Search options (Page 19 of 80)

I think it's very important that we enjoy art on our specific terms. Our interpretations aren't necessarily right or wrong; they're simply our interpretations. We're all going to respond differently to a work of fiction especially one addressing perceptual understandings of reality.

That said, when Evelyn isn't looking, we see Waymond on the security cameras where his bearing and physicality suddenly change as the Alpha Waymond personality takes over his body and he performs some fancy acrobatics of which 'prime' Waymond is not capable. This occurs outside Evelyn's perspective and awareness from an objective third person perspective, so while Evelyn may be having a mental breakdown, these events appear to be happening in Evelyn's reality.

I think Slider_Quinn21 has seized on one of the primary peculiarities of STAR WARS: it almost never thinks about how depressing it is. Lucas conceived STAR WARS as a fun rollercoaster ride of space opera adventure, a movie that didn't require too much thought, just the excitement he felt when dragracing as a young man.

Naturally, he set his joyride movie in a fascist-ruled dystopian empire with his heroes being the perpetually-losing revolutionaries rebelling against a system that would keep coming back.

And of course, Lucas reduced Luke's aunt and uncle to skeletons, nuked a planet, killed pretty much everyone in Rogue Squadron, and then had Luke triumphant and happy at the end of a movie where his family had been incinerated and most of his new friends had either been blown up or suffocated in the icy vacuum of space.

Who is more traumatized? Luke Skywalker or Rembrandt Brown? Certainly, they'd have a lot to discuss in a support group.

I don't know if JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson and the people making all these other shows and animated serieses have thought about how depressing STAR WARS is, but if they're following Lucas' formula -- high adventure and excitement in battling against fascism -- then they're re-enacting and deepening an element (a flaw?) in the original source material that they won't overturn. The Empire/First Order/alt-right/whatever keeps winning so that these shows and movies can justify more action sequences against the villains.

It's possible that STAR WARS needs to be done with the Empire and find a new villain if it wants to break what Slider_Quinn21 notes is a deeply saddening cycle of the Empire winning and the Rebels scoring points and winning battles but always surviving on the losing end of this eternal war.

Thanks. I'll stick with the moire patterns. It's fine. I'm redoing all the encodes again with Lanczos at four taps.

I don't know why, but I don't like the results with the Nvidia encoder. GPU acceleration is fast (7 - 10 minutes per episode), but image just looks dull and fuzzy to me, even though when I take screenshots, I can't see any difference. I'm sticking to CPU encodes (an hour per episode) for this.

I may need to design some artwork for SLIDERS: SEASON 1: THE PNEUMATIC EDITION.

I'm getting some moire patterns where there were previously jagged edges. This screenshot from "Eggheads":

Any recommendations from pneumatic for what addresses this? Or is it best left alone?

*

On the subject of Topaz AI -- I think it's a little overhyped. The upshot of Topaz AI and all the experiments in this thread is this: if a video looks good in standard definition at 480i, Topaz AI can make it look good in high definition at 1080p. If it's sharp in SD, Topaz AI can make it sharp in SD. If it's blurry but grainy in SD, Topaz AI can resolve that grain into HD detail.

This isn't actually that meaningful, useful or worthwhile.

If you have a video that looks good at 480i, you can likely upscale it in less taxing ways than $300 upscaling software and still get decent results; if you produced a video that looks good at 480i, you likely have the original materials to produce a high definition version. Why would you need Topaz AI if you could go back to your original film or HD digital masters?

Meanwhile, Topaz AI can't seem to do very much with an SD image that is blurry and lacking in film grain.

AI upscaling could be highly effective in specific use cases that I think are incredibly insular and a bit silly. FOX lost a ton of film and effects shots for THE X-FILES, and a lot of their HD release of the show has used upscaled videotape where the original film could not be rescanned. BABYLON 5 and LOIS AND CLARK had film rescans for HD releases, but the effects were pulled from the standard definition master tapes.

An AI upscale could have helped out a lot there. AI upscaling might be good for a few shots here and there or for 90s effects work that was always a bit painterly. BABYLON 5 effects looked like video game graphics. AI could increase the size of those without degradation.

And sure, if you're an obsessive fan who really wants to watch "As Time Goes By" in 1080p (which I am) and an on-the-fly upconvert isn't good enough for you (and I wouldn't mind better), then yes, Topaz AI could make your dreams come true with that episode, one that was edited on 1995-era digital videotape that preserved the film grain for the AI to reconstruct. And if you're really not happy with your Mill Creek DVDs for Seasons 4 - 5, then Topaz AI can make that grainy image look HD even from those overcompressed discs because of the 16mm film grain.

And yes, RussianCabbie's brother got his footage back, but it was produced in HD in the first place and transferred to a format where that the HD elements were downscaled but not lost.

In the case of episodes 102 - 109 for SLIDERS, they were edited on analog videotape. This unfortunately creates severe generational loss. And for analog videotape, Topaz AI has been pretty useless. Topaz AI can't rebuild what isn't already there either as standard definition detail or film grain, and analog videotape clearly has neither.

Topaz AI is a bit like the Holy Grail: it seems enticing and everyone wants it and thinks it's a magic solution, but its usage turns out to be incredibly limited. It is only useful within a cave of specific situations, and it maybe wasn't worth all the effort and stress and agony that Indiana Jones and his dad put themselves through to find it, even though it was good to see John Rhys-Davies back again.

There is a rumour about why DAREDEVIL on Disney+ will not feature Foggy and Karen: it takes place between INFINITY WAR and ENDGAME when Thanos had disappeared 50 percent of all life in the universe. This rumour was based on a location shoot with a church sign dated 2020, but fans and journalists later noted that this church sign was actually a real sign at a real church that had in real life not been updated.

