Miracle Workers on TBS

[K Frame]

This show has been on a couple of seasons now, and currently we're in the 4th or 5th season.

Anyone else watch it?

I started watching with season 2, and caught up with season 1. Each season is self-contained and, in general, they've all been pretty good.

Steve Buschemi and Daniel Ratcliff are the two big name stars.

This season's shows are titled End Times, the basic theme being life in a world after a global nuclear war. In look and feel it's a LOT like Mad Max, especially the Beyond Thunderdome movie

All in all it's been a darned good series, but last night's episode was... was... I'm not sure what it was but it was one of the weirdest, oddest, and most unsettling things I've watched in a LONG time. Funny at times, but still... weird and unsettling.

[230RN]

^

"This season's shows are titled End Times, the basic theme being life in a world after a global nuclear war. In look and feel it's a LOT like Mad Max, especially the Beyond Thunderdome movie

"All in all it's been a darned good series, but last night's episode was... was... I'm not sure what it was but it was one of the weirdest, oddest, and most unsettling things I've watched in a LONG time. Funny at times, but still... weird and unsettling."

Maybe it's just plain going downhill.

But with an absolutely new and fresh setting, "End Times," it should be refreshing.

My goodness, "End Times" is an absolutely brilliant new plot line.  It must involve the degradation of societal values and new relationships based on strength and power of individuals and groups. 

And this fresh new concept gives the writers the opportunity to compare it to the feudal system of old and maybe even the Samurai ages of the far east.  And if it were well done, it could even play with the relationship between the States and the federal government.

And, if they're daring, even the precedence of the Church throughout the middle ages... but I don't think they can get away with that.

Wow. 

That kind of bright original thinking should allow it to be carried forward for another couple of seasons.

[HankB]

^^^^

But does it have zombies?

New, bright, original post-apocalyptic shows always have to have zombies.

[230RN]

^ REF HankB.

Even newer, newer, more creative ones just coming off the entertainment production lines have vampombies.  Or was it Zompires...?  I  can't remember, but they have "reinvented" Ford's production line concept for new shows each year.  Longer, wider, sleeker.

They can now route a script through various subassembly lines, like the Love Interest line (branches to male and female love interests and, getting woke nowadays, there's a same-sex sub production line they're forming), the Family Member Killed sub line, the  Family Member Defects to Enemy line, and so forth.

Oh, and there's a "Setting" sub-line and one of the choices there is "The End Of The World As We Know It"  (TEOTWAWKI) and Nuclear Holocaust is one of the sub-sub-production lines.  I guess the show mentioned in the OP went through that one.

I can't neglect the "Sweet Meteor of Death" (SMOD) sub-production line, of course, or RoadKingLarry will never forgive me.

So producers can order up a script with various options and the script departments can route the work through the appropriate production line sub-branches just like you'd order a new car with various options.

_{Gawd that was fun.  And true.  100% true.  Every word. Have I ever lied to you?}


Terry, 230RN

[K Frame]

 

Actually, the series is still very funny. I watched another episode last night, the one after the weird one, and it was quite funny.

Anyway, the one that I found so... weirdly creepy... involved two plot lines. The first was the main married couple. They had both been wild waste landers, but they decided to move to the town and the lack of adventure was starting to cramp their sex life. Their cyborg friend (gay cyborg friend) put them into the matrix. In the scene where Neo called for guns, lots of guns, they call for dildos, lots of dildos. It got weirder from there.

The second story line was Steve Buschemi's character. He plays the town junk entrepeneur who has a LOT of hang ups and ghosts haunting him from his high school days. "They called me Moaning Morris because I moaned so much when they held me down and punched me!"

He finally gets talked into going to his 40th high school reunion and everyone (except the event DJ and the hostess) are... skeletons. "They all died in the boom." Why was that so weird? Well, he talks to and interacts with all of the skeletons as if they're still alive... and he gets up the nerve to ask the snooty cheerleader to dance... and ends up having sex with her skeleton.

As I said, just completely weird.


The episode after that one? It deals with getting older and not being able to party as much anymore...


Anyway...


"My goodness, "End Times" is an absolutely brilliant new plot line. "

Oh my god, you're right! They copied a plot line that has been done before... that's a first in the history of cinema or television! They should all be taken out and abandoned in the waste land!

 

[HankB]

. . . They can now route a script through various subassembly lines, like the Love Interest line (branches to male and female love interests and, getting woke nowadays, there's a same-sex sub production line they're forming), the Family Member Killed sub line, the  Family Member Defects to Enemy line, and so forth . . .

Don't forget the "Bad guy sneaks up in back of the good guy/good gal and takes them by surprise" sub-production line. That's been used SO much it's pretty easy to predict when it's going to happen, even in a show you've never seen before. (It was used in nearly every episode of "Alias", the spy spoof starring Jennifer Garner in the early 2000s.)

[230RN]

Ah, but much of that is dedicated comedy.  Dedicated comedy gets a pass.  It's like the bit on Get Smart, where successive agents get the drop on previous agents.  I think they maxed out at "would you believe" five "Drop its."

"Television is a vast wasteland" Newtom Minow, former Chairman of the FCC, 1961

I don't have to spoof the OP's show.  I think they're spoofing themselves.  And we're the spoofees.

Are we sure they aren't affiliated with the Babylon Bee?

I can imagine the head writer on the necromancy, in desperation, saying to his staff, "Sure, why not? They'll suck up anything.  After all, they were raised on a diet of Wile E. Coyote  falling a thousand feet off the cliff and landing in a puff of dust at the bottom."

https://youtu.be/wRSHzenjiNA (9:13, Interruptible, Skip Ad available, filmed on location at the Royal Gorge, Colorado.)

Dedicated comedy.  Feel free to laugh.  And don't let them con you into "But the skeletons only represent symbolic death."  What a copout.

Terry, 230RN