Reviews

To understand this film, you have to get it on 3 levels.

1. It's an action / comedy. Because of Hollywood's "Rule of Cool", if it's cool enough, a few plot holes are allowed.

2. There's a real story. There's heartache, there's love.

3. It's a love letter to stunt people, and the audience gets to join in.

Towards the end of the film, #1 and #2 are completed. That's when the plot gets silly, because we're still wrapping up #3.

The purpose of the last 20 minutes isn't the love story. It's "hey, everyone, let's make a movie!" It's straight up a celebration of filmmaking. It's joyous. It continues straight through the film's conclusion to the credits with outtakes.

Anyone criticizing the film for plot holes just doesn't understand its actual purpose.

Actually, The Fall Guy is genius. It's somehow both a well-written, thoughtful movie, but also a powerful action flick. It doesn't take itself seriously but is also very moving. It's a tribute to stunt people and can be appreciated culturally the same way that other films bring you into other cultures and peoples.

It is similar in its joyousness but a far, far better film than Drop Zone (1994) with Wesley Snipes, which celebrates skydivers.

What a wild ride, and a great homage to the original The Fall Guy, which started Lee Majors, whom you may know better as TV's The Six Million Dollar Man.

When I was a kid, my father let me stay up "late" (8pm) to watch Lee Majors. It was so thrilling to be up past my bedtime and sharing an adventure that just washed away all my little kid troubles.

The new film did the same for all my adult troubles. Just go see it and let yourself experience joy in a way that (as a planet) we've had rarely in the last few years with covid and politics and war.

To me it's the first film since Top Gun: Maverick that I've wanted to see more than once. It's a party. It's a celebration. It's got world record setting stunts. Stop complaining. Go see this film and join in!

I used to love this film, and of course I respect revolutionaries fighting a police state. If you live in Russia, this film may give you inspiration.

But that's not what the filmmakers intended and it's not how it's perceived in society. In society, it's a shorthand for political outrage instead of debate. It's about the United Kingdom, which is not a police state.

Alan Moore, creator of the original comics, is a self-described "anarchist" and a conspiracy theorist who admires cultist and con man Aleister Crowley.

I find it curious. Some of the most "liberal" people who believe in social justice admire Che Guevara, who was a murderer and wannabe dictator. Now in V for Vendetta we're supposed to admire Guy Fawkes, who was a religious fanatic and wannabe murderer who wanted a new monarch.

I get it. It's only a movie. And I love movies like Batman. Batman is a vigilante but it's okay because Batman is so clearly a fantasy, and he's written so that he's never wrong. V for Vendetta, with its earnest poetry about "ideas", is not so much a fantasy as a call to arms.

If you actually live in an Orwellian nightmare, fine. But for the rest of us, debate and peaceful protest are the only moral tools in a democracy. If you're angry but uninformed, full of self-righteousness, and you think this justifies illegal acts, that makes you part of the problem. That's not liberalism. That's populism, a mental and moral dead end.

Stoking hatred and fear is what's getting society into trouble. Showing empathy and reason is the only thing that gets us out.

If you love this movie, grow up. When you're a teenager it's fine to wear black lipstick and pretend to embrace death like a goth and think you can pull violent stunts like blocking a highway because there's some moderate injustice in society, but when you're an adult, you have to reject Alan Moore's ideas entirely. The way to rid ourselves of injustice in a democracy is through debate and peaceful protest.

One of my favorite quotes is this line: For every complex problem, there is a simple solution, and it is wrong.

So I'm reducing this from 10/10 to 4/10 because I am no longer a child and I don't think like children do.

Wow! I'm shocked by the reviews saying that Obliterated isn't intelligent.

Folks, it's a comedy. Silly, off-the-wall antics is part of it.

In fact, as a writer I have to say that the script is actually genius. Do you have any idea how next level it is to write a story that works both as a comedy and as action?

And have it all take place in one 12-hour period, and it's an ensemble cast, but every character is fleshed out and has a story arc. And the plot has lots of surprises, and the plot is character driven?

