What are you watching/Random TV thoughts

So I probably can't disclose too much about my job without getting into trouble, but my work today involves a certain poorly received show about a family who gets kidnapped, which aired last year. Let me just say that this thing totally lives up to its reputation as the dumbest show of 2013.

You do quality control for DVD's right? Are they actually bothering to put together a DVD set of that show?

At least that came out during the TV shows on DVD boom.  I don't understand how they would expect a lousy show to find an audience on DVD now with all the streaming options.  But I suppose if it's cheap enough to produce it makes sense to just do it and see what happens.   

This show is the worst song, played on the ugliest guitar.

So I just finished the Assets. Holy crap that show was terrible. I read an interview with one of the actors where he said the show was darker than the Americans. Not only is that not true, but it doesn't even matter. Darker or not, the Assets is a terribly written show with paper thin characters spouting cliche dialogue and a really uninteresting black and white morality that makes no sense in a spy story. Goddamn was that a waste of time.

Put this up at The Old Country; thoughts on rewatching Season 3 Person Of Interest.

-Yes, there's a ton of expositionary dialogue in the show. That's it's cunning secret: playing to the standard CBS crime format and its over-explaining to the audience, while slowly upgrading its non-SF-fan viewers to be able to grasp the idea of a war between AI gods and still keeping high ratings.

-Within that format, S3's long arc is like a fucking freight train. From the status quo at the start through the upheaval around HR and the death of Carter to a full-blown dystopia in 23 episodes is a hell of an upheaval, and it happens in perfectly timed increments.

-Everything Amy Acker does in this show is glorious, but when she's shooting bad guys with two guns while communing with her Goddess it's the best thing of all. Even better than her flirting with Sarah Shahi - slightly.

-After a bit of a lull on the non-diagetic song use last year, this season goes all out: between the Johnny Cash 'Hurt' choice (still an astonishing sequence) and the 2 uses of Radiohead, it's mastered the technique. And the last 5 minutes of 'Deus Ex Machina' set to "Exit Music (From A Film)" stand with any highly-praised scene in any show this year.

-It seems to me that one of the main themes of the show is grief. It's the prime motivation of all the primary characters except Shaw (and it's a secondary one for her), also for other major players like Collier, Control and Greer. And, overall, it's about post-9/11 grief - and the range of ways people reacted to that, from the heartfelt to the insane.

-I am more excited for Season 4 of this than anything else on telly.

You know as glad as I am to have satellite channels and DVR again, it kind of makes me sad that I don't get all those sub-channels anymore.  I miss flipping through my 10 channels and encountering 60's Batman, Twilight Zone, Star Trek and Joey Fatone cooking shows on my TV.

Hulu currently has a viewer's choice awards thing... for 2014... and has Toni Colette in United States of Tara as one of the options for Non-American American Accent. I was baffled by her inclusion, as that show ended in 2011, but voted for her anyway.

I watched the first episode of Outlander because RDM, and it was pretty good (Hey, Brutus from Rome!) but holy shit, halfway through I wanted to start stabbing my ears whenever there was voiceover. It really didn't add anything to any of the scenes it appeared in and ruined the mood for me. Will watch episode 2 but if the voiceover doesn't die down I'm probably clocking out of that one.

Which sucks, because it seems like a very empowering, credible period romance/drama.

Falling Skies, you are the WORST. Don't dedicate an entire quarter of an episode just to explaining why a tertiary character has a tragic backstory that makes him hate beeping noises.

I've recently been watching Adventure Time as my cable company rotates though past episodes on their On Demand service. I just watched the episode where the Ice King and Marceline have a jam session and we learn about their past together. I'll admit I choked up a bit there at the end.

I don't have a dick, but is it even remotely plausible that someone would want to shoot up there rather than, oh, anywhere else?

@scarlettletterowhora, the only person here who may appreciate this .....

I'm watching PBS' Frontier House for the first time since it aired in 2002 (GULP twelve years ago!) and it's still so great. It's reality tv without all the boring repetitiveness and cliches, with the added bonus that they're actually doing something. Now to be fair, there's a certain amount of cattiness and shit talking, but it's mild and wry in accordance with PBS standards. All the "House" shows were good fun, wish they were still making them:
Cave House!
Haight-Ashbury House!
Pompeii House!
et cetera