NNNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDDDD

Except not really. The series I was watching was the latest live-action version of it, which is mostly eye candy and emotionally charged gazes. And maybe some fight scenes. Not much of the nerdy to see there.

Watching Downton Abbey

That show is amazing. I basically used it as bait to get lookingforme to come home more often last year. ;)

The Office

...Who are all these new people disguised as old characters?

MR. FEENY!

Archer season 2, finally. Love this show.

So far, Terr Nova is not impressing me. The premise is interesting, but the characters are just the stock family and supporting characters:

the obnoxious and rebellious teenage son
the smart “loser” teenage daughter who is also pretty for whenever she starts dating and becomes popular
the bratty kid who is supposed to be cute but instead just does stupid/dangerous things and never gets in trouble for it
the smart wife who is on the kids’ side
the dad who bickers with the rebellious son who doesn’t respect him
the obvious love interest for said teenage son
the military man who is in charge but is not as “good” as he seems

Also, the dinosaurs on Jurassic Park look better than these (probably for budget reasons or something).

So much wasted potential.

Breaking Bad is awesome.

Yes, yes it is. The last episode was great.

I finally caught How I Met Your Mother on TV, rather than online. It made me happy. The episode was pretty good, only a couple little moments that made me go eh.

On the other hand, I caught 2 Broke Girls , which was on afterwards. I saw some of the good reviews, and figured why not? But unfortunately, the ten minutes I saw were painfully unfunny. Max, our snarky heroine, was less snarky and more mean. Caroline, our rich girl, was both stupid and sensible by turns, and annoying either way. I was rather disappointed. Lots of standard sitcom stuff (the sleazy, stupid ex, the asian stereotype, the horse poo jokes).

...what are the two main reasons? Because both girls were not very pretty by tv standards, and had unattractive personalities to boot.

Ohhh. Way to keep it classy, Sansa :)

...I don’t know if How I Met Your Mother has a laugh track. But it has Neil Patrick Harris. Check it out.

Because HIMYM zips around time so much they film the whole thing without an audience, then they play the finished video to an audience and record the laughter then, I’m pretty sure. It is one of the better sitcoms with a laugh track but I share sansa’s disdain for laugh tracked sitcoms.

I like laugh-tracked sitcoms. Generally the acting is heightened when it’s performed in front of an audience, and I like that style. It also gives an edge to the comic timing.

Well, I did mean the acting in the ones with a live audience that laughs, but yeah.

Rowan Atkinson is awesome :) Thanks for pointing me to that one, Taku.

Does anyone watch Castle?

Tell him he’s dreaming.

So I finished Torchwood: Miracle Day finally, and all I have to say is, are Rex and Jack going to be a Super Awesome Fantastic Bisexual Lovers Team Through Time now? Because that’s pretty much the only outcome I’ll accept at the moment.

I can’t really agree. Most sitcoms with laugh tracks(from a real studio audience or not) generally stick to a pretty common rhythm in terms of pausing for audience laughter and joke delivery and such. You can’t do rapid, complex joke strings(ILU Community) because you have to leave laughter space.

Yes, there is the pause factor, but the performance of the actor still has some immediacy to it. Like, their performance has got to work, or because there’s an audience there, the actor will immediately know it’s flat. There’s always tension in performing for an audience (even when you’re in your stride), especially comedy. My experience has been slightly different, because when I’ve done it, I’ve just been in front of a normal audience and haven’t been able to do re-takes, but even with being able to do re-takes, you can still can play to the audience, and take cues from the audience , which is always helpful and interesting. Even if the stage lights are in your eyes or you’re not wearing your glasses, you still get feedback as you go.

And I’ve been in comedy sketches where none of the audience got it and we just had to keep rolling on anyway. That’s what I like about live-action sitcoms, I guess. They’re closer to stage. And also, when they’re done well, they also have heart to them. There’s something about a group of people laughing together at something genuinely funny that brings them all together—and when the actors laugh at themselves as well and have fun with it, a sense of community develops.

The pausing thing does lead to awkward moments where everyone just sort of hangs in place and waits for the laughter to die down, though. I was watching some comedy sketches the other day and I kept noticing it, and now I can’t stop unnoticing it! (Went with the Wind with Carol Burnett, if you’re curious. If you know anything about Gone with the Wind at all, watch this. (and I do mean anything, like so long as you know it exists, you’ll find this funny) But at the really hilarious parts, they have to wait before going on because otherwise the laughter would drown them out. So it’s kind of weird for a nonlive audience.

