Short form TV diary.

I realized I haven't written in this blog for a whole year. A lot has happened. Well, not really. But I watched a lot of TV.

Lost Girl--a new season started. I was loving it so much I rewatched it from the beginning and luxuriated in what a great show it is and I was so happy. Towards the end of the season, they killed off a character in such a stupid way that it ruined the whole show for me, but I'll probably get over it.

I also found this amazing website, mehlsbells, that writes about the show. Melanie is a filmmaker so she doesn't just review the episodes and do meta, she also talks about the editing and camera angles and things like that, and she points out things the show does to save money. I'm making it sound boring but it is really interesting to learn about and see the show from that perspective.

Speaking of, and this is all out of order, but this summer I watched Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe. I love it so much that I already watched all the episodes two or three times. It is about 7 years old and British, and it always starts with the tagline, "I'm Charlie Brooker and you're watching Screenwipe, a program all about television."

Image description: a man fucking a TV. Image description: the way I feel 100% of the time.

I guess the show is known for Charlie's angry reviews and criticisms of famous people, but the best parts are the educational parts, like when he explains how much a TV show costs, who works on it, and why people who are making TV shows have to make a lot of compromises. It all has kind of a whiny tone, because that's the tone of the show, but it's not at all just a show about reviews or complaining. Also, there are a lot of guests on the show who talk about pretty much every subject, like why "science" on TV is not scientific, the best credit sequences of all time, kids' shows they ironically watch, and how TV reporters have changed.

Charlie's actual reviews are nothing to sneeze at, of course; they're some of the funniest reviews I've ever seen. He comes at the most inconsequentially bad shows with an attitude of frothing, inarticulate rage which is especially funny because it isn't very convincing. He usually starts smiling a little bit, and basically comes off as very nice when he isn't yelling.

I tried to watch some of his more recent shows, like Newswipe, and that particular brand of comedy just stopped. It was watchable, but I was really disappointed because I enjoyed the persona so much. I guess a lot of angry nerds are mad at him for not being angry anymore, but honestly he never seemed genuinely angry to me, just very committed and over the top in his humor? So I don't think it can really have to do with him mellowing out or becoming a less angry person. I don't know what happened, but at least I'll always have Screenwipe.

Anyway, back to the spring.

Dracula. I watched a tiny bit of this show. It was terrible, terrible, terrible. I also tried to watch Penny Dreadful, also at Clayton's suggestion. I liked when Frankenstein and the monster seemed like they were going to make out but I just couldn't stick around very long. I feel like Clayton has almost never recommended a good TV show to me. I think he's the person who originally got me to watch Grimm! And Clayton, if you are reading this, we were supposed to talk on the phone ONE WEEK AGO!

Dead Like Me. I marathoned this show while playing 2048. It's very good. I love all the characters, the style, acting, writing, blah blah. It's weird because it is older than Wonderfalls, I think, and you remember my complaints about Wonderfalls. Actually, I think Bryan Fuller had to leave this show in a really awful way only a few episodes in, so I should be mad and think that the rest of the show sucks and doesn't live up to the first few episodes, but I am just a philistine and I really like it. The movie is fucking horrible though. Don't do that to yourself, ever.

Sometimes I pretend that Mason and Daisy are Josh and me even though we aren't funny or attractive. ACCEPTABLE!

American Horror Story. I regret watching season three.

Adventure Time. I got really into this show! I love the art style, the music, the characters, and the humor. I love when the episodes end on a really strange beat--that might be my favorite thing about the show. I also got really sick and spent several days in a haze of Bubbline fanfiction on tumblr. I wrote meta, recorded a cover of "Oh Bubblegum" trying to sound like Olivia Olson, and then returned to my day to day life.

Aside from the Bubbline-related episodes, my favorite is "Dream of Love," where an elderly, tiny elephant and a pig fall in love with each other and everyone yells at them for holding hands and kissing in public--not because they are different species, but just because people think public displays of affection are gross. The couple start making out in different places like sandwiches, a baby carriage, and a projector. At the climax of the episode they are separated and start bellowing out a song that has lyrics like, "In my dreams, your love is just a dream to me, but in my heart it lives and breathes and grows!" while the pig is drinking at a bar and the elephant is baking a pie. Okay that summary pretty much contains why I love the show, although you might need to see the art and hear the performances to understand what's so awesome about it.


