Amy Ponds of the 99% (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
allchildren) wrote2010-01-31 09:04 am
allchildren) wrote2010-01-31 09:04 am
Entry tags:
greeks and romans, lend me your ketchup
Sorry about my last, if you happened to catch it. Low mental health ebb. :(
Here, I will talk about TV.
GREEK
Greek is an ABCfamily hour-long dramedy about college life, particularly in the Greek system. It's all on Hulu, mostly without commercials, and I've inhaled over 30 episodes in less than a week, with 20something more to go. It's pretty good fun!
1. What I kept coming back to originally is how surprisingly good the show is at, wait for it... moral ambiguity and complex situations. Couples cheat on each other, people make terrible and shortsighted decisions, friends feud and make up and break up, grudges are held, belief systems conflict and yet they're all showing having reasons and boundaries and emotional maturity and the ability to compromise and forgive. Nobody is perfect and nobody is irredeemable. It's kind of bizarre given how rare that is on TV of any genre.
2. Following from that -- the characters with the biggest "DOUCHE" targets on their back by and large escape my ire, because they show is never telling me so-and-so is Really A Nice Guy or whatsherface is a saint. People are just allowed to kind of be assholes sometimes, without being constantly handwaved or championed as ~dreamy or alternatively beaten into the villainy ground with their evilness glands.
3. THREE gay characters (the main one is a black dude who has no trouble being gay but is uncomfortable with larger questions of queer culture and identity) and TWO main girls of color (one of whom is the adorblest ever omg and the other of whom is a rich bitch <3), cast-wide suggestions of fluidity (it's always nice to see Tim Bisley with company in the Straight Dudes Who Enjoy Sexy Transvestism Club??) as well as pretty racially diverse supporting cast. (This does lead to the familiar problem where because the three straight male leads are white, alternaships with dudes of color tend to be short-lived, which is frustrating. But it's still cool to see, for example, multiple Asian male love interests.)
4. Sorority life is portrayed as very pink and full of bitchy dramzz as one would expect ... but what drives a huge deal of the action on the ladies' side of the show is politics. Like, not just in the bizarre Gossip Girl way of queen bees & followers, but literal elected office and rules and regulations plotty politics. It would be really easy for that to take a backseat to who-slept-with-who/mean girls/popularity drama (especially given the show's unfortunate overdependence on love polygons), but due to the surprising complexity mentioned in #1, the personal drama tends to just grease the wheels of the political structure. And because they're a sorority, sisterhood and loyalty actually matter.
5. IDK, I feel like all my points circle back to the same general idea which is that "it's weirdly complex and aware for a show about frat parties?" But I'll give one more example: originally I read the show as Undeclared meets Freaks & Geeks, albeit very tonally different -- our male protagonist starts out as quite the knockoff Sam Weir (and honestly after 30+ episodes I would still take the original model any day). And then two [gay] characters actually have a conversation about misogynistic & homophobic elements of Judd Apatow's work. I just ... ?!?! ZING.
Also:
- fantastic continuity
- occasional actual sense that characters care about what they're studying
- SPENCER GRAMMER STOP STEALING KATEE SACKHOFF'S FACE
- Cappie/Casey/Rebecca OT3!!!1111!!1 (btw: "Cappie" is hands down my least favorite thing about the show. CAPPIE IS ALREADY ONE OF MY FAVORITE BOYS OF ALL EVER and I am still actually embarrassed about that based solely on his terrible horrible name)
- gay Deputy Leo
- needs moar Ashleigh icons ;_;
So that is a thing that I recommend if it sounds relevant to your interests!
SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND
Spartacus is a new ~*~Starz~*~ drama which easily comprise two of the worst hours of television I've ever semi-watched. (So much for being the audience I want to see D:) (I usually play Combine while watching things, but even that wasn't enough so I started playing Quinn alongside the screen instead.) It's produced by Raimi & Tapert, but aside from the cast (feat. Lucy Lawless and Craig Parker) and general time period does not reflect much of the cheesy RenPics style and in fact bears a different production card. From what I can tell it's actually the brainchild of Stephen S. DeKnight, whose career as a writer of several legendarily aggravating episodes of Buffy & Angel has taken quite a nosedive since.
