So, the Khaleesi is planning her invasion. Her cohorts all want a full assault on King’s Landing. The Khaleesi has other thoughts in mind. She doesn’t want to be Queen of the Ashes, i.e. to destroy the city. She wants to surround it and starve the Queen out. Meanwhile, Grey Worm and the Unsullied will take Casterly Rock.
Sam is working to cure Mormont despite advice against it, namely, he could catch the disease in the process.
We finally see what eunuch sex looks like. Ladies, keep an open mind about eunuchs. They may not have much downstairs, but they make up for it with a little mouth to the south.
Cersei looks like she might have a surface to air anti-dragon weapon. She also scores the first victory as ally Euron Greyjoy defeats his niece and nephew at sea. Reek really wusses out.
Khaleesi confronts Varys. He has a history of conspiring against those he has served to save the realm and also his hide.
Jon Snow decides to meet with Khaleesi despite advice against it.
What say you, 3.5 readers? Will the Khaleesi pull this off?
It’s a Game of Spoilers, 3.5 readers. Look away, I say.
Basically, Cersei and Jaime are screwed, and more so than the usual screwing they do to each other.
To the South, the Dornish Amazons are pissed. To the North, Jon Snow is King. The Whitewalkers are headed for the Wall.
Oh, and the Khaleesi has landed. Repeat, the Khaleesi has landed.
Arya has taken out all the Freys with her ninja skills. Oh and all the kids have officially grown up. Arya, Bran and Sansa are all super tall and look like they ate their Wheaties over the past year. Sigh, this decade really has moved fast, hasn’t it?
Yes, things suck big time for Cersei. And with her children and family gone, Jaime asks the inevitable question of what are they even fighting for?
Her only potential ally at this point seems to be Euron Greyjoy, who promises a fleet and a special mysterious gift if he can get all up in Cersei’s lady business.
Don’t do it, Euron. You know she’s packing a steel bear trap in that thing.
I had the following conversation, more or less, with a kid who discovered Pee Wee Herman while browsing Netflix:
KID: Why is this guy so…I don’t know.
ME: Weird?
KID: Yeah, he’s so stupid.
ME: He’s like an adult who hasn’t figured out he’s an adult yet so he acts like a kid.
(ME IN MY MIND): Crap. Should I just tell the kid to turn this off? I really don’t want this kid thinking it is ok to talk to adults who think they are kids. Adults who think they are kids are freaking perverts.
KID: Was this a long time ago?
ME: Yes.
KID: Did you watch this when you were a kid?
ME: Yes. All the kids loved to watch Pee Wee when I was a kid. We would watch Pee Wee every Saturday morning and scream real loud whenever he said the secret word.
ME IN MY MIND: Yeah, because it was a more innocent time when there wasn’t a freaking thirty year old who has yet to grow up trying to lure kids into his weirdo bachelor pad on every street corner. Or perhaps there was just as many adult man child perverts back then but the media didn’t report on it as much because the TV only had like three channels to watch in those days.
KID: He’s funny.
ME: Yeah he is. Hey, just an FYI this is all make-believe. If you ever see an adult who acts like a kid, run away real fast and don’t talk to them ok? Because adults who act like kids are super weird and they might hurt you because they’re so stupid ok?
KID: OK. How old is Pee Wee?
ME: I don’t know. I think he just stays the same age forever.
KID: Is he still alive?
ME: Yes. He just made a movie. He looks the same. He probably exercises and eats his vegetables and colors his hair and stuff.
KID: Why isn’t his show on now?
ME: He got busy.
ME IN MY MIND: He did a terrible thing. Also, whereas in my day there were a plethora of children’s shows in which neighborhood children would visit the homes of grown adult men they weren’t related to, ranging from Pee Wee, to Mr. Wizard to Mr. Rogers, today, you just don’t see shows like that, because the safest thing a parent can do is chain their kid up so no one gets the kid and especially never allow the kid to visit the home of a random adult and especially not without supervision.
