What are you watching (Streaming)

[deaddmwalking]

I'll admit that I'm way behind the rest of the world on watching any type of TV programming. Still, I'm curious to know what other people watching and whether it's enjoyable or not.

I'm watching a couple of things at the moment.

Star Trek Discovery

So apparently there were 5 seasons of this show, and I only started watching it this month. We're doing a Paramount+ subscription through Roku. The show is set at approximately the same time as the Star Trek The Original Series - there are references to Constellation Class starships (like Enterprise) and Harry Mudd (from Mudd's Women and I, Mudd) makes an appearance. So far we've enjoyed the show, but the Klingon redesign bothers my wife. I feel like they've tried to make them appear more alien in part because a big part of the series (at least the first season) revolves around a war with the Klingons. There are a number of references and call backs that fans of TOS should catch. I haven't watched Star Trek: Strange New Worlds yet. That also appears to be set at the same time as TOS, but using the aesthetic of the original series. Discovery is more similar to the Star Trek movies in terms of ship design. There's a fair bit of bad science but if you accept that many problems can be solved by random combinations of scientific techno-babble, it's alright. The best parts of Star Trek have more to do with how the characters confront situations and interact than the situations themselves.

Dead Man's Gun
This is available on Pluto TV (free, with ads). It's an anthology series from 1997 (2 seasons, about 40 episodes). It was recommended to me because it's an Anthology series (like the original Twilight Zone), meaning that it has different characters and plots each episode. In The Twilight Zone it didn't really matter that one episode had Martians turning humans against themselves (the Monsters are Due on Maple Street) or another with completely different Martians finding out that they're too late since the Venusians are already here (Will the Real Martians Please Stand Up?). The series had the idea that weird things are going to happen and you could accept each story independently. Dead Man's Gun uses the presence of the titular weapon to tie the episodes together. In most episodes someone finds the gun, things happen, and the narrator blames the gun's evil for it. I think that the episodes would be better if they didn't try to use the gun as an organizing principle. First, as an object, it has different effects in different episodes. Some it makes someone a real danger - super speed and super accuracy - and in others it doesn't. If the show were supposed to be organized by the gun moving from person to person, it would actually make sense to have a little more continuity between episodes - the person that loses possession should give it directly to the next person... But instead we often see the gun with someone at the end of an episode (like Billy the Kid) and then the next episode starts and there's no reference to Billy the Kid or what happened when he had the gun. Sometimes the protagonist finds the gun on a dead man to start the episode, but in some cases it's clear the person has been dead for months if not years. Considering how short 'the wild west' was, passing through dozens of people and sometimes waiting to be found like a Ring of Power actually makes the show less enjoyable.

But it's fun to see characters I recognize from 80s and 90s shows, like Jack from Three's Company (John Ritter) and the Fonz (Henry Winkler, also an executive producer).

What's nice about an anthology show is that it has a ton of characters that you could easily adapt and drop into a Western campaign. In Episode 5, Buryin' Sam, an undertaker decides to increase his business by speeding up the dying process. That's pretty grim and pretty easy to adapt as an adventure seed, so for me it's worth the watch, even though I think it's just of middling quality.

[Stahlseele]

Godfather of Harlem.
Yellowstone
I watched the Blacklist because, come on, James Spader as a villain? HELL YES! But the show jumped the shark and lost the plot <.<
Tulsa King i would like, but neither Netflix nor Amazon Prime have it in the included section . .