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Don't Look Up on Netflix is a hilarious and terrifying look at what would probably happen if a comet was barreling towards Earth.  It's obviously a satire of some version of Trump 2.0 being in charge, but I could easily see some of the decisions being made the other way around.  It's satire....but is it?

I'd love to talk more about it if anyone else wants to talk about it in the Random Thoughts post.  Since my non-spoilery thoughts are primarily political, I thought it made sense to put it here.

I'll do real spoilers so I'll add the tag

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I think I liked it?  I really don't know.  I thought it was well done, and I think "the machines make the Matrix pop culture so that people would never believe it's real" is clever-ish.  I think I struggled with a lot of the plot.  It's almost too much like the Force Awakens - where it's both a reboot and a sequel.  It retreads so much of the Matrix without doing just a ton of new stuff.  A lot of the things I found most interesting were mostly ignored.

Like what is "Morpheus" - I don't understand.  Does he have any actual Morpheus in him, or is he just a combination of the game version of Morpheus with the game version of Smith?  Is he a program?  Why does he call himself Morpheus if he's really his own thing?

I don't understand enough about the truce that happened after Revolutions.  Was the truce just about Zion and the machines, and the Matrix was left alone?  If so, why did the Matrix look so much different afterwards?  If the Matrix wasn't affected, why did the Analyst need to change it?  Is there still a war going on, or is the truce still alive?  Are the humans not supposed to be trying to pull people out?  Is Io supposed to exist?  Are the machines that are helping the humans traitors to the machines or just part of the truce?

The more I think about it, it's a lot like the Force Awakens.  A bunch of things happened in the time between movies, but I guess none of it was all that interesting and we're just back to the status quo?

I think it'd be great to get everyone back, but you only need Quinn.  JRD is almost 80 and almost certainly wouldn't survive the fall from the vortex   Rembrandt is a great character, but I don't see how he fits into a "next generation" scenario except in some kind of non-science mentor situation.  Wade is another great inclusion, but could easily be included in a line of dialogue (like Jane Foster in most Thor appearances).

JOC is almost the same age now that JRD was when Sliders started.  I think the most organic Sliders story is a version where Quinn, following in Arturo's footsteps, is a professor.  If you want the story to be a true reboot, you can have a Quinn that never fully developed Sliding (and his student, instead of Smarter Quinn, is the one who finally solves the equation).  If you want it to be a continuation, you have a Quinn that slid for a while, settled on an Earth and started teaching.  You can either have him having found home or not, but if he's not home, it would add motivation to his character.

If Quinn was a slider, the cameos are easy.  Quinn visits Wade (whether they're married or not) and tells her about his student.  She can either support it or not.  He could visit Arturo for his advice on such a similar situation.  He could visit Rembrandt to see what happened to him ("don't let anyone drive into the vortex").  It could be a scene with all four of them or three separate scenes).

If Quinn wasn't a slider, you could do a cameo kinda like the other group of survivors in Shaun of the Dead.  Have a group of Quinn, Arturo, Rembrandt, and Wade cross paths briefly with the new group.  Either way, if Quinn wasn't a slider, you'd need him to interact with a double that is shocked that he never slid in his younger years, and Quinn can learn that he's kinda the dunce of the multiverse.

But kinda like No Way Home, I'd make the references to previous continuity played off as humor or vague enough that it could apply to anything.

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Quinn as Arturo is probably the easiest way to do it, but I actually convinced myself that "Rembrandt as the mentor" might also work.  Rembrandt jumps into the Seer vortex, gets to a close-enough Earth Prime, settles in, and has a family.  His son ends up being a Quinn-like scientist and develops Sliding.  Maybe the son discovers that Rembrandt never made it home and convinces Rembrandt to come along, or maybe Rembrandt comes along to protect his son.

But Rembrandt certainly has the experience to be the mentor character and could be a good source of knowledge.  You'd get a Quinn appearance via Rembrandt tracking him down for advice.

Hahah, no wrath.  You gotta do what you gotta do.

I feel very vindicated by making my choice to see Spider-Man in theaters since, based on how much comic book videos I watch, YouTube has thrown *tons* of *full clips* of the movie.  There's no way I would've made it 90 days.

I liked Hawkeye but feel like they really wasted (SPOILER).  I know that they might be saving some material for the Echo series, but Hawkeye was the biggest example (moreso than Iron Man 2) of the MCU sacrificing story for setup if that's the case.  I did like the interaction between Kate and Clint, and I thought the street-level action made it the best Disney+ MCU finale so far, but I was disappointed by some of the threads they brushed to the side.  I think it'd be really easy to edit Hawkeye into a really great 2-hour movie that ignores some of the other extraneous stuff.