But in general, yeah, live performances can be a lot more fun because of the audience participation. It just is something that comes with its own way of doing things, if that makes sense.

The end is sort of WTF?! all around, so yeah.

For some reason, I’ve been under the impression that sansa’s been watching Sons of Anarchy for a long time. Maybe because it seemed like such a sansa-ish show? But then if he liked the show, he’d be talking about it a lot, so that doesn’t really make sense. Hmmm…I make really weird assumptions about people sometimes.

But I don’t think you’d really need to shill for Mad Men because nearly everybody knows about it and shills for it anyway. The Wire and Sons of Anarchy are less…I guess the word is ‘mainstream’.

SoA has the guy who played Gary in Remember The Titans (which, as a high school football player in the early 2000s, I watched at least 7 million times) as one of the titular Sons, and The Wire has Julius as a drug kingpin. Neither are roles I’d expected them to end up in, but I ended up loving Avon Barksdale, and it seems like this Opie guy has an interesting base.

This. The minute I saw Julius as Avon, I was like “NO”, but after a while I got used to it. And Opie’s kind of an jerk sometimes, but he consistently has his good moments.

There’s an entire fan-canon based on Inspector Spacetime. This delightfully confuses me.

There’s an entire fan-canon based on Inspector Spacetime

Already? The joke just aired less than a week ago. Oh, Internet.

I’m trying to watch an episode of Family Guy, and it’s the most unfunny 30 minutes I’ve ever seen.

I think every time I try to watch an episode of Family Guy. Even pre-cancellation I can’t understand why people love the show so much.

My main gripe with Castle is that it started off being a fun, ridiculous (in a good way) and somewhat creative show, compared to all

True, yet somehow I’ve missed most of those episodes ;) And really, I only keep watching for when they do stick to the team banter and Castle’s relationship with his daughter. <- I really think it’s the best part of the show.

Criminal Minds, however. Seriously. Why am I watching this? They’ve always been gory-dark, but the ensemble was good and the characters had good chemistry… Does anyone remember the controversy over CBS eliminating one of the female characters the beginning of this year?

@Thea: You know a police show that doesn’t do any of those things you said?

@Spanman: But she’s such a spitfire! She’s not my number one crush on this show(I liked the lady that plays Tara since Mad Men). Jax just took care of that shit though, and now my bloodthirst can rest.

noooooooooo, but pout

I know one.

Oh, well of course :) But that was regarding shows I might actually catch…unfortunately, sansa, unless it’s on netflix, I’m not likely to watch—actually even then I won’t because I only watch shows haphazardly. It’s why I never see any good ones.

Think about who asked you the question.

This.

Effing second to last episode of SoA S1, man. It’s like watching The gatdamn Wire.

._.

Don’t smile, jerk. That shit fills me with bloodrage. The motherfucker that did it needs to get got, but I feel like he won’t.

This does feel seriously Wire-esque though, with the Really Bad Shit dropping in the penultimate episode of the season instead of the finale, but I guess we’ll see if more of that comes in this last one.

Community was good this week(I hope Martin Starr is in more episodes, he’s a perfect fit for the show). Breaking Bad was nucking futs, and I can’t wait until Sunday.

Sons of Anarchy finale was good, and I’m interested to see where the show goes in Season 2. I feel like it’ll give me a much better indication of what kind of a show it really is than Season 1. Season 1 was, granted, some really good TV, but whether the narrative momentum keeps rolling or it finds a way back to the status quo will be the difference between good and great.

Well, I do love talking about TV shows…

The Wire

It ended in 2008, actually.

I bags GoT when it comes back in spring. :D

Lol’d good, or lol’d bad?

Yayyyyy :)

Can’t wait for a new episode of How I Met Your Mother tonight. Wooo!

I watched the premier of American Horror Story last week, and it might be spork worthy.

On the good but finished/canceled shows, I’ve been streaming Twin Peaks. It has a few weird moments, but it’s written by David Lynch, so weird is par for the course.

How much a decade changes things: Exhibit A and Exhibit B.

HIMYM is just bland… I’ve pretty much lost all interest in that show.

I found the Ewok thing funny just because it’s a family joke. But yeah, Nora doesn’t interest me much.

If tonight’s Community had been done in any other show(except Futurama, probably) I’d have called it that show’s best episode ever. As it is, it still probably makes my top 5 in Community.

Brilliant.

