The Magicians' Best Trick is in Being Actually Pretty Good

Okay, I’ve got a story for you. Imagine, if you will, a young man named Quentin Coldwater who discovers that he has been accepted to study magic at a mysterious school and join the ranks of the world’s magicians, those who can work actual magic. Along the way, Quentin and his friends begin to discover that a beloved series of children’s books about adorable English orphans who escape to a magical land may, in fact, be based on reality. Of course, nothing is as it seems and while our heroes learn more about their powers, they become aware that a dark and powerful force is watching and coming for them.

I know, right? Can totally see where all this is going. The premise will sound achingly familiar to anyone who has even glanced in the direction of the fantasy section at Barnes & Noble. Nonetheless, SyFy’s The Magicians, based on the series of books of the same name by Lev Grossman, has finished its first season. And, actually? It’s pretty good.

Accio Preppy Girl!

What makes The Magicians’ story more interesting than what you might expect is that it actually does a fair job avoiding the well-worn tropes of fantasy. Some things remain, of course. There’s still an overly-powerful villain bent on doing bad things; the merry band of adventurers must still come together to save the land; there are, natch, talking animals. But where both the books and TV series succeed is in striking out on some new ground.  Unlike most fantasy stories, Quentin is not a chosen one. The books go out of their way to explain that there are no prophesies, no special destinies to be fulfilled. In fact, anyone can do magic if they are smart enough, focused enough, and possess some latent skill for it. Add to this that Quentin’s fellow students are far from the precocious mainstays that seem to pass through Hogwarts. They’re loud, drunk, hedonistic, complicated, a little giddy about how cool it is that they can do magic. When the books were published they were somewhat derisively referred to as “hipster Harry Potter”, which wasn’t altogether unfair.

All that gritty real life is on full display in the show. Brakebills University is the college to Hogwarts’ primary and secondary school and as such, the characters are that much older and more adult-acting. There’s no wondering about which students are having illicit romantic liaisons with each other; like many college students, these characters are fully in possession of their sex lives and their extra-curricular interests, most of which come in the form of intoxicants both literal (alcohol) and metaphorical (SyFy’s tagline for the show, after all, is “Magic is a drug”).

Levitation sex is totally a thing.

That reality sometimes comes crashing in on itself. A lot of folk attempted to read the books and couldn’t make it through the first one. This was largely due to how epic of an entitled, whiney jerk Quentin is but also because, frankly, does anyone really need another jaded-eyed novel about how excruciating it is to be young, pretty, powerful, and yet feel bored and unfulfilled? That was pretty much the entire point of Gossip Girl, but at least that story knew it was a satire. Here’s one area where The Magicians the show outshines The Magicians the book: the characters are actually interesting and the entire narrative thrust isn’t solely focused on alternately mocking fantasy stories while trying to weave an all-too-knowing narrative about privilege into the fabric.

Another area where the show succeeds is by significantly venturing from the book’s established plot, taking a page from Game of Thrones’ book. While fans of the book will recognize similar set pieces and plots, as well as a general agreement in narrative direction, the show contains a number of differences, some directly related to the outcome of the plot. Again, like Game of Thrones, characters that survive in the books are killed off early in the show. Other characters are created out of whole cloth, merged, or altered significantly. Case in point: Margo, a fellow student at Brakebills who’s name in the book is Janet. While Margo and Janet as characters are certainly echoes of each other, the very fact of Margo’s name is something of an Easter Egg that hints at a major difference in the end of the season.

The biggest change, however, is the inclusion of Julia, Quentin’s classmate/best friend/crush object since forever. Julia’s presence in the first book is almost non-existent; she’s seen in the first few pages and then vanishes for the rest of the story only to turn up at the very end of the book radically different from how she was at the start. We as readers don’t get her story until book two. The series instead interweaves Quentin’s formal magical learning at the storied and WASP-y Bakebills with Julia’s much more dangerous street-level education as hedge witch. Not only does this change give us as viewers a much richer sense of the world of magic and how deeply it runs, but it also allows us to see the development of Julia’s character in a way that lets her claim her own story.

Today, finger sparks. Tomorrow, I dunno. More levitation, maybe?

