Be Excellent To Each Other

Okay, I'm sure all the cool kids have either watched this series on the torrenty things or on DVD, but I'm old fashioned and like the delayed gratification thing. I was HUGELY looking forward to this, being a massive massive fan of Series 1.

HOWEVER. 27 minutes in and I'm absolutely underwhelmed.

And who the fuck are these annoying twins?

Please, someone tell me it gets better.

dunno, i'm reading this whilst it is on. but i get all postmodern like this everynow and again. btw, i might need a proofreader and a ghost pubkisher for someting

I'm writing this whilst it's on, which says a lot for how good it is[n't]. I shall be sticking the next BSG Series 3 disc on shortly.

Oh, 20 quid an hour for proof reading.

Gee, that'll cheer you up.

Starbuck and Apollo got jiggy. As did the president and the Admiral (ew).

All is well.

Back to Heroes - why do they keep using that roof terrace - they all know that everyone else knows about it, ffs!

didn't me, my proooof reeder is kiking me for writing this...

I finally started watching band of brothers though, 8 years after.. it's fucking awesome...

seriously, is that a cork accent or fucking wot?

Hiro's Hero looks like fun.

I'm on episode 8 of the 11 that were made for Series 2, and I can confirm that it gets very compelling. Don't worry MrChris, I'm not keen on those twins either. If they died horribly I wouldn't mind.

I got halfway through watching the second series and sort've meandered away from it. Even the presence of her out of Veronica Mars couldn't keep my attention.

Everything from the first series seems 20% more annoying in the second. And as you can imagine that makes Peter "Fucking" Petrelli very, very annoying indeed.

And yes, God, the accents. "Dere's more to Oirland dan DIS."

The main guy making the show apologises that the season 2 didn't make much sense or go anywhere very fast. But I've been enjoying it.

Spookily - I'm up to episode 8 too.... Comical are you my Girlfriend?

Kristen Bell is serious phwooooooooooooar

Lave - not unless you're my gf too, and we're actually lesbians.

I'm not ruling it out...

Band of Brothers is definitely in my top 10 TV shows - (I don't include comedies, there's too many to count)

The Wire
Band of Brothers
The Prisoner
Twin Peaks Series 1
Eerie Indianna
Doctor Who
Homicide: Life on the Street
Edge of Darkness
BSG
Ultraviolet

I'm actually very tempted to start a thread about Band of Brothers. It's so much better than Saving Private Ryan it's mind boggling, and I weep to think of people who thought 'Spielberg + Hanks + David Schwimmer - no thanks!' without realising its cunning awesome. Also, Dexter Fletcher.

Band of Brothers is teh awesomes, it has to be said, despite featuring Marc 'I make everything worse ' Warren in it. Even Dexter Fletcher comes out of it looking good. I end up re-watching it about every 9 months, despite being sort of sick of it by now.

He gets shot in the throat though, so that's alright.



Me too. It's a rather wonderful series, and made up for the ridiculousness of Saving Ryan's Privates. HOWEVER, it maintained the rather pissy anti-English stance of said film.

The two episodes of 'BOB' set in Bastogne are buttock-clenchingly tense.

(no spoiler space because one of the episodes is called, er, 'Bastogne' - I won't tell you who wins though)

I thought it was unfair at first, but I read deeper into it and apparently the Guards regiment were complete arseholes by that point. Whenever they had a breakthrough they'd stop to have a cuppa and cake, and not show any momentum at all. Not even the other British divisions liked them much, with the Paras at and around Arnhem reserving the most damning condemnations of them.

The 101st were naturally very annoyed with them. It's mentioned in the book too.

Oh quite, I've read the book,which has some excellent stories in it from the Arnhem campaign (not least of which was Harry Walsh and his platoon all getting shit faced and leaving the line at [can't remember the name of the town] undefended. Winters' rather understated telling-off was great). And I'm aware of the rather relaxed approach the Guards took to the whole thing.

But the whole attitude in the series was "we'd be fine if it weren't for the stupid English" - e.g.

Nixon: "This operation will be under British command"

All: "GROAN".

Kissyfur Trufax - I know the guy who played the English tank commander. When we first met him we got him to spend the whole dinner saying stuff like "I'm sure there is a bread roll over there, but if I can't see it I can't butter the bloody thing".

That's awesome!

Whenever I have watched it at my parents' (as I sometimes have), my Dad and I always get really pissed off at that tank commander, and blame everything that goes wrong for the rest of the war, on him. So that's aceness, Mr. Chris.

And yeah, Bastogne. I like to rewatch BoB because as well as being superb, it's a great way of realising how stupid and humble one's own troubles usually are.

It always makes me want to join the TA, for some utterly crazy reason. Mrs Chris thinks it's because all men want to know if they could cope with it, and to be a complete man, in some sort of macho willy waving psychological fucked-up-ness.

I now have an amusing mental image of Simpsons/Futurama unpopular Nixon being booed at his briefing on princple by the BoB guys.

That is indeed excellent, Mr Chris. Almost equal in excellent to CUS's mighty, "He's the Boom King!" fun. Both items have made me indulge in extra laffs this week, and I thank you for this.

Read some of this book by a German infantryman. He said that the British were poor and easily disspirited in attack, but heroic and tenacious in defence. The Americans were strong and fierce attackers in the morning, but didn't bother much in the late afternoon or evening - and positively hated night attacks. (Unlike the 101st it seems.) Interesting stuff.

I always attributed the groans to the fact that any army hates to be under an ally's command and naturally they think their own side can do better. They probably could, actually. We'd lost most of our good professional troops by that point in the war. How would our troops react if they were told they were under American control? I can never blame Spielberg on this point, and if we had the guts to invest money and talent in war films of our own we could stop bleating in the tabloids that they don't show us 'proper respect'.

In other news - any love for The West Wing here?

I'd always thought it would be interesting to make a film about the War of American Independence from the British side, showing all the brutality, self-interest and incompetence on the side of the Americans, while a plucky loyalist fights for revenge after having his farm burnt down by the rebels. It's one of the most mythologised events ever, and I bet you'd get quite a reaction if you didn't stick to the myth.

After 'The Wire', the finest US TV Series in the last...well ever.

A classic example of nervouspete(IIRC)'s "Nothing Should Last Longer Than Five Series" theory.

The first three or four seasons were absolutely wonderful, though.

Season 5 may have been lacking but season 6 was good and 7 was exceptional (Alan Alda is most topington in it).

However, Season 5 wasn't too bad. Yes, there was some filler in there, but it also laid a lot of the ground work with Josh getting increasingly disaffected (e.g. getting bollocked for the unfortunate consequences of ideas of his that Leo had signed off on). Also Leo becoming more and more of a cunt who clearly thought he was running the place.

Seasons 6 and 7 wouldn't be as good as they were character development-wise without Season 5.

Also - Pete - sorry, my "In other news..." post appeared right after your thoughtful response on BoB making it look as I was completely ignoring and/or dismisisng your post - which was certainly not the case, just entirely and unfortunately coincidental post timings!

Hitmen recalled.