Teevee blogging o/
ღ - Sekaiichi Hatsukoi is getting an anime? A 20 minute dvd thing is coming out in January, but the actual TV series still has yet to be dated? Omg!
ღ - I never knew the origin of CLAMP's name before and just... omg FOREVER LOL, seriously.
ღ - So, uh. Alison Brie reads Jeff/Annie fanfic? Excuse me while I go FREAK THE HELL OUT in the corner! Not that I write fic for the show, but I recommend a lot and it'd be easy to find my journal/site in a search for J/A fic and asl;dkfjal;kjslkjs hiding under the desk forever now.
ღ - New Sons of Anarchy s3 promo and as;dlfkja;slkjaslkj oh my god September 7th cannot come fast enough.
ღ - Speaking of Community, as I was looking for more fic to read, I was browsing the tags over at community_tv and, holy shit, the Jeff/Annie tag has 150 entries, which blows anything else out of the water, doesn't it? The next closest (Jeff/Britta with 30 or Abed/Troy with 23) doesn't even come close. Wow. Now I remember why I love fandoms sometimes--it's nice to be able to walk into a fandom and go OMG REAMS OF FIC JUST FOR MEEEEE, given how many times I've found myself on the other end of that. (Just... oh, man, please don't turn out like the last time I was onboard with the popular hetship. I can't take another fucking Glee.)
Which reminds me, after reading this article posted at the J/A comm (which has vague s2 spoilers, but nothing really major), I realized I never really talked about the finale, did I? SPOILERS up through the s1 finale of Community. And, yeah, it's going to be mostly ship talk. I watch it for other things, but it's the ship stuff that's the easiest to actually hold a fannish conversation about!
So, I'm not watching this show for my ship, I don't think. Even when it looked like Jeff/Britta was going to be where things were headed (after the ramping up they did about 3/4ths of the way through the series, after "Modern Warfare" where they slept together in the library), I was okay with that. It's where the pilot basically set things up and, even if it wasn't my ship, I liked both characters and I liked the show for other reasons. It was still a smart, funny show and I could read all the fic I wanted, so I was fine!
And then they started putting in all these little hints! Annie dressing more professional like Slater or the little looks they gave each other. I took these as little treats they were throwing to the fans, given the popularity of the ship. But then the finale! I had heard about the kiss before I actually watched the episode and I was like, "....wait, what? They actually went there??" and expected it to be out of nowhere, given Britta and Slater seeming to be the two big contenders in this whole thing right now. (I love that Community can have three potential love interests for a character like Jeff Winger and I don't want to punch him in the face because Community clearly knows what it's doing and knows you kind of want to punch Jeff Winger in the face for it. ♥)
But it... actually made sense? There was a surprising amount of build-up there! Even with Annie dating Vaughn, you could see there was something there with Jeff. And I liked the conversation they had, that Jeff didn't know what to do, because Slater made him feel like trying to be the person he wanted to be, but Britta made him feel like the person he already was, and he was caught between the two of them. And what I like to think is that Annie is somewhere in between those two, which is one of the reasons I actually like the ship, rather than just finding it hot. (....that made sense in my head?) Because it's not just about being good for each other, but also because they'd be fun together.
My initial reaction was OMG PLEASE DON'T LET THIS BE THE "GETTING IT OUT OF THE WAY" ROUTE because I didn't want them to touch on it only to drop it like a hot potato, especially after my experience with Glee. I'd rather they just not go there at all, if that was going to be the route. But, with a little time to consider it, I'm vaguely hopeful. I don't necessarily want them to get together forever and ever right at this point, that's not how you build a lasting ship in a series like this! Instead, you save it for the big moments (like with the finale), you tease the audience over the years, you build a narratively interesting story for them along the way. I don't think either of them are quite ready for a proper relationship at this point, they both need a little time to grow, so I'm really okay with this if it's going to be a, "We have a ton of chemistry, but we can't get together right now, there are too many roadblocks in front of us. But, man, I'm going to think about making out with you a lot." sort of thing.
