TV Reviews
From iGeek
Bosch is an Amazon Original TV Series (started in 2014), that's one of the best crime-drama shows of the last few years. My wife and I binged watched 4 seasons in about as many weeks. Basically, it's very old school, and predictable in some ways: tough guy Harry is ex special forces, the veteran detective, who sometimes bends/breaks the rules... but over time, you learn that he's fairly ethical outside of a few shortcuts, and is trying to right the wrongs of the world, because he was brought up as an orphan, after his prostitute mom was murdered, and he was stuck in the system.
Netflix produced a 20/20 style documentary series called Dirty Money. Only this show doesn't have the constraints of a John Stossel, who is likely to wakeup one day, and realize how unclean his Michael Moore style one-sided Marxist propaganda is.
So while the show is interesting, and watchable, it's completely dogmatic, one sided, and filled with lies of omission and commission. It reminds me of High School civics, history, social studies, all over again: though this is slightly more interesting.
House of Cards: the Breaking Bad of Politics. And I'm not sure I mean that in a good way. I grew to hate all the characters on Breaking Bad, but I started out hating them on HoC. They don't get more likable. If you like watching people manipulate each other and behave badly, this show is for you.... or you could have visited my family during the Holiday's.
Ken Burns disappoints with a progressive puff-piece, written, directed and shown by the left, for the far left. Teddy the Republican was almost all bad. FDR the Democrat was almost all good. And the complexities that made both 3 dimensional, instead of caricatures, was all whitewashed off the series. I figured the format would allow PBS to do something deep and complex, it was just long and shallow.
HBO propaganda film on how great Obama was, called "The Final Year" and was total puffery. You probably shouldn't do many documentaries on people while they're still alive. (Too many people are more biased when they can be help accountable, and all the truths haven't leaked out). But this is especially true when done by water carriers like anyone at HBO. It's like watching a Reagan Documentary done by Breitbart: I'm sure there's some interesting parts (and some truths), but it certainly wouldn't be the whole truth -- and I find Brietbart a lot more intellectually honest than HBO. Crap like this is why I give HBO as little of my money as possible.
The View was a talk show with 3 or 4 female shrill Liberals that gang-bang the one token conservative. In the case of Elisabeth Hasselbeck they haranged and bullied her off the show for being "too Christian/Conservative for their audience". E.g. they were worried about the balance and likability she might bring to the show. Ratings plummeted on The View, while Hasselbeck grew the FoxNews Channel ratings (she went to immediately afterwards) by 9%. Yeah, Elizabeth was the problem. They replaced her with Meghan McCain, and they repeatedly had incidents with her not being liberal and stupid enough. Basically, the two most obnoxious are Joy Behar, and Whoopi Goldberg, who like to prove their stupid, divisive, hypocrisy, on a regular basis -- with Joy being more obnoxious, and Whoopi just looking ignorant. Lousy show with lousy humans, makes their viewing audience dumber with every viewing.
You're spoon-fed the ideas that it was just greed and arrogance that caused the callous disregard for the planet. And I'm sure greed and arrogance were part of it. But it forgets to hint at the truth: the regulations were unmitigated bullshit. The truth was it was because CARB and the EPA set unreasonable and unattainable standard, and so VW had a choice of surrender a market, or cheat. You might not agree with VW's decision, but if you don't know why they did it, then you don't understand what happened. This documentary (and most of the media) leaves you ignorant of why, while feeling like you know more than you do. It turns people into progressives: arrogant, ignorant and sanctimonious (or worse: willing to lie for their cause).
Walking Dead Grumble Thread. Look I can suspend disbelief enough to watch a show about the Zombie apocalypse. Living in the bay-area, I saw them walking to the poll booths on Election Day. But I can't stand stupid people not adapting to their new reality. There's so many better ways to deal with walkers or biters.
Placeholder for Westworld TV series. On my to-binge lists, but I hear lots of people who love it, but I'll have to see if I'm in the other group or not.