FINAL THOUGHT: I watched “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” with the kid in question and it holds up. It was so funny back then and it is equally hilarious today. I feel bad that Pee Wee ruined his career by doing what he did in a porn theater. I mean, seriously, all that money he made, he couldn’t afford a home VHS? Seriously.
As they say in Gaffney, this review is for people who have been watching the show from the beginning and are all caught up. Otherwise, the SPOILERS will ruin it for you.
BQB here with a review of “House of Cards-Season 5.”
I thought this show had jumped the shark a couple seasons back where Frank and the fictional Russian President had a personal showdown in the desert but I was wrong. The shark not only jumped this season, it did backflips.
Here are my observations:
#1 – Surprise Murders/Attacks
The show got a lot of bang for its buck when Frank tossed Zoe in front of that moving subway car with literally no warning. It made for great, disturbing viewing and heightened the stakes, letting you know the show could turn on the drop of a time.
Sadly, now they always seem to be trying to recreate that moment. Frank pushes Kathy down a flight of stairs at random in the midst of a conversation with her. Claire kills Yates with her vagina. Speaking of…
#2 – Claire Did Not Kill a Man with Her Vagina
I thought maybe she had as Yates died mid coitus. Maybe she had some sort of top secret CIA device inside her cooter but nope, it was poison (in his drink, not in the vagina.) Still, another surprise murder. I mean, not really because Yates had threatened the Underwoods and that’s never a good move for your health but I think the sex part was to trick you into thinking Claire was going to let him off the hook but nope, she just wanted one more turn on that penis before Yates bit the big one.
#3 – Elysium Fields
I had mixed thoughts on that. First, it was funny. Second, I think we all assume the rich and powerful get together to divide up and rule the country/world but still, to see it unfold brought the show to a different place. It was creative and fun though.
#4 – Claire Becomes Vice-President/President
I never really bought that. It could happen but usually if the First Lady is an asset, they just keep her and put her out there more and then try to add a VP who is also an asset. In other words, if someone is on your team and scoring points for you, then you’ve got them, so you just add another person to score points.
#5 – Frank Frames Himself
That was way out of left field and total bullshit. The whole premise of the show is that Frank does evil shit and then does more evil shit to get himself off the hook, that if you are willing to do the most evil shit then you will always win in politics. He loves power and his own ego so that he’d somehow be willing to hand his wife the presidency and take a powder while she rules seems highly unlikely.
#6 – Claire Acknowledges the Audience
Frank has always had his little asides, breaking the fourth wall to let us in on what he’s up to. Now Claire is doing it, so to me, that seems like the show is moving towards a final showdown between Frank and Claire. I kind of yearn for the early days when Frank was the boss and Claire his evil consigliere. That dynamic just seemed to make more sense.
#7 “I’m Fucking You Because I Hate You”
That lady whose husband died so Frank could have his liver knew Doug did it all along and had sex with him because she hated him? Please. I’ve had women completely dump me and abandon all contact because I left the toilet seat up or forgot to wash a dish so I can’t imagine the vengeance a woman would have if a liver was involved.
8 – Real TV Reporters
Does it ever bother you when real TV reporters make cameos in which they “report” on Frank? If they’re able to act that well, makes you wonder how much of the real news involves acting.
9 – It’s getting boring.
I try not to get too deep into the weeds on some of the more complex conspiracy theories. At this point if they say it happened then it happened. I can’t keep track of it all.
10 – It should wrap up soon.
I feel like they’ve gone as far as they can go. It should probably end with Claire besting Frank or maybe they both take each other out in one last Mr and Mrs Smith style battle royale to the finish.
I’ve been working on this list a long time now and I never seem to run out of TV shows that ended badly.
Today, I want to talk about a great show that sadly screwed the pooch in the end. Yep, I’m talking about the long running series “How I Met Your Mother.”
Oh and FYI – SPOILERS! So, if you haven’t watched it yet, don’t read below.
