Summertime and tv/game updates
So it's finally officially summertime, and it came with with a flood (in someplaces literally). Also summertime means grilling out! So that means I'm learning my ways around a grill, and since I'm a beginner I got a beginner baby grill to start me off. So far I've successfully grilled turkey burgers...and that's it so far. Like I said, still learning. I am going to try grilling peaches and pineapple for the Fourth of July though, we'll see how that goes, I have two recipes that look REALLY promising...
Of course I also bought an ice cream maker to have homemade ice cream. I haven't graduated above a premade mixture for it though. Simply because I don't have the patience to try to mix all the crap together, nor the money to buy vast amounts of cream. Sure I'll eventually try my hand at a homemade recipe, but not yet.
The dog isn't overly pleased with the sound the ice cream maker makes. I have to stop myself from chasing her with it. Yes, I'm THAT kind of owner. And yes, I chase her with the vaccuum and spot bot. Granted, SHE is the one who's all up in my stuff while I'm vaccuming/spot botting, so it's her own fault.
I did promise some reviews WAY back at the beginning of this month so I guess I better get on those...I'll start with video games first...
God of War III and Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters is a good starting place. I'll start with my little PSP game I bought for vacation. I haven't completed Ratchet and Clank yet, simply because it's frustrating. Though it's a fun game it lacks a little something that makes the games super fun. It's easy to tell Insomniac pawned that title off to an outsource company so they could focus on other things, and perhaps that's my frustration. The gameplay, while super easy in some places is beyond frustrating in others. I don't like that there are several instances where I have to score FIRST in a race in order to continue gameplay. Also the battle arena challenges have gone from frustrating but doable, to frustrating and barely doable. Yeah, yeah, it's supposed to be hard, but if I'm playing the game on easy so I can enjoy being slightly challenged and making my way through the game for storyline then I don't want to spend half an hour trying to defeat a race or battle arena.
I get some of the gameplay has to be tuned down for the PSP. I miss space battles. I LIKE that there are Clank battles, I also like that one of them is a logic puzzle (since there's so few in this game, another thing I miss), unfortunately it's a logic puzzle that leaves NO room for err. I HATE those kind.
Overall the storyline is ok. Granted at this point I'm more fascinated wondering what's going on with Qwark than with our dynamic duo, but it's not like the storyline to Ratchet and Clank has ever been able to rival classic literature.
Now we'll move on to God of War III...and again I'm slightly disappointed. I LOVE the CGI on Kratos. I mean he's a very dynamic character that looks like he can pop out of the screen at some points in time, so I'm very impressed that the full capabilities of the PS3 were employed on this game. The secondary weapons were also much better in this game, for once it seems like the fully maxed secondary weapons are leaps and bounds better than the fully maxed primary weapon and I LIKE that. It's how it SHOULD be. I shouldn't work my way through a bunch of shit for hours to get a shitty weapon that's only slightly less shitty once I max it out.
The downer is that it's INCREDIBLY obvious the designers pretty much said "Oh crap, they want a third? We didn't plan for that, ok lets throw all this cool stuff together and no one will notice the story of all three of these won't make sense as a whole..." The story is INCREDIBLY lacking. It seems as though they spent massive amounts of time on game mechanics and forgot that for some people story is JUST as important. The story for God of War was awesome, Kratos wasn't necessarily a good guy but you GOT his motivation. This chapter he's a vengeful ass who will kill anything that gets in his way as long as he gets to kill Zeus.
Which brings me to another bad. Two games in a row and Zeus has been the ending fight. That's lame. Of the ENTIRE greek Pantheon and the biggest focus is on killing off the Olympians. I kind of wish that they'd taken a page out of Dante's Inferno and had you run across some iconic figures along the way. Hell I think you run across like 20 iconic souls you can damn or redeem in Dante's Inferno which was kind of cool (and they get a little story in your diary). In God of War it really seemed to focus majorly on the 12 Olympians with a few smaller gods popping in to get killed here and there.
