OT: 10,000 Pt XLIV - Guitar Things

[The Nemesis]

@drunksage
That took less time than I expected.

The current admin recommendation is to edit the table code so that it starts with just "[ table ]" instead of "[ table=collapse ]" (without the spaces. I need those so the tags don't actually function like they're supposed to here.)

By taking out the "=collapse" part everything else should function as intended and require minimal other fiddling for you. They don't expect that there's going to be a global fix for that collapsing table functionality anytime soon.

EDIT: One thing that has been noted is that for whatever reason, the new updated forum software is a bit squirrely if you try to copy/paste cells out of excel or a similar spreadsheet program into an HF post. Sometimes it works if everything is left justified. Sometimes it doesn't work at all and breaks spectacularly. So the best thing to do there is not copy/paste anything anymore because it's highly likely to not work as it should.

 

[Cas]

Dark mode is back, hooray.

 

[drunksage]

@drunksage
That took less time than I expected.

The current admin recommendation is to edit the table code so that it starts with just "[ table ]" instead of "[ table=collapse ]" (without the spaces. I need those so the tags don't actually function like they're supposed to here.)

By taking out the "=collapse" part everything else should function as intended and require minimal other fiddling for you. They don't expect that there's going to be a global fix for that collapsing table functionality anytime soon.

EDIT: One thing that has been noted is that for whatever reason, the new updated forum software is a bit squirrely if you try to copy/paste cells out of excel or a similar spreadsheet program into an HF post. Sometimes it works if everything is left justified. Sometimes it doesn't work at all and breaks spectacularly. So the best thing to do there is not copy/paste anything anymore because it's highly likely to not work as it should.

Thanks for the response! SNOG tables will be back in action later today.

 

[LadyStanley]

Bob Uecker, longtime voice of the Brewers and a star of 'Major League,' dies at 90

Bob Uecker's career in professional baseball started in 1956.

sports.yahoo.com

RIP. Now I want to watch Major League

 

[Pavelski2112]

RIP David Lynch

This one hurts

 

[Bowie22]

RIP David Lynch

This one hurts

Just saw the news. Devastated. Loved Twin Peaks...

 

[Star Platinum]

SNOG back just in time for me to get the score wrong again!

 

[slocal]

The day doesn't get any better. RIP, Mr Baseball

 

[Star Platinum]

The day doesn't get any better. RIP, Mr Baseball

View attachment 962267

 

[BaileyMacTavish]

Well. There's a certain convention going on right now in DTSJ and uh... howdy from there. Heh xd

 

[slocal]

I'm sure I don't even have to guess, lmao

 

[Bowie22]

RIP

 

[WTFetus]

@The Nemesis i don’t remember if you liked Supernatural, but I just gave it a shot and I’m a fan.
I could always watch these one-off episodic hardly plot driven procedurals like Burn Notice or White Collar or Mando s1.

Only reason it took me so long to give the show a shot, is because I wasn’t a fan of Dean from Gilmore Girls (who confusingly plays Sam, Dean’s brother) or that I expected this to be typical CW teen romance show with the tall good-looking men.

 

[The Nemesis]

@The Nemesis i don’t remember if you liked Supernatural, but I just gave it a shot and I’m a fan.
I could always watch these one-off episodic hardly plot driven procedurals like Burn Notice or White Collar or Mando s1.

Only reason it took me so long to give the show a shot, is because I wasn’t a fan of Dean from Gilmore Girls (who confusingly plays Sam, Dean’s brother) or that I expected this to be typical CW teen romance show with the tall good-looking men.

I did watch it all the way through, though I kinda checked out near the end and even accounting for covid restrictions scuppering some of their plans I thought the finale was dumb. It was really, really good for the first 5-7 seasons though. Be aware that it loses some of its episodic structure a few seasons in and really starts leaning heavily into story arcs and building its own mythology that sprawls and starts to consume everything.

There is some romance along the way, but not a lot because that's not the focus and because this show very much leans into the Joss Whedon show maxims of "happy people are boring" and "anyone can die for the drama" (which is a sorta mildly spoilery: Nobody is safe.)

