Enemy of the State, another Tony Scott film.

Talking does it for me. I just can't absorb anything if someone is talking to me while the TV also has someone speaking. I can read in a large crowd (like an airport) but if I just hear someone speaking close by or there is a singular TV on that I can hear, then I end up tuning into that.

Lol, this could be said about almost any sitcom from the past 50 years.

My favorite was when her daughter goes from Boston to Scotland, then back in time in Scotland, then takes a boat to the Americas, is reunited with her BF from present day who had his own terrible journey to the past, then is brutally raped by a guy that her parents had helped out earlier in the season, then gets pregnant with his kid. This happened in like 2 episodes.

Oh also, her BF that followed her back in time has almost as bad, if not worse, go of it. He goes back in time, joins a crew bound for the new world that is lead by the rapist mentioned above. Finds his girlfriend but then is forced to go back out on the ship with the rapist guy (he doesn't know this dude raped his GF). He escapes and makes his way to his GF's family's house only to be mistakenly identified as the rapist (he was unaware of the rape) and is beat nearly to death by his GF's father and left for dead. Then the Mohawk Indians capture his and hold him prisoner and take him hundreds of miles away. He escapes and finds time traveling stones but decides to stay in the past (wtf?) and is recaptured by the Mohawk where he watches another white guy get burned alive. His GF's family finally arrives to save him and take him home, where they finally notify him of the fact that his GF had been raped by his ship captain that he hated and has now given birth. Oh and the next season he is hung and nearly killed when he's falsely identified as someone else. Dude's life sucks.

I first read the Hobbit and LoTR when the LoTR movies came out back in the day. I enjoyed it quite a bit but it was tough. I decided to reread them a couple years ago and got completely hooked. What helped, though, was often pausing my reads to watch some youtube videos about some part of the book I was in. Most youtube videos on Middle Earth are pulling from the Silmarillion and his other works. This gave everything a much greater depth, knowing a rough history of each part of the book. It no longer seemed like some adventure story, it seemed like an active tale taking place in a world extremely steeped in history. With timelines of hundreds of thousands of years you get a real sense of scale of LoTR. I've since read the Silmarillion.

My favorite aspect of it all was if you look at LoTR as "modern day" when most regular people no longer believe in magic or even know if the old tales they grew up with are actually true. These Hobbits are quite like that, but are then thrust into this story where this one ring that was lost like 3000 years ago is actually real and the being that created it is alive and wants it back. The LoTR is sort of the final epic tale of Middle Earth. The characters often allude to the other epic tales like Beren and Luthien, Fingolfin vs Morgoth, etc, but don't realize they are in one of these tales until about halfway through the journey.

You should definitely go back and read the series once you've finished the Silmarillion.

You have a point, but I personally think it's just a solid show for any network (specifically season 1-5). There is a super cringe part of the fandom that overlaps with The Arrow fans that think that stuff was good. I gave The Arrow a shot after hearing the accolades and it was the most meh piece of TV. The latter years of SPN catered extremely hard to these cringe fans (where the early seasons actually made fun of them). I honestly think Twitter/Tumbler fandoms have ruined many shows because a show gets popular so creators turn to the internet to see what the fans are saying and the most hardcore ones are living there creating the absolute dumbest piece of fanfic possible with everyone praising it.

The WB/CW was a good melodrama network for teens and young adults and then it turned into PG13 Nickelodeon shows.

That's ridiculous, lol. Can you imagine a world where seasons 6-15 didn't exist? With SPN having ended 13 years ago and just been one of those shows that faded into maybe cult classic like status? Going out on the highest rated episode of the series would have been great and people probably would have been discussing a potential continuation for the past 13 years. That's when you get them back together and you pick up with a limited new story and the whole point is to finally get Sam out of hell. Instead, they brought him back before the episode ended.

I actually didn't finish season 15. I got halfway through and gave up when I heard the ending had been horrible. I read the synopsis of the remaining episodes and it was just a weird way to end it. Having rewatched 1-5, it makes way more sense to stop there and pretend it actually ended there.

Yea, and he stayed until season 8 but I think he worked better with Kripke there than when he wasn't.

I used to go on the subreddit and speculate how certain seasons would wind up, and I was always wrong because they would just keep getting more and more ridiculous and then a bigger enemy would emerge in the last episode and one of the brothers would disappear. That show had so much potential for good stories but it became fanservice schlock.

I think post-5 Kripke was collecting checks and helping the team transition without him. I mean they literally kill him in one episode. After that, he seemed to just get residuals and drop in every now and then. The writing was just terrible after he left though. I know he didn't personally write that many episodes in 1-5, but his showrunning direction must have been what kept things grounded and on a consistent course.

He seems to be running the Boys like he did SPN and I think that's making people anxious. A big criticism of The Boys season 3 is that it ended just like it started and nothing really changed, just a lot of build up for nothing. To me that's exactly what happened in season 3 of SPN with Dean actually dying and going to hell. He seems to still write like he would for a network TV show instead of a streaming service, and he's said that he's planning to go to season 5 with the Boys. I think he's got good ideas and knows how to string stories along to keep them interesting until they can reach a final episode and come to a conclusion. I'd bet he'd be able to develop a well rounded epilogue to season 5 SPN if he got the chance.

I think the anthology series was an idea that got dropped before the pilot even shot. Kripke wanted the scary stories to be front and center with a couple of reporters going around capturing them, but when the studio disliked that he pitched the idea of them being brothers. I think he fleshed out a couple seasons at a time, waiting to see if they would be able to continue before writing any cliffhangers.

They really should have let the whole thing die. The only thing I hope for in the future would be a team up with Ackles, Padalecki, and Kripke making a new show some years from now. Retcon seasons 6-15 and pick the show up 20 years after the events from Season 5 (which aired in 2010, so 8 more years from now).

I think you could literally have the clichéd sequel that repeats the story from the original but with some changes (like 22 Jump Street) and people would like it. These spinoffs that they do don't work well because people liked the aspect of these two guys hunting monsters. Figure out how to get that going again and you'd have a good show.

Dean is in his early 50's with a family when the same thing that happened to his dad happens to him. He then has to get back into the life while taking care of his kids and basically becomes what his dad was, someone mercilessly hunting the demon that murdered his wife. Turns out the demon that killed his wife is Sam (or someone with Sam's body), returned from Hell. Cue a season or two or good ole Supernatural. Maybe Dean goes on a hunting trip and doesn't come home for a while and his kids have to go after him, leading to some Monster of the Week type episodes. Hit the same story beats they did in the original. Make it a show about people searching the unknown, trying to hunt things and save people. It works best with a smaller cast.

That one scene in the newest special.... ouch.

That, for me, was the best part of that show. You could tell he was truly out of his element at certain moments (like when the lambs were being born and not all were making it, which is typical but morbid). It was a nice change of pace from his usual antics where you laugh at an obviously scripted bit. You could also see the reality of the farming business hitting him with every update from his guys, and he just gained more and more respect for them.