“Beyond Blunderdome” (S11, E1) features Mel Gibson who was presented as beloved at the time with Robert Downey Jr. and Hugh Grant presented as degenerates. Just goes to show how easy it is for actors to go from being loved to despised to loved again. Since I’m keeping track of presidential references, I’ll mention an unnamed monocle-wearing president is decapitated in the movie Mel Gibson and Homer make together.

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At the end of Season 1, the X Files had been discontinued and Mulder and Scully have been assigned to other duties. Season 2 kicks off with “Little Green Men” (S2, E1) in which Mulder investigates an alien signal picked up by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. This episode feels very cinematic. There’s a lot of location shooting, a car chase, and Mulder and Scully are separate for much of the episode each doing their own thing. We also get a flashback to Mulder’s sister being abducted. It’s like a mini movie. I had forgotten about how much Mulder likes sunflower seeds until the opening scene depicts him with his feet buried in shells.

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Psych (2006-2014) is a hilarious show about a guy named Shawn who is hyper-observant and has a perfect memory, yet somehow forgets a lot of things and often lacks common knowledge. He pretends to be a psychic and solves murders with his best friend Gus. There are a lot of eighties references and famous guest stars (many from the eighties). It doesn’t entirely hold up (there’s some scattered instances of homophobia and objectification of women in a few episodes here and there which I thought was old-fashioned even when it originally aired), but overall, it’s still watchable.

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Since US Presidents are an interest of mine, I’ve been keeping track of presidential references in The Simpsons. For season 10, we have a reference to then-current president Bill Clinton in “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace” (S10, E2). A couple radio DJs joke that the President has a new website: http://www.[whistling noise].[boing noise]. This is a reference to Clinton’s womanizing ways. It’s interesting that The Simpsons is said to be a liberal show when, so far at least, they make fun of Democrats as much as, or more than, Republicans.

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This season starts with one of the funniest episodes, “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson” (S9, E1). It starts with Moe the bartender telling his customers that 91% of all traffic accidents are caused by the six of them, so they need to start having a designated driver. Barney draws the black egg and can’t drink. He’s even unable to party with Duffman in his first appearance, but he goes on a bender afterward, leaving Homer’s car illegally parked between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. I’ll admit the sight of the Twin Towers brought a tear to my eye. (This episode was made before the towers were destroyed on 9/11.)

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I posted before about Plur1bus. Now that I’ve finished the first season, I’ve got a short additional thought to share.

So, the hive mind of Plur1bus makes even less sense. They claim they don’t make people join them against their will even though they did this to billions of people in the first episode. They say animals aren’t part of the hive mind, even though it all started with a rat. They claim they can’t lie, but they do lie by omission. At one point, they let Carol believe they’re vegetarians by saying they “prefer to be vegetarians” when they really aren’t. This counts as lying as far as I’m concerned. When one of them dies or is in pain, they’re aware of it, but it doesn’t hurt the rest of them. If this is the case, why do millions of them die whenever Carol yells at them? The only explanation is that the hive mind can indeed lie. With all the time she has to think things over, Carol really should have figured out they’re a liar much sooner, but she hasn’t.

Also, they apparently can’t pick apples from trees because they think this hurts the tree. Huh? Why would someone with the collective knowledge of all humanity believe such an obviously wrong and fringe idea? They can’t hurt any living thing directly, but they don’t do anything to prevent living things from harming each other. Who would think that kind of morality makes sense? The set of rules they follow gets more nonsensical and self-contradictory as the season goes along. I guess it’s still interesting to watch, but it’s definitely one of those shows you have to turn your brain off before watching. If there’s a second season, I probably won’t bother with it.

The Netflix adaptation of The Sandman was pretty good overall and well worth watching. I loved the first season quite a bit. Some people didn’t like that many of the characters changed race and/or gender from their appearance in the comics, but that didn’t bother me. However, I did hesitate before watching the second season due to recent revelations regarding creator Neil Gaiman. I ultimately decided all the other people working on the series both in front of and behind the camera shouldn’t be punished for Gaiman’s sins, so I did end up watching it. That said, I don’t blame anyone who skipped it.

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This season, the first episode is “Treehouse of Horror VII” (S8, E1). It was frustrating for me at the time since I’d come to depend on new Simpsons episodes airing in September, but this season, we had to wait two months until the end of October for the first episode. Like usual, there are three short horror stories. The stand-out episode this time involves the one-eyed aliens trying to take over Earth by replacing the President. However, since it was an election year they had to replace both current president Bill Clinton and Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole. As we’ve come to expect, The Simpsons pokes fun at both Democrats and Republicans, even if it had a reputation for being a liberal show at the time.

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Plur1bus is Vince Gilligan’s latest show. He’s best known for realistic shows like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, but he also used to work on the X Files. He returns to his sci-fi roots with this one, presenting a world in which everyone on earth except for a dozen people are part of a hive mind. The main character of the show is Carol, a romantasy author who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She’s the only person in America not part of the hive mind. The other main character is the hive mind itself. Although the hive mind is depicted by numerous actors, in effect, the show only has two main characters. We sometimes see other people who aren’t part of the hive mind, but they don’t appear regularly.

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