Blagdaross

I just realized all the TV shows I’m translating is good fodder for a blog post. All the old stuff is for DVD:s if you’re wondering.

Huff. Five episodes from the 2nd season. Awesome! Especially the Oliver Platt character. Great performance. Also Huff’s wife. Typical that the Izzy actor got an emmy, her character has the only tugging at heartsrings stuff. Very entertaining show.

Dallas. I used to watch Dallas as a kid, I think starting right before Bobby was killed. This is earlier, and at least this episode it’s way more of a proper drama than I remembered. It’s a lot of emotion, and it’s all pretty real and believable, and surpriisingly subtle at times. Lucy’s having an abortion this episode, and Pam’s ambivalence is subtly handled.
Bobby’s not particularly angelic. Sue Ellen is tragic. J.R is a very compelling character. Even the soap opera elements makes them show people as pragmatically calculating in a way that’s real, and absent from most dramas, certainly in 70s television.

MacGyver. Two episodes. First one kinda meh, featuring Amish. Other one, where MacGyver’s boss gets tested, goofy fun. Neither features barley anything of the invention gimmick, oddly.

Prison Break Episode in 2nd season. What a silly show, sometimes awesomely so. I hate black helicopter shows though, though maybe the sillinness would redeem it. I wouldn’t have understood much of what’s happened, without doing research, and using a Television without pity recap. Tip for subtitlers, they’re very useful when you don’t have a script.

Penn and Teller: Bullshit! My sister likes this show, so I thought it was cool to translate something she’d watch. I’m not sure she’d like this though, since it’s about pets, and Teller’s contemptuous of people who care about them too much, and she’s a huge animal lover. Penn’s shtick is being an asshole, and well, he sure is an asshole. In this case, some of the stuff about the cat show kind of crossed the line into vicious, and those were real people. The show in general is so obviously driven by Penn (and Teller’s?) need to feel superior of people. No surprise he’s libertarian. Most was mildly entertaining, though, esp. the stuff about the guy who sold testicle prostheses for dogs.

The Unit. Original premise: A “realistic” (compared to James Bond) take on military special operation unit, like the Delta force. Execution is kinda meh, though. Not bad exactly. The geopolitics is as ludicrous as usual. Bizarrely, David Mamet is the creator of this not very serious show. WTF?

Subtitling entails a much more intense, attentive watching of the films than normal, unless you’re a film major writing a thesis or something. Will sometimes make for a v. different viewing experience, in this case it may have influenced how I viewed Dallas in particular.