Thanks so much!!! Looking forward to receiving it.

Even though I watched it during the Animation Challenge in August, I'm watching Home Movies again. Enjoying Bob's Burgers on Sundays made me want to revisit the show again, despite having watched it not too long ago. No wonder my unwatched pile remains so large, lol.

Me too!

I saw Coach Beiste in an episode of Dharma & Greg.

It's funny you mention the Animation Challenge, because I was just thinking earlier about when I can next continue with some of the shows I've been watching for other challenges. For instance, if I get around to buying the second season of The 4400 by July I can resume that show for the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Challenge, and having gorged on 32 episodes of She-Ra, Princess of Power I can wait till August to pick back up with Season One, Volume Two of that show.

Some of the shows I've been watching have been the first seasons, and I've got an eye on picking up the second seasons of those shows either in time for the next eligible challenge, or at least by the end of the year. It might be fun, for instance, to watch a season of The Dukes of Hazzard each January! There are a lot of possibilities just within the structure of the DVD Talk challenges, and I'm getting a better feel as this month winds down for things I wish I had or hadn't done. (I probably should have waited on the Star Trek Borg box set, for instance, but I felt the itch for some Trek and probably would have watched it anyway.)

Same here.

I saw a teenage Kurt Russell on an episode of Gilligan's Island!!! I kept thinking he looked and sounded familiar, but couldn't figure out who he was until the end credits.

Hitting the mail this afternoon. Congrats and enjoy!

GoldenWheels, I have PM'ed you with a request.

I enjoyed all 4 series. That's the first I've read of people suggesting skipping series one. I find that series quite funny, although Blackadder is a much different sort in that one. Each series stands alone very well with only that slim, familial, connecting thread.

"Blackadder: The Cavalier Years" is just too short. I know it was a "one-off" for Comic Relief, but it deserved at least an hour. Actually a whole series in this era/setting would have been good.

The "Blackadder's Christmas Carol" episode is my least favorite of the bunch, but it's still very funny. The "Blackadder's Christmas Carol" on the disk I own is the unedited version, which is nice. I somewhat understand why a line was edited, but it *is* funny and very much in keeping with the spirit of Blackadder. Not only that but IMHO it's really no more "offensive" than the entire section leading up to the censored line. They should have provided both versions on the remastered DVDs and left the censored/edited version for broadcast. I'm a bit suprised that, with the exception of *one* review on the "specials" stand-alone release, none of the reviews on amazon mentioned or complained about the omission.

I've yet to see "Blackadder: Back and Forth" as I own the first releases as individual series. I've not been tempted to pick it up because the reviews are less than glowing.

Well, I've had fun with this challenge - been to prison a few times, broken out of prison a few times, wished I had kept a running tally of the times I heard "Jupiter's Cock" during Spartacus, and ended the challenge with some laughs from AbFab. Between Oz and Spartacus, I don't think I've ever seen that much male nudity on tv ever!

Switching over to the next challenge and heading in for surgery in a few hours (yuck!) but that just means more quality time in front of the television recovering and enjoying some discs. Can't wait to do this challenge again next year.

Oh, and I also was shocked to see Coach Bieste from Glee in Prison Break!

As the Oscar Challenge starts up, I know my TV watching is going down, but I just want to finish Dexter: The Second Season. An okay season, but nowhere near the greatness of season one, IMO. Nothing is really happening. You can really tell that the first season was based on the book; it was all well planned and such.

If anything, it really makes me want to read the books.

While I've started the Oscar Challenge I've no intention of short-changing the TV Challenge. I only started the other because I just got in a "new" copy of "The Little Mermaid" that, while shrink-wrapped, had no paperboard sleeve, a missing security seal, and the Movie Reward had already been redeemed. It's being watched to make sure that there are no issues with the disk. After that, it's back to TV!

