Interesting Links for 25-01-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Inside the Mating Psychology of Incels

(tags:celibacy sex psychology )

2. Nicola Sturgeon shares my opinion of Boris Johnson

(tags:BorisJohnson politics incompetence pandemic )

3. How people laugh online in different languages and cultures

(tags:laughter language )

4. Which Shows Got Their Finale Right, and Which Didn't? A Statistical Analysis

(tags:TV statistics )

5. Pizza Hut releases a ramen pizza in Japan, and it took half a year to perfect

(tags:pizza food japan viaSwampers )

6. UK companies won't be allowed to add mandatory fees at checkout in the future.

(tags:uk business shopping regulation )

7. What's going on with Gorgie City Farm?

(tags:edinburgh farm animals )

8. Military interests are pushing new nuclear power – and the UK government has finally admitted it

(tags:nuclearpower military uk )

9. Netflix password crackdown fuels sign-up surge

(tags:netflix passwords business )

Comments

[calimac]

4) I'm rather surprised that they don't distinguish between finales, which I'd define as deliberately-made conclusions to an arc, and whatever happened to be the last episode of a show from pre-arc days when all episodes were free-standing. They're not comparable, the more so if the pre-arc show wasn't canceled for the next season until after the "last episode" was made, so nobody knew it was going to be the last episode. (That even happens sometimes today.)

I've seen few of the arc-era shows, and only one did I follow all the way through as a fan, and that was Buffy. The article classifies its finale as one of the brilliant ones. I guess by 'brilliant' they mean 'satisfying' in terms that it didn't leave the viewer feeling up in the air. But I'd hardly call it brilliant in terms of being particularly well-written or -produced.

[andrewducker]

Yes. The ends of season 3 (which closes off high school) or 5 (Glory and sacrifice) were both better ends to the series. The final ending was fine, and perfectly satisfactory, but the season had been a mess, and it wasn't amazing in the same way.

BTVS postmortem

[calimac]

It's hard to emphasize just how much I agree with what you just wrote. I found both seasons 6 and 7 to be slack and padded, and I kept watching only because I was steeped in it so far, returning were as tedious as go o'er. (allusion obvious, I hope) I would have preferred incorporating the highlights of 6-7 (the musical episode, the psychiatrist vampire) into season 5, beefing up that already somewhat iffy season, and going out at the end of it with a bang.

Re: BTVS postmortem

[andrewducker]

No disagreement here.

There were bits I liked. But an awful lot I didn't.

[simont]

My all-time favourite (so far) Show With An End-To-End Plot was Babylon 5. But the final season of that had some ... well known difficulties. So I was interested to see what #4 would make of it – but it seems too old to be on their radar at all.

[andrewducker]

You can do your own maths from https://www.ratingraph.com/tv-shows/babylon-5-ratings-4548/

[calimac]

I watched only parts of Babylon 5, so I can't comment on its achievement in the specific matter under discussion here. I would have watched more had it not been so very mixed in quality: some of the writing was good, some was terrible (I'm convinced that the stupidest substance in the universe is Minbari politics); some of the acting was good, some was inept. That was never a problem in Buffy: the casting was always superb and the acting consequently excellent.

[snippy]

MASH famously had a good finale, even though it was mostly a free-standing episodic show.

[calimac]

Oh yes. But that was an exception for the time. Strangely, it's not in the survey at all. Older shows it has, that did not have dedicated finales, include ST:TOS, Bewitched, and I Love Lucy.

I watched the MASH finale at the time, though I had not been watching the show regularly for some time. I was rather disappointed: I thought it was soppy, whereas the show as I'd known it had rigorously avoided soppiness.

[anna_wing]

Blake's 7 is both old (1978-1981) and from the UK, but had both arcs and an extremely memorable ending, which has variously been considered both a triumph and a disaster, depending on who's talking. It is also the only mainstream instance I can remember off-hand of the Evil Overlady winning, or at least surviving the heroes, so I have always had rather a soft spot for it.

[channelpenguin]

God I loved that series!

It's really "the British Empire in space", I find. So, yeah, evil survives.

My fave character was Avon. Amoral computer genius (but failed often) with a liking for hamming it up and wearing black leather. NOT an influence on me AT ALL. Lol.

I also had the "Servelan" haircut at one point. I think her gowns were made bby the same designer as Shirley Basseys as I recall.

And Travis (MARK 1 ONLY PLEASE!) rocked hard too.

Just the best evil characters ever. I have an admiration for COMPETENT evil, whilst loathing the evil itself - and the tension inherent in that is very special when it's done as well as here.

[channelpenguin]

Competent, rational, SANE evil.

But please, in fiction only!

[calimac]

Another Blakes 7 fan here. I watched the show when it was stripped on US tv, but I started with season 4, so I'm biased towards that end of it. (The very early episodes remind me too much of early Dr. Who, which is not a plus in my book.)

I've described the show to non-viewers, thinking of course of seasons 3-4, by saying, "Imagine ST:TOS with the Enterprise a fugitive ship on the run from the Federation. Kirk disappears, and Spock starts to crack under the stress of command. Imagine that, and you'll have something a bit like Blakes 7."

[bens_dad]

I don't understand the scoring. Why compare the finale with episodes from all the *other* seasons ?
If I wasn't comparing it with all the other episodes I would be thinking more of comparing it with the other season finales or the rest of the final season.

Another old and British show with an arc was Morse. Each series is now available as a single block, but they were originally shown as something like four half hour shows where you only got to see whodunit in the last episode.
I think this was the established pattern at the time.