The staff is, of course, super aware of the fandom (which seems to be very onboard with Jeff/Annie) and I'm hoping that they won't pander too much (because pandering never gets anywhere good) but instead its more... obviously a lot of people feel chemistry there and I hope they decide to explore it on a long-term basis, rather than just having it end here.
Because that kiss was super, super satisfying and, oh, man, the fic in this fandom is delicious and I want that train to keep going.
I've actually been watching a lot of TV lately and another series I picked up is Cougar Town. Despite that it was by Bill Lawrence, the name just completely turned me off--it had to be a terrible show with a name like that, right? Plus, there weren't exactly a whole lot of rave reviews coming out for it, so, clearly, it was a show to be avoided.
I'm not sure what made me change my mind and decide to give it a shot. I guess I was just running out of other comedies (since it's the summer season and all my favorites are on hiatus) and I wanted something to laugh at, so I grabbed the first three episodes. And, yeah, it got off to a rocky start and the name is still terrible, but I found that it was a show that was actually REALLY GOOD. It starts out as being a show about a woman in her forties basically trying to relive her 20s after her divorce and the writing and the acting pull it off (but I love Courtney Cox and Christa Miller in pretty much anything and Busy Phillipps is winning me over a lot and all the male actors are kind of great, too), but the thing about it is that... about a third of the way through the first season, it becomes this whole other show.
And now I have to write a ridiculous amount of squee about it. :|b
It's a show about a group of people that are friends and family, about the relationships between them and how they all deal with growing older (the women in their 40s, a 20-something young woman growing up, an 18 year old son getting ready to go off to college, even men in their 40s adjusting to this new stage) and it's genuinely hilarious and I-- I'm kind of in love with the OTP, okay. He tries so hard to be a loner and not get dragged into their kooky crap! She's a big ball of delightful crazy and doesn't even pay attention to his snarky comments and drags him along for the ride! He obviously ~*likes*~ her! She obviously ~*likes*~ him! OMG I WANT THEM SO MUCH.
I love Bill Lawrence shows and this one has the magic that I've been missing from the later seasons of Scrubs, it has the dialogue and the freshness of the characters, it has the snappiness that made me sit down and watch all 24 episodes in, like, two days because I couldn't put it down. I've seen people criticize the show for, idk, being too much about 40-something women or making them too crazy or not strong enough or whatever, but I kind of stared at those reactions because OMG THE WOMEN ON THIS SHOW ARE GREAT. Yeah, they're all completely nuts, but in a really delightful way! Jules (the main character) may be more than a little crazy, but she's also shown to be a strong parent and a strong partner in a relationship and clearly gives as good as she gets. Christa Miller manages to make her character just as sharp as Jordan on Scrubs, but not an exact retread of her! Busy Phillipps as Laurie is surprisingly charming, when she could have just been a bimbo with nothing to her character.
I love this show because of its strong female characters and the relationships with the guys in their lives! I love Jules' relationship with her ex-husband Bobby or her son Travis or her obnoxious neighbor/potential boyfriend Grayson just as much as I love her big sister relationship with Laurie and her friendship with Ellie. I love Ellie and Andy's marraige because... it's one of those shows where I wanted to be annoyed, it was another show with the hot wife and a schlubby husband, ugh. But... oh, man, Andy is so sweet and he knows she wears the pants and he clearly adores her for just being her, not just because she's beautiful, and I can really understand it. And Jules' crazy is so endearing that you can see why Bobby still carries a torch for her and why Grayson, despite that he tries SO HARD not to like her, eventually falls for her as well. She's just... she's so full of life and cares about everyone that you can see why they all gravitate towards her.
Just. as;dlfkjalsjk I actually love this cast as characters, not just as a show! I... I kind of want fic, oh god. orz But mostly I love the show because I shrieked with laughter at the end of just about every single episode.