Generally, the show suffers in the areas that a lot of shows suffer during their inaugural seasons. The pacing of the first few episodes is particularly clunky, veering headlong into plot points that probably should have been spaced out a bit while lingering on others that didn’t need more than a mention or two. The writers also seem to have a hard time grasping the characters voices initially. Penny, a sometimes foil to Quentin, is cast as a rebel and a verbal flame thrower, but instead of coming off nuanced in the first few episodes he just lands on unrepentant jerk. Alice, the Hermione Granger of the group, is done up in Hollywood “smart girl” drag, which is to say she wears glasses and plaid skirts and high collars is given lines to emphasize how socially awkward she is.

Could be worse. At least she's not studying Communications.

The show also sometimes seems to forget its own mission statements. Remember how I said in the books Quentin was not a chosen one? Well, the show gets a little wobbly on that bit. Quentin isn’t portrayed as having some kind of grand destiny, but a twist in the plot that is missing from the books does imbue Quentin with a bit more importance than his written counterpart ever had. Likewise, the choice to showcase how different Julia and Quentin’s education is ends up being underlined a bit too much, right down to the cold, washed out colors Julia’s sequences are filmed in contrasting with Quentin’s highly saturated, vivid experience.

What the show does right, however, is start to course correct after the first few hours which is where I kind of started to fall in love with it despite its initial faults. Given that the books showcase a story that is so transparently about privilege, it is ironic to have a cast that is just…so…white. The show improves on this, adding more diversity to the cast and fleshing out the supporting characters from the book more specifically. Students Penny and Eliot benefit most from this approach with Penny portrayed by Indian American actor Arjun Gupta and Eliot, the sole LGBT character in the series who also is the only one in the book to have literally NO romantic interactions with anyone, given a relationship to develop in the show. (Viewers may find that relationship, shall we say, “problematic”, but that’s another point.)

Seriously. Eliot rocks. His entire magical motivation is basically gin.

What you end up with is a first season that starts off wobbly but finds its legs over time. The show has a little more creative freedom to play with and gets to include new story elements that the books, oddly, never found time for. Also worth mentioning is that the showrunner is Sera Gamble, who was the showrunner for most of the good seasons of Supernatural. The show is eminently binge-able and has already been renewed for a second season, making it perfect for your summer TV watching. 

Golan the Insatiable

How long did it take for me to get my boyfriend to write for the TV blog? Only about 6 months. I think I showed remarkable restraint! Please enjoy this offering about the new FOX cartoon series, Golan the Insatiable. --Maggie Cats

Golan the Insatiable is not your typical cartoon. Sure, there are the usual trappings of a family sitcom: A cozy Midwest town. An adorable precocious preteen daughter. Her older, more… shall we say “worldly” sister. Their single mom just trying to hold everything together.

This probably sounds familiar, but the title character, Golan the Insatiable, turns the premise on its head when he crash lands from an interdimensional portal and takes up residence in the family’s suburban home. A renegade demon lord exiled into a humdrum middle-American existence, he plots with the younger daughter Dylan to wreak havoc and return to his home.

Golan started out on the web, then became part of a cartoon anthology series, and has most recently segued into its own legit 30-minute animated series airing on Sunday nights. The fantastically imaginative concept started out as a series of short journal-style entries by Joshua “Worm” Miller on the web forum “Something Awful” between 2010 and 2012.

The journal features the earliest iteration of the characters, and the plot focuses mostly on Golan himself and the differences between his life in his Dungeons & Dragons-esque nightmare-dimension called “Gkruool” versus the USA everytown of Oak Grove, Minnesota. There are interesting distinctions between this rough and offensive early version and its later, tamer TV reiterations--most notably the Barbarian character “Yor” who is also stranded in our dimension. He’s loved by the citizens of Oak Grove just as universally as Golan is despised.

Golan evolved into a 2013 short series as part of Fox’s ADHD TV programming block alongside similarly adult animated shows like High School USA and Axe Cop. Miller himself voiced several characters, including Golan, but when the network scrapped the programming block, it seemed the adventures of Golan, Dylan (his preteen acolyte), and the Beekler family would also be over. While that wasn’t the case, the question is whether it should have been.