However, I have to say: DAREDEVIL on Disney+ being set during the Blip would be a story worth telling and it would make sense if Foggy and Karen weren't in the show if this were the timeframe.

If 50 percent of the human race were erased, it's impossible that no one in Matt's social circle was affected. From a dramatic standpoint, the most story possibilities fall with the direction where Matt is the one to survive and now he has to live in a world without Foggy, without Karen, and one where Wilson Fisk could stroll out of jail and begin rebuilding his life as the Kingpin.

I hope this rumour is true because it's the first thing I've heard that would make me accept and embrace a DAREDEVIL without Karen and Foggy.

I'm just happy that pneumatic's experimentation and explorations have yielded something I didn't think we could have: an acceptable DVD image from the Season 1 Universal DVDs.

Yes, the image still looks like a standard definition analog videotape from 1994 because that's what it is. But it's clear of jagged edges, it isn't obnoxiously distracting me with interlacing lines flashing across the screen, and at living room distance on an HDTV, it looks like an okay DVD.

I don't even think my new transcode to 1080p (with 3GB files per episode) is really even necessary; it just seems better to have the file brought to 1080p with a pixelation-reducing rescaler (Lanczos) rather than my TV doing a linear stretch.

I've had a look at "Fever" in progress of the AI upscale to 720p and... I do not like what I am seeing. The TIVTC + QTGMC transcode had its flaws like how the skin above the actors lips looks white instead of skin coloured. In the SD transcode file, the softness of the image means this flaw blends into the picture and at living room distance, it's a non-issue. But in the 720p upscale, that white line is enhanced and sharpened and you can't unsee it or look away from it.

I think pneumatic just getting a decent image out of these poorly handled DVD files for 102 - 109 was a huge achievement. I think I'll take until tonight to decide if I'm going to continue with this upscale or whether or not I'll just see about Topaz AI sharpening them up as 540p files (and hope that doesn't add more image flaws while offering few gains).

I bought a set of $7 USD neckband earbuds. That seemed about right for such a dated form factor. They're the Rythflo Bluetooth Earbuds and... I'm reminded that neckband earbuds have some real advantages over true wireless earbuds like AirPods or the Jabra Elite line.

First, neckband earbuds sound fuller and richer with more bass. The Jabra Elite 75t and AirPods sound fine, but being small-sized devices, they never have the depth and bass of full fledged earbuds. They don't have the space for larger sound drivers since they need antennae and batteries. Neckband buds give volume to all the background noise of movies and TV that true wireless earbuds tend to leave out.

Second, neckband earbuds allow you to use your own choice in eartips. My memory foam eartips create a better seal to block out external noises which is preferable for a gym session when I don't want to hear other people around. Most true wireless earbuds need you to use the eartips that came with them in order to fit into the charging case. Neckband earbuds use a charging port. Admittedly, the Jabra Elite 75t comes with active noise cancellation, but ANC for me isn't going to be as effective as a tightly sealing eartip.

Third, have longer battery life. Yes, my Jabra Elite 75t can play for about five hours before it needs to go back in the charging case (which can charge the earbuds three times before needing a charge itself). But neckband earbuds using modern low power Bluetooth technology can last for 30 hours of use (unlike the 6 - 10 hours my old neckband earbuds had on Bluetooth 4.0). I can throw these neckband buds into my gym bag and only recharge them every few weeks.

I was surprised that this cheap neckband set had multipoint pairing (connecting to two devices at the same time), but they have it.

The only thing about these neckband earbuds that disappoint: the microphone is rather crackly. I left myself a voicemail to check the microphone and my voice was a bit staticky.

But I that's okay. I don't think I would ever wear my neckband earbuds outside of the gym; I don't feel safe walking the streets without at least one ear open to the world. I prefer the same when making phone calls. But this $7 purchase is great for the gym.

While I've only ever seen the first two episodes of QL1.0, I understand from REWATCH PODCAST that Deborah Pratt as the voice of Ziggy is a cultural touchstone, a critical pillar of the QUANTUM LEAP iconography akin to MacGyver with his paper clip, Batman with his batarang, Spider-Man with his webbing, Xena the Warrior Princess with her chakram, and the Doctor with his police box.

I wonder why they haven't had Pratt do the voice. She is working on the show as a producer. Has her voice aged too much? Or do they want Ziggy to be gender-neutral for 2023?

Another question: why output the files to 720x540 instead of 640x480? Which one is the 'native' resolution of the DVD files?

Hybrid and QTGMC has done a pretty good job of smoothing out the 'jaggies' in "Fever". Those shelves in the pharmacy now look smooth. But I'm wondering if I'm using the best settings. I'd like pneumatic's opinion.

pneumatic's result with "Princes of Wails" is vastly superior to anything Topaz has done with Universal's Season 1 (aside from the pilot). Topaz made 1.02 - 1.09 look like a muddy, watercoloury mess. However, to rip the DVDs, I copied them with MakeMKV, then decombed-deinterlaced the MKVs in Handbrake. QTGMC seems superior.

Topaz can't upscale the MKV file without decombing and deinterlacing; comb lines and jagged edges keep appearing across the image. Even Topaz's deinterlacer can't address it.

I'm not sure why QTGMC results look so much better than Handbrake's decomb. Maybe pneumatic can explain that.

Once my XENA upscales are done by tomorrow, I'm going to follow pneumatic's lead. I'll use MakeMKV to re-copy the Universal discs for 1.02 - 1.09 and use Hybrid and QTGMC to deinterlace the rips to MP4 and then see if Topaz can do better with this process.

I really liked this movie. Thank you to QuinnSlidr for recommending it. I really enjoyed a female Asian senior citizen citizen as the lead character of a fantasy epic with dialogue alternating between English, Mandarin and Cantonese. The movie is clearly on a low budget and staged across two main indoor locations (the laundromat and the IRS office), but it uses those two spaces for a wide range of psychological states for Evelyn's character.

