#27 - Odd Man Out: Fight Club

yes - image is froma  differnt episode but it had the two mates on.

Odd Man Out aired in the UK on Trouble (more about that channel later), it's always kind of surprises me when a sit-com that lasted 13 episodes makes it around to my side, I always assumed it was brought as a part of a package involving other shows or either it's really cheap, my memory always suggested it was a show that lasted a full season (not half that).

The premise is about a teenage boy (Erik Von Detten), who lives in a house full of women, including his mother, 3 sisters and auntie and his best friend seems permanently over (which is related to the house full of women thing), the cast I always remembered was Jessica Capshaw (Kate's daughter and Spielberg's step-daughter) played his aunt, Von Detten voiced Sid in Toy Story and was in Christmas Every Day (a movie like Groundhog Day but set at erm... Christmas) and Natali Cigluiti who played one of his sisters was Lindsay on Saved By The Bell - The New Class for the first few seasons (one of the few to survive the cast cul of it's second season).

Odd Man Out see our friends fall out but as the title suggests there is no physical fighting and for a show that got repeated multiple times and I probably watched more then once rang very little bell with me (honestly many of the other episodes might be the same).

The most enjoyment I honestly got out of it was nostalgia to television at that time in my life (my teens) because it did feel like a standard sit-com from that era (which doesn't mean it's bad).

#26 Eye Candy - K3U

I honestly thought Eye Candy was a new show, I mean it's "new" in terms of complete television history, but it's a show I only heard about in the last month or saw and had no idea it began airing in early 2015 and only made it to March (with 10 episodes) so yes not really new liked I believed.

 So alas, I'm behind yet again when it comes to a TV show just like I was with Community, and still am with Game Of Thrones (hopefully that changes the middle of the month when I get a chance to catch up) and I have to say with Eye Candy's pilot episode K3U that while I wasn't blown away, I was intrigued - I assume it's mean't to be a whodunnit and perhaps the killer was already introduced in the first episode but for all I know suspect might get built upon suspect episode after episode and I'm hoping we do actually find out who the killer is for that matter because I don't know if the rug was pulled out from it.

I talked about Victoria Justice, the shows star when I wrote up about Victorious, saying she is absolutely gorgeous, that is an undeniable fact, and even with films I've seen of hers it seems like she as struggled to find a decent enough project for me (either comerically or critically).

Eye Candy starts with Justice picking up her younger sister from a bunch of roughens and while stopping for petrol her sister gets out the car and is abducted in the slowest abduction in the history of mankind (seriously I don't think a film or television series as had one go on so long), cut to now-ish and she is helping other people with missing family because she's a brilliant hacker but not so briliant that she got caught and is tagged (which is about to be taken off).

At a trendy night club her friends put hers on a dating app under the name Eye Candy and it turns out somebody is both watching her and even kills one of the men that is interested in her.

Overall like i said it's not a perfect episode but there was something there to get your teeth into, I've seen worse shows last longer.

(blog post title goes here)

I literally had 0s and 0s of the fans of this blog asking where I have been for almost the past week - firstly it was kind of funny that for a few days it looked like Mrs. Brown's Boys had killed my interest in the blog - truthfully it was much more mundane then that I just decided to take a few days away so I don't get bored by it, I did catch up on TV I watched the rest of the Fuller House series which I enjoyed in it's cheesiness, also watched some selected Community episodes that I consider among my favourites, yada yada yada, regular programming will return very soon...

#25 - Mrs. Brown's Boys: Mammy's Valentine

Okay, let's get the bias out of the way... I REALLY CAN'T STAND THIS SHOW, so I have to admit there could be some instant viewer bias here, and I actually mistyped the title at first on for some reason wrote "Mrs. Brown's Eye" which yeah is pretty fitting when it comes to my opinion of this show. Anyway I would say I find the jokes tired and worn out and hate that every other character seems to find Mrs. Brown so feckin' hilarious (helps that he - as in Brendan O'Carroll, the man in very bad drag - wrote it).

The people I know who seem to like this show are over 50, I'm sure you might be younger and like it or know people younger then that who like but in my life there is nobody I know who is a fan of this who was born after 1975. So I chose to watch Mrs. Brown's Boys because so far on this blog I've been doing television episodes I actually watch and wanted to watch something that would challenge me and try and watch it with an open mind.

At this point want I want to say I have no problem with broad comedy and I've laughed plenty at broad humour in the past it's just Mrs. Brown's Boys does absolutely nothing for me.

