I don't mean to completely hi-jack the TV thread into Lynch Worship, it's just happening.

My list would be:

1. Mulholland Drive
2. Blue Velvet
3. Eraserhead
4. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
5. The Straight Story
6. Wild at Heart
7. Lost Highway
8. The Elephant Man
9. Inland Empire
10. Dune

To detract from the Lynch loving, I'm going to talk Science Fiction shows.

My son and I are nearly done watching all of Stargate SG-1. Previously, we watched MacGyver, Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: DS9, and Stranger Things together.

We're not sure what to watch next, but I already feel that impending emptiness/sadness that you get when a great long-running series finally comes to a close. Like, yeah, those last seasons of SG-1 aren't as strong without Richard Dean Anderson and the Ori arc ramps up too high too quickly, but still, the ending leaves a vacancy in your life. I felt the same way then TNG ends or the X-Files, which I've previously watched in their entirety twice.

Stargate SG-1 is simply one of the best science fiction shows ever made. Amazing characters, fun and widely varied stories. It strikes equal chords of intelligent writing, thoughtful writing, character development, thrilling moments, dramatic moments, and comedic pieces. It's rare for any TV show to hit this all and succeed, but SG-1 did it almost perfectly, as did the X-Files. TNG came close, but frequently fell flat on humor until later seasons. DS9 was much stronger with comedic pieces.

Not looking forward to SG-1 ending (again), but totally looking forward to the next series I introduce to my son. I'm thinking X-Files, which has a new 11th season coming up.

More people should be talking about how excellent Orange is the New Black is. What a solid, well written fucking show.

In addition to Dark Matter, Blood Drive was also shitcanned by Syfy. Unlike Dark Matter, I can kinda understand this one because the ratings were absolutely terrible (even by Syfy standards) and the show looked expensive as fuck. Awe well, it was still a fun ride.

Speaking of Syfy, I just started Van Helsing. Two episodes in and pretty good so far.

Watched about three minutes of "Norsemen" - one unfunny joke after the next in a failed attempt to Monty Pythonize "Vikings."

To get back to the best television series of all times, I have analyzed and described the new Twin Peaks episodes here if anyone is interested: http://kluseba.eklablog.com/twin-peaks- ... -c29272494

I still have to write reviews for the last two episodes but they will be online by the end of the week if everything works out as planned.

The hype I've been reading for how hilarious this show is lately seemed excessive.

Damn I'm still thinking about that TP ending. Also listening to Dean Hurley 's "Anthology Resource Vol. 1" featuring the fantastic and haunting sound design he did for the new series.

Thought about Voyager and/or Enterprise? I'm not a huge VOY fan but I'd say if you're a Trek lover you should still see it, same as Enterprise, particularly the last two seasons.

And Battlestar Galactica? May be a bit too dark for your son? depending on how old he is. Firefly is fun too for dramatic/comedic scifi.

I think Voyager is the worst Trek TV series, but the new one might change that, since thus far, it looks like it's horribly missing the point of Star Trek. Voyager fell into formulaic blandness. They had this set-up they thought would be interesting, the Federation and Maquis forced to survive together on a single ship in a distant part of the galaxy, but it ultimately amounted to nothing. There was no tension or anything there, like people questioning Janeway or anything like that. You didn't get that until the doctor developed a personality and Seven showed up. The two best characters on that show were a hologram and a half-robot former Borg. Episodes were routinely summed up as "ship threatened by Treknobabble, Treknobabble solution 1 fails, Treknobabble solution 2 succeeds, roll credits." It lost the heart of the franchise for the most part and Treknobabble should support the plot, not be the fucking plot.

Totally agree on Enterprise, the latter two seasons are really strong. Had the series continued, I think it would have been really good. The last episode is pretty stupid, though. My order on the Treks is: TNG>DS9>TOS>ENT>VOY>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>New Movies

My son and I watched the original Battlestar Galactica and the late-70's Buck Rogers to a point (that show was hard to take as far as I was concerned). Original Battlestar is okay. I think he'll have to wait a year or so on the new one. We'll build to that. I'm "meh" on Firefly, which is good, but I never really felt it was as great as people made it out to be. My kid might enjoy it more than I did, though. Never know.

Finally finishing up S7 of Voyager after watching something like 400 hours of Critical Role. Some alright episodes in s7 but the show was well past its peak at this point. Looking forward to being pleasantly surprised by Enterprises later seasons, and then watching the new show.

I'd rank it: TNG=DS9 > TAS > TOS > VOY so far. TAS was basically just TOS with more theater of the mind involved, and way cooler shit happening. VOY has its good aspects but is mostly just pretty boring.