Also, they created AMAZING landscapes for God of War III, unfortunately I couldn't fucking SEE them! I didn't have free use of the camera which is damn near STANDARD for any kind of action game (especially free range ones or very close to free range). I was VERY disappointed. I don't know why the studio wouldn't tap into that since it's a great and useful tool. There's nothing more frustrating than being in a fight, low on health, you dodge an attack only to have the camera STUCK in the fucking wall so you can't see shit and proceed to get your ass handed to you while you try to dodge away from the wall so you can actually see what's going on. It was a big fail to me that the company ignored what is a huge trend in gaming and opted to have the fixed and outdated camera. Why bother creating such intricate landscapes if I can't move around and see them? It's useless.
Though I hated some of the voice acting I couldn't help but bust out laughing when Hercules lumbers on screen and I realized it was Kevin Sorbo voice acting. Now THAT was full of win.
My last thought on GoWIII, I was kind of disappointed that some of the deaths were needlessly gory. I uttered "ew" several times while playing the games simply because the killing went from "mindless action killing" to "gratuitous gory killing". I do NOT like the trend of blood and guts all over the screen when I kill something. Unfortunately that seems to be a huge trend now even on the Silver Screen so I'm pretty screwed.
Oh well. If you are a God of War fan it's a satisfactory end to Kratos' story. I fail to see how a gaming magazine could have given this title a 10 out of 10 since other than graphics and secondary weapons the production company did little to improve upon the previous two titles. I get Uncharted 2 scoring high, this is same old shit, different console.
Moving on to TV stuff. I'll start with Nurse Jackie. Honestly as much as I love Edie Falco I'm not a fan of Jackie. However they are doing well portraying an addict. She's a liar, a cheat, a completely dispicable person and that is an addict. Unfortunately this season wasn't nearly as strong as last season. The strongest episode was actually the finale. Most of this season was filler. As much as I loved the idea of O'Hara being a lesbian, the fact that it took only TWO episodes to explore that part of her life leads me to believe it was just, as always, a ratings stunt. Actually I enjoy the secondary character much more on this show than Jackie herself. Last season I loved to hate Jackie, this season she just become unredeemable. I do NOT believe for a second she's going to get clean next season even though O'Hara and Kevin went in for the intervention. I think Jackie will just act her way through it and be back to pill popping Jackie by season opener. What I WOULD like to see is some background on Jackie to find out HOW she became such a heavy abuser of pain medication. We got an offhand comment in the first episode, but I'd love some real backstory on her. Otherwise I'm just going to root for Zoey and O'Hara to spin off in their own sitcom together so I can laugh hysterically and feel good about myself.
Fringe I can't really comment on. The last episodes we watched were awesome but my DVR decided when I went on vacation it was going to freaking boycott the last two episodes of the season. You know...the FINALE. Bastard. Oh well, I'll still proclaim my Fringe love, and I'll be buying it on DVD as soon as it comes out.
How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory, I'll stick them together because they were both BEYOND disappointed. Let me start off by saying I effing LOVED HIMYM in the first three seasons. The characters were rounded, it was a sitcom but they still did things real life people would do. Then it tripped in the fourth season, but I held on cause they started pairing together Robin and Barney which I thought was perfect. How often do you see a couple on TV completely comfortable in their sexuality, in their careers, and not motivated to procreate? I LOVED that. I loved that FINALLY there'd be a couple on TV everyone ELSE could relate to. Then this season. This shitty shitty season. It not only destroyed that pairing, but it proceeded to stomp over every single character and turn them all into buffoons who weren't even funny. So I counted down the days to HIMYM, and now I look at my DVR and go "Oh, today was HIMYM day, cool." Next season I want some advancements with characters. Next season I'd like to see Barney be a person and not just a disgusting man whore. As for Big Bang Theory, it's finale was like any other episode so it just didn't even register on the scale of anything. However towards the end of the season I accepted that Sheldon was going to be annoying 90% of the episodes (since apparently that's what america loves, someone being annoying and assholish, I guess I see the love of Sawyer from Lost now) so I was starting to be ok with him. But the episode was just meh. Like I said it didn't register.
