Travis McClain

UGH. I was going to re-watch the 1954-1955 Sherlock Holmes series, which I thoroughly enjoyed. However, I've only reached episode 4 before encountering freezing and skipping issues that make the second half of Disc 1 entirely unwatchable. It's particularly obnoxious as this is actually the replacement DVD set that Mill Creek sent me a few years ago because my first purchase was defective. *le sigh*

BobO'Link

^I hope my set is OK. I purchased that one several years ago and have yet to open it. I always worry about such issues on older sets.

The Monkees

Dallas S05E13 The Search, they think Jock is dead!

Of course I know the actor Jim Davis died and so the character is dead, but still it's kind of amazing how long they stretched out the fact that he was dead.

EDIT: What a phenomenally great episode that was, I've never seen an episode with so many flashbacks to be so emotionally great! I can only hope they do that for Larry Hagman this season.

Travis McClain

It's not so much the age of the set as the manufacturer. Mill Creek has done a great job acquiring licenses and collecting public domain content but the quality of their physical work is far more dubious.

*contemplates several responses; says nothing*

The Monkees

I wish you would, you're the only person who will talk to me about this show!

EDIT: Am I stupid or was it that I said they "stretched out the fact that he was dead", I think what I meant was that they stretched out that the character was still alive when in reality the actor was dead. I'm not really sure why they took that route, the audience knew Jim Davis was dead, so it's not like that episode was supposed to make you believe the character was still alive.

LJG765

Ok, watching Firefly still. Still enjoying it. Wish they didn't randomly speak in Chinese. It really just doesn't fit in with the whole atmosphere of the show. Totally throws me out of it when I hear it. It's getting a bit better as the episodes go on-perhaps as the actors speak it more often, the words flow better; but especially at first, the words were very jarring.

Travis McClain

How about this: I'll agree with you that it was a very well-made episode and that they did a solid job handling the arc itself. I'm reluctant to say much more about the matter because of things that await you.

I've wondered about that myself over the years. I can't recall now whether I ever heard if it was that they weren't expecting his death so they had to sort of fit it into the arcs of episodes that were already more or less finished, but that would make sense. I don't recall either whether there was much consideration given to re-casting Jock at the time. I think it's for the best they didn't.

I've always liked how Jock continued to loom large over the series, quite literally in the sense of the portrait of Jim Davis that hung in the living room after his passing. I feel bad for both Howard Keel as an actor and Clayton Farlow as a character that in the continuation series they've got a portrait of Davis with Barbara Bel Geddes in the living room. I could understand it if J.R. had inherited Southfork, but Bobby and Clayton had a healthy relationship. It seems out of character to me that he would put up a new painting of his parents after the deaths of Clayton and Miss Ellie.

Again, though, I'm getting ahead of where you are in the series! Jim Davis's portrayal of Jock Ewing is one of those very rare and special things in TV. Normally, deceased actors/characters are either recast or de-emphasized, but instead Jock - like Obi-Wan Kenobi - became even more powerful in death.

A few years back, I read Boone: A Biography about Daniel Boone, written by Robert Morgan. There's a passage where Morgan discusses the impact of the passing of Boone's father, Squire, that I think is applicable to J.R. Ewing:

I think the writing of J.R. after the death of Jock reflects Morgan's take on the matter. As you go forward with the series, I think you'll find it interesting to contrast how differently J.R. and Bobby handle that "sweeping vista of obligation". It's a theme that dominates the rest of the series, all the way down to the present continuation series.

mrcellophane

Finished the first season of Stargate SG-1 and started the second season. After some truly terrible episodes and a lot of mediocre ones, I feel that the first season ends well with an intriguing cliffhanger and a penultimate episode that not only sets up a intriguing premise involving alien technology and alternate realities but also has real consequence to the ongoing narrative. It is nice that all is not forgotten after the situation is set straight. So far the second season is awesome! There are nods to world building and some great character moments (which the first season was lacking).

I've also been watching Josie and the Pussycats as I prepare lesson plans for this week. I loved it when I saw it on Boomerang as a kid, but the show is nowhere near as good as Scooby-Doo or Jonny Quest even though it feels like those superior shows go it on and produced an untalented love child. Unfortunately, the often exotic locales lend themselves to racist stereotypes, and the plots are never terribly clever (even for a kids' show). Also, it seems that all the villains got together and voted that "sprays" and "ray" were the way to go. Almost every villainous plan involves using a spray or ray to destroy gold, get information, mess with genetics, or become invisible. I'm finding it very entertaining, but it is definitely not a classic.

Travis McClain

Speaking of Scooby-Doo, I decided while I figure out what to do about my Sherlock Holmes situation that I'd pop in the Scooby-Doo Meets Batman DVD. It has two episodes from The New Scooby-Doo Movies, both teaming up the Mystery, Inc. gang with the Dynamic Duo. Though the package suggests that the two episodes are presented in their original airdate order, the DVD actually has them backwards. It doesn't make any meaningful difference to the stories. Here are my remarks, as posted in my Letterboxd diary:

The New Scooby-Doo Movies "The Caped Crusader Caper"

Scooby-Doo was one of my childhood favorites, and of course in 1989 Tim Burton's Batman made me a fan of the Dark Knight. This DVD collection of two crossover episodes of The New Scooby-Doo Movies was a natural fit for my taste.

