That is the best thing that has ever.

Also, I'm pissed at myself for completely forgetting to bring up PAPRIKA as an example of a fascinating direction you could take a story about invading peoples' dreams. Like most anime, it goes batshit off the rails toward the end, but well worth a viewing.

Dude, get health insurance. I was the same way for a long time, and it was only by sheer happenstance that I finally got insured -- after four years without -- only a month before my gallbladder went haywire. When I had my surgery to remove it, they discovered it had ruptured and if I'd come in a week or two later it would have been life-threatening. And if I hadn't had insurance, I probably wouldn't have gone in at all because I would have been afraid to deal with the cost of care.

So yeah, I most likely would have died last year without insurance and it was basically just lucky coincidence that I had it when I did. Get it soon.

The greatest irony here being that it was Disney himself who said he built his empire on the principle that if you tell a good story, the profits will follow. He must be rolling in his cryotank.

In Latin, and Latin-based languages -- like French -- it's pronounced "mahl." The Firefly pronunciation is the incorrect/Anglicized one.

Holy shit, what happened?

I definitely agree. I thought even as we were watching, "if this were an anime, it would've been huge." I also agree that this is basically identical to PAN'S LABYRINTH, with many of the same problems (i.e. the fantasy sequences have no stakes or relation to the main plot), and it just didn't manage to fool as many people into thinking it's deep.

The thing is, if a show has managed to go an entire season and there are people whose judgment you trust evangelizing for it, clearly the pilot did manage to hook an audience at some level, even if only just enough that they were willing to see where they were going with this.

If you want to know what's so great about it and the answer -- from people who gave it a shot and watched the whole thing -- is "stuff that happens after the pilot," then that's the answer. If you actually want to find out if you agree with them or not, you'll have to go past the pilot. If you're just not interested enough to do so, then don't; worst case scenario you're missing out on something you'd actually enjoy, it's not the end of the world. The people pitching it to you, obviously having already seen it, haven't lost anything, except maybe the ability to share and discuss it with you. No one's gonna end up with cancer over it.

But, realize that you forfeit your ability to honestly say you "don't understand" what people think is so great about it, because they will have already told you. You simply chose not to investigate.

Oh, for those days.

But we're not talking about an unknown quantity that might get better but no one knows if or when. We're talking about shows that have already had their runs and people who watched them are saying, from firsthand knowledge, that the early time investment has a worthwhile payoff, but you have to watch more than just the first episode to get there.

I think the problem here, frankly, is one of hype and expectations. If you're watching a show casually then you're likely to give it an episode or two to see where it's going. If you're watching a show because you've heard how great it is and you feel left out of the conversation, then when it's not immediately great it's easy to dismiss it.

But the people who are saying it's great are the ones who went in with no real expectations, gave it a few episodes and watched it unfold. You're going in with expectations that were built by viewer reactions to the run of the show/season. They aren't expectations the pilot was meant to meet.

When people tell you that a show is good, they mean the show, long term, is good, not necessarily the pilot. So to see the good stuff they're talking about, you'll have to go further.

Personally, if I find a show to be interesting in its premise, I'm willing to give it a season to figure itself out. Season 2 is put up or shut up time, for me.

I think it's not very much different from the Terminator/Terminator 2 thing. Terminator 2 is awesome, but to get there and have it make much sense you need to see Terminator 1, which isn't that great but it'll be worth it. In a TV season, there may be awesome stuff coming later but it requires the laying of groundwork. "Give it a season" means, I think, give it the groundwork as a time investment, and ideally it'll pay off later. And also, of course, the show needs to proceed to get more interesting even within the season or it's not a good sign.

A lot of shows never make it past the pilot. If a show makes it to the stage that it was picked up for a full run AND multiple people are telling me that it's a worthwhile time investment, then that doesn't guarantee anything obviously but I feel like it's only fair to give it a shot even if the pilot is only meh.

And yeah, I can't think of any show I loved right out of the gate with the pilot.

Of course you're supposed to feel sorry for the alien. Didn't you see E.T.? J.J. Abrams saw E.T. and he wants you to be thinking about how you felt watching E.T. Never mind what the alien actually spent its time doing in this movie. You're not supposed to be thinking about this movie.

That's what pretty much all film theory looks like to me.