Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-30 (Thursday)

On 1/31/25 11:15 AM, anim8rfsk wrote:

Ian J. Ball <ijball@mac.invalid> wrote:

On 1/31/25 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
>

What did you watch?

>
Another day where going into work for a little bit turned into going to
work for half a day. So, yesterday I only got through soaps, and then
decided to close out the day as "mildly" as I could by watching
"Shifting Gears":
>
Then, because today is the first full "teaching day" of the semester, I
needed to watch something "mild" before bed, so I watched "Shifting Gears":
>
Shifting Gears (Hulu) - Episodes #2-4.
    The networks (this one is ABC) are up to their old tricks again, as
episodes #2 and #3 were clearly shown out of order (IOW, flipped order).
I thought ep. #4 might have also been shown out of order, but Wiki seems
to confirm that it was supposed to be ep. #4 (even if it felt like ep.
#2 in the order!).
    I thought all of these were better than the pilot - ep's #2 & #3
actually managed to do a better job of working in Seann William Scott
and Daryl 'Chill' Mitchell into the action - though ep. #4 was the
weakest of these and wasn't much better than the pilot (if at all!).
    The best of these was ep. #2, which apparently had Brenda Song as a
guest star (she looks so different that I didn't even recognize her!),

 Yeah, if I hadn’t been watching for her, I would’ve never spotted her.
 

which probably explains why ABC showed this episode second, even though
it should have gone third.
    The show is mostly following a pretty familiar formula where Allen
"crotchety old guys" some conservative viewpoint or old guy behavior,
which Kat Dennings needles him for, though she usually also gets hers by
the end.
    This is breaking no new ground, but it's like a pair of comfy old
socks, which makes it perfect for "mild" TV viewing when you don't want
to be challenged by your TV show.

 As of yesterday, the Hulu was only offering me three episodes.
 What was your clue that makes you think they switched running order of
episodes two and three?

In the second episode ABC aired, Dennings' son is already in schools, and is getting academic "accommodations".
In the third episode ABC aired, the same son was nervous, at the episode's beginning, to go to the local school for the first time.
It didn't take a genius to realize the "third episode ABC aired" belonged before the "second episode ABC aired".
But the second episode aired was the best of the episodes (by quite a lot, I think), so it's not surprising that ABC aired in immediately after the pilot even though it should have been "episode #3".

So in the episode two they showed as episode two the son is pretty much of
a retard. But in the episode three they showed as episode three he’s in a
robot club and making robots. Do you think they decided to make him smart
or they decided to make him stupid going forward?

Just because he's a bad test taker doesn't mean he can't built robots - they're different skill sets.