Ironically, I never watched this show while it was on the air. I assumed it was one of many vapid CBS comedies about young, beautiful people pretending to have problems but they don’t really have them. “Waah, boo hoo I’m so pretty and so sad.”
But as it turns out, it’s not that bad at all. Funny, the first episode I saw was the last one. After hearing about this show about a man telling his kids the story of how he met their mother for years, I figured it might be interesting to check out the final show where he meets “the mother.”
At the time, I thought it was nice but then over time, I went back and streamed the show from the beginning on Netflix and…yeah…that ending sucked the big one.
Unlike many sitcoms where you can come in at any time and not be lost, this series really is cumulative and better watched from the beginning.
The best short description I can give it is that it is “Friends” for the tail end of Generation X (or the beginning of the Millenials, depending on how you’re keeping score. I know that can be confusing as “Friends” was also a big show for Generation X (but the older Gen Xers.)
Ted (Josh Radnor), Robin (Cobie Smulders), Marshall (Jason Segel), Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) five youngsters just trying to make it in Manhattan.
As they go forth into the world, the show explores a variety of issues that often affect people as they move from their early twenties into their thirties or in other words, as they escape adolescence and struggle to make the best of adulthood.
Each character suffers career setbacks – i.e. their chosen professions don’t work out anywhere near the way they thought.
The characters suffer losses – i.e. parents grow old and die or decide they don’t like each other anymore and get divorced.
They experience regret and suffer sadness over thinking “What if this” and “If only I had done that” and they learn how to cope with the fact that there’s no time travel machine for them to use to go back in time and prevent themselves from making mistakes.
They all suffer romantic heartaches and Ted suffers the most.
The show is narrated from the perspective of an older Ted (voiced by Bob Saget). Ted, an older man, calls his young children into his home office, sits them down in front of his desk and begins to tell them the story of “How I Met Your Mother.” The show runners showed a great deal of foresight as to the show’s longevity as they recorded a number of interactions with the kids that could be used to interact with Older Ted (who we don’t see until the very end sitting at the desk, it’s just assumed he’s there talking to the kids).
Over the course of ten seasons (this is reflected as the kids often joke about their father’s horribly long winded story telling style), we see Ted move from a young, recent college graduate to a mature adult man.
Ted is madly in love with Robin, who he sees as his end all, be all, the perfect woman, the woman that can bring all sorts of eternal happiness to his soul.
We’ve all met someone like that and we all know it feels pretty shitty when that love goes unrequited. Even worse, an experience like that can make us doubt future relationships. After all, if you met someone who gave you butterflies, won’t it feel like settling if you end up with someone who doesn’t? But then again, how likely is it to get that butterfly feeling in your life more than once? Should you really wait for it to come again?
Life is complicated as the show tells us. Though it is filled with great humor, we learn that life’s greatest problems aren’t all black and white. Sure, you could hate Robin for denying Ted…or you could understand that Robin wants something very different than what Ted wants.
Ted dreams of a stable home life filled with kids and a loving wife who adores him and will work on house projects with him and shop for curtains and so on. Robin dreams of becoming a big time TV reporter, traveling the world, going on awesome adventures and making a lot of money.
Thus, as much as these two do love each other, Robin at least realizes she probably would not have the type of personality that Ted yearns for in the long run.
The show moves on. Ted meets a series of woman. Each time, we wonder if this woman will be “the mother.” Ted is abused by some of these women and at other times, Ted screws the pooch royally with these women. It’s reflective of the average love life – sometimes people get screwed over and sometimes they do the screwing over.
By the time the last episode rolls around, Ted is forlorn as hell, having to go through an indignity no man should suffer through – being expected to go to the wedding of the woman he loves (Robin) to his one of his best friends (Barney.)
That’s another lesson of the show. Sometimes love will come in an inconvenient manner. Rarely does it ever show up when you want it to by appointment under the best of circumstances. Like Robin, Barney also yearns for that flashy, jet setting lifestyle and so he and Robin are perfect for each other…though it causes all sorts of turmoil given that they both are friends with Ted.
