Tag Archives: TV

Evan and Gordon Talk: Naps [And Also the Hours in a Day]

Posted on April 10, 2013 by | 3 comments

GORDON: Ladies and gentlemen, because we are men of our word, today’s Evan and Gordon discussion will be based off a suggestion left by you, the readers. 

Specifically, Joe Chinn, who asked us to talk about rest and leisure time in this crazy modern world.EVAN: The irony is not lost on me, as I embark on a forty-five minute chat at around 11:15 pm with work the following the morning.

GORDON: So I’m guessing we’re stating right off the bat that we don’t have enough hours in the day?

EVAN: Well, let’s see- Continue reading →

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Fame Day: Munchies

Posted on March 28, 2013 by | 1 comment

The purpose of Fame Day is to, as the page states, “to give credit [and praise] where it is due.” While Gordon has used it to draw attention to significant contributors to our present day world a few times, I have in turn pointed readers towards YouTube to check out a series I deem to be of high quality. This is another of those times.

munchies

I was directed towards a show hosted on the YouTube channel of Vice magazine, and was captured instantly. As an avid lover of food shows [which you’d know if you’ve been keeping up with E&GT], Munchies was exactly the sort of show I didn’t know I was looking for, a window into the lives of chefs that didn’t include their motives for supporting various charities [I’m looking at you, Top Chef Masters]. Continue reading →

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2 Broke Girls, S2E20 “And the Big Hole”: A TV Review

Posted on March 26, 2013 by | 3 comments

andthebighole

The “big hole” in this episode is courtesy of Oleg, whose leg punches through the girls’ ceiling due to him and Sophie’s vigorous lovemaking. That’s probably too delicate a word to describe what was going on, I mean, they were using a bowling ball. Anyway, that’s the cold open for ya.

Since Sophie and Oleg’s excessively cacophonous copulation leads to Caroline losing sleep [she didn’t strap sponges to both ears and get smashed on booze like Max did] she is 20 minutes late to her shift at the diner, which starts the first real conflict I can remember between the girls and their boss, Han Lee.

Now, I am not a person who enjoys the jabs every single character on the show makes at Han. They constantly attack a) his height, or b) his sexuality, and both types of joke been done to death. I don’t know who thinks they’re funny, but the show’s writers seem to think we live and breathe the stuff. What I do love, and you know this if you’ve been reading these reviews, is when Han dishes it back as good as he gets it. It’s great to see him as more than just the show’s whipping boy, and Matthew Moy almost always nails the delivery.

So when Caroline finally shows up, makes excuses about having to take a nap before badmouthing the diner she works at, Han gets a little upset. He makes a remark at their shop closing, which is sort of in poor taste, but Caroline calls his establishment a “dumb diner,” and he pulls out the big guns. By firing her.

“Well at least my diner is still open and successful, whereas your cupcake shop was so dumb it failed.”

“Oh really, you quit? You must be dumber than my diner because I already fired you.”

Which leaves Caroline unemployed, a change I would have enjoyed more if Max hadn’t gotten her fired in the last episode. She waits in front of the apartment door [like a puppy] for Max to get home so she can start complaining about how unemployed she is. Then the girls head upstairs to return Sophie and Oleg’s sex bowling ball because we’ve gotta keep this episode moving.

Sophie answers the door roleplaying as Beyoncé, which was an image I did not need to see or want to write about. Upon hearing that Oleg was inside dressed as Jay-Z I fully admit that I expected him to be in blackface; this is not a show that has had a very good track record when it comes to race. Thankfully, he was not. The girls suggest that the two get their freak on at Oleg’s, and he worries, for some reason, that she’ll be disgusted by his place, an understandable sentiment if they weren’t already sleeping together. So Caroline offers to give his apartment a woman’s touch, for cash .

I spent actual time making this gif specifically for this blog, and you will appreciate it.

Subjectively, Oleg’s apartment is awesome. Sure, it has skeevy stuff like a sex swing and a sex chair and an anatomically correct “previously loved” sex doll, but it also has a sweet waterbed and some really awesome lighting courtesy of 1,500 tracer bulbs, most of which he tore out of the new Cineplex 14 on Queens. It’s got some good stuff going for it, is what I’m saying, and any logical person would assume that Sophie would be down with the whole deal. But Oleg thought it needed a bit of a change so of course Caroline wrecks it by covering it in beige.

Max realizes that she needs to get her friend her job back [the irony] and tells Han they should go get high and watch movies. In the most obvious plot twist since “they were planning a surprise party the entire time,” she gets both Han and Caroline into Oleg’s newly female-ready apartment to kiss and make up. Minutes later and they are hiding in a closet [cue joke about Han’s sexuality!] from Sophie and Oleg. Their hijinks crouched in a small space with a sex doll aside, we’re also able to witness another turn of events you all knew was coming, that Sophie was actually into the weird kinky sex stuff and “[likes Oleg] a little bit” for who he is! 

