Pick your poison. And be warned, there will be spoilers.
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by John Cole| 80 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Television
Pick your poison. And be warned, there will be spoilers.
Comments are closed.
General Stuck
Just watched part 1 of the 60 minutes segment of the guy who ran the Bush torture program for the CIA. Leslie Stahl does a pretty good job of asking the right questions and countering some of the bullshit thinking of this guy. And the FBI claims still that they got all the information from Zubeyda before he was tortured. And even with clear implication all knowledge and permission all the way up to Bush, imo, this country would never convict the perps, for the reason of the attack was so large and on US soil.
Keith G
You left out The History of Science…and Birdsong.
schrodinger's cat
How about none of the above. I have to put my groceries away, vaccum the house and feed the kittehs before I go to sleep.
Brachiator
I downloaded the premiere episode of the new HBO comedy Veep from iTunes. Pretty funny stuff. Julia Louis Dreyfus is the hapless VP. Two conceits of the show, from what I have read, is that you aren’t supposed to know which political party she belongs to, and you are never supposed to see the president.
The premiere episode and some short clips introducing the other characters are all free.
Litlebritdifrnt
I finally found an online resource (free) to watch the second episodes of Whitechapel. They were really good. Episode 6 was damn brutal, although I have to say that episode 3.4 was my favorite. The DI going with his Sergeant’s gut, rather than the hottie female DI’s idea really did solidify Chandler’s commitment to his Sergeant. I absolutely love this series and I hope that ITV make more.
cathyx
I made chicken patties from a recipe that was repeated on several websites. They tasted good except they were mushy and didn’t hold together. So they never were actual patties. I don’t know where I went wrong. I followed the recipe exactly.
marcopolo
Whatever we do, we should not alert John to the Yvonne Strahovski Sobi ad photos. Oops.
No comment on any TV other than I need to watch this past Friday’s Fringe & am quite happy there will be a final season next year.
Merp
The Killing is not a good show.
Seconding Veep. Although she’s clearly a Democrat, the actual conduct of the office isn’t partisan; the focus will probably never be on the idealistic goals of policy a la some show I have a vague recollection of being popular a few years ago but on the venal, banal and vicious process and career ramifications of enacting that policy.
gogol's wife
@Keith G:
He also left out “Peyton Place” on TCM, but unfortunately it turns out to be unwatchable.
General Stuck
Wrong turn to hell
David Koch
History Channel has a pretty awesome documentary on the Bin Laden raid.
You can see it online here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GehQet4bnvk
merl
I’m reading the fifth book of Game of Thrones now. Anyone want to know how it ends? Daenarys has a younger brother.the last book comes out next month
mcd410x
Has The Killing solved the crime it promised to solve in the first season yet?
jeffreyw
We watched the four GOT episodes up to tonight’s installment yesterday in one sitting. We have a bunch of stuff DVR’d to watch. Dexter, Justified, Boardwalk, and several other shows that we just let go to the machine, not feeling ready to watch anything till just lately.
Randy P
@Brachiator: We just watched the same episode on HBO’s website. We don’t have cable TV or internet, but have a MiFi device with a plan I just upgraded to 10 GB. I’m rediscovering TV (haven’t watched it in any form, including online, in months) and seeing how much video that will really get me. We also watched the most recent Rachel Maddow show, and POTUS’ Correspondents Dinner performance.
Before the Olympics, I’m going to have to find a way to get decent wall-to-wall coverage via internet. Anybody know what options are out there?
Re Veep, it’s obvious that “Did the President call?” “No” is going to be one of the running jokes of the series. I also love the depiction of the hard-driving young staffers. We lived in the DC area for nearly 2 decades and it is a type that is well-known to us.
mainmati
@schrodinger’s cat: Ok, totally respect that. I have stuff to do too before tomorrow but I will be also able to tune into Game of Thrones because I organized my time to do that. But I totally understand that other folks have desperate situations that don’t allow for any similar scheduling.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Can’t wait for the Avengers!
johnnymags
Hodor! I also have the pleasure of chatting with Kristian every night or so on Ventrilo.
TaMara (BHF)
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Watched an interview with Joss Whedon this a.m. and now I’m excited to see it. Love him.
For me tonight, The Good Wife and then get everything ready for the week.
I take it I should be watching GoT.
schrodinger's cat
@mainmati: I think a death in the family and helping my husband make an unscheduled trip to India, so that he could attend the funeral, counts right?