The plot centres around Agnes (as in Mrs. Agnes Brown) not having a date for valentine, there's internet dating involved, the exact situtations you expect will arise and at one point Mammy turns on the laptop and is told to press "any key" and she searches for any key, haha... wait didn't Homer query where the any key was back in the feckin' 90s! - but to be fair that is probably the episodes freshest joke, take another joke for example...

"What do you call the useless thing at the end of a willy?" --- "a man"

That is a legit joke in the episode, are you kidding me??? I think I heard that for the first time in the 1990s and I would wager it was a few decades old by that point.

There was probably gold to mine from the episodes premise but O'Carroll goes for the most predictable jokes imaginable and it doesn't help that most of the cast aren't really performeners (I believe many are relatives or the like), I was also not a fan of when things went wrong and they kept I in mainly because it didn't feel particularly natural.

In fairness I did laugh at one bit, when Mrs. Brown cried when she got stood up, but I don't think that was mean't to be funny, but it was played so sincere that is just verged on the ridiculous

I really did give this a chance but it's not for me, if you do find it funny and I do mean it in a none sarcastic way - but good for you, not all shows are mean't for everyone, I'm sure I could put say Spaced on for somebody who might like this and they'll call it awful and unfunny so I have to say no new fan here and probably never will be.

#24 - Puppetman: Unsold Pilot

I got to witness "The Muppets" during the first part of the first season of Saturday Night Live, I say this just to prove as much as I love Jim Henson and those Muppets, I know for certain not everything he touched turned to gold I was also aware from a Jim Henson biography that in 1987 he produced a show titled Puppetman that went unsold and was about the goings on behind the scenes of a puppet show (but not like The Muppet Show, I mean the actual puppeteers).

It's best to say my opinion on Puppetman is mixed, anything involving the puppets is pretty good and there is some nice Muppet characters that wouldn't be out of place elsewhere but... the plot about Gary (Fred Newman) looking after his son and finding out the mother is going be away for 6 months (they've split) is so generic that you just want the scenes too move along.

I don't know if this was the first thing that Henson produced that took away the illusion of the Muppet characters but that might have some explaniation to why it was never picked up, but there is a spark there with the behind the scenes (though it's not exactly Larry Sanders Show).

Overall I've seen worse make it to series and go on years but next to some other Jim Henson work it's just not in the same league.

#23 - RoboCop The Animated: The Man In The Iron Suit

Based on the 1987 movie RoboCop, it's probably one of the more surprising properties to get an animated adaption aimd at kids (only The Toxic Avenger probably beats it in suprising stakes) and it's something I remembered watching quite fondly as a child, so what surprises me most when I look it up that was only 13 episodes produced of the cartoon series (which was the same amount with The Toxic Crusaders).

So obviously the violence as being neutered, nobody gets there arm shot off or ran over after being covered in toxic waste, but what did surprise me is that when he thought Lewis was killed that it seems like he wanted to take revenge (in the killing sort of way).

This episode plot is about Dr. McNamara creating an iron suit that is mean't to be better then RoboCop and gets Lt. Hedgecock who despises RoboCop in the suit and challenge him to prove it's far superiror. Yadda yadda, you can guess who comes out on top.

So RoboCop: The Animated Series is in line with a lot of animated actiony shows of the time period in that from a non bais point of view a lot of them can be samey, still it's an enjoyable trip down memory lane for me.

#22 - Coming To America: Unsold Pilot

I like to think I have a pretty good knowledge of shows based on films, even the ones that failed or only made it as far as an unsold pilot, but I have to admit the existence of an unsold pilot for Coming To America passed me by.

So a year after the films release, a television pilot was produced in 1989 which rather then Eddie Murphy (who would have been way too expensive - but he stayed on executive role) we get Tommy Davidson playing Prince Tariq (you'll recall Murphy played Prince Akeem). Davidson about a year later would go onto to appear in sketch show In Living Color.

While Akeem set off to find a woman who loved him for him and not his money, Tariq as being exiled to America by his brother to attend college and has blown through his allowance in only 9 days. While Murphy was charming in the role, Davidson is nothing like that even other female character which p-off's his aide Oha (Paul Bates - who is the only actor to appear from the people, he has the same name but it's unclear if he was mean't to be the same character) and to make money get a job at their landlords diner (not McDowells).

It's not very good, but if it had gone to series and made it to show in 89, I would have probably regularly watched it. Another thing that stood out with the pilot was the randon excuses for Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson impressions.

Overall, more of a curio then anything and easy to see why there wasn't a series to follow.