What We're Watching

Cop shows. All cop shows, for some reason.

Now that we're approaching the mid-season hiatus, I finally have enough time to stop watching things long enough to write about watching things. We were off on a bad foot to begin with this season. I had two international journeys as soon as the season started, so we were behind to start off with and are only now gradually catching up.

So here, in particular order, is a list of the TV shows we have given what could have been otherwise productive hours this year.

A cop partnered with: a writer
Castle

The water skis had gone on last season, and I was just waiting for the inevitable shark, but they managed to turn it around this year. At the end of last season, Becket got a job offer to go to DC. There's nothing I wanted to see more than to have the formula of the show shaken up a bit, but since Status Quo is God, there's not much change that can be had.

But the writer's found a good middle-ground. Shake up the first few episodes by having Becket take the job, then hit the Reset Button and have her get fired.

Plus, they had that awesome time travel episode. Was it real? Was it fake? Nobody knows!

(Particle man.)

A cop partnered with: a robot
Almost Human

Derivative, cliched; equal parts Robocop, Blade Runner, Minority Report, and Total Recall. There is very little reason to watch or like this show. Yet we do. Very much. Why? Why do we like it?

I'll tell you why. Because Karl Urban (played here by Eomer) has great interaction with his pet robot. That's half the fun of watching.

They also showed amazing restraint for a Fox show, and waited one whole episode before bringing out the sex robots.

A cop partnered with: the zombie apocalypse
The Walking Dead

True fact: the shock value of media is not an infinite continuum. There is, in fact, a maximum shock value, after which audience desensitization so thoroughly takes hold that nothing can further shock the audience. In shows built around shock value (South Park, Family Guy) the maximum-shock point, referred to as the Dead Baby point, is the point at which the show jumps the shark, because it loses all ability to shock its audience after that, and hence there is no further reason to watch the show. In Family Guy, the Dead Baby point was finally reached with the "Prom Night Dumpster Baby" sketch. In South Park, it was reached about 5 minutes into the first episode of season 1.

It was apparent from the beginning of this season of The Walking Dead that we were on a rapid approach to the Dead Baby point. It was clear the writers were running out of ideas to keep audience entertainment, and had resorted to squick (cf., the walkers falling through the ceiling of the grocery store in the first episode and going splooge on the floor). Well, as expected, with the mid-season finale, we finally reach the Dead Baby point with a literal dead baby. (Or is she? There was no body!) What this means for the future of the show remains to be seen.

A cop partnered with: a werewolf
Grimm

The spiritual successor to Buffy and Angel, Grimm continues to entertain. Not much to say about this one, besides that it keeps heading down the path of fun and interesting, keeping a good balance of suspense and humor.

Also great tourism advertising for the city of Portland.

A cop partnered with: Ichabod Crane
Sleepy Hollow

Don't think about this one too hard, or you'll realize just how silly the premise is: the headless horseman is Death, of Four Horseman of the Apocalypse fame. Ichabod Crane was a soldier for General Washington in the American Revolution, tasked with killing the horseman, he beheads him, but is killed in the battle, but his wife casts a spell or something linking him to the horseman, so when the now-headless horseman awakens 235 years later, Ichabod does as well.

See what I mean? Silly. I enjoyed the pilot, but then started examining it in too much detail, thus ruining it for myself. It's main problem is that, unlike Grimm, it tries to be too scary and takes itself too seriously. Grimm is just fun scary.

A cop partnered with: the Avatar
The Legend of Korra

See this conversation on John C. Wright's excellent piece "Saving Science Fiction from Strong Female Characters" for everything wrong with The Legend of Korra. Korra is annoying. Sums it up.

The rest of the show is still pretty good.

(John C. Wright's piece is basically exactly what I was trying to say here.)

A detective partnered with: an ex-surgeon turned sober companion
Elementary

When we last left off in our Sherlock Holmes comparisons, we were waiting for Moriarty to show up in Elementary so we could see how he stacked up against the other incarnations. And she(!) finally did at the end of last season. And she(!) was Irene Adler! Dun dun DUNNNN!

