Let's play pretend,

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing..

The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

So we have a snap election in Spain, and widespread disruption of schools in France as they protest underfunding? Well, it makes a change to see reports on this instead of whatever is going on in the US from day to day.

For those wanting to ease into "the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" as Keats puts it, or "spooky season" as several online retailers seem to insist on calling it, PattyCake Productions, makers of fine Disney homages and tributes, has released a new track, "Home is Where the Haunt Is" an electro-swing earworm, and tribute to the Haunted Mansion, with VoicePlay's Geoff Castellucci on lead vocals, with his bass notes seemingly bypassing the ears and going straight to the spinal column.

The second season of the UK Celebrity edition of The Traitors (the only reality show I've watched in YEARS) has just started, with a remarkable line-up (ie I'd heard of more than 40% of them before), and Richard E Grant immediately cornering the market in attention grabbing eccentricity by the unusual route of, the admitting he was a Traitor to everyone in earshot the first time he was asked (as a joke) by another player. He could have played it off as a joke, but you could actually see the moment his brain seized up. His subsequent explanations were amusing, though hardly convincing, and the only reason not everyone is assuming he IS a Traitor is the fervent belief that no one could be THAT bad at it.

After it's multiple Emmy wins, I tried "Widow's Bay" and I'm just... not getting it. The production values are high and the acting seems fine, but the whole vibe is just... "Everyone on our quaint little town is quirky (or an asshole) and that means EVERYONE!" that I also got from "Gilmore Girls"and "Twin Peaks" (both shows I REALLY wanted to like more than I did) and this seems like those with a "supernatural" instead of "Coming of Age" or "David Lynch weird" theme. I think, sometimes you do need a regular character to bounce the oddities off of (See Joel in "Northern Exposure") and I've not found that in this. I can see the Mayor is supposed to be that, but he's not selling it to me. Oh well, my loss I'm sure.

I did Found a couple of stashes of short lived old shows to pass the time from around the turn of the century, and gosh, some of those haven't aged well! :) "Jake 2.0", a perfectly decent attempt from 2003 at a low budget sci-fi superpowers show, marred by, amongst other things, Christopher Gorham's distractingly bad haircut (No, seriously, it IS that bad), and the ACHINGLY hip "Level 9" from 2000 where overly trendy nerds work for a government agency with super-duper (ie terrifyingly intrusive) tech for observation (spying), utterly unconvincing keyboard skills, and so much jargon flying around that they actually have a character called "Jargon".

Also 2002's "Glory Days", a VERY short lived series from Kevin Williamson who wanted to make something akin to "Dawson's Creek", but for older viewers, but was then asked to make it a mystery series, and honestly, it plays out like live action Scooby Doo as seemingly supernatural events are always explained as being faked via means which seem less plausible than supernatural activity would have been.

So, since I've not asked a question in a while; What's your favourite "It's awful but I love it" old show? :)

Late addition: The BBC has released it's first image from the upcoming pre-school show: "Doctor Who: TARDIS Crew". Get ready for a slew of fanboys who are decades older than the target audience wanting to play "Affronted Bingo" over this. Bonus points for them using "DEI" as an expletive!

So, we have reached the end of Lanterns season 1....

( In Stewarts eyes, in Jordan's butt. Spoilers lie, beneath this cut )