Netflix 2012
Today I found out that my Netflix account keeps a list of everything I've ever watched. Now, I'm going to do the obvious: roll through the list for 2012 reviewing stuff. Here we go, in order of appearance:
Private Practice
Somebody distilled all of the drama and emotions from Grey's Anatomy (or so IMDB tells me) and re-boxed them into convenient 42-minute streams of "difficult" situations, meaningful stares, and workplace promiscuity. All combined, I've seen a total of about 30 minutes of this show, but Netflix tells me that we've swept the series.
Tin Man
A completely awesome miniseries remix of Wizard of Oz - the next generation. DG makes it real yo. Go get some.
How I Met Your Mother
HMYM and Scrubs are our go to shows when we have 20 minutes to kill or need to make sure the TV is still working. An unreliable narrator tells us stories about a bunch of New Yorker friends having young New Yorker-people adventures.
True Grit
An engaging western where simple folk speak fancy and Matt Damon receives a serious tongue injury. Matt Damon wounded is an automatic five stars (see also: Oceans 11, Team America).
Sherlock (the series)
Star Trek's next Kahn and Bilbo Baggins join forces to solve crimes. Some of the episodes are straight-up modernizations of books (e.g. baskerville) other episodes are new material. Holmes and Watson manage to be awesome without being magic ninjas - defeating the Robert Downey Jr movies for best Sherlockiness.
Burn Notice
A moderately douchey ex-spy goes A-Team all up in Miami's business. Supporting character Bruce Campbell (aka Hero of the Entire Internet) plays a former Navy Seal. When Burn Notice is good, it's really good. As the series has gone on, it more frequently felt kinda icky. We stopped short of finishing season 4.
Season of the Witch
Nicholas Cage and Ron Pearlman turned somebody's D&D crawl into a movie. In other words, this movie is exactly awesome ... when Julie isn't around. Because she would have thought it was powerful stupid. A lot.
Doctor Who
Legendary British light-hearted, sci-fi, horror ... stuff. I feel like it's a platform for certain kinds of writers in the way of Simpsons or the Twilight Zone. We watched about half of the first season, but it didn't have staying power for Julie and I. I think that costs us substantial geek cred.
Grey's Anatomy
Honestly, I have no idea. I watched about three minutes and couldn't stand the unsubtle, applied with a sledgehammer, drama. I'm given to understand that lots of genetic material is exchanged in closets - presumably the cause of and solution to all of the hurt feelings on the show. It looks like we saw about four episodes.
Thor
Yes. This is a great movie about how a sibling rivaly and old family secrets can wreck a kingdom. And by wreck, I mean obliterate with magic and magic hammers. Also, Natalie Portman is cute and I'm told that the title character is very fashionable shirtless.
Undercover Boss Canada
In this reality show, TV experts create a false identity and disguise for the CEO and then get the chief a low-level job at the company. The episode we saw was about a zoo. Evidently it resulted in the penguin keeper getting a new high-pressure sprayer and a custodian being fired.
Avatar: The Last Airbender
This is the greatest thing ever to happen to TVs. If Avatar was a 5, nothing else would score higher than a 4. It's a cartoon made by Nickolodean, not to be confused with the poor live action movie or the 3D film about blue people. A kid with a destiny travels the world with his friends and eventually restores peace and harmony. I could write book about this show. It's just soooo good. The Netflix line items were from us re-watching the final season (again).
Life
Evidently we also re-watched this quirky cop drama. A wrongfully imprisoned police detective emerges with an exciting combination of zen and narrow beam rage. The individual episodes are great and the two season story arc is brought to one of the most satisfying conclusions I can remember.
Captain America: The First Avenger
Unfortunately, I watched this after becoming well steeped in the Avengers cartoon. It was difficult for a live-action human to, in two hours, live up to the bar set by the "real" captain. The show was pretty good. Everything that needed to happen happened.
A Little Bit of Heaven
I have no memory of this movie.
The League
I think our nanny was a fan of this one - during Greg's naps. It appears to be about a bunch of dudes with serious personality flaws who are drawn together by their love of fantasy football. We watched about 10 minutes and decided it wasn't our cup of tea.
