So what have you guys been watching lately?

[Gamerforlife]

I am really liking Almost Human. The show seems to be scratching an itch I've had for awhile. Even though the episode order has been all mangled up for some reason, the flow is still good. I just wish they'd decide the episode order BEFORE showing a preview.

Shield is ... doing stuff ... finally.

Slapping in the Deathlok stuff was kinda dumb.

I just wish the show would move faster. I know the show runners are saying "oh just be patient, this isn't a movie, we're building it over a season". But it's just moving too slow. The nice thing about those Marvel flicks is they're self contained and they move quickly. I would rather have a quick moving and dense show, where a lot more ground was covered in similar fashion allowing for more plot threads to be explored (It sounds like they want to have the same amount of plot threads as one movie for every season, that sounds boring). Having character arcs stretch out is fine, but having an uninteresting invisible bad guy whom you have no reason to really care about and isn't even the threat on a weekly basis is just really boring.

The most recent episode was interesting, but I realized I just don't care about these people, they still seem like puppets without much substance.

People getting shot whom you don't really care about ... and know aren't going to die because they set up several episodes talking about how unique and special they are ... or because no one of any significance has really died on the show ... all people thought dead, we get a ":O they're alive" reveal in the next scene or next episode. It's just not suspenseful and comes across as kind of lazy.

It just becomes slightly less interesting when they slap on known Marvel names (Deathlok) and expect people to be psyched about it.

I'm loving both Almost Human and SHIELD. After Walking Dead (restarts this Sunday!), they're my favorite new shows on T.V.

Almost Human is great because of the cast, and production values. Dorian and Kennex really have this great chemistry together that shines through and make for some pretty funny scenes. And the production values are just fan-freaking-tastic! It looks like a movie. And it gives me my action fix. This isn't Robocop violence, or anything, but it's still plenty and balances out the story well. I'm also pretty curious about what's on the other side of the wall, too.

Trying to avoid the S.H.I.E.L.D. comments as I'm behind on that show by one episode, but yeah Almost Human is awesome. I watch a lot of Sci Fi, but this is one of the few shows that feels like a Sci Fi show. There are so many cool, futuristic gadgets on the show and everything in that world LOOKS futuristic. Plus, the narrated intro just feels like the sort of thing you'd see on an actual Syfy channel show. And the music, the goddamn music, it's so perfect. It adds energy to every action moment, and being electronic makes it one more facet of the show that adds to the futuristic feel. Props to Crystal Method. The whole look and feel of the show really hits a lot of geeky sweet spots. There's Terminator vibes, Blade Runner vibes, and Japanese cyber punk anime vibes.

And of course the two leads are great. Dorian is the real MVP though. He's the guy who really gets you emotionally invested in the story, but the dialog between him and Kennex is fun and entertaining. They've nailed the buddy cop formula. And as someone who has a fondness for darker, harsher TV programming (The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural, etc.)it actually is refreshing to watch something a bit more positive every once and a while. On Almost Human, good guys are good guys, bad guys are bad guys and very often the good guys win and very often they actually save people.

I've been saying this for a while, but Fox has really come out and surprised everyone. For a network with a bit of a bad reputation amongst geeks for cancelling shows like Firefly and The Sara Connor Chronicles and screwing with the creative direction of Dollhouse, they are building some good will right now with two surprisingly good genre shows in Almost Human and Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow's season finale got a LOT of positive responses from fans and critics and the show as a whole is being called a break out hit. Having these two shows back to back is practically spoiling us.

And speaking of geeky shows, man I'm starting to really love Revolution for its general badassery. Sebastion Monroe(I'm Batman!), Miles Matheson (even though they've been softening him up a LOT lately) and Charlie have become three of the biggest badasses on TV for me lately. Check this out:

[TSTR]

So Psych got cancelled; this will be the last season.

[Sload Soap]

The only one I can touch on is the Future Janeway still existing. The moment she changed time she created a parallel reality where Voyager made it back, while the future she came from still remained. Lots of sci-fi uses this theory.

Seems kind of pointless then. If you use the many worlds theory, you must conclude there are as many if not more timelines where Voyager made it back anyway or was never even lost. In other words: don't end your long running and beloved sci-fi show with a lazy deus ex machina because your fanbase is made up of exactly the kind of nerds who will call you out on it.

[Cronozilla]

I knew the Psych cancellation was coming. People thought it would be last season, but the dead give away was the voting they had about 6 months ago where you could choose two (or something) of these 5 remaining episode ideas they had, three of which would never be produced. The season order was really cut down, which is another sign.

I just wish they announced it when they started the season, not when there's only a handful of episodes left.

Here's hoping for more in the future. I would totally go see a Psych movie. I think that'd be great, I also think that would totally not happen.

[Ack]

I knew the Psych cancellation was coming. People thought it would be last season, but the dead give away was the voting they had about 6 months ago where you could choose two (or something) of these 5 remaining episode ideas they had, three of which would never be produced. The season order was really cut down, which is another sign.

I just wish they announced it when they started the season, not when there's only a handful of episodes left.

Here's hoping for more in the future. I would totally go see a Psych movie. I think that'd be great, I also think that would totally not happen.

Honestly, it should have been obvious when Maggie Lawson joined the cast of Back in the Game that Pysch was likely going to be gone. That said...

