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bobkatt013 posted:You should look at the post right above you I wrote this up before I saw that post. Holy christ alive that actually happened.
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May 16, 2014 14:55
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The timing of the reviews justifies my Power Rangers suggestions. I was actually going to suggest Once A Ranger for Irish Joe but
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May 16, 2014 17:03
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Ugh, so okay. The L Word, Season 5, Episode 2. Things I know about the L Word going in: it's a lesbian show. That's literally all I've heard about it. To start with, the recap of previous episodes had so much going on that I continue to have no clue what was happening - there was a fire, there was some people making a movie script, there was a LOT of ladies making out, something going on in a women's prison, there was a 2 second long glimpse of Jane Lynch, and that's all I've got. The actual episode opens up with a (male) Hollywood guy complaining that the script for whatever doesn't have enough lesbian sex in it. He and the two women he's talking to discuss additional sex scenes they could add, all of which involve at least one party cheating. The two women argue about the possibilities as though the characters were real people, "Bev would never have sex with the make up artist!" which leads me to believe that the script, or at least the characters, are based on real people and real events. All of the discussed sex scenes are played on screen in a way I feel weird about. Like, it's trying to be tantalizing, but I don't know what's going on so I just feel like I'm watching the start of a porno before everybody's gotten completely naked. It's kind of uncomfortable. The title sequence plays and for as little as I care about this show, I do appreciate that there is not a single male name in the credits. All the main characters are ladies and the producers appear to be too. That's pretty rad. There's also a ton of groping and making out. Super. A lady named Shane shows up at a mansion to handle some make up issues for a wedding. Shane, I should note, looks like an 80s rock star. A male 80s rock star. She also has a very smokey voice and seems like she really, really wants to bang the woman who... owns the mansion? I'm not sure who she is. She walks around in a thin silk robe the entire scene. The scene changes to a lunch restaurant where a woman who looks like Zac Efron and another woman are hanging out at the bar getting water (so they're me at a bar, really), and discussing another couple who they think are on a date. The two women (one black haired and one red head) who are on the date are discussing the child of the red head. The red head is not only discussing her child but also her girlfriend so I guess this isn't a date after all. The red head's girlfriend sounds like a helicopter parent who is REALLY determined for their kid to be an artist. The black haired woman points this out and the red head sort of stutters out a rebuttal but it's clear that the black haired woman isn't wrong. You know what would be great? If I had names for any of these people. So far all I've got is Shane and Zefron. Speaking of Shane, the scene cuts back to her where she's doing the hair of the girls for the wedding. All three of these girls look so alike that even if I had names for them, I wouldn't be able to tell you who was who. They're talking about how weddings are a scam and ridiculous while the bride rolls her eyes and calls them jealous. They eventually turn on Shane - are you married? No. Do you have a boyfriend? No. *sly looks* Do you have a girlfriend? Not anymore. Does that mean you'll never get married? and another butts in with Duh, gay people aren't allowed to get married. Shane brushes it off, but I hate all three of these girls already. Scene cuts back to the two women who are probably not on a date. The red head is still trying to justify helicopter parenting, while the black haired woman looks deeply unimpressed. A tall woman with curly hair and a flat chest approaches the table and I finally get names for some of these loving people. The black haired woman is Denise, the tall chick is Bet (? It sure sounds like she's saying Bet, not Bev) the helicopter parent, and the red head is Tina. The entire conversation is awkward as balls, with Bet offering to have them come over for lunch at her table, Tina initially declining, and Denise loving booking it out of there. Was this a date? Tina makes it sound like it is, wanting to "do this again sometime" but Denise blows her off saying that Tina has things to figure out. I guess she and Bet are exes and not current girlfriends. Then we transition into Orange is the New Black: There are two women in a jail cell, one of whom is sitting on the top bunk staring at the other girl who is doing push ups in the most awkward position I've ever seen - her hands on the top of a table and her feet pressed against a... radiator? I have no idea what that is. Why isn't she just doing push ups on the floor like a loving normal human being? There's plenty of room. A guard comes by to tell them its food time and the scene changes again so, great, that was a phenomenal waste of a minute. We're back to Zefron who is standing outside a bathroom in the restaurant? There's a guy standing outside, leaning on the wall with a magazine and he doesn't actually look like he's waiting for the bathroom but Zefron nonsensically tells him "you know there's stalls in there right?". Turns out the door is locked, and after a moment, two girls come out of it together giggling. Zefron and the guy both go into the bathroom together as well but based on the number of lesbians in this show, it seems statistically unlikely that they're about to have bathroom sex. Back out in the main part of the restaurant, Tina and Bet are having lunch with two other chicks that I can't even be assed to care about at this point and Tina is lying about her date going well. Bet clearly has low opinions of Denise but the other two girls basically tell her to play nice. One of the chicks is also apparently deaf, which I hadn't realized (I thought she just had a speech impediment) because the guy from the bathroom shows up to sit with them a moment later and starts signing and saying, "I just pissed next to the cutest boy alive." I assume he's talking about Zefron, and I'm not sure if the plot here is going to play out that Zefron is trans and I didn't pick up on it or if the guy is just mistaking Zefron for a boy. One of the girls gets a text from Shane and makes a passing mention of the wedding, so Tina bolts because she apparently forgot something. The girls continue talking about Shane and how her life is apparently a disaster? I don't know, I didn't follow most of this. Fortunately the scene then transitions back to Shane! Oh wait, the scene transitions to Shane loving one of the bridesmaids. Super. There's literally nothing happening but them loving. After an uncomfortable minute, there's another scene change. I have no idea what is going on in this goddamn show and I'm only like ten minutes in (yeah, everything I've written so far? 10 minutes in! There is TOO MUCH HAPPENING IN THIS SHOW. Jesus, I thought Glee crammed poo poo in). At a military base, a nice looking black girl in army camo walks into an office to talk to an officer (?) friend about the fact that she's being investigated for "homosexual activity". Ah, the days of DADT. The officer is super friendly right up until he finds out what she's being investigated for, at which point he immediately turns into a dick who tells her that he can't help and that allegations like that are hard to fight because they "usually end up being true and after that the military doesn't want you anymore. Which is kind of understandable, don't you think?" What a bag of dicks. Back in the restaurant, Zefron's name turns out to be Max, but I don't care because I'm going to keep calling him Zefron because he seriously looks exactly like Zac Efron. The table confirms that Zefron is a transman, which is cool, and bathroom guy takes it pretty well, which is nice. Zefron gets a hot drink brought over to him by the friend he was chatting with earlier about whether or not Tina was on a date. Zefron points out a girl reading a book that's apparently important. Zefron's friend (Kit) gets her busybody on and goes over to offer up a slice of pie (at some point in the conversation, it's revealed that the slice of pie is like $7 which is loving ridiculous, goddamn) and drags the girl over to Zefron because apparently Zefron lives with the author of the book. The girl (Adele) is starstruck by Zefron, which seems silly because he's not the one who wrote the book??? There's a brief transition back to Shane and the wedding party and literally nothing happens in it. Nothing. I have no idea why it's there. The author of the book (Jenny something) shows up at the restaurant to get a coffee look hassled and complaining about losing her assistant and having to be at a wedding and not having a gift and she's clearly stressed out but Kit drags her over to meet Adele and it's blatantly obvious that this isn't going to go well because Jenny can't seem to remember her name seconds after being told it, but okay great. Meanwhile, Shane is loving either a different bridesmaid or the same bridesmaid, I literally cannot tell, in a room with glass windows on the ground floor leading out to the patio where literally the entire wedding party is and neither of them think this is a bad idea. The bridesmaid talks about some rear end in a top hat she wants to piss off and Shane realizes that she has screwed up in her choice of fuckbuddy. The sex scene is still super awkward. The scene changes to Jane Lynch holding a huge thing of flowers. They are for her girlfriend who she has apparently recently asked to move in with her? Her girlfriend calls it a proposal but I don't know. Her girlfriend has something important to say and it's clear that Jane Lynch thinks it's going to be "I'm not ready to move in" but instead it turns out to be "I'm loving other people" and Jane Lynch goes ballistic in the way that only Jane Lynch can. Back in the restaurant, Jenny clearly has no time for the little lunch date that Kit has tried to organize and is being kind of a dick to Adele who is having a perfectly nice conversation with Kit and Zefron. Jenny completely abuses how star struck Adele is by getting her to essentially be her assistant for the day and I don't know, maybe I'm wrong and Jenny is actually going to pay Adele to be her assistant but I get bad vibes off the whole thing. Scene transition into a prison shower and abrupt lot of really naked women. Xeria, why have you done this to me. There's a dropping the soap joke which turns out to be less of a joke when one of the women has a knife (it's not even a shiv, it's an actual knife) and the girl has to be rescued by her weird-push-up roommate who is ripped as gently caress. I still don't know what's going on. Army chick is chatting with one of the people from the earlier sign language luncheon party that I didn't catch a name for about how her army buddy turned out to be a douchebag which is justified, but she says "He's never even seen action, he'd probably poo poo his pants if he saw his buddy get his skull blown up next to him." Uhhhh, yeah? That seems reasonable to me even if he is a homophobic turd. Army chick (Tosh) complains that if she hires a civilian lawyer than she might as well just cop to being gay and get discharged. She also says that DADT won't be repealed any time soon, which is ironic I suppose. Meanwhile, the wedding is actually starting and my sound actually completely cut out for this entire scene so I have no idea what's happening other than Jenny showing up late. Adele is not with her so idk. My sound cuts back in just as the wedding party is looking