Watching things (Taskmaster AU, Person of Interest), and the rest of the meme
Left to my own devices, I'm continuing to watch things (and do sudoku) instead of doing anything more productive:
Taskmaster Australia (I keep writing it out in full because "Taskmaster AU" just makes me think of the AU ideas where Hugh or Ed are a serial killer or Victoria is an android XD), episode 3: Hmm, not as fun as the previous one, IMO, and main!Tom's weird scoring is back. spoilers
Prize task: intriguing category, but I wasn't really sold on any of the choices. The most bizarre thing is Tom giving Luke 4 points and Jimmy 2 when they had the same general idea and even Luke admitted the shovel was going to not be useful from inside the coffin. I did find Danielle's treasure map and Nina's BYO worms approaches amusing.
Flying flip-flop: this was just kind of meh all around -- Jimmy and Luke were pretty route 1, Nina's did not really work but not in a funny way, I don't like the CGI approach even when it works, which I didn't think Danielle's did. Julia's was marginally more interesting, but it was a stretch and neither brilliant nor that funny. I feel like that's one task that could've just been scrapped and not much would've been lost.
Team task: I'm not really feeling either team that much. Danielle and Julia are quite funcitonal and they did do a great job at being twins and deserved their five points, but it's not a particularly interesting dynamic. The team of three -- I agree with main!Tom actually that their problem was being on a team of people who are TOO supportive, because they throw out a bunch of dumb ideas and then spiral off into even dumber ones. But while their performance was bad, it was not bad in a way that's interesting in team tasks (i.e. not enough conflict). But ooh! a "solo" team task (i.e. a task for one of the two teams) -- I don't think that's ever been done before.
Cricket appeal: I'm glad that most of the others also had no idea WTF they were supposed to do XD Julia's appeal for money was a fairly amusing way to interpret it; Danielle and Nina's were just kind of sad, and I just very rarely find anything Luke does on this show funny. Jimmy's was amazing though, and totally made this task (and I'm glad he finally got to win something decisively).
My favorite task of the episode was the studio task with the paddles. Giving Tom the opportunity to do weird subjective scoring many times instead of just once is maybe a flaw, but I enjoyed most of the showings. Nina speaking ~Japanese and addressing "Taskmaster-san" was adorable, Luke casually mentioning the five points was well done, and Julia being seductive were my favorites in round 1, and I agree that Danielle's was least interesting. In round two, Jimmy's song was my favorite, followed by Julia's vague and cut-off threat, and I agree with eliminating Nina. I'm not sure why Jimmy was eliminated and not Julia in the third round, and while I agree with Tom's point that Luke was playing against type, I do think Julia deserved to win.
I'm glad Julia won the episode at least.
**
Continuing onward with Person of Interest, season 3:
3x01 ("Liberty") -- I like the actor playing Maksim! he's an actual Russian speaker, and has the right everything -- intonation, vibe. I liked Salazr, too. And I'm liking Reese and Shaw as partners in violence -- they have a really fun dynamic, with John being the quiet and deceptively mild one. I'm not sure if we're supposed to take at face value the implication that Reese also ended up in the army after trouble with the law, but it does seem plausible, and I do find it interesting (not surprising, just interesting) that while he's being very hands off/choosing not to advise Salazar on what to do as far as navy, he tells him straight out to say no to the CIA. As far as Root, neat to see what she's up to while committed by "Uncle Harold", and that she refers to the Machine as "god" and "she".
3x02 ("Nothing to Hide") -- I'm impressed that the show managed to make the LifeTrace CEO guy sympathetic (well, until he hit Finch over the head) at the same time as I'm finding him reprehensible; it's a neat trick, I think mostly down to the guy playing him. I expected Collier to be one of the class action suit people, after that weirdly timed call, but I was not expecting the ideology angle, or for Kruger to end up dead after all that. Meanwhile, I do feel for Carter, being unfairly demoted back to uniform and all, but she's being pretty mean to her rookie partner; I'm glad he called her out on it.
