The Office (US) could have ended with the proposal in the rain.

It probably should have ended with the wedding in Niagara.

It definitely should have ended when Michael left. Don’t give me your Robert California bullshit either. The series was already on fumes and the last two seasons were garbage.

I just watched The Marvels, and I liked it quite a bit, if I stopped short of loving it (but honestly, who LOVES marvel movies? The entire point is high floor/low ceiling entertainment). The plot meanders and it has a typical Marvel “understandable but underdeveloped” villain, but the leads had good chemistry, the switching dynamic was fun, the entire cast from Ms. Marvel is delightful, and Brie Larson is (finally) getting comfortable in the role. I was kinda surprised at how poorly it did, but also kinda not, because fanboys are proving that they really need to see themselves represented or they suddenly develop extremely high standards and demand only groundbreaking entertainment with perfect execution.

Sounds like they specifically lingered on it a couple of times. This one looks like it’s going to just kind of be a compressed version of the cartoon, which could be a lot worse, as we all know. Hopefully it’s respectful and mostly consistent, and people who find they just need to know more can go back and watch the Nick series. Even if that leaves it sort of “slight” for those already invested, it will have value. Fingers crossed.

Otherwise, whimsically hoping the show low-key transitions into basically being a prequel to the expanse.

After the finale, I think they’re on their way, though possibly with less Protomolecule. I also don’t know if my expectations have just been re-leveled, but the human drama this season felt less soapy. Less Danny, more Dani, that probably helped.

Why? More than anything other film I’ve seen … this felt like a poor cover band doing a poor cover that didn’t need to exist.

Mostly agreed, but IMHO a better sendoff than Crystal Skull, which literally tried to delete magic from that universe.

There’s rarely a strict cutoff for this sort of thing. If you’re on the edges, it’s sort of “whichever feels right”. I am only a year older than my wife, and we were both born in the late 70s, but I had a brother 7 years older than me and she was her parents’ first. Based on the TikToks she sends me, she identifies as a millennial. I am much more in tune with the Gen X zeitgeist.

Honestly? I thought Natalie was wooden and terrible in the prequels. Not necessarily her fault, but based solely off of Star Wars, I’d believe you if you told me she and Hayden Christensen had similar and unremarkable career paths.

I like The Orville. I’ve watched the entire run of the show. Much like you with LD though, I don’t quite get how people love The Orville. It strikes me as leftover TNG episodes with a Find and Replace, followed by a liberal coat of Seth MacFarlane’s very particular set of Gen X influences. The morality is often pretty clumsy and I can almost imagine Seth and the writers being frustrated by the ambiguity that a good Trek episode can leave you with. Then, the way it had to start with a more Galaxy quest vibe to get a show order from Fox, followed by Seth wanting it to be more serious but also still be a Seth show, it’s kind of all over the place. I also find some of the acting performances to be amateurish to the point of distraction.

And for all that, I still like it. It scratched an itch and has a lot of heart. On the whole, it’s more than the sum of its parts, but for me it still has a ceiling. I like it about as much as I like Discovery, which I have also watched in its entirety though only once. The two shows’ issues are very different though, with the exception of tonal whiplash.

I have come around on LD. I think it is a similar love letter to to Gen2 Star Trek but handles the balance of trek-to-humor better, and for all their cartoon antics, I’ve found the characters more compelling than The Orville’s.

Maybe I’m a little pollyannaish, but I tend to think that the generations growing up with this stuff will grow around it and configure their social expectations and will settle into rhythms that work as well for them as older generations’ environments did for them. It will look weird to olds, but I always wonder if we’re looking back at the “good ol’ days,” and projecting our own reactions to the changes onto the generations that will take them in stride and make sarcastic wanking gestures at us when we complain.

Pamphlets/Newpapers/Films/Radio/TV/Video Games/Internet/Social Media will all rot your brain and subject you to misinformation and leave you depressed at how you must interact with the world, depending on when you were born and when you are speaking. Not to say there are not unique challenges to each in turn, or that some periods don’t end up worse than others, but I just don’t think our kids are going to treat the world and each other THAT much worse than all their ancestors have, and if they do I’m not sure it is uniquely social media’s fault. There are many things worth knowing about the social impact of new tech, and perspectives that the experienced can offer, especially in transitional eras while it’s new. I just don’t think think doomer handwringing or trying to put genies back into bottles is a good use of anyone’s collective time.