gdp's Comments

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Agent Carter'- S01E02 - Bridge and Tunnel

Tue, 24 Nov 2015 23:59:43 +0000

I NEED JESUS AFTER THAT EPISODE. HELP ME. No help or Jesus here, only nuns. <img src="http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/ll127/tardis_stowaway/gifs/parker%20nun%20leverage%20smiles%20cereal_zpsviihsx0x.gif" border="0" alt=" photo parker nun leverage smiles cereal_zpsviihsx0x.gif"/> And also sympathy, because THAT EPISODE.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Agent Carter'- S01E01 - Now Is Not the End

Tue, 24 Nov 2015 02:21:48 +0000

You can copy and paste in the rot13 website as suggested in the previous comment. If you're getting tired of copying & pasting, there are also browser extensions that will translate without having to switch tabs. I use one called LeetKey for Firefox. I don't know if there are similar tools for other browsers.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Doctor Who': S08E07 - Kill the Moon

Fri, 18 Sep 2015 19:58:58 +0000

For me, how much Doctor Who's junk science bothers me depends on the genre of the episode. Because the tone can vary so much from week to week, BS that I might ignore in one context can totally throw me out of the show in another. Robot of Sherwood was a ridiculous swashbuckling romp, and I was having too much fun to care if it made a lick of sense. Gur bar jvgu gur gerrf vf nf zhpu snagnfl nf FS, rira zber guna hfhny ba Qbpgbe Jub, fb crefbanyyl V nz bxnl jvgu znffvir fhfcrafvba bs qvforyvrs. But Kill the Moon is trying to be serious science fiction. That's a genre where I prefer to have at least vaguely plausible science. Kill the Moon's blatant disregard for even a middle school level of understanding of gravity, among numerous other scientific transgressions, really bugged me. I'm a little more forgiving than you in that I could probably have rolled my eyes and sort of gotten over the bad science IF I'd enjoyed the rest of the episode. However, this episode had the Doctor going beyond "not nice" and into "pointlessly mean" in a way that I considered out of character and contained an anti-abortion allegory that made my blood boil. An effective creepy atmosphere and some good moments for Clara and Courtney were not anywhere close to enough to salvage this episode from the garbage heap.

Mark Watches : Confirmed Shows for the Future

Thu, 27 Aug 2015 22:49:51 +0000

I'd love to see Mark watch Merlin, although I'm pretty sure it would be a mix of love for things it did well and interesting discussions of certain problematic things. (r.t. Zbetnan'f punenpgrevmngvba va fbzr frnfbaf, naq gur trareny jnl gung gur fubj frrzrq gb qrsvar evtug naq jebat cheryl ol jurgure na npgvba urycrq be uvaqrerq Zreyva naq Neguhe. Jura guvf fubj jnf tbbq vg jnf fhcre ybinoyr, ohg vg erthyneyl znqr zr jnag gb guebj guvatf ng gur fperra. Ohg gung'f nyfb na vagrerfgvat ernpgvba gb jngpu sebz Znex.)

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Leverage': S04E18 - The Last Dam Job

Tue, 21 Apr 2015 16:59:31 +0000

THIS. The crew has pulled some cons with serious morally dubious side effects before (rigging elections, for example), but this was the worst, IMHO. Quagga mussels are devastating to both human business involving those waterways and the local ecology. Putting quagga mussels in a new watershed completely alters what species can survive there. Unlike some of the collateral damage caused by the teams' cons, if the quagga mussels get out of the dam and into the larger ecosystem that harm CANNOT BE UNDONE. I guess the crew was assuming that the dam managers would shut the dam off promptly and prevent the spread, but what if the dam managers had been slow to react? What if the water flow between the part of the dam where the mussels were dumped and the rest of the river couldn't be cut off quite completely? What if the dam operators had decided that it was in their economic best interests to keep the dam running for the time being until after the sale and let the Chinese buyers deal with the consequences of the mussel invasion? The risk is not acceptable. All it would have taken was a few lines to establish that the mussels the team used were actually sterilized shells, not living and able to reproduce. Without such a reassurance, the team's actions are apalling to me.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Leverage': S04E15 - The Lonely Hearts Job

