What Was the Last Television Episode You Watched?

Out of curiosity/boredom, I watched the first third of the first episode of the old series Love, American Style (1969 - 1974.) I say first third, because this was an anthology series with more than one story per episode, sort of like a comedy version of Night Gallery. (Like Night Gallery, there were brief vignettes between the main stories.) Every story had the title "Love and [something]"

Anyway, this story was pure farce. Guy's ex-wife shows up at his place just as his new girlfriend is about to arrive for dinner, when he intends to propose to her. Ex-wife tries on the engagement ring he plans to offer to the girlfriend and can't get it off. Hijinks ensue. It's all played very broadly, with a very annoying laugh track.
 
The second third of the first episode of Love, American Style is notable for being the first television appearance of Flip Wilson. He's a pool hustler facing an unknown opponent in a game worth a huge pile of money. Anybody watching this is sure to predict that the foxy lady he just met, and who acts as if she knows nothing about the game ("Which one is the cue ball?") is the secret opponent, and that she beats him easily. That's the entire plot, with a rather sweet ending. (He admits she's better, and she uses the money to treat him to a night on the town.) Featuring an all African-American cast, with old-time comic actors Eddie Anderson (Rochester on the Jack Benny programs) and Mantan Moreland (in zillions of old movies, including the long-running Charlie Chan series, as the comedy relief, and often the best thing in a lot of cheap films.) Wilson is very much his extroverted self (he yells "Woo!" a lot, as if he's already playing Geraldine or the pastor of the Church of What's Happenin' Now) so your enjoyment of the story may depend on how you react to that persona. And damn that laugh track!
 
And the last third. Not particularly funny, but a fascinating look at how attitudes have changed. Parents are worried because their teenage daughter (who never shows up) is going on a "swinger's tour" of Europe with her boyfriend. Boyfriend shows up, and parents try to trick him into taking Mom's birth control pills with him so he can sneak them into daughter's drinks, telling him they're vitamins. Since he's not an idiot, he recognizes the round container of pills for what it is. Turns out the boyfriend, the cleanest-cut young man you've ever seen, has strictly honorable intentions. Wow.
 
JunkMonkey said:
My main criteria for deciding if an episode is good or bad (not that it's really as simple dichotomy as that) boils down to -

Does the episode involve:
  • Soap opera elements which can only be understood in the context of previous episode/s?
  • Does it have Q in it?
  • Does the resolution involve Geordie and/or Data frantically recalibrating, bypassing, reconfiguring, overloading and diverting some previously unmentioned piece of equipment to blah blah blah... and achieving this with only seconds to spare?
  • A Klingon ritual we have never heard of before?
  • Data misconstruing a common figure of speech he may well have used himself in a previous episode?
  • A close up of Jonathan Frakes flaring his nostrils?

Answering yes to any of the above usually means it's sh*t.

Does the episode involve:
  • A story which I can imagine having read in an early 1960s Galaxy Magazine? (This usually calls for the script to strip the familiar characters of all backstory and present them as types - The Captain, The Ship's Telepath, The Engineer etc.)
  • Patrick Stewart getting some real acting slid in between all the duff lines he has to deliver?
  • Gratuitous amounts of Deanna Troi's cleavage?

Answering yes to any of the above usually means it's not automatically sh*t.

This is not a rigid list as many items will cancel each other out to varying degrees.

The last episode I watched, Night Terrors, had more shots of Marina Sirtis's inter-mammary sulcus than the last season as a whole. Patrick Stewart acting his little socks off - and the most absurd "if we release the hydrogen from our Bussard collectors the aliens can explode it! thus freeing us from the madeupium energy rift" .... bullsh**, get out of free, techno-babble resolution of the season so far. Which sank the episode to the lower strata of the dung heap... with only seconds to spare.
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I loved the techno babble (which was not all nonsense, one of the show's science advisers was Leonard Mlodinow), I also loved Q and Data's constant struggle to understand the complexity (and nuances) of human behavior. And I liked all the episodes that featured Klingons. I also enjoyed the Night Terrors episode including its resolution. TNG was the best of the lot, it's no surprise that so many current Sci-Fi writers loved the show (Alastair Reynolds for example).
 
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CrazyKB said:
I loved the techno babble (which was not all nonsense, one of the show's science advisers was Leonard Mlodinow), I also loved Q and Data's constant struggle to understand the complexity (and nuances) of human behavior. And I liked all the episodes that featured Klingons. I also enjoyed the Night Terrors episode including its resolution. TNG was the best of the lot, it's no surprise that so many current Sci-Fi writes loved the show (Alastair Reynolds for example).
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Oh, Night Terrors was doing great guns till the end, really building up a nice sense of unease and tension (so good I instantly forgave the Kingon Hari-Kirilike ritual bits) - despite the continuity lapse in the morgue but that could be explained away as part of the hallucinations that Dr Crusher was suffering... but the end was a real plot rabbit pulled out of nowhere.
 