around in confusion because apparently the bride is missing. Also, nobody's seen Shane. Has Shane seriously been loving the bride this entire time? I swear to god. Shane spends the scene reassuring bride that everything's going to be okay and the bride goes in for a kiss with Shane but I legitimately can't tell if the bride is who Shane was banging all episode. I'm pretty sure she's not because the other girl mentioned making somebody jealous and ugh, I don't know. There's too much garbage here to keep track of. Kit arrives at the prison to talk to the girl who almost got knifed and/or molested in the shower and tries to make sense of what happened. Her cellmate turns out to be named Dusty and mentions that Dusty protected her. Kit seems impressed by this and encourages the girl to stick with Dusty. Kit has apparently been in jail before, or at least knows whats up. The other girl is dumb as a box of bricks. In some nice restaurant (these people sure eat out a lot, ho ho ho), Tosh, her possible girlfriend or at least the friend she was talking with earlier, is talking with the deaf woman from before, and Bet. Also in the restaurant is Jane Lynch and the girlfriend she blew the gently caress up at earlier. This is definitely gonna go great. Jane is trying to convince her girlfriend not to gently caress other people. Back at the wedding, holy loving poo poo, I can't handle these scene changes, Shane was definitely not loving the bride earlier because it's two bridesmaids who are flirting with her from across the room. Shane was apparently working her way through the entire female side of the wedding party. Tina, sitting next to her complains that this is the straightest wedding on Earth and there's no way a lesbian would find anybody to gently caress here. That's a great gaydar she's got there. Shane makes a swift exit to the bar with Tina and they run into Jenny, and Adele shows up with the gift and cake for Jenny. Jenny takes one bite of the cake, and declares that she doesn't like it, then exits the scene with Adele and oh my god I hate her so much. Tina also has to leave the scene and Shane is immediately harassed by one of the bridesmaids she banged, looking for a dance. Shane is not interested because I guess she's the love em and leave em type. Back at the restaurant, Bev and the deaf chick (I have no name for her) are shamelessly making out in the restaurant in a way that would be really rude no matter who was doing it. Stop playing tonsil hockey while you're having dinner with other people guys. Tosh and Alice are both displeased, but apparently Alice is worried Tosh will be noticed as with them and it will hurt her in the investigation. The two immediately stop making out and apologize but Tosh didn't want this information to get out and is angry at Alice for saying it. Alice and Tosh walk away to have an argument about the whole thing and honestly I just don't care and I want this episode to be over. Back in jail, Dusty and the other chick are finding common ground over some actress who died. Nobody cares. At the restaurant, Tosh and Alice are leaving. Jane Lynch and her girlfriend have taken their places at the table and Jane Lynch is being super awkward and possessive and talking about sex. At the wedding, Jenny is dancing with Vizzini from the Princess Bride and Adele looks disappointed. Tina looks like she's gonna hurl and frankly I sympathize. Bet and the deaf chick have a cute conversation in sign language about Bet not wanting to go back to the other girl's place because it's "funky". Since Bet is supposed to be an art obsessive helicopter mom, I can totally see her having that kind of neurotic issue. Jane Lynch, meanwhile, has apparently not grasped that her girlfriend broke up with her. Shane gets a hug and a thank you from the bride who is leaving on her honeymoon. Both bridesmaids are gunning to get Shane's attention and Shane ends up getting invited down to the wine cellar. In the prison, Dusty is having a nightmare and the other chick is dumb enough to try and wake her up and ends up in a headlock for her trouble. It ends in sex, during which the chick proves that she is literally the stupidest by trying to talk about what Dusty was in prison for. Murder comes out and Dusty is offended - she's in for tax fraud. Shane gets an invitation again while on her way out and this one she actually follows. Adele actually does get formally offered the assistant position so okay, maybe Jenny's just a lovely boss and not somebody abusing a fan. Shane arrives at the room and finds - the owner of the mansion and presumed mother of the bride. Wearing a robe, high heels, and hosiery. She's pretty blunt too: "I saw the way you looked at me when you followed me up the stairs, and it made me horny." Okay. Shane knows a bad idea when she sees it, but can't resist. The bridesmaids are looking for Shane and while wandering around upstairs, run into each other and try to brush the other off. Then they hear the distinct sounds of loving and unlike normal people, go to investigate instead of awkwardly walking away and pretending they didn't hear anything. They walk in on Shane and the mansion owner. Shane makes a run for it and that's where the episode ends. Overall: This show loving sucks. It changes scenes way too rapidly and often for no good reason. Every new paragraph in this review marks a scene transition and it's loving UNNECESSARY. It also had way too many characters to keep track of, many of whom don't have a lot of personality going for them, and I've watched Glee, I'm pretty good at keeping track of large numbers of characters with few personality traits. Having watched almost an hour of this loving show, I still have no idea what was going on in it other than lots of lesbians loving each other. Maybe if I was a lesbian, or even a guy watching who got off on lesbians, I would be more charmed by the show. But as it is, I'm an asexual girl who thinks sex in general is super awkward and kind of gross. This... isn't exactly the show for me.
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May 16, 2014 19:49
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CuwiKhons posted:Maybe if I was a lesbian, or even a guy watching who got off on lesbians, I would be more charmed by the show. Nah, it was pretty much just a really bad show helmed by someone improbably more egomaniacal than Ryan Murphy.
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May 16, 2014 20:16
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xeria posted:Nah, it was pretty much just a really bad show helmed by someone improbably more egomaniacal than Ryan Murphy. Why did you do this to me, Xeria? What did I ever do to you 
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May 16, 2014 20:18
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CuwiKhons posted:Why did you do this to me, Xeria? What did I ever do to you It's Senerio's fault! I said the next person who requests an episode was going to get The L Word and he said to give it to you!
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May 16, 2014 20:29
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I accept the blame.
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May 16, 2014 20:50
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CuwiKhons posted:Why did you do this to me, Xeria? What did I ever do to you 
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May 16, 2014 21:09
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Desired Reviews: Xavier: Renegade Angel Season 1 Episode 4: The 6th Teat of Good Intentions Continuum Season 3 Episode 7: Waning Minutes __________________________________________________________________________________ Also, I've been dying to get in on this. Shows I've watched: Continuum Xavier Modern Family Almost Human Avatar/Korra Firefly Battlestar Galactica/Caprica Game of Thrones Archer Arrow Believe Community Fargo HMIYM New Girl Orphan Black Hannibal Psych/Monk Revolution Suits Supernatural and other CW shows The Red Road
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May 16, 2014 22:08
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Ravane: I assign you to watch Bates Motel, Season 2, Episode 3 "Caleb"
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May 16, 2014 22:33
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I'll take another one that's actually available on Netflix (or Hulu Minus because I ain't got plus), if anyone has any suggestions.
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May 16, 2014 22:58
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I'd like to take a crack at this. Some shows that I do watch are: Parks and Recreation Louie Portlandia Orphan Black Hannibal Mad Men Doctor Who
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May 16, 2014 23:08
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Dias posted:I'll take another one that's actually available on Netflix (or Hulu Minus because I ain't got plus), if anyone has any suggestions. Potato Star Episode 113
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May 16, 2014 23:10
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ZDar Fan posted:I'd like to take a crack at this. Some shows that I do watch are: Person of Interest Season 2 Episode 16: Relevance
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May 16, 2014 23:16
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Senerio posted:Person of Interest Season 2 Episode 16: Relevance I'm on it. Thanks for the suggestion.
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May 16, 2014 23:27
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Allright it's the weekend and I'm down to do another one or two of these reviews! http://i.imgur.com/h94xNab.jpg Here are the shows I follow. Hit me with your best shot.
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May 17, 2014 01:07
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Zaggitz posted:Allright it's the weekend and I'm down to do another one or two of these reviews! Batman - the Brave and the Bold - Season 1, episode 9: Journey to the Center of the Bat
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May 17, 2014 01:10
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Sadly, extremely so, I have already seen all of Brave and the Bold, it's amazing.
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May 17, 2014 01:15
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I'd say that's a shame, but it's not because everybody should see The Brave and the Bold. How about Almost Human? Season 1, episode 2: "Skins" That show was hot garbage but the episode was... interesting.
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May 17, 2014 01:29
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Zaggitz posted:Allright it's the weekend and I'm down to do another one or two of these reviews! Kamen Rider Gaim Episode 19.
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May 17, 2014 01:43
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CuwiKhons posted:I'd say that's a shame, but it's not because everybody should see The Brave and the Bold. Saw all of Almost Human so I guess I'm watching Kamen Rider Terry's Chocolate Orange. edit: Also Senerio hw about you do the review I assigned you before assigning all the toku you can manage to the poor masses. Zaggitz fucked around with this message at 02:05 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 01:53
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IRC posted:<Zaggitz> also dont reccomend toku shows people cant normally watch Kamen Rider Dragon Knight episode 25
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May 17, 2014 02:28
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Zaggitz, if you want to watch a non-whatever-Senerio-is-suggesting thing, try Danny Phantom, season 3, episode 11: D-Stabilized.
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May 17, 2014 02:44
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I WILL WATCH ALL OF THEM.
