Tag: TV
[BLOG] Rob’s thoughts on AHS Double Feature : Red Tide
Hey Somethings, PCR here!
Now.. fair warning, if you haven’t caught up with the 1st half of AHS S10, you may want to pass this by…….
Ok! So far, Season 10 is an interesting and enjoyable season. Red Tide is 6 episodes, and the first half of Season 10, with Death Valley being the last 6 episodes. I haven’t watched Ep 7 at the time of this writing, but the guess is the two seasons will somehow converge and overlap in some way. I really liked seeing Finn Wittrock in a lead role. The whole vibe was really well done in my opinion..the stormy greys, the lack of any real vibrant color.. really got the whole ‘winter in a Massachusetts coastal town’ feel down. Macauley Culkin was the real scene stealer for me, as Mickey was the only one I felt sorry for at how his story wrapped up. That said, I wasn’t crazy about Ursula, and.. to be fair, I don’t believe I’ve enjoyed *any* character Leslie Grossman has played in AHS. While other actors seem to play a multitude of styles and personality types, Grossman always seems to end up playing the ‘Meh-person-turned-bitch that I could care less about’. The final episode of the first half was a case and point as it really revolved around her. For me, Episode 6 was a let down that moved way too fast through the narrative to wrap up the first half of Double Feature and set up the second. Where the first 5 episodes were a slow-burn pace, episode 6 felt like a roller coaster ride built by someone who’s never built a roller coaster but has seen one once.
All in all, I’m mildly optimistic for Death Valley and to see how it ties in to not only Red Tide, but previous seasons as well.
[THE END] The A-Team
If there is one thing that the Somethings don’t do.. it’s pitying fools. We don’t pity the fools, and we have, and will always have a ‘no fool pitying’ rule.
That said, we have somehow stumbled into this pit of fools, specifically the finale of the classic action adventure show, The A-Team.
So settle in as we look back to the finale of this beloved cult classic and ask whether it was worth the journey to get to this moment? From helicopters to Italian food names. From anchovies to exploding cars – did the A-Team go out with a bang, or more of a disgruntled Mr. T grunt.
There’s only one way to find out… join us for THE END: A-TEAM
Ok, here we go!
[THE WHEEL] Dreamcasting Thundercats w/ Gutting the Sacred Cow
thunder… Thunder… THUNDERCATS…
If, like me, your brain is now screaming ‘Hoooo!’ – you were likely of an era of a particular vintage of cartoons. WYou are left with questions … is Cheetara naked? Do Thundercats mate with their relatives or do they just ignore that cat thing?
And most important question of all…. If there was a Thundercats Movie, who should star in it?
So, this week on THE WHEEL, we are going to throw out our own ideas as to what the perfect Thundercats movie is – and we are not doing it alone. Joining us once again are the greatest Kevins in all the land – Kevin Gootee & Kevin Israel – also known as Gutting The Sacred Cow, a brilliant podcast where you can hear some of your favorite things torn to shreds. We would like to thank them for taking this trip to Thundera with us and giving us insight beyond insight.
Ready? Well, ok here we snarf snarf….
[BLOG] PCR has thoughts on the Season Finale of LEGO Masters!
Hey all, PCR here!
So, I just watched the finale of LEGO Masters Season 2 last night and…I have thoughts.
First, let’s go over the teams…
Caleb and Jacob – Even though they had been in the bottom two more than any other team in the finale, they made their move towards the end, winning Episodes 9 (Land and Sea with their “Chameleobster”) and 11 (Cliffhanger) which gave them some great momentum going in to the final.
Mark & Steven – They held The Golden Brick the longest, and had the most wins going in to the final episode, and though they were only at risk of elimination twice, once was the episode right before the finale, which put them on shaky ground.
Zack and Wayne – They were only ever at risk of elimination once in Episode 10 (Flip My Block) and had more 2nd place finishes than any other team the entire season.
So, we’re in the finale, and the teams are tasked with doing a “Day/Night” build. Caleb and Jacob opt for an hourglass design with a ‘Day City’ on the bottom and a ‘Night Realm’ in the top of the hourglass. It was bold in design and impressive in construction considering the two halves were built separately and then the top literally flipped upside down to join with the base. Considering the middle didn’t actually connect and it was only the 4 outer pillars supporting the weight, it was amazing to me that the thing stayed together.
Mark and Steven opted for a “Warden of the Woods” character. The “Day/Night” shift was accomplished with a number of lights throughout the model, and while the water base they created was very impressive at “night”, the figure overall honestly wasn’t that impressive to me due to the complete brown build with little variations of color except the leaves for the hair and the glowing eyes.