Yeah, that's sorta what I was trying to do with my pitch.  Make a Nightwing show that gives the writers the Batman stuff they want (taking more elements of Dick's time as Batman), and allow them to make a Titans show without all that baggage.  Making a BATMAN WITHOUT BATMAN show and dragging all these characters that don't belong and giving them nothing to do is what caused problems.

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Armageddon was fine?  Episode 5 didn't really feel like the same arc, and was a bit of a letdown after Episode 4, which I think felt like more of a conclusion.

But they used the whole Arrowverse family (minus Superman & Lois) which is something that I've been asking for.  So A++

Oh geez, I'm so sorry.  I thought you'd finished the season and dropped two spoilers on you

That's the thing.  Did I ever like it?  Why did I just finish the second *spinoff* of a show that maybe I never liked?  I watched the first season of the Walking Dead when I was traveling for work and had nothing better to do.  And I guess I never stopped.

To be fair, I almost never "watch" it.  I just have it on for it's running time once a week.  I often have to read a recap of what I just watched and often will think "huh, I don't know that character.  I wonder if they're a guest character or if they've been on the show 3 seasons."

Ha.  I think LOST is the best show of all time, and I've watched it several times.  But I get it.  Lindelof has admitted that they had to spin their wheels in season 3 because the show was too popular to "wrap up."  I think there's still intrigue in season 3, and I didn't mind the infamous "how Jack got his tattoos" story.  I didn't even mind the inclusion of Nikki and Paolo as "background castaways" that got promoted to the A-Team.

But by season 4, they'd made an agreement with ABC for less episodes (so less filler) and a definitive end date.  And after that, the show was a lot stronger.  I still like the finale a lot, although I understand why people wouldn't like it.  Endings are hard.

The Walking Dead - the shows I watch for....some reason?

I don't know if I've loved the Walking Dead even going back to season 2.  And yet I've watched every season.

When they announced a spinoff, I rolled my eyes.  But then the promos came out, and it promised to show the beginning of the outbreak (when Walking Dead skipped it entirely).  That's the part of the zombie apocalypse that I'm most interested in.  How does society fall like that?  Walking Dead got repetitive because it's just our band of survivors going from fragile rural encampment to fragile rural encampment.  This is going to take place in LA!

So I watched.  And a couple episodes in, they had a time jump and we'd skipped through the parts that I thought would be more interesting.  Before too long, they were going from fragile rural encampment to fragile rural encampment.  And while the show got much better when they killed off most of the season one cast and brought in new characters (including Walking Dead alum Morgan Jones), it's....fine?  I'm still watching.

Then they announced *another* spinoff about kids that were raised during the apocalypse.  I didn't really care about that, but they announced that it would be 1) revolving around the mysterious Civic Republic that would certainly tie in with the main shows and 2) it would be a limited series - 2 seasons, 20 total episodes.  So fine.  I watched.  And it was...fine?  I watched all 20.

But there's a glimmer of hope.  At the end of the final episode of World Beyond, they had an epilogue.  I won't spoil it here, but it teased some cool stuff that we haven't seen before and maybe some answers about what happened in the first place.

Damn it.

Appreciate that!

I could be wrong, but wasn't it stated explicitly that Wayne Tower was abandoned, either in the crossover that introduced Batwoman or the pilot?  I feel like the introduction to Luke was him dealing with homeless people living in the tower?

And you're right about the way the Arrowverse treats jobs.  All the Arrowverse major players all live like they're upper class but rarely do any actual work.  Oliver was unemployed for most of the show but lives in a gigantic loft.  Barry was a cop and Iris essentially had a blog, and they had a huge luxury apartment.  The only Arrowverse characters I can think of as actually struggling were Rene and Roy.

And while I do think some of it is political, anti-corporation stuff, I once read an article about how most movies/TV shows struggle with real-life jobs because writers haven't really had real-life jobs.  Most of the jobs that people have are the ones that feel the most like writing.  Like architect - where you spend a lot of time coming up with a pitch, make your pitch, and then you get to build this super big thing at the end.  It's writing a script, pitching it, and then producing it.