For just when it seemed like Golan had gone the way of the dodo, FOX instead conjured it back to life as part of its Sunday night animation lineup. The new Golan has undergone some changes--the Beekler family now consists only of single Mom Carole (sorry, affable loser Dad, Richard!), and daughters Dylan and Alexis. While Carole probably still writes erotic fan fiction about Golan, the Godlord’s perviness towards teen Alexis has been expunged from the plot--mostly likely deemed too objectionable by network producers.

For a 30 year-old, I watch a heck of a lot of animation. In this country, the medium has been relegated mostly to an “age ghetto” to use tvtropes.org terminology, or the lowest common denominator. It’s no surprise then with each reiteration, Golan the Insatiable has become less edgy, more appealing to a wider audience, longer, and dumber. The Fox network execs are probably pushing Family Guy-style frat humor since that seems to be what “the people” want...or is it just what they think we want? In any event, the latest version of Golan now features Rob Riggle, former correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, as a more bro-tastic bratty Golan. In essence, Golan has become American Dad. Just, you know, a demon.

Demons have feelings too.

The concept has undergone some positive changes too -- Dylan, originally a teenage boy in Miller’s writing, has transformed into a goth elementary-schooler (voiced in the latest version by the immensely talented Aubrey Plaza of Parks and Recreation and Grumpy Cat fame). Most characters, such as the town Mayor or Keith Knudsen, Dylan’s sister’s boyfriend, get much more characterization in this new revision. Also, with the negative continuity of the show, the horrors that Golan and Dylan inflict on the small community are reset at the beginning of each new episode (so it’s okay if Dylan or Golan bludgeon 5th grade bully McKenzie B. to death, right?).

Finally, though being the tamest version of the Godlord himself, the new Golan occasionally works entertaining feats of Gkruoolian magic with humorous results -- he breathes life into a backpack in the pilot, for example, or in the third episode creates a “shamunculous”, a monster that feeds on shame.

Nevertheless, the latest episodes of the show are mere shadows of the stronger, edgier, and more tightly-written episodes from the ADHD version and the web series that spawned it. Let this be a lesson to the fanboys and girls of America -- be careful when asking for your favorite shows to come back on the air, you might just get what you wish for. And it will be transformed into a shamunculous.


Golan the Insatiable airs Sunday evenings on Fox at 9:30 p.m. EST. You can also catch all four aired episodes on the FOX website.

Sense8

For your reading pleasure, here is a guest post from Mac about the Netflix original series, Sense8. I have heard a bit about it, but mostly I just sit around wondering how to pronounce the title. But after reading Mac's review, I don't think it's worth devoting any more brain power to this or any other question related to the show. --Maggie Cats

Sense8 is a Netflix Original directed by the Wachowskis (of The Matrix Trilogy fame). It's definitely the show for you if you like your social commentary like I like my pancakes... flat and chopped up into bite-sized pieces.

It's billed as a show about eight strangers forcibly connected mind to mind. None of this matters very much in the show. An honest billing would be, "this is a thin metaphor for the fact that life would be better if we were all in each other's heads."

The eight characters vacillate rapidly between three different states; the first is a nonchalance in the middle of what they assume to be incredibly vivid hallucinations of the lives of people around the planet. The second is panicking because they earlier experienced a hallucination. And the third is just kinda going about their business, completely ignoring the fact that they've been hallucinating on-and-off for days now.

The actual interaction between characters is incredibly minimal, and typically done more for a gag or a "hey isn't this a head trip" rather than anything which might advance what little story there is. We are flat-out told that there is some sort of shadowy organization that wants to chop up all of their brains, but that's most of what we know by now. Only one of the characters so far seems actually affected by this worldwide manhunt, even though another character should be on their radar. Seven of the eight have not the first idea what is happening to them; the last one has been told some stuff, but not very much, and how much he believes and understands is even less.

So in essence, it's eight different, pointless little stories being told all around the globe, filled with ham-fisted representations, like an entire police department that refers to one of their own number literally as a traitor for saving the life of a black kid. No joke, a black cop uses the actual word "traitor" to describe a patrol cop who found a wounded black teenager and brought him to a hospital.

 

 In their defense, the show IS set in Chicago.

