152 insights into my soul

TV commentary:

Cougar Town- Aw, sweet finale. I'll admit, they did have me confused there. ( spoiler cut )

Finding Carter- Woah, shocking reveal there. But it does finally explain some things! ( spoiler cut )

Back at work after a nice 2 week vacation. I was a little worried there might be ice or snow today, but thankfully my route to work was ice free. I could care less about the cold. Well, I mean, I don't like it, but as long as there's no ice or snow, I'm happy. Because I actually have to still show up on "snow days", so snow isn't a day off for me, its a drive through treacherous roads because Atlanta is not equipped for snow day.

Anyways, tired as hell because I didn't actually get to sleep until 2-ish, which means I'm only going on about 4 hours of sleep. It doesn't help that I'm bored right now- since I'm boring and have no life, I actually kept up with my work e-mail on vacation, so I'm all caught up. Though I'd rather be bored that trying to slog through 2000 e-mails all at once this morning.

Oh, and what the frick is with all this TV being on Tuesday now? 8pm is Agents of SHIELD, PLL, the Originals, Brooklyn Nine Nine (until Feb 25, when Glee takes over that time slot), and NCIS. 9pm is Supernatural, Ravenswood, and Intelligence, if that ends up being any good. And then 10pm is Cougar Town, Person of Interest, and Justified.

I'm particularly annoyed by Glee, The Originals and PLL being up against each other. I wish I could quit Agents of SHIELD, because its so effin boring, but the Whedon fan on me is unwilling to give up on it. I mean, once Glee comes on, I'll be up in my room watching that instead and watching AoS later. And I'll see all these shows eventually, I just hate that I prolly won't get to see The Originals or PLL until the next day.

Speaking of Glee though, looking at the upcoming songs, I'm eggcited: ( spoiler cut )

I think the songs I'm most looking forward to are Breakaway, Whenever I Call You Friend, Danny's Song, Hold On (I really can't wait for this one), More Than a Feeling, and the re-dos of Defying Gravity and Toxic. Given the sheer number of songs listed for each ep, I'm wondering if some of these aren't going to be full releases. As long as the one's I just mentioned come out, I'll be happy. I'm guessing Hold On is a definite, since its listed as being a Lima/NY number, which means its a major song in the ep. Hopefully they don't eff it up and do it weirdly.

As if I couldn't like Alison Brie anymore, she sings Hall and Oates in short dresses with other hot chyx:



The Girls, of Alison Brie and the Girls being Cyrina Fiallo and the lusciously-meloned Julianna Guill. (I wonder if they got their guest spots on Community because of Alison?) I guess she also shows her co-star Donald Glover some love by doing Childish Gambino's "These Girls":



with Alison singing lead and Julianna and Cyrina doing the Garfunkel and Oates parts.

TV commentary:

Fairly Legal- Kate and Ben, hey, I think I like it.

In Plain Sight- Huh, I'm a little surprised at the ending. ( spoiler cut )

A smattering of different things:

-Still can't talk, but I think things are definitely improving at least. Of course, the other thing frustrating about this is I'm drinking so much water and other liquids, that I have to go to the restroom even more than I usually do.

-So my ipod nano was close to filling up, so I switched to the ipod classic, which has 10x the storage. Since it can hold up to 160 gigs, I put some of my TV shows (all of Glee, select eps of various other shows like Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, Community, and Archer) and those movies I have on itunes (Bandslam, Brick, Enchanted, Garden State, Godspell, Kick-Ass, Lemonade Mouth, Rent, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, the director's cut of Sucker Punch, A Walk To Remember and Zombieland) So I'm down to about 77 gig on the device, which should hopefully last a long time. Weird though, my nano couldn't charge from the dock on my car stereo, but the classic can. I'm not sure why it would work for one and not the other.

-Faberry won yet another poll, Zimbio's 2012 March Madness TV couples competition. The article about their win here is more well written than the E! one when they won that one, because they actually go into the compelling reasons why fans support Rachel and Quinn as an actual romantic couple.

-Speaking of TV couples, here's an article on 5 TV couples that just need to get together already. Obviously, I agree with Jannie and Barney/Robin. Laurie and Travis on Cougar Town would be a little weird. I mean, the age difference is smaller there than with Jeff and Annie, but Travis was under 18 when the show first started. He wasn't exactly a kid, but there was still a generational gap- he had his teen stuff going on, while the adults had there's. And Laurie is like friends with his mom, as opposed to being a fellow college student who just happens to be 10-15 years older. I'm not against it, it would be interesting, just a little jarring.