Of course, it requires accepting a fairly silly incarnation of Batman typical of the Silver Age. I'm cool with that, though. Rotoscope animation, clunky exposition littered with "Old chum" and "Great Scot!" Then there's the characterization of The Joker, back when he was a ridiculous, cackling comedian instead of a psychopathic mass murderer.

Unfortunately, the story here - while charming in its way - is kind of boring. Batman and Robin appear as alternately aloof and incompetent, so that the Mystery, Inc. gang shines. They tended to do a much better job showing the guests as equals to Scooby and pals than this.

The plot itself is so simple that it shouldn't take 43 minutes to be told, and that's a problem. Watching the combined team of Mystery, Inc. and Batman & Robin shouldn't be boring, but this episode kinda is.

The New Scooby-Doo Movies "A Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair"

"Walking on the ceiling is kinda weird, eh, Batman?"
"Yes it is, Robin."

Ah! Now this is more like it! I was pretty underwhelmed by the other episode on this DVD, "The Caped Crusader Caper" but this is a much more satisfying team-up. Here, Batman and Robin are far more personable and competent, and the plot is actually solid. Scooby and Batman, et al, meet in the woods investigating a suspicious airplane delivery that leads them to a counterfeit money scam. The Joker and Penguin are involved, but are they the real masterminds?

More thought went into plot twists here than in the other team-up episode, and it's actually fun to watch the characters interact with one another here. The humor is pretty sharp, too, at least insofar as the goofy Scooby-Doo style humor ever was.

It's also fun to see the villain in the purple hood, because of the striking resemblance to Pandora in DC Comics's New 52 relaunch comics. One wonders whether this episode was an influence on that design...and if not, how it wasn't!

Travis McClain

I decided to scope out YouTube for Sherlock Holmes. There's a new Channel from "Film Stream Online (FSO Television)" and sure enough, they've got all 39 episodes of the series available to stream. They've got several other series, many of which I recognize from having had a DVD release from Mill Creek. Whether this channel has just uploaded rips from those DVDs or has another source, I have no way of telling but it's a handy substitute for my defective disc. I'll stream the rest of Disc 1 and then try to go back to my DVDs, but it's nice to know I can turn to this YouTube playlist as an alternative.

FSO Channel | Sherlock Holmes Playlist

Ash Ketchum

I’d never seen the original b&w “Dragnet” series (1951-59) before this month, although I did see the color Dragnet movie from 1954 (which is pretty wild, esp. if you compare it to L.A. CONFIDENTIAL which is set around that time). I picked up a used boxed set with 22 “Dragnet” episodes last year and finally started watching them for this challenge. I’ve watched eight so far. Man, these are intense. They’re incredibly focused half-hour episodes following the nuts and bolts of police work with rigorous attention to even the most mundane aspects.

Jack Webb stars as Sergeant Joe “I’m a cop” Friday. I have yet to hear his trademark line, “Just the facts, Ma’am.” But he has plenty of other great lines. When he shoots a suspect in self-defense and the criminal’s girlfriend starts protesting, Friday tells her, “We didn’t call it, lady.” (He's later quite anguished about killing the man.) In one scene, they put a bug in one of the stationhouse rooms so they can listen in on the conversation of two murder suspects waiting to be questioned. When the suspects start poking around the room looking for the bug, Friday barges in and yells at them to sit down and stop messing with the place, like they’re a couple of kids. This guy is strictly no-nonsense.

One of the great things about this series is how the bit players all look like real people and not like “types” sent by Central Casting, even though most of them were very busy character actors in the 1950s. They just didn’t cast people who looked like actors. In contrast, I also watched a “Police Story” episode from 1973 and everyone in it looked like an actor.

I’ve watched some of the 1960s “Dragnet” episodes also, including the 1966 pilot. The older series is much better.

shadokitty

*sigh* I was in the mood to watch an episode from my Borg Star Trek Fan Collective, and when I put in disc 1, I found it was scratched, and wouldn't go past the FBI warning. So I take out my Skip DR to try to fix the scratches, and it seems it only made it worse, now I get a disc error every time I insert the disc. Looks like I am going to have to replace that set.

Travis McClain

Well, you're only missing out on an episode of Enterprise that's a coda to First Contact, the Borg first appearance in "Q Who?" and "The Best of Both Worlds" parts I & II. Oh. Right.

Yeah, you need to replace that forthwith. Hell, that disc is the most important in the collection!

davidh777

I like the Fan Collective series. While I have the majority of episodes on season sets (other than Enterprise), they're well-selected for these sets.

I was pleased to pass #30 on my list, but at this stage of the month I'm going to have to pick it up to hit triple digits.

lisadoris

Speaking of Trek disappointments, I just finished sitting through TNG's "Shades of Gray." Over the first 2 seasons of SG-1 there have been a couple of clip shows and they were both good so just writing "Gray" off as a clip show is no excuse. I know there was a writers strike but good grief this episode is bad. Actually besides "Q, Who" and "The Emissary," the last two discs have the S2 set have been one bad episode after another.