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May 17, 2014 02:54
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LOST #4.5, "The Constant" Holy gently caress. I was TERRIFIED of this after Vikings. I was putting it off, putting it off, then I watched Vikings and that landed with a wet fart, mostly because I didn't have a clue as to what the gently caress was going on. So I was punting this even further because if I was grumpy over sitting through loving Vikings, I was going to be scratching at the walls after hopping into the second-most infamously serialized drama of the modern era (besides The Wire). Finally I realized that I was gonna get kicked out of the game if I didn't produce a review, so I gritted my teeth, booted up Netflix, and jumped in. Here's what I knew about LOST: I know there's a plane crash, a smoke monster (who is, by my understanding, eventually played in human form by Titus Welliver). I know there's a hatch. There are characters named Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, they're in a triangle. Jack's a doctor, Kate did some bad poo poo in her past, I THINK Sawyer's a con artist. Other characters include Sayid, who tortures people; Terry O'Quinn's character, who was apparently a paraplegic before crash landed on the island, Korean couple Jin and Sun, and some guy named Desmond played by the guy who was in that short first season of Scandal. At the end of Season 3, Jack is able to radio off the island and we learn that he and Kate, among a handful of others, eventually get off. That's about where they introduce time travel. Eventually there's a nuclear bomb, and I have the roughest idea of how it all ends. So imagine my despair when I realized that my prior swiss-cheesed knowledge of this show counted for precisely jack poo poo, save for "Desmond" and "Time Travel." And there were no previouslies. I started this episode thinking "Oh God, this is going to be the longest 43 minutes of my life." Holy gently caress I was wrong. Whereas "Raid" was just a middle chapter of the longer Vikings story, "The Constant" was a complete story, one that relied on the show's history without demanding more than a basic knowledge of it. In an effort to make contact with the people Jack radioed, Desmond flies through a rough storm along with Sayid and Jeff Fahey; in the midst of this, he awakens in a boot camp, swearing that he was in the midst of an intense dream. When he slips back to the helicopter, he has zero memory of Sayid and Jeff Fahey, and proceeds to freak the gently caress out. Desmond's mind continues to flit between the ship and the boot camp; when he is awake in one world, he's catatonic in the other. This is POWERFUL stuff: Henry Ian Cusick's panic and confusion in these scenes is palpable and horrific; it only intensifies when he is sent to the ship's med bay, where he meets another person that's been going through a similar ordeal. Sayid eventually manages to get Jack on the phone, who turns Sayid and Desmond over to the island's resident super genius, Daniel Faraday. Faraday susses out that Desmond has become unstuck in time, the world he's actually traveling to is his life back in 1996, where he broke up with his girlfriend Penny (even though he's still in love with her) and joined the Army. Meanwhile, the ship's doctor, concerned over a crazy person acting crazy, has hit the alarm, leaving Faraday with limited time to bring Desmond up to speed. Faraday tells Desmond to find him at Oxford in 1996, and gives him some information that will sell the story. Back in 1996, Desmond hops a train to Oxford and gets Faraday's attention. He learns that Faraday has done experiments of this sort with lab rats, sending their consciousnesses forward long enough for them to gather information that they're going to learn at a later time. The problem is that these rats eventually die of aneurisms. Faraday's theory is that the rats lose track of where they are, and their brains can't handle it. They lack a common bond -- a constant -- between the two time periods that allow them to stabilize. So in order for Desmond to survive, he has to find his constant between the two time periods. The best that Desmond can think of is Penny, but she's changed her number. So this episode, complicated as it is with Time Travel and various serialized elements, boils down to the simple story of a broken man desperate to reconnect with his love, and it's a story well told. Now on its own, I have questions about the nature of Penny and Desmond's relationship, and why they're so fixated on each other even after their relationship apparently ended. (My understanding, based on the information provided by the episode, is that he broke it off with her, so why can't he stop thinking about her? And if it was the other way around, what happened to turn her back to him? These are questions that I can imagine answers for within human nature, but detail would be nice.) So I suspect the episode would have been far more effective if I had the history of the series to this point behind me. But as it stood, that final phone call between Desmond and Penny was powerful stuff, and sold me on their relationship on its own. I can tell that Vikings was a good show despite being utterly confused and even bored by what was happening in "Raid." But "The Constant" kept me engaged despite having the barest idea of what was going on, and THAT'S the mark of something truly special. --- Okay, because of how long it took me to crank those two reviews out I think I'm going to hold off on asking for any more, at least for now. But now that my workload's clear, I'll be happy to give a few out to anyone who asks for them. DivisionPost fucked around with this message at 03:10 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 03:05
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Going in My knowledge level here boils down to knowing that the gimmick is that Taye Diggs is living the same day over and over again. I remember just about that much only from watching the first episode something like years ago. Day Break 1x10 - What If He's Free ...which is helpful, because that's precisely what the show decides to recap, along with a big gigantic dose of scheming between politicians and gangs, where Taye Diggs informs me that he needs to find not-Danny Trejo to figure out how he's being accused of a crime he physically couldn't have done. And then his girlfriend (?), after making an awful joke about supermax, answers a phone call all mysterious-like. I was recently told that she's going to be in danger today, but maybe she knows about the danger? MYSTERY. I get the feeling that phone call means more if I've seen other episodes; he probably knows who's on the other end. "Tomorrow? Wish I could get there." We then spend a few minutes watching a pretty clever use of the premise; he cheats the laws of common sense by trying the same thing repeatedly, each time learning more and more about his plane passengers and the warden that he needs to con into talking to not-Danny Trejo. It takes him a few tries to fool him into thinking he's Jonathan Banks' crony, only to find that the prisoner he's looking for has escaped. At this point, I imagine that it must be incredibly goddamn frustrating for him to repeatedly go through airport security only to find out he didn't have to at all. And then we meet Mexican Wil Wheaton and his old guy friend talking about how they're tracking Taye Diggs (I think?) He talks to apparently his confidante, apparently not-Danny Trejo was just let out of the prison by someone. He deduces, using his informant, that Tuco Salamanca is a reformed gang member who's not, in fact, so reformed. During a confrontation, the informant kills Tuco, who has an address in his wallet that Taye Diggs goes to investigate. To be honest, this is where the show's gimmick shoots itself in the foot a bit, because any tension in this scene is defused by the fact that if he needs any other information, he can get it tomorrow. It feels like the show takes it more seriously than it probably should, but to Diggs' credit, he plays it well; he looks startled, nonplussed, but doesn't freak out the way most people would at his only lead dying in front of him. "I have a better idea, I'll pull all the cases I want, and you play ball with yourself." He meets a mysterious lady with a scar across her face who wonders why the hell this cop is harassing her about contract killings and crap. He gets a call from Andrea, who has just finished having a slapfight with the officer on the case, who seems convinced that Hopper did it. Not knowing who's in on it and who isn't going in, the detective acts as if he's trying to hide it, but his shocked reaction that the gun in the case was checked out by... himself says otherwise. I did like the slight slipup on his part where he lets slip to Andrea that he's just going to get the missing gun "tomorrow", since he knows it's in his apartment. As it turns out, though, he gives his girlfriend really bad advice when he tells her to stay at her house with some agent, because that's where not-Danny Trejo is! This elicited a legitimate gasp out of me, stakes-lessening of the premise notwithstanding. His apartment, however, is covered by a ton of cops, who come in to get him. As part of his escape, he finds a surveillance system upstairs from his apartment. Someone was watching him, that someone being those two goons from earlier, who he caught spying on his apartment on his way in. He ropes his landlord into his escape, which indirectly results in the landlord confirming that it was the goons, even though Hopper doesn't get to see that. "I knew this day would come." From Hopper's partner, we learn that the mysterious lady from earlier is, shock of shocks, not-Danny Trejo's sister, who changed her name to get away from him. That seems like a relatively obvious development, although it's played for all the pathos it can be. Less predictable is the DOUBLE REVERSE TWIST that it is, in fact, her who does the contacting of Trejo, and Tuco meets with her as the middleman. This entire development, while shocking, feels incredibly inorganic, as if the writers needed to figure out a way to tell Hopper his girlfriend was in danger, already had this scene, and decided "Well she can just be the world's biggest idiot and get caught on her phone talking to the killer!" Between that and the ensuing trap, it all feels a little too convenient. I realize that, given his ability to try the day over again, he can skip a lot of the random chance, but up until now the show's been good about showing how we get there if that were the case, so it's presented as all the same day's worth, which stretches belief. "The sooner we can put this day behind us, the better." He catches the killer, his name is cleared, he gets to go home with his girlfriend and watch the sunrise, and... he wakes up again. Yesterday. While the pacing (and the fact that I know there's more episodes) gives away that this might happen, it's still a really interesting thing to do. We've spent the last 10 episodes trying to solve this mystery, it gets solved... and that's still not it. The only real thing is that Spivak says there's "a few loose ends" that hadn't been cleared up, which means the conditions for escaping this hell are awfully specific. The problem is that, after an entire episode spent following concrete things from A to B, what the hell is Hopper supposed to do now? He can escape from his predicament all he wants, but there's something else he's supposed to do, and he has no idea what it is. The despair he must feel waking up there must be crushing. To be quite honest, I would've expected it to go either way; that he gets to deal with the "why the hell was he repeating" now that he solved the mystery, or that he hasn't successfully figured it out. They definitely picked the more intriguing of the two options. Overall I'd give this a B. The premise is used to clever effect without being too hard to follow, even if that results in a bit of a surplus of expository dialogue and some serious fudging of how long things take for him to pull everything he does off in a day. Where it suffers is when the killer's sister is introduced; a bunch of time is spent fleshing her out only to pull the rug out of the entire story we learned ten minutes earlier. The show displayed such an economical use of time early on that the fact it spins its wheels halfway through is kind of disappointing. In all, though, I'm impressed. The ability to take a premise involving a lot of repetition into a fast-paced thriller without confusing the bejesus out of you is not something to sneeze at. At the end, I was left wanting to find out what happened. Was it God? Is this a stupid religious allegory at the end, or is there not even a resolution because the show got cancelled? I don't know if I could handle that. 
Celery Jello fucked around with this message at 04:49 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 04:44
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Okay I'm on this. A loving Ken Burns doc about a sport. Awesome. This thread is the best, everyone keep up the good work.
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May 17, 2014 04:49
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I would love it if someone would review Metal Hurlant Chronicles 2x04 - Second Chance. It's something else. So is Ashes to Ashes - Series 3, Episode 8.
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May 17, 2014 04:56
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I have telenovelas to recommend for Irish Joe (whether or not he speaks Spanish) but I am going to have to review something first! I have Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. These are the only ways (other than the odd YouTube) I can watch TV. My viewing history is lengthy and weird. If it's goony, British, campy, genre, kiddy, or old I probably know it or know of it. Good luck!
