[Movie] Simulwatch Brainstorm/Vote Thread: AMERICA! FUCK YEAH! BRITAIN! Fuck yeah? Edition

THE LINEUP



Blackadder

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Although each series is set in a different era, all follow the fortunes (or rather, misfortunes) of Edmund Blackadder (played by Atkinson), who in each is a member of a British family dynasty present at many significant periods and places in British history. Although the character is quite unintelligent in the first series, he is increasingly clever and perceptive in subsequent generations (while sometimes decreasing in social status). Each Blackadder though is a cynical, cowardly opportunist concerned with maintaining and increasing his own status and fortunes, regardless of his surroundings. In each series, Blackadder is usually a cynical (almost modern) voice puncturing the pretensions and stupidity of those around him, and what might — through modern eyes — be seen as the more ludicrous and insane follies of history (from the medieval witch-hunts and the petty whims and insanities of various British monarchs to the bloodshed and horror of World War I).

Dexter

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Dexter is an American television drama series that airs on the pay-TV channel, Showtime. In February 2008 reruns began to air on CBS. Set in Miami, the series centers on Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), a serial killer with standards who works for the Miami Metro Police Department as a blood-spatter analyst.

The show is based on the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay the first of his series of Dexter novels. It was adapted for television by Emmy Award-winning screenwriter James Manos, Jr., who wrote the pilot episode.

Fawlty Towers

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The series focuses on the exploits and misadventures of short-fused hotelier Basil Fawlty, his wife Sybil and their employees, porter and waiter Manuel, maid Polly, and (in the second series) chef Terry. The episodes typically revolve around Basil's efforts to succeed in 'raising the tone' of his hotel and his increasing frustration at the numerous complications and mistakes, both his own and those of others, which prevent him from doing so.

Little Britain

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The show comprises sketches involving exaggerated parodies of British people from all walks of life in various situations familiar to the British. These sketches are presented to the viewer together with narration in a manner which suggests that the programme is a guide — aimed at non-British people — to the ways of life of various classes of British society. Despite the narrator's description of great British institutions, the comedy is derived from the British audience's self-deprecating understanding of either themselves or people known to them.

Oz

Quote:

Oz is the nickname for the Oswald State Correctional Facility, formerly Oswald State Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison (level 4). Many of the plot arcs are set in "Emerald City" ("Em City"), an experimental unit of the prison in which the unit manager attempts to emphasize rehabilitation and learning responsibility during incarceration. Emerald City is an extremely controlled environment where there are a controlled number of members of each racial and social group. The show was taped in Bayonne, New Jersey.

Penn & Teller: Bullshit! & QI

See Deni's post.

The Wire

Quote:

AIM FOR THE HEAD IN B-MORE

Top Gear

Quote:

Top Gear is an Emmy award winning BBC television series about motor vehicles, primarily cars. It began in 1977 as a conventional motoring magazine show. Over time, and especially since a relaunch in 2002, it has developed a quirky, humorous style. The show is currently presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, and also features a test driver known as The Stig. The programme is estimated to have 350 million viewers worldwide.

Weeds

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(420 SMOKE WEED EVERY DAY)

Weeds is an American television series created by Jenji Kohan, produced by Lionsgate Television for the Showtime cable television network.

The shows' central character is Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), a newly widowed suburbanite mother of two who has turned to selling marijuana to support her family after her husband unexpectedly dies. Over the course of the show she finds herself involved in illegal activities on a progressively larger scale; the first three seasons deal mainly with local drug dealing and growing, while later seasons revolve around the smuggling of more general contraband from Mexico to the U.S. and the electoral machinations of Baja's gubernatorial politics.

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Quick question: In the other thread you kept mentioning about it only beng 25 minutes out of our day, but the only things on TV that are 25 minutes are mostly sitcoms. While I have no problem with those, I'm sure some people would like to watch some dramas too, which can range anywhere from 40 to 60 minutes. So are these allowed as well, or are we only limited to sitcoms?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I'm willing to watch a show that's an hour long if everyone else is. I'm curious if we're going for a show where each season is self-contained or if we should pick something that has a broad storyline over the entire series?

Maybe it's because I'm watching it obsessively right now that The Wire jumps into mind as my top nomination. Either that or Breaking Bad (I don't really need an excuse to rewatch it, but I'll take one). One season of The Wire works well enough on its own, but the whole show continues with the plot threads left dangling in previous seasons. Also working against it is that a five-season show where each episode is an hour is a big commitment.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Rockgamer

Quick question: In the other thread you kept mentioning about it only beng 25 minutes out of our day, but the only things on TV that are 25 minutes are mostly sitcoms. While I have no problem with those, I'm sure some people would like to watch some dramas too, which can range anywhere from 40 to 60 minutes. So are these allowed as well, or are we only limited to sitcoms?