ETA : Oh noes, I just realized that I have not done the laundry.
Brachiator
@Randy P:
There should be more hard details in the coming months. Right now I am seeing a lot of scary “Olympic Games may crash the Internet” stuff.
Is your MiFi device giving you a lot of access without heavy overage charges?
I didn’t think you get get any current HBO stuff without some kind of cable plan.
Randy P
Douthat’s book got a fairly friendly review (!) by Randall Balmer in the NY Times Book Review today.
Yutsano
@cathyx: Ground chicken I assume? It’s very moist and sticky so it actually needs more binding because as it cooks that loosens up. How many eggs and how much breadcrumb did it all for? Do you have a link to the recipe?
Mino
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): How did Josh Wheldon get involved with this. Not his thing, I would think.
It’s getting good reviews overseas.
Randy P
@Brachiator: I went to the HBO site to see what I could find, clicked on “Veep”, and on the right side of the screen it says “Veep Episode 1 Online”. You have to register.
The 5 GB plan has been satisfactory up to now and I only got overage occasionally, when we had family visiting and tended to see a lot more media. The charges weren’t too bad, typically $10 or so. But I wanted to start watching a little more myself, particularly more political stuff like Rachel, Jon Stewart and Colbert. So I upped the plan.
Villago Delenda Est
OT, but Powder Blue Satan has another great link.
Villago Delenda Est
@Randy P:
OK, so gigantic factual errors don’t detract from the preachy papist shit of Douchhat’s book.
Gotcha, Mr. Balmer.
Idiot.
cathyx
@Yutsano: Yes, ground chicken. Here is the recipe. I would bet that egg would have helped.
ETA: Now that you mention it, I noticed the recipe said cooked chicken, I used raw ground chicken. Next time I will cook the chicken first. And definitely less salt, it was too salty. But it had a great flavor.
Villago Delenda Est
@TaMara (BHF):
Josh Whedon is my master now.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Mino: Actually, I would think Buffy and Firefly would be perfect practice for the Avengers. He gets to write a kick-butt female character, and had an entire (short-lived) series about a disfunctional family with lots of egos flying around together on a space ship. I think he just needed a large enough budget.
Linda Featheringill
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Whitechapel link? Thanks.
Bnut
@Mino: He has done plenty of comic books, most notably X-men before.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Mino: How did Josh Wheldon get involved with this.
Cringe
…Joss Whedon…
He’s a pop-culture-of-all-kinds geek since forever.
Mino
@Bnut: Well, I plan to get out to see this one. I’m a hopeless fan.
Mino
@Xecky Gilchrist: Can’t type.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Mino: Apologies.
My real life name is as odd as my online one, so I get sensitive about these things. Pardon.
Comrade Mary
@merl: Oh, no, no, no. There will be seven books. The sixth will not be the last. And winter is coming.
Brachiator
@Xecky Gilchrist:
He seemed happy to be able to get on board. The Avengers has opened in some overseas markets, and early reviews range from favorable to absolutely gushing.
RossInDetroit
I’m looking at the television today, as I do for an average of about 30 minutes a month. Watching Neil Young’s Live Rust tour movie. What a great songwriter.
My wife tells me this is the new Golden Age of TV. It does seem like there’s a lot of high quality programming on. Really doesn’t make you nostalgic for the days of Room 222 and Rhoda.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Linda Featheringill:
Here ya go
http://www.tv-links.eu/tv-shows/Whitechapel_24726/
You have to opt out of the pay version of putlocker and hope that you get into the server before everyone else does but I managed to watch all of the second episodes of the new series today (when I SOOOOOO should have been doing housework :))
Cacti
For anyone paying attention to the NBA playoffs…
The West looks deep and competitive, with 4-5 credible contenders.
The East looks like it will be a snooze, and that Miami is going to romp through to the NBA Finals.
schrodinger's cat
Has anyone seen BBC’s new Sherlock? I liked Cumberbatch a lot in Tinker Tailor, so I am curious.
Mino
@Cacti: My Spurs are too old. Don’t follow the game anymore.
slag
@Keith G:
link?
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Series One was quite good. Series Two is set to begin soon on PBS.
Cumberbatch, by the way, is the baddie in the new Star Trek movie.
The prophet Nostradumbass
This Rodriguez guy on 60 Minutes really is a disgusting sack of shit. I bet he had an erection when he talked about torturing people.