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May 17, 2014 06:02
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LISTEN ALLA Y'ALL ITZ THA MOTHERFUCKIN' CARRIE DIARIES Before I got my assignment, I was watching a UFC event on TV, watching men violently get punched in the face, and I said, to myself, "Hmm, I wonder what that would feel like. Then I Log in to the ol' SA account to find that I've been assigned The Carrie DIaries. WELP So I've been slated to review The Carrie Diaries, which is not, like I originally assumed, a feminist-friendly TV adaptation of the Turner Diaries, starring Selena Hudgens as "the girl in the pig's-blood-soaked prom dress." I know CW's not technically a network still, but I could see that pitch meeting going awry somewhere down the line. No, it's a prequel to the mega-nome-thon smashseries Sex & The City, a.k.a. CSI: Murder of Crows' Feet, a.k.a. Show I Have Never Seen One Episode Of, so after three tallboys of the cheapest brew I could find, LETZ DO THISSSSSSSS Spoiler Alert: It involves AIDS to some capacity. Season 2(it got a 2nd season!>?) EPisode 10, Date Expectations Pompous inner monologue times. "Before it all began…" Before it all began you were probably working the night shift at a restaurant with a Dollar Meniu, Anna SophiaRobb. More inner monologue about Valantine's Day and how stereotypically romantic it is. Skater Douche Boyfirend greets Carrie Bradshaw Baby at his apartment. Appartently he hung out with Tony Hawk before he was famous. Funny how characters on shows set letss than twenty years in the past are the Forrest loving Gump of famous people. "I'm telling you, He's gonna be huge." HINDSIGHT IS 20/20, DIPSHIT. So he;s reserved a table for two for Valentines' Day. Nice. Two people I don't care about are talking in front of a locker, which as we all no is the designated highshcpool Talking Focal point. Schlub #1 is talking to schlub #2 about how she got into CCSU University, but with no financial aid. Then some poo poo about hot Army recruiters. Then Some poo poo with Carrie and a black chick with a British accent, and another blonde who thinks Woody Allen is a porno director, GOD I STILL HAVE THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES TO GO I'm trying to find out what the main plot is so I don't have to recap all this insignificant ephemera poo poo Woody Allen Schlub has a job at A gay club, with leather daddies, I wish all the characters In the Carrie Dieareis suffered the end fates of the characters in Paris Is Burning, I want to pull a Mummified Skater Douche out of Haggard Baby Bradshaw's closet, please God SKip forward, Estelle chick has abounch of flowers delivered to her desk , one bouquet is for Carrie. NEW Development, Skater Doucke (aka Sebastian) has canceled their Valentine's Day Date and used their Dinner Reserveation for, In carrie's words, "That TOny Eagle Guy." Hopefully he didn't include the OTHER reservation he made. Tony Eagle won't be feeling the champagne glass hot tub. Any way. You know English chick is English because she said "shag" and "bollocks." good thing you straightened that poo poo out for me, CW Producers. Next, Financial AId Scchlub does a flying header into Plot Device #79, The Army Recruiters Station. Ohno, Skater DOuche is making Carrie feel neglecting because of his career with Tony Osprey. Then she slips on a skatebord. Good. Losing it while I'm waiting for this video to buffer. Have you ever chugged Kahlua? It's nnot fun Back from break, her coccyx is broken, maybe, which drives a wedge between her and her Douche Boufriend. "Skateboerding is never going to become A Thing, GAWD, if you love Tony Condor so much why dont'ya MARY HIM". COLLEGE SCHLUB has decided to join the Army, which sends Schlub #2 Into a tizzy. Please please let this turn into a prequel to Full Metal Jacket. Schlub Deux is talking her out of it. They both have a conference with Tits O'Bannion who plans to let her eponymous Tits distract the security guard while the WonderSchlubs sneak onto the base and rip up College Schlub's paperwork. More Tony Peacock discussion between Future Carrie and Skater DOuche, Who is planning to move to California, the conversation ends with her walking away in a Huff, the patented Huff. Back from commercial to the Gay Club, Which is playing Frankinge GOES to Hollywood over the speakers. When You Wanna COme Indeed. British Chick Is here! And Woody Allen Chick, who's naked on a horse. Wrong Place, Wrong TIme, Dumbbell. Gay Guy Character has a scene with his boyfriend talking about the pitfalls of modern (80's) society. Call him an overgrown orangoutang. DO IT. Back to the Schlub Avengers. Tits O'Bannion hoodwinks her way into the Army Base, with tears. "I hate to see a pretty girl cry" COUNT: 1. Boooooo. Two Sub-Schlubs are watching SOylent Green on a couch. Points for Killing Fields Reference. Carrie: "Who's Cambodia? Is that Tony Penguin's Skateboarderr Identity?" Carrie is dancing with Skater chick. Imean Briticsh. Chick. Cockney Hackney chick starts a fight with Naked Woody Allen Chick and gets thrown out, in an impotent display of British rage. Schlub Avengers are sitting in an army Office. Schlub #2 (remember her?) starts searching thorough the files herself and gets caught by GUy in A General Hat, who says "You're in Big Trougbel" So you know he means business. The Schlub Avengers Are In Dutch! Will They Be Able To Defeat GENEREIC ARMY MAN? TOON IN NEXT TIME, ON loving three minutes in the future Gay Couple Is having fun on the dance floor with Hairy Brad shaw, but Gay Guy Number 1 runs into his boyfriend, who tells him that his other gay ex-partner is dying of AIDS. "THERE'S a test now." Spread awareness, thirty years ago. It's like Back to the Future! Except not. Commercial Break. Gay Guy #1, AKA Walt, is having a crisis at the thought of possibl\y being infected with AIDS, a crisis I can understand (I mean, not me personally) Did they have a facsimile of OraQick back then? Walt runs away in a panic. Female Sub-Schlub talks with her father about Male sub-Schlub and his seral-killer potential. Female Sub-Schlub flips out about her father telling her what t do. "I'm going to date him and YOU can't stop me and NO that was not a love letter to Ted Bundy you found under my pillow!" "Over MY Dead Body" count: 1. Back to to the Schlub Avengers, as Generic Army Man tells Tits O'bannion that her Mammary Magic won't work on him, as he has two sisters and therefore Tits Immunity. College Schlub Tries to distract him with NCAA talk, but to no avail. She just decides to be scrtaight with Army man about her panic at her supposed lack of afuture, and Army Man accepts it, tearing up her application on CAMERA which is the ONLY way to do it in order to ramrod the plot into the CW viewer;'s heads. Yay. And then Army Man asks her out. Huzzah. Muppet Baby Carrie is in tears on the phoone in her apartment, when Skater Douche walks in (fresh off his date with Tony Walrus, the fiend) and lets her know he's not moving, no matter what. Carrie tells him that WAlt may have the sneaky ninja, and she doesn't know where Walt is. They both head off to search for Walt, who is xsuqquirreled away in the awkward and hard-to-reach location of his own apartment. Incoming Serious Talk. Or Carrie and Walt Could Just hug. That Too. Skip Forward to a Week Later, When walt and (Bennett? I think? Is his name? I'll Call him Tony Bennett) Tony Bennett talk over lunch about the bombshell they both endured a week ago. The Crooner's results are negative, as are Walt's. They have a discussion about their respective gay experiences and the mortality of AIDS, and they profess their love for each other, despite all the terrible real-life consequences rushing at them like the blood from the elevator in the Shining. Carrie and Sebastian the Human Pubic Crab make up over Carrie's monologue about expectations and how they can be surprising in a good way. "Of course, some things in life really are predicable." *Cue Sub-Schlub answering the door to meet other Sub-Schlub for a date* "But Sometimes, the universe really pulls the rug out from under us." *Cue Naked Woody ALLen Chick and Naked British Chick Riding the Horse in the gay club in front of Tony Bennett, who drinks a glass of what I'm assuming is rotgut mezcal, rumored to kill 99.9% of all germs™ "Will we be brave, or will we run away?" *cue walt talking on the fone to his mother* "So how do we deal with a world where the unexpected could hit at any time?" *cue Scary Bradshaw Lounging upon skater douche, implied message is WEAR A RUBBER* Conclusion: The Carrie Diaries, while taking a CW-flavored deviation from it's source material, nevertheless provides the lion's share of strong female role models and well-rounded characters that are willing to discuss the tough issues plaguing today's society even when nobody else will. Grade: 
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May 17, 2014 06:18
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Allen Gregory, Episode One - Pilot or The rear end Shines Out of His Son Before reading this thread, I had never heard of this show before. Probably because it's a Fox animated sitcom without any involvement from Seth MacFarlane. Cheap shot? Get used to it, because it's where 90% of the jokes in this show come from. Sorry, I said 'jokes', I really should've said 'premises'. There's not really any jokes, just situations that we're supposed to find inherently funny because... well, just because. I did a little research on the series, wondering why I'd never even heard it in passing. Allan Gregory premiered October 30th, 2011 and was cancelled three months later, managing to broadcast a grand total of seven episodes. In fairness, that's rarely ever a symbol of quality. Hell, it's almost a badge of honour: Firefly was killed off with a quarter of the episodes unaired, Clerks managed maybe three episodes, Clone High (with whom this shares an actor, Jonah Hill) was one season of 13 episodes. The near-universal derision is a different matter, but hell, even Blade Runner tanked in its original release. Our main character is the titular Allen Gregory De Longpre - never just Allen, as he points out later. He lives with his father, Richard De Longpre, his father's husband, Jeremy and his adopted Cambodian sister, Julie. The opening scene tells you all you need to know about the show. Richard belittles and outright bullies Jeremy with a frequency that probably qualifies for spousal abuse, Jeremy is a doormat who doesn't get much chance to stand up for himself, Julie is sarcastic, constantly ignored and really the only likeable character in the show and Allen Gregory... oh boy. Imagine all the worst aspects of Frasier Crane condensed into a ball of self-absorbed arrogance. Or just Piers Morgan in general. That's Allen Gregory. He has no redeeming qualites, save that he sometimes stops talking. He's a modern-day Poochie, everyone talking about him, asking about him, except I have no idea if we're supposed to actually like him or not. Tell me a later episode involves time travel and I'll believe it. The show, as I said, boils down to a few recurring premises that we're supposed to find funny. Rich gay men have trophy husbands the way rich straight guys do. Gay people are also silly, self-centred and constantly DTF, but that's hardly a problem or opinion unique to this show. There's a sprinkling of casual racism (Julie was ordered online the same way you'd order a DVD from Amazon and was saved from life in the ocean or something), casual sexism, a few reminders that Jeremy had a wife, family and a career before he was mercilessly stalked by Richard and a vague implication that he's only with Richard in order to keep his family safe. And then there's the naked old people. When Allan Gregory meets the principal at his new school, there's an extended dream sequence where he dreams of taking her to the beach, rollercoasters, before going to a motel room to do the deed. Said principal is in her 60s, chalk white, overweight and covered in varicose veins. And he's constantly touching her up the whole time. Comedy! The whole time this is going on, In The Air Tonight by Phil Collins is playing. Ignoring for a moment the fact that the song is about a painful and difficult divorce, who in the hell has ever found Phil Collins acceptable sexytime music?! The man's work is sexual bromide! Oh, and then when she shouts at him, Allen Gregory shits himself and runs off crying, because we're sorely in need of poop jokes too. The thing that annoys me most about this show, however, is how it keeps reminding me of better shows. As mentioned, Jonah Hill was in Clone High, a far funnier show that I would rather have been watching. Richard looks (and sounds) for all the world like Dean Pelton from Community or Dr. Rusty Venture. And Keith David - Keith David! - plays a recurring magical negro, presumably because he was in need of beer money. However much they paid you, it wasn't enough, my friend. But you know what? I could forgive its sins if it managed to get a single emotion from me beyond 'indifference'. I just don't care about this show. I can't even bring myself to get mad at the fact that I wasted 21 minutes of my time on the thing. Any kind of reaction would prove that it had an impact on me, something that affected my life in some minor way. But it didn't. Instead, I'm going to post this review, get another show to watch and if I ever think about Allan Gregory again, I will be amazed. No rating. It doesn't deserve one.