Sleepy Hollow. This show is wonderful. It sucks when I review something I watched such a long time ago, because it's not really fresh in my mind, and I wish I was able to write a lot about this show. It's about a cop named Abbie who lives in Sleepy Hollow and then Ichabod Crane comes to the present day and acts really angry about the fact that he has to pay $1.99 for donuts. He and Abbie are a delight. So is ORLANDO JONES, whose character name I forget, but he loves being on Sleepy Hollow so much that the background of his tumblr is a picture of him, Abbie, and Ichabod in front of an American flag.

The show is genuinely really scary sometimes and also funny, and has wonderful characters. When I complain about Nick being bland on Grimm and how he's not a real character...well, I am just thinking of characters like the ones in Sleepy Hollow. Abbie has been in way fewer episodes of TV than Nick Burkhardt, but I am so much more excited about her and could tell you so much more about her than I could about Nick. Same goes for every main character, except stupid Katrina--well, that's not true, she is dumb compared to the other characters, but she is still more interesting than Nick Burkhardt.

Also, Sleepy Hollow has a lot more female characters, and black and Asian characters, than most TV shows. That's another thing that makes it more interesting to watch and it is starting up again in ONLY TWO DAYS!!!

Teen Wolf. Never admirable, always watchable. Plus Shelley Hennig, who I used to have a crush on in The Secret Circle--the show I could never remember anything about except that it had hot girls in it?--has ambled over to here and is making out with Stiles and acting in a way that I can claim is crypto-disabled, which is good, because if she was canonically disabled, she'd be a villain.

Community. The REAL season four was great! Shame on you, other season four! (Just kidding, I barely even watched it, except like 3 episodes where the plot of EVERY episode was "Abed compares something to a TV show or movie! Look! This is exactly like Community actually is, except for being well written and doing a good job with the characters!")

Now, this is probably just about half the shows I watched, so I got to dig around in my brain a little.

Drunk History was as good as last year--maybe even more consistently good. It's a really fun show.

I watched Catherine, which isn't actually a real TV show--it's on YouTube--but I like it. Yet I am too lazy to even look up the link for you. You'll just have to do your own Googling. I am a monster.

Broad City. This is a comedy show with maybe 10 episodes about two friends, Abby and Ilana, who live in New York. Again, this is something I remember really liking but it's been such a long time that I don't remember that much about it. Fuck my life! Hannibal Buress is also in it, playing a dentist who is in love with Ilana. By the way, Ilana is one of the most attractive women I've ever seen. I think I might not have found it that funny in the first few episodes but it really picked up. Only quote I remember:

Hannibal Buress: I'm at the dog shelter.
Ilana: When are you going to get your own dog?
Hannibal Buress: I could never subject a dog to the crazy life of a dentist.

Now I am remembering a lot more great dentistry moments in the show. Cool! Maybe I should rewatch it.

Hannibal. I can't believe I was talking about Hannibal Buress but I forgot this show! Okay, I'm going to say the first season was AMAZING but then, like, something happened? Okay warning you should stop reading if you don't want me to post an awesome gory screencap from Hannibal.

First of all, what's kind of exciting about this show is that we have a mentally ill, crazy, crypto-Autistic main character who everyone sort of suspects is a serial killer, but he's not, he's actually super ethical--but all the doubts that other people have about him and all the doubts he has about himself contribute to him being the perfect patsy for an actual serial killer. I know I know, I'm about to say a Bryan Fuller show is realistic, but just shut up okay, I feel like it is a realistic portrayal of mental disability and violence, i.e. that mentally disabled people are seen as violent because of stereotypes, but meanwhile, we actually are disproportionately victims because we're more vulnerable and we're also taught to be more compliant and doubt ourselves and stuff. Good job Bryan Fuller!

I also like that he changed some of the male characters from the books to be female in the show so there would be more female characters.