3x03 ("Lady Killer") -- lol, it's cute that Finch is having to explain "Tinder" to the audience. Shaw insisting on rowing the boat during her and Reese's pretend date was very funny; in general, I'm really liking Shaw this season -- the combination of, like, this violence-prone bro's attitude in a petite 5'3" woman is really fun. And her bond with Bear is cute. Also cute: the kid playing Alex; I'm impressed they found someone that age who was a decent actor and actually looked like he could be Ian's son. I'm puzzled by why they put Ian's name on the birth certificate as the father when I'm sure it would've been easy not to. The red herring/twist with Ian appearing to be a stalker/serial killer at first and then turning out to be a victim was a bit hard for me to swallow; the stuff he's doing with those women is creepy, even if he's doing it to score and drop them. I enjoyed these couple of episodes of Root in the hospital, and I'm with her in being surprised that the Machine wouldn't let her kill the government assassin coming after her (once it wasn't in self-defense). I guess the Machine is predicated on valuing all human life, so it makes sense once you think about it, but it's still surprising watching Root walk away from the guy. I'm also intrigued by this general idea of Root having, like, outsourced her ethics to the Machine. And really curious to see her and Finch interact in this new phase of her moral development.
3x04 ("Reasonable Doubt") -- Ugh, I didn't like this one at all. I found the writing in this episode much clunkier than usual for this show -- people kept restating stuff that was obvious from dialogue and relaying to each other things the viewer could see and asking questions that make them sound not very smart, and also delivering cliche lines with an air of great profundity. The writer is Melissa Scrivner Love, and I know she's written or co-written a couple of previous episodes, and I didn't think those were terrible, so not sure what the deal here is... But also, besides the dialogue and exposition, it just didn't feel like a POI episode? There's more focus on the numbers in relation to each other, rather than any of the principals, the whole trial idea feels like total nonsense, and everyone feels a bit (or a lot) out of character -- Finch not discovering the secondary email, really? and I don't buy AT ALL Reese leaving those two to shoot each other and walking away -- the Machine alerted them to Vanessa for a reason, Finch sent him to stop Vanessa -- I feel like it goes against the whole premise of the show and Reese's character/role in it to swan off. And Carter has some ridiculous lines. The only people who felt in character were Shaw and Fusco when he was stopping her from stabbing the bank guy with a letter opener. Maybe this was originally written for some other show and then shoehorned into POI? I was also disappointed to learn that Carter's rookie partner is spying on her for HR; I actually liked the kid, and was hoping she would get some support.
3x05 ("Razgovor") -- *sigh* I was heartened by seeing the Russian title, but I guess it's too much to expect that they give the Russian girl an actual Rusian name -- "Genrika" is not a thing; I suppose they were going for "Zhenya"? (which is a form of Eugenia) Also, Finch, I expect you to be better with Russian pronunciation -- you're a worldly man (he mangled "Solntsevo" pretty badly). I'd liked the previous kid actor, in "Lady Killer", but this girl, not so much. (I did like the girl playing little Shaw, and I guess if there could be only one good young actor in the episode, I'm glad it was her?) Also, neither "Gen" nor the guy playing cousin Vadim seem to be Russian, which is always annoying to me. The girl's Russian is ATROCIOUS -- I had to listen to her line three times to figure out what she was saying, and twice to convince myself it was Russian at all, and she manages to mispronounce "Vadim", and the guy's accent is just cartoonish. Whoever put together the Russian webpage Finch is browsing did a much better job, though -- good work them! (Funnily enough, the Russian article mentions that political prisoner Oksana has a daughter, but does not give the daughter's name, because the daughter's name is silly.) OK, but aside from that, I did enjoy the episode, for Shaw. So I guess she's a full-on, what, sociopath? the way she explained it to the girl, that she doesn't get scared or sad or happy or lonely (but does angry ok, lol) -- I liked that way of explaining it. I liked the way the episode played out, with Carter and Laskey (still a bit sad he was a traitor though), Shaw marching into the lab and blowing it up in her wake, thanks to Finch's "enough" chemistry, and found the scene with the girl handing Shaw the Soviet medal genuinely touching. And then Root! Dun-dun-DUN.
*
And the rest of the Character Roulette "greatest hits" meme. Fandoms featured: Vorkosigan Saga, LotR, Dragaera, Harry Potter, ASOIAF, Babylon 5, Discworld, Dresden Files, Temeraire, Firefly, Kushiel's Legacy, AtLA/Korra quite a bit (although you can sort of tell which fandoms I picked up or dropped over time), and occasionally others like Disney movies, Chronicles of Amber, A Great and Terrible Beauty, Flora Segunda, Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series, Sookie Stackhouse series, BBC Sherlock, Hunger Games, MCU, Demon's Lexicon, Kingkiller Chronicles, Tortall, etc.
