The "You know what?" thread

[cjd874]

I joined Instagram a few weeks ago to reconnect with old friends from high school and college, since apparently Facebook is for dinosaurs and Instagram is for "millennials" like me. I reached out to my followers and heard back from most of them! And buckle up your seat belts...

Three of my friends from high school work for law firms. Two of them are elementary school teachers like me. Another one teaches 7th grade social studies, one is pursuing music education full-time, and another one is a doctoral student at Teacher's College at Columbia University, NYC.

I could not be prouder of what they've accomplished. It fills me with so much joy to know that they're forging unique paths to make society stronger than before. I can't wait to see them again in person, once social distancing is lifted.

 

[D'Snowth]

Funny how I'm somehow a dinosaur and millennial at the same time, because I find Facebook to be far more effective in actually connecting with people.

 

[minor muppetz]

I'm amazed that so many of the shows I watch were able to churn out so many episodes before Covid-19 hit. Not really sure how far most of the shows in advance do it, but after March, I was expecting most of the shows to have just a few new episodes.

We've gotten almost two more months worth of The Goldberg's. The season finale was prom-related, I wonder if that was intentional. It doesn't end with the usual end-of-the-season montage, but the ending narration does have a line about it being "1980-something", though maybe not the same "it'll always be 1980-something" as usual. I wonder if that was planned to be the season finale - It kind of seems like the typical finale while also not. And the ending line about 1980-something, since it's narration, could have easily been recorded after so many things have shut down.

Last week, all of Wednesday night's shows were themed around prom. I wonder if that was intentional - I assume they were all shot in March if not earlier. Actually, I was thinking they were all season finales, maybe it was just the case with The Goldberg's and School'd, I guess I didn't really pay much attention to whether American Housewife and whatever other show were finales or just ordinary episodes that happened to involve prom. It'd be a weird coincidence if they planned four back-to-back prom episodes for the same night, before we knew that this years proms would be canceled.

On the other hand, during these two and a half months, there haven't been very many new episodes of Young Sheldon. And I feel like the same episodes keep being rerun. There is at least one episode that I saw again twice during this period. And I think they've sometimes shown two back-to-back episodes. Even if the season was cut short, there's got to be more episodes from the season they could choose from - and if not, couldn't they rerun some episodes from the first two seasons (I don't think the show is in syndication yet)? And yet the season finale not only seems like the perfect season finale, but it also seems like it could have been the series finale. Did they plan that to be the season finale, even with the season (most likely) suddenly cut short?

On the other hand, it's a shame that one new show, Broke, won't be returning (though I don't think many people besides me like that show).It started after the pandemic, it's confirmed there won't be a second season, but at least they haven't run out of episodes yet - and at least they seem to still be airing the remaining episodes, as opposed to canceling further unaired episodes. Still, it is sad that they seem to be running the same promo every week, pretty much showing clips from the various episodes in general as opposed to limiting the clips to what's in the next episode. And I'm not sure how I like the opening, which plays out more like a "previously on..." recap, only it's the same each week. I guess not too different from an expository theme song, except there's no singing.

 

[minor muppetz]

You know what would make a great meme?

Elmo saying "let's ask a baby!" from Elmo's World!

Could be a good meme in response to some of the big, important questions that can't be answered.

 

[Oscarfan]

We've gotten almost two more months worth of The Goldberg's. The season finale was prom-related, I wonder if that was intentional. It doesn't end with the usual end-of-the-season montage, but the ending narration does have a line about it being "1980-something", though maybe not the same "it'll always be 1980-something" as usual. I wonder if that was planned to be the season finale - It kind of seems like the typical finale while also not. And the ending line about 1980-something, since it's narration, could have easily been recorded after so many things have shut down.

Last week, all of Wednesday night's shows were themed around prom. I wonder if that was intentional - I assume they were all shot in March if not earlier. Actually, I was thinking they were all season finales, maybe it was just the case with The Goldberg's and School'd, I guess I didn't really pay much attention to whether American Housewife and whatever other show were finales or just ordinary episodes that happened to involve prom. It'd be a weird coincidence if they planned four back-to-back prom episodes for the same night, before we knew that this years proms would be canceled.

The "prom night-night" was no doubt intentional; they did a cast reuniting night awhile back, so this isn't dissimilar.

I won't bother to butcher her real last name, but the woman who plays Erica posted on Instagram that the only episode left to shoot was the season finale before they had to shut down due to the virus, so the prom episode became the psudo-season finale. I assume the same with Schooled.

 

[minor muppetz]

The "prom night-night" was no doubt intentional; they did a cast reuniting night awhile back, so this isn't dissimilar.

How lucky, I guess, that they planned a night of prom night shows before they knew many would miss out on their proms and therefore make a special night out of it? Though maybe that would have been better for a Friday or Saturday night, when schools have their proms (I'm not really sure which night normally has prom.... I didn't go to mine).

