happy presidents day!
(+) Oscar simulation results have been posted. (click the banner) Thanks to everyone who voted this year! It seems like this year, your tastes are pretty much in line with the Oscars.
(+) I caught up on some TV lately and marathoned The New Girl cause I was bored. I actually like it so far, it's cute and pretty funny. From what I was hearing, I thought the Zooey Deschanel schtick would be too much but even though it is kind of a continuation of her typical persona, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was more Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky, though I realize that performance was not universally loved, than like another (500) Days of Summer situation. Like she is genuinely an optimistic dork and that feels true to the character, rather than making her into a MPDG and using her quirkiness and free-spirited nature to advance the emotional arc of a man. Anyways, so far it's pretty cute and harmless. As for ships, I'm not really sure yet cause while I like the guys' friendship with Jess, I also like their actual love interests. So as of now, I'm not really shipping Jess with anyone. I kind of like that it's not doing a typical sit-com route where there's like immediate sexual tension between two characters that culminates in something happening in the first season finale and so forth. At least so far, it doesn't seem like it's going there.
GOSSIP GIRL
Wow, I never in a million years thought they would actually go for Dan/Blair in a serious way. There's still hoards of very very aggressive Chair fans, even though Dair shippers are coming closer in terms of numbers. I just never though Dair would actually become a legit thing. But honestly, I loved how they handled everything except for the Dan as the leaker thing. It's so obvious that they're going to tease Dair for a while, but then use that revelation as a way to break them up and get her back with Chuck or something. Ugh, it's just stupid and doesn't make any sense for Dan to be the leaker. Why would it even benefit him to reveal to the world that Blair still loves Chuck? If anything, it would've driven Blair back with Chuck, assuming it ruined her wedding to Louis. That just doesn't make any sense, unless he was doing it to get Chuck and Blair back together so she could be "happy" like the bogus excuse Serena made. Plus, Dan enabling Gossip Girl in any way just seems off. He just doesn't have that kind of manipulative ability in him.
But everything else, OMG PERFECT. The build-up from the last episode was really good. Blair really needed to understand that she was taking him for granted before she could possibly come to terms with her feelings for him. I liked that she was genuinely interested in his happiness this time, just like he's been about her for the past few months. I do think re-inserting Serena into the mix is a bit overdone though. It was already clear from Dan's book that he was over Serena and knew that they weren't really good for each other. But I guess it's an interesting way to bring back the Blair vs. Serena rivalry. Hopefully it gets handled better this time.
Honestly, the less we see of Chuck, the happier I am. Not that he's been terrible lately or anything (I think he's perfectly enjoyable as a side character with a few one liners), but just the show's total willingness to let him off the hook for some REALLY gross and awful things he's done in the past still bothers me. It took the show like several seasons to address the fact that he attempted to rape Jenny at one point, and even then, it was like one episode and he's forgiven. I don't necessarily need him to like suffer immensely and get served punishment for his past deeds, but I would really like for Blair to acknowledge the horrible things he's done and understand that it's not healthy, instead of declaring her undying love for him every other week. It really weakens her character when she acts like that with Chuck because seriously, he actually physically harmed her at one point. Anyways, it's annoying enough when fandom makes excuses for sketchy male characters and sometimes that's not the fault of the show writers, but it's just fandom being idiots about "hot" guys, but when the show does it, it just drives me insane.
SMASH
So I stuck with this cause I'm pretty much giving up on Glee, and I think the second episode was better than the pilot. I still find the acting from McPhee to be very sketchy and unconvincing at times, but the drama is building in a nice way, and the other actors are pretty good. The one thing I can't stand is that the show is clearly trying to get us to be on Team Karen, because you know, she's the nice small town girl, while Ivy is the "slutty" one who slept with the director and what not. It's like this virgin/whore dynamic that's off-putting. I honestly don't find either of them to be very convincing as Marilyn, but at least they showed Ivy's acting audition scene where she almost came close to getting it. They didn't even show Karen's audition when she (presumably) did a good job, they just showed the crappy audition where she wasn't doing anything. And the entire logic of someone being "too prepared" for the role feels weird cause holy crap, if you're gonna play Marilyn Monroe, you do not just go into blindly and make it up on the spot. That's a role you do a shit ton of research for. Michelle Williams worked her butt off preparing for that role and that's kind of what needs to be done.
Ivy getting the part at this point makes more sense. A newbie like Karen needs to understudy for a while before carrying a huge show like this. I don't know why they didn't just do that. But I'm pretty sure something will happen that will put Karen back in the running (maybe people find out about Ivy sleeping with the director? although I'm not sure who would be shocked at that). But yeah, clearly they're going for Karen as Norma Jean and Ivy as Marilyn. Although Karen is not exactly giving off Norma Jean vibes to me, other than the fact that she's from a small town... and well, that's it.
Also, what did I say about Karen getting into a Devil Wears Prada situation? It's only the 2nd episode and the boyfriend already got stood up for "work". And obviously Jack Davenport will be a factor as well. At least the boyfriend guy doesn't seem like he'll become some kind of asshole, but it's so obvious where this is going. And they're going to use that as a way for Karen to ~understand~ Marilyn's troubles in love, even though that's not really what happened in Marilyn's marriages anyways.