Speaking of shows centered on strong female characters! I've been watching Medium as well! I've marathoned most of season 6 and it's been tough to put down, despite that I'm almost out of episodes. It's one of those shows where it just makes me happy to watch, because it's a good show, but also because I love everyone on it. And, the more I watch it, the more I spend time thinking about female characters in television shows, the more I'm amazed by what Medium does. It's not just Allison and her daughters that are strong characters on this show (though, they are the heart of it, along with Joe), but also that the show does a lovely job with the guest characters of the week.
Sometimes the women on the show are evil, sometimes they're victims, sometimes they're bad people, sometimes they dust themselves off and get back up again. And sometimes it's about male characters of the week, sometimes it's about female characters of the week, and I love the show for being so beautifully balanced. I love the show for it being Allison's show, I love it for the amazing partnership she has with her husband, I love the show for exploring the daughters' situations as well. With so many shows, I might get annoyed when the focus shifts to a child character because, hey, that's not what I signed up for. But Medium has this amazing balance between making them touching stories, but not too awful so that you feel it's too much for a child to handle. I love that, as they get older, as they can handle more stuff, things get a little darker, but never more than they can actuall deal with.
I forget the episode number, but the two-parter in the middle of s6 really stuck out for me because of all this. With the young girl who'd been in a car accident and could see visions of the killer who was still alive. The episodes started with Allison in the middle of a fun dream for once, until the girl appeared and asked, "Is this what you do with your gift?" before eventually killing herself in a really awful way. Later, we see Ariel also having a dream, where the girl appears and shoots herself in the head. We also hear that Bridget had a dream about her, but she only walked out onto the ice before she fell in. Still scary, but not gory, just enough so that a young pre-teen girl could handle it. It struck me that I really like the way the show handles the mysterious power that their gift is, that it's some force that is meant for good and won't destroy their lives to have.
But it's also things like Ariel's babysitting job with Mr. Toofers (Teefers? I forget now) and how she tricks the dead guy (who was a real dick and was kind of destroying a five year old's life, just to get back at his ex-girlfriend's therapist for breaking them up) to just leave already, never backing down against him. She was smart and clever and I love the show for putting in little stories like that.
I've really been enjoying this season because it's been very comforting. Even when they go through a lot of difficult things, their lives are mostly pretty comfortable right now. They both have steady jobs, their marraige is as fantastic as ever, their kids are doing well. They're not super rich, but they're comfortable and it's just been a joy to watch something that's good. I've delighted in the Joe-at-work antics because Keith (the younger, brilliant engineer) has played well off him--sure, the final few episodes with Keith were uncomfortable, as was the whole "diffuse" situation, but the resolution? Where they went at it "old school"? By playing DONKEY KONG against each other? So, so beautiful.
I continue to love this show because I love the Dubois family, because I love the strong female characters, and because I love the simple but elegant way Medium tells a story every week. It's been the most consistent show I've watched in a very long time and part of me wants it to end already, to go out on a high note, but... the rest of me wants at least three more seasons of my most comfortable show.
I've picked up another new show as well: Persons Unknown. I was not surprised to find out this was a FOX show, since it feels like it should be on FOX and has that same filtered to hell and back look that FOX is so fond of these days. I... am not sure if this show is actually good or if I just like it anyway? If I'm just weak to the genre? But I watched the first six episodes over the course of two days and will definitely keep going back to it. I can't say I'm super hooked, I'll probably let it build up in two or three episode mini-marathons, but it's an interesting little show. It's on NBC, so I'm reluctant to get invested, especially since it's all about the ~*overarching mythology*~ but it's an interesting one! I want to know what's going on!
I accidentally spoiled myself for one of the big reveals, but the show keeps up with little surprises along the way so I'm never bored by the show. It's moody and atmospheric and worth the time to sit down with it if you're in the mood for a mystery/suspense/wtf is going on here show. But, well, I'm also a sucker for "six people are kidnapped and held in a small abandoned town, not allowed to leave or even knowing why they're here, and oh hey let's throw in some conspiracy fun, too!" plots.