I'm not sure how I feel about Mary and Marshall on In Plain Sight. They've always had that will-they or won't they thing going on. Well, it seemed Marshall was the one more into it, but they definitely have strong feelings for one another. Its just with only a few episodes left, and where they are in their lives currently, I don't think them getting together can be done well in that time constraint. She just had a baby and is living with her ex-husband, he just proposed!

But I do echo their comment on OUAT. Snow and Charming? Great couple? MM and David? Ugh. He's such an ass in Storybrooke.

TV commentary:

House- Wow, House has done some crazy things before, but I feel that's over the line. ( spoiler cut )

Hart of Dixie- You know, even though there are a lot of similarities between Lemon and Lauren on MIOBI, I can tolerate the former much more. (Though just barely). They're both rich bitch Daddy's girls with mother abandonment issues. At least with Lemon, I understand her motivation, she's friggin' paranoid. Lauren has some of that, but also, she seems to cause chaos on a whim, or worse, hurts her friends because they're doing better than her at this or that! And Lemon at least shows periods of genuine vulnerability without seeming like a petulant brat, even when Lauren has her moments of sadness, there's always some element stopping you from completely feeling sorry for her.

( spoiler cut )

So, there's no Glee live tour this summer? Its disappointing, but understandable. Regardless of what you think of the show, it still has one of the hardest, if not the hardest working casts in the business. I mean, in addition to the usual stuff you do for a TV show, they also have to go into the studio to record, and the dance room to learn the choreography for the numbers they're doing on the show. Its not uncommon to see the cast tweet about still being on set until late at night. Though not in a complaining sort of way, because it seems like they love what they do, despite the hours. But I digress, the fact that they go on a multi-city international tour after filming these past two seasons is intense. I think they deserve a break!

Anyways, since there were a lot of awesome moments on the shows I watch this week, let me break down my favorites: (warning, spoiler heavy!)

Gossip Girl- As I said, I was expecting to be sorely disappointed with this week's ep. That it would be more of the same teasing with no payoff that's been happening week after week on this show. But then Dan and Blair finally kiss (which was totally unexpected!) and it looks like they're finally moving forward on the Dair front.

Raising Hope- Hey, that ending was one of the greatest things evar! That has gotta be one of the all time best scenes for a couple getting together on a TV show.

Once Upon a Time- Hey, I thought the Rumbelle stuff was nice. Wasn't sure how it was going to work out by having Rumpelstiltskin be the Beast, but the stuff with Belle in Fairy Tale land was nice, and brings a whole new interesting side of Rumpel's character.

Other mentions: Really good episode of Glee, probably the best of the season so far. The songs were all good, all the plot stuff was good, and Brittany and Santana get an actual real on screen kiss, satiating the fans who complained lesbos weren't getting any love and the show only focuses on heterosexual and homosexual male couplings.

Grayson's proposal to Jules on the return ep of Cougar Town was pretty sweet, but unfortunately, that Raising Hope thing happened, and it just doesn't compare.

On Justified, I enjoyed the "shades of Crank" with Dewey Crowe and the kidney stuff. Also, Raylan shooting someone center of mass THROUGH someone was cool. Less cool was that it was Jules from Psych. How could one do that to such a pretty little sweet-talking thang!

Missteps of the week: Revisiting Ted and Robin on HIMYM. We know she's not the mother, so why continue to go down that road. (Oh, BTW, I find it hilarious the writers were apparently considering having Lyndsy Fonseca be the mother. The scenes with Ted's kids are apparently stock footage, and now that Lyndsy's older, they were thinking maybe she could play the mother since she would obviously look like the daughter. Ida know, there's something about that that just seems totally wrong.

The ending of this week's Castle. So the guy they found is supposed to be some genius spy who managed to hide and lay low for several years. Now, I know he realized they had realized he had walked into a trap, but instead of telling Castle and Beckett, aav('Its a trap!') and trying to warn them so they could make an escape, he friggin freaks out and runs into the middle of an open area?! He should've known he would've gotten his ass sniped. It does not make cents!

Breaking into the Russian consulate on Hawaii Five-O. This isn't 24. And even though Jack Bauer gets results, we're supposed to see him as this flawed individual who goes too far at times. But on this show, they constantly do effed up things! I mean, they once strapped a guy to the hood of a car and sped through the streets to get him to talk. WTF! And they act like the governor assigning them Lori as a liason to reign them in at the beginning of the season was total BS. I think they kinda need it. Too bad she did a piss poor job at reigning them in, so her resigning is probably best.

But yeah, they're all "F U, Russians, for not turning in this rapist guy who we have no solid evidence on!" and friggin drive a truck rigged up to look like it might be a WMD through the front gate of the RUSSIAN CONSULATE. Just so they would evacuate the guy, and they could ambush the car he was in once it was outside of the consulate so they could illegally grab him from a diplomatic car (granted the guy left the car, but still).

