Tag: The Big Bang Theory

Chuck Lorre, Where Art Thou?

Short Review

I used to love Chuck Lorre shows.

I loved them back in the days of the first few seasons of Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory and even the beginning of Mike & Molly.

But now? Not so much. But let me break this down by series.

Two and a Half Men

Let me preface this by saying I don’t care what happens behind the curtains. I never did. Not with this show, not with others. What I care about is what happens on the screen.

TaaHM used to be funny. Back in the days when Jake was still a cute kid, back when Charlie wrote things like the Oshikuru theme song, back then when Alan had no success with women.

Long before Angus T. Jones grew up and pulled a sort-of Kirk Cameron, Jake was used less and less and had to endure the fate of many a sitcom character: His character traits were exaggerated until (in his case) he was basically too dumb to live. Does anyone remember that cool kid from the Pilot who out-bluffed grown men at the poker table?

Charlie (the on-screen character) didn’t change all that much over the season until he was killed off-screen.

And Alan? I found Alan never that funny to begin with but his ability too mooch and his inabilty to find a decent job (has he been working at all in the past two seasons?) have just stretched way beyond the breaking point.

All in all, I’m going to cancel TaaHM for myself at the end of the season.

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Amazon (again)

Misc, Web

In recent months Amazon has become quite a controversial topic in Germany.

It all started with an “undercover” documentation for one of our TV stations. I watched the docu online after everyone and their dog wrote about it and the first “Boycott!” outcries were made.

I don’t know if what the docu claimed was actually true because I found it to be severely lacking in the objective journalism department. If you understand German, you can read my commentary here: ARD vs. Amazon.

The general gist of the controversy is that Amazon hires seasonal workers for the Christmas time and then fires the workers around New Year’s. And they also pay according to the union labour contracts for the logistics trade and not the retail trade where the workers would get higher salaries. They can do that because the retailer Amazon EU is based in Luxembourg (mainly for tax avoidance reasons) and what is called Amazon Deutschland is just the fulfiller that operates the deployment centers.

Anyway, two recent events have once again proven to me that Amazon is a great business partner:

#1)
A few months ago I wanted to order the first season of The Newsroom at Amazon.com. Usually the shipping costs for a season are $6.48. For some reason the system charged me $29.52 for a season that only cost $17.99.

It happens, even computers have hiccups from time to time. I contacted the support, they gave me a refund, end of story.

Now it happened again, this time with the sixth season of Burn Notice ($17.11 shipping for a $11.98 product). I contacted the support again and got this reply:

Quote:

Hello,
I sorry[sic!] to hear that you’ve been charged an incorrect shipping charge.
To make this right for you, I’ve waived the total shipping cost of $17.11 for your order.

What can I say except “Thanks”?

#2)
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TV Junkie: A History

Thought Storm, TV Season Diary

I watched a lot of TV shows over the years. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT. And I watched accross the board.

Keep in mind that I’m only 35 years old.

I watched The Guiding Light for two years straight (it’s a soap opera whose German title was the Springfield Story). I watched medical shows like Trapper John M.D. and lawyer shows like L.A. Law. I watched the 80s action shows from MacGuyver to Riptide. I even watched Love Boat every weekday on one of the first private channels in Germany: Sat.1. I got up at 6am on every Saturday morning to watch Rawhide (Tausend Meilen Staub, lit. “A Thousand Miles of Dust”) with a very young and pre-Fistful Clint Eastwood. I knew who Daniel Boone was around the same time I met the Cartwrights as well as the men from the Shiloh Ranch.

And last weekend I binge-watched the first Netflix show House of Cards (Big recommendation! Kevin Spacey is a brilliant Magnificent Bastard!) and I got curious as to how many shows I watched intently over the past two and a half decades.

With the help of the list on the German site Wunschliste.de I created a list of “my” shows.

I only counted live-action fiction shows, no animated shows may they be Saturday morning cartoons like Yogi Bear or Scooby-Doo or evening shows like The Simpsons or South Park. No scripted reality (which I’m avoiding to 99% anyway with the exception of Comic Book Men). In this list are only shows which I followed for more than a year unless the show itself didn’t last that long.

And the answer was: 244 246 247. Two hundred and fourty four six seven different shows I watched with active interest since I’ve started watching television. And the worst thing is: Of most of these shows I watched 90% or more episodes at least once.

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"Not do: Dead." – Monday Mornings

Short Review

Monday Mornings @ Wikipedia
Monday Mornings @ IMDb

“Monday Mornings” are conferences within the Chelsea General Hospital and these conferences are about all the things that went wrong. Malpractices, patient deaths and social misbehaviour. But it also shows parts of the private life of the doctors working there and their different approaches to their chosen profession.

