(Source: stationtostation)
274Second Guessing THE WALKING DEAD: Season 2
You know what WALKING DEAD? I’m not so sure about you. The television you. The comic book you continues to be a exciting, shocking and one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever read. The television you is a little half-assed, I think. I didn’t really think too much about it last season, mainly because I was so excited that you were happening. I love zombies, horror, and all that. The idea that those wonderful bastards at AMC would be putting their money into an HQ zombie show was so great, I think my critical faculties had a stroke.
Not that it was BAD…
Matt Soller-Zeitz at SALON asks the question if Starz’ new Kelsey Grammar drama, BOSS, is the new WIRE. I suggest reading it. Not nearly as hyperbolic as you might think. He’s not talking in terms of overall perfection, but as an in-depth, artful representation of political corruption. In that sense, it’s got a real shot. The pilot (directed by Gus Van Sant) is kind of great. I don’t think its a coincidence that his character’s last name is Kane. He’s clearly playing a sort of modernized version of Charles Foster Kane. I remember when I was going through my Orson Welles phase back in film school, thinking how Grammer was born to play Welles in some biopic (almost IDENTICAL voices!). BOSS is even better. It’s not perfect, suffering from the pay-cable problem of titties for the sake of titties (feminist though I may be, that’s a problem I’m never going to raise much of a stink over), but it’s definitely one of the more compelling new shows this fall. Definitely curious to see where it goes.
(Source: tvspace)
Kelsey Grammer, please leave Alexander ALONE!
While tagsurfing for art to accompany an upcoming blog entry about Kelsey Grammer’s new show BOSS, I stumbled across this eloquent rant about the man from a Mr Alexander Americano.
Kelsey fucking Grammer.
Fucking Cunt ass bitch ass slut sleeping with other women on the side when you know your ass is married ass bitch is talking shit on his ex wife WHO, was a good ass wife. He is beyond disgusting. And instead of getting a divorce he fucking cheated. Nasty ass dirty ass white man. Oh my god.
Get the fuck away from me Kelsey.
bTW, your show boss is terribly acted and horribly filmed you look like a fat bitch.
I really hate you.
Good by.
(Source: alexandertheartist)
Rotting Brains
You know how lit-snobs and posture-obsessed intellectuals used to broadly declare that TV rots your brain? How they said they didn’t have a TV like that was some great mark of character? And though, you really really liked watching TV, you didn’t really have a comeback?
Well, thankfully, these days you can safely tell those assholes to go suck an egg, and still maintain your status as an armchair intellectual. Thanks to networks like HBO, and AMC (Showtime, and FX, to a much lesser extent), there is now an onslaught of high quality shows that cater to art, and depth. These shows don’t rot your brain. In fact, I’d argue that they have every bit to offer us in the way of cultural understanding as any great modern novel. And I’ll fight any literatti that argues with me.
Reality shows still exist, sadly, and they rot your brain. Sorry. Hang around any modern American watercooler for five minutes if you disagree. They don’t ask you to think. They just want you to sit there, vacantly judging people you don’t know. And singing/music competitions are even WORSE! In addition to rotting your brain, they flood the market with shitty cover versions of better music.
For years, I had people praising Lost to death, and now they say: ‘I’m so pissed at you for the end of Lost.’ I think a lot of people who were upset with the ending, were just upset that it ended. And I’ve not yet heard the pitch of what the ending should have been. I’ve just heard: ‘That sucked.’” — JJ Abrams, on what LOST fans are saying to him today.
(source: VultureBlog)
Fuck you, JJ. What a stupid, dude response. He might as well have just grabbed his junk, and said, “Let’s see if you jerks can do any better.”
And I think any number of jerks could have done it better. The finale sucked so majorly because the producers stopped giving a shit, not because the material was so tough. Abrams was too busy making movies to involve himself, and Lindelof & Cruise essentially gave up trying to resolve all the varied plot threads. Rather than make a serious attempt to answer the story’s questions, they tried to distract us with a bleeding heart finale that sold-out all of their well-earned character development. And if that’s the way those kids wanted to do things, that’s their perogative. They’re not the first good show to give us a half-assed finale. Producing a TV show has got to be tough as Hell. I’m sure at some point you just stop giving a damn. It’s just all sort of disappointing.
LOST had so much promise in the beginning, as far as high-quality genre shows go. They created a rich mythology that could have certainly been a peer to other classic sci-fi mythologies, like STAR TREK or DOCTOR WHO. With it’s blend of time pulp adventure and strong focus on characters, LOST had the potential of standing with THE SOPRANOS, THE WIRE and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA as examples of modern TV greats. By wrapping things up with a finale that chose to distract fans by manipulating their heart strings rather than answer any questions, Abrams & Co effectively shot their legacy in the foot. It makes a grand majority of the show retroactively bad. Maybe not bad, but at least horrifically unsatisfying. I have yet to fully rewatch the series, though I intend to someday. I can’t see how the earlier season’s twists and turns could still be enjoyable, knowing that their plot threads are just going to turn to dust.