Well I overlooked that part~

It wouldn't end up being more than 25 on the animow side, but if people are willing to put up with a lengthier TV show I wouldn't have a problem with it.

Originally Posted by An Antarctic fur seal has been observed trying to have sex with a king penguin.

I'm willing to watch a show that's an hour long if everyone else is. I'm curious if we're going for a show where each season is self-contained or if we should pick something that has a broad storyline over the entire series?

The choice is yours on this one. If we pick something with multiple seasons it'd be up to you guys whether or not you wanted to continue after the first one or pick something else and let people who want to watch more of the first show pursue it on their own.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I fully support all of Devo's choices. So long as we skip season 1 of blackadder due to suck.

And I say we can go up to an hour, because frankly most good Amurrican tv is in the 44 minute club.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'll beat nutty to the punch and suggest Life on Mars. The original British version, of course.

Quote:

Life on Mars tells the fictional story of Sam Tyler (John Simm), a police officer in service with the Greater Manchester Police. After being hit by a car in 2006, Tyler awakes in 1973 and finds himself working for the predecessor of the GMP, the Manchester and Salford Police at the same station and location as in 2006. Early on in the series, it becomes apparent to Tyler that he awakes as a Detective Inspector, one rank lower than his 2006 rank of Detective Chief Inspector. As part of the CID, Tyler finds himself working under the command of Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister).
Throughout the two series, the central plot centres on the ambiguity concerning Tyler's predicament of it being unclear to both the audience and the character whether he has died, gone mad, is in a coma or has actually travelled back in time.

To add to Devo's list of British comedies there's something wrong with you if you haven't seen Red Dwarf.

Quote:

In the first episode set sometime in the late 22nd century, an on-board radiation leak of cadmium II kills everyone except for low-ranking technician Dave Lister, who is in suspended animation at the time, and his pregnant cat, Frankenstein, who is safely sealed in the cargo hold. Following the accident, the ship's computer Holly keeps Lister in stasis until the background radiation dies down—a process that takes three million years. Lister therefore emerges as the last human being in the universe—but not alone on-board the ship. His former bunkmate and immediate superior Arnold Judas Rimmer is resurrected by Holly as a hologram to keep Lister sane. At the same time, a creature known only as Cat is the last member on board of Felis sapiens, a race of humanoid felines that evolved in the ship's hold from Lister's cat, Frankenstein, and her kittens during the 3 million years that Lister was in stasis.

Spoiler:

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Don't even talk to me about British television without talking about LITTLE BRITAIN.

Quote:

The show comprises sketches involving exaggerated parodies of British people from all walks of life in various situations familiar to the British. These sketches are presented to the viewer together with narration in a manner which suggests that the programme is a guide — aimed at non-British people — to the ways of life of various classes of British society. Despite the narrator's description of great British institutions, the comedy is derived from the British audience's self-deprecating understanding of either themselves or people known to them.

Way b in the d (last year), Diss, Deni and I tried to do a simuwatch of CANADA'S WORST HANDYMAN. So let's do that too.

Quote:

Like Driver, Handyman has five contestants trying to not become Canada's worst handyman. Unlike Driver, however, none of the contestants are eliminated; instead, at the end of each episode, one will be named the most improved, while another will be named the worst. Also, the time frame for Handyman is much shorter, lasting only two weeks, instead of the eight weeks for Driver; and each episode chronicled one or two days, instead of a week for Driver. On the sixth episode, the five contestants will work together to refurbish an apartment in ten hours, with the one with the worst individual performance being named Canada's worst handyman.
Like Driver, the contestants are accompanied by their nominators, who are allowed to assist them in their various tasks. Each episode (except the finale) also features a "group challenge", which is done by the five contestants as a group. Except for the first group challenge, each of the group challenges has a contestant named as the project's foreman, and the foreman designation is given to the most improved contestant for the previous week; this particular twist was added when the judges saw how badly they performed at the first group challenge without a designated leader. The contestant named the worst in each show is obligated to "hang their head in shame" and nail a picture of themselves along a "wall of shame", and be personally tutored by Younghusband on an aspect leading to their nomination.

FELIPE NO

Oh JESUS what is with you damn foreigners!!! Seconding The Wire, nominating:


bad ass prison show Oz,


My main man Dexter,


this sexy slut in Weeds,


and i've never seen Six Feet Under but I heard it's awesome as shit so it goes in.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I've been interested in checking out Dexter, so I'd be down for that. Pretty sure that's streaming on Netflix too.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Finally, some Merkin shit up in this AMERKA, FUCK YEAH edition thread. This ain't no Britain Wanker edition thread.

