knitting tv recs

[eruthros]

Today is Post All The Things I Have Been Composing In Tabs day!

I need new knitting TV. The thing is, a lot of tv I'm watching or re-watching with people, so I can't put on five episodes in a row while I finish up that scarf. (At the moment, this rules out X-Files, Farscape, Xena, and probably Fringe.) I like my knitting TV to be have interesting characters and plots but also be pleasantly trope-y, so that I can just glance up every few seconds to go "right, they're doing the interrogation scene, check." If it's amazing and groundbreaking and I have to have all my attention focused on it, it's not good for knitting.

For a while I was watching Criminal Minds, first because I loved Morgan and Garcia, and later because I loved Morgan and Garcia and was staring in a sort of train-wreck kind of fascination at the sudden fail of the show, but I think that I have now hit the limit of my train-wreck fascination, so now I need something new. Other good knitting TV has included Numb3rs, the Dead Zone, Leverage, SG1, Mythbusters, the Sarah Jane Adventures, V, Starsky and Hutch, various rewatches of things, and other things I've forgotten now. Things that are generally not good tv for me include most sitcoms (I sitcom-embarrassment-squick easily), crime dramas that are really into victim-cam or into only-weirdos-commit-crimes, and fantasy that does our-(heterosexual)-relationship-is-destined.

In which I live-IM and clip to document the end of my train-wreck fascination with Criminal Minds and distract from the main point of this post but seriously you guys this actually happened on the show I cannot even deal:

eruthros: ... so I'm just about to start watching this episode of Criminal Minds
eruthros: it's called Corazon
eruthros: it's set in Miami

bitter_crimson: *tilts head*

eruthros: the first thirty seconds have involved somebody's hands cut off with a machete, and a cat's head ditto, and Reid has already said "Santeria" and "Cuba"
eruthros: votes on "omg creepy voodoo sacrifices!!!" ?

bitter_crimson: ...wowwww
bitter_crimson: I'm guessing it will happen

eruthros: me too
eruthros: oh man

bitter_crimson: oh show, why so awful now

eruthros: also they were just like, "so is the unsub sacrificing people to Eleggua?"
eruthros: and Reid was all, "none of these religions openly call for human sacrifice"
eruthros: SERIOUSLY
eruthros: OPENLY
eruthros: THANKS REID
eruthros: WHY AM I STILL WATCHING THIS SHOW

bitter_crimson: haha
bitter_crimson: <3
bitter_crimson: I cannot answer that question for you
bitter_crimson: heh

eruthros: oh actually I lied
eruthros: the first thirty seconds of the show
eruthros: involved Reid having a kinda spooky supernaturalesque headache
eruthros: OH and also the unsub is turning crosses upside-down and shit

bitter_crimson: lol seriously, is Reid having ~psychic visions~??

eruthros: and the murders are in a Latino neighborhood obv
eruthros: I DON'T KNOW
eruthros: he's wearing big black glasses and whatever

bitter_crimson: maybe he's just transforming into Lady Gaga

eruthros: ... that would be awesome
eruthros: just think about lady gaga on a crime show

bitter_crimson: it would be epic
bitter_crimson: she would show up to crime scenes wrapped in her crime tape outfit from Telephone
bitter_crimson: haha

eruthros: that would be great

bitter_crimson: I think I shall acquire some fooood

eruthros: um
eruthros: wait
eruthros: Reid actually is having a vision now
eruthros: as near as I can tell

bitter_crimson: lol wut srsly

eruthros: yeah, hang on, let me clip it for you
eruthros: it is amazing
eruthros: (ly bad)

bitter_crimson: ha

eruthros: I'll upload it while you get food :)

eruthros: "so what makes Palo darker than other religions?" one of the good guys asks seriously
eruthros: Morgan and Reid just walked into a community center to find a bunch of black Cubans sacrificing birds and singing/dancing (and it's the same building Reid saw in his vision earlier)
eruthros: ... I think this is probably the last straw for me

And I did in fact upload Reid's possibly-vision-thing for chagrined, so if you, too, want to boggle, here it is. It contains violence against humans, violence against animals, and racist tropes. There's a description of the clip below the video.

There's no dialogue in the clip. Reid leans back from reading a book, looks up at the ceiling, and sees the symbol that was painted on the floor at an earlier murder site. Then there are a series of images: a skinned goat's head, a dove flapping its wings, alcohol being drunk + a cigar being smoked, an old white house. Reid startles and sits up, and then the shot transitions to a non-visiony murder scene, where that symbol is on the floor, and a dove has just been beheaded. The whole thing is set to drums + chanting.

Comments

[isagel]

Seriously, I am not believing how bad Criminal Minds has become. I recently had to insta-assault anatsuno in the comments to an entirely unrelated post of hers that I happened to have open as I watched with my complete and uncontainable *headdesk* at the episode with the swingers. I think that was some of the worst tv I've ever seen, quite apart from it being kink-negative in the extreme. It's like they suddenly have no clue what they're doing.