The only other thing is that the longer it goes and the more different showrunners and major creative forces it changes hands between, the more it can depart from what it was at the start to something really different. At any of those points it's probably better to pull the chute and get out instead of sticking around and hate-watching it hoping for change. I know, for instance, that the series creator left after season 5 and the completion of the story arc he plotted out from the beginning of the show, so that's the first massive potential departure point.

I got kind of annoyed near the end when they really started to get meta and cater to the hardcore fans by explicitly referencing things like shipping wars and leaning into fandom obsessions about relationships that had nothing to do with the plot. Not because I thought the relationship ideas were bad (save for one) but because it just felt pandering and lazy and not earned. The only excellent thing to come out of those last couple of seasons were, and I'm dead serious, a crossover episode with Scooby-Doo of all things that was hilarious and far better than it had any right to be.

I did also like that it was filmed in Vancouver and much of the surrounding area so there were lots of familiar locations and scads of Canadian actors that popped up.

If you like that you might also check out Grimm. It's not as dark and grimy as Supernatural was, but it's that same sort of episodic fantasy monster story. It aired on NBC originally so maybe it's on Peacock, and I think it might be on Amazon Prime now.

Spoiler: If you haven't heard of it or know what it's about

The gist of the story is that a detective in Portland discovers that he is the descendant of a line of monster hunters (each of whom is called a "Grimm" because the namesake brothers who wrote the old fairy tales were some of the earliest in the line) and that the world is full of people who are actually of different humanoid species around which most myths, legends, and fairy tales about supernatural creatures are based (they all have the ability to pass as purely human to most eyes, but can become their more monstrous forms when provoked, stressed, frightened, or on command, but the Grimms posses the ability to see them in that form even if they're hiding it) and so his police work then gets intertwined with finding out that a lot of crimes may involve these "wesen" (the German word for "creature") and he has to figure out how to fight them if it turns out they're actually evil.

For instance in an early episode he meets a meek guy that repairs clocks and it turns out that he is a wolf-like wesen that are the inspiration of most werewolf and wolfman type stories (up to and including things like Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Little Pigs) but is mostly benign. From that the main character, Nick, learns that for wesen communities, The Grimm is the monster they tell their kids about to scare them and keep them behaving.

 

[Juxtaposer]

@The Nemesis i don’t remember if you liked Supernatural, but I just gave it a shot and I’m a fan.
I could always watch these one-off episodic hardly plot driven procedurals like Burn Notice or White Collar or Mando s1.

Only reason it took me so long to give the show a shot, is because I wasn’t a fan of Dean from Gilmore Girls (who confusingly plays Sam, Dean’s brother) or that I expected this to be typical CW teen romance show with the tall good-looking men.

I'll stand by the first five seasons of Supernatural being legitimately good. It goes seriously off the rails after, but still has some entertainment value. I liked some of the recurring characters they added in later seasons and there were some really interesting plot points that were worth watching for even if they weren't executed great.

 

[drunksage]

Joss Whedon

My cue to suggest that Dollhouse is a great watch and picks up strongly around episode 5.

Also, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. at S01E17.

 

[The Nemesis]

My cue to suggest that Dollhouse is a great watch and picks up strongly around episode 5.

Also, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. at S01E17.

I stuck it out with Dollhouse until the end and it was good (I like Eliza Dushku even if she can't do accents ) but it got a little weird right at the end. Firefly and then Angel are the superior Whedon shows. Yes, I said Angel > Buffy. I will die on that hill.

Shield I think I bailed after the 3rd or 4th season.

 

[The Nemesis]

I'll stand by the first five seasons of Supernatural being legitimately good. It goes seriously off the rails after, but still has some entertainment value. I liked some of the recurring characters they added in later seasons and there were some really interesting plot points that were worth watching for even if they weren't executed great.

Yeah. They sorta fell into the trap that a lot of these sorts of shows do where every successive villain has to be bigger and badder than the one before, so you eventually reach a point where it spirals out of control. Like the last couple of seasons deal heavily with the literal capital "G" Abrahamic God which is just sorta.... weird.