They act like LOST was this epically complex concept, that only they had the smarts to figure out. Which it clearly wasn’t. It was a cool concept with slightly-above mediocre execution. It’s only a matter of time before ABC realizes that there is still money to be made from it, and orders a LOST: THE NEXT GENERATION reboot from some smart young writer.
This sort of posturing from Abrams/Lindelof/Cruise is just obnoxious. It makes them all look like Kevin Smith-style babies. They rode nerd love to fame & riches when everybody loved LOST, but didn’t realize that the flipside to nerd love is an obsessive attention to detail. Honestly, I’d have more respect for all of them if they just said, “Fuck you, nerds. We got tired of that shit so we phoned it in.
GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE cast as “Brienne” in GAME OF THRONES::: She’s the tall drink of water on the right. Christie is one of the first new cast members announced for Season 2 of HBO’s GAME OF THRONES. Brienne of Tarth, sarcastically named Brienne the Beautiful by various Westerossi assholes, is a mannish she-knight supporting Robert’s brother Renly Baratheon in his quest for the throne.
The book goes to great lengths to describe how ugly she is, which Christie clearly is not, but this casting seems pretty good. Nobody wants ugly people on TV, right? (jokes) Add a little Hollywood Ugly make-up, and I’m sure Christy’s crazy hot tallness will make a great Brienne.
Also Cast: Gemma Whelan as Yara Greyjoy, Theon’s seaworth sister. In the book, her character is known as “Asha.”
(pic from orgasmaddict)
WEEDS, SEASON 7: Episodes 1 & 2:::I hope the history books are a lot more kind to WEEDS than the majority of modern television critics. With each new seasons comes a flood of bloggo speculation on when exactly WEEDS jumped the shark, and why Showtime continues to torture people with it’s existence. Most long for the early days of the show (Season 1, and the first two-thirds of Season 2) when it was all sass & pot jokes — what’s more clever than a widowed mom dealing drugs to support her family?? — and bemoan Season 3 for “getting all weird.”
Here’s a tip: if someone describes something as “weird,” you can usually dismiss what they’re saying entirely. Weird is a catch-all term people use for things that demand they step out of their intellectual comfort zone. It’s something old people use to dismiss things they’re too old to appreciate. Weird is a slur the ignorant use to smother creativity.
While I’m not going to say the entirety of WEEDS’ run has been perfect, it’s weak points have been few and far between. In it’s populus halcyon days, it treated Nancy’s drug dealing with safe, sitcom irony. We’re used to our half-hour comedy existing in a vacuum. Nothing truly bad can happen, and while there is an on-going plot, we can always count on it’s eventual return to a form we’re familiar with. Beginning with the Season 2 finale, the show acknowledged IRL consequences of drug dealing and began exploiting our sitcomy expectations in the interest of blowing our collective minds. Since Season 3 culminated in Nancy burning down suburbia, the plotlines have closer emultated the Spanish Telenovela than American sitcom. Her decent into the criminal underworld, which we’ve viewed over the course of Seasons 4 through six, has been ridiculous & over the top, but the heart & soul’s still there. We’ve still got our dopey pot humor, and Nancy’s Girl Power sass, but the undercurrent of dark comedy and edge-of-your-seat tension has allowed Cohen & friends to create genuinely intelligent social satire. And it’s become pretty much the best stoner dramedy ever made.
It genuinely confuses me why there’s so much critical hate for the show. Nancy is a bit of a B, I’ll admit, but I think that’s the point. She’s the female equivalent of Tony Soprano. She began as a sitcom ideal (read: stereotype) of a mother, but evolved into an actual, multidimensional person. The show acknowledged that Nancy never really wanted to be a mother in the first place, and that she never really got over her teenage lust for danger. A lot of people chose to have kids before they “find themselves,” and that usually manifests itself into some sort of midlife crisis. Sure, usually they’re more realistic than Nancy Botwin, but that’s beside the point. There in lies the reason for all the hate, I think. ”Pre-widowhood Nancy” is likely not all that different than a grand majority of Americans. Watching Nancy say “fuck it” to her mistakes, rather atoning like all these haters think they would, is too much for people to watch without turning into judgey little bitchez about things.
Season 7 is shaping out to be pretty awesome. I was a little disappointed that they were skipping over Nancy’s imprisonment entirely - I had all these hopes of Season 7 being mostly Nancy in a girl-version of OZ - but this halfway house storyline seems pretty great thus far. Nancy seems a good deal more nihilistic than usual. Not a day out of prison, and she’s already running guns for her lesbian prison-GF. Episode Two found Nancy smoking down with her GF’s brother, and getting busted upon return to her halfway house. There’s a sense that Nancy’s sort of given up. She’s accepted that she’s a fuck-up, so she’s going to do what she wants. Yet, Crazy Shane seems to have found a new devotion to his mother. She took the wrap for him killing Pillar, and he seems determined to show gratitude. We’ll see where it goes.
Click the pic to watch a preview for next week’s episode.