Yeah, I just saw that.  I'm having fun with Batwoman season 3, although the corporate stuff is really dumb to me.  I'm sure there are mid-20s CEOs of major tech companies, but I think the fact that Ryan or Kate or Marquis are CEO of Wayne Enterprises would be impossible.  Especially since we never saw Ryan or Kate do any work as CEO - Ryan would've been CEO for months without even knowing it.

I know TV likes to think that these big-salaried CEOs don't really do anything, but having an absentee CEO would destroy most companies.  Their work probably isn't worth what they're paid, but they're paid a lot of money for reasons.  They're also usually the chairman of the board of directors, and I'm sure they'd have something to say about hiring an ex-con with no experience in business as a CEO.  Even if there was a clause that gave Bruce Wayne that kind of authority in absentia, and even if Ryan/Kate were turning down a salary, I don't think it would fly.

I think if they'd made Luke the CEO, that might work.  But even then, I think he's too young and not present enough for that.  I think it's just another example of TV writers having no idea how the real world works

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And I agree about Batman being too big for Batwoman.  I think even if he came back for a brief crossover only to go back in the shadows, it would be too much.  Whenever something big came up, we'd expect Batman to show back up.  I'll admit I've thought that about Supergirl a lot - when there's an extinction level event, shouldn't Superman at least show up as backup?

Now to be fair, since Ryan took over for Kate, the references and connections to Bruce have pretty much stopped.  The connections to *Batman* are bigger than ever, but I don't know if Bruce showing up makes a ton of narrative sense anymore.

This has bothered me since Batwoman started, as you know, but if I were running the show, I would've gotten a meeting with the highest-up person at DC I could get a meeting with and I'd ask for a direct answer - will I ever get to use Bruce Wayne as Batman on my show?  If the answer is no, I kill off Batman.  Having his ghost around is too much.  I'd also have his villains die too.  Maybe a Superman-level villain wiped everyone out in some sort of battle royale and then Superman fixed it.  Or Kara.  Whoever.

Because having Batman just out there not doing anything is too big of a shadow.  I also wouldn't have set the show in Gotham but that's a different argument.

If there's a chance, I'm fine with running out the clock until they let Batman be on the show.  Putting Superman on Supergirl didn't hurt Supergirl, and I'm sure having occasional Batman visits would be fine for Batwoman.

I also think it's dumb that DC has three Batmen currently (Pattinson, Affleck, and Keaton) but thinks that one on TV would confuse people.

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I think Armageddon has been really fun.

I finally saw Shang Chi.  Really fun, and I hope he appears in a bunch of movies.  The post-credits was intriguing, and I loved it.

Still planning on seeing Spider-Man in the second week it's out.  I don't know when I'll see Eternals - I guess in February or whenever it hits Disney+

Really looking forward to Hawkeye.  I've been reading the Fraction Hawkeye series that inspired it.  The art is a little weird for my tastes, but I really liked the story so far.

Happy to!  Please note that I wrote these as a teenager.  I stand by every idea in this.  The writing might not have aged well hahah

http://slidersweb.net/otherworlds/214/index.htm

I thought part one of the Armageddon 5-part premiere was really fun.  And Ray Palmer's appearance was really fun and exactly the kind of thing I love about the shared Arrowverse.

Thank you!  That's super helpful!

My wife and I have a similar philosophy.  We are willing to pay a little bit more for something that will last longer.  We both drive 2010/2011 cars still, and our current laptops are at least 5-6 years old so we'd like something that won't be like a disposable computer.  We take care of the things that last long.

The ones you listed were the right range.  Do you have a preferred brand or something you've had success with?

The photos thing was a recent request she added, and it's not something I'm familiar with (I'm a computer dummy and happy to admit that). I have years worth of photos and videos on my phone and I think I have 63 GB of photos (I think, I'm a dummy).  So what would be "a lot" for all our family photos?  My phone is 256 GB, so is that enough?

Or is an external drive the better route?

Can y'all recommend me a laptop for my wife and I?  It doesn't need to be anything fancy - all we'll use it for is standard web browsing, storing family photos, and using Microsoft Office.  No gaming, no streaming, nothing else.

My wife would prefer it not be a Mac, mostly because it's harder to use Excel on a Mac with the keyboard shortcuts being different.

I know nothing of computers - both our laptops are both old, and we just want a sensible replacement?  Something that will do what we need and not need to be replaced every couple years (mostly, for me at least, because I feel like it's a pain in the ass to move things over).

I liked your analysis of Supergirl, and I really don't have anything to add.

