December 2011
1 post
4 tags
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...
November 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Brief Interviews with Hideous Terra Nova...
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:...
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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...
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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...
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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...
October 2011
11 posts
2 tags
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...
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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...
4 tags
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...
3 tags
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,...
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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,...
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Terra Nova S1E4 "The Runaway"
Forget what I wrote after the pilot. Terra Nova has made it clear it has no interest in raising, much less answering, anything Lost got near. It would rather be full of dumb storylines with dumb characters, terrible dialogue, and just be boring. That’s really the worst part, isn’t it? I hated Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen not because of the racial stereotype robots, or that...
4 tags
The Walking Dead S2E1 "What Lies Ahead"
Much like its title suggests, this episode tried to do everything a good premiere should do, and it pretty much did that. There are a few new mysteries, a new purpose, and some smaller character plotlines put into action.
However, I can’t help but read into a lot of the underlying themes. There’s talk of moving on, and fresh starts, and the new direction the group is heading in. This...
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Community S3E4 "Remedial Chaos Theory"
It takes a lot of work to make even a single episode of television. Think about your average Two and a Half Men - hundreds of people (maybe for them, tens) of people contribute their efforts over a week or two to create one 22-minute long show. Most of these shows (like tonight’s Parks and Recreation) have a firmly established A-, B-, and C-plot, and try to execute them in a way in which...
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Breaking Bad S4
I was actually talking about this earlier today - showrunner Vince Gilligan has said from the beginning that Breaking Bad would be about Walter White’s slow descent into the drug underworld and discovering a hellish morality. I knew from the start that Walt would become a terrible guy by the show’s close. I knew it. Yet, it’s a credit to the show that I am always shocked when...
9 tags
Pilot Roundup Part 5: I Am Terribly Behind, But It...
What a perfect time to have my computer broken for a week and a half! The good part of this - I’ve watched more episodes of these shows, so opinions will certainly be stronger than with just the pilot. Things should resume to normal status by Sunday, ideally.
Free Agents
This is pointless, because Free Agents became the second show to get the axe this year, but the show had some promise...
September 2011
7 posts
5 tags
Pilot Roundup Part 4: Whitney, Charlie's Angels,...
Whitney
I’ve talked a lot about how difficult it is to judge a comedy based solely on its pilot. Most shows are moderately funny, so you really have to look at the characters to see if it’ll last. Looking at Whitney, however, you don’t even have to look that far. This show is funny in the worst way - it’s so unfunny, I didn’t even laugh at how bad it is.
...
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Breaking Bad S04E11 "Crawl Space"
I haven’t written anything all season about Breaking Bad, and that’s partly because of episodes like this. A lot of this season has been set-up, and I mean that in the best way possible. The show has been entertaining and excellent - any show would kill for a season like this. But, we all know, Breaking Bad isn’t content with just that. We all knew there had to be bigger and...
5 tags
Community S03E01 "Biology 101"/Parks and...
Parks and Rec and Community are the best sitcoms on television, and have been for a while. Since they come on the same channel on the same night (and now, back-to-back), it’s easy to try and compare them and find thematic links between the night’s episodes. Tonight, though, both shows aimed for something similar, and succeeded each in their own way. Both episodes were of about the same...
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Pilot Roundup Part 3: Revenge
Revenge
Of all the bad things I can say about Revenge, the worst I can say is it doesn’t have a heart. We need to empathize with our main character, and there’s none of that here. Overall, even outside of her character, there’s no real pulse to this pilot - it feels dead already, like a network exec wouldn’t let any one part of the solidly produced episode go wild....
4 tags
Pilot Roundup Part 2: The Playboy Club, New Girl,...
The Playboy Club
Chicaaaaaaaago, Chicaaaaaaaaago…..
Let’s start with this first, just because moral concerns trump writing concerns. Since Playboy is still an actual brand, this show conforms exactly to what Hugh Hefner wants everyone to think of him, which he states nicely at the end (and a few characters take pains to mention): he was awesome for giving women such a great...