The comedic bits are silly and fun because they're supposed to be. But actually, the crew doesn't have a comedic moron who makes deliberate bad choices just for effect. Instead, it's amazing how all the characters manage to get through the 12 hours with mainly sensible motivations, given that they're all high, and without as many coincidences and you would think.

To me it all comes together as a next level version of the TV show 24, which was full of mechanical plot for plot's sake and obvious plot direction, plus laugh out loud comedy. It's stunning. Most comedies, except for rare cases like Austin Powers, just don't work as action. Most action films, even the Die Hard films, don't have much genuine humor.

Please show respect. If you didn't like it, fine, but this is a genius series that is well written, well acted, and a huge amount of fun. Don't call it brain dead. It's just not.

10 stars! Even better than FUBAR.

Rule 1. Have likable characters. I loved the pilot episode, but the main character lies and cheats her friends. I can't root for that.

Sure, Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy lies too, but by the end of the episode she is genuinely sorry. There's no sorry in Extraordinary. Instead there's real pain and sometimes deliberate cruelty. That deflates comedy. It robs the audience of the feeling that everything will be okay in the end. The show's premise is too wacky to be a dramedy.

Rule 2. Viewers want characters to make bold choices. Three of the main characters are just useless. We don't like to root for weak characters, and we can characters don't drive the plot. The plot goes nowhere. I get it, in a dark comedy it's okay for the protagonists to ultimately fail and get nowhere. But this sure doesn't feel like a dark comedy. It feels like it's trying to be a real comedy.

Rule 3. Stories must have an arc. Story arcs require character arcs. Character arcs require character change.

The show is too heavily plot driven, without the characters changing. The plot hints at character changes, but then they always just reset. For example, in the story two characters who are dating break up. But then they continue hanging out together.

I get it, Jen is resisting growing up. But when characters don't change, the plot just seems to be running in circles. If you don't want to have long story arcs, that's fine but then make your show episodic with some resolution at the end of each episode.

I really don't understand people who like this show. This is not Breaking Bad, where it's fun to root for the bad guy because the show is so clearly not reality. The lies, cheating, and abuse of this show are all too real from the worst parts of normal life. Do viewers who like this show really think it's okay to act like that? To be petty and to celebrate hurting other people and scoring points in this way?

This show has a very interesting premise, and good acting, but it just runs into a wall with the quality of the writing. I'm sorry. Five stars out of ten.

Okay, this wasn't made in Hollywood. :)

Season 1 had a lot of antics. The characters are always trying to deceive each other, with crazy spirals and really great acting. Season 2 was pretty good too, but then they broke a rule of Hollywood.

The rule is, in a comedy, even a dramedy, everything has to be okay in the end. You can't have real pain. This show began as a dysfunctional family but ultimately they love each other. Then it just became fighting, real pain, and if characters are willing to cause each other real pain, that makes them unlikable.

Of course the mother should complain. She has a lot to complain about. But she's also the normal one, the "everyman" that the audience can identify with. If she's complaining, the audience feels like they're unsatisfied too.

I'm sorry. I absolutely saw the genius of this show, but after a while it became repetitive to me and it just didn't cheer me up to have them go through so much heartache. By the middle of season 3, it seemed to be a pretty straight drama with essentially no comedy remaining.

6 stars, a pretty high rating considering that I stopped watching the series.

To me, the new Quantum Leap has all the heart of the original show. Ben goes to times where he helps real people in a compelling drama and we learn something about history. The writing is excellent, very moving.

But a third of the show centers around the people that Ben left behind, the people running the computers and time travel system. It's soap opera level with contrived plot twists. Some military VIP will threaten to shut down the operation center, or they need to fix this week's software problem.

There's no emotional heart to it, or there is but it's melodramatic. I think basically they just don't have a strong concept for the home base storyline. That's why the set design is dark and weird, and they never shoot on location in the real world. That's why a multibillion dollar operation only has about six people working there. That's why it feels nothing like NASA.

The basic problem is that the show breaks this rule of Hollywood: In science fiction / fantasy, it's not about the premise. It's about the effect of the premise on real people.

