So I finished The Man in the High Castle and it was interesting. The production values are just amazing but some of the acting was uneven. I will go back and re-read the book to figure out if the characters were really that stupid or if the writers made some major changes to the story.

Now that it's officially 2016, after I take down the holiday decorations I'm going to start watching Star Trek. Let's see how much of the original series I can get through before classes begin on the 11th.

I just watched the next episode of one of my Netflix DVD's, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors. I love revisiting shows from my childhood.

I finished S4 of Enterprise this morning. I'm glad I read reviews of that season as one pointed out how the last episode truly isn't a Enterprise episode but more a ST:TNG episode. Because of that review I watched *that* episode before "Terra Prime." It was a good choice, as "These are the Voyages..." doesn't really fit well with the rest of the series and is a very poor choice on which to end the series. Ending with a viewing of "Terra Prime" is much more fulfilling. Overall, it's a excellent season, possibly the best of the 4, and should have pushed the studio to keep it around at least another year. The episodes, under new Executive Producer Manny Coto, were much better than those delivered by series creators Berman and Braga in seasons 2 & 3, especially the "temporal war" episodes. This season *felt* like Star Trek and had the feel of the development of The Federation of Planets.

I woke up early so decided to start right in on the challenge viewing. I started with an episode of How It's Made on my DVR.

Re-watched the first six episodes of Star Trek (I love it when classes aren't in session; I can just veg out). I just take a deep breath at how women are portrayed in early TV and remember that Trek was revolutionary in some ways but not in others. I learned this morning that in "the Naked Time" when Sulu tries to "rescue" Uhura and calls her a fair maiden, Nichelle Nichols ad-libbed the "sorry, neither" line. That is one of my moments about the whole episode so it makes me happier to hear that Nichols came up with the line.

Made it through season 1 of Gotham. Being a big Batman fan, I'm not sure what took me so long to finally watch this. Great show and the guy who plays the Penguin is fantastic.

I'm also a little sad that I'm watching the season finale of Ash Vs. The Evil Dead. I didn't care for The Evil Dead movies that much (hated Army of Darkness), but this show is tons of fun.

I just finished revisiting Life. I enjoyed it, though it was the Oprah version. But at least the BBC Life On Location segments were included as bonus features, so I still got some David Attenborough while watching it.

Bosch on Amazon is really capturing my interest.

Lots of great series mentioned in this thread so far, making me long for retirement and time to get thru my 4,312 episode backlog.

Finally started Daredevil on Netflix the other day, and am really enjoying it so far. Crossing my fingers that the rest of their Marvel lineup turns out as nice.

Being an outdoorsman and good old country boy, sometimes I get in the mood to binge watch hunting and fishing shows. I started last night, with an episode of The Hunt on Amazon Prime, about an brown bear hunt in Alaska, and resumed this morning with an episode of Babe Winkelman's Good Fishing, about brook and lake trout fishing in Ontario, on Destination America. It's always been my dream to take a once in a lifetime hunting or fishing trip.

On New Year's Eve, a friend and I watched the three Friends episodes about the holiday. My favorite is "The One with the Routine" from season six. Ross and Monica's geeky obsession with Dick Clark's New Year celebration is delightful as is their childhood dance routine (and the fact they still practice it separately).

Over the last couple of days, I watched two made-for-TV movies: Disney's adaptation of The Music Man and Jacques Tati's Parade. The former is utterly charming, and though it may be sacrilege, I prefer it to the 60s film. I especially love Kristin Chenoweth and the outrageous hats she sports. Matthew Broderick does his thing, and Victor Garber, Molly Shannon, and Debra Monk have fun in their supporting roles.

Parade is Jacques Tati's last film. It's an experimental look at stage illusion and tomfoolery. It seems to operate as a filmed performance, but the audience also performs for the camera - getting involved in various ways. The film raises questions of what is reality and what is trickery, and it reminded me of certain parts of Orson Welles' F for Fake. While it is not my favorite Tati outing, it almost seems wrong to compare it to those other films. It's a different beast entirely.

I decided to watch a couple of more recent sit-coms for which I'd picked up S1 to sample: Modern Family and The Middle.

Modern Family is the better of the two, although neither really stands out. I *did* enjoy Modern Family enough that I plan to pick up S2 at some point to see if it progresses much. Even should I change my mind the season ends in such a way that it has some closure and works fairly well as a one-season-wonder type viewing.