Michelle Yeoh's Evelyn is highly compelling. The wonky, silly, goofy, threatening, dangerous tone of the film as Evelyn learns about her situation is hypnotic. Ke Huy Quan is incredible in shifting between different versions of the Waymond character.

As a multiverse story, this film doesn't have too much bearing on SLIDERS. It's not about alternate histories leading to a bizarre inversion of the present day like "The Weaker Sex" or "Eggheads". The alternate realities are defined in how they have different circumstances for Evelyn: she's a ninja, an actress, a businesswoman, a doctor, a janitor and Waymond has a beautiful line about how Evelyn's failed at so many things that she has created tremendous potential across all her realities for anything.

Evelyn has a hilariously petty moment where, when she first learns about the multiverse, her immediate desire is to tell her husband how in every parallel world, she's better off without him.

That said, two hours is a bit much to spend in the laundromat and the IRS office. This would probably have benefitted from being episodes in their separate parts watched on successive nights.

Back in 2016, wireless earbuds were all the rage. People who hated wearing headphones with cables tethering to their pocket radios/MP3 players/phones had lived lives devoid of music or podcasts or radio. Then suddenly, there were wireless earbuds: 6 inch plastic bands that hung around your neck with the sound-emitting buds extending up to your ears. Your head no longer had to be tethered to your phone. Without wireless neckband earbuds, I would never have become so enthusiastic about THE REWATCH PODCAST with Tom and Cory.

Wireless neckband earbuds were a go-to gift for several Christmases. My favourite neckband earbuds were Skullcandy which were very affordable and had a very bass heavy sound design that was great for such small sound drivers. Of course, even in 2016, Skullcandy's neckband designs were being made somewhat obsolete as Apple released the first generation of its AirPods.

AirPods had Bluetooth earbud technology miniaturized with a more power efficient design that no neckband was needed: all the hardware could fit into each bud. But Airpods went for $160 USD for one set and had an 'open' design that let outside sounds in while whereas the Skullcandy Ink'd neckband cost $50 USD and you could replace the tips on the earbuds with any size that would fit and and seal it to your ear. Neckband earbuds (Skullcandy or not) were the better choice.

In 2018, Jabra had released a competitor: the Jabra Elite 65t "true wireless earbuds" which, like the AirPods, had all the technology in the individual buds, eartips that sealed to the ears, but these things cost $190 USD, even more than the $160 AirPods. However, in 2019, the the Jabra Elite 65t could be found discounted or open box for $40 USD and I found myself intensely tempted by the idea of being able to listen to a podcast in only one ear while outside and having the other ear free to catch any noise.

My lightly used Jabra 65t set started glitching after 18 months, randomly losing connection and not charging, but I was so enamoured with the form factor that I replaced it with the Jabra Elite 75t (which I bought lightly used for $40) in 2020 and these have lasted right up to today. I liked it so much that I bought another lightly used set: one to keep in my bag when out, one to keep at home for use. And my neckband earbuds?

I don't know. Recently, as I was getting back into the gym, I thought it'd be good to keep one set of wireless earbuds in my gym bag, exclusively for gym usage. I searched for my old neckband earbuds. They were nowhere to be found. I looked to see if neckband earbuds might still be sold in shops and expected that the prices would be very low since true wireless earbuds had made them a dated product. But neckband earbuds simply weren't to be found. And online, the Skullcandy neckband earbuds on sale are at absurd prices for being 'vintage'. These things aren't worth the price of $50 USD. They aren't even worth $20 USD.

I see a local eBay retailer selling what looks to me like Beats neckband earbuds that a factory in China is still making but without the branding, possibly to use up remaining component supply. They're going for $12 USD which is probably what these are worth now... assuming these even work. The era of neckband earbuds is over even as a cheap option for isolated use cases.

I'm still kind of curious about this $12 neckband set.

There used to be a Topaz page where you could download old versions, and I downloaded an older build of Topaz that I've reinstalled. They seem to have now taken all the old versions of the video upscaler, however.

SCREAM is an interesting example of a reboot/revival and SLIDERS might be able to learn something from it. The original SCREAM film in 1996 subverted teen slasher horror movies by featuring characters who'd watched slasher movies, knew all the tropes of the formula and would comment on them between fleeing getting knifed to death. It was a cultural sensation for its witty dialogue and the way it turned all the horror cliches on their heads.

Its $15 million budget earned $173 million at box office, 11 times its budget. A film needs to earn three times its budget to turn a profit, so this was a small investment for an excellent return. Naturally, a sequel was in theatres a year later with SCREAM II (1997) with a bigger budget ($24 million), bigger setpieces, Jerry O'Connell on break from SLIDERS, a very rushed scripting and shooting production that led to some sloppiness and urgent rewrites -- and it made $172 million.

While still a terrific return on investment (seven times the budget), the series had not grown its audience. The studio hurried into a third film, but it couldn't move as fast as before: cast contracts had to be redone, a school shooting made the studio hesitant to make as bloody a film as before, the original star (Neve Campbell) was unavailable, the original screenwriter wasn't willing to write a less violent sequel and had to be replaced.

Campbell eventually signed on but only for 20 days of filming, a new writer hacked out a draft, SCREAM III hit the cineplex in 2000 and... its $40 million budget saw $162 million. It made back four times its budget, so it turned a small profit, but SCREAM had clearly had its day: the budgets from rising cast salaries had made it difficult for a SCREAM film to turn a great profit again.

Eleven years later, the studio thought enough time had passed for nostalgia to bring in ticket sales again and commissioned a fourth film on a $40 million budget. With inflation, SCREAM IV was actually being made for about 25 percent less than SCREAM III. SCREAM IV would have to earn $120 million at box office to enter profitability; if it could make it to $200 - $250 million, SCREAM IV would be as worthwhile as SCREAM II. The studio was able to get the original actors back at reasonable rates as nobody had become Tom Cruise since 2000 despite working steadily.