Glee. I'll admit, I love Glee because I love music. The back nine of this season didn't do much for me though. I loved that the baby drama was over, unfortunately it seemed like the writers didn't know what to do once that was taken care of. Schue was still kind of an asshole who likes to give kids in a VOLUNTARY EXTRACIRRICULAR ACTIVITY homework every week (and they are stupid enough to let him) who only finally realized that he was being a selfish ass at the end. Sue...was awesome. Granted I can't see anyone else playing her except for Jane Lynch. As a matter of fact I'm perfectly comfortable saying Sue wouldn't be NEARLY as fun, or with NEARLY as much depth if anyone else OTHER than Jane Lynch was playing her. And Jane Lynch can rock that black track suit (and yes I giggled when she went on her date with Schue and was wearing a track suit with a pearl necklace, heh).
But honestly? This show needs to get better. As selfish as Kurt is the actor can act the shit out of that character to the point I feel incredibly sympathy for him and what he's going through. And he has the best dad on the face of the planet. I wish there were more Burt Hummel's out there who would allow their kid to be who they are and accept them even if it's not something they are completely OK with or even really understand. He gets best parent award. Especially on a show where parenting all across the board is pretty shitty.
As for the finale? It went exactly as I expected. I knew Sue wouldn't throw them under the bus but I freaking HATE that she had to go and tell Schue that she was the reason Glee was getting another year. It nearly neutered (or should I say spayed? *g*) her character now that he knows she likes the kids in the Glee club in a weird Sue Sylvester kind of way. It will take the bite out of all her comments to Schue next year since she's now the loveable but misunderstood bad guy. I could live with misunderstood, but I liked it when she seemed to hate everyone across the board except her sister. As fun and awesome as the Bohemian Rhapsody was, they did the WHOLE song (which is freaking long) when I feel like more time should have been spent with what New Directions was singing (and why did Vocal Adrenaline only sing one song when all other competitors sang a medley?). The plot sucked, not to mention apparently they sang and were up there WITHOUT THEIR FREAKING CHOIR DIRECTOR!!
My wish for next season. A duet with Kristin Chenowith and Idina Menzel...like yesterday. I don't give a shit what they sing, as long as it's broadway and it's those two together! Speaking of Broadway, they are a show choir, please show, less Beyonce and perhaps more Cabaret? Just a suggestion. I would also like to hear from more of the kids and not just Rachel and Finn. Especially since Finn isn't that awesome (again I say why hire someone who can't sing that great for a show based around singing, I JUST don't get it). About that autotune, please, tone that shit down (heh). It's jarring to have this stuff sound studio perfect. I also would like Mercedes to sing something other than screeching a few high notes at the end of every. single. fucking. song. And ban Matthew Morrison from rapping...pronto. He's no Eminem, he's a Broadway white boy and that's how he sounds. It isn't good. So stop him from doing it, I don't care if it's some clause in his contract that he needs to rap 5 times a season. Cut that shit out, NOW.
Ok, Doctor Who. You know I was going to write out a long cohesive set of thoughts for the four episodes I watched, but I can pretty much sum it up like this...
Vampires in Venice - Vampires, COOL! Wait, fish? WTF? Mating with humans? WTF? Amy pretending to be her fiancee's brother? EWWW! Oh look the Doctor climbing on roofs again to stop an doomsday machine but he doesn't actually destory said machine. Doctor can't save evil bad guy...again. Lame.
Amy's Choice - Hey guys this episode is about Amy's choice, did you know that? Somewhere in the middle someone is going to have to make a choice and it's going to be Amy's choice. In case you didn't know the person who had to make a choice was Amy. Seriously, stop repeating the episode title, it's fucking annoying. Oh look, a dream master, stole it from Farscape and it's just a cheesy and stupid. Oooo, the Doctor lied, and Rory died. Ok episode if I cared about Amy at all. Instead she's a blank slate I'm told to like every single episode. Is that a....viewer's choice?