I'm staring at the final three episodes of Jeeves and Wooster, which is likely my last season/series to complete for the challenge. I've still got a few assorted things I want to get to, such as the TV movie Return to the Batcave and a pair of Hee Haw DVDs I just turned up at Half Price Books, and I want to get to at least one or two more episodes from my iTunes library.

What's crazy is staring at my watched totals. For one thing, it equates to nearly seventy movies watched in the month, which would obliterate my previous challenge totals! I'm looking ahead to the Academy Awards challenge and think that if I can sustain even half of this kind of attention span for viewing I can really get around to seeing a lot of the movies I've been meaning to see but still haven't.

One more thing. We've got three prizes yet to be awarded and I'll tell you what I was thinking and I'll let you all decide. These were bonus prizes on top of what Rich originally allocated for our challenge, so I hadn't quite factored them into the trivia contest structure. We can do a sort of lightning round trivia, giving out one prize a day for the rest of the challenge. Or we could do something like this:

Two voted-on prizes for what we'll characterize as "Best Participation." This would encompass having a respectable list post (meaning the last update wasn't two weeks ago, information is easy to read, etc.), having been a contributor to the discussion thread, things like that. I figure we'd take the top two vote-getters and they'd get their choice of prize, and then out of everyone who hasn't won a prize I would randomly draw for the remaining DVD prize.

It's entirely up to you guys, but I need a consensus by mid-afternoon. You can reply here, or you can PM me if you'd rather not go public with your position.

Incidentally, I just realized that a few of the Star Trek features have "dual citizenship" with this and the Academy Awards Challenge:

Star Trek (2009) Won: Makeup; Nominated: Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects
Star Trek: First Contact (1996) Nominated: Makeup
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) Nominated: Art Direction, Music (Original Score), Visual Effects
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) Nominated: Cinematography, Music (Original Score), Sound, Sound Effects Editing
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) Nominated: Makeup, Sound Effects Editing

I think that doubles the list of movies that qualify for this brief overlap period!

So I was, thankfully, able to watch the entire series of The Mary Tyler Moore Show during this challenge. Really what an outstanding program with an amazing cast. Truly, television at its finest. This challenge has been a lot of fun and I've watched a ton of stuff. With a few days left I probably won't worry about finishing stuff so much, but will just watch whatever I have time for. Been a great challenge. I'll post in here again at the end with my final count.

I vote for the second option, "Best Participation..."

Okay, I've only had one PM concerning the remaining, "bonus round" prizes in addition to Ash's remarks here and it seems that participation is favored. Here's what I'm thinking:

Bonus Prize #1: Discussion
I'll go through this thread and take note of how many posts each participant has made. I will, of course, exclude myself and I will only count people who have a post in the list thread. (There was a lot of discussion back when we were planning this thread and some of the posters may not have actually participated in the challenge once it began.) Also to be excluded are any previous prize winners. The remaining posters will be ranked, and the top poster will have his or her choice of the remaining prizes.

Bonus Prize #2: List
There are 58 posts in the List Thread, including the introduction to the challenge, the trivia questions and answers post and my own list. I propose that I'll simply use the randomizer to select a number between 4 and 58 (thereby excluding myself and the aforementioned non-list posts). If the winner has updated his or her post within the last two weeks (which, sadly, excludes more of you than I'd realized) and has not already won a prize during this challenge, then he or she will get his or her pick of the remaining prizes. If the randomizer selects someone who either hasn't kept up with his or her list or has already won a prize, then I will generate a new number until such time as we have a winner.

That should leave us with one remaining prize to be awarded. I'll deal with that once we've awarded these two. How's all that sound?

Also, while I'm at it, we stayed up last night and watched a pair of Syfy original movies, Mega Piranha (unenjoyably bad) and Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (enjoyably bad, and the catfight between Deborah Gibson and Tiffany was truly epic). Then we caught the first episode of Face Off, their makeup artist reality contest show. I could get into that series, as I've long been fascinated by how they actually realize the fanciful imaginings that become our TV and movie worlds.