SCREAM IV had the original screenwriter back who turned in a script with a cliffhanger ending to lead into a fifth film. The studio greenlit it... but abruptly backtracked in preproduction and mandated rewrites from another writer to make it a standalone film. The rewrites led to an incoherent, awkwardly plotted film that seemed to be introducing a new generation of SCREAM characters only to kill them off and negate the movie's own purpose. The film only made $90 million at box office, not even twice the budget. SCREAM IV was a loss and the series seemed to stop dead in 2011.

SCREAM came back in 2022 with a new movie that this time had the benefit of being coherent. The original screenwriter produced and gave guidance to a new team of writers and directors who this time committed to bringing in a new cast (although the originals still had small roles).

SCREAM V was made for $24 million -- effectively less than half of the SCREAM IV budget with inflation and less than the budget of the first movie. The budget was low with a tight shoot, a short shooting schedule, limited shooting days for the original actors (as they were expensive). SCREAM V was a success, making almost six times its budget at $139 million. Adjusted for inflation, this was $106 million in 2011 dollars, not much more than what SCREAM IV had brought in. But the budget was suited to the ticket and streaming sales. There was a solid economic argument to making SCREAM levels at this financial level.

That and positive reaction led to SCREAM VI in 2023 with a $35 million budget that looks to be on track to earn at least six times its budget back again. The low production rates, however, saw original star Neve Campbell receive an offer that she considered insulting and that she refused to take.

SCREAM VI was the first film in the series where Campbell didn't appear. Given how Campbell's appearance in SCREAM V was welcome but a bit tokenistic, however, it seemed fine that she wasn't in SCREAM VI.

The case for a reboot, in this instance, was that new SCREAM movies could be made cheaply enough that modest box office earnings would still offer a high return. That's  been the argument behind most long-running horror franchises; even if FRIDAY THE 13th and HALLOWEEN movies are bad, they cost so little to make that they easily  become profitable.

Can SLIDERS be as cheap as SCREAM V and SCREAM VI? (Scaled to TV, of course.)

Every time I log into Dall-E or ChatGPT to get a sense of how to use these tools conscientiously and effectively, I just get error messages.

The pattern on MAD ABOUT YOU looks like what I'm seeing on XENA and SLIDERS. I don't really recognize the RUGRATS pattern.

My understanding is that animation cels would be positioned in frame stacks to be filmed with a rostrum camera to record each frame, putting the combined cel images onto 35mm film and then spliced into a reel. I imagine that, for television, the film would be transferred to videotape for TV broadcast.

Okay. I was going to catch up with Marvel on Friday night, but I'll watch this instead.

When we say "Trumper", I think of someone who is racist, anti-semitic, homophobic and engages in anti-vaccine pandemic denialism. In reviewing Lego_Sliders's post history, I have not seen racism, anti-semitism, homophobia or vaccine misinformation. I feel gratitude and appreciation to Lego_Sliders for cautioning me about signing up for an experimental sixth dose of COVID-19 vaccine (that got shut down).

Unfortunately, looking at the post history, I see what looks like transphobia and it fills me with grief.

There's this post where Lego_Sliders posted a panel of a JOKER comic where the Joker is pregnant:

On its own, that might have been commenting on the biological absurdity (which we could also say of Rembrandt being pregnant in "The Prince of Slides").

But then we have this post where Lego_Sliders uses a transphobic slur:

"Tranny" is a derogatory pejorative for transgender individuals, specifically to attack and deride people for their gender identities. Could it be an accident? People here misgendered supervillain Ezra Miller without any malevolence. Sometimes, we're not aware that common parlance has become offensive.

As moderator, I edited the quoted post to apologize for the use of this slur from a poster and I apologize again. Hate speech is not permitted here.

Then we have this over my QUANTUM LEAP 1.12 review where I called it overwritten but said that its message was necessary yet "overstated":

It's an absurd leap of non-logic to declare that 24 million people will die because I said transgender people have human rights.

I don't mind when people insult me or my writing, opinions or analytical style. People are welcome to do it. There's this special episode of REWATCH PODCAST where Tom and Cory call out all the plotholes and errors in my fanfic. They're reading a script; I wrote that script.

But this has gone beyond attacking me personally. The broadcast of an anti-transphobia episode of television that nobody has to watch is not "forced education". A review of that episode is not "forced education". Furthermore, the review being cited expresses (joking) 'hate' and vitriol towards an overly lecturing writing style for scripted conversations and calls that style dated and out of touch.

It's downright odd that someone would be offended by me saying that society needs to learn that transgendered individuals should have human rights, to accuse me of calling for "forced education". People are educated to learn that assault is wrong, that theft is wrong, that talking in a movie theatre is wrong, that stealing someone's Lego is wrong. Lego_Sliders would never call that "forced education".

So what we have here: offense towards a comedic drawing of a pregnant man; the use of a transphobic slur; calling respect for transgender identity to be "forced education".

In totality, all of the above examples demonstrate a focused and extreme anger towards transgender individuals having human rights. A level of anger that overrides sense and reason. There doesn't seem to be any other motive for why my decidedly mixed review of the anti-transphobia episode of QUANTUM LEAP would prompt this mania:

I'm going to dismiss your insults towards me. Even the very best of friends will say the wrong things at the wrong times. But I can't dismiss transphobia.

Now, I don't fully grasp transgender identity and community. Those are life experiences I will never have. But I don't need to understand someone's personal identity to respect it so long as that identity isn't based in transphobia or bigotry towards how people were born. No one was born a fascist.

I don't know what you got away with before you came here, but this is Sliders.TV. Thinly-veiled or unveiled, Lego or no Lego, transphobia has no place here.