Tue, 14 Apr 2015 17:05:22 +0000

I was so excited to see Emma Caulfield's name pop up in the credits. ANYA!!!!!!! This seems like a natural career transition for an ex-vengeance demon. She might be a grifter, but the woman who bought Hardison at the auction seemed pretty genuinely excited about winning him. But who can blame her? I love that Eliot has the sophisticated food and wine knowledge to blend in to these extremely upper-crust situations. I love even more that Eliot picked out the perfect gifts for Parker and Sophie. He's such a romantic. ;)

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Leverage': S04E14 - The Boys' Night Out Job

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 16:51:20 +0000

This was another fun episode. There were so many hilarious gags: the Irish goons bickering about the sanctity of church basements and reciting the boy scout law, the fridge mostly full of orange soda, Nate trying to explain the empty nun's habit with "rapture!", and more. Eliot insisted that he doesn't think about Parker and Hardison. Suuuuuuuure, you just keep telling yourself that, Mr. Grumpy Cat. This season certainly has a lot of gimmick episodes. Individually, I adore each of them! Collectively, it's starting to feel a bit like a meal consisting mostly of dessert without much in the way of protein or veggies. Still, I continue to deeply love this show and these characters.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Leverage': S04E14 - The Boys' Night Out Job

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 16:33:47 +0000

"I never think about you and Parker," Eliot says, lying through his teeth Ha! Yes. This bit was my favorite. Methinks the hitter doth protest too much.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Leverage': S04E10 - The Queen's Gambit Job

Wed, 8 Apr 2015 05:23:53 +0000

The way I saw it with the plans is that Nate is trolling Hardison and Sophie, because they can take it. Parker doesn't get trolled about a plan with her death because she still benefits from reassurance that the team will always have her back, and she might miss the nuance that Nate is just messing with them. Eliot would catch that Nate was trolling about a plan involving his death, but Nate chooses not to. It's because of that tendency to lay down his life to protect that others that Eliot still benefits more from the reminder that his death would never be part of the plan.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Leverage': S04E09 - The Cross My Heart Job

Mon, 6 Apr 2015 18:22:30 +0000

This is definitely one of those cons with a fair amount of collateral damage in terms of people's days being messed up. That was a lot of flights they delayed, so people are going to be missing connections. It's absolutely worth it to save the life of a kid, but I just can't help thinking of all the people stuck in the Cincinnati airport because of a fake tornado. I enjoyed watching the team have to pull a con starting with pretty much nothing, not even their earbuds. I loved that after they explained that the method to get the first badge was going to be spraining Sophie's ankle, Parker chimed in with escalating ideas of how to injure teammates to accomplish the other steps. (We're going to break Eliot's wrist! We're going to set Nate on fire!) Nate took the creepiness up to 11 in the final scene. Threatening Chesney when they were still trying to get the heart I can understand, but keeping it up after the con and going so far as to monitor not just his finances but his vital signs strikes me as going way beyond protecting the weak and into the territory of being creepy and vengeful. I hope this isn't the sign of where his character is going in the future.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Leverage': S04E09 - The Cross My Heart Job

Mon, 6 Apr 2015 18:00:51 +0000

If I'm being charitable I could guess that the show doesn't want to give people realistic ideas about how they could cause mischief at an air traffic control tower. But mostly this is just one of those episodes where suspension of disbelief doesn't happen organically but instead requires a conscious choice not to worry about it. (Which is not something everyone wants to do to enjoy a TV show, and that's fair.) For me, the thing that made me question the most was why Chesney's goons brought the little girl they kidnapped through airport security. The show specifically mentioned that a ticket had been bought for her, so it wasn't that she was traveling with her mom the nurse and already in the airport; she was kidnapped from outside and brought into the airport. Why would that be a good strategy? Wouldn't they have much more control of the situation if they kept the little girl in a van outside or something instead of having her in a public situation with lots of security, where if the goon stopped paying attention for one moment she could alert someone to her plight? Oh well. Sighing and moving on. I still had fun watching the episode, even if the logic wasn't always there.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Leverage': S02E14 - The Three Strikes Job

Mon, 2 Mar 2015 09:12:18 +0000

I just watched this episode tonight (Sunday, March 1), having fallen slightly behind. After this weekend, the Wrath of Khan reference is EVEN LESS OKAY than before. It made me cry out "No!" at the screen because of the unexpected poke at my fresh Leonard Nimoy feels. :(

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'The Next Generation': S01E02 - Encounter at Farpoint, Part II