The first episode of the Planet of the Apes TV series (1974) available on the Internet Archive.
Frankly, I think it holds up. Too bad it only got 14 episodes before it was cancelled. - Then again, in England that would be 5 years!

Planet of the Apes TV Series : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The series begins with the crash of an Earth spaceship that encountered a time warp while approaching Alpha Centauri on August 19, 1980. The spaceship is...
archive.org
 
Just began watching A Spy Among Friends. What happened to traitor Kim Philby after he disappeared to Russia in the early sixties? What was his background that led to such betrayal? So far, an excellent show, starring Damien Lewis and Guy Pearce. Recommended.
 
THE WILD WILD WEST S3 - The Night Dr. Loveless Died -- This one had a couple of good disguise scenes although it wasn't too hard to guess that the episode title was misleading.

MANNIX : s1 Run Sheep, Run - Mannix is hired to protect a witness named Mavis but the first Mavis turns out to be a fake and he has trouble finding the real Mavis as crooked police are seeking to rub her out.

STARSKY AND HUTCH S 1 Texas Longhorn - A tycoon's wife is raped and killed but he is such a good ol boy he doesn't seem too upset until the cops zero in on the culprits and he decides to take them out himself. Written by Michael Mann.
 
The Changes (1973)
A children's SF drama that I remember from my own childhood. People suddenly and inexplicably rebel against all things technological. They are struck by a madness that drives them to hate and feel compelled to destroy all forms of machinery and electrical items. The story follows one teenage girl's journey through the madness and the need that finally drives her to seek out the cause of these changes.

@Danny McG warned me that the books were better but I've never read them so I'm not in a position to judge. Now that I've seen this series from an adult point of view, it does feel a bit weak in places, but that could be as much down to budget limitations on these types of shows at the time as anything else. It's still worthy of a watch, even if only as a historical exercise in the few more thought provoking shows that were available to youngsters in the seventies.

It's not bad but it's just not as good as the show from this era that I still regard as the benchmark - Timeslip. If you've never seen this particular TV show, give yourself a treat and hunt it down.:)
 
Cthulhu.Science said:
The first episode of the Planet of the Apes TV series (1974) available on the Internet Archive.
Frankly, I think it holds up. Too bad it only got 14 episodes before it was cancelled. - Then again, in England that would be 5 years!

Planet of the Apes TV Series : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The series begins with the crash of an Earth spaceship that encountered a time warp while approaching Alpha Centauri on August 19, 1980. The spaceship is...
archive.org
Click to expand...

Why 5 years?
British TV show are usually commissioned in season of 6 episodes (not always though, Doctor Who (New Who) has, I think, 11 episodes a season) but 6 is the usual. Even stonking great successes like Peaky Blinders only has 6 episodes a season.
 
JunkMonkey said:
Why 5 years?
British TV show are usually commissioned in season of 6 episodes (not always though, Doctor Who (New Who) has, I think, 11 episodes a season) but 6 is the usual. Even stonking great successes like Peaky Blinders only has 6 episodes a season.
Click to expand...
Oops. My sarcasm seemed to hit a soft spot.
I guess I overshot the mark.
Even Doctor Who of the era had 5 episodes per season!

No offense meant in my exaggeration.
 
Mission Impossible "The Emerald." Phelps and the IMF team has to steal a microfilm on the back of a rare jewel by winning it in a poker game--using various cheats of course.
 
The Silent Sea. A Korean original Netflix series. In a water-deprived, dystopian world, a team of astronauts is tasked to retrieve a mysterious cargo at an abandoned lunar station.

The title comes from the observations of Galileo, who thought that the lunar mares were water. And water is a main theme in this series.

Great suspense. It hints one thing at you, and then delivers something slightly different; so you never figure things out before they happen (as you often do in cheap productions).

The worldbuilding is also great. One of the main reasons I consume dystopian fiction is to analyze worldbuilding. As water is so scarce, people are categorized by their Water Class. People line up to fill their bottles from pumps that resemble gas stations. The higher your class, not only the more water you get, but also public services like health.

Oh, the Koreans!
 
I just spent a week dogsitting for a friend. There was a telly. I mostly watched fun films, but there were a few programmes I caught bits of - QI, Star Trek, Scrapheap Challenge, GBBO, Winterwatch, the Kenny Everett Video Show, M.A.S.H., Come Dine With Me, and best of all was several hours of the European Indoor Athletics Championships.
Of those, I think Winterwatch was the last.
 
HareBrain said:
What service is that on (if not DVD)?

I'm on a joyful rewatch of Blackadder III.
Click to expand...

It's available to buy on Amazon Prime. I think I paid £5.99 for the full 10 episodes of 25 mins each. It's quite a slow burner drama, but worth watching for the nostalgia factor.

Another brilliant release is the DVD of 'Come Back Lucy' a very spooky children's Victorian-style ghost story from the 1970s. Never expected to see this commercially released. I used to have vague recollections of a girl being transported back in time through a mirror; it took a long time to track down that it was (probably) this programme. Just as good (if not better) than The Clifton House Mystery, The Moonstone etc.
 
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