 

With eight almost entirely unrelated stories to get through, very few of which have any impact on the tie-the-show-together story, no one story actually progresses very far during any particular episode. I have so far slogged through five episodes, and near as I can tell two whole days have passed on this planet. Beyond which, even inside each story, plot progresses at Dragon Ball Z pace. One young man lives in Nairobi. At one point he is walked at gunpoint from his own van to someone else's. No dialogue is spoken. No important clues are revealed in the background. Nothing happens but four men walking in a line. It takes five of his own scenes, cross-cut amongst scenes of the other seven main characters, for him to travel from van to van, so basically that's half an episode.

 

 His walking is over nine thousand.

 

I'm not myself a fan of letting shows play in the background while I do other things, but the literal only way I can recommend this show is if you simply need white noise to fill your home. I guess if you occasionally get calls from Rachel Maddow accusing you of being too liberal, you're prolly the target audience for their flagrantly masturbatory progressive propaganda, but I myself am left of center and I think they went way too far with their world of "everyone who disagrees with me is evil." 

 

I hesitate to say something is bad just because I don't like it, and I try to be tolerant of people who just want to sit there having their own beliefs reinforced. However, as far as I'm concerned there's a line, like the difference between Renaissance art and pornography, and you cross that line once you start demonizing your enemies. Saying "every gay person is wonderful" is a little flat, but technically not objectionable. Saying "literally every cop wants all black people dead" is too far.

And the Asian chick is a martial arts master. Because of course she is.

Wayward Pines

I'm of two minds about Wayward Pines. This is kind of surprising, since I'm usually pretty decisive.

I can typically tell in the first few episodes or even minutes if I am going to like a show. But Wayward Pines is proving a difficult nut to crack. Not to say that the plot is particularly complicated, but when the best way to describe a show is "Twin Peaks meets LOST," you can pretty much guarantee there is going to be some wacky stuff going on. 

Here's the official description from FOX (cue press release voice):

Based on the best-selling novel, “Pines,” by Blake Crouch, and brought to life by suspenseful storyteller M. Night Shyamalan, WAYWARD PINES is an intense, mind-bending new thriller in which nothing is what it seems. Secret Service agent ETHAN BURKE (Academy Award nominee Matt Dillon, “Crash,” “City of Ghosts”) arrives in the bucolic town of Wayward Pines, ID, on a mission to find two missing federal agents. But instead of answers, Ethan’s investigation only turns up more questions. Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan further from the life he knew, from the husband and father he was, until he must face the terrifying reality that he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.

That's not really super specific, so here's my short version of the plot. Matt Dillon is in a car crash while investigating the disappearance of two fellow Secret Service agents. He wakes up in a hospital in Wayward Pines, Idaho, where everything is super creepy. There are hardly any phones that work, he can't find his wallet or any possessions, and everyone seems to be part of some vast conspiracy. Mostly a conspiracy against allowing him to leave. And it turns out one the agents he has been searching for (and had previously had an affair with) has been living in Wayward Pines for years...even though she just went missing a short time ago.

Wayward Pines has the "Federal agent finds himself in a super strange small town filled with crazy people where supernatural things happen" vibe of Twin Peaks combined with the "seemingly normal people find themselves trapped in a super strange place that doesn't seem to follow the laws of physics and is part of a must deeper mystery" aspects of LOST. 

Normally this kind of thing would seem like a slam dunk, but Wayward Pines meanders just enough that I'm not sure it will sustain the intrigue of the pilot. A plot twist at the end of the second episode is enough to keep me watching for now, but if episode three doesn't step up I might consider dropping it. But let's be honest--there's not a heck of a lot on TV this summer and my OCD will probably kick in so that I feel obligated to finish the season.  

It certainly looks good though; everything about the show, sets, and characters works and is just slightly weird enough to be off-putting. And the performances are downright great. Props to Terrence Howard for playing the local Sheriff with just the right amount of ambiguity that I am super interested in finding out his part in the overall conspiracy. I was also really excited to see Carla Gugino in the cast as the missing-now-found Secret Service agent. 

In sum, Wayward Pines has a great creepy feel that hints at a much larger mystery, but it's going to have to work to keep up the momentum established in the pilot. If you're looking for something to watch this summer, you could do a lot worse. 

