What we're watching

Not gonna lie, I was waiting for Patrick Stewart to show up and throw him out a cathedral window. No such luck, but it definitely still has a Lords of Shadow vibe.

Didn't notice this point until just now. For the love of the God-Emprah, not Gundam SEED. The Gundams look cool in the games and stuff, but the show itself is...blargh. If you really want to watch SEED and SEED Destiny, go watch Gundam Wing and/or Mobile Suit Gundam, along with Zeta Gundam instead, since SEED and Destiny are quasi-reboot parallel universe versions of those--except they are sorely lacking the awesome that is Treize Khushrenada and Char Aznable while tripling the amount of whiny protagonists, Mary Sue characters, and intensifying the level of whining to boot.

Kira Yamato needs a good old-fashioned BRIGHT SLAP, but unfortunately, Bright doesn't exist in that series.

Or, if you're feeling more like watching Super Robots, G Gundam. Unlike other Gundams and much like TTGL, G Gundam mechs run on the power of awesome.

Keep in mind that the other Gundam series all have their own amounts of whiny main characters (Its a Gundam thing) but yeah...SEED and SEED Destiny went overboard with it. Zeta Gundam's main character is also pretty bad, but thankfully someone had the sense to bring back the old archrival from the original Mobile Suit Gundam and throw him in there as a secondary protagonist and veteran combat pilot to help counterbalance him.

Horrible main character aside, Zeta Gundam was pretty interesting, if a tad depressing at times. Best way I've seen to describe it for the unfamiliar is by comparing it to a hypothetical Star Wars scenario. After the Empire in Star Wars collapses, the New Republic takes over. The Republic then suffers a coup by a group of extremists. Luke Skywalker is celebrated as a national hero for defeating the Empire but is placed under house arrest and 24/7 surveillance because of the potential threat he could pose. Others also disagree with this new direction and break off from this new radical Republic and join up with some of the remnants of the Empire who were already on the run anyway to go fight them.

The sad truth about Gundam though, is that if you've seen the original and Zeta Gundam...you've pretty much seen them all. Right about when Gundam Wing started is when they started really going into recycling the same types of plots and character tropes. There are a few that do stand out of course.

Gundam Wing stands out more than the others to 'Muricans simply because it was the first Gundam that aired in the US. There hasn't been a villain quite like Treize Khushrenada before or since though. Closest thing to David Xanatos of Gargoyles fame that Gundam ever got.

The 08th MS Team is widely regarded as one of the best Gundam series ever, mainly because it focuses on a group of ordinary mech pilots as opposed to the super ace pilots with their super machines of death like in most typical Gundam shows. Kind of like Gundams in the Vietnam War...mixed with just a bit of, oddly enough, Romeo and Juliet. Its also relatively short as well.

G Gundam I had already mentioned. Its basically Dragonball Z with Gundams. The fights are much shorter though, and there's far less time devoted to standing around screaming and powering up. No "5 minute" time limit that then goes on for a few hours worth of episodes. Notable in that the main character is pretty much the opposite of Zeta's main in every single way. And its awesome. Oh, and the pilots in G Gundam actually control their Gundams Pacific Rim style.

Gundam Build Fighters has a solid "Meh" of a story, but some pretty cool action scenes when the Gundams get around to fighting each other. Its like Yu-Gi-Oh meets Gundam, so you'll see Gundams from completely unrelated series go at it and rip each other apart.

I haven't seen Turn A Gundam (set way in the future to all other Gundam series, I've heard mixed things) or Gundam Unicorn (which I've heard good things about), but those two also seem to stand out a bit, even though Unicorn is actually a direct sequel to the "main universe" of Gundam.

Thanks for the summary, Ax, I've been wondering about whether it's worth getting into the Gundam stuff because of how mindbendingly numerous it is. I've watched bits of Wing when it was first airing and I saw Endless Waltz (although somewhat confused by the back-and-forth of betrayals and heel/face turns as I didn't see a lot of the series and was more familiar with the characters from the SNES game adaptations) and that's the end of it.

Of all the absurdly long running mecha franchises, the only ones I watched were Macross (though I only ever saw the original, none of the spinoffs) - first in its RoboTech iteration and then the actual genuine article and Mazinger (by way of Grendaizer, since it got to Europe long before Mazinger itself did).

So I've finished off the first season of The Blacklist, not going to lie, it's a really good show. It took a netflix binge but it starts getting really good after the first couple of episodes and really peaks at the end.

It's in it's second season now, which means I still have more to catch up on but at this point I'm properly hooked into the show. Bonus points for having a female lead that is a proper baddass and for James Spader playing Raymonton "Red" Reddington for making an excellent villain.

I've read a nice analysis about Agents of SHIELD: it was held back badly by the fact that it needed Captain America: The Winter Soldier to come out to let it cut loose with its plot, because it bloomed once the Hydra plot kicked off.

Sounds like they should've waited a bit to premiere it then. Kick it off following Winter Soldier and have the group a bit more paranoid about if anyone among them is a hidden Hydra agent from the get-go instead of staggering along for half a season with appetizers because they can't do anything big until Winter Soldier hits.