My current medical recovery is quite exhausting. I'm still struggling to pay attention to things. But I am hopelessly bored most of the time. So I've been trying to find something to watch to keep me sane.
It needs to be stupid enough where I don't need to follow it closely, but entertaining enough that I am not bored.
At the moment I have landed on...
Dad Shows™
*tasteful, but impressive Joe Walsh solo from his Eagles era*
A Dad Show must have punching, shooting, car chases, and by the end of each episode, the Good Guy must save the day or solve the case.
Bonus points if they rescue a kid or a damsel in distress.
The ultimate Dad Show is NCIS. But there was actually a precursor Dad Show that birthed NCIS into existence.
Enter JAG.
JAG is about a fighter pilot Navy lawyer.
He mostly does lawyer stuff, but also some light fighter piloting on the side.
Sometimes he lawyers on an aircraft carrier. Sometimes he lawyers on a submarine. You'd be astonished at how much lawyering can be done in various naval settings.
JAG was very close to the ultimate Dad Show, but the lawyer aspect was not conducive to creating the primary Dad Show components of shooting, car chases, and saving the day. Those elements had to be forced harder than a seaman into a bunk bed.
When JAG started losing the Dads, they tried shoving their main lawyer guy into a fighter jet with any insane plot contrivance they could manage.
How did a lawyer end up flying a stealth bomber?
It doesn't matter.
The show started going downhill and the dads were ready to abandon ship, so in a Jeri-Ryan-in-a-catsuit moment of desperation, they put Catherine Bell in a bikini.
Fun fact: When fixing my Uncle Larry's computer, I found a folder full of Catherine Bell bikini photos. It would seem this gambit worked for him.
Sadly, fighter jets and bikinis could not save JAG.
It was cancelled after only 10 seasons.
Which is way too long for any normal show, but tragically short for a Dad Show.
The Dads were sad.
But the show creator and Dad Show scientist, Donald P. Bellisario, learned from this 10 season, 226 episode failure and went back into his Dad Show lab.
He had success with his cult Dad Show, Magnum P.I. Which involved an ex-Navy Seal getting into car chases and shooting at nuns.
And he was definitely onto something with the fighter pilot Navy lawyer.
After many hours working in the Dad Show lab, inspiration finally struck.
NAVY COPS!
The only conceit was he had to vastly increase the murder rate within the Navy/Marine community. In this show, folks in the Navy murder more often than the people of Cabot Cove, Maine.
I have a complicated relationship with NCIS. It is the ultimate Dad Show. And my dad was a dad. He liked mustachioed Magnum shooting nuns. He liked lawyers in fighter jets. So he could not resist NAVY COPS.
He also enjoyed NAVY COPS: IN ANOTHER CITY.
When my dad got sick he had trouble concentrating and remembering details. But he was also very bored, having to sit in his recliner all day tethered to oxygen. Much like my current situation, he needed a show he could easily follow while also having enough shooty-shoots to be exciting. My dad had seen all 400+ episodes 2-3 times, so he had familiarity.
For him, it was the perfect comfort show.
For me, it was Navy Cop Groundhog Day. I had to supervise my dad 24/7 to keep him safe and that entailed soooo many episodes of NCIS. Over and over and over. Complete with a 2000s-era electronic theme song that has been burned into my brain and haunts my dreams.
I was so traumatized by repeated viewings that my dad and I had a legit heated argument negotiating the number of episodes we would watch per day.
I got him down to 2, but I had to promise to watch a John Wayne movie with him every week.
Historians will assuredly call it "The Duke Compromise."
The main character of NCIS was Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a gruff and tough ex-Marine sniper who is allergic to technology and does things OLD SCHOOL.
Sherlock Holmes solved his cases using his enormous intellect.
Leroy Jethro Gibbs finds a suspect WITH HIS GUT, gets them in the interrogation room, and then GRUMPS them into confessing.
GUTS & GRUMPS... the most powerful crimefighting combo in a Dad Show.
It plays out something like this...
Leroy Jethro Gibbs:
My gut tells me you killed that woman.
Suspect:
I did not and you can't prove it!
Leroy Jethro Gibbs:
I am very grumpy.
*stares grumpily at suspect for 30 seconds*
Suspect:
Okay, I killed that woman!
Leroy Jethro Gibbs:
I know. My gut is *never* wrong.
Also the goth chick in the crime lab found your DNA on the murder weapon.
But my GUTS & GRUMPS are undefeated at solving shit.
Leroy Jethro Gibbs:
The court will probably care more about that whacky, new-fangled DNA science crap. I mean, did you see how many computers and random science bottles that quirky goth gal has?
Leroy Jethro Gibbs:
You're going away for a long time, pal. No one murders in my Navy and gets away with it.
There is so much murder.
I am very tired.
*roll credits*
NCIS has not changed this formula for 492 episodes.
And when the lead actor could not sustain being grumpy more than 19 seasons, they replaced him with a totally unique character with his own investigative style and traits.
I'm just kidding, he was Diet Leroy with a beard.
He solved crimes with his GUTS & GRUMPS.
And also the new gal in the lab that replaced the goth found the suspect's boot print at the scene and that will probably be the main evidence used by prosecutors because gut instinct is not really admissible.
She has glasses and a lab coat, so you know she is super smart.
NERD ALERT.
Your fancy science bottles will never replace grumpy interrogations.
So, yeah.
I have a lot of unresolved trauma regarding NCIS and watching 500 episodes multiple times.
It is not the Dad Show I need right now.
But I found something better...
Meet Colter Shaw.
The Tracker.
He grew up in the woods with his survivalist father.