As someone who appreciates you, I am going to ask you to reach into yourself. I will ask you to find the generosity of spirit and that warmth of character that inspires you to create with Lego and share your delight and joy with us. I'm going to ask you to commit some of that generosity -- of which I know that you have a great deal -- towards people who find that due to brain chemistry and genetics, they were born in a body that doesn't suit them and that they need to change in order to live as themselves.

There are some transgender fans of SLIDERS reading this thread and post right now and wondering if Sliders.tv is a safe space for them or if they're going to regularly see hate rhetoric directed at them for their gender identities. They shouldn't have to wonder.

I feel like in this situation, a moderator would issue warnings or lay out consequences, but I can't do that right this moment. After all that Lego, surely Lego_Sliders is our friend. For now, I'm instead going to say:

Lego_Sliders, I am deeply hurt and heartbroken by these transphobic remarks from a friend and fellow SLIDERS creator. As your friend, I'm asking you: please don't do this again.

And as Lego_Sliders's friend, I would say that if Lego_Sliders were to make no further transphobic remarks in this community, I would have to conclude that Lego_Sliders was temporarily poisoned by dropping some Lego on a stove burner that someone forgot to turn off, that the fumes were eroding Lego_Sliders's good judgement and inherent love and respect for humanity, and that all these were just unfortunate glitches that two friends can set aside going forward.

I really enjoyed the nuclear explosion + timeloop episode of QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 (1.11). "Leap. Die. Repeat" was a fun puzzle and it kept me guessing as to what set off the disaster. And I was just thrilled to see Robert Picardo. QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 has such great guest stars: the soulfully earnest Justin Hartley, the wonderfully strong Carly Pope, the joyfully charismatic Deborah Ann Woll.

Then we come to 1.12, "Let Them Play", the transphobia episode and... I liked it and hated it in so many ways. The 1.12 script is possibly the most 90s style of QL2.0 made to date. It is written in a densely didactic manner with nearly every line of dialogue being a transgender community talking point about transgender inclusivity and alienation and statistics and transphobia. It is a lecturing episode of television.

Let's be blunt: this world is in dire need of lectures. This world is shockingly transphobic whether it's JK Rowling or that alt-right Nazi who used to post here. This world is shockingly hostile towards any identity that isn't straight, white and male: there were some weird bursts of outrage when QL2.0's star was a South Korean actor playing a South Korean character with a South Korean name (that got altered from Seong to Song). If didactism is the brick needed to hammer some respect for people's identities into a few brains, so be it.

That said, the resulting episode has the writing style of a 90s episode of television: everything is severely overstated with every point of argument or information laid out slowly and piece by piece with the (lack of) speed and (slow) pacing of the SLIDERS pilot episode.

In the 90s, character and sociological information came slowly because television was a small, blurry, fuzzy image and interrupted by commercials and the viewer was expected to be distracted real life without any simple way to pause. 90s viewers needed their hands held. In 2023, this style implies the creators don't trust the audience to follow the emotional arc and statistics and details to convey that transphobia is bad.

I'm not sure that the didactism is unneeded; people don't seem to be widely aware that transphobia is bad.

And yet, there is a certain craft to screenwriting to at least disguise the lectures into something resembling human conversation. TV conversations are in not realistic, of course; no one in real life talks like the characters on COMMUNITY. However, TV can create the illusion of naturalism by tricking the viewer's brain into accepting that what's being said out loud is being spontaneously voiced and conceived on the spot by the characters (if not the actors and writers).

QL2.0 has generally been able to maintain some illusion of spontaneity, but for "Let Them Play", it doesn't, not because it can't, but because it chooses not to. "Let Them Play" overstates nearly every point it has to make because it doesn't trust its audience to reject cruelty, hatred, bigotry and harassment.

I am not sure if that mistrust is unwarranted.

"The Mask of the Red Death Part 2", THE FLASH 9.05, is a baffling misfire. THE FLASH is full of great story ideas and strong characters, but ever since Season 5, the stories never seem to land with coherence or resonance. The Red Death takes over Central City, but despite having a two parter, THE FLASH is unable to articulate what that means for anybody: civilians barely appear, there are no news reports, there is no sense that STAR Labs is particularly affected, and the Red Death doesn't seem to engage in any real action after this supposed takeover. The Red Death is defeated by Ryan Wilder showing up with a well-aimed batarang.

The approach to time management is bizarre: Ryan Wilder was "missing" last episode and shows up this week without explanation. Ryan's scenes are rushed and hurried despite THE FLASH having two weeks to give all scenes plenty of space to breathe. There is no sense of the Red Death being a particularly dangerous threat to anybody outside of draining Barry of his speed and even that is emphasized as temporary. And the Red Death's defeat is so hurried and perfunctory that it seems completely forgettable and forgotten by the end.

Showrunner Eric Wallace seems to see writing television as an exercise in stalling and delaying. Barry needing a motivational speech every week stretches out the stories. Allegra and Chester kissing and then avoiding each other is nonsensical for the characters, but it drags out their romantic arc. Wallace never devotes enough screentime on dramatic climaxes and payoffs or giving the primary Ryan Wilder more scenes, but assigns far too much time on filler scenes of Joe and Cecile having arbitrary emotional crises over where to live. The sequence of the Flash defeating the villain he's been contending with for five weeks is tossed away; scenes of the Red Death making threats she doesn't carry out drag on and on.

The Red Death was all talk and considering how simple and straightforward her defeat was, I don't see why THE FLASH spent five episodes on it instead of devoting some time to the Legends. The only thing that was particularly successful: it was nice to see Barry bringing in new allies from his former enemies list -- but even then, I think I would rather those allies have been the Legends.

It's not easy to come up with meaningful threats against a speedster, but the Red Death was particularly weak.