I'll start S3 of SG-1 tomorrow.

BobO'Link

Yes, I know. My comment lies with the simple fact that the older unopened sets I own are *far* beyond their return dates so I'm pretty much stuck if there are defective disks. Several are OOP which also makes replacement somewhat iffy. I guess I've been lucky with MC sets as I've yet to purchase one that has bad sections or just won't play. I wish I could say the same thing about some of those DVD-18s I have from Universal and Fox.

BobO'Link

It gets easier to accept as the series grows. At first it annoyed me too as it felt like something thrown in for effect. As I watched and learned more about the state of affairs with which they were dealing and the direction civilization had taken it became more apparent *why* they do this. It's natural for the characters as it is a future where the only surviving superpowers are the United States and China which merged to form the Alliance, the new central federal government. Because of this merger, Mandarin Chinese became a common secondary language. As English is a flexible, growing, language it's natural that Mandarin words and phrases would begin to creep into everyday use. As the series progressed I got the impression that the Chinese were becomming more influential in the Alliance and were in the process of moving to "top dog" in this world, at least in the outer rings where Mal and his crew work to survive.

The Monkees

I've been watching Tiny Toons and I have a few things to say.

First of all, I think the episode Fields of Honey my be the best episode of the entire series. It's funny as hell and incredibly touching at the same time. It's a rarity when an animated children's series can pull that off. Hampton's line when Babs asks what he knows about Honey, meaning the character Honey, and he replies "Um, it's sweet... Winnie the Pooh has a problem with it" just makes me laugh so hard. And then the part at the end when Babs is standing in the back of the theater while people are laughing at the Honey cartoons and there is a random kid sitting on the floor next to her eating cereal and Babs is yelling "They like it!" and she turns to the kid and yells "Hey Mikey!", it just comes out of nowhere and is just so hilarious! Not to mention that kid disappears after that never to be seen again.

The second thing I'd like to say is that I just watched the banned episode Elephant Issues and it's interesting to note that the first segment, "Why Dizzy Can't Read", has the element that TV is bad and then they have a small montage of Dizzy walking around staring at the TV and walking into traffic, or a neighbor's yard with a vicious dog, etc. the reason I bring this up is because it speaks volumes TODAY more than it did in 1991. Why? Not because of TV, but because of cell phones! They should redo this cartoon, remove the TV and replace it with a smart phone and show it to kids today!

LJG765

Good to know! As of now, I haven't heard this in the shows...they haven't mentioned the origins of the Alliance. Hopefully they'll get to this before the show ends! But, it does make for sense knowing that it's a conglomeration of both US and China. Still, you can tell the flow improves with age, as the actors get used to speaking it.

Travis McClain

I always kinda liked "Manhunt", though I can easily see why many others find it tedious and groan-worthy. But yeah, on the whole, the first two seasons of TNG were awful.

Gotcha. I'll cross my fingers for ya!

Travis McClain

Whoops! I missed davidh777's comment.

I've almost bought the Q set a few different times, but I wasn't terribly thrilled by Klingon, Time Travel, Alternate Realities or Captain's Log. I love the Borg box, which is the only one I've got. I re-watched that set in 2011 for this challenge.

I'm currently at 3 movies, 68 episodes and one short film. 16 of those episodes were Aqua Teen Hunger Force, of course. I stalled out the last several days when I hit the brick wall of the defective Sherlock Holmes disc, but now that I can stream them via that YouTube channel, I'm hopeful to get back on track.

I'm also planning to hit the library tomorrow. They have some mini-series on DVD that I'd like to finally see, including Reilly, Ace of Spies and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

davidh777

I have all those. There are a few overlaps between sets which is kind of annoying, and of course one can always complain about the choices, but I like them, especially Time Travel (which was great for the Leap Day Challenge) and Captain's Log.

Travis McClain

I think for me the biggest issue was the overlap. With more than 500 episodes in the canon, it just didn't make sense to me for there to be any overlap except for "Q Who?" being on both the Borg and Q collections. I understand that the thought was more about which episodes would make this specific themed collection the best, but there really ought to have been more consideration for the potential buyer of the Fan Collective series.

I also wish they'd included some from the animated series in appropriate collections (obviously, nothing in the Borg or Q set would have come from there). That would've been a nice touch.

Speaking of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine just turned 20 a week or so ago and it's also now available on Hulu. As soon as I finish Sherlock Holmes, that's my next ongoing series commitment!

ntnon

Oh, there were some good episodes in the first season...

I'm up to the end of Season 4, and what struck me was how drawn-out and concealed the reveal of Sela was. She literally stayed in the shadows for a whole episode and only turned up right in the final scenes of the next one! And, unless I missed it - which I might have - was kept out of the credits entirely, too.

ntnon

I've been hunting out musical episodes after watching the Buffy one during Horror month, and I have to say that Xena's "Lyre, Lyre..." is easily it's equal for being both musical, hilarious and plot-furthering.

(So far, the music and plots in the Gilligan's Island, Daria and The Office musical episodes were also notably entertaining.)