2008: The Year of NPH

If this isn't his year, I don't know what could be. He's the trademark character on a good show, generating a slew of popular catchphrases. He's starring in an innovative web television project created by a well renowned TV genius. A major motion picture studio is marketing a movie, of which he is not the star, using little more than a picture of him on a unicorn. And you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would describe him as anything less than "awesome".

Okay, that got more than a little effusive. Anyway, tonight's episode of HIMYM, "The Bracket", was a good one. The main episode was really funny and clever. The bit with everyone trying to guess what his pick up strategy at a museum is was particularly amusing. And I always love some good Bracketology. But all of that pales in comparison to the episode's coda. I don't want to reveal the joke to anyone who hasn't seen it, so here's the full episode. Admittedly, a more subtle reference may have been more clever, but when that music started my jaw dropped and then I laughed hysterically for probably a solid minute.

In addition, this is possibly the most amazing thing I've ever heard: www.tedmosbyisajerk.com.

I know I love you XOXO

I finally got around to catching up on Gossip Girl and I'm pleased that I did. While it's not quite as appealing and enjoyable as The OC was in its best days, it is definitely entertaining. Over the course of the season the narration eased off a bit and I'm grateful for it, despite my unconditional love of Kristen Bell's voice. Chuck's love/lust/obsession with Blair is bizarrely endearing. Jenny is such a weird combination of sweet and calculating that it makes me want to cheer, against better judgment, for her to become the new Blair. Despite a heap of annoying situations, character traits, and acting deficiency against him, I've come to like Nate. And oh, Blake Lively, I am so sorry that I once got you mixed up with Amber Heard. So so sorry.

So Josh Schwartz appears to be two for two in this genre. Whoever thought a nerdy, hipster, twenty something Jewish guy would be the godfather of the teen soap? Oddly enough, his one show in the nerdy, hipster, twenty something Jewish guy genre seemed to struggle a bit more. But NBC is a tougher field than FOX or CW and, as far as I know, Chuck did manage a second season pick up. So I guess I shouldn't question the guy's skills in any hipster-friendly genre.

TAAAAHMOOOOOH!

It was just announced that Tahmoh Penikett has been cast in Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. Helo! Awesome! Apparently his character is kind of a crazy cop that's vaguely obsessed with Eliza Dushku's character, Echo. I'm pleased. I think they'll probably look really hot together. Hooray, hooray! I can't wait to see the one or two episodes of this show that air before Fox cancels it! Although now I'm afraid that my hopes are going to be up so high that I'll be disappointed. Which means, if it's bad, it'll be even worse than Bionic Woman.


...Hmm, I wonder if that means Helo dies sometime in the first half of season 4. Or if it means they plan to have finished shooting the second half of the season before shooting starts on Dollhouse.

Kevin Johnson put me to sleep

Seriously, I had to force myself to keep watching. I just didn't care. I never liked Michael much to begin with and now it just seems like he's really easily manipulated. Not that a lot of people aren't, like Locke and Jack...and maybe everyone but Sun and Jin, but he's easily manipulated all the time. Like it's one of his main character traits. And there's pretty much no way to make that likable.

Admittedly, I am kind of curious about the whole "island won't let you die" thing. I'm mainly wondering if it'll apply to other people. It seemed to apply to Mikail, the Other who just kept not dying. And that makes sense with other people healing from pre-island afflictions. But what does that mean about the people who are dead and buried? Are they all alive in their graves, Adam Monroe style? Or does it only work for a chosen few? It didn't seem to help Ben with his tumor.

Oh yeah, the only other thing I cared about in this episode: They killed Karl! I mean I know Karl served absolutely no purpose at all, but I had a soft spot for the guy. And I'm a tiny bit disappointed that Rousseau was killed too, because I enjoyed her particular brand of crazy. And then I was also a little disappointed that Alex wasn't killed at the same time, because I really don't see the point of her. I was pleased, however, that they've finally acknowledged that all those people that used to follow Ben around still exist. I was starting to think they'd been forgotten about.

I'm seriously already desperate for the next Drew Goddard and/or Brian K. Vaughn...oh, of course. I just looked it up and BKV actually did co-write this episode. Damn it. But he did co-write it with Elizabeth Sarnoff, who has written some terrible episodes (like the one with Bai Ling!), so maybe I'll just blame her for now. Anyway, it could just be that I'm awaiting the next Drew Goddard and/or BKV written, Sawyer-heavy episode.

So far I'm disappointed with the boat. The "boaties" on the island are great. Love Farraday, love Miles. Just on the boat itself that's a combination of weird and annoying whenever it doesn't have to do with Desmond. Did Desmond even have lines in this episode? I know we saw him, but did he speak?

Too little too late...or maybe not

So the last two episodes of Torchwood were way above the level of quality that had been established this season. I found that I had quite a bit of feelings about them in common with the i09 recapper.