As far as comparisons go, Elementary's Moriarty was more in line with Guy Ritchie's than Sherlock's. More along the lines of the evil corporateer bent on making money. But! The way she tried to do it was much more interesting: something about investing in the currency of a country bidding to join the EU, then through political shenanigans, halting the process, so the currency, which was expected to be replaced by the Euro, and thus not worth much, suddenly became worth much more. Until she was outsmarted by Sherlock Holmes and Watson (of course). And of course, she turns out to be Irene Adler (what a tweest!).

But blah, blah, blah Moriarty. The real reason Elementary wins the comparison is because this season, they had an episode that featured P vs. NP. Accurately and plausibly. While I was putting my university education to use, and explaining the problem in small words to the Murloc, I mentioned that, by the way, P vs. NP has huge implications for cyber security, because the principle of public key encryption relies on the idea of one-way functions that are mathematically much more complex to solve one way than the other. If P = NP, then this wouldn't hold.

Not fifteen minutes after I mentioned that to her, one of the characters in the show said these exact words: "this would have huge implications for cyber security, because the principle of public key encryption relies on the idea of one-way functions that are mathematically much more complex to solve one way than the other. If P = NP, then this wouldn't hold." Exact transcript. True story.

A cop partnered with: Snow White, Prince Charming, and the Evil Queen
Once Upon a Time

I'm calling it. Time of death was October 13th, when we discovered that Mulan is a lesbian, in love with Sleeping Beauty (because that totally works within the mythos of the movie, where Mulan ends up with whats-his-name). That was the last episode I watched, and I've had no desire to go back since.

Water skis had gone on a loooong time ago, but this show is so far over the shark that... it's really far over the shark. I don't know; come up with your own stupid joke there.

A cop partnered with... OK, I got no cop show parallel here
Once Upon a Time in Wonderland

We watched the pilot and I fell asleep, which really says more about my sleeping habits than the show. We haven't watched any episodes since the pilot, partially because the lameness of the parent series has turned me off to it. We'll probably come back to it once we've caught up with the actually good shows.

A detective G-man partnered with: a rag-tag band of lovable misfits
Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D

A Marvel TV show? With Joss Whedon at the helm? Based in the same universe as the Avengers movie? With tie-ins to it, and future Marvel movies? How can they get this one wrong?

Quite easily, apparently. Too much Dollhouse, not enough Firefly. Penny Arcade isn't too far off. Although, it is steadily improving. The last couple episodes were OK. I blame most of the failings on the character Skye. Not only excels at being annoying, but makes otherwise bearable characters also become annoying when in the same scene with her. Please, Joss, do that thing you do with characters we love.

A cop partnered with: Batman/Robin Hood
Arrow

OK, so the cop is the main character's ex-girlfriend's dad and more of a side character. So sue me.

The Murloc and I forgot to set our DVR to record this last year, so we've been playing catch up with the first season (thanks, Netflix, and by association, Al Gore!) while the second season queues up on the DVR.

The only thing you need to know is that it's a hybrid of Batman and Robin Hood, based on characters from the DC universe. The Murloc approves for Obvious Reasons. We've been binging on it, trying to get through season one so we can begin to catch up on season two.

There is one odd thing about the show. Here, let me show you pictures of the female characters.

Hero's ex-girlfriend | Hero's sister | Hero's mother

Hero's psychotic ex-girlfriend | Genius hacker chick

Hero's cop ex-girlfriend | Ex-girlfriend's friend from work | Sidekick's love interest

They're all the same!

Note to the producers: you may think you're introducing diversity to the cast with the ethnic women. You're not. I was three episodes into the show before I could reliably tell the love interest from the sister. Awkward.

It occurred to me while watching this show: it must be jading to be a Hollywood TV/movie casting person. You've got to cast a female character, and you've got these big binders full of women's head shots. You flip through the pages, and they're all the same bland sort of gorgeous. Pretty soon, you can't even really tell them apart anymore, and that becomes your de facto idea of beauty.

And the #1 cop show on TV is...

A cop partnered with: the Man in the Suit aka Jesus

Person of Interest

This one maintains its death grip as the best show on TV. It's just soooo good. The mid-season finale was among the best hours of TV, with one of the most powerful and dramatic openings evar.

10/10 would watch again.