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May 17, 2014 09:32
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BarbarousBertha, I'm gonna toss you The Yard #1.3: "The Territories". If it's anything like the ten minutes I watched a couple of months ago, I'm so sorry. You can find it on Hulu+, censored or uncensored. DivisionPost fucked around with this message at 12:52 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 12:50
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The last few reviews on this page really are something special.
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May 17, 2014 15:53
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Regy Rusty posted:Ravane: I assign you to watch Bates Motel, Season 2, Episode 3 "Caleb" Bates Motel, Season 2 - Episode 3: “Caleb” I have, of course, watched Hitchcock's final film “Psycho”, many of you may remember my semi-intense hatred for the character “Arbogast” fueled solely by his ridiculous name.  -BOGAST! That said, I had no idea how they'd make a television show based on the movie; I figured it would be a typical “monster” of the week type deal with a little Mother and Norman conversation thrown in, the monster being some foxy lady they kidnap off the street. #BringBackOurGirls  I skipped the recap to go in blind. The episode begins, Norman(?), a brown haired 15 year old, is eating his   The scene quickly cuts to a blond woman, later named as Norma Bates, who is listening to a fellow coworker bicker about both of them losing a part in some play.   They share a weird lesbian moment, then go to the bar. Apparently, the Bates family is a lot newer to town than I thought. The coworker talks about a local sheriff that died at the motel and then offers to show Norma around town. I thought this was season 2, how have they not seen the town yet? Perhaps they moved? But that doesn't make sense if the show is centered around the motel, unless they bought a new motel. If they haven't seen the town by season one, what the hell have they been doing?  Scene cuts to an aggressive blond guy who is trying to look for Norma. He's refused help from some blond kid who looks like he's fresh off the CW. The guy asks if this CW kid is Norma's son, and identifies himself as Norma's brother. CW kid doesn't answer the question but seems to know quite a bit about Norma but not everything as he didn't know she had a brother. Who is this guy? He lets Norma's brother into Norma's house, but Norma quickly boots him [the brother] out and says to CW kid, “don't ever let this guy back in here.” Is this Norman Bates? I thought the kid with brown hair was Norman. Scene cuts to kid with brown hair calling Norma mother, so I guess brown haired kid is Norman. The brother's name turns out to be Caleb, thus explaining the title of the episode. Norman stares at his mother for a prolonged period of time before leaving.   Blond Norman [CW kid] and another guy find a pair of dead bodies. He makes a crude joke in reference to another plot thread that I don't know about. But it's inappropriate here, what a douchebag. Later, a punk-dressed vixen questions brunette Norman about the color of his hair. Clearly I was onto something here, maybe Norman is not her biological child? Though Norman brushes it off as nothing more than "weird genetics." She offers him to join her in building the set for the drama that he and his mother were supposed to act in. He refuses replying that he only came there to notify everyone that he is quitting but ponders the offer. He's clearly attracted to this dame. Blond Norman and Caleb have a heartwarming "father and son" type chat about fly fishing, at this point it's clear that Blond Norman is Norma Bates' son, so apparently she has two sons now. Then Brunette Norman asks his mom if he can join the tech crew for the drama, supporting his love of building by talking about his taxidermy fantasies. Blond Norman turns out to be some kind of drug dealer involved in a gang war, I think. He's told to bury the bodies he found. He also has a moment where he stares at Norma while she is indecent and then asks about her brother.   Brunette Norman goes to the beach for a bonfire rally for Bradley the dead girl. I can no longer be sure what decade this takes place in because a Mackelmore song starts playing, which means my gimmick about calling beautiful women terms of endearment in the 60's just makes me look like an idiot. Despite this being a small town, nobody gives a poo poo about Bradley or even knows who she is besides Norman. No wonder she committed suicide.  Everyone just drinks and smokes weed at her funeral. #TypicalTeenagersMeanwhile, Norma goes to some party she's invited to [at a mansion in the middle of nowhere] where she mentions her husband died 6 months ago and she just moved here from Arizona, and she's already involved in local town politics. She's a bit awkward at the beginning but eventually fits in with the crowd rather well. Finally, Blond Norman confronts Norma about treating Caleb like poo poo, even though he seems like a pretty decent guy. Then Brunette Norman rages out of nowhere (like he was legit in another room, does he have bat ears?) and starts beating the poo poo out of Blond Norman. It's like watching a skinny nerd beat the crap out of a jock. Norma Bates breaks down and reveals that her brother raped her as a child. Blond Norman calls her a liar, but then shuts up when she reveals that Caleb is his father.  My computer can't take screenshots, so here's a reenactment:  Overall: I have no idea what the hell is going on. I was expecting a monster of the week show, and what I got was some plot-rich prequel where Norman Bates is the sanest guy in town and it's actually his mother that's completely messed up. I guess that makes quite a bit of sense because in the movie Norman Bates is completely sane (if you exclude his Oedipus complex), while his mother persona is the crazed killer. So what if it wasn't Norman that killed Bradley, but Norman's mother?  I am not really liking the local pseudo-political drama and awkward teenage romance side plots, it seems rather trite in a show based off of a serial killer. Then again, if this is just a prequel that gradually shows how Norman gets messed up, I suppose it makes sense. But I still don't think it's a great idea for a tv show. It's like watching Smallville without the superpowers. It's like watching a slightly more compelling 7th Heaven. Ultimately, it's difficult to judge this show having only watched a random single episode. But the episode itself was decent, it had great pacing, an okay plot thread. The events weren't really dramatic or surprising, which for a show based on a Hitchcock film is a bit of a disappointment. It wasn't that bad as a whole, but I think Hitchcock would be disappointed at the lack of suspense.  Final Grade: B- Ravane fucked around with this message at 20:57 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 16:59
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Robin Hood (2006-2009) Season 3, Episode 13: "Something Worth Fighting For, Pt. 2" Okay, first things first, Deadpool, you gave me Season 4 Episode 13, but that does not exist. Might want to correct that. This is the series finale, the second of a two-parter, the first of which- along with the rest of the show- I have not seen. This should be fun. It starts well, with a man yelling "BRING FORWARD THE TREBUCHETS!" The Sheriff of Nottingham adds "Welcome to Hell, Robin Hood!" Bad guys are laying siege to the town where Robin Hood and his Merry Men are camped out, and they've already killed... uh... I think his name is Alan? The major problem with reviewing the second half of a finale of a show I've never seen before becomes clear early on- I have no idea who anyone is. I work out that Robin Hood is the guy who kind of looks like Aaron Paul, which is distracting at times because Jessie Pinkman as Robin would be an awesome show. He and... a friend ride out to parley with the Sheriff of Nottingham and his shouty accomplice (who is never named but is cool.) The Sheriff makes the usual threats, get out or we kill everyone, etc. Robin refuses and the town prepares for a siege, and the titles start. The titles. Oh man. A blurb about a legend from the mists of England or whatever flies across the scene in really gaudy CG letters, and the actors' names and such are intercut with a lot of VERY FAST edits. Not even corresponding to the names or anything, just random shots from the series that go by too fast to convey anything other than "faces!" Like, the first title sequences for the new Doctor Who were a little gaudy, but this is just ridiculous. This is 90s Action Pack material. And I sometimes watch Xena on Netflix, so I'm not against that, but this was 2009. Guys, really. So we start with a funeral for whoever the dead guy is, and cut to a woman in the town prison named Isabella, who I guess betrayed them somehow. Her jailer is her brother, guy with long black hair, and he gives her poison as a means of offing herself because he can't quite bring himself to do it. Later she seduces a very stupid guard (she stabs him so slowly that he clearly had time to see the blade coming and get out of the way) and escapes. I kinda like her, and I can class her role as "something that would mean something if I had seen the rest of the show." Just when I think the only real problem here is lack of context, the words "Town Walls" fly across the screen accompanied by the sound of a whizzing arrow. This is apparently how the show does titles. This gets done one more time, for a scene at the Main Hall, and nowhere else. So it's at once silly, inconsistent, and totally unnecessary. All these characters are stuck inside the town waiting to be invaded! We can be sure they have not gone to Majorca between scenes. So anyway the blond girl who is not Maid Marian (she died earlier in one of the few things I ever heard about this show) sneaks out promising to get help. Meanwhile Robin's men are shouting at each other because one of the guys sold the Sheriff the Byzantine Fire he's going to use to kill everyone. Well, that was dumb. Anyway, there follows a nighttime sneak attack on trebuchets which leads to the episode's first big fight sequence, which is okay. Kinda fun but goofy, not really very coherent. The heroes destroy the trebuchets and the Sheriff shouts out, "DESTROY EVERYTHING!" He is pretty awesome- a guy named Keith Allan, who's done a lot of serious work and clearly enjoys not being serious at all here. Really overall the apparent tone of this show is honestly not that far off from Xena and Herc.