Monday, May 23, 2016

Ranking the seasons of "24" (in anticipation of "24: Legacy"


I can't wait for the 2017 Super Bowl to be over. Not because I dislike football; I feel guilty about how much I like watching the concussion-inducing sport. It's just that when the Super Bowl ends, "24" returns.

Okay, Jack Bauer is not going to be back, not yet. In the meantime, while I reminisce about the past nine seasons, here's how I rank them. Obviously, chock full of spoilers:

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

The five best episodes of each of the "Star Trek" series (imho)


Image result for star trek

A good friend of mine (in real life and on Facebook) made an interesting and provocative assertion, namely, that every incarnation of "Star Trek" has been worse than the previous series. I responded that I didn't think the original series (TOS) could be compared to the others, because its production values, tone, and acting were so different; and that I agreed with the assertion as to the offspring except that I believed that "Deep Space Nine" (DS9) was superior to its predecessor. Naturally, this being Facebook, a time-sucking argument ensued.

I didn't want to attack TOS, but when push came to shove, I resorted to pointing out all the dreck from the third season - episodes like Spock's Brain, The Mark of Gideon, and The Cloud Miners, among others. My friend defended even these atrocities, noting that they were memorable. Apart from the general awfulness, I remembered not very much about Spock's Brain - and it turned out that the line that I thought I remembered wasn't even in the shooting script! That episode was so bad, I was inventing better dialogue for it....

Anyway, my friend then asserted that the best episodes of TOS were better than the best episodes of the other series. "Best" is going to be subjective, of course, but I decided to come up with my list of the five best episodes from each of the series.