Then Han admits that he overreacted and hires Caroline again.

Also the Current Total ends at $205, because apparently Oleg paid Caroline the money to make his apartment look like it was inhabited by a 70-year-old woman.

I guess I should probably talk a little bit about the episode as a whole. Yes, everything turned out exactly the way you thought it would, but what I’m more concerned about is what happened between the characters. Han is the butt of every joke in every episode, and it is fantastic to see him sticking up for himself for once. That being said, it is disappointing to have things resolved on the basis that Caroline “makes everything prettier,” and that he misses her. Caroline apologizes too, of course, but I doubt this will put an end to their sassing the man who signs their paycheques . As I mentioned earlier, it is kind of really stupid for Max to be trying to get Caroline re-hired when she cost her a pretty decent office gig just last week; it’s illogical and thinking about it still makes me angry.

Two episodes away from the car crashing in through their cupcake store wall and we’re still left without any real direction, though Caroline insists that cupcakes are still the dream. We’ll continue to stick around and see  what happens, I guess.

Stray Observations:

  • Max makes a joke about asking Oleg to at least keep it in his apartment, and this one woman goes crazy. There’s this really loud high-pitched “WHOOOOOO!” and she is loving it. 
  • Han has dubbed his employee handbook “The Han-book,” which is, as he says, super adorable.
  •  So Max actually makes fun of CBS, their very own network, which was very . . . uh . . . I guess I’m gonna go with the age-old “Simpsons did it first.”
  • According to Oleg he has banged 1,684 women in that apartment. By the end of the 4th season of How I Met Your Mother Barney Stinson had only reached 200. I highly contest Oleg’s claim. I contest it so much.
  • Out Of Date Reference of the Episode: Sophie quotes the infamous Antoine Dodson “hide yo kids hide yo wives,” which went viral in 2010.
  • 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Caroline is once again in her skimpy all-grey sleeping ensemble, while Sophie re-enters this section by dressing up as Sasha Fierce. Though I guess this is technically pre- that album since she kept singing bits of “Crazy In Love.”

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2 Broke Girls, S2E19 “And the Temporary Distraction”: A TV Review

Posted on March 19, 2013 by | 7 comments

necessarydistraction

I’m not going to lie, I’ve been infinitely grateful for the two week break CBS decided to give the show; working had made it hard to write these on Monday nights. It couldn’t have come at a better time, either, since last episode worked great as a sort of midseason finale, the opportunity for the show to head in vastly different and mysterious directions.

Open up on the diner, Max cracking wise about Han’s sexuality. Enter the character who is making the diner’s manager feel strange things in the downstairs department, the androgynous-looking lesbian Max has dubbed “Tina the Turner” due to her penchant for converting straight girls. Caroline scoffs at her co-waitress’ warnings and teenage boys the world over hold their breath.

Then they let out a sigh of disappointment, because all Caroline does is unconsciously give up her number before we cut to opening credits.

The next morning both girls wake up and Max lets her roommate know that her old temp agency calls. This elicits Caroline lamenting their fall from being small business owners,  but we all know where this is headed. Some inconsequential Sophie-and-Oleg-burst-into-their-apartment shenanigans later and the two are in an office talking to a delightfully deadpan office drudge. The way she answers questions with “Lemme give you a f’instance” is pretty darn funny.

They watch a sexual harassment video which will be a key plot point later.

As you may have guessed, the conflict of the episode presents itself when Caroline turns out to be a person who actually does her work instead of watching funny cat videos, and is legitimately interested in advancing at the company, filling out an application for a Junior Executive Position. This worries Max, who has been baking cupcakes to make a little extra cash at the diner, and clearly hasn’t completely given up on their dream.

Caroline nabs the position in a really quick back and forth of “YES’s” and “NO’s” between Max, Caroline, Office Manager Eli Green, and some dude named Ryan [I mean Leon]. For some reason her promotion is reason for champagne, which leads me to believe that this is a company with money to spare. Caroline talks to the boss and gets Max the position of Junior Executive’s Executive Assistant.

Max ultimately declines, pretty upset that Caroline quite the cupcake biz. After hearing her excuse that their dream blew up in their face, she asserts that “Lots of things blow up in your face, that’s part of being a woman.” I felt like this was somehow weirdly sexist, until Max continued on and I realized it was an ejaculation joke. Then I knew it was weirdly sexist. End on emotional note with them talking about whether or not cupcakes were the actual temp job, and that maybe it’s good not to have a dream.