Though on the other side, the later seasons did give us Rowena, which is great.

The one good thing is that even if someone stops with season 5, they get deep enough in the series to get to the single best Castiel line in the whole run, so at least viewers that stop there will go out on a high.

 

[Cas]

I stuck it out with Dollhouse until the end and it was good (I like Eliza Dushku even if she can't do accents ) but it got a little weird right at the end. Firefly and then Angel are the superior Whedon shows. Yes, I said Angel > Buffy. I will die on that hill.

Shield I think I bailed after the 3rd or 4th season.

Gotta go:

Buffy
Angel
Firefly
Dollhouse

I think Firefly has probably too much pop culture cult status for what it actually promised, though it's not bad. Dollhouse overpromised and underdelivered. I don't think Angel ever reached the heights of Buffy, and the villains always underdelivered for me in comparison to the parent show.

I haven't the slightest interest in seeking out any Whedon productions I'm not already familiar with.

 

[The Nemesis]

Gotta go:

Buffy
Angel
Firefly
Dollhouse

I think Firefly has probably too much pop culture cult status for what it actually promised, though it's not bad. Dollhouse overpromised and underdelivered. I don't think Angel ever reached the heights of Buffy, and the villains always underdelivered for me in comparison to the parent show.

I haven't the slightest interest in seeking out any Whedon productions I'm not already familiar with.

I wasn't as much of a fan of the last couple of seasons of Buffy. After season 5 and

Spoiler

Buffy dying

it never really felt like they had a strong handle on what they wanted to do. Season 6 was kinda aimless and then the whole "potentials" idea was cool in theory but that whole season just didn't land for me. It felt messy in a structure and storytelling sense. And even prior to all that, whatever season had all the college stuff and Riely and his weird supernatural commando unit was kinda meh.

Angel stumbled in the Jasmine season (brought down by how much of an annoying pissant Connor was and the after-the-fact revelation that the raw deal Cordelia gets wasn't just a questionable story decision but also Whedon being an unbelievable dick to Charisma Carpenter for incredibly awful and petty reasons.) but I liked the grimier, more sorta supernatural noir feel it had in its early seasons. And I will never not giggle at Spike's guest spot in season 1 that kicks off with him standing on the rooftop and narrating a fake conversation between Angel and the woman he just saved.

Also

Spoiler

Fred's death

absolutely tore my goddamn heart out. I hate it so much, but the fact that I hated it so much means they did a good job with it (even if the explanation of its aftermath felt needlessly cruel and seemingly the writers agreed as the post-script comic book season allegedly set about undoing it somewhat).

"Why can't I stay?"

boom. waterworks.

My only complaint with Firefly is that Whedon really seemed like he was running on the expectation that he'd get at least 3 or 4 seasons because season 1 spent so much of its time setting things up that would ultimately never really go anywhere. But it has the advantage of being possibly the most perfect cast for a Whedon show. With the possible exception of Simon (who's not bad, just not on the level of everyone else), everyone in that cast is absolutely perfect.

 

[Pavelski2112]

I stuck it out with Dollhouse until the end and it was good (I like Eliza Dushku even if she can't do accents ) but it got a little weird right at the end. Firefly and then Angel are the superior Whedon shows. Yes, I said Angel > Buffy. I will die on that hill.

Shield I think I bailed after the 3rd or 4th season.

I still haven't watched Angel but Buffy is so good. I just rewatched Firefly somewhat recently as well and it still holds up so well.

 

[The Nemesis]

I still haven't watched Angel but Buffy is so good. I just rewatched Firefly somewhat recently as well and it still holds up so well.

Angel is different because it more or less starts out as him moving to LA and starting a detective agency as a way to get him connected with what's going on in the city. That sort of "case of the week" thing slowly falls away into the 2nd and 3rd season and it turns into an arc-heavy story that is more in line with how Buffy ran, but it still manages to feel different in a way that I enjoyed because it wasn't filled with so much school/college drama. There's also some cast carryover too as Cordelia is there from the beginning (and honestly goes through possibly the best character development of a Buffy-verse character. She is absolutely fantastic by the end of her run.) and Wesley shows up and joins the cast mid-way through the first season too.

