MeTVFan1234

Peppa Pig is one of the few cultural monoliths to come out of the United Kingdom alongside The Beatles, Harry Potter and the London bridge nursery rhyme. Like the London bridge, many of these monoliths have fallen over the years. Paul McCartney doesn't sing good anymore and he refuses to change the key of his songs to change his aging voice, leaving concertgoers with a subpar experience, and tarnishing The Beatles legacy forever. JK Rowling's Twitter rants and unnecessary political badgering has turned Harry Potter from a monolith for Buzzfeed Millennials into a dogwhistle of hatred. And of course, the London bridge nursery rhyme insists upon itself and is overplayed. But Peppa Pig stands alone, it's quiet steadiness fills the nation of the United Kingdom with pride. It's characters stay the same no matter what. The steadiness and stability of Peppa Pig gives viewers an ideal look into life in the UK, where picnics have amazing looking sandwiches which never get soggy, where careers as a grocery store cashier and funfair attendant are revered, and where there is never a rainy day without a positive spin on it.

Unfortunately, the stability of Peppa Pig is going away, because Mummy Pig just HAD to have another child. Peppa Pig is officially ditching the stability that made the show a mainstay of viewers worldwide for years and taking massive leaps over the shark that it makes their muddy puddle jumping look like sitting in a chair.

Alongside this new baby in Peppa Pig, they are getting a new house, a new car, and a completely new lifestyle, even a new intro, and it's the utter embodiment of what happens when a show jumps the shark.

Will it still be good? Sure. But I think the new generations are more interested in TikTok and Bluey then they are Peppa Pig. And this jumping the shark is only going to make the next generation want to visit the dogs down under.

I love "copaganda" shows aka police procedurals, especially ones like Dragnet or Adam-12. Jack Webb really had a great formula for those shows which made them fun to watch.

Dragnet, Adam-12 and Emergency take themselves very seriously. They're meant to be fun to watch, of course, but watching it you get the feeling that Jack Webb took policing more serious than the actual LAPD did. Jack Webb portrayed the LAPD as an organization that really set out to help people in times of need, that tried to set young "burnouts" and "hippies" in the right direction, etc, while also maintaining a high level of standards for the police officers themselves. There are multiple episodes of Dragnet and Adam-12 where they get visited by the internal affairs department, where they make sure that police officers aren't being corrupt, etc. There is even an episode where Friday gets investigated (and cleared, of course.)

Yes, Dragnet is copaganda, but it's copaganda that sets a higher standard for police officers, and that is it's redeeming quality. It does not beat around the bush, it equally criticizes "gun nuts" and "burnout hippies" in the eyes of the law, it equally judges police officers in the same way. It's the ideal police show, because they do what the police are theoretically supposed to do.

TJ Hooker takes all of that, removes any sense of dignity and replaces it with Cannell style car explosions and 80's thirst traps. The show is quintessential 80's action, and it's attempts to take itself seriously while also exploding cars every two seconds is laughable.

Now don't get me wrong-- I like cheesy 80's action. I love The A-Team. But The A-Team is a ridiculous show. It's like if they made a cartoon into a live action show. People are getting "shot" but you never see blood, nobody ever dies. They're just beating up "the bad guys" and The A-Team always wins. It's fun! And it's also the anthesis of "copaganda" considering that The A-Team is on the run from the United States gov the entire time. They're framed by a corrupt government, but they use their anger to help people in need. It's fun to watch.

TJ Hooker tries to take The A-Team's formula and apply it to the police procedural and it's mid at best. The theme song is a banger, which is a good start. But Shatner is not a good cop. His acting is bad and he comes off like an sshole. Here is the thing: Jack Webb was also a garbage actor, but it worked for the role of Joe Friday, which is why he played it for over 20 years on both radio and television. Hooker's combat is also equally as terrible. There is an episode where he is sword fighting some guy with a nightstick. There is another where they are chasing a serial killer into some abandoned mine shaft(?), which, despite being abandoned, somehow has full power, and the serial killer is able to trap Hooker and Romano into a room with an automated jail cell like door. What?? The building they were in resembled something you would see in a Roblox obby. Absolutely ridiculous... Reed and Malloy would never get themselves into such a jam.

The A-Team works because it's characters are equally as crazy as the show is. You've got this old man with a cigar saying "I love it when a plan comes together" as they drive off in a totally tricked out GMC van, which somehow always is registered in the state of California without alerting the feds. Btw, the feds find The A-Team at the end of EVERY EPISODE yet they never catch them. How?? They drive the same van every time!

Why do we like the A-Team despite it's obvious issues? Because it's fun. It's like a comic book or a cartoon. You can suspend disbelief about The A-Team. But TJ Hooker is meant to be serious, a serious show about cops in a corrupt Los Angeles. But ratings have a beckoning call, so they had to go the stereotypical 80's action route. And that kind of ruined the show, because it's trying to be two things that really just don't go together.

The show is mid. It's not bad, it's perfectly tolerable, but I don't get a smile on my face and cheer when Hooker gets the criminal. It's just forced. I do when Friday does--I do when the A-Team does, but not when Hooker does. And that's because the show really does not fulfill what it set to do.

I was browsing through some local channels while using the free and open source software, Jellyfin, and I happened to come across this show: Operation Repo. At first, I was confused, I did not know what I just have stumbled upon. After further evaluation, I realized that this is one of the greatest reality television series of our generation. Operation Repo surrounds a group of individuals who reposess vehicles, I am assuming in Los Angeles (it looks like LA). And it's a banger. They're always screaming and yelling while trying to repo some garbage Chevy Malibu that was worth $200 even when the show aired. In this episode, some guy held the repo man at knife point trying to protect his base model silver 2000's malibu. Come on bro. It wasn't even worth all that when it aired. He even kept looking at the camera. Absolute Cinema 10/10.