I'm watching that too. Seeing how the show is meant to be more informative than entertaining, I can't figure how a season would end with a cliffhanger. Unless, it's maybe building up to a point where a large group of escaped victims bring up a big-ass lawsuit that'll shut the whole damn cult down.

@ Nahsil and Resident_Hazard, I agree about later years Enterprise. The shifting alliances within the Xindi storyline, was something I'd really missed since the Dominion War in DS9.

All the praise for the new Twin Peaks has got me hyped. Still have to get the girlfriend caught up though, we only just finished season 1 the other day.

Also, Bojack Season 4 came out! I am excite. S3 was the best yet I think so hopefully they've kept the quality at that level.

Anyone watching The Orville tomorrow? It will probably be bad, but IDC:


SCI-FI TV!!!!

I agree about VOY, definitely got formulaic and bland, with a large number of forgettable characters. Really sad. That said, I feel like if you're a Trekkie you should still see it! It had a handful of good moments, 7 is pretty cool yeah, the doctor is solid. I'd agree with that listing as well, although I'm honestly not a big fan of TOS so I'd probably put ENT before it (heresy, etc).

You guys have said it all about VOY, nothing to add except that they should have made Tuvix a permanent character. Would have made the show much better.

Star Trek Discovery premieres on the 24th. I stand by my prediction that it will be dog diarrhrea for the following reasons: CBS, it's a prequel which means there won't be anything new, development hell, exodus of the original writers so there's no artistic vision, the 15 episode season is divided into two chapters meaning that it will be based on dramatic arcs (aka, soap opera writing) and not exploration, it's another prequel/remake, they're already copying things from other series ("Number One"), CBS, prequel, remake, they've already sunk to copying ENT by rehashing the stuff about why Klingons look different in TOS and TNG, prequel...

Of course it could end up being good. Who knows?

Voyager rocks, it's big-budget episodic sci-fi popcorn at its absolute best (aside from the execrable season 2). Sure, I thought Naomi Wildman and Neelix should've been blown out the airlock from the beginning and there are some monumentally awful episodes (most of them in the aforementioned second season). But it kept the bright colors and cheerful attitude of TOS and distinguished itself sharply from its contemporary DS9. It's good stuff.

Nahhh. I'm nearly finished Voyager and it's basically just a worse version of TNG. DS9 is leagues ahead of it. I'm glad they leaned on Seven as much as they did in later seasons because she's definitely one of the more interesting characters, along with The Doctor, but while Janeway is good I still feel like she didn't really bring anything notably new to the role of Captain. She's more like a combination of aspects of previous captains. Plus the large cast of dull characters, some pretty dumb episodes, an intrusive over-reliance on techno-jargon that often feels way more consistently deus ex machina than in any previous series...it's definitely the weakest Trek. Looking forward to finally finish it and get on to Enterprise.

Watch the first episode of The Orville first!

Nah, only binge-watching shows is real. I'll actually do Twin Peaks S3 before getting into Enterprise, anyway.

Also, Seth McFarlane sci-fi parody show that so far has an 11% approval rating? Yeah...no thanks.

People got fucking mad at me on Facebook for pretty much sharing your view, ha ha! There was all sorts of crazy defenses that were all equally ridiculous. Basically, I went by the trailer, which was action-centric, space-explosion, Star Wars-esque, anti-Trek nonsense.

They'd say this is just to get new audiences interested, and that it was still "real" Trek. Which is stupid, because that means they're lying to prospective new audiences about what the show is, and after they're blindsided and blatantly disappointed, they'll turn it off. At best, this is piss-poor promotion. Nothing ever succeeds if your trailer can't even accurately inform the audience of what they're getting. That is always a death knell.

If the trailers are accurate, that means they have sacrificed much of what made Trek great and memorable and removed the elements that defined the franchise to begin with.

Sure, it could be good, but given the evidence thus far, I'd say the odds are against that.

Just be wary that the first two seasons of ENT are kind of a slog. At some point, Archer goes completely bonkers as well. Like, usually when we've seen a Star Trek captain go off the deep end like he did, he was the antagonist Picard or Sisko had to reign in.

Meh, the first two seasons being a slog are par for the course with Trek. Only (partially) TOS and TAS escaped that fate.

I thought the first season of Voyager was actually pretty good. Especially that Romulan wormhole time travel episode; that episode alone was better than anything in the first season of TNG.

This is very true. I've said the same, and I warned my son about this when we watched TNG.

One of the first season episodes being the... ugh... Black African people planet where they abduct the... white woman...

How this got to TV in any era, let alone the 80's where they should've known better, is beyond me.