Can't remember the name of the first half of the reptile episode - Ooo human like dinosaurs that call us apes even though it's established they were asleep before we were "apes". Writer anthropology fail. Crazy military woman on a suicide mission, seen it. The Doctor putting emotional human's in charge of a crazy reptilian capture who is on a suicide mission, he's 900 years old and has learned NOTHING about the human race. Also, WHY exactly did they feel the need to drill down that far? Why drill for no reason other than a world record? Waste of resources, waste of our Earth (which didn't seem to bother the Doctor btw), and that has GOT to be the smallest drilling team EVER. Oh look, the Doctor is doing a scene from Titanic where he's saying he'll never let go, too bad this isn't season 1 or 2 or that would have been funnier. Oh no, Amy is going to get disected, HORRAY...oh I mean OH NO! The human's killed suicide soldier by...tasing her...Ooookkkkaaayyy.
Second half of the above - Amy proves she's super incredible again and pick pockets someone else! The Doctor puts the ENTIRE future of the human race into the hands of a stripper (Oh...I'm sorry, are we still going to pretend kissogram isn't a stripper?) and the scientist in charge of the smallest drill team ever who is only drilling for the heck of it. Does he not think world leaders would have a problem with those two deciding where another WHOLE SPECIES gets to live? Not to mention can Amy be any more bored and rude in the middle of a fucking important negotiation?! Irrational human threatens to collapse lizard world and irrational lizard threatens to kill all apes (seriously should we just be "pond scum" not ape?!). Doctor yet again explains nothing, stops in the middle of a crisis to look at something and gets Rory killed. Why didn't the Doctor drag Rory away before the crack got him? When did the Doctor get so stupid? Ooo, a piece of the TARDIS...showed me that last season and I might have been able to care but instead the best character who actually WAS interesting and not a blank slate just got killed off. Oh look, this season is going to handle meeting Van Gogh, this should be a romp through hell I'm sure...
Overall, I'm not impressed with this season. What sucks is each episode has SO much freaking potential. Matt Smith CAN BE the Doctor if someone would reign him in and focus him a little. Karen Gillan is a good actress and Amy was AWESOME in Eleventh Hour, so why has the writers FORGOTTEN how to write this character since then? And honestly, if they pull out a "Oh, this is why she was acting that way all season" in the finale, I WILL be pissed. I like a season long arc, but that doesn't mean you write a character as a blank slate and make her unrelatable completely until the finale. If they wanted to focus this season more on the Doctor and how his actions affect people then do that, have him travel alone or something, but having him travel with a blank slate he keeps saying is brilliant (I actually believed him when he said Donna was Brilliant and Rose was Fantastic) who doesn't show any spark at all is BEYOND frustrating and TERRIBLE writing. Going back and acknowledging the older series doesn't mean you have to dumb down the writing and characterization of the series that had become fairly sophisticated (if someone could have ONLY guided Russell T. Davies on how to resolve his epic stories it would have been amazing).
That is what I miss so much right now. I miss feeling so attached to these characters I wanted to cry and help them when they were hurt. As cheesy as Turn Left was I felt HORRIBLE for Donna because she was a completely rounded character. She WORKED independent of the Doctor. Amy wouldn't. I can't imagine watching an episode where Amy was carrying it completely on her own. I'm not saying the actress couldn't, I'm saying the CHARACTER couldn't. She's boring and annoying, and it makes me sad.
I stll don't even know if I'll get this season on DVD. Some episodes have been fun, but most have been mediocre at best. Overall there is just NO spark to this season. And the writing is very amateurish at it's best. I don't know what happened, but honestly where are the producers who are supposed to reign in people like Stephen Moffat and Russell T. Davies when they are making obvious mistakes? Are there no producers with balls in Wales? Or are all the producers just best friends with these guys and that's where the problem lies? Or is England and Wales really that bad at producing (I mean I will easily say a lot of the failure in the Resident Evil series is due to a failure from the producer to reign in the writer/director)? It's producers money on the line, they are supposed to be on top of things so things DON'T go in the shitter.
Oh well. If things don't change next season I can see me watching Series 1 through 4 on DVD instead of any new crap. To think, I started out worried about the guy playing the Doctor, but I want to throw the towel in due to all the missteps with writing and directing. Who knew?
