Ottis

Lots of one-joke skits in this one. Problem is, getting the joke takes a fraction of the time of the skit… which goes on and on. I liked WU joke swap. I didn’t laugh at much else. I don’t even remember the two skits before the cat skit. I like Eilish, but weird song choices.

I think one character said it had been a year? I don’t recall if Tokyo and SF were hit the same year, but Tokyo has signs up, a campaign and procedures in place. That takes time. In any case, it wouldn’t be finished, of course. But why does it seem to be cordoned off?

Teacher has become too muscular. Too stiff for some of the things he needs to do. He was lucky the carjacker wasn’t watching him. Also, those dealers were really slow on the draw. This season has started slow. But glad it’s back.

This show is hugely uneven while still being entertaining, thanks largely to Kelsey Grammar and his on screen buddy, Alan. The Good: Frasier himself, and his trademark pretentiousness and deep-voiced sarcastic comments. The show overdoes it at times, but generally Frasier's dry humored observations, even of himself, are fun. The Good: Alan is really becoming a more complex character. He has apparently never cared much about consequences, and now he is of an age that he will take risks because, well, why not. And yet he loves Frasier, and clearly wants to do the right thing for others even as he acts silly. The Middling: Freddy. I love that Freddy chose a different path in life that he loves. As a parent, I don't understand why Frasier has had such an issue with it. It's not like Freddy became an addict. That said, all the drama over this, especially from Freddy, who seems irretrievably scarred by most aspects of his past, is irritating. Freddy needs to grow up. The Middling: Harvard. Yeah, it is Frasier's dream. The show would have been better had he settled for Boston College, with hopes to get to Harvard. The Bad: The nephew. What is the point of this cartoon character? Neither Frasier nor Freddy should have to put up with him. The Bad: So far, all of the males have ranged from pompous to clueless, with lots of negatives in between. Alan may be the least toxic male here, with his benign silliness. The women, OTOH, are all capable survivors, usually outsmarting the men. We need to see a fuller representation of those two groups. We thought the same of Neuwirth, and it wasn't the gray in the hair. It was her entire manner and delivery. I kept expecting her to announce she was sick. Honestly, have not noticed Kelsey Grammar is frail. Older, sure. Not frail. He did quite well in the ep where he crawled on the floor of the classroom. Yes, indeed. As I noted above, he needs to grow up. "Go ahead and welcome us to Jurassic Park" was mine. Agree. They could cut the nephew entirely. And I really, really hope they don't have a whole thing where Freddy actually does love the woman next door, and she him, and they each have to deal with their guilt.

I thought the ending made no sense. If the aliens were only observing, why no crystalization? If it was only a test, why did they actually make it to Mars? I thought the ep should have stuck with the dilemma of whether to go or stay on Earth and whether their choice was a good one. Adding the aliens was unnecessary.

Am I missing some background? Why is the show spending so much time on the Randa kids, the fact the dad had two families and various peoples’ reaction to it? In a show about Godzilla and monsters? I don’t care if he had a cult and a compound with a harem. Move on. So a large part of damaged SF has been cordoned off and there is no effort to clear and rebuild it? Is there a reason for that? I feel like this show has a backstory I don’t know, because the way people are acting makes no sense to me. Isn’t there an effort to find and prepare for more monsters? How many are there? What actions help? What do they want? How does humanity thrive in a world with these creatures? Stop with the flashbacks about “who loves me.”

I didn’t like him in “Girls” either, where he was … a NY hipster doofus. Not sure what his actual background has to do with how he comes across on the screen. For me, all of his performances have come across as entitled and sulky. Last night he seemed more mature and settled.

Better than recent episodes, because they went for some silly. "Beep Beep" was fun. And the "old friend who is a sex predator" was pretty good, especially when they brought in "Big Filthy." The "Trying to get pregnant" skit started strong and then meandered away from a point. Were they supposed to be dumb about biology, or were they so woke they couldn't talk normally about it? The Santa chocolate is SNL's latest attempt to recreate Schwetty Balls. They had all the pieces, but for some reason they chose to have the hosts be appalled and try to block it instead of have everyone act unaware of the resemblance and take it further and further. If they had done the latter, they might have had a classic skit on their hands. The airplane baby sketch was promising as well, but I thought they should have played it more as "what a baby thinks and we can actually hear say on a plane" instead of "look, a weird baby." Still, I appreciate that SNL got weird in this one. Definitely made me engage more. I've never been an Adam Driver fan, he is basically a NYC hipster doofus that could be the most miscast role in Star Wars history (part of the reason why his prior SW Undercover Boss skit worked so well) and always seems to be the same guy. But he seemed more mature here, and more settled. I kind of liked him as host this time aorund. I didn't understand the Julia Stiles dance thing at all, but I love Julia Stiles.