Here's an example. Imagine that The Walking Dead was split between people surviving zombies out in the wild, and then a laboratory of bickering people trying to cure the disease. The two things don't go together, stylistically, and the more you focus on the premise the more you basically reveal that most sci-fi premises make no sense.

For example, in Star Wars, don't think too much about the Force. It's just a device to tell compelling human stories. Imagine that Star Wars was all about how the Force actually works, and it wasn't about awesome lightsabers and space travel. That's how you get, in Star Wars I The Phantom Menace, mitichlorians and the Virgin birth. Don't make us stare at the premise. Focus on the human stories that it triggers. That's a rule of Hollywood.

Even Lord of the Rings, which came from decades of historical research and plotting by a serious academic, doesn't go into how the magic ring works. Because it's blah blah blah Magic, and you can't tell a compelling story about nonsense.

In the new Quantum Leap, the soap opera at home base is not compelling and takes show time away from having a fleshed out story in the main time travel adventure. You know, the one where I might learn something about history. The one that has a big heart. The one that makes the show different from other TV shows. Call it the competitive advantage.

The competitive advantage about this show, compared to other science fiction TV shows, is that it explores the past in an educational and heartfelt way by inserting an everyman hero whom the audience can identify with.

The home base plot lines dilute what makes your show different and special.

The original Quantum Leap was like The Lone Ranger. The focus of the story was on the people that you met, not on the protagonist or regular supporting cast. You learned almost nothing about the crew back home, because that wasn't important. And ultimately how the time travel actually works is just blah blah blah nonsense. Don't stare into it.

I definitely recommend the new Quantum Leap! It's just, now I'm near the end of the second season, and I watch the show while skipping past the home base scenes. Think about that. How is it possible for me to understand the main plot line if I'm not watching anything from home base? It's because they're basically two different TV shows.

That explains everything you need to know about Quantum Leap and why it's good and it's bad. It's a good time travel show with a bad drama about administrating a time travel laboratory.

Hello again, fellow film travelers!

I loved the movies when Star Trek and the Terminator were set on modern day Earth, and after Alien: Resurrection I really wanted to see the Alien franchise set on Earth. But, it's bad.

One Hollywood rule explains this film. If one actor is bad, it's the actor's fault. If all the actors are bad, it's the director's fault.

Unfortunately, the film is riddled with unrealistic character moments that pop you out of the suspension of disbelief. It comes from all directions:

-- The editing. Characters get startled at the wrong instant. It's hard to follow the fight scenes.

-- The sound design, when we can hear the alien through a glass window, but the guy right next to the alien can't.

-- The dialogue. Being chased by a monster you don't need to say "We've got to go." A guy grabbed by a monster should be too shocked to say "Help me."

-- The writing. Person A sees Person B beat up (by humans) and in the next scene neither mentions it. No one is skeptical of monster sightings. The military's decisions are inexplicable. The surprise ending is telegraphed.

-- The blocking, when characters who should flee have to "stay on their mark".

-- The lighting. I turned my video player's brightness all the way up and it was still too dark. Even the daytime scenes are too dark.

-- The directing. This is just not a serious movie. It's a slasher film. It's not worthy of the franchise.

-- And finally the acting, as I have already noted. A notable exception was Chelah Horsdal (from The Man in the High Castle), who bridged the film's flaws with compelling terror.

You can see from my profile that I rarely give films low ratings, but this time, I have to, I'm sorry.

3 stars. Keep on traveling!

This show is worth watching but sometimes meanders through "connected" topics that really aren't very connected.

For example, if topic A makes you want to complain you can do it by ground mail. So let's talk about ground mail. That's not a connection. If you make the topics more thematic and connected it helps with learning. For example, if every example had something to do with the history leading up from ancient times to how modern gears work.

At intervals the program stops to recap. That's an acknowledgement that the various connections are hard to follow. Also, many of the topics are either repeats from the previous Connections series, or aren't science.

Finally, the show is full of cute verbal flourishes that undercut the clarity. Things like "He was all abuzz about bees. Well, insects. Well, any creepy crawly thing." Or "He failed. Mind you, he did succeed in one thing."