Also, am I the only one who is missing just the dark blue panel at the top of Live Journal with Frank the goat making his appearance? Why do they have to keep putting ugly nature scenes up there?
Of course I also bought an ice cream maker to have homemade ice cream. I haven't graduated above a premade mixture for it though. Simply because I don't have the patience to try to mix all the crap together, nor the money to buy vast amounts of cream. Sure I'll eventually try my hand at a homemade recipe, but not yet.
The dog isn't overly pleased with the sound the ice cream maker makes. I have to stop myself from chasing her with it. Yes, I'm THAT kind of owner. And yes, I chase her with the vaccuum and spot bot. Granted, SHE is the one who's all up in my stuff while I'm vaccuming/spot botting, so it's her own fault.
I did promise some reviews WAY back at the beginning of this month so I guess I better get on those...I'll start with video games first...
God of War III and Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters is a good starting place. I'll start with my little PSP game I bought for vacation. I haven't completed Ratchet and Clank yet, simply because it's frustrating. Though it's a fun game it lacks a little something that makes the games super fun. It's easy to tell Insomniac pawned that title off to an outsource company so they could focus on other things, and perhaps that's my frustration. The gameplay, while super easy in some places is beyond frustrating in others. I don't like that there are several instances where I have to score FIRST in a race in order to continue gameplay. Also the battle arena challenges have gone from frustrating but doable, to frustrating and barely doable. Yeah, yeah, it's supposed to be hard, but if I'm playing the game on easy so I can enjoy being slightly challenged and making my way through the game for storyline then I don't want to spend half an hour trying to defeat a race or battle arena.
I get some of the gameplay has to be tuned down for the PSP. I miss space battles. I LIKE that there are Clank battles, I also like that one of them is a logic puzzle (since there's so few in this game, another thing I miss), unfortunately it's a logic puzzle that leaves NO room for err. I HATE those kind.
Overall the storyline is ok. Granted at this point I'm more fascinated wondering what's going on with Qwark than with our dynamic duo, but it's not like the storyline to Ratchet and Clank has ever been able to rival classic literature.
Now we'll move on to God of War III...and again I'm slightly disappointed. I LOVE the CGI on Kratos. I mean he's a very dynamic character that looks like he can pop out of the screen at some points in time, so I'm very impressed that the full capabilities of the PS3 were employed on this game. The secondary weapons were also much better in this game, for once it seems like the fully maxed secondary weapons are leaps and bounds better than the fully maxed primary weapon and I LIKE that. It's how it SHOULD be. I shouldn't work my way through a bunch of shit for hours to get a shitty weapon that's only slightly less shitty once I max it out.
The downer is that it's INCREDIBLY obvious the designers pretty much said "Oh crap, they want a third? We didn't plan for that, ok lets throw all this cool stuff together and no one will notice the story of all three of these won't make sense as a whole..." The story is INCREDIBLY lacking. It seems as though they spent massive amounts of time on game mechanics and forgot that for some people story is JUST as important. The story for God of War was awesome, Kratos wasn't necessarily a good guy but you GOT his motivation. This chapter he's a vengeful ass who will kill anything that gets in his way as long as he gets to kill Zeus.
Which brings me to another bad. Two games in a row and Zeus has been the ending fight. That's lame. Of the ENTIRE greek Pantheon and the biggest focus is on killing off the Olympians. I kind of wish that they'd taken a page out of Dante's Inferno and had you run across some iconic figures along the way. Hell I think you run across like 20 iconic souls you can damn or redeem in Dante's Inferno which was kind of cool (and they get a little story in your diary). In God of War it really seemed to focus majorly on the 12 Olympians with a few smaller gods popping in to get killed here and there.