Monday Mornings was developed by David E. Kelley who’s more known as a developer of law(yer) shows just as Ally McBeal or Boston Legal. And in the end this show is not so different, because the MM conferences are basically the closing arguments of a trial where everyone explains their point of view of what went wrong.

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Purchase Diary 2012 – October

DVD / Blu-ray, Purchase Diary 2012

Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe (2011)


04 Oct – €7.27 (£3.92) @ Amazon.co.uk

U.S. Marshals (1998)


11 Oct – €4.80 (£2.98) @ Amazon.co.uk

Bond 50 (1962 – 2008)


11 Oct – €111.51 (£89.23) @ Amazon.co.uk

Leverage: Season 4 (2011)


11 Oct – €0.00 ($24.28) @ Amazon.com (paid via gift certificate)

UHF (1989)


11 Oct – €6.04 (£3.96) @ Amazon.co.uk

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Purchase Diary 2011 – September

DVD / Blu-ray, Purchase Diary 2011

Dieter Nuhr DVD Box


08 Sep – €23.99 @ Amazon.de

contains Nuhr vom Feinsten, Ich bin’s nuhr & Nuhr die Wahrheit

Volker Pispers … bis neulich 2010


08 Sep – €15.99 @ Amazon.de

24: Season 8


19 Sep – €28.61 (£23.18) @ Amazon.co.uk

Community: Season 2


19 Sep – €0.00 ($19.99) @ Amazon.com (paid via gift certificate)

The Goonies

19 Sep – €8.32 (£5.94) @ Amazon.co.uk

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TV Season 2010/2011 Diary #10

TV Season 2010/2011 Diary

In the last few weeks I didn’t feel much like watching anything. But then the hill turned into a mountain. Luckily some of the series are pausing for some weeks and I decided to play catch up before I have to cross the Alps. Since this was a bigger marathon session I won’t talk about every individual episode but rather about I like the season so far.

Bones
With Bones it’s business as usual. I like their cases and their chemistry and I just enjoy watching them.
And I loved it how Brennan managed to jump over her own shadow for this kids show:

Castle
The same is basically true for Castle. Castle and Beckett are hilarious together and I love the way they solve their cases. Both shows have put the WTWT topic on a back burner which is good for now but it’s obviously still there and will become an issue again. I don’t mind as long as it’s well executed.

Chuck
Chuck’s family tree is becoming more complicated than the one Jennifer Garner had in Alias – and that’s saying something. 😉
Chuck as a person has grown but luckily that doesn’t take away the humour and the appeal of the show. If anything the addition of Morgan as Casey’s “partner” made it even better.

Community
I love it how every episode is mainly about one or two characters but it doesn’t really feel that way because everyone is contributing their own point of view and in the end it’s always an ensemble show.
The zombie movie homage in the Halloween episode was so cool – and I don’t even like zombie movies.

Cougar Town
The show continues where it left at the end of the first season. I’m glad that it doesn’t really matter that Travis is in college because he’s either at home or they are visiting him, so he’s still a full cast member.
I also love how they toy with the series name, for example in episode five the title card read 100% Cougar Free Cougar Town. 😀

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TV Season 2010/2011 Diary #8

TV Season 2010/2011 Diary

Better With You 1×01 / 1×02 Pilot / Better with Firehouse
I watched the first two episodes but I don’t really get it. I think it has to do with the fact that I don’t see the irony in not being married and why that’s supposed to be a source for humour.
What also doesn’t work for me are these scenes where they show all three couples doing the same thing – just differently.

Community 2×02 Accounting for Lawyers
Jeff in his natural habitat. It was cool to see the lawyer from the pilot episode back and how he could twist anything to his liking.
It was also cool to see them all in formal wear and going on a Mission Impossible. 😉

$#*! My Dad Says 1×02 Wi-Fight
Shatner as the grumpy old man totally works for me. I’m not sure about the older brother and his wife though. Maybe they need a bit more time to find their pace. They are lucky that they have Shatner and I am willing to give them that time.

Melissa & Joey 1×08 Dancing with the Stars of Toledo
It was an OK episode. I really loved the all-male Tango, it was incredibly funny to watch them dance and they really pulled it off. I also liked the drug-induced dream sequence. It’s of course a staple of these kinds of sitcoms but you also have to find two people that can actually pull it off and I think these two can.

Raising Hope 1×02 Dead Tooth
Even the show acknowledges that it’s weird. And as the cast is getting wider, more weird people come into it. But it also shows the genuine care between father and daughter.
What makes it more fun for me is the fact that I can’t stop seeing Garret Dillahunt as the Terminator from The Sarah Connor Chronicles and then to watch him here.
And Sabrina reminds me a lot of the young Ally Sheedy from WarGames.

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