Ramblings Concerning Nothing

ESFI and the changing world of eSports journalism

A couple of weeks ago, I had to leave right at the end of the finals of Dreamhack Winter. Hero was up 50 or so supply when I left, but when I got home, the very first thing I did was to check what exactly happened. 

How did I do that? Well, I went through the labyrinth that is TeamLiquid. I went to the home page, then to SC2 Tournaments, then to the DH thread, and then scrolled down to the results and looked under the spoiler tag. Then, I went into the depths of the LR thread to see what happened in the game once I left, and then just decided I’d wait for the VOD.

Alternately, I could have gone to Reddit, where I would’ve known who won immediately, but I would’ve had no way to see what else happened in that game. Did Puma come back and force a longer game? Or did he gg about 5 seconds after I left? (It was the latter, by the way.)

There is a clear gap that needs to be filled, and thus, eSports journalism is in an exciting, dangerous time of transition. TeamLiquid has caught some flak for not having anything newsworthy on their front page, which seems to me like a vestige from their BW days. But the reality is they are a forum, not a news site. The line is blurring, I know, but it doesn’t seem like they want to be that destination for hard news. 

And neither does Reddit. It’s unfair to expect that of them, since they are practically the anti-hard news website. Imagine in-depth articles about the GSL next to gifs of Keen celebrating.

Thus, some other websites are trying to fill the void, which is admirable, since eSports needs it (and the journalism industry is in such a transition, but that’s another topic). A couple of shows have broached the subject this week, and they should. It’s a key development for eSports. The site I’ll focus on is ESFI, and in particular their article from yesterday on Naniwa switching teams again. It’s an intriguing read, and I highly recommend reading it before continuing.

Read More

Brief Interviews with Hideous Terra Nova Characters

Jim: Hey, uh, can we make this short? I’m kinda a busy guy.

RCN: No problem. You do have a variety of talents at Terra Nova. I just wanted to start with-

Jim: Sorry to interrupt, but I think your voice recorder just broke. 

RCN: Wow, thanks. I guess the batteries just died.

Jim: No problem, I can get them! [Jumps, flies out of room. Returns a few minutes later.] I found some!

RCN: Uh, thanks, but I had some right here in my bag.

Jim: Okay. So what did you want to talk—wait, I think someone, somewhere is in trouble. I’ll be back!

Read More

Boardwalk Empire S2E7 “Peg Of Old”

I had a weird night.

I started by memorizing about 300 vocabulary words. Then I watched the 4th quarter of the Giants-Patriots game. Then I watched District 9. (Man, that last act was conventional.) My DVR was ready, back from the Comcast store earlier this week, and I had recorded Walking Dead for a super-duper recap. Alas, the DVR suddenly decided not to work tonight, which threw off not only Walking Dead, but my plans for Hell on Wheels. (My chat with the typically unhelpful Comcast technician ran too much into the 10 o’clock hour, in particular.) 

So those will have to wait until after the GRE. I say all that to explain that my television got progressively better as my mood lightened up. During Hell on Wheels I was infuriated with Comcast and the episode did little to help; Walking Dead found me eating some Jello and liking the show’s stately pace; and finally, Boardwalk Empire capped the night with what I thought was a great episode.

All of these episodes tried to have Important talks. Rewatching Mad Men, in particular, shows how to do an Important talk well. Almost every conversation in the pilot is Important without being overbearing. Contrast that with the main conversations in Hell on Wheels, including Colm Meaney’s groan-and-laugh-inducing finale. (I’m not sure if I love or hate him yet, but that speech was overly goofy.) Similarly, take Rick’s conversations with Herschel about his role as leader, and Shane’s eulogy. Better, setting up things later or paying off past events, but still fairly surface. Boardwalk Empire, though, does great dialogue better than any drama on the air right now. Whereas Walking Dead focuses on twists for a lot of excitement (like last week), Boardwalk usually telegraphs exactly what will happen. Everything around it is just so good, it doesn’t matter - it’s still shocking.

Read More

New Girl S1E4 “Naked”

Fox did something really stupid when they pulled New Girl, one of their biggest new hits, from the lineup for almost a month. Yeah, I know baseball sometimes would have interfered, and jumping around timeslots wouldn’t have helped. But, as baseball analysts say - you have to play the hot hand.

It’s a good thing the previous installment, “Wedding,” was a huge step in the right direction and left a good taste in everyone’s mouth. Jess was believable without losing her charm, and everyone else played off each other to make a pretty good arc for Nick. Laughs have never been a problem on New Girl, at least for me - every episode has made me laugh more than any other new sitcom this year combined.