Sun, 1 Mar 2015 21:46:30 +0000

Thanks for linking to your abridged version of the series! I've been wanting to follow along with TNG here on MW, but I don't remember much since mostly haven't rewatched since I was in my early teens (and some I haven't ever seen, since that was before DVDs or Netflix, so if I didn't happen to catch it on syndication or find it on VHS at my local Blockbuster I didn't see it) . Unfortunately I just don't have the time to watch the full series, so this is a good compromise.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'The Next Generation': S01E06 - Where No One Has Gone Before

Sat, 28 Feb 2015 11:30:11 +0000

:`( Well, there goes my control over my emotions. Again. RIP.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Leverage': S02E12 - The Zanzibar Marketplace Job

Tue, 24 Feb 2015 09:08:13 +0000

There was a lot that I loved about this episode, but my personal highlight had to be the amused/proud/turned on looks on Parker and Hardison's faces when they watched Eliot beat up Sterling. My OT3 likes watching each other work.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Leverage': S02E04 - The Fairy Godparents Job

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 05:24:46 +0000

While the team's cons always take down someone undeniably bad and help someone blameless who suffered hurt, they are not always without collateral damage to other people's lives. Nothing too awful, but it's there, and when the con took place at a school it bothered me. Even though they were trying to build Widmark up, they got lucky that it actually worked, and they didn't do any of those other kids in the school any good. Kids are smart enough to realize that there was some really blatant favoritism towards Widmark with things like the obviously rigged spelling bee and the fact that Widmark got the big finale to the sciencical despite never sounding good in rehearsals. The other kids might either assume that they've done something wrong to make the adults turn against them, or take out their anger at the favoritism on Widmark. The team didn't take enough time to learn what Widmark might be good at before throwing him into things like fencing and the spelling bee that just set him up for more failure. Then they made all the kids write and learn songs full of complicated science vocabulary words under an absurdly tight deadline. Not all of the kids involved in that sciencial are going to have Widmark's empowering success under those conditions, especially when Sophie didn't seem to care about any of the others. Then there was the headmaster who was sent to Botswana thinking he was going to consult with the president. He's going to get there and realize that the president hasn't actually read or cared about his thesis. The team may have bought him those tickets, but he might face job consequences when he gets back for taking off so abruptly. Kids are unlikely to be permanently damaged by their school being controlled for a week (or whatever the timeline was) by people who know nothing about education and don't care about most of the student body, but it still bugs me as an educator. Other than my problems with the morality of using kids in the con, I liked this episode. Parker having to coach Hardison into the breakin while making smalltalk was great. I really enjoyed getting such a moment of rare clear insight into Sophie underneath the masks.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Leverage': S02E04 - The Fairy Godparents Job

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 04:55:22 +0000

Stoichiometry: the Musical would be all sorts of awesome. You should make it happen! My high school biology teacher actually had us write science songs. We picked any existing song and rewrote the lyrics to be about biology in some way. At the time it was a source of lots of stress for shy high school me, but it was a great idea for an assignment. These days I am an environmental educator and sing campfire songs about topics like the ecological importance of animal poop. Hooray for science songs!

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Leverage': S02E04 - The Fairy Godparents Job

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 04:42:16 +0000

Tim Hutton was doing a bit of Roman Polanski because he had done a film with him. Doing anything calling to mind Roman Polanski? In an episode involving kids? A world of NO. Ick. Tim's wasn't ready yet so they put it together from stuff in the wardrobe room and also broke into the home of the woman making his costume Well that escalated quickly!

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Star Trek: The Voyage Home'

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 03:42:53 +0000

The fact that Wikipedia automatically redirects for "the one with the whales" is one of my favorite random things on the Internet. That poster is all sorts of glorious.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Leverage': S02E03 - The Order 23 Job

Tue, 10 Feb 2015 17:53:40 +0000

I enjoyed this episode a great deal. The con was amazingly elaborate and tense. Eliot's sweet and protective storyline with Randy was a good counterbalance to the rather disturbing main con. I am amused by the fact that Hardison and Eliot apparently tried to convince Parker to wear an old-fashioned nurse outfit with a skirt and white stockings. Trying to get the female character into an outfit like that might otherwise bug me, but they must have known she'd actually do her own research and not wear the stockings-nurse outfit unless she wanted to.