Watching it now (west coast). Trying to let it stand alone so that I don’t question it and miss any details. So far, it’s interesting…
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The only one of those I saw was Threshold, which I enjoyed, It had a good cast and maintained a balance between whether to take itself seriously or not. I re-watched the pilot again about a month ago. It’s probably what most would call a guilty pleasure. One of the things I love about it is that I am a much more audio than visual person, and much of the series is technobabble about how extra-dimensional entities are using sound to invade, I’m not bothering to spoiler tag that, since it is in the trailers and everything. Carla Gugino, Peter Dinklage, and Brent Spiner solving alien mysteries? Yes please! Often had WTF levels around the same levels as Greg Strangis’ late 80s “War of the Worlds” series, which I consider a compliment.
I enjoyed the first IIRC five seasons of X-Files finally, at the ripe old year of 2010 or so. I thought it was OK, but never got very invested in it. I think the series had lucky timing, because it was popular when so many people were just starting to get onto the internet, and there was a “wow factor” that much of the public had not really been immersed in conspiracy theories by that time. Suddenly it was easy to look up these weird references, making for a novel rabbit hole.
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Well, it was interesting. The pacing was oddly fast… simultaneously immersive and oddly short feeling segments, that seemed more teaser than contents, at least until the last 10 minutes or so. The audio and sound cues were well done, though the levels/mastering were somewhat more theatric than televisory (it’s a word now, dunno if it was before!). The periodic narration was unusual. Necessary from a creative perspective (new audiences, after all), but didn’t annoy me in the way that most shows utilizing that technique do (suck it, NBC).
The plot and twists will go unstated so as not to spoil anything, but I feel much more involved this year than I did with the start of last year’s “mini season” (which I didn’t have enough motivation to finish). I’ll definitely be tuning in next week.
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Also not to be confused with the 1960s CBS show The Defenders, about a father-son team of defense lawyers. It ran for four seasons, back when networks had guts.
From Wikipedia:
Topics featured in the series included abortion, capital punishment, “no-knock” searches, custody rights of adoptive parents, the insanity defense, the “poisoned fruit doctrine”, immigration quotas, the Hollywood blacklist, jury nullification, and Cold War visa restrictions.
Half a century later, it still sounds a tad more relevant than Marvel’s superheroes.
ETA: Also William Shatner!
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Who else watched Rubicon? Also cancelled after one season, with no resolution, it was a classic paranoid conspiracy story in the vein of The Parallax View and similar films.
I saw a comment on Reddit speculating that it’s not available anywhere online because it was getting too close to the truth.
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Utopia didn’t get canceled, it got sold. It was IIRC Showtime who bought the rights to the series. There was talk that they were trying to get David Fincher on board to make the third season/series. Then I was disappointed to hear that they were just going to do a direct remake, which was IMO pointless because the original was new, nearly perfect, and they could have just licensed the original to show in the US. Instead, we got nothing.
I don’t know if that means that Utopia was a victim of its own success, or if it failed to live up to its potential, but I think it would have benefited from a third UK season.
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That’s even more annoying. My guess was that Channel 4 had given up rights to it.
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Oh yes. Weirdly plausible as well.
What if there was a black-ops group working for, like, the World Health Organization, or somebody like that, shutting down the deadliest epidemics that pop up around the world, by any means necessary, the kind of stuff world leaders want done RIGHT NOW but they don’t want to know ANYTHING ABOUT IT. What else would a group like that do, after a while? How would it recruit a second generation of operatives? What kind of bizarre internal culture would it develop?
It’s a horrorshow for sure. Prepare to be horrified.
That’s what I thought about Fortitude. Have you seen Fortitude ? Horrible people doing horrible things just because they’re horrible, plus sci-fi monsters. It looks like it was shot on another planet, but it’s so disturbing and violent it’ll make you wonder what it says about you if you “like” it.
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No ridiculous that sort of group would never happen.
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I’d include Millennium in this list, even though it lasted two seasons. Season 1 had a very, ah, final finale because they thought it was going to be cancelled. As a result Season 2 was uneven.
Not much music, but that haunting violin solo over the opening credits always sounded amazingly expressive to me.
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I dropped Fortitude about the episode when Stanley Tucci is shot. It started to feel unecessarily convoluted. Should I revisit it?
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Probably not?
I still haven’t seen the second season.
At some point staring at a car wreck might not be a healthy thing to keep doing.
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I loved Rubicon. I loved the pacing, the actors, everything. I had had the whole series at one point but have long lost the files.
And, yes, it was a little close for comfort I think.
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Looking forward to hearing your thoughts about the episode!
It’s a week late, but I just watched Strange Days. In the tradition of watching Die Hard on Christmas, I think this will become my traditional New Year’s movie.
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Ooooh, Nova’s doing an episode on black holes tonight. They’ve fascinated me since I was a kid, so this should be good. It’s on right now, gotta go watch… 
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Just finished Spotlight on Netflix. By now, we all know the story they were chasing, but somehow I thought it blew up earlier than that. I guess not, though.
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I’m glad you mentioned Spotlight. All the crap Netflix recommends to me, and they neglect to notify about the film I’ve been searching their listings for of and on for months.
I like how they mention all the previous articles that would be short, focus on one priest, and then nothing would be followed up.
I also find it interesting that the number the priest-turned-psychoanalyst gives – that 6% of all priests are molesters – matches closely with the percentage of rapists in the student populations that Jon Krakauer gives in Missoula.
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Interestingly, Marty Baron is now the editor of WaPo, who have managed to resist the excessive Trumpism of outlets like NYT.
I liked that the filmmakers decided not to go over-the-top with the drama stakes and let the horror of the real thing just sink in. And that a lot of the job is making phone call after phone call and being told no. Plus the fact that it was mostly put together from random, boring records that nobody thought to look at, because they’re just boring.
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I am watching The Blues Brothers for the first time (hey, everyone has cultural gaps).
I just saw the scene where the Bluesmobile runs the Illinois Nazis off the bridge.
And that made me think about the actual Nazis running over the actual counter-protestor last year.
Those petty fuckers.
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