Also, they created AMAZING landscapes for God of War III, unfortunately I couldn't fucking SEE them! I didn't have free use of the camera which is damn near STANDARD for any kind of action game (especially free range ones or very close to free range). I was VERY disappointed. I don't know why the studio wouldn't tap into that since it's a great and useful tool. There's nothing more frustrating than being in a fight, low on health, you dodge an attack only to have the camera STUCK in the fucking wall so you can't see shit and proceed to get your ass handed to you while you try to dodge away from the wall so you can actually see what's going on. It was a big fail to me that the company ignored what is a huge trend in gaming and opted to have the fixed and outdated camera. Why bother creating such intricate landscapes if I can't move around and see them? It's useless.
Though I hated some of the voice acting I couldn't help but bust out laughing when Hercules lumbers on screen and I realized it was Kevin Sorbo voice acting. Now THAT was full of win.
My last thought on GoWIII, I was kind of disappointed that some of the deaths were needlessly gory. I uttered "ew" several times while playing the games simply because the killing went from "mindless action killing" to "gratuitous gory killing". I do NOT like the trend of blood and guts all over the screen when I kill something. Unfortunately that seems to be a huge trend now even on the Silver Screen so I'm pretty screwed.
Oh well. If you are a God of War fan it's a satisfactory end to Kratos' story. I fail to see how a gaming magazine could have given this title a 10 out of 10 since other than graphics and secondary weapons the production company did little to improve upon the previous two titles. I get Uncharted 2 scoring high, this is same old shit, different console.
Moving on to TV stuff. I'll start with Nurse Jackie. Honestly as much as I love Edie Falco I'm not a fan of Jackie. However they are doing well portraying an addict. She's a liar, a cheat, a completely dispicable person and that is an addict. Unfortunately this season wasn't nearly as strong as last season. The strongest episode was actually the finale. Most of this season was filler. As much as I loved the idea of O'Hara being a lesbian, the fact that it took only TWO episodes to explore that part of her life leads me to believe it was just, as always, a ratings stunt. Actually I enjoy the secondary character much more on this show than Jackie herself. Last season I loved to hate Jackie, this season she just become unredeemable. I do NOT believe for a second she's going to get clean next season even though O'Hara and Kevin went in for the intervention. I think Jackie will just act her way through it and be back to pill popping Jackie by season opener. What I WOULD like to see is some background on Jackie to find out HOW she became such a heavy abuser of pain medication. We got an offhand comment in the first episode, but I'd love some real backstory on her. Otherwise I'm just going to root for Zoey and O'Hara to spin off in their own sitcom together so I can laugh hysterically and feel good about myself.
Fringe I can't really comment on. The last episodes we watched were awesome but my DVR decided when I went on vacation it was going to freaking boycott the last two episodes of the season. You know...the FINALE. Bastard. Oh well, I'll still proclaim my Fringe love, and I'll be buying it on DVD as soon as it comes out.
How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory, I'll stick them together because they were both BEYOND disappointed. Let me start off by saying I effing LOVED HIMYM in the first three seasons. The characters were rounded, it was a sitcom but they still did things real life people would do. Then it tripped in the fourth season, but I held on cause they started pairing together Robin and Barney which I thought was perfect. How often do you see a couple on TV completely comfortable in their sexuality, in their careers, and not motivated to procreate? I LOVED that. I loved that FINALLY there'd be a couple on TV everyone ELSE could relate to. Then this season. This shitty shitty season. It not only destroyed that pairing, but it proceeded to stomp over every single character and turn them all into buffoons who weren't even funny. So I counted down the days to HIMYM, and now I look at my DVR and go "Oh, today was HIMYM day, cool." Next season I want some advancements with characters. Next season I'd like to see Barney be a person and not just a disgusting man whore. As for Big Bang Theory, it's finale was like any other episode so it just didn't even register on the scale of anything. However towards the end of the season I accepted that Sheldon was going to be annoying 90% of the episodes (since apparently that's what america loves, someone being annoying and assholish, I guess I see the love of Sawyer from Lost now) so I was starting to be ok with him. But the episode was just meh. Like I said it didn't register.
