Blog
'I can tell life from TV, Jeff. TV makes sense. It has logic, structure, rules and likable leading men. In life we have this. We have you.'
The art that kept me going this year
Not quite the Year in Review post I used to do; here’s 2010 (surprisingly holds up, other than being sometimes being thirsty on main and a general 19-year-old basic guy), 2015 and 2016 (where I was too lazy to actually write something). So 2020 has a different spi: three things that got me through this year. The George Lucas Talk Show Look. There is no way to describe this show in a way that makes it justice. This is a show you feel, not watch. In its simplest form: The GLTS is a weekly talk show hosted by “Retired Filmmaker George Lucas” and sidekick Watto, with their on-camera producer Patrick Cotnoir. They started it all this year with a 31-hour-long Star Wars charity marathon. So far, they’ve raised over 150,000 to various charities and funds through 2020, endangering their own well-being and sanity with unadvisable stretch goals. Like everyone, I did not expect this year to go this way. I moved to a new country and city, Los Angeles, to do what I wanted to be doing: attending live comedy, meeting people, enjoying everything a new city has to offer. That did not happen. But GLTS, unlikely as it sounds, helped fill that void. It built a community, both nourishing and feeding from it. The audience is as big as part of the show as the crew, with them providing fan-art and piling on the bits with remarkable speed. Nothing else engaged me this year like this show did. It got me out of the House to walk around Hollywood to where Studio 60 exteriors were shot! I learned...Top Ten: 2015 shows
The usual caveats: these are my favorite shows, they might not match yours! Favorite doesn’t equal better. So, let’s get on with it. 10.- The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail 9.- Review 8.- Parks and Rec 7.- iZombie 6.- Jessica Jones 5.- Fresh off the Boat 4.- Jane the Virgin 3.- The Flash 2.- Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt 1.- Master of...Why I love ‘Jane the Virgin’
I’ve never been to an IKEA. I think I know what it’s like: full of furniture with weird names and impossible-to-assemble desks. IKEA is the place where the sitcom dad goes to find something to do in a C-story. I know this from context in TV shows. I had to learn it. There’s a moment in the second episode of Jane the Virgin (which concludes its first season tonight) where Abuela Alba namechecks Catalina Creel, a telenovela villain from 1986. When I saw that, I had to pause the episode, go to my mother’s room, and show her the pilot. We binged the other eight available episodes that day. Now, I’ve never seen that telenovela. I actually have never seen a telenovela, and that’s the official statement I’m putting out on the internet, no more questions, thank you. But it was the first time, in my long history of watching TV, that I instinctively *got* a specific cultural reference. Which leads me to the first of many reasons I love Jane the Virgin. Representation Look, I know. Maybe you’re Deadline. Or maybe you say that you don’t really pay attention to diversity, you only care if the show is good or not. I’ve used that argument before. That doesn’t change the fact that television is, mostly, straight white males creating shows with straight white males as leads. Jane the Virgin was created by Jennie Snyder Urman, and stars Gina Rodriguez and other actors of latin descent. When was the last time you saw a show with two latino regulars? Or when was the last time you saw a hispanic character not playing a...
Agent Carter: Pilot/Bridge and Tunnel review
[This is a 100-word review. This is my way of forcing myself to write, as it is both easy (it’s just a hundred words…) and severely limiting (it’s just a hundred words!). Will probably take me a while to nail down the form.] Agent Carter is the show most Marvel fans where expecting. While I’m sure people were excited about S.H.I.E.L.D. (like myself), this one was actively *expected*. And, for the most part, it succeeds. Following Hayley Atwell as Peggy, the 40’s set show nicely balances character and action. Whenever Peggy and Jarvis are on-screen (fighting, talking), the show clicks. It’s sadly not the same whenever the other male agents of the SSR — the spy agency where Peggy works — appear, or when the obligatory MacGuffin appears. Special effects are good, and give the show an Indiana Jones...
My Fall TV schedule
Is that time of the year again, when new shows rise and fall and old shows try to correct past sins. I’ll be watching a lot of it, so here’s a neat list of what I’m watching and what I expect of them. Let’s see how many make the cut come May. Monday Gotham I’m honestly not excited for this show. I’m not saying it can’t work — a cop show on the Batman universe is fine by me — but the promos focusing on the villains and the wink-winks aren’t appealing for me. I’ll probably watch the whole season, so I hope it turns into a pleasant surprise. Sleepy Hollow I binged watched this show and what I got was a load of crazy. But good crazy. I didn’t know how the series would keep-up after the pilot, and yet it has. I don’t know if it’ll suffer a sophomore slump… so I think it’ll do fine. Can’t wait to see what Abby and Ichabod are up to. Tuesday New Girl The S4 premiere was a good return to form, and this is a set of characters I like to return to over and over. S4 is still early enough on the show’s run that we can find new things to like about them, so I’m excited for the season. Agents of SHIELD It’s no secret I’m disappointed with this show. I’ve never rooted harder for a show to succeed (Whedon! Jed and Mo! Marvel!) and yet it let me down. Hope S2 picks up. This is a show I’ll watch every episode of. Hopefully I’ll stop sighing...