The show’s triumphant return to regular scheduling, “Naked,” had a lot of problems the previous two episodes did. Jess was cute, not saying the word “penis,” but she also wasn’t believable, specifically when she didn’t knock when entering Nick’s room. Her lapse in judgment in the cold open (which I couldn’t hear, thanks to Comcast, but could make out well enough) was also frown-worthy. These moments make Jess less and less of a character. For example, what did we learn tonight? She’s shy about sex? Contrast that with “Wedding,” where a lot about her personality and crisis management regarding friends did come to light. Nick also shined in that ep, and here we just learned he’s still not moving on from his ex, something we already basically knew.

Meanwhile, Winston has a weird c-plot - he lived the last two years in Latvia, so he doesn’t know anything about pop culture the last two years. This culminates in a funny gag where he’s watching The King’s Speech and The Human Centipede simultaneously, but it’s really early in the episode and never picked back up. I was waiting for a bunch of other jokes like that, but it was totally forgotten until the last act where he tried (unsuccessfully) to tie it in to Schmidt’s problems. Those problems, while absolutely in-character and generally funny, also needed some more to make it really work. It feels like there are two or three deleted scenes that would’ve really tied the back end of this episode together, but they got cut due to running time or something.

It may sound like I didn’t like this episode - I shouldn’t have. Like I listed above, it was a step down from the last episode, Jess reverted back into dumb child mode, and there was a dangling subplot. My TV critic senses were tingling, telling me to write a scathing review. But a funny thing happened. I really liked the episode.

Maybe it’s just because the show was off the air for a week. Maybe I can relate to the characters due to my position in life. Maybe I liked it because of how plots have paralleled my own life. But I keep laughing and having fun with these characters, week after week. I enjoy spending time with them, even if I don’t know any woman who would ever act like that. (There were two female comic exaggerations this week.) I like the better episodes a whole lot more, of course, but my time spent is always worth it. I really don’t know how to analyze this - I just had fun and laughed a lot. That’s what’s ultimately important with any comedy episode, but we just focus on a bunch of other stuff so there’s actually something to write about.

Given that the ratings are quite good, especially in the demo, New Girl will most likely get past the 24 episodes that are already ordered. Considering that an episode can fail this much on a criticism scale and still work for me overall, despite my best objections, that’s terribly encouraging. I’ve talked a lot about how hard it is to make a successful TV sitcom work, especially in the early going. If New Girl continues down this path, Fox will have a solid comedy. But if they can make more episodes like “Wedding” and sprinkle lesser ones like this in, we’ve got a new great sitcom on our hands.

Boardwalk Empire S2E6 “The Age of Reason”

After last week’s barnburner, we all knew this was coming. We knew for having so much fun and payoff, we’d have to go in the confessional and talk it all out this week.

Part of this is due to the structure of television - there can’t be a huge climax every week. We need slower episodes. But the biggest problem with “The Age of Reason” was it took everything that made the last few episodes thrilling and put them in the backseat - and put the show’s least-popular characters front and center.

Read More

Re-welcome

The blog has gone through a few different forms in the last few years, so I wanted to officially state a new focus and talk about some upcoming plans.

I like to write about television; specifically, what makes a good hour of television. However, I want to get into much deeper, meatier topics. I will do that as soon as I prove that I can do it. You can expect in-depth posts on most good shows from time to time - my favorites will get the weekly treatment. Other shows I just kinda like will get a mention on Twitter. New shows, generally, will get some coverage on the blog as well. Old shows I’m currently catching up on will also appear randomly.

I also have some plans for coverage in the dead periods of the television calendar. I will finally finish my Twin Peaks coverage (yikes) and then, every weekday, will go into more depth than you’d ever want about every Mad Men episode, straight up until the S5 premiere. The show has been off the air for too long, and there’s so much to mine anyway. Next will be a long-gestating Lost project. Yes, this stuff will happen.

Some other things: my name is James, and I am a senior at Virginia Tech, looking to move into grad school. I like Starcraft, hockey, long-form journalism, and literature. You can contact me through Twitter or email. I won’t bite.

Boardwalk Empire S2E5 “Gimcrack & Bunkum”

Yes, I copied and pasted that title.

The most common complaint about Boardwalk Empire is that there’s not enough action. Some people combine that with another complaint, that the show is slow, but those are really two different things. Tonight’s episode, while high on violence and action, did no more than usual to advance the plot. To avoid spoilers, let’s jump earlier than usual.