- not as explicitly camp, but this was clearly the BBC trying to do a fun family adventure series off of the success they'd had with Doctor Who. It didn't quite work (by the end the ratings were so low that this episode was shunted off to BBC2) but I can get what they're aiming for even if it's not dead-on. See, it's a marksmanship metaphor. By daybreak there's another parley at the gates of the town, and we see that the blond girl was captured! But she gets rescued quickly, so that was utterly pointless. Guess the finale had to give everyone something to do. The attack recommences, Robin Hood gives a rousing speech, and a nerdy guy I work out is Friar Tuck has successfully replicated Byzantine Fire- enough to blow up the entire town. Doing this would break the Sheriff's power- I guess it's his town- but it would also kill everyone. So that's plan B. When troops start breaking through the defenses and Isabella waves "bye" to everyone as she heads to an escape tunnel, her brother and Robin Hood and accomplices go in after her, which leads to a swordfight as Isabella sides with the Sheriff and his men. (There are apparently some other family connections I'm missing, they talk about "a family affair" and "brothers in arms" and such so I guess everyone is related?) The brother is killed, and Robin is scratched with a blade that Isabella coated with the poison she was given. He'll be dead by sundown, they say, and nobody really looks into a cure or anything so that's it then. Robin Hood Will Die. The Sheriff is downright orgasmic at the news. Robin evacuates the townsfolk through the cellars as the Sheriff's men start to close in. Once everyone good is clear, he goes into town with... uh... other guy with flaming arrows drawn. He's a bit shaky on his feet, but says "I am Robin Hood" and shoots his flaming arrow right at the store of Byzantine Fire. There's enough time for them to escape and for the Sheriff to rather casually recognize they're about to die, and then the town explodes. Woo! But alas, Robin is dying, and it's for realsies. Either this was planned to run three seasons or the producers worked out early on that this was the end, it doesn't feel like a quick patch. He says all his goodbyes to the main cast members before walking off to die alone, where he is greeted by a vision of Maid Marian. This is kind of sweet and made me mist up a little, as little as I knew or cared about the characters. Not bad. So of course there's a spinning archery-target transition a la the 60s Batman series. People, people, you can be campy and use crazy transitions but you have to actually think about what you do with them! Like, just when the show gets close to having any impact at all they have to ruin it. Anyway the real final scene is the remaining cast vowing to fight on against Prince John's tyranny, so I guess their last-ditch plan was that they could have the Merry Men fighting new Big Bads across England if the show got re-ordered. It's a rather generic last scene, but eh. (I am really disappointed that they didn't work in the bit with Robin shooting one last arrow in the air to mark his grave site. That's a cool part of the story.) So this is a tough one to evaluate. As an ending there is a sense that they're going out on their own terms, providing some closure to what loyal fans remained. Most of the characters don't register but it's hard to say whether that's a fault of the episode or not- it feels like there are a few generic kinda-handsome bearded dudes standing around, and only Robin, Isabella, and Isabella's brother get much to do that isn't just running around and shouting. The action could definitely be better- it's never that clear or dramatic. It comes across as not really good, but an okay finale to an okay show that some people probably liked. Music is cool, though.
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May 17, 2014 19:16
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Person of Interest - Season 2, Episode 16: Relevance What I Know About the Show: It has the guy who was Ben Linus on Lost. What I Think I Know About the Show: The government has a mathematical formula that pinpoints suspicious people? I’m probably way off on that. Opening Narration: "You are being watched. The government has a secret system: a machine that spies on you every hour of every day." OK, so they don't have a formula, they just have satellites and cameras all over the goddamn place, a fact which the scene transitions hammer home. They are a nice visual touch that sets it apart from other shows and ties into the premise.  This episode appears to be either a backdoor pilot, or the introduction of a new cast member. The story revolves around an operator, Shaw (Sarah Shahi), while Michael Emerson and Jim Caviezel are barely in it. It's a pretty standard story: Shaw is a government operative whose superior, Wilson, turns on her, so she has to go on the run until she figures out what's up. Wilson sets up Shaw and her partner, Michael Cole, whose name is kind of funny if you're a WWE fan (come to think of it, Shaw's full name is Sam Shaw, which would be kind of funny to a TNA fan, if there were such a thing) because Cole began questioning "Research," the entity that identifies and assigns their targets. After some digging, Cole learned that they have killed at least one man who was actually a double agent for the USA. Cole takes several bullets for Shaw when Wilson's strike team arrives, and he professes his love for her with his dying breath, yada yada. Shaw escapes the ambush by using one of the gunmen as her personal express elevator.  Wilson calls his boss to let him know that Shaw escaped. Wilson's boss is not happy. The way the scene is shot makes it seem that the identity of Wilson's boss is some kind of reveal, but if it is, it is of course completely lost on me. Shaw was shot during the assault, so she does what any sensible person would do in her shoes: yanks a drug dealer halfway into her car and drives off while his hapless friend looks on.  The man that Shaw has kidnapped is named Louis, and she has him take her to his friend's apartment. Training her gun on both men, Shaw has Louis ziptie his friend, then removes the bullet from her stomach, revealing that she went to med school before joining the Marines. Unfortunately, Shaw passes out before she can force Louis to ziptie himself. When Shaw regains consciousness, she sees several intimidating men in the apartment, the leader of whom is playing with her gun. Fortunately, she has a backup sidearm, and after a forced one-liner, she shoots everyone dead except Louis, whom she allows to escape. Having earned a break, Shaw settles down on the couch for a beer next to one of the corpses.  Shaw borrows the dead man's laptop to look at the data on Cole's USB, which has evidence that their earlier mission killed an innocent target. She calls one of the contacts, Veronica, who helped Cole get the information, and arranges to meet with her to learn more about the situation. The next day, Shaw meets Veronica (played by one of my favorite TV actors, Amy Acker) in a discreet hotel room to compare notes, but Ronnie is mainly interested in who Cole's other contacts were. During the conversation, Shaw keeps hearing noise coming from the bathroom. Advising Veronica to stay safely away from the windows, she investigates...and finds a woman ziptied and gagged in the bathtub. Amy Acker sneaks up and tasers Shaw, then drags her to a chair and zipties her hands (I'm starting to think the writer has some kind of ziptying fetish). Obviously Amy (I'm just going to call her that because if they did reveal her character's actual name, I didn't catch it) has her own agenda separate from Wilson; she mentions that Wilson's men started looking for Veronica three hours ago, so she's in a hurry. We are then treated to some Emmy-caliber writing: "You should know torture almost never produces good information. Well, almost never." Yes, she said "almost" both times, making the follow-up completely nonsensical. Amy prepares to torture Shaw with an iron, letting her show off her great crazy face.  Unfortunately for Amy, Wilson's men arrive, so she politely excuses herself and escapes through a door...adjacent to the door through which the other agents enter. I have no idea what the layout of this hotel is like, but apparently they didn't see her. One of the agents moves to give Shaw a lethal injection, but casually tucked his gun in his front waistband, so Shaw is able to reach it and shoot him and his partner dead. Shaw is still ziptied...but she is then saved by Jesus, as Jim Caviezel makes the scene and frees her, bringing her to Michael Emerson (who is named Harold in this show) and his weird sideburns. Harold goes into a somewhat confusing monologue about how he and Shaw work for the same entity, and he knew that she would be in danger because Cole began to doubt that Research exists in the first place. Harold tells her "we are probably the only people who can help you," moments after basically saying "our bad" about Cole dying. He offers to help her hide from Wilson and the rest of the agency, but she declines, because she has to get revenge for Cole. Shaw goes to a fancy dinner party to find Wilson and his boss. They and an unnamed goon find a private spot away from the festivities to talk. Shaw gives the big boss Cole's USB, saying that she still believes in the Program. Boss: You are a good soldier. You didn't want revenge. You just wanted to protect the program. Shaw: A good soldier does both. She draws a suppressed pistol and headshots Wilson. The other guy draws his gun, but the boss says "let her go." She leaves the party, satisfied with the outcome. But swerve! Another one of the boss' goons jabs her with some kind of poison, saying "You were a good operator. Sorry, Shaw." EMTs arrive and declare her dead, and load her into the ambulance. Double swerve! Shaw comes to, and finds that the ambulance is now in a cemetery. She exits to see Harold and Caviezel. Jesus thoughtfully offers her some water: "Dying can make you thirsty." He should know, after all.  She declines, and pulls her gun on our heroes. Harold says she should be able to trust them by now, and she replies that trust is overrated. She drives away in the ambulance as Harold muses "Think she'll call us a taxi?" Summary This show is definitely not my cup of tea, but it's generally well-executed, and I like the overall visual style. I've heard of Sarah Shahi, but I had never really seen her in anything until now, and this made me like her a lot. She's very likable and comes across as a tough, efficient agent. Michael Emerson was doing his typical weird guy schtick. I found Jim Caviezel laughable, because in every scene he speaks in a bizarre Steven-Seagal-like intense whisper. I've never seen him act before, so maybe he talks like that all the time, but it made all of his scenes comical. The worst thing about the show is definitely the dialogue. There were a lot of clunky lines; my favorite, apart from the "almost" bit mentioned above, was this line when Shaw encounters Louis' friend: Shaw: You ever have a staring contest with a fish? No eyelids. Kind of pointless, right? Like you reaching for that scattergun. I'm not sure how much of the story was confusing because of bad writing and how much was because I wasn't familiar with the show, so I'll let that slide. For all my criticisms, I was never bored during the episode, and had no problem watching it a second time to cement my impressions. Grade: B- Would I Watch It Again? Nah, not for me. Would I Recommend It To Anyone? If they like spy drama, sure. Would I Recommend Playing Hide-and-Seek With Sarah Shahi? No. 