I feel like the series struggled on what to do with Kara a lot, though.  We watched her as the main character for six years, and what did we really learn about her?  She's really nice?  Really loyal?  Really hopeful?

She likes karaoke?  And musicals?  And singing?  She's supposedly really good at journalism, but she doesn't seem all that interested in doing it most of the time and doesn't seem all that upset to be quitting it.  I think for the most part, the writers had more interest in writing about Alex and Nia than writing about Supergirl, and she just became a Deus Ex Machina in her own show.  And, honestly, I think the same can be said about J'onn, who hasn't really had any storylines since his father's arc ended.  I almost feel like Smallville's J'onn was more fleshed out.  And they struggled on what to do with Brainy too.

I think, as you said, Supergirl was a "social justice show" - and I think that sometimes meant having the characters be conduits for telling social justice stories and less about the characters being real people.  Alex's understanding about her sexuality and having a healthy relationship with Kelly.  Nia's struggles with her sense of identity and the world's acceptance of her as who she is.  And I think having a beautiful, heterosexual white woman at the center of the show wasn't all that interesting to the writers because there weren't that many stories to tell about her that they'd care about.    So she often took a back seat.

I thought the Supergirl finale was....fine?

I thought all the returning faces were nice and showed some of growth of the show.  I also think any season 7 they would've done would've been much better than many of the last few seasons. 

I was also wondering about Batman in the Arrowverse.  The movies are going to have at least three Batmen (Affleck, Pattinson, and Keaton), so why can't there be another Batman on TV?  They've already connected the DCEU to the Arrowverse and cast Batman, so I don't know why they couldn't do it.  It would need to be its own thing, but I think a Batman show alongside Superman & Lois could rejuvenate the Arrowverse.  If they're going to do it, now's the time.

Yeah, I think it might make some sense, but I think the Alex and Kelly plot was both introduced and strongly leaned into to try and appeal to the LGBT angle.

It's hard to accuse Supergirl of being anything other than inclusive.  I'm sure there are more inclusive shows on TV, but it's pretty inclusive.

Hahaha it's all good.

I thought the Legends 100th episode was a lot of fun.

The Supergirl season is getting a lot of flack online because Kara's been sidelined.  I don't usually look into this stuff or care, but I clicked on some tweets.  I do think that Kara hasn't had a ton to do in the last few seasons.  No real love interest (I don't know the purpose of William), no real arc.  She lives through the enjoyment of others.  So I think that's true.  There was also a complaint that Kara is sidelined so that the men on the show get storylines.  I didn't understand that at all.  J'onn hasn't had a real storyline this year (not since his father's arc ended - not much with M'gann recently).  Brainy has some stuff with Nia, but he hasn't had an arc since he betrayed the group.  I agree that William is a fairly useless character, but he's barely a character.

So I don't get that.  I feel like Alex, Kelly, and Nia are the main characters on the show sometimes.

Stargirl has been good.  I don't think you can really notice the move from DC Universe to CW.  I like it, but I don't have much to say.

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I do miss the crossovers.  Not just the main one, but I miss the minor ones too.  Hopefully, post-pandemic, they can do minor ones.  It was fun when Felicity would show up on Flash or Cisco would show up on Arrow.  I think it'd be fun to have more stuff like that.  How would Luke react to working with Superman or Flash?  What would Jonathan and Jordan think about being on the Waverider?  I think putting Superman on Batwoman would be a little problematic, but I'd be interested in hearing about Clark's views on Bruce.

I don't know if they've moved beyond that stuff, but I currently find the Arrowverse universe more interesting than any individual show.  I'm looking forward to the Flash premiere crossover event.

I do think all the multiverse stuff - from SpiderVerse to Flashpoint to What If to Phase 4 of Marvel will make it easier to bring Sliders back.  Sliders is probably the most well known multiverse property that exists, and its very nature makes it very easy to bring back.

I still wonder if Jerry's work on Lower Decks makes an animated series the easiest way to do it.  Maybe something like what Universal did with Camp Cretaceous on Netflix.  It's certainly the easiest if they want the original cast.  Otherwise, I think Jerry with a new group of younger Sliders (with Quinn as the mentor character) probably makes the most sense.  If it gets done in 2025, there will be some appropriateness to that since Jerry would be the same age JRD was when Sliders premiered.

I think it was maybe shown that way in New York?  So that's possible.  At least with Endgame, they were all vaporized.

