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Sunday, April 12, 2009

Watched 4/6-4/12.

Robin Hood, Season 2 and the beginning of Season 3 and Saturday Night Live - 2 shows that are, well, adequate. But, ultimately, mediocre. Chopped, as of this week. Life is short.

The Mentalist - more background on the main characters trumps the retarded mystery of the week. Good stuff.

Breaking Bad
- continued dysfunctional choices and insanity. Win.

Daily Show and the Colbert Report - don't take life too seriously.

House - getting into House's psychology makes the season worthwhile. Also, shit doesn't make sense. That's life.

Castle - by the numbers mystery, till the end and the tweak for the week. Well fucking done.

Bully Beatdown - fake, but funny.

Heroes
- this entire season, just like this episode, have just been wildly uneven. Some moments very, very sharp... some very, very dumb. One more ep, chopping block.

Better off Ted 2 eps - very, very strange. Win.

Scrubs
- weird enough. Good deal.

Lie to Me - the more they delve into the character's past, the better. More the mystery of the week, the worse it is.

Life
- fucking brilliant. Fucking, fucking brilliant. Period.

Ultimate Fighter - fights are good, the rest is crap.

30 Rock - Funny, funny stuff. "Those girls pretend they're not women yet, but they are." - "In the HR world we refer to that as being a filthy prostitute." Yeah they do.

The Office
- I'm hoping the Michael Scott Paper Company ends up kicking the shit out of Dunder-Mifflin.

The Beast - the performances are barely served by the scripts. Great performances though.

Free to Choose
- Milton Friedman is a smart, smart man. I think the draw of libertarianism is the mix of optimism/cynicism. It's optimistic in that it assumes a functional system that works, almost perfectly. But cynically, the system assumes self interest as the primary driver of behavior.

Particularly enjoyed the commentary of Thomas Sowell on the 30 years old discussions. Sowell may be kind of insane of late, but a look at Wikipedia shows these gems - Thomas Sowell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"7) What some portray as "authentic black culture" is actually a relic of a highly dysfunctional white southern redneck culture. Such a dysfunctional white culture Sowell maintains, in turn derived from the ‘Cracker culture’ of certain regions in Britain, mainly the harsh English borderlands, origin of many 'cracker' migrants. Sowell gives a number of examples that he regards as supporting the lineage, including an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship,… and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery. Sowell also provides figures to support his argument that there was a far bigger divide between the cracker/redneck culture of the Southern and Applachian regions and the culture of more northerly Americans, than between whites and blacks. E.g. Northern blacks tried to stop redneck blacks coming up from the South, and the same happened between northern whites and redneck whites. This thesis is the title essay of Sowell's book Black Rednecks and White Liberals."
Parks and Recreation - Amy Poehler deserves better. Potential but needs to prove itself and improve.

Dollhouse - "We're pimps and killers, but in an philanthropic way." - "Sooner or later, everybody get's theirs." Dollhouse is getting fucking good. I wonder how good it could have been had the network not fucked with it from the get-go.

Friday Night Lights
- great season finale. Saw the plot twists coming, but it was all about the execution.

Strikeforce
- I used to love Frank Shamrock, just for his athleticism and execution. But given his attitude the last couple of years, I was delighted to watch Nick Diaz whup his ass.

Primeval - What?! How do you kill...?! You have one fucking week. That is all.

2 comments:

  1. dam rob! how much tv do you watch a week???

    ReplyDelete
  2. Entirely too much.

    Though honestly, it's less "watch TV" as it is "listen to TV as it plays in a little box on my desktop as I surf the net."

    ReplyDelete