Television

If you’ve ever wanted a practical demonstration of Einsteinian relativity, you can always rely on the man’s simple explanation: “An hour spent talking to a pretty girl can feel like a minute. A minute touching a hot stove can feel like an hour.” For us fans of THE FLASH, a summer waiting for the new season to begin can feel like an eternity, and the hour we spend watching it can go by in a second.

We pick up immediately where Season 4 finished: with the family and friends all gathered at the West home, when a young lady shows up claiming to be Nora West-Allen — Barry and Iris’s daughter from the future. She’s also a speedster who goes by the name XS. This, and a throwaway reference to Lightning Lad means the future of the Legion of Super-Heroes is closer than we thought. It also means there’s a Legion on this Earth — or is it the same Legion we saw on SUPERGIRL last season?

Meet Jodie Whittaker. For the foreseeable future, she’s The Doctor — and I’m completely fine with that. The idea that Doctor Who could regenerate in a female form had been telegraphed ever since we learned The Master had been reborn as Missy all those episodes ago. It was an intriguing concept, and one that could open up a cornucopia of new story ideas. For my part, I was hoping that the female Doctor was going to be Jenna Coleman, who as a prior companion had announced “I’m the Doctor” on more than one occasion, so that I hoped it was a bit of foreshadowing.

Okay, this is not going to sit well with my readers, but I have never watched a single episode of STRANGER THINGS.

I know, I know. Me and some guy in Alaska without electricity, we're the only ones.

So I thought I could at least get a flavor of the show through this new comic book debut from Dark Horse, penned by Jody Houser and illustrated by Stefano Martino and Keith Champagne. And after having read it, I can at least admit that the story is properly titled: STRANGER THINGS than this I've not seen.

The story follows young Will Byers, who has gone missing from his hometown of Hawkins, Indiana. But he's still in Hawkins -- or rather a mirror version of it, in a dark place called the Upside Down, where he's all alone except for some monstrous creatures.

Of all the so-called Arrowverse shows, CW's televised adaptation of DC Comics superheroes, SUPERGIRL has been the most problematic. Besides taking place on an entirely different Earth than the other three shows, necessitating a cosmic crisis for the annual uber-crossover to occur, the show has a distinctly different feel to it. Perhaps it's because it's adopted into the Arrowverse, having been taken up after cancellation on it's original network. Perhaps its because the scripts have an undertone of agenda-driven plotting that shoehorns its way into the plots rather than rising organically out of the stories.

Whatever it is, it makes SUPERGIRL more difficult to watch, especially in binge-doses.

Anyone who knows anything about Frank Oz and especially Jim Henson should understand that they created the muppets to provide joy and entertainment to people of all ages.

What they mean to you is different than what they mean to your neighbor.

Recently former Sesame Street writer, Mark Saltzman, came out and said that Bert and Ernie are gay. What being gay means for a muppet is still yet to be determined, however, that was his point of view. Frank Oz, who created Bert and probably knows Jim Henson better than anyone outside of Henson's family, said that Bert isn't gay; he also questioned why their sexuality mattered?

MACGYVER was one of those classic 80s shows that are often imitated but never duplicated. Attempts to make movies of THE A-TEAM never took off, and remakes of KNIGHT RIDER just didn't have staying power.

As time passes by, things change, and recently one thing that has begun to take a new direction are princess stories.

For all it's many (many, many) plot faults, the fourth season of THE FLASH is one of my personal favorites. It's not just because the big bad of the season finally wasn't another speedster who was faster than the titular "fastest man alive," or because the villain was (at least at first) one scary AF adversary. No, the real joy of this season of THE FLASH comes from the introduction of HARTLEY SAWYER as Ralph Dibny, aka The Elongated Man. In the Silver Age of comics, Barry Allen and Ralph Dibny were best friends, and teamed up often on cases, so it was nice to see that relationship begin to develop in the television series, even if it did begin on strained terms. The special effects for Ralph's powers were also better than anticipated, and will hopefully be even better and more creative going into the fifth season.