Doc Martin
Intending to portray a surgeon learning people skills, this show appeared to be about a totally normal doctor who, upon opening a general practice in a backwater town, was treated very rudely by everybody and called antisocial when he didn't take it with a smile. Seriously, half of the people in this show are just mean. Later seasons make the doctor weirder and the townsfolk less abrasive. The medicine part of the show was cool - it wasn't generally a big mystery, just reasonable doctoring.
Battlestar Galactica
I so badly wanted this to be cool, I watched it for nearly two seasons before I gave up. The series depicts the last surviving colonies of humans in a galactic race for survival against deadly robotic life forms ... in the most boring possible way.
Beverly Hills Cop
Back in the day, Eddie Murphy was really cool. A Detroit cop takes a fake vacation to Beverly Hills where he schools the LAPD on crime solving. This movie is somehow linked to my 80s childhood. Good times.
Numb3rs
Netflix reports good coverage, but I only saw a few episodes. As near as I can tell, FBI agents struggle to perform basic tasks but one of them has a brother who works at a school and knows math. And basic logic. And knows how to tie his shoes with his own hands and everything. I think we had a good concept here, but the writers outclassed themselves and had to downgrade the "normal" characters to compensate for their inability to make an awesome genius character (properly executed alternatives: Fringe, Eureka).
The Guild
Felicia Day grabbed a camera and decided to make a successful TV show. This is another one that I desperately wanted to like. It's about a bunch of online gamers and their real life encounters. They are weird. Internet freaky weird. I didn't like any of them and I stopped watching.
Midsomer Murders
Laid back English murder mystery TV show. We follow the lead detective home, through conversations with his family that don't appear to have anything to do with anything, but for some reason it's okay. The detective is constantly trying not to actually call his thickheaded partner and idiot. The worst part of this show is that the detective never finishes his breakfast. We watched three episodes, saw probably 4 breakfasts and he barely ate a thing. These were good breakfasts too! Very sad, but I would watch more.
Hart of Dixie
A fish out of water wannabe surgeon takes over her father's general practice in a small southern town. There is tension between her New Yorker-ness and Southern traditions and lots of relationship drama. It's Doc Martin re-set in America with a much more attractive cast. The characters are all quirky and things never get too sad. I'm excited for the next season.
That's pretty much all of it. What did we miss?
Private Practice
Somebody distilled all of the drama and emotions from Grey's Anatomy (or so IMDB tells me) and re-boxed them into convenient 42-minute streams of "difficult" situations, meaningful stares, and workplace promiscuity. All combined, I've seen a total of about 30 minutes of this show, but Netflix tells me that we've swept the series.
Tin Man
A completely awesome miniseries remix of Wizard of Oz - the next generation. DG makes it real yo. Go get some.
How I Met Your Mother
HMYM and Scrubs are our go to shows when we have 20 minutes to kill or need to make sure the TV is still working. An unreliable narrator tells us stories about a bunch of New Yorker friends having young New Yorker-people adventures.
True Grit
An engaging western where simple folk speak fancy and Matt Damon receives a serious tongue injury. Matt Damon wounded is an automatic five stars (see also: Oceans 11, Team America).
Sherlock (the series)
Star Trek's next Kahn and Bilbo Baggins join forces to solve crimes. Some of the episodes are straight-up modernizations of books (e.g. baskerville) other episodes are new material. Holmes and Watson manage to be awesome without being magic ninjas - defeating the Robert Downey Jr movies for best Sherlockiness.
Burn Notice
A moderately douchey ex-spy goes A-Team all up in Miami's business. Supporting character Bruce Campbell (aka Hero of the Entire Internet) plays a former Navy Seal. When Burn Notice is good, it's really good. As the series has gone on, it more frequently felt kinda icky. We stopped short of finishing season 4.
Season of the Witch
Nicholas Cage and Ron Pearlman turned somebody's D&D crawl into a movie. In other words, this movie is exactly awesome ... when Julie isn't around. Because she would have thought it was powerful stupid. A lot.
Doctor Who
Legendary British light-hearted, sci-fi, horror ... stuff. I feel like it's a platform for certain kinds of writers in the way of Simpsons or the Twilight Zone. We watched about half of the first season, but it didn't have staying power for Julie and I. I think that costs us substantial geek cred.