Brachiator
@Randy P:
Sounds like a good setup. Which mifi device are you using?
I’ve got Internet service, so I mainly use ITunes and the Roku LT. But recently, the Internet has been slow, with some service hiccups.
Steeplejack
On the 60 Minutes torture thing, did Leslie Stahl ask why, if “enhanced interrogation” techniques are so efficient, they waterboarded that one guy 187 times?
Amir Khalid
@Randy P:
Hmm. I’d call Rev. Balmer’s review “polite” rather than “friendly”. Balmer goes on at some length about Chunky’s errors of fact and less-than-exhaustive scholarship. I rather suspect he could have gone on and on, and on, had the New York Times’ word limit been generous enough.
Balmer is courteous but quite thorough in eviscerating Chunky’s poor grasp of history, unfamiliarity with Christian scholarship, and shallow thinking. Balmer ends by mocking Chunky’s whole reactionary attitude: “Religion in the rearview mirror never looked better.”
patroclus
Game of Thrones is excellent – especially the music and the visual sets. I’m rooting for Tyrion and Dany and the remaining Starks (Arya, Bran, Sansa and Jon Snow). Renly, the gay king, got stabbed in the back tonight. Condolences to Loras, his lover and his sister. Joffrey deserves to have his head on a pike.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Steeplejack: Not in those terms, no. I would say she performed as well as you could realistically hope a network journalist would.
Svensker
@efgoldman:
Oh, no, it’s so fun! I watched it last week on TCM and just loved it all over again. It’s sooooo weird. It’s amazing anyone got through the 50s and early 60s at all.
Southern Beale
We’re taping all the good shows and watching the hockey game.
The prophet Nostradumbass
For a grotesque window into the Wingnut mind, check out some of the comments in the #60minutes hashtag on Twitter.
bend
@schrodinger’s cat:
Series 1 was good and it left me: ‘meh, this is good. I’ll watch next year.’
Series 2 was so amazing that it left me jonesing.
Really, the finale of 2 is just a fantastically entertaining 90 minutes of television.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: I recently saw Nemesis, the worst Star Trek Movie ever made, I couldn’t finish it. I hope the new one is better.
Yutsano
@Southern Beale: I might be morphing into a Preds fan after Shea Weber did a You Can Play vid. Still kinda interested to see what’s gonna happen with an NHL team and the new arena they’re building in Seattle.
(edited for clarity)
Amir Khalid
@Svensker:
I followed Peyton Place all the way to the last episode when I was a teenager. It started with characters who were more or less like they were in Grace Metalious’ risque-for-its-times book, and slowly mutated into something utterly unrecognizable. Metalious herself hated the show, as I understand.
Svensker
No love for Nooners and her “Bush League Pres” hit piece on Obama?
She doesn’t think Obama is “fleshly” enough, not passionate enough for the job…so we should vote for Romney instead!
With that, I’m going to my bed.
Svensker
@Amir Khalid:
I never saw the series, just the movie — which I loved.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Yutsano: I was really pleased to see Tommy Wingels of the Sharks do one as well.
Yutsano
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I admit this is pretty personal for me. My ex was passed over by the Avalanche most likely for this reason, but this was 2008, before the campaign came into full swing. It devastated him.
Merp
Alls I’ve got to say is hop on Veep before it gets going, because this thing’s got legs.
Running gags:
the aforementioned “Has the President called?” “No.”
Tony Hale reciting some true-but-inappropriate science tidbit in a “I’ve got the answer teacher” tone.
Matt Walsh declaring sexual arousal every time the obsequious White House liaison declares he’s from the White House.
Coffee being a mechanism of exerting dominance (among aids, Julia Louis-Dreyfus > her aids, other politicians > JLD)
The ambitiously slimy political operative emasculating Tony Hale, causing him to overcompensate in outlandish ways.
Swearing highlights:
fuckity-doo-dah, fuckity-yay
fuck dot you
The characters are getting nicely fleshed out, even though there’ve only been two episodes and about seven different sub-plots. Maybe the best aspect of the writing is the sense of a political and social ecosystem that exists beyond the scope of the show. Minor characters drift in and out, but they have existing relationships with the main ones that define the interactions but are only hinted at. Eg Matt Walsh and a new reporter character acting testy around each other, apparently because Walsh told some half-truths to the reporter at some point.