I think the serious difference between the “real” timeline and the other ones was that Jeff wasn’t there to put the brakes on what became an enjoyable experience for the rest of the group. At least the way I read it, Jeff’s return at the end was actually a, well not sad, but at least a melancholy moment where he’s on the outside looking in. I think it was at least a suggestion that maybe the group might be better off without Jeff in it.

I mean, Abed basically stole the Winger Speech moment there when he caught the die and nobody even missed a beat.

I dunno, I might be reading too much into it, but this season is supposed to be a lot more serialized, so I feel like this could be part of Jeff’s arc going forward.

With regards to Britta, I think a lot of her transformation since the beginning of the show is just Gillian Jacobs getting more comfortable with comedy(especially of the physical variety) and the writers taking that into account when writing jokes. I was pretty sure she was blazing even before the did the dance(I want a gif of it RIGHT NOW), and the dance only confirmed it.

I don’t have the skill to articulate like you guys do, but I will say that I thought this week’s episode of Community was pretty good, and a nice change of pace from the usual setting.

Also, The Office was pretty good as well. I was glad to see Jim almost go back to “his old self” in this episode. And in terms of Andy’s character development the last two episodes have been really good.

I gave up on The Office US ages ago when it got oddly dramatic and lost the funny like with Michael’s dinner party with his boss who was psycho and wanted him despite hating him. I’ve heard about Pam and Jim becoming sucky once they married and had a kid. Parks and Recreation to me is like the new Office and way better but it’s not always terribly funny. Watching the apathetic and monotoned April totally crushing on Andy was so cute. So far this season they’ve kinda gotten boring just like Jim and Pam… but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. The stories aren’t really focusing on them so far.

I should so rewatch all of Rugrats! A baby’s gotta do what a baby’s gotta do.

In the universe of Supernatural they’ve pretty much stated that Christianity is the correct religion, but I like that they balance it by making gods from other religions exist as demigods. This week had an Egyptian god in a pretty interesting episode. Last episode kind of sucked. Sometimes the monster of the week stories can have almost nothing happen and yet they somehow make it go for a whole episode, but this one was nice. I was hoping the hot Jewel Staite from Firefly would come back this episode since they hinted on it but it didn’t happen :(
I can’t remember if Supernatural has explained the existence of other gods or not. I don’t know if creating the world and people was a joint effort, or god created them all and they each created their own people, or they only exist because people believe in them or what. Supernatural is very interesting the way it’s built all this up for this many seasons. And to think it wasn’t originally going to get into the angel stuff.
Though it keeps getting sillier as the seasons go by so I didn’t really like the existence of phoenixes. Since Eve supposedly created all monsters then she must have created it and yet Phoenix ashes were her weakness so why create something that is your own weakness? Unless it was a mistake. And if she didn’t create it what did? And dragons existing was stupid too especially since all supernatural beings just end up being humanoids. Though I think they implied that the dragons were only recently made by Eve because she was looking for new things to make and looked at mythical beasts for inspiration so that makes it more okay.
/end rant…

And here is a scaredy-cat pony staring down a cockatrice that already turned her incredibly powerful magic-using friend into stone and is halfway turning her into stone as well.

Thanks for reminding me it’s out today. I follow some shows just for the sake of it. To see where the stories go. And even shows that have gone bad can have some good in them. I like a lot of HIMYM’s storytelling techniques. And I wanna know how they handle the reveal of the mother eventually. If you see Ted meet someone we’ve never seen before and the show just ends then I don’t understand the point, even with us having slowly learnt stuff about her through Ted.

There’s also a new Bored to Death today wooooo. I dunno if I wanna continue watching 2 and a half men purely out of curiosity or stop now. I think since they’ve put into place how Allen got back into the house to stay and how Burda is still there and such I can be done with it.

Just spent the afternoon watching the Colbert Report instead of doing homework.

What’s up with all the ‘fairytale’ type/inspired shows coming out? I’ve seen at least 3 from three different networks. Kind of interested, but also kind of horrified by what primetime would try to do with what sounds like pretty neat concepts. Anyone seen any?

Community is just so freaking good.

I love that they just never take episodes off when it comes to doing character work.

They’re just so good at character development. Community isn’t like most TV shows out there that just dump all this emotional crap into one episode in a pathetic attempt to make you feel some kind of connection with the characters. It sounds kind of obvious, but one thing I really like about Community is how all the characters are important and how together they make the show so great. While Pierce and Shirley are often picked on and made fun of, they’re still just as fleshed out as everyone else and you know that if it was just Jeff, Britta, Annie, Troy and Abed (in the mooooooooooooorning) that the show would be pretty dull.