So what have you guys been watching lately?

[REPO Man]

Started season two of the Gossip Girl reboot. So far there's only four episodes and if this season is like the first one, one can expect a hiatus after the sixth episode.

Damn, I almost forgot how sexy Thomas Doherty is.

[Raging Justice]

So I watched episode 9 of season 2 of Transformers: Beast Wars, maybe the best episode so far. I have reached a point now with this series where I would say that it is required viewing for fans of the old, Generation 1, 80s cartoon. Beast Wars directly uses history and characters from G1 and ties its story into the G1 continuity. In fact, there is a season 1 episode where you will actually see a returning G1 character. I won't spoil that.

I have some gripes with Beast Wars, but overall, it is entertaining. It is very different from G1 in a lot of ways, yet there is clearly a respect that the creators of the show had for G1.

That said, the show is certainly good enough to stand on its own, but the G1 references just add an extra layer of enjoyment for an old G1 fan like myself.

[Raging Justice]

So I finished Beast Wars. As I've stated, it's a good show...BUT, it's not a masterpiece as some have claimed. It is not the greatest piece of media to come out of the franchise, as some have claimed, and it is NOT better than G1. The 1986 G1 movie is still better than ANYTHING in Beast Wars. That said, with Transformers it's all generational. Of course, the people who grew up on it will say it's better than G1, but the fact is many of the show's biggest moments RELY on stuff from G1. The show is constantly in G1's shadow.

That said, the show has great characters, some cool stories, and many cool moments, but it has issues too:

The tone is wildly inconsistent. Dramatic and dark at times, and completely wacky and ridiculous at others. There are times in the show where it's literally just taking the piss

On that note, the show literally feels like a Looney Tunes cartoon at times with over the top slapstick comedy and audio cues that have you expecting Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd to pop up on your screen at some point. The comedy in Beast Wars is very off putting at times, it gets far more silly than G1 EVER did.

What does and doesn't cause death is very inconsistent. Characters come back from literally anything in this show (and the over the top comedy plays into that), yet once the writers decide someone needs to die suddenly things become fatal. Also, some of the deaths come out of nowhere and don't really leave an impression. Season 2 very nonchalantly kills off certain characters like it's nothing important, although there is one death that is extremely well done.

There's a rushed romance between two characters that isn't built up well

The character designs vary wildly as characters gain new forms, some of which are REALLY ugly. The new forms just seem like an excuse for new toys, but that's the nature of a Transformers show I guess. Generally speaking, Beast Wars characters are ugly as sin compared to their G1 counterparts, who had nice, clean, designs while Beast Wars designs are kind of a mess. The fact that Beast Wars characters transform into animals makes some of their designs disturbing, like seeing a person's arm be a head with independently moving eyes, or having the head of an animal on ones' chest. Beast Wars toys won't look as good on a shelf as G1 or other Transformers toys...though to be fair nothing in the show is as much of an eyesore as Michael Bay designs.

The whole animal thing is weird too. For some reason, characters in animal mode LITERALLY become those animals, including having to feed on organic beings like mice. Why? They are robots. This makes no sense. In G1, characters like the Dinobots became robotic interpretations of animals but didn't literally need to like feed on animal life like ACTUAL dinosaurs. It's weird, like once characters in Beast Wars transform they stop being robots and become organic beings, even sometimes becoming feral. It's bizarre. I much prefer G1's handling of animal based Transformers, even transformed they were still robots, not organic beings.

Some of the show's cringiest moments revolve around humans, well not technically humans but our prehistoric, simian ancestors since the show takes place on a prehistoric earth. This is a frequent complaint of Transformers fans, the annoying use of human characters. There's a whole episode revolving around this prehistoric girl that had me rolling my eyes. Speaking of the prehistoric thing...

why don't we see more prehistoric creatures pop up on this show like dinosaurs and stuff? The planet seems strangely barren most of the time in terms of wildlife. Like we never see dinosaurs even though some of the characters have dinosaur transformations.

Some of the new characters that show up later in the show are awful. Silver Bolt is literally one of the worst characters I have ever seen in any cartoon ever. In fact, both of the fuzors suck and so does Inferno. Thankfully, Rampage and Depth Charge are both awesome. Silver Bolt really, really drags the show down though and turns one of the coolest characters on the show into a much less cool version of herself by his association with her.