A good chunk of the Buffy cast also make guest appearances along the way too (Buffy a couple of times, Willow a couple of times, Spike a couple of times before he joins the cast in season 5, which is the one and only season to run after Buffy ended and I will leave you to digest the plot implications of that if you've seen Buffy to its end, Faith a few times, Harmony one or twice before she's a recurring guest in season 5. Drusilla has a major recurring run in one season. There's a spoilery reappearance too that I won't give away. The only big names that don't show up at all are Giles and Xander because they never really got on with Angel so there's no point.)

And they add a set of new regulars too, all of which are pretty good. I love Fred, but you don't meet her (yes, her) until I think late season 2 or season 3.

The only season that really sucked for me was the 4th one, which was dominated by a plot arc that could've been really really good but mostly just got super annoying because of a couple of main characters.

 

[LadyStanley]

Huh

 

[Juxtaposer]

Angel is different because it more or less starts out as him moving to LA and starting a detective agency as a way to get him connected with what's going on in the city. That sort of "case of the week" thing slowly falls away into the 2nd and 3rd season and it turns into an arc-heavy story that is more in line with how Buffy ran, but it still manages to feel different in a way that I enjoyed because it wasn't filled with so much school/college drama. There's also some cast carryover too as Cordelia is there from the beginning (and honestly goes through possibly the best character development of a Buffy-verse character. She is absolutely fantastic by the end of her run.) and Wesley shows up and joins the cast mid-way through the first season too.

A good chunk of the Buffy cast also make guest appearances along the way too (Buffy a couple of times, Willow a couple of times, Spike a couple of times before he joins the cast in season 5, which is the one and only season to run after Buffy ended and I will leave you to digest the plot implications of that if you've seen Buffy to its end, Faith a few times, Harmony one or twice before she's a recurring guest in season 5. Drusilla has a major recurring run in one season. There's a spoilery reappearance too that I won't give away. The only big names that don't show up at all are Giles and Xander because they never really got on with Angel so there's no point.)

And they add a set of new regulars too, all of which are pretty good. I love Fred, but you don't meet her (yes, her) until I think late season 2 or season 3.

The only season that really sucked for me was the 4th one, which was dominated by a plot arc that could've been really really good but mostly just got super annoying because of a couple of main characters.

IMO Angel will always be tainted for me by how they treated Cordelia in season 4. Just a completely unwatchable season of television outside the Faith episodes. But other than that, Angel was really good and even if I liked Buffy better on the whole, there are aspects of Angel that were definitely superior.

The front half of Angel season 2 is probably my favorite stretch of episodes between either show, and season 5 was shockingly good.

 

[The Nemesis]

IMO Angel will always be tainted for me by how they treated Cordelia in season 4. Just a completely unwatchable season of television outside the Faith episodes. But other than that, Angel was really good and even if I liked Buffy better on the whole, there are aspects of Angel that were definitely superior.

The front half of Angel season 2 is probably my favorite stretch of episodes between either show, and season 5 was shockingly good.

Yeah, the Cordy stuff in season 4 was awful, and made worse once you find out that most of it was down to Whedon being just a completely detestable asshole to Charisma Carpenter for having the apparent gall to get pregnant between seasons (the horror! How dare she live her life like some sort of... person!). And then made worse by basically everything to do with...

Spoiler

Connor (I'm just spoiler tagging this because there have been posters who have said they haven't seen the show yet and even giving his name will kinda wreck things as early as mid season 3

because he was just the worst. Also as cool of an idea as Jasmine was, I thought the execution was kinda lame and a waste of Gina Torres. I know that she can play a great super-creepy villain (from, of all things, a Transformers show) so giving her a character that was mostly kinda one-note boring sucked. I get that was sort of the point, but it just didn't click for me.

When I said that Cordelia was great by the end of her run I almost don't count season 4 at all. Just through the end of Season 3 and then her one-episode guest spot in season 5.