 

[minor muppetz]

Last night I watched The Wizard for the first time in a long time (and I've only watched it in its entirety enough times to count on one hand). A number of things I noticed:

• I feel like Nintendo isn't really mentioned on-screen very often. Sure, we see the system, which has the company name on it, but the only time I really noticed them saying "Nintendo" is during the Nintendo hotline scenes. For the most part they refer to the games as video games. Even when we first see that Nick had brought the NES on the trip (or actually, found it in the pick-up truck and fixed it), he refers to it as "Corey's old video game".
• Nick just happened to find the NES in the truck and fixed it (as it had been broke). Okay, so it's one thing that a broken system was in the truck, but they also just happened to have multiple games with them as well (they had Mario 2 and TMNT, and I think a Zelda game)?
• When Lucas encounters Sam and Nick and tells them where Jimmy is headed, I thought he did it to eliminate the competition, but was he helpful for that reason, or was he genuinely being helpful? By this point, he'd only encountered the main characters once, and in that scene, he never plays against Jimmy or sees his skills. Jimmy sees how good he is at video games and seems to be unhappy, without playing in front of him.
• Probably the case of not seeing the whole film often (I'd probably seen the Nostalgia Critic and Angry Video Game Nerd's reviews a lot more times than the actual movie), but I really hadn't realized that the kids are not aware of Putman until the first time he finds Corey. I was thrown off by Putman finding Corey and, upon being asked "where is he?" (Jimmy), Corey doesn't know who he's talking about.
• When Corey thinks about just giving up, he says he's going to find a phone and call his dad. Too bad he doesn't know that his father is looking for him.
• When the truckers confront Putman, with Spankey saying "so, you touched her breasts, huh?", did Haylee lie to them to get them to beat him, or did they know they wanted to save Jimmy, and he used the line as justification to attack Putman? In the next scene, he has the kids, including Jimmy (who was in the back seat which had childproof locks), with him, giving them a ride.
• In regards to Corey and Jimmy running away, Jimmy's step father only pays for Jimmy to be found, reasoning that "Corey wants to run away. If we bring him back, it won't make a difference". Wouldn't that be the same with Jimmy, who kept running away heading to California? Even if Jimmy kept trying to run away to the same location.
• The kids act surprised when told that the final round will have them all play a new game that hasn't been released, with Corey and Hayley saying it's unfair because they weren't told about it. It wasn't until last night that I thought about the fact that, as it was a game none of them could train for, it was perhaps the most fair way of determining their skills. Also, Jimmy had proven to be good at many games that he had not played before. I thought about this as I watched last night, then looked at the TV Tropes page about it and saw this same stuff being discussed under headscratchers.
• With their trip, it seems like the only games Jimmy could play and get better at are arcade games. I kinda wish they had access to an NES on the way, so they could play more Nintendo titles.
• I had thought that Jimmy's sister's death had been mentioned sooner, but while she is mentioned by name a few times, it takes halfway through the movie before we learn about her and the family situation and stuff.
• The scenes with Corey talking to Haylee about Jennifer and his family, and the dinosaur scene where he talks about how, he just figured out, Jimmy wanted to leave pictures of his sister at a happy place, kind of feel like Wonder Years scenes, like what it would have been like if young Kevin talked about his past as opposed to the narrators voice. In fact his father in The Wizard kinda looks like the father on The Wonder Years.
• There wouldn't be any conflict otherwise, but shouldn't Putman still get paid even if the parents find the son? And he does come across them more times than the parents do.
• People say that it was product placement for Universal Studios as well as Nintendo, but the fact that the competition is held at Universal is barely brought up until they get there. We see a poster for the competition a couple of times, the Universal Studios logo is seen but there's just so much to take in with the picture, Universal Studios not being a real focal point.
• For a movie meant to promote Nintendo, we don't really see or hear about video games until about 20 minutes in, and after the competition is over, they barely acknowledge what had happened, with no further talk about Nintendo. Of course TV Tropes mentions that it's not as much of a 100-minute "commercial" for Nintendo as the public seems to think.

 

[minor muppetz]

In Looney Tunes: Back in Action, when Bugs and Elmer do the "rabbit season/duck season" routine without Daffy, it actually could work without Daffy.

After all, Elmer's saying it's rabbit season, Bugs could just say it's duck season or another season altogether, moving the riffle away from his direction. Bugs could say it's bear season or deer season or another season. Perhaps Elmer could just want to shoot a rabbit and is saying it's rabbit season because that's all there is.

 

[minor muppetz]

In the 1980s, Nintendo's policy with third party developers was that they could not release the same game on another system while also on a Nintendo system, then some rulings made it so that Nintendo could not legally have that policy. I think this change happened as the Sega Genesis was becoming popular. Do you suppose part of Sega's popularity was the fact that Nintendo could no longer force companies to only release games on their systems?

 

[D'Snowth]

I think the weirdest example of Early Installment Weirdness I can think of is ED, EDD N EDDY, because in one episode, and only one episode, both Ed and Eddy actually call Double D "Edd."