It is Shitty 300 x Shitty Rome x Shitty Gladiator. If you have seen any of those things you have seen this only they probably entertained you at least a little (and I could only stand 15 minutes of 300, but at least it was kind of visually interesting unlike Spartacus's painful ripoff of the same style). Literally every cliche you can think of from those works and their genres is applied like so much dried macaroni on the construction paper diorama that is this show:
A. I can't go one more sentence without discussing the CGI blood. This is because the show cannot go more than approximately 30 seconds without bringing back the CGI blood. Basically nothing ever happens but Spartacus fighting various dudes, and they all cut each other up (in slo-mo. very slow.) and THEN SHEETS OF CGI BLOOD ISSUE FORTH BECAUSE IT'S RAINING RED WALLPAPER AND/OR KETCHUP FIGHTS. It is absolutely shocking how much CGI blood one dude can shed and be totally okay the next day, but I guess that's the benefit of existing primarily in bullet/sword/flying ketchup time. (???) This is not as amusing as it sounds because it takes up approximately half the show.
B. In the olden days everybody mostly just went around having boring slo-mo graphic and/or unusually pervy sex when they weren't having ketchup fights¹. Or at least having tits. Is there a female character who has not yet been seen topless? NO. (Well, this is not saying much because there are only three speaking female roles, and one is Craig Parker's Spoiled Bitchwhore Wife which duh nudity!, and one is &LUCY; which just made me sad (there is a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. 'twould be a pity to waste yours on this crap, first ladycrush ever), and one is Spartacus's Wife of Angst so being naked and having slo-mo is basically her job¹. And then there are a crapload of writhing slave girls who have slo-mo orgies or roll around in mud or whatever.) There is a small glimpse of (non-protagonist) cock in the second episode but nothing comparable.
C. ¹ Beginning of first episode: Spartacus/Wife of Angst sex. Middle of first episode: Wife of Angst escapes rapists! Then Spartacus/Wife of Angst sex, which comes to an exciting conclusion when Romans come and steal Wife of Angst out of bed from Spartacus with lingering shots of her naked body in the hands of evil men. Beginning of second episode: Spartacus/Wife of Angst Sex, which is a dream, which gives us the opportunity to combine boring slo-mo graphic sex with the CGI blood when her dream angst head like EXPLODES and she's still fucking him as the ketchup rains down and drops settle on her tits? What is interesting (not interesting) here is that this wasn't even mildly surprising in its grossness because after having seen a single episode I knew exactly what would happen. Because what the fuck else. P.S. later Craig Parker brags about the time his evil men gangraped Wife of Angst, which amazingly happened offscreen (except it's not amazing because for it to happen onscreen Wife of Angst would have to any have any identity or narrative weight of her own which is clearly not in the cards).
D. Dude don't you love it when Our Hero is held captive and for some reason everybody else around him is totally IN THE TANK for their captor even though they are also slaves and are forced to fight in the arena and get no food or sleep? It takes a special kind of sensitive soul to be offended by being a slave, I guess. That's how you identify a hero.
E. I am hurting myself talking about this show so I'll stop after this but I have to make a note about the dialogue. Have you ever seen teenagers who don't understand Shakespeare reciting Shakespeare? This is not like that because the dialogue is a really bad (really really really bad) attempt to sound old-timey²,³ without any cleverness whatsoever. But the actors carry it off without about as much grace. This is about as snappy as it gets:
Guy: Is there any wine left?
Spartacus: Your belly holds the sum.
G: I'll return the balance presently. How far to the mountain pass?
S: Three days by foot if we march with meaning.
G: A drink would spur my intent.
All: chuckles!!!
~*~WRITING~*~
² "Old-timey" dialogue is basically accomplished by putting extra words in phrases where they aren't needed. Examples:
Don't say "are we better?" when you could say "are we the better?"
Don't say "you are different" when you could say "you are of a difference."
Don't say "by my judgment" when you could say "by the judging."
Definitely always say "Jupiter's cock!"³
³ You know it's not just old-timey but GRITTY because piss, shit, and fuck are used in every part of speech several times per sentence. Cock and cunt are doled out in slightly more stingy quantities. Random homophobic remarks are also cool to sprinkle in for funsies. Maybe a metaphor about fucking death with your penis? Whatever feels right.