So yeah, lots of issues. I only bring them up because some of the praise Beast Wars gets is off the the charts. It's not up there with TRUE 90s masterpieces like Gargoyles, Batman the Animated Series, or X-Men the Animated series, or other all time greats like Justice League Unlimited, Avatar: the Last Airbender, or Green Lantern: the animated series. It is overall a good show though largely due to cool characters like Tarantula, Rampage, Dino Bot (maybe the show's best character), Depth Charge, Megatron (yeeeesss), Cheetor, Rat Trap (even though he can be annoying), and Black Arachnia (though her character becomes significantly less cool once they start pairing her up with Silver Bolt) and cool G1 based stuff which constitute the show's biggest moments. Honestly, once we get into season 3 it starts to actually feel like an extension of G1. Some individual episodes are extremely good like Code of Hero, Transmutate, and Possession, all must watch episodes. Also, despite my criticism of it, some of the comedy does land in this show. It's a good, B tier show while some of the stuff I mentioned earlier in this paragraph are A tier (heck, Disney's Gargoyles is probably S tier quite honestly...except for season 3). Beast Wars has a lot of excellent moments, but a lot of issues drag it down and its fans overrate the show quite a bit (I've literally seen people call it the best thing in the whole franchise). That said, I am looking forward to the integration of Beast Wars characters into the next live action movie and I will give credit where credit is due, it does seem like Beast Wars re-ignited interest in the Transformers franchise at a time when it was waning. I would say the 1986 movie, Beast Wars, and much as I hate to admit it, the Bay movies have all helped to keep the franchise alive and relevant throughout the years.

[marurun]

So I have not seen Beast Wars. It came out when I was just a little too old to appreciate it. I watched and loved G1 as a kid. But I went back to watch G1 just last year via the Hasbro Pulse YT channel and read some of the old comics (British and Marvel).

It turns out G1’s quality is not what I remembered. The movie still rocks (despite some of its flaws), but the TV show is VERY of its time. The stories are inconsistent and often nonsensical and there’s very little actual series continuity, for the most part. There are cool moments, yes, but the show is actually just not that good. GI Joe, however, is pretty darn good.

I also disagree on the G1 designs. That’s not entirely true. I disagree some. The cartoon designs are great, but some of the actual toy designs were weird. Like Ratchet and Ironhide. Their cartoon appearance is actually nothing like the toys. The toy design wouldn’t have worked well in a cartoon.

So I guess I completely understand your nostalgia for G1, but I’d encourage you to go back and give it another watch, because if it’s been a while you might be building it up a lot in your head.

[REPO Man]

Recently began my second watch through of Murder, She Wrote and my third of The Golden Girls, as well as Rocko's Modern Life and Hey Arnold.

[stickem]

Binge watched Beef with my wife. Thought it was ok but kinda slow, i kept falling asleep. My wife loved it. Good acting though

Mon-fri 6 to 8 began watching the andy griffith show again. Probably my favorite series ever. Me and the wife could just sit on the couch and watch all day long

[RCBH928]

IDK if I said this before but I had big hopes for X-Files and was aiming to binge watch it. The vibe of it is that its this really mysterious tv show stories. From watching some episodes its just some weird organism that they have to tackle. Abnormal creatures oozing stuff is just not my thing. Its like a 1950s monster movie. Does it get any better?

I think maybe time has an effect on it, because I do remember life pre-internet had more wonder and mystery and people were more likely to believe what they see on tv. With the internet I can get detailed information on any topic to prove or debunk it.

[Anapan]

That Beast Wars episode where the mutant (Transmutate?) was born was so good! There were a lot of memorable episodes but I've had vivid and disturbing dreams involving that thing, or a cyborg that it inspired in my brain even many years later. As mentioned tho, it seems half of the episodes are fanfiction that should've been screened better instead of being brought to screen unedited.