Wayward Pines airs on FOX Thursdays at 9:00 PM EST. You can catch up with the first two episodes on FOX's website or on Hulu.

The Kids are Alright

It’s no secret that I am, at my core, a nerd.   Specifically, a comic book nerd.  As Maggie Cats mentioned last week, I am seriously excited about the wealth of comic book properties that we’re going to be seeing on TV this year.  And while television may just be echoing the notion that movie studios have already picked up on, namely that comic book properties can make for big hits, that doesn’t make it any less cool for what we’re about to see every week. 

I’ll be talking more about this new Valhalla that we find ourselves in later, but before the ginormous comic book television extravaganza begins next week with Gotham, I decided to go back and rewatch one of the only television mediums that for years has been safe for superheroes – cartoon shows.  Particularly, one of the single best superhero cartoon shows ever to air on television, Young Justice.

"Don't you...forget about me..."

Young Justice can be loosely understood as the adventures of the teenage sidekicks to the bigger DC Comics superheroes.  In practice, the show merged characters and stories from two different comic books, the Teen Titans franchise (which also has had several of its own cartoon shows) and the eponymous Young Justice series which was a short-lived early ‘00s book that was essentially Teen Titans by a different name.   The stories are more or less similar: teenage superheroes, by and large the protégés of stalwarts like Superman, Batman, the Flash, Green Arrow, and Martian Manhunter, are brought together both to help each of them be around other young people like themselves and for training with the implicit understanding that, due to the dangerous nature of saving the universe all the time, eventually each of these young heroes is probably going to have to take over for their mentor someday.

And that point right there illustrates one of the reasons why Young Justice was such a powerful show, cartoon or otherwise.  The show is premised on the notion that teenagers are living with a sword of Damocles having over their heads constantly and preparing themselves for their mentors and family to one day be killed.  That’s some heady stuff to load onto a cartoon show.  Young Justice gets away with it by introducing characters that are not only well-written, but are also treated seriously.  The show wasn’t afraid to go to pretty dark places conceptually, even if it always did so with a sense of adventure and humor firmly attached. 

They actually smothered Superboy with a kryptonite pillow right after this scene. 

Even if you’re not a big comic book fan, you’re going to find familiar characters here.  Superboy and Robin are both leads, as is Speedy/Red Arrow who is familiar to anyone whose watched Arrow.  Rounding out the cast are Artemis, another Green Arrow protégé; Miss Martian, young cousin of J’ohn J’onzz, Martian Manhunter; and Kid Flash, the resident speedster.  The team is led by Aqualad, an Atlantean who is struggling with his own inner issues.  Other characters like Wonder Girl, a teenaged Zatanna, and Rocket fill in on missions. 

The thing about watching Young Justice that makes it such a rewarding TV show is the level of sophistication it takes in long-form story telling, something that is usually unheard of in what is nominally a children’s show.  In order to make that format work, characters have to change and evolve over the course of several episodes, which is exactly what they do here.  In contrast to most superhero cartoon shows, the status quo is almost never returned at the end of any given episode.  In every case, something alters the story or the way the characters interact with each other, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.   Because the writers treat the characters respectfully, they have secrets and fears as well as desires and hopes.  In other words, there’s pathos in them thar superheroic hills. 

ALL THE FEELZ!!!

All of which is part of what makes the story behind Young Justice so heartbreaking.  The show only ran for two seasons from 2011 to 2013 when Cartoon Network abruptly canceled it.  Fans were understandably flummoxed; the show had enjoyed critical acclaim and was performing well.  It wasn’t until after its cancellation that writer and producer Paul Dini stated in the media that the reason for cancellation was because Cartoon Network feared that the show was becoming too popular among teenage girls.

Let’s unpack that for a moment.  A critically acclaimed TV show, performing well with a solid fan-base gets cancelled by its network because the network fears that rather than hit the target audience of teenage boys, girls have started to like the show.  I could see the argument for more girls tuning in; the show featured several female leads (Miss Martian, Artemis, Zatanna and others) who were heroic, well written, fully-fleshed out characters.  Young Justice passes the Bechdel test pretty well.  Note that they didn’t say that boys weren’t watching any longer – just that more girls had started to pick it up.  According to Dini, the network was concerned because “girls don’t buy toys” in addition to being worried that boys would start to view the show as a “girl’s show” if they learned that too many girls were watching.