DAREDEVIL's third season was largely an adaptation of "Born Again"'s plot elements, albeit repurposed to being set after DEFENDERS and rewritten to suit the Netflix version of Karen Page. As of the third season, DAREDEVIL had used pretty much every usable aspect of the "Born Again" storyline and the unused aspects of that storyline wouldn't be applicable to the post-Season 3 versions of the characters.

If you want to watch CONTINUUM on Amazon Prime via Canada, you might try using a VPN with a Canadian connection.

Season 1 of CONTINUUM was super-compelling in how, at first, Kiera Cameron seems like a heroic police officer from the future and Liber8 seem like a bunch of violent time travelling maniacs -- but then Liber8's anti-corporate ideals start to seem more sensible while Kiera's dedication to police work to maintain a corporate-ruled future starts to look delusional. The character of Alec, the teen tech genius who assists Kiera, is also a winner. Kiera becomes friends with a present day police officer, Carlos, whose simple decency is in stark contrast to Kiera's complexity. Season 1 also did a great job of introducing the Kagame character, the Liber8 leader, whose antagonism towards the protagonist seems pretty heroic compared to the supposed hero... and killing him off in the Season 1 finale seemed really daring and frightening: where could the show go next?

Season 2 seems to have a lot of trouble figuring out where to go next. Kagame's removal from the series leaves the Liber8 group with warring factions and no coherent goals while Kiera pursuing them starts to feel haphazard. Killing off the central antagonist (not necessarily the villain) resulted in a serious loss of focus. The show shifts away from the uneasy moral conundrum of Kiera being a 'hero' for corporations versus 'terrorists' battling corporate rule.

Instead, the focus is on Liber8's civil war, Kiera running into intrigue with other time travel factions, Alec helping Kiera, and the introduction of the mysterious Escher character who is revealed to be Alec's father in the Season 2 finale. The finale sets up Escher as a major player in the series to come and also introduces some neat threads: Carlos, the steadfast police officer who has always aided Kiera, has become increasingly uneasy with Kiera being a soldier in service of future corporations; Carlos ends up a fugitive due to having helped Kiera and with no other options left, he joins Liber8 in their fight against corporations. It was compelling, but I confess, with all the multiple sides, I found Season 2 a little confusing.

Season 3 uses time travel to abruptly reverse all the developments of the Season 2 finale: Carlos joining Liber8 is undone and Carlos' crisis of faith is forgotten. The Escher character is killed off with a combination of reused Season 2 footage and a body double, almost as though they lost the actor; it makes all the work spent building the Escher character in Season 2 a waste of time.

Also peculiar: the time travel results in two Alecs, one from the original Season 2 timeline and one in the new timeline. For reasons I have never understood, the two Alecs become enemies; the new timeline Alec becomes a malevolent and bitter antagonist; the original Alec remains the same -- even though the only difference between them is a few days of experiences. I didn't understand it.

Season 3 has a lot more intrigue with warring time travel factions, warring Liber8 factions, warring Alecs -- and eventually, I just got lost with Season 3 and I couldn't figure out what was going on.

Season 4 seems to declutter the series significantly because a hoped for 13 episode season was reduced to only six. Season 4 rapidly simplifies and cleans up the Season 3 arcs in order to focus the series on getting to a conclusion. It seemed to pay off well enough and I enjoyed most of it, although I was still very confused by Season 3 and found Season 4 to be a little confusing.

Please consider getting a VPN to rewatch the show so that you can explain it to me.

I agree that we needed to see at least some shots of the BATWOMAN/FLASH WAR that gets recounted in dialogue. While actors are very important, at the end of the day, this is 2023 and TV is a visual medium. It is no longer adequate to present large scale wars through two actors describing offscreen events. Even body doubles in the costumes surrounding Batwoman in slow motion shots with the faces obscured by shadow and glare would have sufficed.

**

Regarding the terrible acting: I'm willing to give Javicia Leslie the benefit of the doubt and say that the director and the editor(s) are letting her down. (I wouldn't give that same trust to Kari Wuhrer.)

I used to think of Serinda Swan (Zatanna on SMALLVILLE) as one of the worst actresses on TV. She was always posing for the camera, thrusting or preening, clearly putting no thought into her character's feelings and motivations and intentions and relationships, treating acting like she was posing for still images for a magazine photoshoot. She was a ghastly Zatanna and I saw her in a few other shows. The best that could be said of Serinda Swan: she was pretty enthusiastic about all her characters and seemed very pleasant to work with on set, unlike Kari Wuhrer who was neither capable nor pleasant.

A couple years ago, there was this new show, CORONER, shot in my hometown of Toronto. Very interesting murder mystery procedural set in Toronto. And Serinda Swan was the lead actress, the title character. I avoided this show like the plague but accidentally tapped it on Netflix one day.

Serinda Swan was excellent: she plays a deeply unhappy crimesolver who discovers her dead husband had gambled away the family savings and house shortly before he died of a heart attack. She has a severe anxiety disorder after her husband's death; she is struggling to manage her deeply depressed son; she is starting a new job where she's always surrounded by dead bodies -- and Swan really sells the character's grief and professionalism and shakiness and talent for solving murders.

At one point, Swan has a panic attack and her stirring performance nearly set me off on a panic attack.

At this point, I realized: Serinda Swan is a great actress, always has been -- she was just getting terrible direction. On CORONER, she had some creative control: she's had her long supermodel hair cut to a short and almost boyish length. She's wearing business casual blouses and trousers and jackets instead of fishnets and swimsuits. None of the posturing and posing of her past work is present; those clearly weren't the performances Swan wanted to give. Her work on CORONER shows true talent.

I have to think that, given how well Javicia Leslie performed on BATWOMAN, the poor moments on FLASH are not Leslie's doing but rather her directors and the editors.

Again, I wouldn't give Kari Wuhrer this level of trust.

