Do 5 pushups every time Dean refers to the Impala as his "baby."
Do 5 situps every time Dean asks for pie.
Do jumping jacks for the duration of every classic rock song that plays over a montage.
I should add: Do 5 lunges every time Dean says, "Son of a b*tch!" The show has had plenty of ups and downs, but in the final analysis Jensen Ackles is still so darn pretty. Are you going to say no to this face?
La Parisienne just sent me this link to Wil Wheaton's blog, in which he nails the reason why we've all fallen out of love with Supernatural, a TV show that used to be so much fun. It's too bad, because Jensen Ackles is really easy on the eyes and Misha Collins is just adorable. On a related note, we've also fallen out of love with Doctor Who. The show was never as much fun after the departure of Rory and Amy. Recently the BBC with great fanfare announced Peter Capaldi as the next actor who will play the renegade Time Lord, but all I could summon up in response was "meh." It's not Capaldi's fault. I lay the blame squarely at the feet of showrunner Steven Moffat. The season finale was a snoozefest, and in retrospect there are other issues too, some of which are covered here.
I should add, though, that I am emphatically not in the chorus of whining Whovians who seem to think that feminism's been gut-shot and left to die because the next Doctor is a man and not a woman. Personally I thought that there was (a) practically zero chance that a woman would be cast as the Twelfth Doctor, while (b) maybe an actor of another race would be chosen. Can you just imagine the glory of someone like Idris Elba in that role? (No chance of Idris himself, though - he's far too busy being a star elsewhere.) Anyway, another thought about the show: the Doctor's supposed to be the good guy and all, but everywhere he goes, he leaves a huge body count in his wake, and not just of bad guys. Plenty of good people end up dead or injured or traumatized, and it's really starting to bother me. (Remember when the rot started to set in?)
It wasn't even that long ago that I said I was back. Tonight's episode was only the fourth one of the season, and you give me something that took an hour of my life and gave nothing back. The ultimate problem was that in an attempt to change things up, the episode marginalized the Winchesters and made them bit players in their own show. LOOK, THE WINCHESTERS ARE THE ONLY REASON TO WATCH THIS SHOW AT ALL. I hate it when the show attempts to make someone else the protagonist for an episode. The one that focused on the "Ghostfacers" was awful, and the only reason "Weekend at Bobby's" worked was because Bobby himself is awesome and we love him and we happily wanted to see more of his adventures after seeing him be the loyal supporting character he was since the first season. Well, tonight's episode "Bitten" marginalized Sam and Dean in order to give a group of annoying morons the spotlight, and I frankly hated every single one of them. By the end, I was actively rooting for them to come to the predictable sticky ends that they had set up for themselves. Can we all get back to the arc with Crowley and Castiel, please? Heck, even Kevin too. And give us Metallicar and classic rock, come on! I am so ticked! Hey, I haven't much time, and if I'm going to spend a precious hour of it on a guilty pleasure of a TV show, I want it to - you know - actually provide a guilty pleasure instead of an hour of eye-roll-inducing idiocy. If I'd wanted that, I would have just watched more politics. BLERG.
The townhall format was messy, moderator Candy Crowley kept butting in, both sides will claim victory amid a sea of vague answers and platitudes, I am sick of politics, and I still have a ton of work to read and write before the night is over. So here we go for some Supernatural streaming on Netflix, because it's almost Halloween, I love this show, and Dean Winchester is a pie-loving, wisecracking, demon-hunting babe.
I haven't blogged about TV in a really, really long time, and I'm pretty darn sure that I shouldn't be doing it now, but I'm tired, I've been working a lot, and if I want to take a study break by talking about TV, well, it's my life. Anyway, you may remember how a couple seasons ago I got tired of "Supernatural" and turned to "Doctor Who" instead. The new seasons of both shows have hit the airwaves, and this time around, things have turned out a little differently. The short version: given the choice between the Doctor and Dean Winchester, I'm going with Dean. What, all of shiny time and space versus grim demon-hunting and family issues? The TARDIS versus a black 1967 Impala? A Gallifreyan Time Lord versus a Kansas native with a GED and a snarky attitude? I'll tell you why if you really want to know.