Read More

The Walking Dead S2E2 “Bloodletting”

Just some short thoughts tonight, but if this is how every Walking Dead episode is from here on out, I will be content. I liked how the episode dealt with Carl’s shooting last week - there was a definite main focus, and even the other storylines directly dealt with it. Furthermore, the smaller character developments continued to simmer, and T-Dog began to actually speak. (It was still about being black, but at least it’s something.)

But as the show begins to be more focused episode-to-episode, I still feel like there’s very little focus to the show as a whole. Like I talked about last week, a lot of Sophia’s disappearance and Carl’s shooting has to do with what actually happened to them, not what the show presents in the first frenzied moments. In “Bloodletting,” Sophia is almost completely forgotten, and there is no continued narrative momentum with that plot point. Also, the supposed purpose at the beginning of the premiere, going to the military base, wasn’t mentioned once. I don’t require a whole lot of prodding, but when T-Dog asks what exactly everyone is doing, I can’t help but think he’s on to something.

But it’s tough to complain, because this week the detour was worth it. I’m more worried about the coming weeks, when we realize very little has actually happened. But as is, the country hideaway seemed real enough, and Hershel is a fun character at this point. The gradual reveal that he was a veterinarian was solid, and Rick and Lori’s grief was believable. (Rick looked more and more like a walker as the episode progressed.) The episode didn’t foolishly waste time on too much scene-setting at the house, which can wait. And next episode, with Shane and Otis trapped in the high school, the foresters seemingly trapped outside at night, and Carl still in limbo, seems to be exciting and continue the tension.

Like I said, if every episode is like this, I’ll continue to enjoy Walking Dead as long as it’s on. But I don’t feel this episode paid off what was set up in the premiere very well, plot-wise at least. Thematically, and in character relationships, it did. The through-line was Lori, first in the cold open (which caught me off-guard) and later into her dealing with Carl (and Rick). It didn’t work completely, but it was an attempt, and I admire Walking Dead trying to fix its faults. Lori’s always been a difficult character, and this helped a little. It didn’t tell us a whole lot we didn’t already know, but there’s a tad bit more character there.

This episode focused on the characters, which didn’t really work, but at least they’re trying. It didn’t really work on plot, since it didn’t pay off last week and didn’t move forward either. But I still enjoyed it, because it was a different type of episode for The Walking Dead. It was a character episode with only the one big zombie set-piece. It comes across as stalling right now, but this is the type of episode Walking Dead will have to do to become successful. While it’s not there yet, it’s encouraging to see them try.

Once Upon A Time

Once Upon A Time isn’t a crime procedural, I’ll give it that. (Looking at you, Grimm.) It has some ambition, apparently, coming from two Lost writers. (Best episode they wrote? I think it’s “The Variable,” although “Greatest Hits” is close.) And, yes, the fairytale premise is interesting if it’s not looked at too terribly closely. But the acting, writing, and editing are all so weak, I find it difficult to believe Once Upon A Time will grow into anything other than another show lingering in DVR hell due to an already busy Sunday night. 

Read More

Boardwalk Empire S2E4 “What Does The Bee Do?”

This season of Boardwalk Empire comes at a weird time in television. It premiered just as Breaking Bad began its breathless race to the finale, emphasizing the differences in the two excellent shows. There’s no doubt that Breaking Bad is more exciting, but Boardwalk lets viewers take in the sights a little, bask in a slow burn, and really go deep with all of these characters. At this, point, it’s not even a slow burn. More like a car in rush hour traffic.

Particularly, as AMC’s dramas have gotten the praise over HBO’s offerings the past few years, Boardwalk hasn’t been praised nearly as much as I expected. Sure, every critic loves it, but I never see people talking about it on Twitter. Small comment sections seem to bolster this opinion. (Comparing the number of comments from the AV Club on the third episodes for both shows this season, BB has 850 comments and BE has 161.) I think this has something to do with where we are as television watchers. A commenter somewhere (sorry, unidentified person) said that BE was like eating his brussel sprouts. I feel the same way sometimes when I watch immediately after BB (as did the first three weeks), but looking at it on paper - Boardwalk Empire is gorgeously shot, has strong characters, and never fails to keep my attention. Breaking Bad may have me breaking out in sweats each week and Boardwalk Empire may have me lounging in sweatpants. But both types of shows are equally necessary.

Read More