THE FLASH, 9.04, "The Mask of the Red Death, Part 1" is... pretty solid for the most part. There's a lot of intrigue with the Red Death, Javicia Leslie's performance is also very good for the most part, there's some excellent character work where Barry's terrible leadership in 9.03 is counterbalanced by his more than adequate people skills in this episode when he convinces an enemy to make a better choice. I would say this episode was probably necessary and it's understandable that this wasn't something that could be sacrificed to focus on the Legends.

But... there is some truly ghastly acting from Javicia Leslie throughout. Her delivery of some of Michael Keaton's lines from the 1989 BATMAN film is bizarre, pausing between sentences as though wanting the viewer to fully appreciate that the words coming out of her mouth are words Keaton spoke in 1989. They come off as non-sequiturs that are totally unrelated to the rest of the scene. And Leslie reduces her character to whiny wailing at the end of the episode and seems childish.

Since Leslie was excellent in conveying Ryan Wilder's maturity throughout her two seasons of BATWOMAN, I have to conclude: the editors and sound designers are adding too many pauses in Leslie's line deliveries and the directors are either giving her terrible direction or using bad takes. I don't feel a performance this bad can come from Leslie alone; she's a talented, trained, practiced professional and the clumsy work on display here is Kari Wuhrer amateurism that cannot be Leslie's fault.

I am currently on Episode 1.04 of QUANTUM LEAP 2.0. I didn't plan on watching more than 1.01 - 1.02 in the gym (to be ready to listen to REWATCH PODCAST cover it) -- but I was so enamoured with the series that I kept watching while I did my laundry and made dinner. I totally see and agree with pretty much all of the flaws that Temporal Flux and others pointed out in the show during these episodes. But... I find that the actors are really strong and are adding all of the elements that the scripts themselves are lacking.

Caitlin Bassett is a very strong actor; her exhaustive collapse and heartbreak in the boxing episode and the way she makes Addison struggle to keep it together as a hologram is really stirring. The scripts are a little clumsy, oversentimentalizing with guest-stars whom we barely know. I'm not super-intrigued by Ben's secret mission because it's just a blank space with no cluing for the audience to drive further speculations.

I think, just from what I've seen so far, QUANTUM LEAP is theoretically a show about holding up a mirror to our society and casting a critical eye on our societal faults and failings and how they've taken different forms in previous eras. In practice, QUANTUM LEAP is a sci-fi undercover 'spy' show about Dr. Ben Song taking on different identities. The mirror is a little unpolished and unwieldy.

But Bassett's strong performance and Raymond Lee's gleeful joy are both highly compelling. The actors are making these somewhat vague characters absolutely riveting to me. Even though I recognize that what is on paper is a little lacking, the actors are bridging the gap of content and I feel connected to the characters and their plight. Bassett and Lee make me feel for Addison and Ben (although, of course, I recognize that QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 is Ben's show, not Addison's).

Watched the QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 premiere episode -- and it speaks to what I was saying about how TV has sped up. The 1989 pilot (the only episode of QUANTUM LEAP I've seen) was a two parter.

In 2023, we don't get two episodes to set up the premise of QUANTUM LEAP and the characters of Ben and Addison. In 2023, if a TV show hasn't laid out the premise and characters by the first episode, it won't make it to a second episode. QUANTUM LEAP has to start fast with Ben almost immediately leaping and it has only one leap to establish the entire leaping concept. Thankfully, QUANTUM LEAP makes effective use of Ben's swiss-cheesed memory to lay the foundations of the show and the continuity of the series through Addison as an expository device.

I really enjoyed it. It wasn't great, but as a series premiere that had to entertain and establish in a very constrained timeslot, QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 made its debut as a professional, enjoyable product. A lot of story elements are rushed like Addison relaying quickly that desperate diamond thief Ryan somehow avoids criminal charges and pays his wife's medical bills. There are strong setpieces like Ben using a waltz in public to prevent the criminals from gunning him down.

Ben's combat skills are peculiar as is his entire mission of vagueness, and there isn't a lot of time to sell the sentiment of Addison's grief that Ben doesn't remember that her or that they are in love and engaged to be married, but the acting makes more of it than the script has space to address it.

Raymond Lee's Ben is thoughtful, a fish out of water, yet quick-witted and it's fun to watch him improvise on his feet. Caitlin Bassett conveys with a few glances that Addison is a soldier, a highly trained special operative formerly of some sort of military or black-ops division, the intended leaper for this time travel project, now reduced to being the handler rather than the operative and going crazy from it.

This is what I mean by visual storytelling. We don't need to see workout gear or medals in Addison's bedroom; the performance makes it clear from the way Addison assesses threat and violence and escape scenarios: this woman is a former-if-not-current espionage agent who is acclimatized to combat and life and death situations.

The QL2.0 premiere made me realize: a SLIDERS pilot in 2023 might have to start with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo already sliding into a parallel Earth, having already been sliding for at least a little while, and the entire origin story of how they ended up as interdimensional nomads might have to come later on in the series. I don't think a 2023 audience will sit through an episode of Quinn going to class and work and home and then an initial slide and then the real first slide with all the sliders.

I finished Season 3 of SUPERGIRL, a season where the survivors of unrepentant sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg are reeling and staggering from the impact of his crimes and his baffling writing decisions that he left unfinished when he was fired. One of those odd decisions: he hired Erica Durance to play Supergirl's mother, Alura Zor-El. This was a very strange choice because the character had been totally resolved by Season 1, had made one cameo in Season 2, and was also dead. She wasn't needed anymore. Why did he feel the need to recast this character for Season 3?

Alura had been in Season 1 flashbacks, holograms and had her twin sister portrayed by Broadway star Laura Benanti. Due to her Broadway commitments, Benanti had to leave SUPERGIRL. During her run on the show, Alura Zor-El was initially remembered by Kara as the perfect mother and a brilliant scientist.