A little while ago I went country and watched a 2-episode DVD of Hee Haw, a show I grew up watching but hadn't seen in ages. Good God, was the pace quick! Some nice eye candy to be found, too. I followed those with a pair of Waylon Jennings episodes of Austin City Limits that have hit DVD in the last few years. Fun stuff. It's much too late to start another full season of anything, so I'm just kind of squeezing in a few of these stray titles to finish off the challenge before throwing myself into the Academy Awards Challenge.

I've enjoyed the challenge. I watched a few things that I normally wouldn't have watched (Mad Men S1 and the Evil Roy Slade telefilm). And, it got me caught up on several other series, such as Gunsmoke and Mission Impossible.

I missed getting caught up on several other series on my shelf, such as Metalocalypse and Have Gun--Will Travel. I also tried to catch up with Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, having the first half of S1 in my collection. I tried to rent volume 2 from Blockbuster, but they sent me S1V1 in the S1V2 sleeve twice! I did receive the second disc of V2, but it was unplayable...DVD-18s just can't handle the rigors of rent-by-mail (and maybe they can't even handle the rigor of sitting on one's shelf either.)

I watched a few things that qualified but I didn't list, such as a few random episodes of Weeds that I watched at someone else's house...I didn't care for the show, and didn't even catch the names of the episodes. I also watched a few things that I decided didn't quite qualify. Hammer's Sword of Sherwood Forest was based on the tv series, but after I watched it, I felt it was too stand-alone to qualify.

Good challenge, thanks to MinLShaw and any others who put a lot of work into it and kept it rolling.

Works for me... I was going to PM you but saw your post after the deadline you imposed. I'd been holding out on the trivia quizes awaiting the one for "The Adventures of Jim Bowie" anyway so anything that keeps me in the running is OK.

It's nice to see someone else didn't like that one. I did a blind-buy on S1 a while back based on the overall good reviews and thematic material. It just didn't deliver for me. I found it to be too dark and not nearly as funny as I'd been lead to believe.

I'd still list the show and number of episodes "just because". After all, it was TV and you did watch.

I don't think I've finished more than one show/series, but I too appreciate the idea of this challenge and the driving of it, and the donation of prizes. The other challenges just aren't feasible or interesting to me, but this one was aimed right at me, and I enjoyed participating in it.
Thanks.

I read your original proposal but wasn't in a spot at that time to contribute intelligent thought. Anything is fine with me, and I like the idea of rewarding participation.

I finally watched "Sapphire and Steel" which I'd purchased on a blind-buy a couple of years ago (yes... pretty much the state of my collection) and was waiting for the "right time" to watch. It really started slowly and I was concerned as the first series, which was video taped in 1979, looked and was produced more like a video taped show from the early-60's. The SFX were fairly well done, it was the overall staging and "staginess" of the production that was a bit off-putting. But that was fixed on the 2nd and subsequent series and it really picked up, although one series felt more like a murder-mystery than a SF episode. I felt most of the series could have been done in fewer episodes but overall it was a pleasant viewing experience.


The extreme suprise was the ending! I don't think I've ever seen a series end that way before. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who's not seen it and wants to watch so I'll simply say it's in the "what the heck just happened" vein. While it "ended" it left a door open and I want to know more...

Okay, here's the list of participants, their last date of list thread activity and number of posts in this discussion thread since the challenge began (thereby excluding pre-challenge discussion).



BobO'Link's 19 discussion posts are far and away the most, and gets his pick of the remaining three prizes. Congratulations, and thanks for your contributions to the challenge!

The second bonus prize will be randomly selected after Bob has made his selection.

Note to Giles: you've copied your post #38 and pasted it to post #60. Are you working on something or was this a gutsy attempt to increase your chances in the random drawing?

no I hit 'quote' instead of 'edit' didn't realize until I saw that it was post 60 ... oops!

I figured it was something innocuous like that.