The X-Files mostly involve monster-of-the-week filler. If you check a wiki there's a master-list that tells you which you should watch (Lore), and which you must watch (Lore but it can't be missed or you will not understand the next lore episode). Each season really does move the plot forward. There's also many lists that rank episodes.
It was a family thing that we watched every episode as they came out, and we only missed a few. Having watched and enjoyed nearly all of them, I'll tell you that there are a lot of dud episodes. I tried really hard to watch at least half of every season before the new season (S10) was announced in 2016. I made it half-way through season 5 before I just cherry-picked the rest. An awesome series to be sure, but definitely best enjoyed with a couple of guides to tell you which episodes to skip. The lore episodes are marked with an ankh-like symbol, and the rest are optional - sitcom style. The episodes vary widely in style and quality as there were a lot of guest writers. David Duchovny wrote and directed a couple of episodes himself.
At some point one of the guest-writers canonically destroyed the ambiguousness of Mulder and Scully's relationship and along with bringing in John Doggett while Gillian Anderson had a baby, it kinda fell apart. Still, the movies were really awesome and I think you should cherry-pick and enjoy the rest of the series if you have the tenacity.
I still haven't watched season 11, but season 10 had me hooked.

[Ziggy587]

The X-Files always had that format were some episodes were monster-of-the-week and some were the continuing story arc. I feel like earlier in the series, more episodes were monster-of-the-week. And as the series grew, more were the story arc. I like the story arc just fine, but I feel like some of the best episodes were monster-of-the-week.

The early seasons are extremely dated, and that may be why I love them. The way they were shot, the lighting, the dialog, the hair and clothes. Everything just screams early 90's, and that just hits the nostalgia button for me. There's also dated plot elements, like "I left my cellular phone in the car."

A lot of people hate Agent Doggett, but I love him. Maybe it's because I love Robert Patrick. Knowing real world events takes you out of any show or movie, knowing why a character was written out. But honestly, the break from Molder was good for the show. There's only so m any episodes that I can listen to Molder's monotone voice complaining that he can't find his sister (LOL). A character replacement can be risky, but Doggett was well written and Robert Patrick is awesome.

I also haven't seen the latest season. I was going to rewatch the series first. That said, I never had a problem with any of the seasons. But the last movie IIRC was exceptionally boring. I Want To Believe, I think it was called. I've only seen it once, maybe I should watch it again. But I just remember it being really bland.

[RCBH928]

That Beast Wars episode where the mutant (Transmutate?) was born was so good! There were a lot of memorable episodes but I've had vivid and disturbing dreams involving that thing, or a cyborg that it inspired in my brain even many years later. As mentioned tho, it seems half of the episodes are fanfiction that should've been screened better instead of being brought to screen unedited.

The X-Files mostly involve monster-of-the-week filler. If you check a wiki there's a master-list that tells you which you should watch (Lore), and which you must watch (Lore but it can't be missed or you will not understand the next lore episode). Each season really does move the plot forward. There's also many lists that rank episodes.
It was a family thing that we watched every episode as they came out, and we only missed a few. Having watched and enjoyed nearly all of them, I'll tell you that there are a lot of dud episodes. I tried really hard to watch at least half of every season before the new season (S10) was announced in 2016. I made it half-way through season 5 before I just cherry-picked the rest. An awesome series to be sure, but definitely best enjoyed with a couple of guides to tell you which episodes to skip. The lore episodes are marked with an ankh-like symbol, and the rest are optional - sitcom style. The episodes vary widely in style and quality as there were a lot of guest writers. David Duchovny wrote and directed a couple of episodes himself.
At some point one of the guest-writers canonically destroyed the ambiguousness of Mulder and Scully's relationship and along with bringing in John Doggett while Gillian Anderson had a baby, it kinda fell apart. Still, the movies were really awesome and I think you should cherry-pick and enjoy the rest of the series if you have the tenacity.
I still haven't watched season 11, but season 10 had me hooked.

actually thats a great way of watching the show! didn't know there was such a list. For a show that span 9 seasons surely there was a lot of fillers but the fanbase and the show's rep. had me thinking it would be on a much higher level of quality.

One of the episodes had a presumption that a computer built into the building electric system built its own AI and now can control the buildings and kill people. Maybe in 1993 computers were a mystery and its scary to think a computer can turn evil with its own mind, but in 2023 that plain silly to me