jeremy-928-938732 Reviews

Barney Miller (1975–1982)

One of the best cop comedies ever.

[8/10 · 3 October 2012]

I am a fairly young person and I was very pleased to find such a wonderful show on DVD. The title of the show through me off, but after reading a bit about the show I was intrigued and bought it.

At first the show mainly focuses on the situations and what the cops are doing, but after a while the show starts to focus only on the squad-room where the detectives convene.

Barney Miller is always getting into other peoples business. When a criminal comes in he Interrogates them and tries to get the whole story out of them and also tries to put his own opinion or label on it.

Most of the stories are very light-hearted, but some do hit close to home. The show is funny, comical, and well played, but some episodes do have a serious vibe at the end of them.

By season three the cast is permanent and the show gets its real humor on. Each detective has an impressive amount of character depth. It was interesting to learn about each of them as I watched all of the episodes. By the end, I felt as if I knew each of them personally.

The only parts of the show I didn't like was Lt. Scanlon. His character was played so well, I truly didn't like him. Inspector Luger was played by a veteran actor, but his character seemed a little dim-witted. By the end of the series, the only set you would see is the squad room. After having visited a couple different stage sets (for example: Barnies apartment, Fish's apartment and the hide-out apartment) it seemed very confining to only use the squad room in the later seasons.

The exits of Fish and Yemada were torture on the show. Fish was great when it came to quick and ironic humor while nick tried to do the same, but his character was never truly replaced.

Overall, I love this show and I continue to watch it often. The humor, the stories, the backgrounds of the people are all interesting and entertaining. This show is recommended for all who love comedy and also recommended for all who wish to enjoy a simple show.

Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001)

Excellent Acting and Shows love for Technicalities

[8/10 · 2 October 2012]

Star Trek: Voyager is a great series to watch. The initial concept of the show is pretty simple: USS Voyager is taken to the delta quadrant against there will and are stranded there - leaving them no choice to but to embark on a long and dangerous journey home.

The Voyager series brings in a lot of new and old ideas about the star trek universe. The new idea of having a holographic doctor and being able to send him on away-missions is a very complex and entertaining idea. The idea of two opposing factions banding together to work as one crew is new. However, some old ideas do still remain for example the unattractive uniforms, color designations, button sounds and the weakness of their ship.

The cast is full of good actors. At first the characters were green and so was the acting, but by the second season the characters and acting seemed to flow much better. Captain Jane-way certainly looks and feels like a leader and her choices are often made by seeking advice from other crew members, but some of her decisions are startlingly dark and immoral. There were a lot of recurring minor roles for actors and they brought a unique feel to the show.

One of the best things I like about this series is that it gets very technical, but is also dumbed-down enough to make sure the ordinary lay-man (like myself) can still understand what's going on. The addition of Seven of Nine was a great idea. Jeri Ryan brought in a great sex appeal and added further to the technical stand-points in the show. I fully enjoyed learning a lot about the Borg. It is one of the species I was most interested in.

If you want to know about the Borg, this is the series to watch. Also, this series is very dark. At some points I had shed some tears. Rick Berman was shooting for a darker Star Trek and he made it happen.

The points of the show I didn't like was that the ship always seems to have some sort of problem and that shields and weapons are almost always offline or not working. It also seemed like the crew wasn't trained well-enough for combat fighting. After a while it appears as if all combat is turn-based. (If you don't know what I mean think of it this way: One person fires and then the enemy fires and continues back and forth.).

By the end of the show itself the writing formats seemed to be predictable. After season 5, each episode seemed to start ending abruptly. Within the last 5 minutes it seems that everything episode or problems gets solved and life goes back to normal without any residual effects. After watching full seasons with that kind of writing, the show starts to get a little tiresome.

Overall, this is a wonderful show. It outlines betrayal, morality, trust, honor and integrity. Each episode takes you on journey to learning a new life lesson.

The Presence (2010)

A mystery thriller that takes place in a secluded cabin, but anything that could go wrong does.

[5/10 · 10 October 2011]

This was certainly a thriller movie. It has a great sense of mystique and mystery to it along with a beautiful score. A quiet secluded setting is always appreciated, but does that make it a good movie?

The movie starts out very slow. It takes almost 1/3 of the movie before anything scary happens. Anything before that just feels mysterious. The acting isn't top notch, but with so few characters, this movie feels like a really long student movie project. Lots of characters doesn't necessarily mean it's a good movie and that is where The Presence gets an A+ in my book.

The pace of the movie is very slow, it feels like this two hour flick could have been done in 45 minutes. But for a modern scary movie this does some justice, but there is a lot of improvement and creativity that could have made this film exceptional, but I guess with a limited budget, there is only so much you can do.

I give this a 5/10, decent story, mysterious characters, but excruciatingly slow pace.