"Adrift", with Gwen investigating the disappearances of random people around Cardiff, was pretty engaging and made me kind of wish that her police buddy Andy was around more often. Maybe by next season, what with the massive overhaul that's been talked about, he will be. I also liked Ianto secretly helping Gwen out. It felt kind of like the Welsh/empathic portion of the Torchwood team banding together. The episode had about as many flaws in logic as any other, but effects of Gwen's distrust of Jack made it intriguing enough to get past that. I do have to say though, that as much as the Gwen walking in on Jack and Ianto scene was straight out of the fanfiction, it was very surprisingly not at all hot.


"Fragments" was really good. Why was this episode not part of season 1? All four of them were more interesting in their flashbacks then they ever are in the normal course of the show. Particularly Owen. Turns out Owen is the sad, broken man that I tend to love on every other show I watch, but the show just didn't bother to mention that until this episode. And Jack and his history with Torchwood was really interesting. I don't know why they didn't make that the spinoff series. It could have started off as a period thing and the story would have followed Jack through his Torchwood career. Or it could have been done like Angel, where within each episode with moder-day Jack and his current team, there would be flashbacks to other incidents during his Torchwood career. Also, Tosh was way more interesting when she was frightened and desperate than she is now that she's just lonely and kind of pathetic. And the Ianto flashback seemed to hint what I've hoped for all along: that Ianto is actually way cooler and James Bond-ier than we ever get to see on the show. Which begs the question, why don't we ever get to see that cooler, James Bond-ier Ianto on the show?

Anyway, it really does look like the finale could go either way. The end bit of "Fragments" with the threat from Captain John Hart made it seem like he's only evil because he's crazy jealous and in love with Jack. Just generally kind of weird. I am kind of curious about Jack's brother though. And I'm interested to see if the end of the show sets up for the beginning of whatever totally different thing they've apparently turned it into for next year. Damn this show. It's just like Lost, disappointing for weeks and weeks and weeks and just when I'm ready to give it up, throwing in interesting ideas to drag me back in.

Playing catch up

Okay, I haven't been keeping up with chronicling my TV watching in the last couple of weeks, so I'm going to consolidate a bit and catch up in a few posts.

First episode of How I Met Your Mother since the strike (the St. Patrick's Day one): It was okay. I didn't really like Ted being a dick. I guess that was kind of the point, but I didn't really find it as funny as it was maybe supposed to be. Also, I may have just forgotten, but I don't think Barney made even one innuendo related to "kissing the Blarney stone". If that was really the case, that was definitely a case of the writers passing up a golden opportunity. That does remind me, I'd been having a few issues with Barney in some pre-strike episodes too. It's like some of the episode writers don't really "get" Barney and so he gets either way too over the top, or just downright stupid. Like they're thinking that as long as they use the word "awesome" a lot, they've covered what Barney is supposed to be. I felt like that was the case in this episode.

And then the Britney episode: For one thing, Sarah Chalke is great and fit in perfectly with the show...probably better than Alicia Silverstone would have. For a second thing, Ted is ridiculously charming and adorable and it's inexplicable that he hasn't found a girl yet, because that 2 minute date was brilliant. I also liked this episode because it had a lot of callbacks to previous episodes, and I really enjoy callbacks...and mustache humor. As far as Britney herself, she was fine, but not amazing. If I had to pick a really great and memorable (at least to me) brief guest star I'd probably go with Tom Lenk as the coffee shop barista in "Swarley" or Alexis Denisof as Sandy Rivers in any of the episodes he was in. Could be I'm just partial to Whedonverse actors though. All in all, I liked it better than the preceding episode and would certainly not be bothered if Sarah Chalke ends up being the mother.

Dear god, the pretension!

Somehow I feel like these two things manage to be both complete opposites and exactly the same:

Here's a New York Times article on the hipster farming movement.

And this one is a blog post from io9 suggesting that the rich and famous should start a new hobby of excessive cave digging.

Whedon awesomeness abounds

Sooooo...aside from Dollhouse, which, it seems, has a shooting start date of some time in April, presumably for a fall premiere, Joss has also just written a short musical for the web, Doctor Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog, starring:

- Nathan Fillion (a deity in the Whedonverse at this point)
- Neil Patrick Harris (Awesome incarnate)
- Felicia Day (one of the potential slayers in season 7 of Buffy, star of a web series about gaming, and a former Gateway Management client from my time there)

I have to say, if I still worked at Gateway, this news would probably drive me to leave out of pure frustration at the fact that they let Felicia get away, thus robbing me of the opportunity of talking on the phone to people vaguely affiliated with Joss.

Unkindness of Ravens

Thanks to Jacob Clifton, and reading his old Doctor Who recaps, I learn something new every day. Today, it's that there are different Collective Nouns for types of birds.

I think, prior to this list, the only ones I knew were gaggle of geese and murder of crows.

Some of my favorites from this list are:
- ascension of larks
- company of parrots
- conspiracy of ravens (wow, ravens get two good ones!)
- kettle of hawks
- lamentation of swans
- piteousness of doves

It kind of makes me want to raise large groups of birds.

Of course it was Michael

So, I'm happy that Sun makes it off the island. I'm sad that Jin doesn't make it off the island alive. Of course now we know that Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sun, Aaron, Ben, and that dead guy that Jack went to see all made it off of the island at some point. The question in my mind is whether the sixth of the Oceanic Six is Aaron or the dead guy. Because, technically, Aaron wasn't a passenger on the flight.