"That is some BULLSHIT..."

If Dini’s take on this is accurate, it’s a brand of shortsightedness that is, in addition to being ridiculously misogynistic, is also ridiculously wrong.  I dare anyone to go to any ComicCon out there and not see girls buying toys.  (Even if the network’s assumption that girls didn’t buy toys was correct, what would stop them from branding the items the girls did buy with their product?)  I also completely blow the bullshit whistle on the idea that boys will stop watching shows about Batman, Robin, Superman, Green Arrow and the rest of the comic book world because they think girls may watch those shows too.  I just don’t think that boys are as simple-minded as networks apparently think they are.

In the end, what we get is a brilliant TV show taken off the air before its time.  Whether that has to do with a network’s backward thinking or not, it still leaves a Firefly-esque hole in my nerdy little heart.  In any case, do yourself a favor and check out Young Justice if you want a nice base-layer of comic book-y goodness ahead of the deluge of shows that we’re going to see this fall.  It will give you a new appreciation for a ton of old characters and introduce you to new ones that you’ll want to know more about.

The True Death

Our long, sexy, national nightmare is over.  This past summer, perennial WTF generator True Blood finally met the True Death and concluded a seven season-long run on HBO.  And while I can’t say that I’ll really miss the show, I am going to miss always knowing that there was something on TV that would make me shake my head and mutter, “well, okay…” 

True Blood started ridiculously strong back in 2007.  In an era where every single story emphasized the misunderstood, sympathetic, chaste, teenage nature of vampires, True Blood’s malicious, randy bloodsuckers were a breath of fresh air.  There was no “romantic” staring into each other’s eyes scenes, no “they just don’t understand us” soliloquies set to classical music.   You got the sense that the entire cast and crew of the show read about 30 pages of an Anne Rice novel and said to themselves, “well this is boring as hell” and then immediately got to filming a butt sex scene while covered in blood.

YES!

Because the show’s mission was always to showcase adults, the initial storylines functioned as a mature, if telegraphed, metaphor not for growing up or some other theme ripped from Joss Whedon’s notes, but for social issues like racism, anti-gay bigotry, and the American South’s continuing struggles emerging into the 21^st century.  (Sorry, southern readers.  You know it’s true.)  And while the show was never subtle about its issues (the opening credits featured a billboard sign reading “God hates fangs”), it made up for its lack of grace with original storytelling and fresh visuals that hadn’t been used before.  If you haven’t seen the show, the first time a vampire is staked it will make your mouth fall open. 

The first season featured an erstwhile murder mystery as a framing story to introducing us to a world where vampires have “come out of the coffin” (what is this thing you call subtlety?) and organized, more or less, under two factions – those who want to integrate into society and live among humans thanks to a new synthetic substance called True Blood that mimics human blood thus negating the need for vampires to feed off humans, and those vampires who still believe that they are the superior race and that humans should be subjugated, not cohabitated with.  Later seasons ran with this tension, showing more and more about how vampire society worked and the ways in which the rest of the world had adapted or not, including the rise of “fangbangers” who are humans who have a sexual proclivity with vampires and drinking blood and even vampire-focused legal offices that only operate at night and help vampires who have been undead for many years figure out what their legal rights are to property owned while they were living.  Add that to a healthy dose of graphic sexuality, and you're at least going to be entertained for an hour each week. 

Did I mention the ho-yay?

All of this world-building made for fascinating watching.  Even as the show began to jump off the rails around its fourth or fifth season, seeing how the creators imagined how the most mundane aspects of everyday life would be managed in a world where vampires were real (a specialty airline service with UV-blocking windows caters to the vampires who wish to travel abroad) was always still interesting.  And if you couldn’t get into the subplots involving werewolves, fairies, shapeshifters, or witches, you always at least had the recurring southern gothic drama between the townspeople of Bon Temps, Louisiana, to keep you occupied. 

