Classic DeBryn moment:
Strange: Choke on his own puke did he Doctor?
DeBryn: [after a moment looking at Strange steadily] Been at the Keats again Sergeant?
@bsag Love these characters. One of my favorite things about Endeavour is seeing Strange and Morse as young work friends.
@macgenie @bsag I’m just discovering both shows. Is Strange a character on Morse?
Never mind. I’ll find out!
@MitchWagner @bsag Endeavour:Morse::Star Trek (2009):TOS
It’s just fun to see characters in their youth. (I think it’s just Morse, Strange, and Debryn.)
@macgenie James Bradshaw is a great Debryn. Clearly the same person as on Morse without doing a slavish imitation. I have not seen Strange on Morse yet; I'm still only up to 1990 or so. @bsag
@MitchWagner The writers on Morse have difficulty writing his relationships with women. He meets a new woman pathologist, calls her by a nickname she doesn't like, insists that she tell him her real name when she says several times she does not want to. And of course she is charmed by this behavior. Oy. @bsag
@macgenie It's great, isn't it? The first time Strange addresses Morse as "Matey" I squealed. I love the way you start to understand how Strange ends up outranking Morse because he's willing the 'play the game' and Morse definitely isn't. Their period of flat-sharing made me LOL too...
@MitchWagner @macgenie I think it is handled better in Endeavour (which is probably partly to do with TV writers getting generally better at writing female characters and their relationships). But anyway Morse's relationships are generally a disaster area and that's intentional. You marvel at the way that someone who is so sensitive and observant in his professional life can be so completely oblivious to his own feelings and the way that women feel about him. It could seem unbelievable, but I have known people like that.
@bsag The fact that Morse ever makes it to Inspector is impressive, based on young Morse’s near constant insubordination.
Have you ever watched the George Gently series? I loved that one.
@macgenie @bsaq My husband and I just finished watching the current season of Endeavor and we were some what disappointed. Both of us thought that some of the stories seemed a bit contrived, and some of the characters were acting out of character. Still love the show and can't wait till next season, that being said
@klandwehr @bsag I think I’m a couple seasons behind. The series didn’t grab me quite the way it did in the beginning. (I’ll eventually catch up because Shaun Evans is my Masterpiece Theatre crush. 🥰)
@bsag @macgenie My eye-rolling isn’t just about his treating women badly, but also about how the women react to it and how his behavior is condoned. I get that Morse, at least its first couple of seasons, was written in another era.
On the other hand, we just watched the very first episode of Endeavour, and in that one he is a complete gentleman and surprisingly empathetic. Downright heroic in resisting the temptation to take advantage of a beautiful, broken woman who he’s clearly smitten with.
@macgenie Oh, yes, of course! I think I remember now – in the very first episode he comes to Morse’s house to say that Morse isn’t going to get a promotion. I thought that was very odd behavior, but it makes sense if the two are, in fact, old friends.
In that first Morse episode, there was an implication there that Strange (if that’s who it was) was being promoted out of the local police station. And yet I think that same character continues as the chief superintendent? I may be misremembering or misunderstanding all this.
To the extent I gave that any thought, I figured they just retconned the chief superintendent’s promotion away. The way US shows sometimes do between the pilot episode and a first episode, even while then airing the pilot unexplained.
@macgenie I disagree on the comparison of Endeavour and ST:2009.
Endeavor has the right mix of fidelity to the original and its own voice, so that it can simultaneously be a prequel and its own standalone thing.
I don’t see ST:2009 as having much continuity with TOS and its sequels. ST:2009 has a cynical line through it that is very un-Trek-like and that I do not care for.
That’s a problem in Discovery too, at first, but instead ST:D became a show about that time the Federation stepped up to the brink ... went over the brink ... but came back before it fell too far. (A metaphor which works because they have antigravity.)
@macgenie @klandwehr Mr. Bsag and I also had a similar conversation about the 'out of character' aspects. My opinion was that (if we are talking about the same character!) it was plausible given what he had been through and the situation he was in. But I can see the alternative point of view too. I'm really interested in how they are going to end it - just one more series to go 😭.
@bsag @klandwehr Spurred on by this chat, I skipped my usual escapist trash to watch Endeavour. Apparently I already started Season 6 but didn’t remember, until about halfway through the first episode. Let’s see how the season goes.
I wish there was an app to track TV watching. I’m sure there’s something but I’d want it to be a dead simple checklist with no comments, sharing, ratings, algorithms or ads, obviously. 😇
@macgenie I’ve actually thought that as well. Sometimes you need a break in a series and when you return you’re not sure where you’re up to. I want to restart Walking Dead but no idea which episode I’m upto!
@macgenie @rossa I made something similar for tracking my current chapter for webcomics/web novels I'm reading - using Shortcuts and Drafts. Drafts would have notes tagged with "tv", each note representing a TV series. Shortcuts would pull up the list of notes, you select the one you've watched and Shortcuts would append the episode number to the end of the note. When you want to watch a show, a separate Shortcuts would extract the latest number in said TV note. For my web reading, I also include the URL for the latest chapter in the Drafts note, and Shortcuts would load the URL on my phone. This could work if you were watching shows from your phone.
@bsag Your description of Endeavour makes me want to give this a go, but do you need to have watched Inspector Morse to appreciate Endeavour?
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is one of my all-time favourite shows so far - it's been an uphill battle to convince my friends to watch it.
@vishae I don’t think you need to watch Morse first. You would perhaps miss out on some subtle references to what Morse will become, but I think it stands well on its own.
@vishae this sounds an interesting way to do it. Never really got into Drafts other than for recording text. Where does your system pull all the episodes from?