What? I'm just trying to understand. Stop taking back what you said and obfuscating. It's fine to have fun flourishes, but make them support clarity.

For whatever reason, this doesn't have the power of the original Connections TV show.

Still, you might learn a few things. 7 stars.

I loved Season 1, but in Season 2 they broke 3 rules of writing.

1. Don't let your premise take over. The premise in science fiction, or any story, is about the people.

Season 1 set up some simple rules for time travel. In Season 2 they got massively more complicated, adding new characters and duplicating the original characters in across 3 timelines. I could no longer follow what was happening in the show. Time travel stories all have trouble with repeating themes. The characters are literally going in circles, time-wise.

The Walking Dead ran for 11 seasons and they never changed the rules of the show for how the zombies worked, because ultimately the show wasn't about the premise. It was about its impact on people.

2. You don't need to make the stakes bigger. Just make them personal. Throughout Seasons 1 and 2 planet-wide disasters keep coming. But in the face of such catastrophe, it makes all the melodrama seem petty. Characters keep making personal decisions instead of personal sacrifices -- even to save the planet -- and it doesn't feel true to me.

3. Vary the tone. If you push it to maximum darkness and keep it there, it's overwhelming. The audience needs to breathe and reset.

I'd give Season 1 an 8 out of 10, but in Season 2, I didn't know what was happening, the characters became unlikable with weird choices, and it's so dark -- both literally with many night scenes and figuratively -- that it wasn't even a fun ride. I gave up.

Hello again, fellow film travelers!

Monk was originally a lot of fun in it's earlier seasons, but the show ended up breaking three of the most important rules of writing.

1. Be likeable. The big joke with Monk is that he can't stand dogs, friends, vacations, anything. He's always complaining. It's unlikeable. Viewers want heroes to be good, to be kind to others. Where are the big and small gestures of kindness? In one episode they enter a flower shop and of course he hates it. Viewers don't like to root for people who hate everything. If Monk is such a great guy, show it.

2. You can't make boredom interesting. Monk's OCD plays out in overly long scenes. Sometimes it's funny but as the series went on it became repetitive and predictable, and so less funny. Mostly the joke is how Monk is obsessed about something, like counting paper straws, and is wasting the time of the supporting characters, who are bored. In one episode the joke is that Monk hosts a bachelor party but it's lame and everyone's bored. My god! Who's idea was it that viewers want to watch characters deliberately being boring? When Monk wastes the time of other characters on the show, he's wasting the time of the viewer! When he annoys other characters, he's annoying the viewer!

3. Pain isn't funny. There's nothing wrong with a dramedy, a dramatic comedy, but there are bits in Monk such as every OCD scene that are clearly supposed to be comedic, but contain pain, and that's a mismatch. When Bitty Schram would argue with Monk, it was in a comedic way that didn't show pain. You knew that everything was going to be okay. With Natalie, the actress played it straight and earnest, genuinely hurt. When she fought with Monk it was distressing, like watching your parents fight.

In addition, the show never regained the magic after losing Bitty Schram, who was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance, and then let go in a contract dispute. It must have been a bad one, because she never acted again. Some genius writer decided that the replacement, Natalie, would call Monk "Mr. Monk" instead of "Adrian", as though deliberately setting an emotional distance between them. Neither the actor nor the writers ever managed to give Natalie interesting character nuances, or the daughter, who was mysteriously absent in most episodes.

For example, Natalie's reactions to Monk didn't vary; it was always just to chastise him. That does not develop character. With Bitty Schram, she was always going on kooky dates, thinking of ways to make quick money, or having a more fleshed out relationship with her child or ex-husband. Natalie's character never seemed to have a separate personality away from her role supporting Monk.

The backstory with the death of Monk's wife goes nowhere. Even though it's Monk's top goal of the show, the case only develops in 3 episodes of 122 before the series finale. The writers clearly had no idea where it was going. Same with bringing in some of Monk's family as guest stars instead of recurring characters. One episode is not a family.