Yes, we know the guy did it, and he killed that one woman to cover up raping her sister. But they had no proof, so they had no right to demand the consulate give him up, and then engineer a plan to grab him when they wouldn't. Now, I'm fine with it on shows like 24 and Nikita because grabbing possible bad guys from other countries who don't want to help is their purview. Secret government spies and assassins can do that. But not the friggin cops! Its one of the effed up things with the Closer. I'm fine with the idea of people doing bad things for the greater good, but only when its dark/grey characters who realize what they're doing is wrong and brood over it. Supposed white hats doing that? That's not right. Or at least have them feel really bad about it and have an arc where they have a huge moral crisis over what they did. The non-effed up big hero type doesn't do such things and act like everything is fine and dandy afterward, like they did nothing wrong.

I rag on Superman and Captain America and other lame goody goody boy scouts, but you need such heroes. You can't have them killing unarmed men or torturing people for information or engineering their deaths because they can't be brought to justice!

So, voting has begun for this year's Tubeys on TWoP. So, here's some commentary on some of the nominees:

5) Most Painful Series Cancellation- I actually went with "10 Things I Hate About You". I thought it was a decent show that deserved to be picked up. And its ridiculous that its gone, and "Melissa and Joey" is in its place.

7) Most Anticipated New Show of the 2011-2012 Season- You know, while there are definitely new shows I'm going to check out next season, nothing really stood out as, "I really can't wait for that!"

16) Best HoYay! Couple- Didn't this site invent the term HoYay? But they seem to not know what it means. I mean, I don't think the term should encompass actual gay couples like Kurt and Blaine on Glee. Brittany and Santana is kinda iffy- back when you weren't sure they were bi/lesbian respectively and they jokingly hinted at it, yes. But once they actually turned them into a romantic coupling, they shouldn't be on the list.

Also not really HoYay? Annie/Britta on Community. That's fan-service, not HoYay. Also, just because two cop partners are of the same sex does not mean its automatically HoYay either. To me, HoYay is a same sex pair who are close and someone might suspect they're gay for each other, but they really can't be sure. Or if the show is playing the characters straight, but you can re-interpret their conversations as having gay undertones. Like Clark/Lex on the earlier seasons of Smallville. (In fact, aren't they the pairing that started the whole HoYay thing on TWoP?)

So yeah, Jack Black imagining Annie and Britta making out or wrestling in a sudsy kiddie pool or the two of them trying to show each other up on how cool and non threatened they are about lesbians does not qualify. And I never got a kinda gay vibe from Dano and McGarret on Hawaii Five-0 or the Good Guys (I can't seem to remember Colin Hanks or Bradley Whitford's character names). But yeah, Alaric and Damon on Vampire Diaries, Jon Snow and Samwell Tarly on Game of Thrones, House and Wilson, Bobby and Andy on Cougar Town, those are definitely HoYay.

17) Best Romantic Relationship- I'm normally not a big fan of the iconic pairing on shows (Ross/Rachel, Jim/Pam, and Seth/Summer being exceptions) Pacey getting the girl on DC was like one of my favorite things to happen on a show, because finally its the friend of the main character getting his due. A lot of the choices were kinda bland at best and toxic at worst. (I find it kinda hilarious that the Lannister twin-cesters are on there!). I actually ended up going with Dany and Khal Drogo from GoT. I thought they were a nice couple.

19) Best Almost-Romantic But Not Quite Relationship- Ooh, this was a real hard one for me, because 4 out of my 5 favorite not-canon couples were in there- Jeff/Annie from Community, Dan/Blair from Gossip Girl, Damon/Elena from Vampire Diaries, and Puckelberry from Glee. They had Barney on HIMYM on there with that Nora chick. Wasn't she just there for like one episode?! I guess maybe Barney and Robin don't qualify because they're exes? I actually went with Dair, because they've teased it too much this past season, I must see the show explore this, even if they'll prolly just end up ruining them.

24) Most Likable Geek: I'll actually list the nominees this time: ( under a cut )

25) Best Musical Moment on a Scripted or Reality show- Obviously, there were several nominees from Glee on this. Also, various numbers from the Grey's Anatomy Musical episode. And they count the ending montage of the Friday Night Lights finale as a "musical moment"? But here's my comment on the Glee songs:
( again, cut for brevity )

26) Best Pop Culture Reference- I had to go with the Community/Cougar Town lovefest. The references to each other were just too good. It was like a crossover that wasn't really a crossover, which made it even better because it wasn't official.