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May 17, 2014 20:37
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Justified - Season 1, Episode 4 "Long in the Tooth" Like I said when I took this assignment, Justified has been on my "I should watch that someday" list for several years, from several of you all telling me I'd like it. This is what I knew going in -- #1 It's set in the south and #2 I thought Walton Goggins was in it (but not the main character.) It appears I was wrong about #2. I'm always skeptical of shows set in the south. Most of the time they portray most southerns so poorly that it just makes me angry, as a Texan. I'd been assured that was not the case with Justified. So imagine my surprise when this episode opened in Los Angeles. I assume most episodes don't take place in LA but what do I know? Walton Goggins was nowhere to be seen. Let's get into it. RECAP We open in a dentist's office. I immediately recognize Alan Ruck, even in a dentist's mask. I immediately declared this episode a success. Anything with Alan Ruck is pretty likely to be great. I love Alan Ruck.  Alan is a dentist who apparently accepts payment in food, like these lovely tamales from Mrs. Pena! He tells Mrs. Pena to pay what she can for her daughter's dental work when she can. As Alan Ruck walks out to the front of the office, two things are apparent, #1, he takes a lot of payment in food, and #2 this is not a high-class operation.  There's someone in the front of the office berating Alan Ruck's pretty receptionist. OH HOLY CRAP ARE YOU KIDDING ME? This episode already has Alan Ruck but I IMMEDIATELY recognize the voice of the guy berating the receptionist because it's a voice I've spent like, hundreds of hours listening to. The douchebag in the lobby is played by Brandon Keener, better known as Garrus Vakarian, Turian vigilante and BFF to Commander Shepard in Mass Effect. It's an embarrassment of riches how much I'm already enjoying this episode and we're less than a minute in. Anyway, Garrus (Brandon Keener is always Garrus, okay) is really mad because Mindy, the receptionist, apparently didn't do his paperwork right or something and he's super mean to her about it. Alan Ruck tries to calm him down but it's pretty apparent that what's really going on is Garrus doesn't want to pay for his semi-elective procedures he's already had done. Dude, you helped save the galaxy, get the turian hierarchy to pay for that stuff.  Also, stop wearing the douchiest shirt known to mankind. Anyway, he storms out of the office and Alan Ruck is pissed. And then Ruck follows him out to his car with a syringe filled with drain cleaner. He throws Garrus against his car, then forces him into his car, and CALIBRATES THE gently caress OUT OF HIS MOUTH. I mean, he extracts the two teeth he's previously fixed. Right there on the spot. HOLY poo poo. Keener's terror is palpable and amazing. The screams will haunt me into my dreams. It's an AMAZING OPENING SEQUENCE and I was immediately drawn in and SO GLAD I decided to do this.  Putting this gif behind some spoiler tags because of gore and ickyness.  You can still see poor Garrus screaming in pain in his douchemobile.All right, I'll stop being so detailed from here on out but the brilliance of that opening scene should be seen by everyone. The opening credits roll. I love the theme song. I'm mad you guys didn't force me to watch this earlier. I blame DivisionPost. So we're finally in the south, and Our Hero, Raylan, is getting told by his generic old white boss about the dentist guy. Raylan is a US Marshal, I guess, and I manage to work out that he probably did something bad to get assigned to Podunk, Mississippi or wherever this show takes place. Alan Ruck's character's name is Raleigh, and Raylan was supposed to bring him in before but failed. Someone else did at some point, though. Generic Boss is sending Rachel (what is up with R names in this show?) along to LA and she's taking lead on this case. Raylan isn't happy. Now at Raleigh's office, it's crawling with news vans and cops. Raylan and Rachel must have hopped the direct flight from Podunk to LA! Anyway, here we, and Rachel, find out from another generic white dude marshal that Raleigh is witness protection and Raylan let him get away after having him cornered. Raylan went to go get an ice cream when Raleigh was almost across the boarder in Brownsville, because Raleigh wanted to finish watching what was on TV in the bar they were in, and then bolted when Raylan agreed. Raleigh was later caught, and this dentist thing is his witness protection gig.  Mindy drops by to ask if she can leave, and take Mrs. Pena's tamales with her. A minute later, the dental assistant lets everyone know there's gold missing. Whoops. We'll soon see Mindy and Raleigh together, with the gold at the bottom of the tamale bowl.  Sitting in the parking a car following Rachel and Raylin around are a couple of mobsters. One is a hitman from Miami, and one local, to drive the hitman around. He looks like fat Ken Marino.  Raylan and Rachel leave to look for Raleigh and they have this really awesome conversation about Raylan taking charge back in Raleigh's office, even though Rachel was supposed to be the lead. It's a great conversation about Raylan getting away with anything because he's a handsome white dude and Rachel is a black woman. Raylan tries to mainsplain what's going on, but Rachel sais "How do you think it'd look if I came into work one day wearing a cowboy hat? Do you think I'd get away with that?" He offers to let her try his hat on and Rachel's resulting look could kill.  I'm going to gloss over a bit here because this is already getting crazy long. Mindy confronts Raligh and forces him to tell her what's really going on -- He admits that he used to be an accountant for a drug cartel but wanted out so he stole some money and ran. They're planning on escaping down to Belieze. Mindy sells the gold but only gets like $4700 out of it for $10k worth of gold. Raylan calls Raleigh and they have a nice chat, but Rachel and the other marshals can't get a trace. Raleigh dumps his phone. Raleigh also decides to steal a car, but gets caught by this awesome old vet, who awesomes all over the place. He trades cars with Raleigh, and later is caught by the police. He calls Rachel out on trying to talk down to him by dropping her R's. It's a great scene. I love this old dude.  Raleigh and Mindy try to get fake IDs by stopping at a taco truck run by an old contact, but they get stonewalled and Mindy gets food poisoning. They head to Mrs. Pena's (the Tamale lady) for help, and Mrs. Pena's father gets them the info for a Coyote (a guy who smuggles people across the border, though usually it's the other way across.) Mrs. Pena, though, calls the cops. When Raylan and Rachel show up, Generic White Marshal gets sent one way until Raylan straight-talks the father into telling the truth. Raylan also straight-talks the mobsters still following them around and says either go back home or I'll kill you. It's a great scene.  Mindy and Raleigh meet up with the Coyote in the desert and start their walk. Shortly thereafter, Raylan shows up, with the mobsters right behind him. Raylan calls Rachel and tells her to send a chopper and an ambulance when the mobsters show up. There's a showdown. Fat Ken Marino (Frank) looks super unsure about all this. OH poo poo RAYLAN SHOOTS OTHER MOBSTER WHEN HE'S TRYING TO STALL. Frank pretends he's gonna throw away his gun but then goes to shoot anyway, so Raylan shoots him. The hitman tells Raylan it's too late anyway, there's a Mexican sniper on the way to kill Raleigh, then dies.  I fell a little in love at this obvious Showdown Hero Pose. gently caress you, Fat Ken Marino.Meanwhile, the Coyote with Mindy and Raleigh has them in BFE, and demands twice the money, RIGHT NOW. There's a confrontation, and Raleigh gets shivved. The Coyote then threatens to rape Mindy, and Raleigh murders the gently caress out of the Coyote with a rock. He freaks out, and rightfully so, but Mindy sticks by him. It's a nice little scene, even with all the murder.  Spoiler tagged for graphic murderness.A little while later, Raleigh is bleeding pretty bad and goes off a little ways to check his wounds when Raylan finds Mindy. The banter is great between Raleigh and Raylan, and Raleigh is about to surrender when the Mexican sniper finds them. Raleigh talks about why he wanted to become a dentist, and it has to do with the first time Raleigh and Raylan met, and the kids show that was on the TV, it's a really sweet, and funny scene. After a tense few minutes, Raleigh admits he knows that knows that the sniper only wants him, and stands up -- sacrificing himself. Awww. It's a beautiful shot and a very climactic finish.  The last scene is Rachel and Raylan in the car. Raylan is asleep, and Rachel reaches over and takes his hat, putting it on her own head. "Does it fit?" he asks. "Nope." she says. She hands it back to him. End.   THOUGHTS: * Alan Ruck is amazing in this episode, start to finish. Holy poo poo. He usually plays sad sacks, but in this he's able to play a guy who seems like a softie trying to be a hardass but they're all mixed up inside of him. He really kept you guessing as to if he's really a bad bad guy or not. And he wasn't. But he was a complicated character played so well by Ruck. * Mindy was a little bit better than your typical dumb blonde girlfriend. I coulda used a bit more depth to her, but she was a better character than I expected her to be. * Jury is still out for me a little bit on Raylan. I mean, I know we're supposed to love him, hero... blah blah but after he literally had this really great talk with Rachel aout not being such a bully about taking charge of the investigation he proceeded to do just that the rest of the episode. Rachel was missing for huge swaths of the second half and didn't have much to do otherwise. * Oh yes I'd like more Rachel. I want to see how that relationship with her and Raylan goes. I hope she's as awesome as there's glints of her being here. She deserves that hat. * Did we really need the rape-threat to Mindy? We really coulda done without that. C'mon. * I did love that Raylan didn't let the mobster bullshit him to death. Great scene. * Also, did I mention how great Brandon Keener was in his little scene? So great. FINAL SCORE: A-. I loved this hour of TV and I'm glad I watched it. After I was done with the first half and ran out of time, I ended up waiting til today to finish just so I knew I'd have time to finish WELL. I'm glad I did. There are a few small things here and there I didn't like, but for the most part, I'm hoping to get to at least the first couple of seasons of this show over the summer. Annakie fucked around with this message at 05:04 on May 18, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 20:38
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DivisionPost posted:BarbarousBertha, I'm gonna toss you The Yard #1.3: "The Territories". If it's anything like the ten minutes I watched a couple of months ago, I'm so sorry. I have already watched this series. (The whole thing.) My kids loved it (they were pissed it was a one-off) and I enjoyed it. Guess I should have added "Canadian" to the list of stuff I have seen.