Last season ended with a bang (and a great ensemble cast of old favorites like Castiel, Balthazar, Crowley, and Bobby), so La Parisienne and I are looking forward to the premiere of the new season tonight!
Last week my guilty pleasure of a TV show, "Supernatural," finished its season with a bang! La Parisienne and I had a fabulous time watching it together. (Come on: Castiel + Balthazar + Crowley + Bobby = automatic awesome, along with very quotable quips along the way.) Besides, the season-ending cliffhanger was really good. I didn't see it coming, for one thing -- I thought something else was going to go down. Well played, Sera Gamble. I was going to write up a full episode review, but then I found an interesting little review comparing "Supernatural" season 6 with "Buffy" season 6. Do read! Spoilers.
It's apple season here in Nerdworld, and I love pie. I loooooooooove pie. Here's an easy recipe (you can cheat by buying ready-made pie crust). This is going to make the apartment smell simply fantastic while also warming it up on a chilly autumn day. Speaking of delicious, here's an added treat for La Parisienne and the Kamikaze Editor, in honor of our "Supernatural"-fest last night. Here's a shout-out to those early days of the show when it captivated us. (It just might be captivating us all over again -- here's hoping.)
Oh, I can't help myself. I have to have a soft spot for a show that, ostensibly about cute, quippy guys killing monsters, has a long-standing love for food in general and pie in particular. Sometimes, pie even appears as part of the plot. Remember this episode?
Once is a fluke. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern. And this pattern is a great one. We just got our third excellent "Supernatural" episode in a row, and as the lovely La Parisienne just said, "Our boys are back!" Oh, and welcome back, darlings! (Plus Castiel, whose first appearance this season was very welcome indeed.) Dare I say that the show has recovered itself? Here's a bit of everyone's favorite trench coat-wearing angel as he appeared tonight:
Overall for the episode? From the instant the title appeared, hopes were high for a good episode. Come on, with a title like "You Can't Handle the Truth" for a story about a curse that makes people engage in total brutal unwilling honesty? The show's recovered its sense of humor and pop culture savvy. Even better, the storytelling was both engaging and entertaining on all its different registers from its throwaway bits of hilarity (Bobby oversharing on the phone ... and Dean's response) to its development of the narrative arc of Sam's troubling behavior and Dean's increasing concern about his brother, even in the middle of being forced to tell the unvarnished truth about himself -- or, at least, his own self-perception. (I did tell La Parisienne that I had never loved Dean as much as I did right then.) As for Sam ... The signs were there from last week that he is not all right, that there is something profoundly and disturbingly wrong with him, and this week's episode developed this rather well, all the way through his bizarre ability to lie, right now to the zinger at episode's end.
As for Dean himself, I was wary that his character would degenerate into the sort of previous impotent moping that I so hated ... but I needn't have worried. This time around, he may be ridden with his own psychological torments, but somehow it's all right. "Poor sad Dean," we ladies said, and then watched him beat his monster to a pulp with a grim determination. I for one can't wait until the next episode.
The title of the most recent new episode of "Supernatural" is so simply awesome that I can't top it. In fact, most of the episode was a hilarious bit of subgenre-on-subgenre violence. Oh, sure, technically both "Supernatural" the show and Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" books/movies inhabit the "supernatural/fantasy/horror/sci fi" supergenre, but that is no reason for the two to play nicely together. In fact, "Supernatural" pulled out the stops to bash "Twilight" mercilessly and relentlessly for pleasure and profit, and I frankly LOVED it.