I have 6 or so episodes of The Middle left in S1 but so far have been somewhat unimpressed. It's a rather standard "modern" sit-com with a couple of episodes dropped in which make absolutely no sense in the overall structure/flow of the season. In one, Brooke Shields makes a appearance as "trailer trash" type mom with 3(?) bully type kids. They just come out of nowhere, in spite of a earlier episode showing the neighborhood coming together for a block party, and are not heard from again after that episode, or at least not in the first 12 episodes. I see that it's still on the air so I'm guessing I'm missing something everyone else sees/gets. Maybe it'll all come together by the end of the season, but right now I have little hope.

Looking outside the window right now makes it look like this is the perfect month for this Challenge. A snow storm has blown in. Makes me want to just curl up with a cup of coffee in bed and marathon TV. Still watching my hunting and fishing show marathon, though this weather outside makes me yearn for the beginning of trout season, or at least the snow to melt so I can get back in the woods.

I'm a casual fan of Modern Family, especially the episodes that aim for the meta inter-connectiveness of edgier comedies. Also, I think the ensemble has great chemistry. However, I've only seen up to season four so I have no idea what's currently happening on the show.

After a lot of holiday travel and chores created by said travel, I got a chance to sit down for a proper marathon. Last night, I started gorging on season eleven of Murder, She Wrote and finished it up today. Unfortunately, this season has been particularly skimpy on the Cabot Cove episodes, but the one I got - "The Dream Team" - featured Jessica's nephew and perpetual loser Grady - so that's a plus.

Then I continued with season six of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It's so very good! They even manage to pull off a holosuite episode that isn't completely cringeworthy.

While it won't be the only series I work through at the same time, I recently bought Season 4 of The Adventures of Superman on Amazon Instant Video, so decided to make it one of the shows I watch right now. I just finished the first episode. The reason I didn't start with Season One, was Season 4 was half the price.

For my next series on DVD, I decided to stick with the BBC Nature Documentaries, and I decided on Wild Pacific. This will be only the second time I've watched it, though I liked it the first time, as the ocean is one of my favorite subjects.

My favorite exchange in this episode, aside from everyone chiding Solok for his dismissal of all the Niners as "humans", is the one in which Chief O'Brien explains gum to Doctor Bashir:

Trivia: Cirroc Lofton is the nephew of retired MLB star Kenny Lofton, and Max Grodenchik is actually so good at playing baseball that he had to bat left handed because he couldn't fake being bad batting right.

Late last night, I finished Homicide: Life on the Street The Complete Season 4. There are some terrific episodes, but what stood out most to me were the obvious ratings-seekers. This season features no less than four 2-parters, including the first of the series's three crossovers with Law & Order.

To hear the Homicide producers talk, despite being something they hashed out with Dick Wolf, they didn't like actually making them because the shows were so different. Jim Yoshimura outright called L&O "pat", noting that their cast loved coming over to Homicide, where they got to say and do more things aside from asking what time someone saw someone else do something or what color a car was.

I was somewhat surprised to hear such open complaining, not only about the crossovers, but about Daniel Baldwin and Ned Beatty. Tom Fontana didn't name either, but it was obvious he was alluding to the two of them when he said that life was too short to have anyone around who didn't want to be there. Similarly, in the DVD set's lone commentary, on "The Hat", Clark Johnson makes a remark about not mentioning people on the show he didn't get along with or some such term. He spoke well of Richard Belzer, Reed Diamond, Melissa Leo; if he named anyone else, I missed it. Doesn't mean he didn't get on well with anyone other than those three, of course.

I mention all this behind-the-scenes stuff partly because I think it showed on-screen. Homicide's key selling point was its authenticity (or at least as much authenticity as network TV in the 90's permitted), and the truth is, it's rare for everyone in any workplace to get along. If two cast members brought their frustrations with one another into a scene, it made for good TV. (It would be difficult to dissect who clashed with whom based solely on watching the episodes, because the characters all got into it at least once with one another throughout this tumultuous season.)

This season also saw some experimentation episodes; "Autofocus", which introduced videographer Brodie (Max Perlich); "The Hat", essentially a road trip with Lily Tomlin as a prisoner being transferred in about as unprofessional a manner as could be (including a stop to Neptune's Castle!); and "Stakeout", structured around pairing off characters trading shifts in a house all day and night.

"A Doll's Eyes" is easily the most emotionally charged episode, with Marcia Gay Harden and Gary Basaraba as parents of a young boy shot accidentally in a mall. Unlike the "pat" Law & Order, Homicide's guest characters were allowed to have actual human reactions to things, and Harden's performance stands out in particular. It could have been over the top in a lesser actor's hands, but she imbued the episode with believable, heartbreaking humanity.