Finally, kudos to Jason Gray-Stanford, who was the funniest cast member, doing so much with even small scenes. It's a shame that they did not wrap up his character by showing that his "bumbing idiot" persona had at least a hint of genius.

There is much good to say about this show, but I recommend that you watch only the highest rated episodes.

Connections 2 is less memorable than the original, and I'm saying that as someone who just watched both at the same time, not someone sunk into nostalgia.

There is a bit too much smugness. For example, you'll find phrases like "He wanted to discover X to Y wouldn't happen. He did, so it didn't." Cute turn of phrase, but you're confusing me.

I found Connections 2 overall less thematic and more confusing to follow. The original show had more signposts to remind the viewer where we've been and where we were going.

The show goes into topics like Robin Hood that don't involve the history of science, and what science there is often is a repeated topic from the original Connections.

Still, I did learn a few things, so 7 out of 10.

I loved other Miyazaki films My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away, I liked Princess Mononoke, and I didn't care for Howl's Moving Castle.

This one didn't grab me.

I don't know what's so "magical" about the animation. Yes, it had some special effects, but overall the animation I would call choppy. I guess you guys have never seen The Incredibles or Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

It's a story of a sullen boy who does not seem to have kindness, or a personality. I didn't care to root for him. And he's pulled through adventures without making his own choices, without agency. It reminds me of the first Harry Potter movie. The kid doesn't do things. Things happen to him. Moviegoers like to root for strong characters who make choices.

And nothing makes any sense. Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro had, you know, a plot. I understood what was happening. I loved the new Godzilla Minus One with its WWII themes of Japanese life, so I'm not against the topic or foreign films with subtitles. I just found this boring.

It seemed like every few minutes we got a disconnected scene with new characters of unknown intent. Some animals are friends and some you want to kill, and some are both? Some characters are kind, and some are cruel, and some are both? It's so weird and aimless seeming.

And it's presented timidly, long pauses that don't seem earned by the plot and not enough supporting music. It's as though I'm supposed to come into the movie carrying my own awe instead of the movie earning my awe. It takes place during World War II but the war is hardly mentioned.

I'm sorry. I guess I was supposed to like this, but I didn't.

If you click on my profile, you will see that I rarely give low ratings to films, but this one checked all of my boxes, I guess.

Have you had a tough last few years with covid and social isolation and politics?

How about a movie that's both boring and depressing, with characters you don't like to root for?

If a film can't be entertaining, it should at least be edifying, but ultimately Dream Scenario is just too weird to have anything to teach us.

I guess it's sort of about cancel culture, but I can't think what it has to say about that. It's mostly about a sort of nobody guy whom you don't hate but has unlikable flaws and don't care what happens to him. And then horrible things happen to him, but not in a roller coaster like a horror movie but sort of a death march.

I'm a writer, so I like films to be well written, especially in science fiction, which is supposed to make you think.

But Hollywood has an even bigger rule, The Rule of Cool. It means that plot holes don't matter if what happens is cool enough. For example, The Force in Star Wars doesn't make any sense but we don't care.

The Creator is like that. I spent much of this film wondering why characters were making certain choices and what their goals were. The film is long and doesn't have enough mileposts to help the viewer understand it.

But it's really cool. The visuals are next level. Remember when you saw The Matrix and thought, Wow, what are they going to do next? This is it.

So, don't worry and just go see it. You have my blessing as someone who hates iffy writing.

I loved seasons 1 and 2, with a goofy sense that a happy ending is coming and a likable character who everyone can identify with.

I also loved that the innovative musical style that had no repetition. Typically I don't find comedy songs that funny because it just takes longer to go through a single comedic concept, but this show does that well, and with songs that are also catchy.

While I have to applaud brave creative choices, in season 3 they broke some of the rules. A rule of comedy is that you can't have real pain. The protagonist does things that cause real pain to people and undercut the comedic sense that all will be well in the end. Things aren't well.

In addition to this, the protagonist becomes unlikable through some of her choices. She can't be forgiven for some of her actions. The interactions between characters start to become repetitive and stagnate. I switched from watching every episode to choosing to watch solely the high rated episodes, and it still wasn't enough.