And most of all (well, maybe not most of all) I love the gore and what Fuller calls "purpleness." We're supposed to believe that there are about one billion really artistic serial killers who do things like killing people and then taking their lungs out and putting their lungs on their back to look like wings:

Or killing people and then turning their bodies into a giant totem pole thing. Or taking diabetic people, putting them into comas, and planting them in a garden and growing plants in them. It is awesome. There was only one scene in the show that actually grossed me out, otherwise all the murders were so dreamlike and just super Bryan Fuller that they were nothing but cool.

The second season wasn't bad or anything but it just didn't appeal to me the same way. First of all, they had understandably moved on from the plot of the first season which, like I said, was very meaningful and exciting to me. So it got more boring. Also Caroline Dhavernas, who I've mentioned I love, was acting really DUMB in season two. No Caroline Dhavernas! Don't do it! Here's a screencap I took of her looking really wonderful though:

And she was walking some dogs too.

I liked it, but I DIDN'T like her being so stupid and also the show just got a lot less case of the week which made me sad because I really liked all the gory art murders so much! Oh well. It's not that I won't watch the show anymore or something but it was just crazy how fast it went from being something I absolutely ADORED and was obsessed with, to something that was just like "well it looks good, good actors, Bryan Fuller, okay."

Orange is the New Black. I'm not sure I reviewed this last year. I love it. It's a great show. I wish I had a husband so I could break up with him for Samira Wiley. But I'm getting tired of writing this post and how short form is it anyway?

Image description: the scrollbar. This post is really fucking long is what I'm trying to say.

Orphan Black. Holy shit am I forgetting a lot of shows! It just means I'm really lucky to have watched so many amazing things this year. Okay at this point I'm going to have to come back to some of these because I'm BURNED OUT.

The Michael J. Fox Show. YES did you know someone could have a disability and be on a TV show and make jokes about it?? YES!!!! But why didn't they do anything else in the show? Like there was literally an episode about how the mom and dad don't want their, like, 17-year-old daughter to take an art class where she draws pictures of nude men. Or maybe she was taking photos, I don't remember, but it just made it seem like the show was taking place in the 1920s and basically everything seems very unoriginal except for the concept. Even though I did really appreciate the concept.

Those are all the shows I can remember right now that I watched this year. I only watched like 18 of them, so I really need to step up my game. Gross.

Short form TV diary, part 3

I forgot to say I watched The Secret Circle for a while last year. I pretty much forgot everything about it. Was it that bad? Objectively, I'm sure it was better than Grimm.

*The girls on the show were good looking. They were playing teenagers so maybe I should feel bad but I'm sure they were all very old.

*There was this one girl Diana who was supposed to be sort of the nice responsible one but she was a lot more intimidating and interesting than you would expect from that character.

*One of the main characters died in the first few episodes.

*This guy came and tried to seduce all the girls on the show but secretly wanted to kill the main characters for being witches.

*The main plotline was about how all the kids were witches combined their powers to be more powerful and Diana kept saying that they shouldn't do it because it was bad but they did it anyway and pretty soon it didn't seem to matter very much and the plot was about something else.

*Some of their parents were evil and they were all witches. The most confusing thing about the show was that the 6 (?) main characters were all descended from 6 witches but it seemed like all the witches were married to each other or something, were they all related? It also seemed like this line of witches had existed for a long time and there had always been 6 witches and they usually all dated each other? I didn't understand.

*I also remember a part where this woman didn't move or talk for 15 years because of magic and the main girl used magic to try and save her, but it turned out that her parents had actually frozen her on purpose because she was possessed by a monster. The monster started taking over the main characters and it was okay.

From my description the show sounds watchable and maybe I'll try it again soon, but I can't help but think it means something that I can hardly remember anything about it.

True Blood. Clayton and I were watching the last season of True Blood but why. I just don't care anymore.

Mad Men. I tried to watch the last season of Mad Men but again I just didn't care anymore. I think it was mostly because of Pete, who I used to love. I liked how in the first season he was a jerk, in the second season he went through a lot, and by the third season he was still a jerk but sort of had a good relationship with his wife and was wanting to be a better person. I don't just mean I want everyone to become nice but I liked that his character was developing. This season I started to feel like Pete was just becoming a jerk again and all the characters were being put through the same arcs and loops and it didn't feel meaningful anymore. JUST LIKE LIFE. Is this what Matthew Weiner is trying to tell us? Probably and maybe I'll be interested again someday, but not soon.