"Hate Crimes" was, for me, the most interesting episode of the season, though. There, Pembleton and Bayliss investigate a killing outside a gay club. Bayliss's judgmental views go beyond being homophobic; he's downright Puritan in his disdain for the kink community. I know from having already seen the series that this gets deconstructed and explored later, so it's important in that respect, but taken on its own, it's still commendable for Pembleton's casual rebuking of Bayliss's narrow-mindedness. Andre Braugher got the lion's share of excitable monologues on the show, so when he got to play a scene like that more calmly, there was a certain legitimizing gravitas. As a social barometer, Bayliss represents where mainstream America was 20 years ago; Pembleton represents where we may reach 20 years from now.

"A Doll's Eyes" is heartbreaking and it very easily could have veered into melodrama territory but it doesn't. "Hate Crimes" is really interesting given where Bayliss as a character ends up later in the series. Given that Pembleton is framed as a devoutly religious man it would have been easy for the writers to make him the prude but nope, he doesn't care what folks do as long as everybody consents, everyone has fun and nobody gets hurt. Motto to live by me thinks.

I just watched my first Food Network show of the challenge, The Kitchen, a kind of food talk show. It wasn't bad and it showed some good looking recipes, my favorite of which was a low calorie, low fat clam chowder. I love sea food.

I'm now catching up with Lovejoy, a pseudo detective show. It's a old favorite and I'm finally making time to watch S5, the "Christmas Special" that goes with this season, and possibly S6. Possibly, because I still have lots of other shows I really want to get to this month.

I'm looking next at watching S1 of The Wonder Years to see if it's held up over the years (I tend to think it will) and S1 of The Walking Dead to see if it lives up to the hype (not sure about this one), and after that just see where the wind takes me. I have a few mini-series I'd like to work in but they also work for the Historical Challenge so I may put 'em off. With the new "TVonDVD Rank 'em as you watch 'em" yearly challenge/log I'm also looking at working in Bonanza, Cheyenne, Maverick, and a few others for the Western Challenge but I also have a bunch of western movies I've been saving so who knows what'll happen there. I have to be careful or I'll spend more time deciding what to put off for later than actually watching stuff!

Pembleton is interesting because his investigative style focuses on motive. He gives Bayliss a speech in one episode (it may have even been "Hate Crimes"; I really should have taken note) about how he doesn't care about "why", but that's wholly incongruous with how he operates. He does the legwork of finding out the "who", "what", "where", "when", and "how", but he's the only one who makes the "why" central to his interrogation. His interrogations become confessionals, with him bringing suspects to the point of seeking absolution that he will only give them in the form of a signed statement of guilt.

Since we only periodically follow any of these cases to trial, the most we as viewers get to applaud is when the name on the board is changed from red to black. Pembleton gives us a moment of triumph, though; something we can cheer and be satisfied by witnessing.

This begs a question I've long had, though; how it is that Howard had the best clearance rate of the squad? I don't question that she, or anyone else, could have a better clearance rate than Pembleton. But when we see her work a case, it seemed more of her time was spent shepherding Beau Felton and catching breaks in a case off-screen than we got to see how great she is at her job.

I've had a really slow start to this challenge. In fact, at the moment, I only have 2 watches in. Just been too busy to turn the tube on and when I did have time, went with silence for a while. That being said, I think from now going forward, I"ll have more time and energy to focus on watching TV. At this point, my only real goal is to finish season one of ST:TNG that I started at the end of the Sci-fi challenge this summer. Anything else is going to be gravy. I do hope to clear a lot of my DVR and maybe get a start with Batman with Travis (after he finishes Homicide, of course!)

Does anyone know where I can find a list of made for tv disaster films? I know of Category 6, and Category 7, but I don't know of any other ones off the top of my head. I know there are probably a lot of SyFy movies that fit the bill, and I may even own some in my 6 movie disaster movie set, but I just don't know where to find out. I do own a couple made for tv horror movies, but I would like to know where to find a list of made for tv action movies. Call me noob, but I don't know where to begin looking.

Edit: I do own some Son of Hercules movies in my Warrior 50 movie set from Mill Creek, plus the MST3K Gamera movies.

*If*...!

IMDb has a search feature where you can combine keywords and genres, etc. Here ya go:

http://www.imdb.com/search/keyword?k...ef_=kw_ref_typ