So that is a thing I recommend to exactly nobody no matter what your interests!
Here, I will talk about TV.
GREEK
Greek is an ABCfamily hour-long dramedy about college life, particularly in the Greek system. It's all on Hulu, mostly without commercials, and I've inhaled over 30 episodes in less than a week, with 20something more to go. It's pretty good fun!
1. What I kept coming back to originally is how surprisingly good the show is at, wait for it... moral ambiguity and complex situations. Couples cheat on each other, people make terrible and shortsighted decisions, friends feud and make up and break up, grudges are held, belief systems conflict and yet they're all showing having reasons and boundaries and emotional maturity and the ability to compromise and forgive. Nobody is perfect and nobody is irredeemable. It's kind of bizarre given how rare that is on TV of any genre.
2. Following from that -- the characters with the biggest "DOUCHE" targets on their back by and large escape my ire, because they show is never telling me so-and-so is Really A Nice Guy or whatsherface is a saint. People are just allowed to kind of be assholes sometimes, without being constantly handwaved or championed as ~dreamy or alternatively beaten into the villainy ground with their evilness glands.
3. THREE gay characters (the main one is a black dude who has no trouble being gay but is uncomfortable with larger questions of queer culture and identity) and TWO main girls of color (one of whom is the adorblest ever omg and the other of whom is a rich bitch <3), cast-wide suggestions of fluidity (it's always nice to see Tim Bisley with company in the Straight Dudes Who Enjoy Sexy Transvestism Club??) as well as pretty racially diverse supporting cast. (This does lead to the familiar problem where because the three straight male leads are white, alternaships with dudes of color tend to be short-lived, which is frustrating. But it's still cool to see, for example, multiple Asian male love interests.)
4. Sorority life is portrayed as very pink and full of bitchy dramzz as one would expect ... but what drives a huge deal of the action on the ladies' side of the show is politics. Like, not just in the bizarre Gossip Girl way of queen bees & followers, but literal elected office and rules and regulations plotty politics. It would be really easy for that to take a backseat to who-slept-with-who/mean girls/popularity drama (especially given the show's unfortunate overdependence on love polygons), but due to the surprising complexity mentioned in #1, the personal drama tends to just grease the wheels of the political structure. And because they're a sorority, sisterhood and loyalty actually matter.
5. IDK, I feel like all my points circle back to the same general idea which is that "it's weirdly complex and aware for a show about frat parties?" But I'll give one more example: originally I read the show as Undeclared meets Freaks & Geeks, albeit very tonally different -- our male protagonist starts out as quite the knockoff Sam Weir (and honestly after 30+ episodes I would still take the original model any day). And then two [gay] characters actually have a conversation about misogynistic & homophobic elements of Judd Apatow's work. I just ... ?!?! ZING.
Also:
- fantastic continuity
- occasional actual sense that characters care about what they're studying
- SPENCER GRAMMER STOP STEALING KATEE SACKHOFF'S FACE
- Cappie/Casey/Rebecca OT3!!!1111!!1 (btw: "Cappie" is hands down my least favorite thing about the show. CAPPIE IS ALREADY ONE OF MY FAVORITE BOYS OF ALL EVER and I am still actually embarrassed about that based solely on his terrible horrible name)
- gay Deputy Leo
- needs moar Ashleigh icons ;_;
So that is a thing that I recommend if it sounds relevant to your interests!
SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND
Spartacus is a new ~*~Starz~*~ drama which easily comprise two of the worst hours of television I've ever semi-watched. (So much for being the audience I want to see D:) (I usually play Combine while watching things, but even that wasn't enough so I started playing Quinn alongside the screen instead.) It's produced by Raimi & Tapert, but aside from the cast (feat. Lucy Lawless and Craig Parker) and general time period does not reflect much of the cheesy RenPics style and in fact bears a different production card. From what I can tell it's actually the brainchild of Stephen S. DeKnight, whose career as a writer of several legendarily aggravating episodes of Buffy & Angel has taken quite a nosedive since.