[eruthros]

Oh god, the swingers one! Which was, absolutely, both bad tv on the level of plot and characterization AND on the level of kink-negativity and slut-shaming. Why I didn't bail at the swingers one, or the Romani one, I do not know. Except that it was so bad that I had to keep watching it because I didn't believe it.

It was once good, or at least decent, tv. I think. Maybe. Better tv, anyway.

[anatsuno]

I have to refrain from hitting things every time I watch an episode now. It's become utter offensive tripe. D:

[eruthros]

Yeah, basically! It's just so bad.

[meretia]

I'm battling insomnia by browsing the "Latest posts" thing.

I did most of my Christmas knitting watching "Arrested Development" and episodes of "The Daily Show" I'd missed earlier in the week. Most of the humor comes from witty dialogue, so it was easy to just listen to the jokes and glance up from time to time to see what the characters were talking about. "Pushing Daisies" worked pretty well too since the narrator describes so often what was going on or what people were thinking, but that got a little hard to follow sometimes unless I kept an eye on it.

[chagrined]

Alas, I have no good suggestions! White Collar, maybe? Or is that one which requires too much attention? Hmmmm.

I am happy you have been able to quit Criminal Minds, though! <3 (Is my icon more appropriate, or ironic? Heh.)

[eruthros]

I do like White Collar! But there isn't enough of it to knit to -- mostly I need shows that have had decent runs to date!

I think you icon is more ironic, because I *facepalm* all the time about the Hotch's-manpain-episodes.

[fightingarrival]

Bones might make for good knitting television?

Lolol the summary for that Criminal Minds ep. Criminal Minds used to be facepalmy/so bad it's still bad, but it hurts in a good way show. Before that it was L&O:TOS and now it's Hawaii Five-0.

Is that ep as amazing and condescending as that one episode that happens in Mexico where the unsub crossdresses so he can kill old ladies? Or the one with the black unsub who kills teenage black girls with good singing voices, and it's all 'Colorblindness!' and 'Racism kills!' Or some other episode I can't think of off the top of my head? Did they quote Ayn Rand at the end of the ep? It's always the best when they end the ep by quoting someone you have no respect for.

[eruthros]

I watched Bones for a while, but eventually I couldn't take the Bones-and-Booth-investigate-weirdos-ness of it. Sometimes I hit that line! I like crime shows, but man so many of them are so racist/misogynistic/kink-negative/neoliberal etc.

This ep they quoted Helen Keller; I also love the ones where the quotes are so unconnected to the story as to make me eyeroll. I'd forgotten that amazingly condescending episode that was like "LOOK MEXICO HAS SERIAL KILLERS TOO IT'S NOT A SYSTEMIC AMERICAN PROBLEM" -- and I'd forgotten that they actually called it "machismo." Oh Criminal Minds, once upon a time only some of your episodes were that bad, and now they all are! Also I have no recollection of the one with the black unsub killing black girls, but I can suggest another episode for the one you can't think of off the top of your head -- how about the one where the unsub is an undocumented Mexican immigrant day laborer who gave himself brain damage sniffing glue and hops from town to town on the train, killing white people? And the Criminal Minds team is very ~sympathetic~ and ~understanding~ about poverty?

[fightingarrival]

*takes time to watch clip now that she's not at work*

Reid got a haircut?! OMG Who let this happen?!!!1 Forget everything else, that's the real crime here.

Also I can only see the psychic visions turning into 'hereditary schizophrenia = magic = the christian god's gift to special people', which will be a whole 'nother world of facepalm.

[eruthros]

Also I can only see the psychic visions turning into 'hereditary schizophrenia = magic = the christian god's gift to special people', which will be a whole 'nother world of facepalm.

Especially since he went to a doctor at the end of this episode, and the doctor was like "There's no physical reason for your headaches! Therefore they're all in your head!" And Reid's response was "I know what mental illness looks like and I don't have it." (As if those are the only two options, sigh.) I have not watched the subsequent episodes, but it does suggest that they're going there. *pre-facepalms*

[anatsuno]

Bones might be good knitting TV, especially since it now delights in a lot more useless gore than before- I'm quite happy to listen to it instead of actually watching the screen, nowadays. Of course, it is also regularly enraging, mostly re: morals, heterosexism, gender essentialism and religion, among others. But I still watch it and there are a few characters I still love a lot.

I knit in front of The Mentalist (enraging in many ways thanks to the assholish title char, but I watch the screen when Cho is on <3), Community (but it's a sitcom, you might not like it), Castle, Human Target and both NCIS, but I'm now nearing the point in my cycle where I can't take the fascism of supposedly heroic LEO anymore, so I'm going to eject NCIS soon. I can't take another muslim-fundamentalist-terrorist-related plotline.

[eruthros]

I watched and enjoyed Bones for a while, but eventually I hit my personal line of "too irritating to watch." Sometime around the episode with ponyplay, iirc.

I don't know Human Target, perhaps I will check it out!

[anatsuno]

The ponyplay episode remains in my top-three hated eps of Bones, yes.

Human Target is very trite and silly, so makes for good TV knitting. I enjoy Chi Mc Bride's petulance and Mark Valley's all-American hero blandness. It's really nothing to write home about. *g*