Zack and Wayne went back to the well once more (which they did often this season) and incorporated dragons into their tower build. It was tall, and each floor of the tower was personalized to their story, but the “Night” shift felt like it was just lights inside each floor that made them brighter.
Overall, I was expecting something different when the Brickmasters said they wanted a build that had a different feel and look in each Day and Night segment. To my dismay, Caleb and Jacob came in third, leaving Zack and Wayne and Mark and Steven to fight for the top two and… to be fair… both builds left me nonplussed. Mark and Steven as a team just felt too… cocky? Too… entitled? I don’t know… just something about their demeanor and how they came off most of the season made me not a fan, and while Zack and Wayne had many of those same qualities, it was their constant use of things we had seen them do before that left me unimpressed with a lot of their builds.
For me, the REAL winners this season were Natalie and Michelle, and Dave and Richard. Both teams had that creativity factor in a lot of their builds that felt others were lacking. They thought outside the box (and the brick) to do builds that were always on theme, but always original.
I won’t spoil who the winner was.
Did the best team win? Probably. Did the most creative team win? Certainly not in my opinion.
Season 2, while I was happy to see it come back, didn’t live up to Season 1 (the highest rated episode of S2 was barely over half of the lowest rated episode of S1), and it will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes to fruition for a Season 3.
[BLOG] Hatton gives us HIS AHS ranks!
Somethings! It’s Hatton!
Since PCR went and ranked his American Horror Story seasons, I thought – especially since our tastes differ pretty severely on a couple ones – that I’d hit it up too. If I really was going to dive in deep here, I’d break them down by half seasons, because it always feels like AHS gives you two stories and notoriously I like one side of it better than the other.
That said, let’s get into it…
9 – 1984
I thought 1984 was a disappointment. It leaned on the ‘Ghost’ rules of AHS heavily, and the latter half felt completely unbalanced to the first half. I really had wanted this to be a brilliant take on horror slashers and 80s teen horror, and it just fell into its own AHS branded melodrama.
8 – Asylum
PCR and I agree about the weakness of Asylum… with the exception of Lily Rabe as Sister Eunice, it felt like this season just didn’t have a cohesive story to tell, but a handful of separate stories that just didn’t land for me. The twists of aliens and the like just didn’t match the tone of the rest of the show.
7 – Apocalypse
I will admit, this one sits in the middle for me because it is the one season I’ve promised I’ll go back and rewatch sometime in the not far future. I would watch AHS while I was doing other things and I missed a lot of this one. I like bunkers. I like apocalypses. I remember there being one thing about this season I really disliked, but I couldn’t tell you now what it was.
6 – Coven
I know not worshipping Coven as a season is sacrilegious for some fans of AHS. I enjoy it, and it does feature one of my favorite subplots in all of AHS in the Axe Man. Coven, to me, feels like a season where AHS discovered what it could be and how it can tell different stories. Not a bad season, and important to AHS lore, but similar to my next entry – it felt like a well they kept coming back to.
5 – Murder House
I love a good sexy latex gimp. Who doesn’t, right? Murder House was an intensely new way to see a serial story and you didn’t know if you were watching a one season journey or if this was chapter one to a much bigger tale. The insert of the Black Dahlia felt very disconnected, but it set the rules we got to know so many times.. even though I think that at times it has been a crutch for AHS to lean on.
4 – Cult
PCR made a point that Cult was uncomfortable. I agree wholly, and it was that uncomfortability that had me glued to what was going on. I’ve seen so many documentaries about cults and group conspiracies and Jim Jones, NXIVM, etc that this was as much a curiosity as to how far they would take it as much as finding the real stories they pulled from to get there. Plus, Billy Lourd was a VIP in brilliance in her AHS debut.
3 – Freak Show
This was the first season I loved. Immensely loved. The addition of Neal Patrick Harris as huckster Chester Creb, Jessica Lange’s black and white over-produced musical numbers, and Dandy. I would have watched a Dandy season – he was brilliant in all of the most horrible of ways.
2 – Roanoke
OK OK OK … Hear me out. I can hear the pitchforks already. I have learned there are people that like what they did with Roanoke… and people that don’t. A documentary style show where the reenactors then go and get sucked into the plot of the story itself. it is AHS at its most meta and I was all about it.
1 – Hotel
I find Hotel to be -the- perfect story for Horror Story. It brings back something that hadn’t been around since the first and second season, which is this intangible sexiness. The location was this gorgeous gaudy affair that was a character unto itself. Every person feels like a fully lived in character. It doesn’t hurt that Evan Peters’ character was this amazing mix of an out of touch HH Holmes and Howard Hughes. Gaga was just amazing icing on an already packed cake.
