Archive | August, 2014

The Strain “Creatures of the Night” Review (2×08)

31 Aug

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“I need the rules.”

“Creatures of the Night” narrows the focus of the show, and everything’s better off for it: the entertainment value, the action, the directing, the acting, and even the character development. It’s a tightly plotted, sixty minute thrill ride that, for once, doesn’t attempt to try to tackle the situation from a larger scale. The show’s certainly attempting to convey a sense of widespread destruction and chaos, but sometimes, confining the characters to one space ramps up the tension more so than anything else does.

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Friday Night Lights Season 5, Episodes 2-4 Review

31 Aug

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EPISODE 2– “On the Outside Looking In”

State.

As the title suggests, this episode deals with those on the outside looking in, whether it be someone like Tami, who’s attempting to enact change at East Dillon but is running into unending obstacles, Julie, who’s navigating her first days at college, or Becky, who’s lost and without a stable family. We also see this idea play out in the fact that after the Lions’s win against Croft, people come down hard on the team just because it wasn’t supposed to win.

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Veronica Mars “Return of the Kane”/ “The Girl Next Door” Review (1×06/1×07)

29 Aug

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A+

Episode 6: “Return of the Kane”

It’s fitting that following an episode in which Veronica throws herself into the case and turns out to be right about her suspicions (Troy), we get an episode in which she does the same and ends up being wrong (Wanda). It kind of hurts to see her happy while on a date or talking about college while making posters with someone she thought was her friend, then have it all get turned on its head at the end of the episode. Her cold “I didn’t vote for you” is another instance of her hardened heart, one weary to open itself up again and one that, if opened, quickly closes at the first sign of trouble.

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The Bridge “Goliath” Review (2×08)

28 Aug

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“I don’t trust you anymore.”

The series began with two cops on opposite sides of the El Paso-Juarez border coming together to work on a case, and it’s now taken multiple turns, ending up in a place in which the actions of one come into serious conflict with the morality of another. Now, Sonya’s retreating from those around her, pushing away both Hank and Marco after she finds out just how caught up they are in the cycle of violence of the world they live in (the Jim Dobbs realization followed up by the David Tate realization is awful for her). And, with every passing day, each character–not just Sonya–is experiencing a similar decision: there are two sides here with muddled states of morality, but how do you make it so that you yourself don’t end up a victim?

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Battlestar Galactica Season 2, Episodes 13-16 Review

27 Aug

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ARC 5: “This is what happens when you have to make 20 episodes a season”

EPISODES COVERED: “Epiphanies”, “Black Market”, “Scar”, “Sacrifice”

I will begin this review in medias res. Does it help? Does it improve your reading experience? Does it give you Breaking Bad flashbacks? Speaking of flashbacks, let us now flashback to the time when I began this review, spend a few unnecessary minutes there, do it again at various intervals throughout the review, and then assume that it’ll make everything more complex and intriguing moving forward. I’ll see you back here in 42 minutes after you’ve wasted your time.

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Friday Night Lights “Expectations” Review (5×01)

26 Aug

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With change comes expectation, whether that change is for the better or for the worse. When you say goodbye and enter a new phase of your life, there’s always an idea in your head of how it should or how you hope it will turn out: will the transition be smooth or rocky? Will you go out in a blaze of glory or in a whimper? Are you ready?

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66th Primetime Emmy Awards Live Blog

25 Aug

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All times central.

7:05-Sheldon is not worth one penny, but you get a point for calling out the idiocy that was the How I Met Your Mother finale.

7:09-And the monologue is over. How many HBO jokes was that? 99? Coincidentally, that’s also the number of nominations HBO garnered.

7:11-I’m so, so sorry, Andre Braugher. Also, this Ty Burrell speech reminds me of Steve Carell’s Golden Globe speech about his wife. By the way, Steve Carell never won an Emmy.

7:17-Well deserved, Louis CK. If I could choose, you’d win every award.

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True Blood “Thank You” Review (7×10)

25 Aug

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Thank you, True Blood, for finally limping off the air after seven seasons, and thank you for doing it in quite possibly the worst way possible. Seriously, what is this? Does this show enjoy making its audience lower expectations so far that we can see the pile of shit that is the Dexter finale staring accusingly at us? Are the writers deliberately trolling the entire fan base, or are they legitimately horrible writers? I pick the latter. I have multiple seasons of evidence, after all.

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The Leftovers “The Garveys at Their Best” Review (1×09)

25 Aug

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“A man said to the universe, ‘Sir, I exist'”. 

“However,” the universe replied, “that fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.”

“The Garveys at Their Best” makes its point known from the irony inherent in the title. Prior to the Sudden Departure, the Garveys were already a broken family, a group of people apparently fine from the outside but straining when you looked closer, and what resulted from October 14th was an extension off of what already existed. That, fittingly, is why people throughout this episode seem to sense that something terrible is about to happen.

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Polar Bears Watch TV’s One Year Anniversary

23 Aug

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Society giving me a thumbs-up ^^

Thanks, everyone. You know who you are. It’s been a blast this past year, from the very first review–Orange Is the New Black Season 1–to the last, and I’ve certainly grown as a writer and as a thinker over these last 365 days and 425 posts. The fact that I have more posts than days in a year is a reflection of me having too much time on my hands, and the amount of spam comments I’ve had filtered out–a lot–ensures that the Internet is working perfectly.

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