Then Max gets Caroline fired by claiming that she sexually harassed her, which puts her on my list of horrible television characters. The scene leads to some laughs, such as Caroline’s explanation that “[they] were drinking and [she] was pretending to be a man,” but ultimately left me wondering why Max was being awful. Her excuse ends up being that Caroline forgot her dream, and that even if she’s not down with starting up the business again she should at least wait before jumping at the first opportunity that comes along.

We end with Caroline declaring [to cupcake-withdrawal sufferer Sophie] that they are back in business. Max declares that they’re doing things differently this time, but doesn’t explain how.

I guess it’s time for a plot hole paragraph. To begin with, how has Caroline not gotten a job in an office prior to this? Yes, her father was convicted of embezzling, but she still went to Wharton, “the most comprehensive source of business knowledge in the world.” She’s got the qualifications to land far better than a temp job, and we have to wonder why, before chasing the dream of Max’s Homemade Cupcakes became a thing, she wasn’t scouring offices all over NYC for a business position. It’s something that she clearly has a passion for, and it made me really think about how what Max did was a pretty big dick-move.

To end with, the final tally lies at $5.00, which I suppose we’re supposed to assume is from the cupcakes they’re selling at the diner. It’s also a 500% increase in funds, the largest financial jump the show has ever had, considering the last episode left them with a single dollar. The fact that the show has decided to have the two girls continue pursuing their cupcake shop dream was a pretty big letdown for me; the last episode set them up to do anything and this episode informed us we’re be back to more of the same. I understand that they don’t want to be waiting tables forever, but how about trying something new?

I was genuinely excited for 2 Broke Girls to come back, even if I wasn’t relishing writing these reviews [my Monday nights have been so free!]. Max and Caroline have returned to pursuing a dream I though they’d shelved when a car crashed into their storefront, and I guess the last five episodes of the season will reveal whether or not this new-old direction was the right one.

Stray Observations:

  • Max keeps her Temping Blazer in a big red bucket.
  • Caroline’s really embracing the “Broke Girl” lifestyle, talking about turning her underwear inside out instead of washing it and drinking way-too-old iced coffee.
  • Audience continues to mistake Sophie for Kramer.
  • Han is rapidly becoming one of my favourite characters on the show, with a fairly long speech addressing Caroline’s comment about wanting a workplace where her skills are valued and supported:

“Oh, are you not feeling supported here? I’m sorry, I’m a boss, not a bra. Should I praise you more? ‘Really killing it with the leaning on the counter doing nothing.’ Kudos, Caroline! Huzzah!”

  • Office Manager Eli Green displays some fairly obvious gay mannerisms, but is apparently straight judging by his admission to being accused of sexual harassment coupled with his desire to obtain one of Max’s butt photocopies.
  • 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Got some skimpy morning wear on the nubile Ms. Channing; Caroline rubs at Max’s breasts after she spills some champagne on her good bucket blazer.

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Beyond Good and Evil

Posted on March 11, 2013 by | 1 comment

Act 2, Scene 2 of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet has the titular character declare that “there is no good or evil, but thinking makes it so.” Years later, this same sentiment would be echoed by Milton’s Lucifer in Paradise Lost, vowing “The mind is its own place, and itself, can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

Moral ambiguity, in case you haven’t caught the drift, is the subject of today’s post. Our culture is becoming increasingly saturated with concepts and figures embodying this general rejection of our traditional measures of what right and wrong is. Jump back twenty years, and the definition of a bad guy would be fairly straightforward. A bad guy breaks the law. A bad guy hurts people. A bad guy lies. A bad guy uses people.

Today, all those things would describe five minutes of screen time with Breaking Bad’s Walter White…

Or Sin City’s John Hartigan…

Or The Walking Dead‘s Rick Grimes…

Or even any of these guys…

And lest anyone think that women are excluded from this mentality…

Now this isn’t the first time we’ve had a run of morally questionable heroes/antiheroes dominating popular culture. If I were to describe tough, unflappable, characters struggling against each other for their own ends and agendas, often in contradiction of the law- you’d probably assume I was talking about characters from some film noir piece.

And it makes sense, doesn’t it? Throw a mass of people in an economic depression with no end in sight, mix in distrust of the powers that be, add cynicism in regards to any progress or change, and when else can you expect but a tacit respect for the handful of people who do manage to carve themselves out a living. When you’re living paycheck to paycheck, “right and wrong” doesn’t quite seem so relevant as “effective or not.” When you feel helpless and voiceless, chances are anyone whose managed to be independent and powerful is going to be attractive- be he/she a suave criminal, a cunning businessman, a shrewd politician (à la Game of Thrones), or even just an all-around tough guy (see Sons of Anarchy).

And we’re not just talking about TV shows here.

Who are the good guys and bad guys in Inception?

Think about it- exactly which characters were representing the side of justice, truth, and freedom? Or Killing Them Softly? The Godfather Series? The Big Lebowski?