Glee. I'll admit, I love Glee because I love music. The back nine of this season didn't do much for me though. I loved that the baby drama was over, unfortunately it seemed like the writers didn't know what to do once that was taken care of. Schue was still kind of an asshole who likes to give kids in a VOLUNTARY EXTRACIRRICULAR ACTIVITY homework every week (and they are stupid enough to let him) who only finally realized that he was being a selfish ass at the end. Sue...was awesome. Granted I can't see anyone else playing her except for Jane Lynch. As a matter of fact I'm perfectly comfortable saying Sue wouldn't be NEARLY as fun, or with NEARLY as much depth if anyone else OTHER than Jane Lynch was playing her. And Jane Lynch can rock that black track suit (and yes I giggled when she went on her date with Schue and was wearing a track suit with a pearl necklace, heh).
But honestly? This show needs to get better. As selfish as Kurt is the actor can act the shit out of that character to the point I feel incredibly sympathy for him and what he's going through. And he has the best dad on the face of the planet. I wish there were more Burt Hummel's out there who would allow their kid to be who they are and accept them even if it's not something they are completely OK with or even really understand. He gets best parent award. Especially on a show where parenting all across the board is pretty shitty.
As for the finale? It went exactly as I expected. I knew Sue wouldn't throw them under the bus but I freaking HATE that she had to go and tell Schue that she was the reason Glee was getting another year. It nearly neutered (or should I say spayed? *g*) her character now that he knows she likes the kids in the Glee club in a weird Sue Sylvester kind of way. It will take the bite out of all her comments to Schue next year since she's now the loveable but misunderstood bad guy. I could live with misunderstood, but I liked it when she seemed to hate everyone across the board except her sister. As fun and awesome as the Bohemian Rhapsody was, they did the WHOLE song (which is freaking long) when I feel like more time should have been spent with what New Directions was singing (and why did Vocal Adrenaline only sing one song when all other competitors sang a medley?). The plot sucked, not to mention apparently they sang and were up there WITHOUT THEIR FREAKING CHOIR DIRECTOR!!
My wish for next season. A duet with Kristin Chenowith and Idina Menzel...like yesterday. I don't give a shit what they sing, as long as it's broadway and it's those two together! Speaking of Broadway, they are a show choir, please show, less Beyonce and perhaps more Cabaret? Just a suggestion. I would also like to hear from more of the kids and not just Rachel and Finn. Especially since Finn isn't that awesome (again I say why hire someone who can't sing that great for a show based around singing, I JUST don't get it). About that autotune, please, tone that shit down (heh). It's jarring to have this stuff sound studio perfect. I also would like Mercedes to sing something other than screeching a few high notes at the end of every. single. fucking. song. And ban Matthew Morrison from rapping...pronto. He's no Eminem, he's a Broadway white boy and that's how he sounds. It isn't good. So stop him from doing it, I don't care if it's some clause in his contract that he needs to rap 5 times a season. Cut that shit out, NOW.
Ok, Doctor Who. You know I was going to write out a long cohesive set of thoughts for the four episodes I watched, but I can pretty much sum it up like this...
Vampires in Venice - Vampires, COOL! Wait, fish? WTF? Mating with humans? WTF? Amy pretending to be her fiancee's brother? EWWW! Oh look the Doctor climbing on roofs again to stop an doomsday machine but he doesn't actually destory said machine. Doctor can't save evil bad guy...again. Lame.
Amy's Choice - Hey guys this episode is about Amy's choice, did you know that? Somewhere in the middle someone is going to have to make a choice and it's going to be Amy's choice. In case you didn't know the person who had to make a choice was Amy. Seriously, stop repeating the episode title, it's fucking annoying. Oh look, a dream master, stole it from Farscape and it's just a cheesy and stupid. Oooo, the Doctor lied, and Rory died. Ok episode if I cared about Amy at all. Instead she's a blank slate I'm told to like every single episode. Is that a....viewer's choice?