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May 17, 2014 20:39
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Camelot or A Bunch of loving Twinks in King Arthur’s Court - Season 1 episode 5 Why does every adaptation of King Arthur suck? Is it because it’s a story that’s been told and re-told thousands of times. I remember hearing about this show when it aired, but I never watched it. Even though it had the lovely Eva Greene  Camelot debuted roughly the same time as Game of Thrones and for all intents and purposes you can't really compare the two except via court intrigue which just seems underwhelming.So on to the story: Our story starts with Voldemort’s brother having a nightmare about a girl drowning while giving him a sword through the ice covered lake. Could this be the fabled Excalibur?    We then join Lancel Lannister who has abandoned his quest to find King Robert’s Breastplate Stretcher (TM), and joined up with some others in a place called Camelot. Lancel and his new friends are horseback riding in the rain, just a few hours from Camelot. They talk about a man named Merlin with whom they're supposedly friends. They're worried that he has been missing for 4 days, but that’s okay, "because he’s Merlin" and they expect nothing else. They decide to have a race through the woods instead of looking for their friend.  We then find ourselves in the midst of a brawl. Why it's Lord Davos Seaworth, the Onion Knight himself. Is he here to spread King Stannis’ claim to the Iron Throne outside the Seven Kingdoms? Davos Seaworth is a man of extreme loyalty so who better to entrust to treat with outside lords. But it seems that Davos' was met with disagreement from the local lords. The man Davos was sent to treat with must have refused to bend the knee so Davos is extolling the King’s justice.  Lancel Lannister and his friends, racing through the woods only run across a young maid who is begging for their help. She tells them to hurry because she’s worried her father is going to be killed. Is she Davos' daughter or the man he's fighting? She leads our heroes back to her home where Davos, Stannis’ Hand, killed the man with whom he was fighting with a rock. An angry mob then jumps on Davos and drags him off to be hanged.    Lancel arrives in time of course with the young girl who we learn is Davos' daughter. Lancel and tells the angry mob that their King demands the hanging stopped at once. They give him lip that they was to do what's necessary. It’s here that I learned that Lancel Lannister has taken up the nom de plume, “King Arthur”. The villagers continue openly deride King Arthur saying that they can dispense justice on their own. King Stannis would disapprove.  King Arthur settles and separates everyone from Davos and his daughter and tells the villagers to lawyer up because we’re going to Camelot for a trial. I suspect we are going to be watching and episode of Law and Order: Camelot.  ——— We meet Vesper Lind and Sister Macbeth. Sister Macbeth asks Vesper if she’s having trouble “controlling it”. My guess is Vesper must be a witch since she survived drowning in Venice. She wants to kill Arthur and claim Camelot, but doesn’t think far enough a head. She has no current allies and no political savvy.  "Nothing more powerful than fear." Sister Macbeth is taking the Cersei Lannister approach to ruling and winning a kingdom.  Camelot has a goat problem and they wonder in on young girls washing their hair. The goat and two young women then discuss Camelot’s current immigration problem, explaining that it's a drain on Camelot's resources and worry on how they are going to feed all of them.  We join Brandi Svenning, wondering through a cave to find Voldemort’s brother taking a shower. She tries to enter the bath house, but Voldemort’s brother reacts violently shutting her out. He tells her it’s not a good time as his twitches and seizes behind the door thinking about the girl who drowned horribly under the ice.   -- We get a quick conversation with Arthur and Arthur’s marshall , who is trying to convince Arthur that they should for Merlin before starting Davos' trial. Arthur says they don’t have to. The Marshall leaves and the blonde with the goat problem comes to see the King. We find out she’s Guinevere. And she’s taking about immigration reform and asks the king's blessing to do something about it. Arthur gives her his blessing to take matters into her own hands. We’ll probably see a huge wall built to keep out the immigrants.   Vesper addresses her courted guests at a feast while Sister Macbeth watches closely. Vesper claims Uthur was murdered and robbed the country of its king. She tries to win her guests to her side, but her guests inform her that they are happy with Arthur’s rule. Vesper agrees with them completely and that she supports Arthur wholeheartedly.     Arthur and his men talk about Davos innocence and possible death. But it turns out Arthur is quite progressive in calling for a tribunal for Lord Davos’ trial. Davos Trial Part 12:  The King questions Davos and it’s learned that Davos was squatting on his land and not paying any rent. It turns out the man he killed, Wade, was his landlord of sorts. Davos isn’t very forthcoming and is in danger of losing 4 more knuckles from his fingers. Swords are drawn and Davos is threatened by his accusers. However, Arthur is clearly intrigued by Davos’ demeanor. ——— Sister Macbeth tries her hand at hiring a mercenary, not to kill, but to leave marks and blood. The man says that Britain is going straight to hell and asks Sister Macbeth who he has to hurt. It’s then revealed that Sister Macbeth is hiring him to beat her. Medieval S & M right here.    --- Brandi intrudes Voldemort’s brother, who is going all A Beautiful Mind on the audience. Brandi reveals him to be Merlin! Of course Voldemort’s brother is Merlin. This makes perfect sense. Brandi whines to Merlin that Arthur needs him. Merlin just ignores her.  Davos Trial part 35 The villagers are opening rebuking King Arthur. Arhur clear is no Stannis. Stannis would have given these men to Melisandre by now so she could sacrifice them to the Lord of Light. Arthur and his judges retire to the stairwell to discuss justice and alternative explanations of just how odd this trial is. Sister MacBeth arrives after her S & M session.  Vesper’s is immediately worried and her court are beginning to think that none of them are safe. Sister Macbeth tells Vesper to use this moment to rally her court to her side. Vesper then uses Sister Macbeth’s blood for face warpaint.  Guinevere is sent as an envoy to Davos’ daughter to find out what’s up with her father. Turns out Wade, the man Davos killed, is famous for his practice of Primae Noctis and had his eyes set on her. Guinevere is troubled by this turn of events.  Arhur comes to talk with Merlin, finding his scribblings all over the wall. Merlin needed some time to lay it all out. Lay what all out, Merlin? The first wave is done, which was getting Arthur to Camelot. Merlin assures him that he’s fine and that he just needed some peace and quiet. ——— Vesper and her blood warpaint returns to court to inform them that Sister Macbeth is ok, but weak. The men of her court are worried because they all carry the Pendragon sigil as a sign of protection for travel and trade. They’re now worried that the Pendragon name means nothing. Vesper tells her court to send for more so they can address the King directly tonight. But Vesper tells her handmaiden in secret not to invite Arthur. ——— The King and Guinevere question Davos in secret. Davos sends his daughter out of the room. He then reveals that Wade’s family are tyrants to the rest of the peasants of the land. They don't just claim Primae Noctis, they claim first of cattle, crops, of everything. Davos continues to tell a horrified Arthur and Guinevere that Wade and his father raped Davos’ wife just before their wedding. Davos wife then confessed that Katelyn, their daughter was actually either Wade's or his father's. Davos loves his daughter in spite of all of this and is highly protective of her and doesn't want her biological father to rape her - or any man for that matter. Davos is terrified that he will lose his daughter if she were to learn the truth. Katelyn, well, she already knew. Everyone in the village knew and talked about it. Katelyn only wants Davos as her father and doesn't want to lose him. I smell an acquittal brewing in Camelot.  Davos Trial Part 62: Davos confesses his entire story to the king and his tribunal. Wade’s brother admits freely that they knew and it’s the way of things; that they're Men's Rights Activists from reddit. The King, disgusted, tells them that the customs of their village change today and they are no longer acceptable.  Ready to render his verdict in the trial, Arthur sentences Davos to banishment from the village. Arthur, you sly dog! The villagers are upset by this and tell Arthur that if that’s his idea of justice, his time on the throne would be short.  Brandi and Merlin watch from the rafters and look pleased at Arthur’s handling of his first trial. Merlin is happy but saddened that Arthur didn’t need him.  Vesper visits Sister Macbeth who gives her inspiration to blaze at court that night.  Brandi visits Merlin, attending to his wounds (from where?) and they talk about Excalibur and that they hope Arthur will do something legendary with it. Brandi tries to suss out Merlin’s history. He’s not having it and in turn asks about her past. Brandi tries to kiss Merlin who rebukes her advances telling her that everyone who gets to close to him gets burned. She runs from him.    Sister Macbeth attends court for the food and reveals to the man who she had beat her that it was all a ruse to get the men of Vesper’s court on her side. She asks them man not to judge her for her kinks.  I must say that spit pig looks excellent.  Merlin studying papers and tearing them down in dramatic fashion. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?  The villagers grab axes and rakes and weapons as Davos is packing. Davos is protected by one of Arthur’s men, Gawain. Gawain happens to be anti-rape and a stand-off ensues between him and the new Head Man, Wade's brother. Wade's brother and his henchmen then attack Davos and Gawain.   Davos and Gawain are out matched, but look who shows up to save the day: Arthur!  They quickly take out Wade’s brother’s henchmen, but spare Wade’s brother’s life. Gawain wants to kill him for being a rapist, but Arthur stays his hand and Gawain agrees saying he’s not worth the cloth and oil.  Arthur tells the women of the village that they are all under his protection. He plants the Pendragon flag and officially annexes Exum.   Sister Macbeth points to the man who she had beat her and tells Vesper that he’s a problem. Vesper says, “I got this.”  Vesper gives a rousing speech mirroring Arthur’s to all in attendance on how she will protect them since Arthur is an absentee king. To prove this to everyone she identifies the man who Sister Macbeth had beat her and slits his throat.    As he kneels in front of the crowd dying, Vesper continues on how she will protect them and give them justice. Rallying her guests to her cause in hopes that she soon would usurp Arthur and become Queen.   She kicks the man into the crowd and tells them to take their justice while she inwardly tells Arthur, “Come at me, bro.”  Score: C+ if only because of Liam Cunningham (Davos) bringing some weight to the acting table and out-performed everyone. Eva Green was good with what she had to work with as well. The writing is milquetoast and purposely easy to predict. The show gave enough to know what's happened in the previous 4 episodes without having to watch them (thankfully) and it's just not interesting. Edit: for some missing images. geeves fucked around with this message at 21:06 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 20:50
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BarbarousBertha posted:I have already watched this series. (The whole thing.) My kids loved it (they were pissed it was a one-off) and I enjoyed it. Hmm. All right, how about Space Dandy, #1.4: "Sometimes You Can't Live With Dying, Baby". It's Anime, so I'll give you the right of refusal; just let me know if you accept or decline. I'll start looking for a backup in case you decline.
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May 17, 2014 20:53
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