Grey's Anatomy
Honestly, I have no idea. I watched about three minutes and couldn't stand the unsubtle, applied with a sledgehammer, drama. I'm given to understand that lots of genetic material is exchanged in closets - presumably the cause of and solution to all of the hurt feelings on the show. It looks like we saw about four episodes.
Thor
Yes. This is a great movie about how a sibling rivaly and old family secrets can wreck a kingdom. And by wreck, I mean obliterate with magic and magic hammers. Also, Natalie Portman is cute and I'm told that the title character is very fashionable shirtless.
Undercover Boss Canada
In this reality show, TV experts create a false identity and disguise for the CEO and then get the chief a low-level job at the company. The episode we saw was about a zoo. Evidently it resulted in the penguin keeper getting a new high-pressure sprayer and a custodian being fired.
Avatar: The Last Airbender
This is the greatest thing ever to happen to TVs. If Avatar was a 5, nothing else would score higher than a 4. It's a cartoon made by Nickolodean, not to be confused with the poor live action movie or the 3D film about blue people. A kid with a destiny travels the world with his friends and eventually restores peace and harmony. I could write book about this show. It's just soooo good. The Netflix line items were from us re-watching the final season (again).
Life
Evidently we also re-watched this quirky cop drama. A wrongfully imprisoned police detective emerges with an exciting combination of zen and narrow beam rage. The individual episodes are great and the two season story arc is brought to one of the most satisfying conclusions I can remember.
Captain America: The First Avenger
Unfortunately, I watched this after becoming well steeped in the Avengers cartoon. It was difficult for a live-action human to, in two hours, live up to the bar set by the "real" captain. The show was pretty good. Everything that needed to happen happened.
A Little Bit of Heaven
I have no memory of this movie.
The League
I think our nanny was a fan of this one - during Greg's naps. It appears to be about a bunch of dudes with serious personality flaws who are drawn together by their love of fantasy football. We watched about 10 minutes and decided it wasn't our cup of tea.
Doc Martin
Intending to portray a surgeon learning people skills, this show appeared to be about a totally normal doctor who, upon opening a general practice in a backwater town, was treated very rudely by everybody and called antisocial when he didn't take it with a smile. Seriously, half of the people in this show are just mean. Later seasons make the doctor weirder and the townsfolk less abrasive. The medicine part of the show was cool - it wasn't generally a big mystery, just reasonable doctoring.
Battlestar Galactica
I so badly wanted this to be cool, I watched it for nearly two seasons before I gave up. The series depicts the last surviving colonies of humans in a galactic race for survival against deadly robotic life forms ... in the most boring possible way.
Beverly Hills Cop
Back in the day, Eddie Murphy was really cool. A Detroit cop takes a fake vacation to Beverly Hills where he schools the LAPD on crime solving. This movie is somehow linked to my 80s childhood. Good times.
Numb3rs
Netflix reports good coverage, but I only saw a few episodes. As near as I can tell, FBI agents struggle to perform basic tasks but one of them has a brother who works at a school and knows math. And basic logic. And knows how to tie his shoes with his own hands and everything. I think we had a good concept here, but the writers outclassed themselves and had to downgrade the "normal" characters to compensate for their inability to make an awesome genius character (properly executed alternatives: Fringe, Eureka).
The Guild
Felicia Day grabbed a camera and decided to make a successful TV show. This is another one that I desperately wanted to like. It's about a bunch of online gamers and their real life encounters. They are weird. Internet freaky weird. I didn't like any of them and I stopped watching.
Midsomer Murders
Laid back English murder mystery TV show. We follow the lead detective home, through conversations with his family that don't appear to have anything to do with anything, but for some reason it's okay. The detective is constantly trying not to actually call his thickheaded partner and idiot. The worst part of this show is that the detective never finishes his breakfast. We watched three episodes, saw probably 4 breakfasts and he barely ate a thing. These were good breakfasts too! Very sad, but I would watch more.
Hart of Dixie
A fish out of water wannabe surgeon takes over her father's general practice in a small southern town. There is tension between her New Yorker-ness and Southern traditions and lots of relationship drama. It's Doc Martin re-set in America with a much more attractive cast. The characters are all quirky and things never get too sad. I'm excited for the next season.
That's pretty much all of it. What did we miss?
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