He knows how to track shit real good.
If a person or thing is missing and you put up reward money, Colter Shaw will use his stoic demeanor, extraordinary handsomeness, insanely chiseled physique (and a computer hacker with near magical abilities) to find your person or thing.
And every once in a while... he will use his tracking skillz.
I mean, I know the show is called Tracker and he lived in a forest during his childhood, but it turns out not very many people get lost in the woods due to dramatic or nefarious reasons.
So he mostly tells his magic hacker friend to track the person's phone and makes people pay him lots of money because I guess they don't know about the "Find My Phone" app.
HOWEVER... every once in a while... someone will get lost...
IN THE WOODS.
And Colter Shaw is ready to shine.
He enters the canopy with nothing but his wits, a firearm, and a minimalist, masculine outfit that lets the forest creatures know he worked hard for those biceps and he is going to show them off.
See that broken branch?
To you and me, it is just a broken branch.
But to Colter Shaw, when in the highly specialized kneeling inspection pose, that is evidence that a lost person walked in a northeasterly direction. The angle of the branch shows clear signs that they are walking with a limp. Obviously, they have a sprained ankle. They've been missing for 12 hours and the average walking speed of someone with an injury is two miles per hour.
Tracker is on the trail.
He sees a dragging footprint confirming his limp theory. It's time to kneel harder and more sexily to inspect it.
Next to the footprint is a log with a single drop of fresh blood. He tastes the blood and it is bitter.
Uh-oh, low blood sugar.
The poor lost soul needs a candy bar or they will slip into a coma and get eaten by a bear.
The Tracker is going to have to Track them even harder.
(And then he calls his magic hacker friend, who hacks the lost person's phone, and Colter follows the GPS coordinates.)
Colter Shaw arrives just in time!
He fights off the bear with a special kind of bear Kung Fu passed down to him by his survivalist father.
The bear knows he is outmatched and runs away.
The lost person is dazed and confused.
An extraordinarily handsome man appears before them, kneeling with maximum sexiness...
Colter Shaw:
I'm Colter Shaw.
Here is a candy bar.
You're going to be just fine.
No thanks needed, just doing my job.
I prefer cash.
*Colter Shaw model-walks out of the forest to collect his reward*
*roll credits*
It is truly one of the dumbest shows ever made.
My dad would have LOVED this shit.
And I didn't think the horrible depictions of hacking in NCIS could be topped. I mean, if you're being hacked, logic would dictate you hack them back harder with 20 fingers instead of 10.
While Tracker cannot match this kind of visual stupidity, it does feature one of the worst depictions of hacking I've ever seen.
Colter Shaw needs security footage from a nightclub. But the owners are like, "Not without a warrant!"
But Colter Shaw will not be deterred. He knows that modern networked security systems feed all of their data into a crusty electrical box in the back alley.
This is commonly known among IT professionals.
Thankfully, Colter's guy-in-the-chair was along for this tracking adventure and they were able to bypass this impenetrable security measure.
Clearly, the show writers, being very tech literate, were trying to depict "Security through Obsolescence." A real security technique in which the hardware or software is so old, it is immune to modern attacks.
But Colter Shaw's magic hacker friend has ancient hacker knowledge passed down to him from the hackers of "old school."
Only a learned hacker of the old school would know to "dongle up" and "cut the wire." You must also employ witty banter. In fact, the witty banter is the only way to activate an old-school-dongle-up-cut-the-wire attack.
I really don't like this show.
But it is serving its purpose.
And in a weird way, it brings back fond memories of my dad. I feel like I am channeling him and imagining how much he would have enjoyed Colter Shaw handsomely kneeling to inspect various things on the forest floor.
My dream for the election is that it’s definitive. I want a 2012-style Election Day where everyone built it up beforehand to possibly be close but then the results start rolling in and it was like “Oh, nevermind. It’s obviously Obama. Everyone go to bed.”
I just want voters to put a stake right through the heart of Trumpism so that it crumbles to ash before our eyes. That’s the dream.
the curse of being on this website is knowing that shit like cottagecore and dark academia and the obsession with mushrooms and whatnot started on this godforsaken platform and not tiktok
I don't post nearly enough about Nanami but the fact that his fighting style deviates so much from what I'd expect it to be still astonishes me. He is a quick thinker and he maneuvers well, is always planning, but when it comes down to it, Nanami is a brawler. His technique is about maximizing the damage that can be dealt with a single blow so when he goes after someone, its brutal.
Nanami is such a clean, collected guy, he is the last character I would expect to have a melee combat style like this. I would have pictured him with a blade or a cursed technique that deals damage from afar, like Gojo or Megumi, you know? Something that detaches him physically from whats going on to some extent.
But what he has is a thick butchers blade strapped to his back and its something that he typically keeps wrapped or uses the back edge of when fighting. Man is just nailing these ghouls with a blunt chunk of metal. Like that's insane. It's messy and brutal—but it works, the blows are decisive just like he is.
And when his weapon isn't doing enough, what does he do? He takes off his tie, wraps it around his hands and goddamn bare-knuckle boxes people. Nanami is so completely insane for that. Like. I could see Yuuji or Todo doing it—they're both absolutely melee fighters at heart, but Nanami was a shock to me!
I am in love with the way his technique and his fighting style complicate his character. Nanami may not be feral like Gojo, but he canonically has abs like a rock wall and can beat the shit out of anybody, bare-fisted. And I think people forget about that a lot.
fucking love when I'm on a call with someone and they start to do a little errand or go somewhere else and they say "and you're coming with me" like. absolutely I am let's go on an adventure I've been spirited away