Is it a lack of military personnel?  From some lazy research, the military is about 20% women.  It'd be higher in some countries and much lower in others.  I'm assuming martial law could keep order, but maybe there isn't enough military to keep order?

I doubt you're wrong.  And Sliders might have more value.  But pick a show that will never come back or one that maybe never made it to the air.  Would Universal rather have a line item that's worth $500,000 or would they rather have $500,000?

I imagine if a fanbase actually raised $500,000, Universal would refuse to sell and would instead just make whatever the fans wanted them to make.  So instead of selling the rights to Heat Vision and Jack, they'd just make something with the Heat Vision and Jack rights.  Everyone wins.

I still think Universal just doesn't see any value in the Sliders brand.  I think Quantum Leap's name has value.  The Fresh Prince's name has value.  I don't think most people remember Sliders. 

With a lot of "original ideas", they try and slap an existing property's name on it and call it a sequel/remake/etc.  It happened twice with Cloverfield (almost three times).  It's an original story about a woman being held hostage during what she's been told is an alien invasion.  It could've been released as 10 Butterfly Lane and been well received and maybe a minor hit.  They throw Cloverfield into the name with almost no connection to the first movie, and it now has name recognition.  You take a story about cyberterrorists attacking the country, throw John McClane in it, and it's a Die Hard sequel with name recognition.

If someone brought a story to Universal about a group of people who stumble on interdimensional travel, I don't know if they'd see enough value in the Sliders name to do the same thing.  There certainly hasn't been enough serious interest to get a Sliders project moving even though Jerry O'Connell seems game for it.

I'm not saying it won't happen.  I just don't think Universal values it that much.

But here's a question.  I wonder if a studio would ever sell the rights to a franchise to a group of fans that crowdsource it.  I know it would be super expensive to purchase the rights to something relevant, but it fans and cast/crew/creators wanted to reboot/sequel a TV show (let's say JOHN DOE) and fans were willing to put the money up, would a studio sell the rights so a project can move forward?

Yeah I think I'd only go midday on a weekday with a mask on.  Even for Spider-Man, I'm sure I can find a showing with only a couple of people 6+ feet away.  I figure that would be fairly safe.  I had in-person jury duty over the summer, and I was able to get by with those rules.

Switch was supposed to be female in the Matrix and male outside of it (or vice versa).  It's why they're called "Switch" but it was either dropped for being confusing or being controversial.

I would expect something like that to happen in the new movie.

I really enjoyed the new season of Legends, even though it keeps feeling less and less a part of the arrowverse.  We're starting to run out of characters that have ever appeared on any of the other shows, right?  With the Legends skipping crossovers and their characters usually only appearing in their own episode when they do, is Sara (now that John and Mick are gone) the only one who's ever actually appeared on an actual episode outside of any of the other Arrowverse shows?  Nate is a maybe, but I could see him only appearing in the Legends episode of any crossover.

Not that it's a big deal. The show is still fun in a crazy way, and it's still entertaining.  It's just weird that it seemingly makes no effort to be a part of the universe anymore.

Stargirl is still fun and I can't really tell the difference from the move to the CW.

Supergirl is fine.  I think it's good that it's ending this season - I think it's run out of gas like Flash or Arrow did.

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I'm enjoying Titans season 3, and I'm glad it's week to week.  One thing that's kind of weird....I'm curious how Barbara is commissioner.  The actress is 37 so I have to assume that Barbara is also about that age (and it fits with the flashbacks we've seen).  In the flashbacks, Barbara is committing crimes for the fun of it and certainly not a cop.  And that's before she's ever Batgirl.  Even if she has a truncated role as Batgirl, when did she ever have time to get the police experience to be *commissioner* of a city like Gotham?

I realize her dad had the job, but I figure even that would not be nearly enough to get someone with minimal experience as the commissioner of a major city, even if she's a super-genius and even if her dad was Jim Gordon.

Outside of the sight gag of saying "Commissioner Gordon" and then it being Barb, her role seems irrelevant to the plot so far.  I would've preferred if she was just a beat cop or a detective.  Her being commissioner by Terry McGinnis' time makes sense, but her being commissioner with no experience at 37 seems crazy even in this universe.

This has been my annual "SQ21 destroys a really small continuity error on Titans"

Disney has screwed over a ton of people.  Even if she wins a massive payday, I think they'll continue to do it.

I love the MCU.  It's great that Marvel was able to acquire the rights to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four and the characters they got from Fox.

I think Disney is an awful company with terrible practices, and it sucks that they own so much and will continue to do so.