So the whole point of The Boys/Gen V is basically the same as the Marvel mutants vs. humans battle from X-Men? The main difference being that the "professor X" school in Gen V is actually run by someone trying to kill mutants, not protect them? Oh, and sex. Kind of disappointed in that. I much preferred the "what happens if superheroes are assholes" approach that launched The Boys. Not sure they had to evolve it into a civil war. A better approach might have been to explore why parents agreed to dose their babies in the first place, and the pressures and motivations that led to it. There was a little in the flashbacks about how parents reacted when the powers were frightening or went wrong, but there should be a lot more to mine there. He didn't explode heads, did he? Didn't he just incapacitate the student, stick one of those oval devices in the student's mouth and then detonate it? You have to get close to the supe vs. use the device from afar.

The producers of Lost did it because of the cliched "we care more about characters." Lost took off during the first season due to the mystery of the island and the "smoke monster." I think the people behind the show were caught unprepared, and so fell back to "character." They started talking about that as season two approached, and then for years they would give back story on each survivor on the island, a ridiculous and annoying process that reached its zenith with an entire ep about how one guy once got a tattoo. Anyway, Monarch already has an interesting present. And there are ways to let us know about past relationships today without going to the "X years ago" well. I should check to see if anyone on the Monarch show staff worked for Lost. I'm not sure what Kurt Russell was trying to do with the aviation fuel. The monster would feed on it. Was it supposed to explode, and that would be bad? How would he know?

This fourth ep reminded me of the worst of Lost. You would be following an at least mildly interesting story, and then suddenly we would be tossed to “one year ago” and a ridiculous flashback to a fight with a spouse or parent. It would be boring and overwrought and eventually we would get back to the interesting story, after wasting 15 minutes. I hope this isn’t a sign.

I’m out, too. Dot’s character makes little sense, Juno is wrong for it and when you go to the Home Alone crap including a drawn-out scene where the henchman is about to open the attic and your mind immediately guffaws “oh yeah, watch the sliding ladder hit him, har har” AND IT DOES, this is all lowest common denominator stuff. I turned it off after Rick Moranis insisted on trying to open the electrified window. This was boring and bad.

And it is a comedy impression, for Pete’s sake. The point isn’t to sound as good as the original. If the poster meant that it just made them think of Cass, that’s fair. But most skits make viewers think of whoever they are parodying.

I was talking to a neighbor this morning who randomly said this same thing, to which I agreed. That was one of the least funny eps of SNL I have watched, and I have been around for almost all 49+ years. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't funny. Emma Stone, who I at first didn't recognize, was fine. That and the fact that they missed blurring one vast member partway through. She was visible in her flesh-colored wraps. The skit was one-note and dull, IMO. I don't understand why they are struggling so much, given how few shows they do each year now (they did 24 the first season, they did 18 last season). Their best shot at being funny seems to come from parody skits of pop culture, but they seem to always choose politics now (which is rarely funny now, given reality) or weird trends that are mostly NYC. Most of the repeating characters are obnoxious. I've always liked SNL's absurd skits that make you go, "What in the world?" But they do very few of those. The best skit they have done in years, IMO, is the George Washington "weights and measures" one from a few weeks ago. We've seen Noah in concert. The female members of our family love him. I suspect it has, at least in part, something to do with his "Jason Momoa" look. He i talented, though, and far better than the "musical" acts we often see on SNL.