Which ones were your favorite? Tell us where you tell us stuff!
[BLOG] PCR ranks AHS!
Hey Somethings, PCR here!
So, in our Free For All episode (which you can listen to here…) we touched on ‘American Horror Stories’ and, tangentially, AHS in general. Long time listeners of the show know both Hatton and I have varied opinions of the AHS seasons… but here, for the first time, I’m giving you my rankings of them…
9 – Roanoke – I know they tried something a bit different this season with the ‘real vs re-enactment’ and the second half feeling like a different story until it wasn’t… but the whole thing fell super flat for me. When I first saw the title, I wanted a season ABOUT Roanoke not.. this convoluted mess that we got.
8 – Asylum – I know I’m stepping on toes here, there are a BUNCH of people who like Asylum. There were PARTS I liked, not not nearly enough to override the fact that I feel like I got scammed in a story that was teased and never shown.
7 – Cult – Cult was… uncomfortable. I know AHS stories aren’t supposed to be all ‘light and fuzzy’, but “Cult” for me felt ‘too soon’ with what was going on in the world at the time.
4 – 1984 – I liked the schlock of it. The season captured the ’80s vibe great, and it was exciting for me to see them bring Ramierez back.
1 – Apocalypse – I’ll be honest, this almost came in at the second spot as the first few episodes I was a bit “meh” on, but once The Witches showed up and everyone revealed their true colors, this season really took off. Cody Fern as Michael Langdon REALLY gave me some “Lucifer/Ahura Mazda” vibes from Cry for Dawn and there was little, if anything, I would change about the season as a whole.
[The End] Golden Girls
We’ve traveled down the road and back again – and we’re here with another episode of… THE END!
It’s been a few months of supernatural, outerspace, dystopian nightmares – so we decided to go with something a little lighter this month – a show about 4 brilliant women who keep joking about death.
That’s right – it’s everyone’s favorite mid-afternoon show you put on and won’t admit to watching… Golden Girls!
So, how did the adventures of Sophia, Rose, Blanche, and Dorothy end? Was it in a hail of bullets? A mass chemical explosion that merged them into one mecha Golden Girl? We’re about to tell you…
Thank you for being a friend – now let’s go!
[Something In Review] Loki w/ Tim Stevens
Welcome to the Something Variance Authority.
Please sign-in by clicking the link below where all of the opinions and ideas about the most recent Diz show, Loki will be revealed. If you bump into your own self, don’t stress it, it’s cool.. and yes, it’s ok if you make out with them. We here at the Something Variance Authority are totally ok with it.
That’s right Somethings, we’re heading into the Marvelverse again, but this time we’re bringing back a Something Alum – one of our favorite people in the world. None other than @UnGajje himself, Tim Stevens. After you are done listening – go check out Tim’s work on The Spool (@TheSpool on Instagram & Twitter) as it is a certifiable fact that you’ll want more of the entertainment this man provides.
So welcome to a fixed location in time. The rest of the future is mutable, but you – here – listening – is clearly something you shouldn’t mute.
Ready? Loki here we go!
Our Favorite Commercials
What would you do for a Klondike Bar? Have you been injured in the workplace, you may be due compensation? Where IS the beef! Have you ever felt… not so fresh?
The Somethings are here to freshen up your day with a brand new classic Somethingcast episode where we are talking about the hours of television we rarely talk about. The periods between all of those “stories” that we “enjoy” — that’s right, we’re talking about the commercials. Which ones are our favorites or have blown us away with their commercialness.
Find out now – and call soon, operators are standing by. ♫ Something you feel like a nut.. Something you don’t. ♫
..and now a word from our sponsors..
[The End] Stargate SG-1
It’s the last of the YEAR 8 themed episodes, so now we get to The End… with our thinnest premise yet. STARG8.
What started as a surprising cult-hit of a sci-fi movie that, I say having seen it recently, still holds up — turned into a television epic that spanned multiple television shows, a couple made-for-tv movies, and a universe of characters.
This though, is the original. Stargate SG-1 and the end of its 10 season run.
Did it live up to its legacy? Was it simply a stopgap between one show and another network? Well, there’s only one way you are going to find out – and that is by either watching ten years of leaping through gates to mysterious lands, boldly going where no man has go– sorry, wrong one… you could watch the original, or you could just listen to our take on The End: Stargate SG-1
Ok, here we go!