Can't remember the name of the first half of the reptile episode - Ooo human like dinosaurs that call us apes even though it's established they were asleep before we were "apes". Writer anthropology fail. Crazy military woman on a suicide mission, seen it. The Doctor putting emotional human's in charge of a crazy reptilian capture who is on a suicide mission, he's 900 years old and has learned NOTHING about the human race. Also, WHY exactly did they feel the need to drill down that far? Why drill for no reason other than a world record? Waste of resources, waste of our Earth (which didn't seem to bother the Doctor btw), and that has GOT to be the smallest drilling team EVER. Oh look, the Doctor is doing a scene from Titanic where he's saying he'll never let go, too bad this isn't season 1 or 2 or that would have been funnier. Oh no, Amy is going to get disected, HORRAY...oh I mean OH NO! The human's killed suicide soldier by...tasing her...Ooookkkkaaayyy.
Second half of the above - Amy proves she's super incredible again and pick pockets someone else! The Doctor puts the ENTIRE future of the human race into the hands of a stripper (Oh...I'm sorry, are we still going to pretend kissogram isn't a stripper?) and the scientist in charge of the smallest drill team ever who is only drilling for the heck of it. Does he not think world leaders would have a problem with those two deciding where another WHOLE SPECIES gets to live? Not to mention can Amy be any more bored and rude in the middle of a fucking important negotiation?! Irrational human threatens to collapse lizard world and irrational lizard threatens to kill all apes (seriously should we just be "pond scum" not ape?!). Doctor yet again explains nothing, stops in the middle of a crisis to look at something and gets Rory killed. Why didn't the Doctor drag Rory away before the crack got him? When did the Doctor get so stupid? Ooo, a piece of the TARDIS...showed me that last season and I might have been able to care but instead the best character who actually WAS interesting and not a blank slate just got killed off. Oh look, this season is going to handle meeting Van Gogh, this should be a romp through hell I'm sure...
Overall, I'm not impressed with this season. What sucks is each episode has SO much freaking potential. Matt Smith CAN BE the Doctor if someone would reign him in and focus him a little. Karen Gillan is a good actress and Amy was AWESOME in Eleventh Hour, so why has the writers FORGOTTEN how to write this character since then? And honestly, if they pull out a "Oh, this is why she was acting that way all season" in the finale, I WILL be pissed. I like a season long arc, but that doesn't mean you write a character as a blank slate and make her unrelatable completely until the finale. If they wanted to focus this season more on the Doctor and how his actions affect people then do that, have him travel alone or something, but having him travel with a blank slate he keeps saying is brilliant (I actually believed him when he said Donna was Brilliant and Rose was Fantastic) who doesn't show any spark at all is BEYOND frustrating and TERRIBLE writing. Going back and acknowledging the older series doesn't mean you have to dumb down the writing and characterization of the series that had become fairly sophisticated (if someone could have ONLY guided Russell T. Davies on how to resolve his epic stories it would have been amazing).
That is what I miss so much right now. I miss feeling so attached to these characters I wanted to cry and help them when they were hurt. As cheesy as Turn Left was I felt HORRIBLE for Donna because she was a completely rounded character. She WORKED independent of the Doctor. Amy wouldn't. I can't imagine watching an episode where Amy was carrying it completely on her own. I'm not saying the actress couldn't, I'm saying the CHARACTER couldn't. She's boring and annoying, and it makes me sad.
I stll don't even know if I'll get this season on DVD. Some episodes have been fun, but most have been mediocre at best. Overall there is just NO spark to this season. And the writing is very amateurish at it's best. I don't know what happened, but honestly where are the producers who are supposed to reign in people like Stephen Moffat and Russell T. Davies when they are making obvious mistakes? Are there no producers with balls in Wales? Or are all the producers just best friends with these guys and that's where the problem lies? Or is England and Wales really that bad at producing (I mean I will easily say a lot of the failure in the Resident Evil series is due to a failure from the producer to reign in the writer/director)? It's producers money on the line, they are supposed to be on top of things so things DON'T go in the shitter.
Oh well. If things don't change next season I can see me watching Series 1 through 4 on DVD instead of any new crap. To think, I started out worried about the guy playing the Doctor, but I want to throw the towel in due to all the missteps with writing and directing. Who knew?
Also, am I the only one who is missing just the dark blue panel at the top of Live Journal with Frank the goat making his appearance? Why do they have to keep putting ugly nature scenes up there?