But then things look up for Ted. Ted’s about to kiss New York goodbye, ready to move on to Chicago, a new city that isn’t filled with so many sad memories for him, when he meets…”the mother!”
Robin and Barney are happy. Ted and “The Mother” are happy…it looks like the show will end happily for all and then…SPOILER…the mother dies. Yup. They kill off the mother right after we meet her…after the show’s biggest fans were waiting ten years to meet her.
At some point, we see Robin and Barney staying in a hotel in some exotic location Robin is reporting (she finally got her dream job) from. Barney has become a successful blogger, sharing the many secrets of how to score with chicks he learned from his days as a super pervert.
You’d think they’d be happy – after all, Robin is traveling all over the world on her network’s time and Barney is tagging along with a new career that he can do from anywhere as long as he brings his laptop but, we’re told they are miserable with this lifestyle, but to me, that just seems so out of character. All those two wanted was a) love b) adventure and c) to not have to sacrifice one for the other. They’re fellow adventurers who love one another and can travel the world together…not sure how that’s wrong for them.
Yes, Barney hooked up with Robin and you’re not supposed to do that to your bro but hey, love is messy and sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
Somehow, Robin ends up essentially being punished for doing what her gut told her to do. She ends up giving this long, tearful speech to Lilly about how she regrets dumping Ted, the only man she loved who loved her but now it’s too late, for Ted has moved on and is with the mother now.
I mean, yeah, any guy who has ever been dumped by the girl of his dreams, his great dream is to find one more girl of his dreams and then have the first girl become beside herself with misery and woe about dumping him.
Long story short, Robin ends up an old spinster in her apartment, apparently a punishment for choosing her career over Ted, but the mother dies because the writers just didn’t have the guts to let the Ted/Robin romance go. The show closes with an old Ted rushing to an old Robin’s apartment to profess his love, his kids giving him his blessing as much time has passed since “The Mother’s” death.
Sigh. Just…yeah…sigh. The happier ending would have been that Robin isn’t a bad person for recognizing what she wanted and going for it, even if that meant putting career over love. She had confidence in herself that she’d find love after her she found her career.
The happier ending would have been that Ted didn’t lie down like a dog and die because Robin didn’t love him. He kept putting himself out there. He kept trying. He finally met his second dream girl.
The happier ending would have been that Robin and Barney, two adventurers, end up together, and Ted and “the Mother” two homebodies who yearn to be loving, doting parents, end up together.
But nope. No. We get to meet the mother and then she’s taken away. I mean, I guess in a dark way, that’s a happy ending for Ted. He gets his second dream girl and then he also gets to be with his first dream girl as an older man.
But for a show called, “How I Met Your Mother” everyone naturally assumed the end of that title should be, “How I Met Your Mother…and How We Lived Happily Ever After.”
Nope. Instead, the show should have been called, “How I Met Your Mother…and Boy Am I Glad that Bitch Croaked So I Can Finally Bone Robin Now that She’s So Old She’s Given Up On Finding Anyone Else to Bone Her!”
Guess that title would not have been as catchy.
Don’t get me wrong. If you haven’t seen it (why did you read this then) you should still watch it. I laughed. I cried. Honestly, at times I debated whether to continue to watch the show because some of the heartaches and regrets, sadness over failures and bad decisions really got to me and made me relive my own pain in my mind…I mean, that’s not a good thing to happen but it speaks to how well written the show is.
So, I ate these episodes up like popcorn over the weekend and I have to say that yes, it’s worth watching.
I especially like the overall theme that this is a bunch of failures who are tired of failing and want a win.
Pretty much all of the women are failed actresses, babes who moved to LA seeking stardom but got crap instead. GLOW is their last chance for TV notoriety.
Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron) is a B horror movie director, addicted to booze and coke. GLOW is his last chance to do something that people might like, plus producer Sebastian has promised to fund his next movie, as no one else in Hollywood seems interested in doing so.
Sebastian aka “Bash” is a rich young man who has everything and access to a ton of his wealthy mother’s funds. He could do anything but he has essentially taken all of the opportunities his mother could give him and squandered them. He wants to be a big time Hollywood big shot and sees GLOW as his ability to buy his way into the big time.
Most of the girls have their own “I’m trying to make a comeback” story but the two main wrestling gals in particular are Ruth Wilder (Alison Brie) and Debbie Eagan (the amazing big breasted Betty Gilpin.)
SIDENOTE: You get to see Brie’s boobs but Gilpin’s big ripe casaba melons are never unleashed. What a ripoff. Maybe Netflix can offer her some more dough to go topless in season 2.
Anyway, Ruth takes acting very seriously, going to all sorts of acting classes, appearing plays – she treats acting like any other job. “You should hire me because I have the credentials.” But no one is hiring her, and GLOW is her last shot at stardom.
And not to give it away, but Debbie’s husband, Mark (Rich Sommer) is a dick cheeseburger with extra buttwipe fries. Seems lame because if Debbie were my wife, I’d worship her and those magnificent mammaries and do whatever she required of me to maintain her everlasting happiness.
But that’s me. I feel bad for Sommer. He’s been typecast as a dick. He’s a dick in GLOW and he was a dick in “Mad Men.” Mad Men was in the 1960s. GLOW is in the 1980s. Casting agents must be all like, “We need an actor to play a dick in a period piece! Oh, I know! Call Rich Sommer!”
Returning to the main point, yes, even Debbie seeks a comeback, becoming a pro-wrestler to get back some of the control she lost at home.
SPOILER ALERT:
I particularly enjoyed the USA vs. Russia i.e. Debbie as Liberty Bell vs. Ruth as Zoya the Destroyer. People think of the Cold War as a 1950s/1960s thing but it was even happening in the 1980s, though Reagan and Gorbachev did a lot of work to cool it down by 1990. Ironically, it seems to be heating up again today.
At times, the show also looks at past issues through present eyes. All of the characters played by the girls are stereotypes. One wrestler is a black woman called “Welfare Queen” who laughs at the audience about how they all have to work while she stays home and lives off their tax dollars. She even pulls food stamps out of her bra and throws them at downed opponents.
Meanwhile, an Indian woman plays a Middle Eastern terrorist character, reminding people that terrorism (and related stereotypes) were alive in the 1980s. 9/11 had not happened yet, but as the show points out, terrorist airplane hijackings were constantly in the news.
Interesting to note though you do get to see the dark side of these stereotypes. At times, the girls object, then they get roped into thinking it’s ok and will help them on the road to stardom, then they see how ugly and obnoxious the crowd gets, hating on the wrestlers because some in the crowd are too dumb to realize that characters like “Welfare Queen” and “Beirut” are real people underneath the costumes and are not the characters they are portraying.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Come for Brie’s cheez-its. Stay for (we can only hope) the great unleashing Gilpin’s sweater cannons in season two. Let me know in advance if that’s going to happen, Netflix. I want to take a day off just to watch.
“Community” fans rejoice! “Annie’s boobs” are finally on screen!
BQB here with a review of the new Netflix comedy/drama “GLOW.”
There was a period of several years where I would watch Alison Brie play it straight as a young, suffering wife to a philandering scoundrel on “Mad Men” only to flip the channel and watch her play perky, nerdy overachiever Annie on “Community.”
Now, it’s like she’s all grown up…and showing her boobs.
“GLOW” is the tale of the “Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling,” the cheap and cheesy 1980s all female wrestling show, where scantily clad women would put on stupid costumes, speak in politically incorrect accents, make jokes that would totally not fly today, body slam the crap out of each other and do their best Hulk Hogan with boobs impression.
It’s the 1980s, so think big hair and yuppies galore as the flower children of the past are gone and money grubbing social climbers have taken their place.