Bedlam. I can't believe I forgot this! The second season of Bedlam was amazing. Jed, who you would expect to be alive, is dead. Molly, who you would expect to have been kidnapped and murdered, actually just went to another country to hang out. I forget what happened to Ryan and Kate briefly appears only to leave again. John Foster remains, and actually was a good character who I had feelings about. Some of the ghosts were actually scary. All the bad characters were replaced by good ones! SPOILERS (I decided it's worth warning for them because I respect the show now.)

*Ellie, the Jed replacement. Just better at everything.

*Max, a Nice Guy who is a bartender and is played by an actor who is really appealing. He Nice Guys all over Ellie, while writing a secret blog about her ghost hunting. She finds out and is mad.

*Keira, a young woman who is having an affair with John Foster and he is terrible to her.

*Dan, John Foster's secret son. For the first few episodes, Dan was just a guy who worked for John Foster and was hitting on girls. Then it turned out that he was John Foster's son and JF didn't even know.

Now, my feelings about this are that I like when actors of different races are cast as relatives. John Foster is white and Dan is brown. But the weird thing about this is that when Dan revealed that he was John Foster's son, Max actually YELLED at Dan and was like, "Dan that's not possible, you're not white," and Dan had to painstakingly explain that a person who's white can have a non-white child. Then when Dan told John Foster, John Foster ALSO yelled the same thing at him, even though he presumably remembered that he dated a brown woman. So we had a weird situation where the casting director knew that people can have a relative of a different race, but the characters didn't.

I would consider reviewing this season more in depth because I really enjoyed it. We'll see.

Dog With a Blog, Jessie, ANT Farm, Austin & Ally, Shake It Up, Wizards of Waverly Place, Good Luck Charlie. Not that there's anyone who reads this who doesn't know me, but for the past 8 months I've worked for a severely disabled girl who spends a lot of time resting in her bed and watching the Disney channel. I know all of these shows back to front and am planning on reviewing all of them, the short version is Austin & Ally is the best and Shake It Up is the worst.

Short form TV diary, part 2

I was excited about this blog but I haven't really been keeping it up. As always I've been watching TV though, so here's some stuff I've watched in the last year:

Grimm season two was better than season one. They sidelined Juliette, the worst character. They let Hank, Nick's partner, find out about the animal people so he just wasn't awkwardly wondering what was going on all the time. Towards the end of season one they introduced Rosalee, a fox person who is a love interest for Monroe, the only charismatic character in the first season. Monroe is a wolfman who has decided not to hunt and kill humans, instead going in the other direction of repairing clocks, setting up elaborate Christmas and Halloween decorations, and drinking craft beer. Silas Weir Mitchell, who plays Monroe, is really cute but has something slightly awkward and creepy about him.

I guess I should have mentioned him when I reviewed the show before but I don't think I did. The short version is that the concept and execution of Monroe is the only thing on the show that ever got my attention and it doesn't take a lot to get my attention. Rosalee isn't quite as good as Monroe, but she's appealing and very pretty, and their relationship increases the amount of the show that isn't about really boring characters doing really boring things. Also did I mention the show now sort of has arcs and isn't just about Nick finding out that all murderers are actually snakes?

I'm not saying Grimm has become good, but there have been times that I was sorry the episode was over and I genuinely was frustrated during the midseason hiatus. It also has all the wonderful moments Grimm has always had, like when a woman is on a date with a guy and says, "I'm sorry I'm always crying," and the guy says, "But I want you to cry," grows a giant tongue, licks her tears, blinds her, says, "It's better if you can't see this," and then turns into a giant fly and kills her.

Lost Girl. I watched seasons one and two last year and loved them. The first episode of season three was like the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival in the form of a genre TV show, although I will give the writers some credit for sort of apologizing when people were mad about it, but they didn't really apologize that much. "I'm sorry you thought this 'demon,' who looks like a woman but has a penis and stubble and is trying to get into female-only spaces in order to rape women, was supposed to be a trans woman. Obviously it's just an imaginary demon." (It was also really sad to see queer cis women on AfterEllen.com implying that no one should criticize Lost Girl because it portrays queer cis women positively.)