More good points, R_H. How many times must they try and fail to make Trek into a blockbuster action style to realize it isn't going to work? You can either get something that fails as an action blockbuster because of the vestiges of Trekness (the TNG films) or something that fails as Trek because it went full action (fake Trek). I suspect they will go for a modern Battlestar Galactica style in Discovery because that is the only immediately comparable tv series from recent memory which had any mainstream impact. It was also a modernized remake/reboot of an older beloved franchise so the computer programs that make decisions for these big media companies will definitely determine that copying that formula will equal automatic success.

According to wikipedia the original vision for this series was as an anthology. That might have actually been workable since it would allow them to do stories set in various times in canon trek chronology without the burden of having to completely rewrite the backstory of the only Trek series that are overwhelmingly accepted as good (TOS and TNG). I think the problem is that there aren't any popular anthology series on TV right now (though I believe there are such things on netflix) so there was no way for the programs to measure the anticipated response.

Nah, the anthology format is definitely making a comeback. American Horror Story has a different plot and characters each season, same with True Detective. Black Mirror is a totally different thing every episode.

I love anthologies. My favorite show is still the original 60's Twilight Zone. But I also love Outer Limits (old and new), Tales from the Darkside, Tales from the Crypt, Masters of Horror, Creepshow, and the like.

It's hard to call American Horror Story a "true" anthology, and no, I'm not trying to make this a more absurd notion of what is or isn't a "true" anthology. Viewers these days are drawn in by arcs that force them to watch from episode to episode, which is what fits with the arguably unhealthy, but super popular, concept of binging.

Black Mirror is a "true" anthology series in that every episode is different, and there are no branching arcs. This is something I'd really like to see more of, but it's hard to do them well. An otherwise great writer, J Michael Straczynski, helmed a Twilight Zone revival in comics for IDW, but even that fell to multi-issue arcs that were interwoven with wider arcs. An interesting idea, but not remotely befitting the label of Twilight Zone.

Black Mirror is really, really good, though. The episodes are generally strongly written, put characters in unique and unsettling situations, and leave you emotionally confused.

Binging on Netflix or whatever is probably healthier than just channel surfing in front of a TV for the same amount of time watching like 60% shit that you don't even like plus a bunch of ads.

Speaking of American Horror Story, what the fuck was with the trailer for the new season? The first three seasons actually had interesting plots, now we have...evil clown cults (what is this, 1995)...and really awkwardly stuffed-in political commentary...and...something.

I dunno, I thought the first season was merely ok with some dumb stuff, while the second season was a huge amount of super awful dumb stuff with like the number of worthwhile scenes being countable on one hand for the entire season. Didn't even bother with season 3 or anything after that.

I'd say it's probably a pretty slim margin of difference. Mostly concerned with if binging something, there is a change your brain is actually engaged, whereas channel surfing, it is not. But at least you're giving your thumbs exercise.

But then we're arguing the health benefits of "sitting for hours watching television" as opposed to "sitting for hours sorta watching television."

Man, the latest episode of Rick and Morty is one of the best ever. Empyreal, your case for season 3 being the best yet just got a whole lot stronger.

S3 had a slow start after the opener (Rickmancing the Stone and Pickle Rick were meh) but everything from E4 onward has been absolute gold.

That whole "Simple Rick's" thing has to be one of the show's best gags, plus



and

Y'all got me seriously wanting to catch up on this season of Rick and Morty now I saw the commercials for this season's version of Interdimensional Cable and I'm really looking forward to it.
Any idea how long it takes Hulu to add new episodes of it on there? I've been considering a subscription to that and this just might put me over the edge if it's caught up to some degree

Really? Pickle Rick was my favorite so far. That or the Jerry one. And the one with the 'toxic' versions of them...



Well shit. Guess I've got to go see that soon.

Yeah, it's insane to me that Rick and Morty has been able to maintain this level of quality. I guess the delay was justified. I wish more shows would take the ''we'll release it when it's done'' quality control approach.

Also, the season premiere of You're the Worst was fantastic. By far still my favourite sitcom currently airing.

Yep, the latest Rick and Morty was definitely up there with the bestest. Still the best series on right now. So much going on.

I have been trying to get into One Mississippi, but that hasn't really worked out so far (I'm in early season 2). It's just so dry and nothing happening really seems all that interesting in the end. A few chuckles here and there, but eh, seems undecided and underwhelming in a lot of what it does, be it drama or comedy. I guess it's a good series for having it drone along in the background and doing something else on your computer. Tig's stepdad's character is weirdly interesting, though.

Haven't seen the latest Rick and Morty episode yet, but Rest and Ricklaxation was fucking brilliant. And it's not just that it was hilarious, it's also the (social) commentary that works perfectly for the show.