However, Kara soon discovered her mother was a complicated woman. Alura had known that Krypton's ecological crisis would blow up the planet; she imprisoned the (admittedly violent) revolutionaries trying to prevent the planet's destruction. She created Fort Rozz, a prison in which Kryptonian dissidents and aliens were sentenced to life imprisonment whether dangerous or not, attempting to suppress any dissent on Krypton. Alura had supposedly been trying to use diplomacy to prevent Krypton's end; the destruction of Krypton proved that she'd been a fool and a failure, a hypocrite and a liar, effectively a climate change denier. Her only shred of redemption: before Krypton exploded, she sent a 12 year old Kara to Earth.

The character was effectively demystified and also dead; why did unrepentant sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg hire a new actress in order to bring Alura back?

Curiously, Erica Durance didn't have anything particularly positive to say about her time on SUPERGIRL. "It was fine," she told Michael Rosenbaum on the INSIDE OF YOU PODCAST, a politely neutral, unspecific statement that would suggest to me that unrepentant sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg hired her because he was attracted to her and that he targeted her until he was fired and Durance finished out her time on SUPERGIRL without him. Unrepentant sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg was notorious for bragging about only hiring attractive men and women as writers or as actors.

Erica's version of Alura is introduced in the Season 3 premiere in Kara dreaming of her mother and Erica replaces Benanti in the recap sequence of Kara being sent to Earth, appearing in various flashbacks and in one peculiar scene where a teenaged Kara is reprimanded by a DEO agent for using her powers in public. The DEO agent is played by Erica Durance whom Kara mistakes for her mother, but Agent Noel Neill says it's just a coincidental resemblance and speaks with a vaguely Southern accent. Agent Neill is revealed to be J'onn using Alura's face to try to give Kara some closure.

It's here that I note something: Erica Durance is fabulous. It's odd because Durance, while excellent as Lois Lane on SMALLVILLE, was really playing herself: a loud, caring, fun-loving, excitable, goofy charmer. Any time Durance had to play the regal Isis or the analytical Chloe Sullivan (in Lois' body), Durance could not deliver a convincing performance. Since then, Durance had clearly taken some acting lessons; Durance disappears into Agent Neill's character, kindly yet commanding, and her performance is particularly meaningful when the show reveals that Durance in this scene is actually playing the Martian Manhunter.

Then in episode 3.20, "Dark Side of the Moon", Kara and Mon-El take a spacecraft five lightyears away from Earth searching for a radiation signal that will lead them to a MacGuffin that can stop the main Season 3 villain. Kara and Mon-El discover a dome in space containing the Kryptonian city of Argo, the one city of Krypton that was saved. Alura is in the city and Kara finds herself facing down her mother. Her mother the climate crisis denier, the war criminal who imprisoned Kryptonian revolutionaries warning of planetary ecological crisis, the failure who imprisoned the people trying to save Krypton in Fort Rozz and failed to save Krypton herself. Her mother the racist who taught Kara to hold all people from the planet Daxam -- like Mon-El -- in contempt.

Alura is overjoyed to see Kara and embraces her, grief-stricken for having given Kara up for dead. Alura recognizes Mon-El as the prince of Daxam and welcomes him to Argo, declaring that the former prejudices between Krypton and Daxam are meaningless now. Alura declares that Fort Rozz was her greatest mistake and is comforted when Kara tells Alura that the prisoners were freed. Alura is racked with shame for failing to save Krypton, noting that her efforts only succeeded in saving the city of Argo and she ran out of time to save the rest of the planet. Alura helps Kara in retrieving the MacGuffin needed to save Earth.

And just like that, the writers effectively decomplicate and simplify every aspect of moral ambiguity for Alura and eliminate any and all conflicts between Kara and Alura, making Alura simply the adoring and loyal mother, destroying what was a very complex character. The best that can be said is that Erica Durance is again excellent, playing Alura's love and warmth and joy and regal nobility perfectly.

The writers write strong scenes but without much purpose. What was the point of bringing Alura back to life and hiring a new actress to play Alura only to remove all the complexities that made Alura interesting? But that isn't actually their fault.

The Season 3 writers didn't choose to bring Alura back. It was a choice forced on them by unrepentant sexual harasser Andrew Kreisberg that they were stuck with even after he was fired in the middle of Season 3 because Erica Durance was contracted as a recurring guest star and production was obligated to get their money's worth or pay her without having her appear. The writers had no choice and had to bring Alura back to life; the actress was going to get paid and TV studios frown on paying performers to not perform.

And while Durance has become an excellent actress since SMALLVILLE, there's a goodhearted warmth to her regardless of her role. In contrast, Laura Benanti played Alura with a certain cunningly calculated demeanor (and her twin sister Astra with a volatile rage).

Durance and Benanti have very different energies; it's hard to believe that any version of Alura played by Durance would have committed the Benanti-version's war crimes, so the writers had to write a fundamentally decent Alura for Durance to play. Alura wasn't a climate change denier; she had a plan to save Krypton that worked to save Argo City and would have saved everyone else had time not run out. Alura hated jailing people for calling out the climate crisis and had hoped to free them after non-violently saving the planet. Alura wasn't evil. Alura just failed to save everyone and only succeeded in saving some.

It's noticeable that Kara's dead mother being alive isn't really put to much use after Season 3. Alura doesn't appear in Season 4 at all. Season 5 kills Alura off in CRISIS to add a familiar face to the mass body count of the multiversal cataclysm; Alura is resurrected offscreen at the end of CRISIS and we get a few updates that offscreen, she's still running Argo City and reunited with her husband in Season 6. But Durance only made one onscreen return in CRISIS. SUPERGIRL's post-Kreisberg writers didn't know what to do with Alura and steered clear of her.