From the opening sequence's riff on "vapid idiotic 17-year-old girl loves creepy vampire pretty boy" (I can't have been the only one who laughed uproariously when the girl's name turned out to be "Kristen" and her vampire lover boy's "Robert") to Dean's priceless reaction to the girl's ridiculously decorated bedroom/shrine-to-vampires, the "Twilight"-bashing was delicious. Haters gonna hate, I hate "Twilight" with a fiery vengeance, and I hadn't had this much pop culture hate-filled fun in a while! Plus, here are just two of the numerous quotable lines: "What are you, twelve?... Are you wearing ... glitter?!" and "These aren't vampires, man! These .... these are d*****bags!"
Here's Exhibit A of Dean's glorious animosity (from 0:00 to 1:35):
So there you have it. Two memorable "Supernatural" episodes in a row (I loved last week's Bobby-centric tale, as you recall), and the show, apparently remembering finally that it was its combination of snarky pop-culture humor and tongue-in-cheek genre storytelling that made it great in the first place, is beginning to win me back. Besides, Dean Winchester is once more fun to watch, now that he's no longer spending every other moment of screen time moaning and wailing and hand-wringing. Let's get back to the fundamentals, shall we? "Cute Guys Killing Monsters While Cracking Jokes About Pop Culture and Listening to Awesome Music." UPDATE: Take a look at io9's review.
Thank goodness we got something that didn't involve lots of angsty exposition and Winchesterly whining. Last night's new episode of "Supernatural" was -- quite honestly -- a joy. The fun is back, along with quips and the great music and some of "Supernatural"'s best supporting characters, of whom the best of the best is Bobby Singer (played by Jim Beaver), the hard-working, long-suffering, ever-reliable unsung hero of this show. We love you, Bobby! (And however awesome you think Bobby is, by episode's end you figure out that he is so much more awesome than you gave him credit for being!) Check out this lovely review and then take a look at this hilarious segment from the opening of the episode:
If you don't appreciate Bobby, you just might be an IDJIT.
So far I haven't been too impressed with the new season of "Supernatural," (and it's still on probation in my book after last season) but I have to say, tonight's episode made me smile. Check out this clip (slight language warning). It captures the fun that used to be the hallmark of the show. Plus ... Oh, Castiel. How I've missed you.
OK. You might appreciate this along with La Parisienne. In the preview for next week's episode, Dean Winchester did wonders for himself in my good graces by slamming "Twilight." Oh, this is the sort of snarky utterance Dean used to give all the time: "These aren't vampires; these are d*****bags." All right, Dean. Win me back.
Here you go, kids, so have at it over the 3-day weekend! There is, of course, lots of room for argument.
(For instance? The writer didn't like "Firefly"'s episode "Shindig," which I absolutely adore. And "Supernatural" isn't on the list at all ... though I'll be the first to admit it's (a) more a guilty pleasure than a classic, and (b) La Parisienne and the Kamikaze Editor and I all thought the most recent season was mostly a crashing bore. Still, I've got a bone to pick with the list if it's going to include "Torchwood"-- and recommend the deplorable "Children of Earth" story! -- and not "Supernatural" which, at its best, gave us snappily witty, tongue-in-cheek, meta-theatrical episodes like "Hollywood Babylon," "Monster Movie," and "Changing Channels." Also, how can "Farscape" not be on this list?!)
I pretty much love almost all the 20 shows on the list, but if I had to choose 5 listed shows that you MUST watch, I pick the following in alphabetical order:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
the new Doctor Who (i.e., Nine, Ten, and now Eleven)
Firefly
The Prisoner
Star Trek
You still must watch "Farscape," though. Oh, and I heartily recommend the BBC "Life On Mars" also, though it's arguably not quite as obviously sci-fi as some of the other shows on the list. But if the list can include "Lost," then I don't see why it can't include a crime drama that plays with the idea of reality, time, and consciousness. The new "V" is fun too, and "Journeyman" is a "Firefly"-esque sad tale of what might have been if it had lasted longer. "Kings" is a hard-to-classify bit of actual creativity. On the animated side, you can't beat "Futurama" with a stick.
And as Khan did say, "It's very cold ... in SPACE." (How about in time, too?)