Unlike the romantic sitcom How I Met Your Mother, whose later seasons just seemed to run out of ideas, I sense that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend made these choices on purpose. It's a shame, because such extremes were not necessary. In I Love Lucy, Lucy lies and sneaks around, but she doesn't get into --omitted--!! Come on. This is not Breaking Bad.

Unfortunately, it broke the rules. When you do something surreal that can't possibly be explained, that's okay in a comedy setting because you don't take anything seriously. In a comedy / drama, you can't have over the top actions because then when the characters just accept the strange happenings it doesn't make sense. Real characters wouldn't react like this. Real characters wouldn't forgive the protagonist, and neither do I.

There's also a lot of preachy stuff about therapy, which I hope helped some real people, because it was sure boring to watch. Another rule of writing is that being preachy is like poison to a script. Tell your stories with subtle morality.

It ruined the show for me, despite the first two good seasons. Combining 10 stars for the first two seasons and four stars for the last two seasons I guess I'll rate this seven stars.

This series is fine. It's well acted, well produced, and interesting. But it's given the brand Justified and that is misleading. Brands convey personality and style. It's a short cut for you know what you're going to get.

Unfortunately, the use of the brand Justified just doesn't apply here. Justified had some comedy to it, and a beautiful and strange locale. The marshalls were a sort of TV family who loved each other. Protagonist Raylan Givens was a wisecracking hero who was like a modern Wild West sheriff, a throwback. There was tension between the uneducated hillbillies and the literature quoting elites.

Justified: City Primeval does not carry these qualities. It's humorless, does not particularly showcase cultural tensions, and with much of the show is shot on sets, its setting could be any American city. Raylan Givens is among strangers, not loving cop friends forming a TV family that includes the viewer, and when he goes outside the lines of the law, his maverick move is quickly punished.

That doesn't make the show bad, but it was misleading to call this a Justified show.

The daughter was fine also. I don't know why people need to complain. I'm sure if she were meek they'd complain about that also. Making her a maverick was interesting, to me. Too bad the scriptwriters could not find a good way to integrate her with the show, but frankly that is always the problem with adding children to a TV show. Take for example the TV show Castle, whose underutilization of the mother and daughter characters was painful -- and they were adults.

Stripped of the fundamental style of the original Justified, at least to me Justified: City Primeval seems ordinary. It doesn't seem to have a flair or style that makes it unique. To rephrase that, what was missing in the landscape of cop dramas that makes you think, oh I need to see this?

And what makes me want to root for the characters? The lawyer, not Raylan, is the only one wrestling with moral choices. Raylan's partner is more of a maverick than he is. The bad guys are mostly hurting each other, not victims we love to see protected.

The original Justified touched on themes of oppression and class struggle, which though stereotyped elevated the show. There's no such elevation or greater theme here. The addition of people of color is most welcome, but there's no discussion of race, just like the Albanians don't discuss their own culture or heritage.

So why am I watching this? Because I enjoyed the original Justified?

That reasoning isn't justified.

I'm a scientist and an engineer, with a healthy respect for history. Surely there could be hardly any more important topic than this movie.

But I guess their attempt to show respect to the dead and take the topic seriously, which to be fair is warranted, leads to a truly bleak film.

Bleakness, despair, tension is supposed to build and relax, build and relax, you can't just hold it at maximum value for 3 hours.

And there's just a mountain of exposition. Hey, I get it, real life is complicated, so if you want to remain true it's hard to make a single theme that wraps up neatly. But this film takes it too far. It includes essentially every single person, and there is far too much emphasis on courtroom drama instead of the scientists. At times, it relies on the audience to be preloaded with awe and respect for the events, instead of earning that. The story is just too complicated, unable to go into depth with anything in a headlong rush of minor characters and historical facts.

This is really a five-star movie to me. I walked out close to the end when I realized that the film still wasn't close to ending. But it's important topic, so I'll give six stars.

Wow! They didn't just top the last Mission Impossible movie. They made an adventure so intense that no one will ever top it, ever.

