Norm

Yep. I am crestfallen.

OJ outliving Norm could be the greatest cosmic injustice in the history of the Universe.

I'm so ****ing mad that we won't get the old man rendition of Norm. That **** would have been amazing.

Norm on Conan was always his highest and best use, and it goes well beyond that amazing Chairman of the Board moment.

As someone who is half Polish this is perfection.

NFL season has been excellent so far, so I've at least built up more spirit for tuning in and watching when the games happen.

The "care and get excited during the week" part still seems to be entirely gone - and in years past, would have been fully activated this week after a good opening Seahawks win - but watching the games has been fun.

Also, shoutout to Aaron Rodgers for spending the opening week forcibly pissing an entire waterfall of urine down his pants in lieu of showing up for the first game.

Very sad about this, him and Sean Lock dying in the same month is a blow.

Most recent episode of Ted Lasso was masturbatory as ****, and the people who wrote it and green-lit it should bathe in shame on a constant basis for the foreseeable future. That said, it seems like the show likely has enough rabid fans by now that some of them are going to resolve to say that they liked the episode whether they did or not. I'm just relieved that these types were not so numerous as to apologize away the episode's quality overall; it appears to clearly be the lowest-rated episode of the series to date on IMDb.

That said, I've really enjoyed the season overall.

Just quoting from the AEW thread where I started a brief derail when I saw a Star Wars commercial during one of the breaks.

Rewatched Phantom Menace for the first time in over 20 years. Basically all I remembered was: (1) the main mid-movie pod race; and (2) Jar Jar Binks being ****ing annoying. I also wasn't fresh on the original trilogy when I watched. Also I watched it with my dormmate who was among the most irritating and absurd human beings I've ever known.

Anyway, I liked it much more than I remember liking it back then. Definitely feel like it helped to be fresh off a recent rewatch of Episodes IV through VI, so I'm better entrenched in the franchise's universe. I'll speak with full spoilers since I doubt anyone's dodging old Star Wars spoilers at this point.

I named the things above that I remember, which is to say that I really didn't even know during this watch that Qui-Gon was going to kick the bucket. I figured it was likely based on how the plot developed (obviously as well as the knowledge that he had to be written out at some point in the prequel trilogy), but I was still hoping that he disappeared as a result of Episode II or III so that we could have him a bit longer. Neeson was a very solid anchor for this thing.

I was, uhh, not wrong about Jar Jar being annoying. I had a greater appreciation for the value of having a role of his kind in the story, but I can't forgive the choice of "make this ****er as annoying as possible." I watched with subtitles on and was still left with little idea of WTF he was talking about a lot of the time, so that speaks volumes. It's like the "ride ze shoopuf?" character from FFX got his own feature film. It is what it is; I was probably a little less annoyed this time just because I saw the value of what his character provided to the plot.

I actually was ready to rate it even better, but for the fact that the climax really didn't do it for me. I'm just really tough to please with large-scale battle scenes though. I love The Two Towers, and my reaction to the Battle at Helm's Deep is still, "Yeah, could you just skip ahead and tell me the key results?" I do not care about such sequences. The individual light saber battles were cool though.

I enjoyed the experience enough that I'm surely in for a watch of at least the rest of the prequel trilogy now. Only having seen Episodes IV, V, VI, and I, I'll be into fully uncharted territory going forward.

Beyond Neeson's performance (best in Phantom Menace honestly), Qui-Gon was really the only one who could have trained Anakin to truly resist the dark side. The battle between himself, Maul, and Obi-Wan is called The Duel of the Fates for good reason. This was actually a battle for Anakin's soul, and Qui-Gon's death sealed his fate to eventually become Vader.

As you haven't watched the others yet, I'll save my other thoughts for later.

I will say you should brace yourself, as Attack of the Clones is generally regarded as the worst of the sequels (worst of the entire Skywalker saga IMO). It suffers the brunt of CG aging from that era; the early shift to digital before high definition was actually a thing. Phantom Menace was shot on film, so has been able to be cleaned up by later restoration, but that simply isn't possible for AOTC. The script and dialogue direction is a whole other quandary. But hey, shaky Star Wars is better than no Star Wars! I still enjoy the first half of the film quite a bit.

Well there was also the moment where Obi-Wan said to Qui-Gon, paraphrasing, "Dude, everyone else thinks the kid is dangerous, why are you ignoring that?" Even having watched the movie to completion, I don't dislike the fact that they had this exchange, but it's definitely out of the ordinary for that to get dropped and then for Qui-Gon specifically to never have to see things panning out in a disturbing direction.

I'm prepared for Episode II to be worse than Episode I. I'll watch both Episodes II and III even if I hate Episode II.

As we see in the film, Qui-Gon is rather atypical for a Jedi. He's obviously accomplished and well respected in the Order, Obi-Wan even suggests that he'd be on the council if Qui-Gon fell more in line with their leanings. He's a man ahead of his time, the type of "new Jedi" that we eventually see in Luke.