I'm glad they didn't make the Michael thing a big dramatic reveal, considering we all knew it was him anyway. I am disappointed that the extent of Zoe Bell on Lost was reading a book upside down and then jumping off the side of the boat.

I was really happy to see that, despite the fact that we don't see them too frequently anymore, Sun and Jin are really the smartest, most resourceful, and most emotionally mature people on the island. Anyone else and the revelation of a past affair would cause a 5 episode angst-fest. Also, they're the only people that seem to question things that should be questioned, second guess other people's stupid actions, and just generally behave logically in any way. I guess that's why we don't see them too often. They'd sit everyone down together, in turn ask everyone what they know, then put all the pieces together to figure out what's going on. And then there'd be no show.

And I really love the fact that whenever Jack is just making a token appearance in an episode, he's usually in the kitchen. I wonder if there's some kind of secret meaning there.

Bow down and worship Michael Cera

I'm not sure how I'd never stumbled upon these before:

Michael Cera sings Weezer.

Does stand-up.

I'm still so disappointed that the only SNL he's hosted was the unrecorded live performance during the strike. But with Ellen Page last week and Jonah Hill this week, you'd think he'd be in line soon. Honestly, I'm confused as to why he wasn't the first host after the strike.

My Anglophilia is getting out of hand

I've watched this thing about a hundred times since I first found it and, somehow, it only gets funnier...to me. Undoubtedly it won't make a bit of sense to anyone else.

My Thoughts Exactly

I absolutely love this webcomic, garfield minus garfield, but this one from today has to be my absolute favorite.

So bad and yet...not boring enough to quit

I love how the person at io9 who writes the Torchwood recaps seems to have the exact same problem with the show that I do. They acknowledge that it is so terrible that it's practically painful, and yet they don't stop watching it. It seems to have reached the point of unintentionally funny. It's unfortunately just occurred to me, however, that the recapper is probably paid to watch it, whereas I am not. Well, regardless, hilariously bad has never been quite enough of a deterrent for me. I will undoubtedly keep watching until it does the one think that I do not tolerate from TV shows: becomes boring. Since there are only four episodes left of series two, I'm sure to be able to stick with it until then.

A few points about the crappiness of it all:
- If there is some kind of series long story arc, it is certainly not apparent.
- The Jack/Gwen thing has become way more uncomfortable now that Gwen is married.
- It seems kind of pathetic that Ianto has not realized that Jack is in love with Gwen.
- Now that Owen is dead, Tosh really needs to stop hitting on him.
- Why was Ianto DJing Gwen's wedding reception in the last episode?

Juliet: Inconspicuous Hussy

I didn't necessarily care for this episode. I didn't find it boring, as I have some, but it did make me sort of suspicious of just what the point of Ben is, as a character. I'm starting to feel like he's just around to be both the catalyst for forward momentum plot action, and the main source of exposition. And, to me, that reads crutch. It's like Ben just sits around "withholding information" until the writers can figure out what the relevant information should be. And I guess that's fine. I understand that storytelling involves certain pieces of information being revealed at certain times and there have to be means of doing that, but I don't think that process should be so obvious. Anyway, enough about that.

So, the person on the boat has got to be Michael. But it's a little weird because there's the whole big build up with the referencing, and the commercials all implying that we're just NOT. GOING. TO BELIEVE. who's on the boat. But every time it's alluded to, I'm positive that the entire audience is thinking "Michael." I feel like when we get the big reveal, if it is Michael, it's going to be pretty disappointing since we've all been expecting it since the season started. Now it would be really unbelievable if it turned out to be someone like...Boone, Libby, Paolo...basically anyone other than Michael. What they should have done is have Ben vaguely allude to his spy on the boat, but not make a big deal about it in any way, so that we don't spend all our time thinking about Michael before he shows up as the big non-surprise. As it's been set up I just expect it to be unsatisfying.

Oh, right, and with all the men she's involved with are we supposed to be thinking that Juliet may not actually be as innocent as she seems? Or am I reading too much into it?

My Dream Job

The Television Without Pity creators have just announced that they'll be leaving the site next week. I feel a little weird about how upset this news made me. Like bordering on devastated. But then part of me feels like it's completely justified. I really, truly fear for what will become of TWoP when Wing Chun and Sars are gone and it is entirely at the mercy of Bravo.

This whole thing is also forcing me to return to dwelling on the fact that that was certainly the career I would have loved to have had (geez, what tense was that sentence?). Why didn't I spend my time in high school and college honing my writing skills? I know I'm not ridiculously funny, but I feel like I'm just wry enough that if I were a better writer, I could be doing some reasonable TWoP recaps. Why wasn't I out there on the internet writing clever stuff the whole time I was in college? I certainly could have parlayed that into a TV "journalist" of some kind, couldn't I have? Damn me and my inability to recognize anything I like before it's too late.

Humanity is doomed

Because, seriously, how could it not be if this actually exists?:

KittyWigs

Yeah, that's right, wigs for cats.