ღ - I never knew the origin of CLAMP's name before and just... omg FOREVER LOL, seriously.
ღ - So, uh. Alison Brie reads Jeff/Annie fanfic? Excuse me while I go FREAK THE HELL OUT in the corner! Not that I write fic for the show, but I recommend a lot and it'd be easy to find my journal/site in a search for J/A fic and asl;dkfjal;kjslkjs hiding under the desk forever now.
ღ - New Sons of Anarchy s3 promo and as;dlfkja;slkjaslkj oh my god September 7th cannot come fast enough.
ღ - Speaking of Community, as I was looking for more fic to read, I was browsing the tags over at community_tv and, holy shit, the Jeff/Annie tag has 150 entries, which blows anything else out of the water, doesn't it? The next closest (Jeff/Britta with 30 or Abed/Troy with 23) doesn't even come close. Wow. Now I remember why I love fandoms sometimes--it's nice to be able to walk into a fandom and go OMG REAMS OF FIC JUST FOR MEEEEE, given how many times I've found myself on the other end of that. (Just... oh, man, please don't turn out like the last time I was onboard with the popular hetship. I can't take another fucking Glee.)
Which reminds me, after reading this article posted at the J/A comm (which has vague s2 spoilers, but nothing really major), I realized I never really talked about the finale, did I? SPOILERS up through the s1 finale of Community. And, yeah, it's going to be mostly ship talk. I watch it for other things, but it's the ship stuff that's the easiest to actually hold a fannish conversation about!
So, I'm not watching this show for my ship, I don't think. Even when it looked like Jeff/Britta was going to be where things were headed (after the ramping up they did about 3/4ths of the way through the series, after "Modern Warfare" where they slept together in the library), I was okay with that. It's where the pilot basically set things up and, even if it wasn't my ship, I liked both characters and I liked the show for other reasons. It was still a smart, funny show and I could read all the fic I wanted, so I was fine!
And then they started putting in all these little hints! Annie dressing more professional like Slater or the little looks they gave each other. I took these as little treats they were throwing to the fans, given the popularity of the ship. But then the finale! I had heard about the kiss before I actually watched the episode and I was like, "....wait, what? They actually went there??" and expected it to be out of nowhere, given Britta and Slater seeming to be the two big contenders in this whole thing right now. (I love that Community can have three potential love interests for a character like Jeff Winger and I don't want to punch him in the face because Community clearly knows what it's doing and knows you kind of want to punch Jeff Winger in the face for it. ♥)
But it... actually made sense? There was a surprising amount of build-up there! Even with Annie dating Vaughn, you could see there was something there with Jeff. And I liked the conversation they had, that Jeff didn't know what to do, because Slater made him feel like trying to be the person he wanted to be, but Britta made him feel like the person he already was, and he was caught between the two of them. And what I like to think is that Annie is somewhere in between those two, which is one of the reasons I actually like the ship, rather than just finding it hot. (....that made sense in my head?) Because it's not just about being good for each other, but also because they'd be fun together.
My initial reaction was OMG PLEASE DON'T LET THIS BE THE "GETTING IT OUT OF THE WAY" ROUTE because I didn't want them to touch on it only to drop it like a hot potato, especially after my experience with Glee. I'd rather they just not go there at all, if that was going to be the route. But, with a little time to consider it, I'm vaguely hopeful. I don't necessarily want them to get together forever and ever right at this point, that's not how you build a lasting ship in a series like this! Instead, you save it for the big moments (like with the finale), you tease the audience over the years, you build a narratively interesting story for them along the way. I don't think either of them are quite ready for a proper relationship at this point, they both need a little time to grow, so I'm really okay with this if it's going to be a, "We have a ton of chemistry, but we can't get together right now, there are too many roadblocks in front of us. But, man, I'm going to think about making out with you a lot." sort of thing.