Anyway that put me off the show for a while. When I started watching again, all the other episodes in the season were pretty good. The best part was Tamsin, a new love interest for Bo who is actually likable. I know I'm the only person in the world who hates Lauren, Bo's first female love interest, but I just think she is the worst and it was so great to get a character like Tamsin.

Also just really appreciate how much of the show is given over to female characters, female friendships, and lesbian relationships.

Community. Haven't watched season four, don't care, never will. I can't believe I've never written about this show on here because I've been seriously in love with it for...like a year now? It really meets all my ideals of what an ensemble show should be by trying to compassionately portray people who are really different from each other. I think Shirley (the character who is most different from the most central character, Jeff, and also probably from most of the viewers) is written kind of weakly though and could be better.

Obviously the pop culture references are one of the most notable things about the show and I love them, but I got into it because I heard good things about Abed, the Autistic character. I have a whole lot to say about Abed so I will say it some other time. Basically I like how the show inverts so many tropes about how to portray Autistic, crazy, or disabled characters though. Abed is often portrayed as smarter, more in the know, etc. than the other characters--he's not othered so much by them and when he is, they're usually shown to be wrong--and the show makes constant sneaky references to his disability, without talking about it so bluntly that it seems like they're trying to be educational or define him by his disability. I don't know. It's really classy.

Game of Thrones. Watched the first season, read the first book, spoiled myself for EVERYTHING and got really into reading theories and analyses by fans, started reading the second book, watched the second season, and got so overwhelmed by the length of the book and so offended by the crappiness of the adaptation that I just gave up on everything. Then in the last few months, I started reading the books again and this time am really enjoying the length and density and kind of appreciating the show as a chance to relive the books, even though the show fundamentally misses the point of the books.

I won't go on about this because lots of people have written about it much better than me, but just an example. In both the show and the books, a guy gets married to a woman who, for political reasons, he shouldn't marry. To avoid spoilers let's call the guy Donald. In the book, Donald is a 15- or 16-year-old who had sex with a girl because he was stressed out, and now he wants to marry her because he ruined her life by taking her virginity. He announces this out of nowhere and is freaking out about what an idiot he is. In the narrative, this event isn't even treated as that important because Donald isn't a POV character, even though forbidden love is usually this dramatic, world-altering thing, especially in fantasy fiction.

In the show, Donald is the hero and is an adult, and his girlfriend is elevated to a much more major character who shocks him by standing up to him even though he's really powerful (something that would be really unsafe to do in that society!) and travels around the world doing awesome heroic things (something that would be really unsafe to do in that society!) and even kind of snarks about other women who aren't cool enough to travel around the world being heroic and sticking it to powerful men. The book series has smart, talented women characters accomplishing what they can in a patriarchal structure, and this character is a complete fuck you to that by implicitly blaming them for their own oppression. There's also sort of an implication that Donald and his girlfriend are just getting married because Donald decides it's lame to take political consequences into account. The show version of the romance undoes the cleverness of the book version, where instead of being super-romantic and the main thread of the story, the forbidden love happens off to the side and everyone feels like an idiot.

So, yeah. And then this kind of thing is about 50% of the show. The ASOIAF books subvert expectations for fantasy fiction and then the people adapting it for TV are just like, "But fantasy fiction isn't supposed to be like this! Let's make it more like he should have written it, i.e. more stereotyped!"

I probably watched some more shows but now I'm bored. Oh I watched Parks and Recreation. It's fine/would watch again.

short form TV diary

Blogging about TV makes me feel better about how much I watch, but I've neglected to write about 95% of what I've been watching.

shows I've started this fall/winter/spring:

The Vampire Diaries. Aside from being "so bad it's good" or whatever, I think this show is interesting because it avoids the hypocrisy of most vampire-romance fiction. The main characters just are really selfish and awful, and that's okay. The show doesn't try to hide or excuse that Stefan and Damon are former (sometimes current) serial killers. Elena isn't in denial, she just doesn't care.