Remember when the Sibling played an important role in getting me addicted to "Supernatural"? Back then, I vowed vengeance. Oh, I did. To quote my own self, I said even then, "[I'm] determined to devise some kind of utterly unholy retaliation. I need some inspiration. Oh, yes. Ohhhhhh, yes."
Well, the "Supernatural" addiction has cooled off (thanks to a season that was far too short on fun and too long on windy dialogue), and I'm happily ensconced in the Whoniverse, even as the Sibling proceeded to make fun of that too. ("You David Tennant fangirl!") He seems to get a perverse kick out of seeing me, the famously cynical, sarcastic analyst of history and politics, be a fan of someone other than Shakespeare or Jane Austen or Reagan or Milton Friedman or Winston Churchill or whomever.
So I forced the Sib to sit down and actually WATCH some "Doctor Who" with Ten (Me: "OK, David Tennant may be cute, but he's also a great ACTOR." Sib: "Yeah, right, you FANGIRL.").
And I chose my episodes with care. This was the Netflix streaming playlist that I inflicted on him:
~"School Reunion," with the fun "Buffy" high school vibe AND guest star Anthony Stewart Head to piggyback on the Sibling's rabid Joss Whedon fandom. (See this too.)
~"Girl in the Fireplace." Beautiful girl (Sophia Myles) plus award-winning story and playing with history and the fragility of time. Plus one of the best scenes ever:
~The two-parter "Human Nature" and "Family of Blood." The nature of humanity, the meaning of sacrifice (not just for the Doctor, but for almost everybody).
All in all, a careful combination of action, humor, time, space, emotional registers, and narrative atmospheres.
The result? Did you ever doubt? MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, BABY.
The Sibling had to acknowledge the awesomeness of the show and of my Doctor ... as we had an entire discussion about time travel and narrative ... as he headed off to watch more episodes on his own. I'm thinking it'll be mere days before he gobbles up the entire seasons 2-4. Other episodes in the queue as the best examples of the show: "Silence in the Library," "Forest of the Dead," and "Utopia."
Oh, I'm good. (And that sounds like something the Doctor would say!)
Sorry, Metallicar. It's not you; it's me. MM has lost her heart to the TARDIS, and she's gone.
I feel as though I owe some kind of explanation, especially to La Parisienne, my fellow TV maven. So here it is. The short version is: if ever a TV series seems calibrated precisely to capture my imagination, the BBC reboot of "Doctor Who" (2005-present) is that series. I'll explain at length later (think of the irresistible combination of technophiliac pleasures, history-covered jaunts through time, and the whole sci fi idea), but for now, let me give you a pair of little video clips in an attempt to explain why, at its best, it is so compelling on a purely human level:
As Alessandra and I were just saying, this episode ("Gridlock" from season 3) is largely silly and involves a massive anti-grav traffic jam, a Hydra-like gigantic monster, space epidemics, telepathic aliens, and kittens. (Yes, kittens. Cute, but come on, really?) But what catapults the whole thing into the stratosphere in terms of acting and character development are the two scenes I linked above, bookending the episode. Out of the silliness comes that elegy, that scintillating flash, and the Shakespearean talents of the actor shine.
We go to the Great Idea, so often missed by TV showrunners and moviemakers, that a truly great story is character-driven, and if you don't care about your characters, then not all the CGI explosions will really fire your imagination. Besides, after that scene, I defy any fan to not feel a melancholy pang for lost Gallifrey -- and it's not even a real place. Now that is storytelling, and that is acting. MM has laughed at every melodramatic tearjerker movie she's ever seen, but Tennant's delicately modulated threnody for Gallifrey made her misty, and that was a real surprise. And I'm not often surprised. The ability of "Doctor Who" to reach for -- and to achieve -- these moments is at the heart of why I love this show.
Now onto the present season of both "Supernatural" and "Doctor Who." Really, it's almost Dickensian in its opposition -- the best of times, the worst of times ... While last Thursday's season finale of "Supernatural" was a disappointment (a crashing bore, actually -- as the delightful Kamikaze Editor said, "How did they make Armageddon boring?" 'Tis a sad mystery), the fresh season of "Doctor Who" with its new Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) has been dishing up some stellar storytelling right from its premiere episode.