Our heroes today aren’t crusaders, they’re survivors. They’re those who manage to carve out a slice for themselves in spite of law, society, and conventional morality. “Good and evil” simply aren’t relevant.

And y’know what? I’m not hear to pass judgement on any of that.

There’s strong arguments to be made on all sides for whether or not this is a good or a bad thing or, to put it into morally ambiguous terms, a productive or a destructive thing. There’s even a strong case to be made for the “morally ambiguous” characters on TV and in the movies still never straying too far from anything truly socially unacceptable. Alternatively, you could (and I would) potentially argue that the moral system we had before all this wasn’t actually all that moral to begin with.

And what about the issue of cultural plurality in our ever-shrinking world? When what is right according to my moral code wrong according to yours, how do we proceed? Do we try to find some sort of umbrella system to keep us from fighting each other? Maybe we should declare moral anarchy and simply duke it all out based on the strength of our convictions. Certainly Nietzsche would approve of that.

All that’s to say that the issue’s complicated.

I don’t know, Michael Cera gif, I don’t know…

Speaking for myself, it is nice to see some kind of conviction, even if I don’t agree with the cause at hand. There’s a case to be made for apathy being the pinnacle of all evil. In a world where the greatest battles the average person (or rather, Westerner) faces are over such petty, empty things as getting a dinner order right or having to wait in line, seeing any kind of drive makes for a nice change. As with so much in this past year, it might not be great, but it’s a start.

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TV Characters We Hate To Love To Hate, Or Something

Posted on March 8, 2013 by | 6 comments

Having just finished an episode of The Big Bang Theory is as good a time as any to write this post, which elaborates on an article I found on Macleans.ca titled “How obnoxious is too obnoxious for a TV character?” In it TV writer Jaime Weinman primarily writes about TBBT and its most popular character, Sheldon Cooper.

Weinman points out that the 12th episode of this season, “The Egg Salad Equivalency,” was actually the highest rated in the show’s history, an astonishing fact when you realize that a large chunk of it features Sheldon being extremely [albeit unknowingly] sexist and racist. I’ve embedded the primary scene in question below:


It’s pretty awful, but the fact of the matter is that Sheldon Cooper is far from being the only popular sitcom character you would actually hate to be around in real life. Two years before TBBT even aired the US version of The Office was around, and the original British version came out four years before that. Michael Scott was a huge draw for people who tuned in weekly to see how a particular Scranton paper company was doing [as well as being solely responsible for repopularizing the phrase “that’s what she said”], but was also one of the most blindly insensitive people on the planet.

Very old television spoilers ahead.

Steve Carrell’s departure at the end of Season 7 meant that someone else had to be the new boss, and in spite of my suggesting that Matthew Perry would fit the bill that role was given to Ed Helms’ Andy Bernard. While his character managed to be a fairly likeable manager earlier on, the current [9th] season has had him transform into what is essentially a terrible human being.

download

He’s this close to being a moustache-twirling symbol of outright villainy.

He leaves the office to sail a boat out to some island, comes back expecting everyone to have covered for his month-long absence, and then, upon having his girlfriend [understandably] break up with him for another coworker proceeds to make both their lives a living hell. Crazy-talented webcomic artist Anthony Clark tweeted it best when he said:

And speaking of Ed Helms, take as another example his companion in the Hangover films, Alan Garner. Essentially just Zack Galifianakis playing the role he always plays [see: Due Date, Dinner For Schmucks, etc.], he is, as we’ve been talking about, a person who is so obnoxious that you wonder how they continue to be alive; there are times when you want to reach through the screen and slap them in the face.

Most TV shows [that’s the end of the movie portion of this post for now] have them, too. Adventure Time has the Ice King, Community has Pierce Hawthorne,  Modern Family has Manny Delgado [which you might debate, but I stand by this], and 30 Rock had the one-two punch of Tracy Jordan and Jenna Mulroney. Not only are the prevalent in television, but they also manage to become a huge draw for viewers.

Weinman ends his article by stating that “the show knows Sheldon is a jerk, but it doesn’t seem to know just how big a jerk he is.” I think it’s a fair assessment to say that all of the shows I’ve mentioned are aware that they’ve added obnoxious jerks to their casts, but the exact purpose for this is lost on someone who only had four hours of sleep last night. Sure, they can act as semi-antagonistic friends for our hero, usually the straight man, but eventually as the audience we’re forced to ask ourselves how people can bear having them around.

You could even justify it as being some sort of catharsis, rooted in schadenfreude, for whenever these character get their comeuppance, but it never happens. Sheldon will continue to be unaware of how his actions affect others, Pierce will continue to be extremely racist but get away with it due to his age, and we will continue watching them, amused, annoyed, or somewhere in between.

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