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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.

But those ones did matter.  We got back The Wasp, but we lost Tony Stark.  We got back Mantis but we lost *Tony Stark*.  We got back Maria Hill but we lost Tony Stark.

I know we also got back Spider-Man and Doctor Strange and some other big hitters, but the loss wasn't those guys.  It was Tony Stark, the guy that kicked this thing off and spent the most time on screen out of anyone.  We also lost Black Widow, who never had her own movie but was still #8 in screen time as of Endgame (per a rando source I found) and technically lost Captain America (#2) in the same swing.  That's not nothing, and it's the payment for bringing all those guys back.

So, yeah, they did resurrect a bunch of people, but I think they paid for that.  And I think it's a bit different than whatever nonsense they had on SHIELD to explain Coulson coming back three different times (the LMD one made the most sense).  They kinda cheated on Loki to bring him back, but it was sorta the same thing.  And "main" Loki is still dead.  They toyed around with Pietro, but he's still dead.  They had Nick Fury and Loki fake outs, but neither of them was even dead by the time that movie ended.

I don't buy that.  It may have been casually true during Age of Ultron (where Phil was alive but we may not have known exactly how or why) but it certainly isn't true now.  Coulson is an LMD "canonically" so I think that's all you need.  You could write a line about "Stark missed me so he built me a new body based on the old Coulson" which, true or not, would be enough hand-waving for it to be both true to the show and make sense for the fans.

It wouldn't even need to be "Somehow, Palpatine is back" levels of bad.  He's a robot so you say he's a robot.  Or if you want more spycraft stuff have two characters who know him but wouldn't know the reason (Thor and Banner?) say "I guess he faked his death?"  Its an explanation to the audience whether or not it's the explanation, and I think that would satisfy the audience.  I think most fans would either get it and move on, or they'd assume that it was explained in a comic book they're never going to read.

I think the real reason is that I think they want death to matter.  I think Tony Stark will stay dead.  I think Natasha will stay dead.  James Gunn has been pretty clear that Yondu will stay dead.  I think T'Challa will stay dead.  If Coulson comes back, it opens that door open.  Why wouldn't the government create an LMD of Captain America instead of using John Walker?  Wouldn't Tony have built an LMD of himself?  Why couldn't Kree technology save Yondu?

If you never open that door, it can't ever be used.

Coulson is a popular character.  He led the first Marvel TV show, and they've literally brought him back every chance they've gotten.  They know he's a capable and fun character to use.  And I think if there was anything they could do to unwrite his death, they would've.  But I think they want him to stay dead, and I think they want his death to matter.  And Agents of SHIELD, as much as I liked it, did undermine a key moment in the Avengers.  And I think, especially since I was only able to come up with four examples of key deaths, that matters too much to Marvel and/or Feige.

This is awesome.  I started reading the first book and just finished Those Left Behind and started Better Days.

Incidentally, I've also been reading the 2015 Star Wars comics.  I finished all the Vader stuff prior to the current run, and I'm making my way through the regular Star Wars run.  I loved all the Vader stuff, and I think the Star Wars stuff is up and down (but mostly good).

Awesome.  I bought some of these yesterday and they'll be my primary mask.  I really only leave the house to get groceries and pick up take out so I think a good reliable mask will be a key part of staying healthy.

My only concern now is that we have grandparents coming over semi-regularly to help with the kids and my oldest is in daycare.  But I think it's impossible to have zero risk.  I'm just doing what I can.

So as I continue watching too much TV, my journey has taken me to Firefly and Serenity.

I'm almost done with Firefly and will watch Serenity after that.  But the question is...are the Firefly comics worth reading afterwards?

Well when I say it was a mess, it just didn't feel like it amounted to anything.  I know they're doing a "graphic novel" approach where they tell multiple small stories, but I don't know if I could tell you much about what the season represented.  What stories they were trying to tell.  What we learned about the characters.

They had an unfair start because the mirror arc had to be awkwardly resolved, both because I'm sure they didn't have the availability of the relevant actors but because there wasn't much story left.  But then they have that horrible CGI for Fuerza with an evil Speed Force but what did that really accomplish?  Then I thought the Godspeed storyline was just handled so awkwardly, especially as a villain that was teased two seasons ago?

I think, at the end of the day, I didn't care about Chester as much as Cisco.  I don't really care about some of the new characters, and as much as Ralph needed to go, they didn't replace him either.  It would've been nice to introduce another hero like Ralph from the deep bench of DC heroes.  Captain Atom?  Booster Gold?  Static?  I'm sure there are tons of people that they could've brought in, but maybe Covid killed that.

It wasn't bad.  I enjoyed watching each week, but I just don't know what they're accomplishing.  It feels like the middle years of Supernatural where the show just felt like it was spinning its wheels.