What are you watching right now?

[Cavaliere (moderator emeritus)]

Criminal Minds: "Amplification"

[Wandering Sensei: Moderator Man]

I just finished watching Schitt's Creek season 2, the season finale.

All I can say is that I want more. (And a new season is now showing...I will just have to wait for Netflix to catch up to it.) This show stars Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara, as well as Chris Elliott and Levy's son, David Levy (the show's creator). Wow. I feel like watching the previous two seasons really paid off with this one. What a heartwarming way to end.

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

My wife and I love Schitt's Creek. I am a big fan of SCTV and Letterman's NBC years, so this show is like a gift for me.

[ClarkKent_DC]

I found a station, Pop, running first-season episodes of ER, a show I have dearly missed. I saw Code Black once or twice, and it didn't bowl me over. Chicago Fire spun off Chicago Med with two backdoor pilots and a couple crossover episodes, but I didn't take to it.

And I watch Grey's Anatomy religiously, and am entertained by it, but I always come away thinking I would NEVER want to be a patient at that hospital, what with all the jealousy and bickering that goes on among its staff. At ER's County Med, I know they'll put aside their personal beefs and all their energy into saving my life. They still might screw up and kill me, but it won't be because they were fretting over their personal problems. 

But, I find it a little sad to watch first-season ER, because I know the futures of these characters. I just saw the one where Carol Hathaway's wedding falls through because her fiance sensed she didn't love him as much as he loved her. But I know Carol and doctor Doug Ross will get together in the end. And doctor John Carter will grow up to be the symbol of the hospital, following in the footsteps of doctor Mark Greene.

And I know Doctor Greene will divorce, remarry, get cancer and die. I remember the season when they were building up to Doctor Greene's death; the producer said actor Anthony Edwards was leaving and they decided to write him out that way because Doctor Greene wouldn't just take another job somewhere else and quit County Med. This is true. Right in the pilot episode, he's got an HMO on the hook that's offering him a job at twice the salary and half the stress, and keeps avoiding making up his mind. But as the saying goes, not making a decision is making a decision.

Speaking of the pilot, it'll be on in a few days and I look forward to it. 

[ClarkKent_DC]

I'm still watching ER reruns on the Pop channel -- I'm up to the fourth season -- but I also recently got the DVD set of the first season. I just now watched "Love's Labor Lost," episode 19 of the first season.

There's a subplot about Doctor Benton's mother having hip surgery. She's frail, elderly and has some kind of dementia, but Benton adamantly argues with his sister and brother-in-law about putting Mom in a nursing home, even though he's at the hospital all the time. HIs sister is fed up with him never being around -- especially breaking a promise to be there for Mom's birthday -- so he trades shifts with other doctors, meaning he's living on no sleep. It comes back to bite him when he's home alone with his mother and nods off and doesn't know she fell down a flight of stairs. In this episode, she has to have hip surgery, and he insists the head of orthopedics do it.

But the main plot is about a pregnant mother and a delivery that goes very, very, very wrong. I don't have words; it's gripping and spellbinding and scary and they won a boatload of Emmys for this episode and deserved every one. I'm still shaken from seeing it. 

[Richard Willis]

On Netflix we've been watching the British show Midsomer Murders which has been on since 1997 and is still going strong. It's set in a semi-rural fictional English county that, like other mystery story towns, has a LOT of gruesome murders, leavened by tongue-in-cheek humor. We're watching a few a week and are up to 2005 now.

On Hulu we're watching the Mary Tyler Moore Show from the beginning. A great show that holds up. Was the first show to have a regular black character, Gordy the weatherman, played by the great John Amos.

Hulu has a documentary called Batman and Bill about Bill Finger's uncredited Batman work. I haven't watched it yet but it sounds well done. It's 1 1/2 hours. Hopefully it will be available to non-Hulu viewers in the near future.

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

Richard Willis said:

Was the first show to have a regular black character, Gordy the weatherman, played by the great John Amos.

How do you mean the above sentence? I Spy and Star Trek preceded it, and so did The Amos 'n Andy Show.

[Richard Willis]

I didn't use the right phrasing. This interview with John Amos states it more correctly.

John Amos on Mary Tyler Moore, Racism on Set, and Playing the First...

(the "racism on set" was one man who immediately lost his job)

[ClarkKent_DC]

Before Good Times, as well as when it was on the air, almost every other family show with a Black family was about a single mother -- Julia, That's My Mama, What's Happening!!  -- which was a step up from all those shows with a Black woman who was a maid with no family at all -- Beulah, Gimme a Break, and the Florida Evans character on Maude.

That's why Esther Rolle and John Amos were so bent on having a father in Good Times.

[Richard Willis]

I watched an enjoyed all of the Norman Lear shows. I really liked John Amos' character on Good Times. He was a hard-working father who reminded me in that way of my own late father. When he was killed off the show was almost unwatchable.

[ClarkKent_DC]

Some Norman Lear shows I liked at the time, like The Jeffersons, Good Times and Sanford and Son, although I find the latter unwatchable today. But I have a burning, growing dislike of All in the Family; I could never find much entertainment in the adventures of an ignorant, bigoted lout. (Maybe because I've met too many such people in real life.) 

[Richard Willis]

ClarkKent_DC said:

But I have a burning, growing dislike of All in the Family; I could never find much entertainment in the adventures of an ignorant, bigoted lout. (Maybe because I've met too many such people in real life.) 

Obviously our life experiences are different. The only thing I can say about it is that Archie was always shown to be ignorant and wrong, and always suffered for it.

[ClarkKent_DC]

ClarkKent_DC said:

But I have a burning, growing dislike of All in the Family; I could never find much entertainment in the adventures of an ignorant, bigoted lout. (Maybe because I've met too many such people in real life.) 

Richard Willis said:

Obviously our life experiences are different. The only thing I can say about it is that Archie was always shown to be ignorant and wrong, and always suffered for it.

I have dear friends whose judgment I admire and respect who look at it the same way. All I can say is, I can't share their enjoyment.