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Pilot Roundup Part 1: 2 Broke Girls
Let’s do it.
Two and a Half Men
I know this isn’t a pilot, but I want it in writing: I tried. I really did. I did not laugh once. This isn’t out of some haughty elitism; I watched an episode at a supposedly fresh start and it was terrible. Every joke I expected the show to make it did, and then a few times more for effect.
2 Broke Girls
How generic is the title card? Geez. I...
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Louie S2
Louie, along with Breaking Bad, has been this summer’s darling. It has been at least as strong as Season 1’s breath of summer fresh air, and Louis C.K. actually was rewarded with an Emmy nomination for S1, which he will surely lose this Sunday to the entire cast of Modern Family. The critical discussion has been all over the place, probably fittingly, as the show itself is...
June 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Game of Thrones - "Fire and Blood"
“Fire and Blood” may be the most HBO episode HBO has ever had. When I first watched it Sunday evening, I thought it was a victim of following the novel very closely, giving us a traditional denouement over the usual craziness that surrounds a season finale. A few days later I realized that “Baelor” was really the season finale - it ended on two cliffhangers and a huge...
2 tags
The Killing - "Orpheus Descending"
I was planning to write something about the finale, but I briefly checked after the episode to see the reaction, and it was pretty much universally negative. Maybe negative is a bad word - universally thrown into a thousand hells more accurately describes it. We all know the season was terrible and that the episode wasn’t any good, so my thoughts will be more of a response to those that are...
2 tags
Community
I just watched the entirety of the show in about a week. Random, jumbled thoughts after the jump…
Reading a lot about TV gave me a lot of information about Community before I began watching it. There were comment battles between whether Parks & Rec was funnier, or what the best theme episode was. Critics spoke of the ensemble cast and format. And I can say all of these things are...
May 2011
9 posts
2 tags
Game of Thrones - "You Win or You Die"
It’s funny that this week’s episode was viewable directly after last week’s “A Golden Crown” on HBO’s new Go service, because the two correlate so closely thematically. There was a direct mention to the Game, and almost everything in the episode dealt with who leads and what makes a good leader. Again, it was difficult to watch Ned take the right path, knowing...
2 tags
The Killing - "Undertow"
What I wrote last week on The Killing still stands, but I had to add in a few words about this week’s terrible installment.
Let’s take the scene pictured above. Bennet has been the lead suspect for about four weeks/days now, and the principal directly told him not to come in. He comes, and then walks past her into the classroom. As that principal, if he walks into that class and...
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Game of Thrones - "A Golden Crown"
We’re now past the midway point of Game of Thrones’s first season, and it’s pretty clear that the show, much like the book, is focusing on the titular game for thematic material. What power means and does is a central concern, as is the political machinations that put people in power. What’s also clear is that within Westeros, if you’re promised anything as a child,...
2 tags
Twin Peaks: S02E10 "Dispute Between Brothers"
How do you follow greatness? The past three episodes for Twin Peaks have been really good, wrapping up the central mystery and killing off a few characters. What can Frost & Co. do now?
There’s obviously still a lot left to do in Twin Peaks, even if Cooper plans to leave midway through. (I’m a little surprised he even thinks about leaving, since Bob got away, but I don’t...
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“5,000 Candles In The Wind” - Mouse...
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Parks and Recreation - "The Bubble/Lil' Sebastian"
“When I take a look at my life right now, it feels almost perfect.” - Leslie
Parks and Recreation was the best sitcom on television last year. Out of the 24 episodes in Season 2, about three were clunkers, and those still had hilarious moments. The show also evolved from the short first season - the pit was no longer the catalyst, because now the characters were interesting enough...
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The Killing - "Stonewalled"
I was in a creative nonfiction class last semester, and we had to write three essays. The first ones were almost entirely based on small, quirky moments in our lives - I wrote about a wedding I went to where there were no flowers. But with the second essay, about two months in to the class, the floodgates of hurt opened. Personal demons were unleashed; stories of death and decay and abuse were...