It was actually too large to fit in a LJ post, so you can read questions 43-84 of the meme here on DW
Taskmaster Australia (I keep writing it out in full because "Taskmaster AU" just makes me think of the AU ideas where Hugh or Ed are a serial killer or Victoria is an android XD), episode 3: Hmm, not as fun as the previous one, IMO, and main!Tom's weird scoring is back. spoilers
Prize task: intriguing category, but I wasn't really sold on any of the choices. The most bizarre thing is Tom giving Luke 4 points and Jimmy 2 when they had the same general idea and even Luke admitted the shovel was going to not be useful from inside the coffin. I did find Danielle's treasure map and Nina's BYO worms approaches amusing.
Flying flip-flop: this was just kind of meh all around -- Jimmy and Luke were pretty route 1, Nina's did not really work but not in a funny way, I don't like the CGI approach even when it works, which I didn't think Danielle's did. Julia's was marginally more interesting, but it was a stretch and neither brilliant nor that funny. I feel like that's one task that could've just been scrapped and not much would've been lost.
Team task: I'm not really feeling either team that much. Danielle and Julia are quite funcitonal and they did do a great job at being twins and deserved their five points, but it's not a particularly interesting dynamic. The team of three -- I agree with main!Tom actually that their problem was being on a team of people who are TOO supportive, because they throw out a bunch of dumb ideas and then spiral off into even dumber ones. But while their performance was bad, it was not bad in a way that's interesting in team tasks (i.e. not enough conflict). But ooh! a "solo" team task (i.e. a task for one of the two teams) -- I don't think that's ever been done before.
Cricket appeal: I'm glad that most of the others also had no idea WTF they were supposed to do XD Julia's appeal for money was a fairly amusing way to interpret it; Danielle and Nina's were just kind of sad, and I just very rarely find anything Luke does on this show funny. Jimmy's was amazing though, and totally made this task (and I'm glad he finally got to win something decisively).
My favorite task of the episode was the studio task with the paddles. Giving Tom the opportunity to do weird subjective scoring many times instead of just once is maybe a flaw, but I enjoyed most of the showings. Nina speaking ~Japanese and addressing "Taskmaster-san" was adorable, Luke casually mentioning the five points was well done, and Julia being seductive were my favorites in round 1, and I agree that Danielle's was least interesting. In round two, Jimmy's song was my favorite, followed by Julia's vague and cut-off threat, and I agree with eliminating Nina. I'm not sure why Jimmy was eliminated and not Julia in the third round, and while I agree with Tom's point that Luke was playing against type, I do think Julia deserved to win.
I'm glad Julia won the episode at least.
**
Continuing onward with Person of Interest, season 3:
3x01 ("Liberty") -- I like the actor playing Maksim! he's an actual Russian speaker, and has the right everything -- intonation, vibe. I liked Salazr, too. And I'm liking Reese and Shaw as partners in violence -- they have a really fun dynamic, with John being the quiet and deceptively mild one. I'm not sure if we're supposed to take at face value the implication that Reese also ended up in the army after trouble with the law, but it does seem plausible, and I do find it interesting (not surprising, just interesting) that while he's being very hands off/choosing not to advise Salazar on what to do as far as navy, he tells him straight out to say no to the CIA. As far as Root, neat to see what she's up to while committed by "Uncle Harold", and that she refers to the Machine as "god" and "she".
3x02 ("Nothing to Hide") -- I'm impressed that the show managed to make the LifeTrace CEO guy sympathetic (well, until he hit Finch over the head) at the same time as I'm finding him reprehensible; it's a neat trick, I think mostly down to the guy playing him. I expected Collier to be one of the class action suit people, after that weirdly timed call, but I was not expecting the ideology angle, or for Kruger to end up dead after all that. Meanwhile, I do feel for Carter, being unfairly demoted back to uniform and all, but she's being pretty mean to her rookie partner; I'm glad he called her out on it.