China, IL. After the last episode we watched, Clayton said, "I wish they would just let Brad Neely make one Professor Brothers and one Baby Cakes video and show them as an episode." It's not unpleasant to watch, but it seems like they had to make all these changes to do a BRAD NEELY ADULT SWIM SHOW because the original videos didn't conform to some stereotype of what Adult Swim shows are supposed to be like. They had to "improve" the animation for no reason and make Baby Cakes unrecognizable/terrifying looking, and every episode has a huge fantastical epic story arc, when one of the best things about the original videos was how mundane they were.

My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. Highly amazing show.

The Fades.

Bedlam. Hilariously, almost the whole cast is going to be replaced for series 2.

Game of Thrones. I'm enjoying this a lot.

American Horror Story. This was great.

Grimm. This seems like it would just be one of those placeholder shows where you're like "why is this on TV, does anyone actually care about it at all?" and indeed there are some obviously terrible things about it. For example, did you know Hitler was a wolfman? But something about its particular flaws makes me imagine it's being written by a 10-year-old who sincerely cares about the show, and I find it relentlessly enjoyable.

shows I've been watching for years but finally sat down and watched every episode of and/or caught up with:

United States of Tara. I feel like most TV critics just don't like crazy people very much because it seems like the more grimdark the show gets, the better they think it is. Whereas when it was more of a comedy, they were like "this show is offensive and unrealistic because it doesn't portray how hard it is to live with a crazy person." I enjoyed watching it to the end, but I definitely didn't feel that it became a better show. In fact, I kind of think it got less interesting.

Six Feet Under. I know this is a good show, but I'm so glad I finished watching it because it seems like all the writers have the same problems as me. I like depressing TV, I really do, but I just could not handle that every episode addressed something I was depressed about in real life.

Flight of the Conchords. Best show ever made (seriously, it's perfect--never stops being funny for a minute, and somehow doesn't annoy me with how sweet and innocent it is, even though I usually find that annoying, as with Portlandia).

Mr. Show. Other best show ever made.

Portlandia. This never fails to disappoint me but I'll keep watching because of my high school crush on CB.

attempted rewatches that I didn't really get that far with and don't have much to say about because I obviously like the show or I wouldn't have been rewatching it:

Spaced, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, Mad Men, Being Human, Skins.

abandoned shows:

Skins. I was actually going to keep watching after the first episode, but Josh told me that the best-looking girl on the show, who also happens to be part of my OTP, died. Obviously shipping and attractive girls are huge motivations for sticking with a show that isn't good, and I no longer felt motivated. I also felt annoyed because since the end of last season, everyone in fandom has predicted that this character would die. It seems like she died because there has to be a mandatory death in every generation (in every generation a mandatory death is born!) and the writers didn't want to deal with either developing the OTP, or breaking them up to get back together at the last minute like Sid/Cassie and Naomily. I guess I can see why this would be difficult, but they just destroyed the only reason I would be interested in the show. Why did they retcon Minky?? That would have kept every lesbian in the world obsessed with Skins during series 6.

The Walking Dead. Maybe I'm just really tired of zombies, they're so horrifying yet so uninteresting. I was never motivated to start season 2.

Being Human. When I heard that not one but three of the four main actors would be leaving the show (with one actor quitting so suddenly that they had to say the character died offscreen), it just didn't sound like Being Human to me and I wasn't interested. Josh has been really positive about the new incarnation though so I'll probably get around to checking it out.

to watch list:

Lost Girl. The Onion AV Club did a weird review of this show where they talked about how the production is really bland in a distracting way (and all the actors are "bored Canadian models") but somehow the show itself is good? They compared it to Buffy and Angel. I also heard that the main character dates a man and a woman and this is a non-issue. So I'm very interested and likely to start this today or tomorrow.

The Secret Circle. This is by the creators of Vampire Diaries and I watched the first episode with Clayton several months ago. Everyone is pretty good-looking and lives in a good-looking town.

The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret. Clayton and I were trying to watch this in fall 2010 but I got so mad when Russell Tovey was replaced after the pilot that I flipped my lid and refused to watch anymore. I am finally starting to get over it and Clayton's interested in trying again.

how great my life is going to be in a week when Mad Men starts and then a week after that Game of Thrones starts:

pretty great.