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Game of Thrones - "The Wolf and the Lion"
According to my The One Ring bookmark, I am on page 317 of A Game of Thrones. If you don’t know, the book is presented in third person limited, and the character focus switches from chapter to chapter. Still, there are a main set of characters that we get to know personally, and the others can only come through via a third party or whispers.
Filling in these gaps with the other characters...
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Game of Thrones - "Lord Snow"
The first thing I thought watching “Lord Snow” was that this episode has to look better in retrospect.
Like a lot of HBO shows, Game of Thrones seems decided that it’s a slow burn show. This is probably a good idea, as it has a huge world to introduce and plenty of interesting characters to focus on. But this episode had even less narrative momentum than the pilot, and it...
April 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Game of Thrones - "The Highroad"
I enjoyed the first season of Boardwalk Empire a lot. I think it was interesting, mostly, but I never thought it understood what it was doing episode-to-episode. It seemed like Terence Winter & Co. just got to a point in the story and ended on a lingering wide shot of a character staring at something.
And I’m frightened Game of Thrones will do the same thing. This is much harder than...
2 tags
Archer
Archer just finished its second season on FX, and it’s kind of difficult to cover. Some episodes play into the typical spy conventions, using double agents and really poor shooting by guards. Other times, the show actively subverts those expectations. Cyril mentions that the spy genre has to be worn out, doesn’t it? In season two, we’ve seen a lot of character development...
February 2011
1 post
1 tag
“Look at 3D. That’s a major setback to good storytelling. I took my little boy to...”
– Matthew Fox (via fuckyeahlost)
January 2011
1 post
1 tag
December 2010
3 posts
3 tags
6 tags
The Hunger Games
I’m taking a class called “Introduction to Science Fiction,” and our last book was The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I was intrigued because I knew this was a current, famous book; it’s rare I read something written in the last 10 years.
I really enjoyed the first book. I took it for what it was: a steamy piece of pulp with excellent plotting and decent everything else....
2 tags
Twin Peaks: S02E09 "Arbitrary Law"
Why are David Lynch episodes the best of Twin Peaks? Is it that he gets the best scripts, or is he just supremely talented? The same goes for Jack Bender of Lost: every time his name would come on screen, I knew we’d be in for a classic. To answer my question, I’d suspect it’s both.
Alas, this is not a David Lynch episode, but rather a Tim Hunter episode. I’ve been...
November 2010
2 posts
3 tags
“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take...”
– Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.431. (via fuckyeahexistentialism)
October 2010
3 posts
1 tag
2 tags
The Glee cast now has more Billboard 100 songs... →
2 tags
September 2010
14 posts
1 tag
Uh, so, hey. I’ll be back here soon, I promise. I’m just leading a double life, writing about television for a student publication. You should check it out if you want. Twin Peaks will be back soon and on schedule. I have a test tomorrow, but then we’ll be back. Okay? Okays?
Reasons I haven’t been writing:
StarCraft II
World of Warcraft
NHL 11
Hockey in general
...
3 tags
"Lone Star"
Just some quick hit thoughts about the show, since it’s been cancelled now…
I enjoy a lot of “Lone Star,” but I hate the music more than anything I like about it. It is so generic, network TV procedural, and it undermines a lot of good moments with good acting and good writing. This is where a soft piano would come in.
AND THIS IS WHERE THE MONTAGE OF LOOKING AROUND THE...
6 tags
Twin Peaks: S02E08 "Drive With A Dead Girl"
It surprises me how quickly Leland has emerged to become the best character on the show. I mentioned a few episodes ago how Cooper was no longer driving the plot (from our eyes, at least) and that other characters were stepping up. Well, our frontrunner is Leland Palmer. I’m not sure if you can steal scenes where you’re the only character, but man, Ray Wise does some fine work. His...
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