I'm watching Scream Queens. It has been panned by critics and not doing too well in user scores.

And I can sort of understand the criticism. The humor is often forced, the characters are crude parodies of genre staples and suffers from being made by the people that made glee.

But I still like it. The humor might be forced and derivative it never feels flat. The characters, while being cliche, have enough quirks to keep them interesting. And it keeps it's references and shout outs in the background, thus preventing it from becoming a point and laugh like Scream did.

 

Teen Wolf, I have no excuse...

 

My daughter calls it "Pretty Little Liars + A Knight's Tale" - close enough.

I finished watching through Sense8 the other day, and I went back and forth between 'this is awesome' and 'this is ridiculous' multiple times, but overall was a pretty cool idea, and a few of the characters were so great it made up for the useless ones.

The current guilty pleasure though is Blindspot, which is more or less a very typical NBC show - no subtlety whatsoever, ridiculously blatant flags for stuff you're supposed to notice for later, pretty hammy acting, caricature-style characters, and the whole nine yards.

It's a fairly cool concept, but it's so cheesy I wonder how long it'll last. It does, however, have the Lady Sif showing a lot of skin and tattoos, which will automatically keep it on my DVR until cancellation.



A lot can be forgiven for that.

 

I am watching The Vampire Diaries. Once in a while I watch an episode or two. Been at it for about a year and am in the middle of season 3.

I am still amazed at how ridiculous this show is. It does some moderately cool things sometimes, which is why I truck on, but the way it pulls over the top villains out of a hat is comedic. For example, a family of 1000 year old vampires who literally were the first vamps ever and even lived in America hundreds of years before Columbus was a twinkle in his father's eye.

In the last episode I saw, one of those supposedly ultimate badasses, you could say a vampire princess, was nervous about her first high school dance.

I think that's why I keep watching. Those moments are too deliciously WTF not to have the opportunity to facepalm at them. The scripts for this must read like bad fanfiction.

 

The last TV show I was really watching was Twin Peaks, and that was only ... 33% terrible, I guess.

 

So I'm not alone... that's a relief.

Currently I'm watching CSI-Cyber. I don't think I have to explain it at all. After all it has the word 'cyber' in it. The show is a classic so-bad-it's-good. It was probably written for the amish or something...

 

Well it got cancelled, but the last show I watched that fit this category was Revolution. . Some parts of it were so ridiculous, but I was a sucker for the world building and mystery (up until the weird nanobot God stuff).

 

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries.

Phryne is the ultimate Detective Sue. Money/looks/charm/smarts/strong!woman. The best part of the show: if it has two legs and male parts and is a semi-relevant character to the plot of the week, she'll probably fuck it.

 

Teen Wolf and Squidbillies.

My dreams are all dead and buried...

 

Once Upon a Time. Not really awful, but cheesier than a four cheese pizza with extra cheese, some very variable scripts and painful amounts of fridge logic with regard to characterisation.

Also just started watching the tenth series of Supernatural. I'm not overly optimistic that I'm going to have had my interest reinvigorated by the end of it, but at this point I'm kinda feeling that I've watched the last nine, so I might as well carry on.

 

4400 - I like the whole concept and idea behind it, but god sometime it is so poorly executed. And it drags.

 

S11 of Supernatural just started and it's not... bad. They've become self-aware of certain issues, and seem to be rectifying. We'll see.

 

The Big Bang Theory. It's so bad, but I still see all the episodes.

 

I watch Scorpion, because it crystallizes something I adore/hate in crappy B-movies and made-for-tv miniseries - terrible, terrible science and completely insane plot developments built upon said hokey principles. It's basically Big Bang Theory but all the main characters solve implausible crimes in dumb ways.

In the pilot episode, a collection of autistic nerds have to use a hotrod racecar to chase an actual flying plane so they can physically plug in a USB cable with which they can reset its software while they are still driving.

This is not the stupidest premise they've come up with.

It's magical.

 

Zoo.

It's so bad. How do I even describe...

The premise is that animals around the world have turned on humanity; they're working in a cooperative fashion to kill us.

So far, so good. I was expecting a gritty post-apocalyptic story, but with uncannily canny animals instead of zombies. Instead, we start with an assembly of the most retarded professionals available who're going to "save the world".

1. A journalist who believes Monsanto -- err, sorry Raiden Global -- is evil and gave her mom cancer and because they're evil they must be the cause of this latest change in the animals. Even worse, her delusional, conspiracy-theory prejudices are eventually proved correct.
   
   
2. An animal behaviour scientist/safari guide whose dad was a discredited scientist [other scientists poo-pooed his findings] who went mad but it turns out was actually a genius who knew that the animals would one day turn psycho.
   
   
3. A misanthropic veterinarian pathologist whose cold, shrivelled heart just needs some journalist-loving to defrost it. He's always the "no we can't" guy. The wowser. He also brews up a cure to the disease using scientific bullshit and because one scientist can do all science.
   
   
4. A hot french foreign intelligence agent because why not. She's always the interface between the group and whoever holds their reins at any particular minute. She keeps animal behaviour guy on track. She tries to tell the scientific community what is happening with the animals [every scientifically-minded person in the team is indisposed] and is mocked for not knowing what she's talking about. The world's scientists don't believe her and walk out within a minute of her opening her mouth. They've got their own [wrong] theories. Are you sensing a theme here?
   
   
5. And last is the token black guy. He's a huge safari guide who tags along for no particular reason [okay he's animal behaviour guy's friend] and has no skills except being the muscle and dispensing wisdom. He's like a black Buddha. If there are Africans in the scene, then token black guy does the talking. The other four characters have sort-of paired off, but token black guy gets no love interest. He is stoic and alone.

A major theme in the series is that scientists are closed off, won't see the obvious truths, and are wrong about everything. You can "know the truth" without evidence, and you'll be proven right in the end. Scientists are all just wanky ivory tower types and if you can't speak their language and be as learned as they are then you can't join in. Okay, so that last bit might be true - sorry, Perspicacity and Cheddar!

The plot is middle-of-the-road network television, I suppose. It's typical race around the world trying to save it fare. The science is all bullshit, of course. Raiden Global has a mysterious "mother cell" that is apparently the basis of all of their products around the world. A lot of shenanigans happen with it and it's mostly used as a macguffin for plot purposes until the veterinarian pathologist uses it to brew up a cure.

Seeing animals hunt and eat people is never not entertaining. They're the show's one saving grace.

The main characters can all die in a fire - especially the "journalist". The show's major themes are toxic to civilisation. The plot's science lowers the IQ of anyone watching it. I missed one of the episodes and could barely tell. And yet I'm still going to watch the finale anyway.

I hate this show.

 

ugh. I hate that trope so much. Coming from an entire family of MS and PhD owners, nothing makes me change the channel faster. The last thing I generally want to do outside of work is talk about theories and work. My family usually just ends up having heated arguments about Doctor Who during get-togethers.

 

I'm rather enjoying Girl Meets World (the Boy Meets World sequel series). It's not spectacular (or even good) but neither was BMW. And it's fun seeing what all those old characters from my childhood show up every once in a while.

Also: Rider Strong (AKA Shawn Hunter) directs a ridiculous number of episodes of this show.

 

I'm watching How to Get Away With Murder right now, which is basically just a lot of sex between different attractive killers. It's not too terrible, though. Viola Davis is an amazing actor.