It is Shitty 300 x Shitty Rome x Shitty Gladiator. If you have seen any of those things you have seen this only they probably entertained you at least a little (and I could only stand 15 minutes of 300, but at least it was kind of visually interesting unlike Spartacus's painful ripoff of the same style). Literally every cliche you can think of from those works and their genres is applied like so much dried macaroni on the construction paper diorama that is this show:
A. I can't go one more sentence without discussing the CGI blood. This is because the show cannot go more than approximately 30 seconds without bringing back the CGI blood. Basically nothing ever happens but Spartacus fighting various dudes, and they all cut each other up (in slo-mo. very slow.) and THEN SHEETS OF CGI BLOOD ISSUE FORTH BECAUSE IT'S RAINING RED WALLPAPER AND/OR KETCHUP FIGHTS. It is absolutely shocking how much CGI blood one dude can shed and be totally okay the next day, but I guess that's the benefit of existing primarily in bullet/sword/flying ketchup time. (???) This is not as amusing as it sounds because it takes up approximately half the show.
B. In the olden days everybody mostly just went around having boring slo-mo graphic and/or unusually pervy sex when they weren't having ketchup fights¹. Or at least having tits. Is there a female character who has not yet been seen topless? NO. (Well, this is not saying much because there are only three speaking female roles, and one is Craig Parker's Spoiled Bitchwhore Wife which duh nudity!, and one is &LUCY; which just made me sad (there is a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. 'twould be a pity to waste yours on this crap, first ladycrush ever), and one is Spartacus's Wife of Angst so being naked and having slo-mo is basically her job¹. And then there are a crapload of writhing slave girls who have slo-mo orgies or roll around in mud or whatever.) There is a small glimpse of (non-protagonist) cock in the second episode but nothing comparable.
C. ¹ Beginning of first episode: Spartacus/Wife of Angst sex. Middle of first episode: Wife of Angst escapes rapists! Then Spartacus/Wife of Angst sex, which comes to an exciting conclusion when Romans come and steal Wife of Angst out of bed from Spartacus with lingering shots of her naked body in the hands of evil men. Beginning of second episode: Spartacus/Wife of Angst Sex, which is a dream, which gives us the opportunity to combine boring slo-mo graphic sex with the CGI blood when her dream angst head like EXPLODES and she's still fucking him as the ketchup rains down and drops settle on her tits? What is interesting (not interesting) here is that this wasn't even mildly surprising in its grossness because after having seen a single episode I knew exactly what would happen. Because what the fuck else. P.S. later Craig Parker brags about the time his evil men gangraped Wife of Angst, which amazingly happened offscreen (except it's not amazing because for it to happen onscreen Wife of Angst would have to any have any identity or narrative weight of her own which is clearly not in the cards).
D. Dude don't you love it when Our Hero is held captive and for some reason everybody else around him is totally IN THE TANK for their captor even though they are also slaves and are forced to fight in the arena and get no food or sleep? It takes a special kind of sensitive soul to be offended by being a slave, I guess. That's how you identify a hero.
E. I am hurting myself talking about this show so I'll stop after this but I have to make a note about the dialogue. Have you ever seen teenagers who don't understand Shakespeare reciting Shakespeare? This is not like that because the dialogue is a really bad (really really really bad) attempt to sound old-timey²,³ without any cleverness whatsoever. But the actors carry it off without about as much grace. This is about as snappy as it gets:
Guy: Is there any wine left?
Spartacus: Your belly holds the sum.
G: I'll return the balance presently. How far to the mountain pass?
S: Three days by foot if we march with meaning.
G: A drink would spur my intent.
All: chuckles!!!
~*~WRITING~*~
² "Old-timey" dialogue is basically accomplished by putting extra words in phrases where they aren't needed. Examples:
Don't say "are we better?" when you could say "are we the better?"
Don't say "you are different" when you could say "you are of a difference."
Don't say "by my judgment" when you could say "by the judging."
Definitely always say "Jupiter's cock!"³
³ You know it's not just old-timey but GRITTY because piss, shit, and fuck are used in every part of speech several times per sentence. Cock and cunt are doled out in slightly more stingy quantities. Random homophobic remarks are also cool to sprinkle in for funsies. Maybe a metaphor about fucking death with your penis? Whatever feels right.
So that is a thing I recommend to exactly nobody no matter what your interests!