In fact, while the Winchesters of "Supernatural" have been steadily frittering away my goodwill all season, the new Doctor has been growing on me. I had been extremely reluctant to commit to Matt Smith -- or anybody, really, in the role -- after the departure of the stunningly gifted David Tennant as the previous Doctor, but I have to say that the lady has been well wooed and is all but won.
Oh, don't get me wrong: sometimes "Doctor Who" can be as silly and campy as any other show, and that's fine -- and often fun anyway. A few episodes are catastrophically awful ("Fear Her" was absolutely unforgivable), but the show itself has so much potential, and it achieves that potential more than it doesn't.
"Supernatural" has been disappointing all season, and its good moments can't outweigh the bad, for the bad is a wearisome drain on its audience. The fun is gone. (In fact, the season finale was described by the critics at TV Without Pity as "bringing five years' worth of plot points and mythology to a close in the most anti-climactic manner imaginable." More here.) Do you remember when I said goodbye to "24"? I am about to say goodbye to "Supernatural" too.
But since misery loves company, I give you some of my favorite nerdy images of my best-loved fictional characters. If I must be surrounded by books right now, at least I can also look at pretty photos of my favorite characters doing the same ...
OK, I hope you have a pretty good idea of what Nerdworld is like right now! I cant resist adding one more image. It basically sums up my personal circumstances! I totally feel like this -- reading yourself into prostration! Yeah, higher education is SOOOOOO glamorous.
It's still Exam Apocalypse on campus, and everything is madness. There are only a few things that are getting me through this catastrophe, and they include, in no particular order, Netflix, coffee, Shakespeare, science fiction, chocolate, text messages, social media, and a ludicrous sense of humor.
As the Eleventh Doctor recently said, "This isn't going to be big on dignity." It's such a brilliant statement that I slapped it on my blog header, because it's TRUE. During exam time, dignity is the first thing to go, swiftly followed by sleep, sanity, and any attempt at fashion. (And yes, I realize the the elevation of a Doctor quote also means the demotion of a Dean Winchester quote. But, let's be honest, right now "Doctor Who" is running circles around "Supernatural.")
Anyway, I figure that since there's no dignity left, I might as well just post up something that's been amusing me lately -- a hilarious combination of a cheesy old 1980s love song now done by the folks from that great TV musical-comedy "Glee." I'll even dedicate it to the object of my cohort of friends' and my nerdy affection. We're all madly in love with the Tenth Doctor, embodied with wit and charm by unexpectedly adorable Scotsman David Tennant. And no, we are not fangirls. We are fanladies.
Well, none of us had set out to fall in love -- it just kind of happened. So here it goes, the "Glee" version of Bonnie Tyler!
Oh, laugh if you want to. Go on! I'm laughing too.
Apparently unsatisfied with her complicity in getting me hooked on "Supernatural," the evil enabler known as La Parisienne has made silly pop-culture TV lightning strike me twice by getting me hooked on "Glee."
It happened yesterday via Hulu. I had marathonned through 3 episodes before I even realized what was going on. It's addictively fun. Try it! It's like "High School Musical" -- only it's actually good. And it's contributing to this semester's Nerdworld Soundtrack.
Oh, my. I'm suddenly reminded of a brief, long-ago involvement with the high school choir when I was just a young soprano-singing schoolgirl and not the over-educated venomous harridan that I am today! (I didn't last too long in choir, though. I ended up in speech-and-debate instead, which I have to admit did suit me a bit better for my current -- and Sue Sylvester-ish --station in life, ha!)
Oh, and for La Parisienne, here is a song that's relevant both for "Supernatural" and "Glee." Savor your victory for now. I shall live to plot my revenge another day! (Oh, and Count Chocula? I'm gonna get you too, honey, don't you worry.)