That out of the way, the first two seasons of Dexter are pretty excellent TV. First three seasons of Weeds are great. Six Feet Under is one of my all-time favorite shows. I would love to watch Oz. I never caught it when it was on and forgot about it after it ended. I'll second all of those nominations.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

If we want to continue with the british TV show theme, I vote IT crowd, because its awesome, but only has 6ish episodes a season, so dunno if it'd work here. Maybe coupled with a short anime.

American side, I'll think of some that people haven't seen yet. I'm pretty sure most have seen shows like Eureka. Wonder how many have seen Pushing Daisies though.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Green Wing and The Fast Show on the british comedy show list, please. Or we could just watch Top Gear since judging by chat a lot of people have not watched it before the Reliable Robin episode recently linked.

The Wire is like the greatest US TV show ever, so everyone should have already watched it. Firefly? :3

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Quote:

In each episode, Penn and Teller debunk a chosen misconception such as cryptozoology, debate a controversial topic like gun control or "expose the truths" of an organization like PETA. Sometimes their objective is not to completely dismiss the topic at hand but to decry certain aspects of the topic that they believe to be pernicious, misleading, unnecessary, or overemphasized. For example, in the case of college they argue that while college is a great place "if you love to learn, if you love to drink beer, or if you need training for a certain career", they feel that using "student diversity" as promotion is "bullshit". Similarly, they state: "so the casual asshole, or just plain dickhead, might do well in an anger management program" but using "venting" as a technique in anger management is "bullshit" since venting increases aggressiveness in a person by "twice as much" over time, especially in cases of domestic violence.

Proponents of the topic make their case in interviews; however, they often end up appearing fallacious or self-contradicting. For example, in "Safety Hysteria", a manufacturer of "radiation guards" for mobile phones admits that there is no proven link between mobile phone radiation and brain cancer, but assures viewers that "you can't be too safe" (mobile phones use conventional radio waves for communication, which are non-ionizing radiation). When he states his background is in advertising, not medical science, it is implied that he knows his product is useless but exploits people's fears to turn a profit.[5] A second consecutive interview with another proponent is often started with the phrase: "And then there's this asshole..."

Penn Jillette has stated that those being interviewed know what show the interview is for and its purpose. One episode shows a video crew from the show going into a building to perform an interview, and Jillette points out that a member of the crew is wearing a Penn & Teller: Bullshit! baseball cap.[6] Opponents are then interviewed and they offer rebuttals to the proponents' arguments. These are usually experts, celebrities, or sometimes speakers from the Center for Inquiry, James Randi Educational Foundation, and the Cato Institute.[6]

Penn and Teller often conduct informal experiments. For example, in the episode "Bottled Water", diners in an upscale restaurant are presented with a variety of apparently fancy bottled water brands. After the diners praise and pick a favorite, it is revealed that each bottle was filled by the same garden hose behind the restaurant.[7] In one of their more serious experiments during the "Conspiracy Theories" episode, Teller fires a rifle at a melon wrapped in one-inch fiberglass tape to demonstrate that when a human head is shot, it is likely to be forced in the direction opposite to the bullet's trajectory. This demonstration was aimed at discrediting a John F. Kennedy conspiracy theory that points out that the fatal gunshot rocked JFK toward the shot through the use of simple principles of physics (i.e. "back and to the left." The fallacious belief that a shot from behind would cause a head to jerk forward is used as evidence that JFK must have been shot from the grassy knoll, in front of the vehicle). Penn and Teller look over the scene of the aftermath of the experiment to which Penn comments, "Second gunman my aching ass..."[8]

Penn and Teller often have skits and stunts performed with them on set or use stock footage, to combine reasonable arguments with straightforward, entertaining ridicule. For example, the "Sex, Sex, Sex" episode may be satirizing the media's obsession with sex appeal by having the hosts constantly surrounded by naked actors and actresses.[9] Penn and Teller often close episodes with an impassioned ethical plea against whatever they are debunking, explaining how this particular belief is harmful and should be resisted. The presenters distinguish between believers (often explaining that Penn and Teller themselves would like to believe these things are true, and showing compassion to the people who do think the things are true) and those they see as charlatans out for money or to advance a political agenda, at whom their anger is directed. For example, in their premiere episode, they debunk the idea that psychics can talk to the dead. While expressing the utmost sympathy towards people who are desperate for a chance to speak to a loved one who has died, they explain that charlatans take advantage of this love to get money from people, and deliver false messages that have nothing to do with the genuine character of the departed.

Since their act is not normally associated with a frequent use of profanity, Jillette explains their choice of using the term bullshit in the opening episode: if they referred to people as frauds or liars, they could be sued for slander, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of chicanery, but as "vulgar abuse" is not legally considered slanderous, referring to them as assholes or motherfuckers ostensibly expresses an opinion rather than a statement of fact and is legally safer for them.

