The one hundred sixth TV show: #871 Bob's Burgers
"How have you not written up Bob's Burgers, we watch it every week?" Because I hadn't thought about it, to be honest. It's an easy thing to fix though, going through some classic episodes on a Sunday morning.
The show is both quite grounded with the normal problems that (mostly) affect families - no celebrities, no trips into space or anything else like that. You instead get weirdly heightened and bizarre storylines that feel quite grounded, anchored by some excellent voice acting and weird characters. Even despite that, the show keeps its heart with a family that cares for each other and characters that continue to help each other. It always feels on and somehow keeps at the same level for a long time and I'm more wondering where else they can go with it.
The one hundred fifth TV show: #624 Winter Sonata
For this random pick, we ended up diving into another Korean show - we're a bit ahead on that now, but that's fine. It's a show that made us think about what we'd do in these circumstances and a show that made us feel a lot of things as we went through. It's a love story told over twenty episodes that has multiple car accidents, a big amnesia storyline and a few other twists that feel a bit bigger, but there is enough foreshadowing that it builds all of this quite well it works in context. Along there are a bunch of characters that we learn to love and hate. A lot of the conflict comes down from a lack of communication - possibly also the way relationships are dealt with in Korean culture.
The main thing that stands out from other dramas is the pace of plot and reveals. Just as your interest might be starting to fade a bit, the next step comes along - sometimes a big revelation, sometimes something smaller, but it feels like it keeps moving. The first two episodes are off that a bit, dragging a bit but setting up a lot that gets paid off in the next 18 episodes, while the end drags a bit because it needs to resolve a lot more (and there's one reveal that's set up so early that it feels like it could have come sooner), but overall it works quite well. Commit to get past the first bit and the rest of the series really unfolds well.
The one hundred twenty-eighth album: #128 Jeff Beck - Truth
WIth these rock bands, you have two groups. One is a collaborative effort, like the Beatles, where some might be more prolific, but it is at least nominally equal, on stage if not when creating the songs. Then we get something like Jeff Beck, backed by the Jeff Beck group. Here there is room for the other musicians, but the focus is still on the lead, in the music and vocals.
What the album gives us is a number of rock covers, with the distortion and loudness stepped up (not unlike Jimi Hendrix's sound), and reworks of classic blues songs where the same is done. The vocals sound on point for this style of hard rock and the heavy guitar soloes work well with them. Ol' Man River is a nice stand out track as well, where the heavier blues elements create a different sounds - still with the heavier sound, but not as intense as the other songs on the album. At the same time, Beck's Bolero, a solo number, is a magnificent tour de force that is purely instrumental, displaying some great guitar work. It's an album that has quite a bit of variation, but in the end feels like a powerful rock statement.
The sixtieth comic: #225 Steel Claw
The British publication Valliant Comics has spawned a bunch of on going series. Steel Claw is a story of an anti hero who first loses his hand, then gains the power to turn invisible when the steel claw that replaced that hand gets an electric charge. At first, that turns our titular Steel Claw into a villain, but later he becomes an anti hero and then general hero trying to protect others. Because of his limited powers (which gets expanded at one point, but it looks like that's temporary) he has to rely on himself far more, and with a ticking clock on his invisibility there's something less easy about his rescues. It's all still plot convenient, of course, but it plays with the concept in a way that only Iron Man really seems to do... and he's always got more gadgets. It feels, at least in the stories we read, quite down to earth, and that's what made for something quite different to read - supernatural, but not too far towards superhero comics.
The sixty-second classical recording: #612 Sergey Taneyev - Piano Quintet
While the previous recording had a clear story, today's quintet is more abstract, five pianists playing together accompanied by violins.There's something quite intense about it, at times as if the different instruments are fighting to be heard, while contrastring with places where the a single piano is slowly supported by one or two more. It goes between those delicate and bombastic moments, with the build up being as fascinating, it's not unearned or jarring.
The one hundred fourth TV show: #498 Space Ghost Coast To Coast
Looking at the list, our personal picks tend to lean towards the eclectic. Space Ghost Coast To Coast is technically a talk show, but with an animated cast, the celebrity interviews are little more than window dressing to hang weird jokes on. Answers are cut up with new questions around them to feed into the weird antics from Space Ghost and his sidekicks Zorak and Moltar. It's bizarre, even more so than something like Childrens Hospital, and clearly made on a budget to reuse material. It's funny, sometimes hilarious, sometimes just weirdly out there, but the sheer variety of ways the show goes is what really sets it apart.
The one hundred twenty-seventh album: #127 The Band - Music From Big Pink
The songs list does ess with my head a bit when it comes to what I've heard before - this is the first appearance of The Band (excluding any Bob Dylan collaborations), but it feels like I've been through their background before. This album in a way worked better for me musically than Dylan - while the lyrics gain less focus (although some are still Dylan penned and brilliant in that sense), the vocals end up a bit more pleasant and the sound of a well rehearsed band makes this sound good even without the meaning behind the songs.
There are some good known songs on here, The Weight and This Wheel's On Fire especially standing out (although the latter is probably more famous in a cover version). It's a nice, gentle rock album with some good songs and lyrics to go with them and the album comes out well because of that.
The sixty-first classical recording: #381 Leo Delibes - Coppelia
The problem with this being a classical recordings list is that visual parts like a ballet get lost and those change your interpretation of the music. In a ballet like this, the music shifts more than when there are leitmotifs and with no vocals to go on either, the imagination can go anywhere.At least knowing the story, it's possible to match the different parts of the performance to the story, which makes it easier to get some context for them.
The music hits a lot of the "standard" ballet beats, including some dances specifically to show off performer skills. They're good, but obviously we get an incoherent section here, which when just listening to the recording feels less necessary. Still, the music of the entire suite is good, even if I miss a bit of a throughline that I feel I get in others.
The one hundred third TV show: #816 Modern Family
We originally gave up Modern Family about six seasons in. We started off loving it, but that wear off. I'm not quite sure when it changed, but it started to grow stale. While a gay couple felt progressive when it started, how chaste it stayed, and how much it fell into stereotypes, made it feel stuck in time. There's not always a lot of growth - there's progress in the characters' place in life, but not really in personalities. It makes the entire show feel quite samey and really reliant on the episode and the characters who get focus. Nolan Gould, for example, really grew into his role and is often the best part and most of the kids work better as the series develops. It's clear they can carry more material, but it takes too long for that to come out.
Another show, The Middle, debuted at the same time, airing an hour earlier, and while its start wasn't as strong, it developed into a stronger show. There's a smaller cast, but with a stronger throughline, and they shifted focus throughout. They got stuck too, but there's something more human and more believable to that show than Modern Family is. The humanity can be missing sometimes and there's almost a manufactured cynicism to the formula that means the show doesn't always land well.
The one hundred twenty-sixth album: #126 The Small Faces - Ogden's Nut Gone Flake
If I have to summarize the first half of this album, it's that it's variations of rock. Some songs go harder, some softer, but it's moving within these defined parameters. Long Agos and Worlds Apart and Rene stand out here. From a soulful ballady song it becomes a drinking song set to rock. The decent rock songs, like Song of a Baker, work best for me, but on the whole it's good to listen to (although the stereo effects got quite distracting and made me wonder whether my headphones were failing).
The second half is more of a concept album, a fairy tale told through rock. Narrated by Stanley Unwin, we get a concept album with a story that would work better as a bedtime story than those that came before. It's quite a nice story and while the songs don't have the variety of the first half, it's well put together.