Alison Brie stars as Ruth, a down and out actress who has moved from Omaha to LA. She’s classically trained and has appeared in a number of plays, but can’t get a paying acting job to save her life and is facing all kinds of financial woes.
Enter GLOW – a new wrestling show directed by B-movie, super crappy horror film director Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron) who revels in showing how little he cares about this project and how deeply below him he deems it. Maron puts his comic skills on display as he occasionally takes cocaine snorting breaks to ridicule the ladies, tell them how ugly, stupid and useless they are, etc.
When Ruth auditions, she too believes the show is beneath her but faced with either calling it quits on her dreams of fame or getting in the ring and rolling around with the gals, she chooses the latter and a star is born.
I have only watched the first episode thus far, but it caught my interest, so I will keep watching. While I am a fan of Jenji Kohan, this show seems to take a different turn from the snappy one liners of Weeds and Orange is the New Black. The show features a darker, subtle, understated form of comedy and it’s more of a dramatic period piece than anything else.
I know from Mickey Rourke’s The Wrestler, professional wrestling isn’t all it is cracked out to be. Sure, it may be “fake” but there’s a lot of physical activity going into those pratfalls and body slams. It takes a toll on the body and the slightest mistake can leave a person badly injured. I think that angle will be explored as we delve deeper into the show.
I never really watched “GLOW” as a kid. I was aware of it but for whatever reason, never checked it out. I was only a little kid during the 1980s and Hulk Hogan vs. the Iron Shiek captivated me. I stuck with men’s wrestling all through high school, even in the Hulkster’s evil NWO days. I was aware of women wrestlers and lady wrestlers would occasionally stop by to duke it out on men’s wrestling but overall, I guess GLOW was one of those things that escaped me.
But as long as it features Annie’s boobs I will keep watching.
What I liked about the first episode the most is it seems like it will be a show about losers who are tired of losing and fighting desperately to become winners. We see Ruth living a life of absurdity as a budding actress, waiting in audition rooms filled with candidates all vying to play a secretary on a TV show with a five second line. We see her paying the little money she has for acting lessons from a teacher who keeps falling asleep during her performance.
We see Sam on the tail end of his directing career, down and out, cast aside from making the movies he loved, directing a bunch of crazy women as they beat the crap out of each other.
Neither Sam or Ruth think GLOW is worthy of them…but they both see this as their last shot to do something worthwhile with their lives, so they are going to fight for it.
This probably sounds like an unmanly post but whatever. I like “2 Broke Girls.” It’s my kind of humor.
I just finished it up to the end of the sixth and apparently last season. I mean, I don’t want to spoil it but suffice to say the girls have better luck at life this season than the previous seasons.
Still, the overall point of the show is to highlight the struggle people have, especially young people who grow up thinking the world will be their oyster only to face the grim reality of every door of opportunity they try to walk getting slammed in their faces.
Along the way, the come across all sorts of characters who are also down on their luck.
Perhaps it seems silly to worry about a show that’s basically a big pile of fluff but from the very first episode, the girls chart out a course – they’re going to lift themselves out of poverty and become big time cupcake selling superstar moguls and I just think CBS is in the wrong for ending the show before that happens.
So if any other network out there wants to pick it up for at least a final wrap-up season (I’m looking at you, Netflix) I know you’d at least have me as a viewer. I can’t guarantee my 3.5 readers will come along. They never listen to me.
Overall, it sucks when networks do this. These shows build up fans over the years that grow attached to the characters and invest time in watching their stories. It’s uncool to leave the fans hanging. We were told Max and Caroline would be super, ridiculously successful one day. We should find out if that happens.
Hollywood, if you can’t make this happen, at least put Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs in something else. Kat, and her copious bazongas are a delight. Beth is fabulous too though she lacks Kat’s bazongas. (As far as I know it’s cool to joke about this as it is a running joke in the show.)
Bookshelf Battle 