Warner Bros. Television, CBS and Chuck Lorre Productions released the followung statement this afternoon:

"We are forever grateful to our fans for their support of The Big Bang Theory during the past twelve seasons. We, along with the cast, writers and crew, are extremely appreciative of the show’s success and aim to deliver a final season, and series finale, that will bring The Big Bang Theory to an epic creative close.” 

Over the weekend at Power Morphicon 2018, we finally started to get a little more information about Power Rangers Season 26.  We had announced earlier that the series would be calling Beast Morphers, and now we have the casting announcements and a teaser!
 

When we ended the third season of GOTHAM, it looked as though we were going to see Bruce Wayne (DAVID MAZOUZ) take up his night-stalking ways that will lead to his eventual identity as The Batman. Alas, as the season progresses, we find Bruce Wayne choosing to be more of a jerk, burying himself from his future by going full-bore into the playboy mode, spending nights on the town with drinking buddies and getting sloshed. He even ends up fighting with Alfred (SEAN PERTWEE) and ultimately firing him.

Bobcat Goldthwait's Misfits & Monsters- Episode 5 "Mermaid"

Guest Star(s): Karan Soni, Bridget Everett, Samm Levine

Written and Directed by Bobcat Goldthwait

This was the episode that Bobcat Goldthwait and Stephen Colbert were talking about on THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT that made me interested in this series in the first place.  It’s a romance story about a man and a mermaid…with a heavy dose of discussing racism…

Bobcat Goldthwait's Misfits & Monsters- Episode 4 "The Goatman Cometh"

Guest Star(s): Melissa Joan Hart

Written and Directed by Bobcat Goldthwait

The biggest problem with CW's series, ARROW, is that it has to keep ratcheting up the action to top its previous season. The natural end result was that the writers have painted themselves into quite a corner with the way the sixth season has wrapped up. The good part of that, however, is that we get the fun of watching them try to write their way out of it.

This season sees Green Arrow, aka Oliver Queen (STEPHEN AMELL), take on several different challenges, not the least of which comes from a federal agent, who is convinced that Oliver is the Green Arrow and is looking to put him behind bars for his vigilante actions. The irony of all that is that the case is largely built on a digitally manipulated image of Green Arrow unmasking to reveal Oliver Queen's face -- a fake that tells the truth.

Bobcat Goldthwait's Misfits & Monsters- Episode 3 "Devil in the Blue Jeans"

Guest Star(s): Bryce Johnson, Michael Ian Black, Jill Talley, Ross Bryant

Written and Directed: by Bobcat Goldthwait

Episode 3 is done as a Behind the Music style documentary about a musician, Caleb Faustini (Ross Bryant) who sold his soul to the devil (Michael Ian Black).  Bryce Johnson plays a documentary film maker who disappears before the footage is ever seen.

Bobcat Goldthwait's Misfits & Monsters- Episode 2 "Face in the Car Lot"

Guest Star(s): Tara Lynne Barr, Dave Foley, David Koechner

Written and Directed by Bobcat Goldthwait

Bobcat Goldthwait's Misfits & Monsters- Episode 1 "Bubba The Bear"

Guest Star(s): Seth Green

Written and Directed by: Bobcat Goldthwait

From Variety:

Sir Patrick Stewart will reprise the role of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in a brand new “Star Trek” series on CBS All Access, Variety has learned.

The exact plot details are being kept mostly under wraps, though the series is said to tell the story of the next chapter of Picard’s life. That indicates that it will take place after the events of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” rather than being a prequel or reboot.

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There's a wall in Berlin that separates it from Berlin. It's not the wall you're thinking of, but it's still symbolic of the cold war that sets the stage for the fascinating science fiction series, COUNTERPART.

Several years ago, an experiment went wrong, and suddenly where there was once one dimension there were now two, each of them identical up to that point in time, and now able to diverge in minute ways, each change cascading into more, like the flap of butterfly wings contributing to the hurricane. The bridge between these two Earths is below the building that is now a United Nations outpost, run by an organization that exists to keep the other dimension a secret, while controlling immigration between the sides, carrying out diplomatic gestures, and engaging in espionage.