me.  It got boring, and stuck in the 1970s for some reason.  If this gets critical acclaim later I might come back and check it out again but for now it's lost my attention. iZombie A cool premise of a zombie show where our zombie protagonist is perfectly functional in human society because she got a job at the morgue and can eat brains regularly.  The brains let her relive some of the memories of the dead person, as well as pick up their skills or quirks.  Unfortunately it quickly became a police proc...

After loving The Flash so much I thought I would check out Arrow.  I enjoyed the characters during crossover episodes so I thought it might be another show I would have fun with, especially since it's in the same universe as The Flash. Unfortunately, this is another show I quickly bounced off of.  After watching the first few episodes I moved onto a "best of" list and even then the show failed to grab me.  It takes itself way too seriously and tries to be dark and gritty... but mostly fails. I've determined that I like the characters and actors of Arrow as written by the team in charge of The Flash.  In the future, when it comes to Arrow, I'll be sticking to crossover episodes only.  But hey, I still really like what DC is doing with The Flash!

After blasting through the first season of The Flash I was hooked and jumped immediately into season 2.  The second season is still ongoing so it's caught in that weird spot between Hulu/Netflix streaming services. But I was able to catch up on all the currently aired episodes and now I can start watching it week to week just like everyone else. Honestly, the second season took longer to hook me than the first.  The premise of the show takes a shift when a bunch of breaches are opened in Central City that link it to an alternate version of Earth that team Flash quickly names "Earth 2." For the first five or six episodes the multi-dimensional plotline feels really forced.  It seems like a way to just keep shoving the same characters and situations back into our faces even if they had been neatly wrapped up in season 1.  But, around episode six or seven it finds it's feet and once again I was hooked.  Now I want to know more about Earth 2 and I really wa...

I marathoned The Flash Season 1 in three days.  I haven't had a show hook me like this in... I honestly don't know how long. In the first season The Flash is easily one of the best superhero shows I've ever seen.  Every single episode drives the overall season-spanning story arc forward.  And the show moves along at a really good pace within each episode as well.  Pacing is super important to me.  When shows get too slow I get bored, tune out, and give up on them.  That didn't happen at all throughout the first season of this show. It even ended on a cliffhanger that makes me really  want to jump into season 2 immediately.  So, I probably will. One of the coolest things about The Flash is how much fun Barry Allen has being The Flash.  It's not some grimdark angsty superhero like so often happens.  From the very first episode Barry thinks his powers are awesome.  He has fun with them while training and while saving people. ...

If you haven't noticed by now I'm catching up on a lot of TV that's come out over the past 5-10 years.  I finally have time to catch back up after having kids.  It's just impossible when they're little. Anyway, Stargate Universe was one of the shows that I liked in my big pilot watching spree .  Unfortunately, this is another show that I gave up on after a handful of episodes. I think I watched five episodes before giving up.  The problem, for me, is that the show became too much of a slow paced mystery.  I like Sci-Fi shows that are about exploration and discovery.  In SGU there was just too much sitting around wondering about the ship that they're on to keep me interested. My brother mentioned that it also just doesn't feel  like Stargate.  The other Stargate shows are all about exploring new places through the Stargate every week.  In SGU they're just kinda on a ship.  Even the episode I saw where they visited a planet throu...

After really enjoying the pilot of Star Trek: Enterprise I was quickly let down by the following episodes. Although I have to say, I really like the show's intro that walks through the history of flight and space travel.  I know it gets a ton of hate too, but it's actually one of my favorite Star Trek openings.  It has some character to it. After not clicking with the first few episodes after the pilot, I did what I have with a couple other series lately... I looked up a "best episodes" list.  Doing so let me sample the best of what Star Trek: Enterprise has to offer.  And honestly, some of these episodes are just as good as any other Star Trek show. The problem is that there aren't many of them. Most of the best episodes in the series tend to break the normal formula of a Star Trek episode.  That's when you can tell both the actors and writers are truly at their best. It's kind of funny, I find myself once again drawn to some of the time tr...

I marathoned Parks and Recreation with my wife over the course of about a week and a half.  We had never tried the show but after watching the first few episodes we were hooked and flew through all seven seasons really fast. It's a really funny modern sitcom.  It's in the style of a lot of modern sitcoms where the people know they're being recorded for whatever reason and often look at or play to the camera.  The style is a bit of an acquired taste, but if you've seen it before you probably know if you like it or not. It's an ensemble cast of government employees, mostly in the Parks and Recreation department.  It sounds super boring which is probably why I never checked it out before, but the characters make it hilarious.  I finally see why everyone loves Ron Swanson. The seasons are also really consistently good.  It falters a bit in season 5 but manages to find it's legs again by the end of the season.  Even then it's not bad, it's jus...