Perhaps surprisingly, I don't disagree with your read on each situation - it could be true, or not. That's part of the problem of Ted Lasso the show. It's careless with details other than Look at Ted Emote, and situations like his ex-wife's engagement or how to be with his son are just plot boulders to be moved around for Ted's benefit. Another read might be that after all the glimpses we saw of Michelle with her new guy, his quick disappearance at the end was jarring and unclear. And after all the scenes we saw of Ted wanting to be with his son (and vice versa), and both of them embracing travel. the UK and Richmond, AND all the money Rebecca promised Ted if he stayed (which would be a choice of schools for his son as well as travel back to the States as desired), AND Beard staying, that there was more than enough benefit there for Ted and his son (heck, and maybe Michelle) to stay in the UK. And while he may have been more comfortable in the US, he seemed plenty comfy in the UK, so if he had a preference it didn't seem large (there weren't, for instance, older relatives in the US who he pined to see). The show gave us what it is: Good ol' Ted, headin' home, to ... something. Yay?

This reminds me of a Mod Squad episode (the original series in the 70s) where the cop boss went to a high school to talk to jaded kids on career day. And in his talk, he preached the importance of observation to be a successful cop. A smart ass kid challenged him, asking him to answer several questions about minute details around him without looking, like what time the stuck clock on the wall reads, and what color tie a teacher is wearing (the teacher wasn't wearing a tie - zing!). And the cop nails every one of the details, without looking. I would definitely notice if the street signs were different in my neighborhood, even if I knew the way. But aside from that, with visitors and deliveries and people walking dogs and who knows what else happening each day, *someone* should have noticed. It was the ep that showed behind the curtains a bit for the season. It seems like every Fargo season has that ep, though I agree that in prior seasons it was more subtle than a time jump to the 1500s. Well, there was the UFO. I don't think he sounds at all like Christopher Walken. Much more like The Swede in Hell on Wheels.

I think what was happening there was pretty clear. Back to that in a second. First, for a while I got the feeling that Munch and Roy know each other and are both time-traveling elements that have crossed paths before. Maybe still true, but after a while it seemed to fade and feel more like Munch is the random chaos element who enters an existing struggle that Roy might have won against out-numbered Dot, but Munch will equalize it. BTW, Munch feels a lot like The Swede from Hell on Wheels to me. Back to the end ... Munch is a mystical element (whether actual time traveling or just a modern dude with mental problems and a book, I don't know, yet) who now has a grudge against Roy for not paying him and trying to kill him. So Munch followed his mystical process to go hunting for Roy, and managed to sneak past (or kill) guards at Roy's house and walk into the front door, in a house where Roy's wife and two kids are sleeping. Meanwhile, Gator and his dorks finally stumble upon the right house and Dottie was expecting them and sees them. I am less puzzled by why no one saw Dottie changing street signs then why those signs were not immediately corrected the next morning when local residents noticed and called it in. Street signs are serious shit. The show almost lost me at the England flashback, but I am interested in what Munch represents in current time so as long as they keep flashbacks to a minimum, I'm good with that. This ep showed Dottie as being far more knowledgeable, and apparently capable, than she has shown in her actions we have seen. Her level of prep is far below her knowledge if she is just now looking at guns and is stymied by the mandatory waiting period (which recalls the hilarious line from The Simpsons when Homer goes to buy a gun and has to wait, and moans, "But I'm mad now!"). MIxed feelings overall, but hanging in more for Munch vs. Roy than Dottie.

By midway through the second season, I was hate watching Ted Lasso. And the finale fit that bill. Not only was it treacly sweet, it was also weirdly sloppy. Sam made the Nigerian national team … how? What happened to the guy Michelle was with (and honestly, his lack of interest in soccer is common and isn’t enough to stand in as “not a great guy”)? Wouldn’t bringing his kid to the UK while still coaching and making tons of money be a better choice for them all (especially if Michelle appears to be interested again)? Why the barest glimpse of the gay kiss and women’s team proposal? All the meandering, downhome wisdom in the world could not have made this show substantive. Somewhere after season one it became a Hallmark sitcom, unrealistic and paper thin. That’s its audience, ultimately, and it’s a shame. It could have been so much more and still been fun.

Still inconsistent, even if we accept that. Let's assume she actually never thought that a law enforcement official within driving distance wouldn't find her (not especially wise). So they find her, and what does she do? Based on her prior actions, she should run. She did before, and she has shown she doesn't put much thought into preparing to fight. But she stays, she creates Home Alone traps ... and she tries to hide it from her family? Essentially her actions are saying that if she doesn't admit what is happening, then it isn't real. That's not the foundation of a good fighter. Yet she keeps winning. It's only two eps in. Fargo tends to reveal its lead characters layer by layer. I hope we find out more that explains Dot's odd choices. I'm just saying that, for now, to me, she doesn't make much sense. I always take little clues like that as a sign that the character isn't truly how they portray themselves (or even seem to believe they are). If the sheriff is a traditional guy with outdated views on women (likely some violent ones I expect but we haven't seen that yet), well, that's one thing. But if Mr. Traditional has nipple rings and is into S&M and, say, orgies, then who he believes he is is all a lie and he is something much worse. Which I suspect is the case.