3x03 ("Lady Killer") -- lol, it's cute that Finch is having to explain "Tinder" to the audience. Shaw insisting on rowing the boat during her and Reese's pretend date was very funny; in general, I'm really liking Shaw this season -- the combination of, like, this violence-prone bro's attitude in a petite 5'3" woman is really fun. And her bond with Bear is cute. Also cute: the kid playing Alex; I'm impressed they found someone that age who was a decent actor and actually looked like he could be Ian's son. I'm puzzled by why they put Ian's name on the birth certificate as the father when I'm sure it would've been easy not to. The red herring/twist with Ian appearing to be a stalker/serial killer at first and then turning out to be a victim was a bit hard for me to swallow; the stuff he's doing with those women is creepy, even if he's doing it to score and drop them. I enjoyed these couple of episodes of Root in the hospital, and I'm with her in being surprised that the Machine wouldn't let her kill the government assassin coming after her (once it wasn't in self-defense). I guess the Machine is predicated on valuing all human life, so it makes sense once you think about it, but it's still surprising watching Root walk away from the guy. I'm also intrigued by this general idea of Root having, like, outsourced her ethics to the Machine. And really curious to see her and Finch interact in this new phase of her moral development.
3x04 ("Reasonable Doubt") -- Ugh, I didn't like this one at all. I found the writing in this episode much clunkier than usual for this show -- people kept restating stuff that was obvious from dialogue and relaying to each other things the viewer could see and asking questions that make them sound not very smart, and also delivering cliche lines with an air of great profundity. The writer is Melissa Scrivner Love, and I know she's written or co-written a couple of previous episodes, and I didn't think those were terrible, so not sure what the deal here is... But also, besides the dialogue and exposition, it just didn't feel like a POI episode? There's more focus on the numbers in relation to each other, rather than any of the principals, the whole trial idea feels like total nonsense, and everyone feels a bit (or a lot) out of character -- Finch not discovering the secondary email, really? and I don't buy AT ALL Reese leaving those two to shoot each other and walking away -- the Machine alerted them to Vanessa for a reason, Finch sent him to stop Vanessa -- I feel like it goes against the whole premise of the show and Reese's character/role in it to swan off. And Carter has some ridiculous lines. The only people who felt in character were Shaw and Fusco when he was stopping her from stabbing the bank guy with a letter opener. Maybe this was originally written for some other show and then shoehorned into POI? I was also disappointed to learn that Carter's rookie partner is spying on her for HR; I actually liked the kid, and was hoping she would get some support.
3x05 ("Razgovor") -- *sigh* I was heartened by seeing the Russian title, but I guess it's too much to expect that they give the Russian girl an actual Rusian name -- "Genrika" is not a thing; I suppose they were going for "Zhenya"? (which is a form of Eugenia) Also, Finch, I expect you to be better with Russian pronunciation -- you're a worldly man (he mangled "Solntsevo" pretty badly). I'd liked the previous kid actor, in "Lady Killer", but this girl, not so much. (I did like the girl playing little Shaw, and I guess if there could be only one good young actor in the episode, I'm glad it was her?) Also, neither "Gen" nor the guy playing cousin Vadim seem to be Russian, which is always annoying to me. The girl's Russian is ATROCIOUS -- I had to listen to her line three times to figure out what she was saying, and twice to convince myself it was Russian at all, and she manages to mispronounce "Vadim", and the guy's accent is just cartoonish. Whoever put together the Russian webpage Finch is browsing did a much better job, though -- good work them! (Funnily enough, the Russian article mentions that political prisoner Oksana has a daughter, but does not give the daughter's name, because the daughter's name is silly.) OK, but aside from that, I did enjoy the episode, for Shaw. So I guess she's a full-on, what, sociopath? the way she explained it to the girl, that she doesn't get scared or sad or happy or lonely (but does angry ok, lol) -- I liked that way of explaining it. I liked the way the episode played out, with Carter and Laskey (still a bit sad he was a traitor though), Shaw marching into the lab and blowing it up in her wake, thanks to Finch's "enough" chemistry, and found the scene with the girl handing Shaw the Soviet medal genuinely touching. And then Root! Dun-dun-DUN.
*
And the rest of the Character Roulette "greatest hits" meme. Fandoms featured: Vorkosigan Saga, LotR, Dragaera, Harry Potter, ASOIAF, Babylon 5, Discworld, Dresden Files, Temeraire, Firefly, Kushiel's Legacy, AtLA/Korra quite a bit (although you can sort of tell which fandoms I picked up or dropped over time), and occasionally others like Disney movies, Chronicles of Amber, A Great and Terrible Beauty, Flora Segunda, Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series, Sookie Stackhouse series, BBC Sherlock, Hunger Games, MCU, Demon's Lexicon, Kingkiller Chronicles, Tortall, etc.
It was actually too large to fit in a LJ post, so you can read questions 43-84 of the meme here on DW