The staff is, of course, super aware of the fandom (which seems to be very onboard with Jeff/Annie) and I'm hoping that they won't pander too much (because pandering never gets anywhere good) but instead its more... obviously a lot of people feel chemistry there and I hope they decide to explore it on a long-term basis, rather than just having it end here.
Because that kiss was super, super satisfying and, oh, man, the fic in this fandom is delicious and I want that train to keep going.
I've actually been watching a lot of TV lately and another series I picked up is Cougar Town. Despite that it was by Bill Lawrence, the name just completely turned me off--it had to be a terrible show with a name like that, right? Plus, there weren't exactly a whole lot of rave reviews coming out for it, so, clearly, it was a show to be avoided.
I'm not sure what made me change my mind and decide to give it a shot. I guess I was just running out of other comedies (since it's the summer season and all my favorites are on hiatus) and I wanted something to laugh at, so I grabbed the first three episodes. And, yeah, it got off to a rocky start and the name is still terrible, but I found that it was a show that was actually REALLY GOOD. It starts out as being a show about a woman in her forties basically trying to relive her 20s after her divorce and the writing and the acting pull it off (but I love Courtney Cox and Christa Miller in pretty much anything and Busy Phillipps is winning me over a lot and all the male actors are kind of great, too), but the thing about it is that... about a third of the way through the first season, it becomes this whole other show.
And now I have to write a ridiculous amount of squee about it. :|b
It's a show about a group of people that are friends and family, about the relationships between them and how they all deal with growing older (the women in their 40s, a 20-something young woman growing up, an 18 year old son getting ready to go off to college, even men in their 40s adjusting to this new stage) and it's genuinely hilarious and I-- I'm kind of in love with the OTP, okay. He tries so hard to be a loner and not get dragged into their kooky crap! She's a big ball of delightful crazy and doesn't even pay attention to his snarky comments and drags him along for the ride! He obviously ~*likes*~ her! She obviously ~*likes*~ him! OMG I WANT THEM SO MUCH.
I love Bill Lawrence shows and this one has the magic that I've been missing from the later seasons of Scrubs, it has the dialogue and the freshness of the characters, it has the snappiness that made me sit down and watch all 24 episodes in, like, two days because I couldn't put it down. I've seen people criticize the show for, idk, being too much about 40-something women or making them too crazy or not strong enough or whatever, but I kind of stared at those reactions because OMG THE WOMEN ON THIS SHOW ARE GREAT. Yeah, they're all completely nuts, but in a really delightful way! Jules (the main character) may be more than a little crazy, but she's also shown to be a strong parent and a strong partner in a relationship and clearly gives as good as she gets. Christa Miller manages to make her character just as sharp as Jordan on Scrubs, but not an exact retread of her! Busy Phillipps as Laurie is surprisingly charming, when she could have just been a bimbo with nothing to her character.
I love this show because of its strong female characters and the relationships with the guys in their lives! I love Jules' relationship with her ex-husband Bobby or her son Travis or her obnoxious neighbor/potential boyfriend Grayson just as much as I love her big sister relationship with Laurie and her friendship with Ellie. I love Ellie and Andy's marraige because... it's one of those shows where I wanted to be annoyed, it was another show with the hot wife and a schlubby husband, ugh. But... oh, man, Andy is so sweet and he knows she wears the pants and he clearly adores her for just being her, not just because she's beautiful, and I can really understand it. And Jules' crazy is so endearing that you can see why Bobby still carries a torch for her and why Grayson, despite that he tries SO HARD not to like her, eventually falls for her as well. She's just... she's so full of life and cares about everyone that you can see why they all gravitate towards her.
Just. as;dlfkjalsjk I actually love this cast as characters, not just as a show! I... I kind of want fic, oh god. orz But mostly I love the show because I shrieked with laughter at the end of just about every single episode.