"Psych has made an indelible imprint on the television landscape, with a unique brand of comedy," said Chris McCumber, President of USA Network, in a statement. "The final season celebrates the iconic characters that have made this show so beloved, and will be an exclamation point on the series' incredible run. And while the series will wrap in March somehow I don't believe we've heard the last of Shawn and Gus."

http://www.eonline.com/news/507669/psyc ... e-will-air

Also, NBC has canned The Michael J. Fox Show.

http://www.adweek.com/news/television/n ... how-155520

[fastbilly1]

Psych may have wavered in season five, but it is still one of my go to shows just to have on. I am rewatching it right now with my wife and picking up even more references then when I watched the first few seasons when they aired. I just hope they bring back Chief Vick for the last few episodes.

[Gamerforlife]

Whedon isn't the show runner.
It's not near the caliber of even something like Dollhouse, which was pretty weak.

To me, it feels like they're failing to capture why people like the Marvel flicks in the first place. I feel like this show could have existed without Marvel at all and still have the same audience watching it. Actually, if it wasn't part of Marvel it might seem more interesting. At least then it'd appear creative.

As it stands it's a show that feels like Marvel is spliced in. You get name drops here and there, but ultimately it's something that feels very superficial.

I wanted to like Shield so much, but with what they're giving me, I just don't care. Especially when something significantly more interesting, like Almost Human, is also on and they hit a lot of the same threads, Almost Human does them better.

Okay, if you want to criticize Shield that's fine, but let's be honest. Almost Human and Shield are not alike in any way, shape, or form beyond the fact that they are both Sci Fi shows. Shield is much closer to a spy show that happens to be in a comic book universe while Almost Human is a buddy cop show in a Blade Runner-esque future. And honestly, much as I love Almost Human, many of people's complaints about Shield could be made about Almost Human, but I think people come into both shows with different expectations. Almost Human is giving us what we pretty much expected from it, Shield really isn't, and I get that that's pissing people off. Almost Human is just expected to be a fun, buddy cop show, with a cool Sci Fi world. It delivers on that level, and we're also hoping to see it build up a nice mythology and some kind of arc as well. Given that it's from many of the same minds as Fringe, that will probably happen, but it'll happen slowly.

With Shield, people want it to be like a Marvel movie. It isn't. Others want it to feel like a Joss Whedon show, and honestly the more I watch it the more I realize it's very not Joss. Whatever creative input he's putting in seems minimal, much like most shows that have J.J. Abrams name atttached to them. J. J. Abrams contributes little more than concepts for a show, than moves on to something else while leaving other people in charge of the show(see Fringe and Lost as proof of that). I think Shield is a competent show, but it's starting to feel like it doesn't really know yet what it's trying to be, and maybe in trying to please everyone (A Thor movie tie in and Stan Lee cameo for fans of Marvel movies, random Marvel references for comic geeks, a Dollhouse reference and butt kicking female character for Whedon fans, and a spy show feel comparable to something like Nikita or Alias) it's failing to please anyone. The show needs to find its own identity, and in doing so find a hook for viewers. It needs to figure out exactly what is the thing that people should want to watch it for.

It doesn't help that the only other comic book show on TV right now is kicking all kinds of ass creatively right now (CW's Arrow), which is casting a long shadow over Agents of Shield. Between that, Whedon's name, and the Marvel tie in, it's tough for ANY show to impress under the weight of those expectations, but I'm still interested in seeing where it goes and it actually seems like the show fares a bit better on review sites than it does on various forums and comment threads on various, geeky websites. I don't know how it is doing in terms of ratings though right now

If nothing else, I'll keep watching for May and Coulson, my two favorite characters

[BurningDoom]

The only one I can touch on is the Future Janeway still existing. The moment she changed time she created a parallel reality where Voyager made it back, while the future she came from still remained. Lots of sci-fi uses this theory.

Seems kind of pointless then. If you use the many worlds theory, you must conclude there are as many if not more timelines where Voyager made it back anyway or was never even lost. In other words: don't end your long running and beloved sci-fi show with a lazy deus ex machina because your fanbase is made up of exactly the kind of nerds who will call you out on it.

At least it wasn't as bad as the Enterprise Series Finale. That all ended up being a holodeck simulation being watched by Riker and Troi from TNG.

And speaking of TNG. That had one helluva series finale. Fantastic time-travel story that touched on all the different seasons of the cast of TNG.

[Cronozilla]

I wasn't really comparing the shows in terms of content, just that they're two shows that I watch, and two shows that were being frequently mentioned here. And I happen to like one of them a lot more than the other.

I do think Almost Human is a better made show. It feels like there's some depth to the characters can still be further explored (and it knows what its doing), where as in Shield everything feels very flimsy, even when additional ideas are delved into about these people, it's not really that interesting. Beyond that, the name dropping feels pretty forced, and that just comes across as panhandling.

For what Shield is, I guess its fine, but it feels much more clumsy than I would expect from any show.

I mean my mom likes Shield, so maybe that's who they're targeting. I certainly don't fit into the demographic.

[Gamerforlife]

Man, this week's Arrow had some awesome scenes





I never even knew R'as al Ghul had another daughter besides Talia in the comic books, but I bet BurningDoom did. You learn something new everyday

God, I hope this show gives us Batman some day. They've done such a good job with other DC characters