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The panel consists of four participants: three rotating and one regular, Alan Davies, who has the seat to Stephen Fry's immediate right. Davies has appeared in every episode, except for one that was themed on "Divination": he was present at the beginning, but he "teleported" away during the buzzer demonstration—his buzzer that episode was the sound of the TARDIS from Doctor Who. He was at a football match instead but was still able to play as communicated "from beyond."[7] He has only won 13 times (including two tied victories) as he generally offers up most of the "obvious but wrong" answers. However, as of episode 16 of the 'G' series, this is the highest number of victories, ahead of Rich Hall's nine (Hall and Davies tied for first place in the Series G episode "Gravity"). Davies has, by contrast, finished in last place 54 times. The show's other panellists mainly come from a stand-up comedy or comedy writing/performing background, although there have also been guests from other fields, including Richard E. Grant, Jeremy Clarkson, Gyles Brandreth, Roger McGough, David Tennant and Emma Thompson.[8][9][10]

Questions are sometimes misleading or very difficult. Providing an "obvious but wrong" answer results in a sequence of klaxons and flashing lights, and a theatrical cry of despair from Stephen Fry. In the first and second series, Fry produced the given answer on a card to show the panellists, while it also flashed on the large screens behind them (except in the pilot episode and the first show of the first series, when only the cards were used).[11] In the third series and onward, Fry's answer cards were dispensed with altogether, leaving only the screens as proof that such answers had been predicted.

Because of the show's expectation that hardly anyone would be able to give a correct answer without significant prompting, it instead encourages sheer interestingness, which is how points are mainly scored.[12] As such, tangential discussions are encouraged, and panellists are apt to branch off into frivolous conversations, give voice to train of thought, and share humorous anecdotes from their own lives.[12] The number of points given and taken away are normally decided by Fry or beforehand by the researchers, especially if the points given or taken are very large. For example, one episode asked, "What is the main ingredient of air?" The correct answer is "nitrogen". The incorrect answer "carbon dioxide", which none of the panellists offered, would have resulted in a deduction of 3,000 points (CO2 is a trace gas being only 0.038% of the atmosphere). However, Davies was deducted 10 points for suggesting "oxygen".[13] Fry once said (in Episode ten of the first series):

Now, the rules are simple. Scoring is my business. Points are given and points are taken away. They are taken away for answers which are both obvious and wrong, and they're given not so much for being correct, as for being interesting. Their level of interestingness is impartially determined by a demographically-selected customer service focus consultancy, broken down by age and sex – i.e. me. Erm ... because there is no-one more broken down by age and sex than me.[14]

The only point at which scores are given is at the conclusion of the show. Negative scores are common, and occasionally the victor is the panellist with the least of them.

John Lloyd, QI's creator, has admitted that not even he has any idea how the scoring system works, but there is someone who is paid to check on the scores. Guests are allowed the right of appeal if they believe their score is wrong, but none have so far exercised that right.

I was speaking idiomatically.

SUDDENLY POLLS. POLLS EVERYWHERE (thanks Acer).

This one is kinda complicated. Whereas animes are short, set in length and of a set number of episodes (usually 12-13/26) TV shows go on for multiple seasons and run for varied lengths. I've given an indicator of how many episodes total each show has and how long the runtime is (correct me if I'm misinformed on any of this). Not to say that we would end up watching ALL of the longer shows, that's a beast we'd tackle when we actually come to a decision. The OP has been updated to reflect the picks Deni made.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Shit i screwed up can I vote again

Since I voted three times, can you remove Little Britain from my votes?

FELIPE NO

LOOK AT YOU. THIS IS NOT DIFFICULT LURKER

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I would've voted for QI and Six Feet Under, but apparently the latter wasn't good enough for Tails' high class tastes.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Tritoch

I would've voted for QI and Six Feet Under, but apparently the latter wasn't good enough for Tails' high class tastes.

Originally Posted by Tails

The OP has been updated to reflect the picks Deni made.

Reading: difficult

(I am not in charge of the TV side of things!)

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I cut Six Feet Under because I didn't want everyone to die of boredom during the 12 episodes of nothing between every good episode. Well written series, but my god, even Six Feet Under thinks Six Feet Under is pretentious, empty fluff.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Fuck yeah QI.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

btw, Penn & Teller's Bullshit is ongoing, and is also a great show, vote for it, fuckers.

I was speaking idiomatically.

But how many more episodes until they feature themselves as a topic and collapse metaphysically?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by knkwzrd

But how many more episodes until they feature themselves as a topic and collapse metaphysically?

They've been saying since season 1 they wanted to do an episode on themselves. The forums are actually pretty much them doing just that. They like to do addendums. They did a huge one when a new study on second hand smoke came out.

FELIPE NO

Alright you guys. Who edited the poll.

e: of course Skills what a jobber

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?