Until the next one, of course.

I can just imagine the casting process.

"Are you the world's most intense person?"

"No, I'm much more intense than that. I want to jump off a boat that's falling from high in the air onto a helicopter that's attacking a submarine while a bomb's going off both from above and below and I'm hanging strapped to twenty eagles flying me through the air."

"That's not going to be enough."

"But then add a train. With a motorcycle. And lots more eagles."

"You're hired."

And the film is smart and funny, too. Just go see it. It will get your mind off of everything nuts in the world and make you feel like you could pull off the impossible, too.

I love Star Trek, but Enterprise has unlikable characters, at least until Season 4, which is finally worthy. Season 1-3 I find so counter to the hero's journey.

Trip is arrogant and gets angry at the wrong moments. No character depth is given to the pilot or linguist. The cast does not show chemistry with each other, and the crew argues in a mean-spirited way. This is no "TV family" like the other Star Trek shows.

Even worse, they violate the rule of drama. Drama is about people. For example, in Star Wars VI when Luke Skywalker defeats the Emperor, it's not because he's a better fighter. It's because he believes in his father. Too many episodes of Enterprise are just a mechanical solving of some technical problem or winning some action sequence, without a human story.

The time travel plot is (a) confusing (b) boring and (c) robs Enterprise of what it should be: an exploration set in its own era. I think the writers got so caught up in one-upping the franchise, making everything bigger, grander than the previous Star Trek shows... but that's a mismatch for the first baby steps of humanity into space. You don't need to always raise the stakes. Make the stakes more personal. Rocky just wants to win one fight. Django just wants to rescue his wife. E. T. Just wants to get home. You don't need to blow up the multiverse / timeline to build interesting stories.

The worst part is that the plot with saving the Earth apparently places so much pressure on Captain Archer that he loses his moral compass. He tortures and murders people. He lies and steals. I just don't want to root for a "hero" like that.

I was aware that Enterprise was not the best Star Trek TV series, so I decided to watch only the top-rated episodes. Even with that, I'm sorry to say that I still found Seasons 1-3 flat. Season 4 is worth watching.

I'm a fan of Dule Hill from The West Wing and Psych, but I just couldn't get into this show. It seems well written but the narrator interrupts every 60 seconds to pull you out of the story.

Some of the interruptions are interesting commentary, but most are unnecessary and some are self-congratulatory, like someone telling a joke and then saying, See? That was funny, right?

I read once that saturating a movie with music -- telling the audience what to feel in a heavy handed way -- means that the director didn't trust their own story to move you.

I feel like that with the narrator. I'm sorry. It ruined the show for me. It made the show unwatchable, even though it seems to be a good one: comedy, drama, good acting, important issues.

I liked Nathan For You, and I loved the first episode of this show. It seemed like Nathan was going to help quirky people in a clever way, like a super hero.

But episodes 2, 3, and 4 drifted into self-indulgence, with Nathan himself becoming the focus, the main theme of helping people getting lost in self-references and meta narratives, and the episode 2 target whom I found unlikable extended into a recurring character.

To use an analogy, a zombie movie should never really be about the zombies. It should be on their effects on real people surviving. The Rehearsal was just too much about Nathan and his setups, and it's easy to guess why: their experiments didn't result in enough footage.

I get it. When you're filming in the real world, you may not get enough footage to make a show. I think this series should have been planned better though. For example, they invested heavily into helping one target who quit, instead of going through to the end of the experiment.

I love an intelligent comedy, and this is one of the best! It takes a lot to make me laugh out loud this many times. It's original, with perfect comedic timing, and doesn't take itself too seriously despite the opportunities to call out prejudice. It's just fun and I love the characters are put into embarrassing and triumphant situations. Give it a try!

I love Steve Martin. I do, I do, I do.

But I have to say, Martin Short is the funniest person on the planet and I already love this TV show.

I don't even care about true crime podcasts. I think they're weird and that morbid fascination is not healthy. Also, I'm too old to know who Selena Gomez is. But I do like detective stories and this one is original and laugh out loud funny.

But this show is that good. Watch it.