Speaking of shows centered on strong female characters! I've been watching Medium as well! I've marathoned most of season 6 and it's been tough to put down, despite that I'm almost out of episodes. It's one of those shows where it just makes me happy to watch, because it's a good show, but also because I love everyone on it. And, the more I watch it, the more I spend time thinking about female characters in television shows, the more I'm amazed by what Medium does. It's not just Allison and her daughters that are strong characters on this show (though, they are the heart of it, along with Joe), but also that the show does a lovely job with the guest characters of the week.
Sometimes the women on the show are evil, sometimes they're victims, sometimes they're bad people, sometimes they dust themselves off and get back up again. And sometimes it's about male characters of the week, sometimes it's about female characters of the week, and I love the show for being so beautifully balanced. I love the show for it being Allison's show, I love it for the amazing partnership she has with her husband, I love the show for exploring the daughters' situations as well. With so many shows, I might get annoyed when the focus shifts to a child character because, hey, that's not what I signed up for. But Medium has this amazing balance between making them touching stories, but not too awful so that you feel it's too much for a child to handle. I love that, as they get older, as they can handle more stuff, things get a little darker, but never more than they can actuall deal with.
I forget the episode number, but the two-parter in the middle of s6 really stuck out for me because of all this. With the young girl who'd been in a car accident and could see visions of the killer who was still alive. The episodes started with Allison in the middle of a fun dream for once, until the girl appeared and asked, "Is this what you do with your gift?" before eventually killing herself in a really awful way. Later, we see Ariel also having a dream, where the girl appears and shoots herself in the head. We also hear that Bridget had a dream about her, but she only walked out onto the ice before she fell in. Still scary, but not gory, just enough so that a young pre-teen girl could handle it. It struck me that I really like the way the show handles the mysterious power that their gift is, that it's some force that is meant for good and won't destroy their lives to have.
But it's also things like Ariel's babysitting job with Mr. Toofers (Teefers? I forget now) and how she tricks the dead guy (who was a real dick and was kind of destroying a five year old's life, just to get back at his ex-girlfriend's therapist for breaking them up) to just leave already, never backing down against him. She was smart and clever and I love the show for putting in little stories like that.
I've really been enjoying this season because it's been very comforting. Even when they go through a lot of difficult things, their lives are mostly pretty comfortable right now. They both have steady jobs, their marraige is as fantastic as ever, their kids are doing well. They're not super rich, but they're comfortable and it's just been a joy to watch something that's good. I've delighted in the Joe-at-work antics because Keith (the younger, brilliant engineer) has played well off him--sure, the final few episodes with Keith were uncomfortable, as was the whole "diffuse" situation, but the resolution? Where they went at it "old school"? By playing DONKEY KONG against each other? So, so beautiful.
I continue to love this show because I love the Dubois family, because I love the strong female characters, and because I love the simple but elegant way Medium tells a story every week. It's been the most consistent show I've watched in a very long time and part of me wants it to end already, to go out on a high note, but... the rest of me wants at least three more seasons of my most comfortable show.
I've picked up another new show as well: Persons Unknown. I was not surprised to find out this was a FOX show, since it feels like it should be on FOX and has that same filtered to hell and back look that FOX is so fond of these days. I... am not sure if this show is actually good or if I just like it anyway? If I'm just weak to the genre? But I watched the first six episodes over the course of two days and will definitely keep going back to it. I can't say I'm super hooked, I'll probably let it build up in two or three episode mini-marathons, but it's an interesting little show. It's on NBC, so I'm reluctant to get invested, especially since it's all about the ~*overarching mythology*~ but it's an interesting one! I want to know what's going on!
I accidentally spoiled myself for one of the big reveals, but the show keeps up with little surprises along the way so I'm never bored by the show. It's moody and atmospheric and worth the time to sit down with it if you're in the mood for a mystery/suspense/wtf is going on here show. But, well, I'm also a sucker for "six people are kidnapped and held in a small abandoned town, not allowed to leave or even knowing why they're here, and oh hey let's throw in some conspiracy fun, too!" plots.