Which is nice, because it reflects the theme of the show which is stated by a yoghurt (with an h) vendor to Matt Walsh and the ambitiously slimy political operative: “You guys live in your own little world with your heads stuck up your Capitol Hill asses! And you, you gay Irish fireman . . . you’re ok, but you! You I do not like.”
“An insular world filled with affectionate profanity and fairly arbitrary acrimonious relationships.” Sums up Washington culture as well as anything else. Besides “a drained swamp that traded malaria for corruption.”
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yeah, Nemesis was all kinds of crappy. But since then, they have rebooted the series with a young Kirk just beginning to boldly go. The new film is the second in the reboot.
Punchy
Ben Zobrist will single-handedly win me my week of fantasy baseball. Booya
Schlemizel
@cathyx: Mushy sounds like they may have been too moist – did it call for bread crumbs to bind? Usually its the opposite problem & you need to add an egg but I’d be afraid to recommend that if they were really mushy as that sounds like there was too much moisture.
ETA: OK Yutsano sounds to be on the right track but then again, cooked chickend? I’d deff. suggest an egg in that case but I am curious about the use of already cooked chicken for the patties.
Schlemizel
@The prophet Nostradumbass: The only thing that would have been better is Mike Wallace giving him the fish eye and asking in that tone he could use really?
And he did seem to be near orgasm as he describe the torture didn’t he? If there was a pasta in heaven this tape would be played at his trial before the World Court.
Mike in NC
“Veep” sucks big time.
Narcissus
That “Unexceptionalism” piece is sort of breath taking. Seeing it all laid out like that reads like the prologue to Escape From New York or something.
PigInZen
Not sure what was better, the DVR’ed episode of Game of Thrones or watching the fourth quarter of the Clippers-Grizzlies game. Holy hell indeed.
TaMara (BHF)
@cathyx: I think you’re right, it was using the uncooked chicken that made them fall apart. There’s a lot of moisture in uncooked and it would have made them mushy. The recipe looks really good and I might have to give it a try. And as you mentioned, too much salt (and probably too much butter, too) – 1tsp each salt, onion salt, and celery salt, really? Have they never heard of hypertension? I’d probably fry them up in olive oil myself.
Thymezone
There may be good shows on, but NYC22 is not one of them. My first impression is that this show is a huge practical joke … they can’t possibly be serious. It’s biblically bad.
mclaren
Huh. Seems to me like there’s almost nothing on TV worth watching. Fringe is okay, but what else?
Mad Men never grabbed me, the ultraviolence on Borgias is so nauseating I can’t deal with it (that scene where they start sawing the guy to death upside down was so horrific I had to shut off the TV and stop watching), and what else?
Back in the 90s, Joss Whedon made TV shows! The 90s rocked. Star Trek was on. Now it’s nothing but torture, torture, torture, killing, and more torture.
No thanks.
mclaren
@Mino:
Whedon got called in as a script doctor. He’s worked in Hollywood as a script doctor for a long, long time. Did you know Whedon did an uncredited finale rewrite for Speed (1995)?
Anyway, Marvel called Whedon in to consult on the first Avengers script and he told ’em: “You need to forget about this script. This script does not exist. You need another one.” So they hired him to write a 5-page summary of what kind of script they needed, and…the rest is history.
The latest print edition of Wired has an interview with Whedon about The Avengers &c.
The prophet Nostradumbass
I just tried to watch the first episode of Veep, and damn, that show is bad. Unfunny in the extreme.
Joseph Nobles
You people knocking Veep are insane. I watch it at a friend’s house, and his next door neighbors are calling him complaining about our shrieks of laughter. This is Arrested Development good right out of the starting gate.
Mino
@mclaren: Hey, thanks for the info.
And I would only add that DS9 was the best Star Trek version.
rickstershierpa
@merl: He is not a younger brother and it is probably better not to give away major plot details. Also, the show does not strictly follow the book at this point.
Privatize the Profits! Socialize the Costs!
…pretty funny but you have to have watched the HBO series “Game of Thones” to get the jokes.
http://www.thefrisky.com/2012-04-29/a-game-of-thrones-american-political-primer/
Pennsylvanian
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I could not agree more. Veep is shockingly bad. I swear like a sailor, but if this show didn’t have profanity, there wouldn’t be any dialogue. Profanity as a substitute for dialogue is offensive. I couldn’t even get through the first 30 minute episode, and I want my 20 minutes back.