Definitely agree. I guess my issue is that if she had just run away 6 months ago, this might make sense. But it has been 10 years or more. She isn't surprised that people are coming after her, which indicates she assumed they one day would. And yet all of her defensive reactions and plans (such as they are) are like she never thought much about what to do. I struggle with a character who, on the one hand seems to expect people to try to attack her, and on the other hand is still improvising 10 years later. If her defensive reactions had been excellent, i.e. great shot, hidden weapons in place already, etc., I could have bought that. OR if her reactions and plans were as poor as we have seen, newbie-like, but she somehow gets lucky every time it happens, I could probably accept that as a Fargo-like thing. But it is an inconsistent mix of each. YMMV.

I actually think Juno is miscast, as is her (newer) husband. Didn't buy for a moment her bumbling around stumbling on ways to fight off people. If she knows she is being hunted, she doesn't show the intelligence or the restraint needed to remain concealed (don't taze cops, or heck, remain for contentious school meetings). Her plans seem amateurish even though she knows she is likely to be in these situations at some point. Shoot, she apparently doesn't even live far from her vengeful ex. Is the show trying to say she wants to be found? And then when she is found out, she starts setting traps ... with her kid ... who doesn't seem surprised or afraid at any of it? It didn't appear her daughter had done it before, she was asking questions about how. But the "why" never comes up? And the (newer) husband just reminds me of Ed Grimley. While I like the actress playing the local cop, she comes across as someone who is trying really, really hard to play a Midwesterner. Also, why, when the two henchmen trapped her and one said she had to be alive but didn't need to have her teeth, is the next shot we see of her, unharmed, in the back of the car? Did I miss a scene? They just decided, after she pissed them off, "oh never mind?" Some of all tha is probably my weariness of the Fargo format. Watching what appears to be hapless upper Midwesterners be threatened for mysterious reasons, and at least one of them then displaying surprising skills, is getting old. I'd like to see the cleverness that made me like the first two seasons so much. Also, as someone said upthread, the other cop at the gas station should be fired. he was awful in his lame response. The mother-in-law seems promising. And Hamm likely relishes being the bad guy, though so far he seems pretty run-of-the-mill. There must be thousands of men like him, tens of thousands. So we'll see.

My biggest impression after the first ep is what a bunch of entitled, pouty brats. The Tokyo son is closest to actually intelligent and asking good questions while US daughter pouts and stomps off. Yep, your dad had a secret family. Want to know more? I would. Also, computer ex-gf is extra pouty. Meanwhile, exploring scientist Scooby gang is trying hard to look cool and dysfunctional while wearing masks to prevent … radiation? That makes no sense. Also, Bill is channeling Bill Paxton hard. I swear he even said a line from Aliens, though it wasn’t “game over man!” The best part is how the society has incorporated monsters into daily reality. Though what exactly were the soldiers going to do when pouty daughter freaked out in the shelter? Who cares if someone runs around during a Godzilla visit? Less family drama, more monsters.

I’m not an anime fan, but this show (which seemed more anime-light, with a traditional story) drew me in and I enjoyed almost all of it. Mizu’s story I liked. Akemi’s story less so. Mizu did lose me at the part where she married and was betrayed by her mother and husband. By the time that appeared, I was well past that “cause” and didn’t need it. It seemed to slow things down. Also, it was a confusing timeline for me.

But then we would have to deal with a whole season of her dad feeling guilty because he did the house repairs himself. It would still be about Maddie!

I know zero about Chloe T, but holy crap. She should be the musical guest on another show. I did like Boygenius. Overall meh. Everyone tried, the writing wasn't funny (with the exception of the Cassidy sketch). Also, I'm really over the political stuff and Trump. If the show wants to say something with it, fine. But trotting it out just to do it, not interested. They are all horrible people and I don't find them funny at this stage. YMMV. Agree. The George Washington sketch was an instant classic.