The prequels present us with a strong, established Jedi Order that is unfortunately too rigid and stagnant to realize the monster growing in their midst. They have safe-guarded themselves from the failures and fallen Jedi of the past so well, that they cannot perceive the type of flexibility/innovation that will be required for someone like Anakin. I mean let's be honest, this kid was conceived BY the force, an actual virgin Mary birth with no father. That **** is wild, and no ancient Jedi tome or code is going to be adequately prepared to deal with that.

Qui-Gon understands that fluidity is the key to the future, and is dedicated to following the force wherever its currents take him. His teaching are less dogmatic and more suited to an older pupil like Anakin that has already formed strong attachments. Rather than see these as detriments at the council does, Qui-Gon understands that the will of the living force is above any political tenets of the Order.

While Obi-Wan's personality is more representative of the conservative Order of the time, it is this teaching that he truly takes to heart from his master. Obi-Wan's ability to let go and simply let the force guide him is the reason he is one of the greatest Jedi of all time. He wasn't even an impressive padawan, did not excel in any area in his training, and was knighted much later than most. It was the acceptance of this one lesson from Qui-Gon that allowed him to excel in the Clone Wars and beyond.

Unfortunately, understanding and teaching are two different skills and his training of Anakin would remain traditionalist. Anakin needed a father in Qui-Gon, but could only have an older brother in Obi-Wan.

The prequels are terrible. The acting is bad. The story telling is bad. There is no character development. Characters actions make 0 sense throughout. Its just bad bad bad.

Here's a longwinded youtuber rant if anyone is into those kinds of things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPvEJjNNPp4

I don't actually get how people can know the prequels are all terrible. Once one is bad, you should probably quit. Once two are bad, you should definitely quit.

No, of course The Matrix 4 shouldn't get any viewers. It's like people didn't watch Matrix 2. But actually, many of these people did. And they correctly agreed with me that it was horrendous. And then they went on to watch Matrix 3 for some reason, and seemed to think likewise of that one. But now, **** it, they're going to watch Part 4. Stop! WTF are you people doing? Quit incentivizing studios to make bad sequels of everything.

I remain extremely proud of the fact that I quit on LOST mid-way through. I'll probably never be able to top that. I did what the rest of society refused to do, and I reacted rationally to the increasingly obvious reveal of "we didn't really map out a long-term storyline and are just sort of button-mashing from week to week...also we're running out of ideas."

Enough with the sunk cost fallacy. Quit on things, everyone. Quitting is one of life's real joys.

Like the YouTuber says, a lot of us saw the prequels as young impressionable Star Wars fans and didn’t know it sucked. I never watched them again until lockdown and it was specifically because of this wave of “they’re better than the sequels!”

The second one is real bad, so I can certainly see your point, but the problem is people rank the third so high, you are tricked into thinking it won’t have the same problems

The fact I read all those words about Star Wars is a clear sign of my tremendous respect for you both. I saw I, in the theater. Didn't like it. Didn't see II. Saw III in the theater, actually enjoyed it, and haven't seen it since.

I wish I understood anything half as well as Jish knows the ****ing Phantom Menace.

I stopped Lost after the 3rd season. Wasn't for altruistic reasons like you, however. I just suck at watching tv sometimes.

And very solid words on quitting!

And we got an exclamation in there!

Haha. I definitely read that post and had a reaction like Andy Bernard to Jim and Pam's comments during the movie the three of them were watching during Stress Relief.

Yeah, I guess the part where the consensus is so firm on Episode III >>> Episode II is also baiting me into watching Episode III regardless as noted above, but I'll probably need to just see for myself. Since it's clear that I now like Phantom Menace more than you do, it's possible I'll disagree on one or both of II/III.

As I keep trying to tell you, I'm not anti-exclamation. I'm actually even more pro-exclamation than these ****wits running all over the planet ruining the exclamation. The rest of the world would have you believe, "If you truly love something, then you must spend every day of your life devaluing it."

3 is most certainly the best of the bunch. I just can’t agree with it being anywhere above the originals or the force awakens

I'm certain I've said it before, but: The Temple of Doom is the most egregious example of a terrible movie hiding in plain sight as it nestles in among classics in a trilogy.

It really, really irks me to see the Indiana Jones trilogy (I think I'm done acknowledging further efforts to add to the franchise, despite realizing there's a Part 5 coming) just listed off as if they're all operating within the same wavelength. People are overjoyed to scorn the ever-living **** out of The Godfather Part III due to its significant failure to keep up with the other two in that trilogy, but most don't lay a ****ing glove on The Temple of Doom for some reason. It's stunning to me that The Last Crusade was such a solid rebound after that.

The Matrix 2 is better than the first one? Having watched all of them not that long ago none of them are particularly good.

Lollllllllll