Unlike the characters, however, True Blood was not destined for an eternal life and began to age.  Plotlines got more and more ridiculous, the show developed an unhealthy tendency toward melodrama such that the speechifying and campy grandstanding of the later seasons stand in stark contrast to the more nuanced and, at times, genuinely scary first few seasons.  Where the first two seasons played with the audience’s expectations about reality and mystery, the show in its later life preferred to keep strictly to over-the-top plot contrivances and characters behaving like characters instead of people. 

An assemblance of well-developed, three-dimensional characters that were sadly never seen again after season three. 

Nothing is more illustrative of this trend that season seven’s insistence upon finding a way to bring lead characters Sookie and Bill back together.  True Blood was premised on the story of diner waitress Sookie Stackhouse falling in love with Bill Compton, a nearly 200-year-old vampire who is the first of his kind to make himself known to humans in his small Louisiana town.  Sookie and Bill remained the show’s primary couple for the first three years before starting to breakdown in season four.  By the start of the final season, it is well established that both characters have moved on, however the writers couldn’t resist the chance for an easy bookend and piled on the nostalgia to create a final story arc where both characters realize that they are Meant To Be or something.  This is particularly remarkable considering that neither character in the novels that serve as the show’s source material ever comes to any similar consideration.  Thanks, Hollywood. 

The final season is slightly mitigated by sheer number of Easter Eggs tossed in to appease long-time viewers.   The return of several fan-favorite characters, as well as the reunification of several others, helped to send the show off properly even if several other major characters, Tara and Alcide being the two most prominent, are given some of the most abrupt write-offs in the history of television.

So Hail and Farewell, True Blood.  I won’t miss your convoluted storylines, but I will miss Eric.  I won’t miss your unfortunate tendency toward saccharine storytelling, but I will most definitely miss Pam.  Actually, thinking on it, Pam is the thing I’m going to miss the most.  Someone get Kristin Bauer van Straten a pilot, STAT.  Meanwhile, I remain confident that television audiences have not lost their taste for WTF programming.  In any case, Salem is going to have some large, bloody shoes to fill.

Oh, Pam.  You can keep sassing me/slitting my throat for another ten seasons. 

Bloated. Just Like Pregnancy!

It’s a familiar story.  Once upon a time, a young princess met a handsome price, got married, and moved into a fantasy castle.  Life was wonderful for the princess, but the handsome prince wanted more, so he arranged for his wife to be clandestinely raped by the devil in order to produce the antichrist.  I’ll grant you, this fairy tale may not have the same familiarity of a Cinderella or a Snow White, but after watching NBC’s remake of the 1968 horror movie Rosemary’s Baby, you’d be forgiven for wondering exactly how many of the tropes are continued from one story’s iteration to another, just like a fairy tale. 

This time around, Rosemary’s Baby is a miniseries starring Zoe Saldana in the title role made famous by Mia Farrow.  The miniseries expands significantly on the original film and Ira Levin’s original novel in an attempt to ratchet up the dread and paranoia that Rosemary feels over the course of her pregnancy.  Unfortunately, like an expectant mother well into her third trimester, the end result is a kind of bloating that makes the entire experience uncomfortable, rather than beautiful.

Demon baby.  Svelte pregnancy figure sold separately. 

The plot is familiar to anyone who remembers the movie or the book: Saldana plays Rosemary, a young woman who moves with her struggling creative husband from her familiar environment into a band new city.  (Originally New York, in this version Paris.  More on that in second.)  Elevated to living in a grand apartment far outside their normal standard of living by an eerily kind and giving older couple that establish themselves as mentors, confidantes, and sort of keepers of the young couple, Rosemary soon finds herself pregnant with the child she’s always wanted.  As her pregnancy progresses, Rosemary begins to sense that something is wrong and that her neighbors are far too invested in her unborn child.  Eventually coming to believe that the building’s residents are actually cultists who are planning to use her child as a sacrifice to the Devil, Rosemary falls into a web of paranoia and suspicion as everyone seems to be against her.  Or are they?  (Spoiler alert: they are.)

This is all a fairly simple story, which makes the decision to stretch that story into double its original length a confusing one. It’s frankly the hallmark of this version of the story: it’s at turns bad and good, boring and thrilling, atmospheric and dull.  Several changes were made, some for better and others for worse.  Fair warning: from here on out there may be spoilers.  I hesitate to say that, since I think the statute of limitations on a story that was filmed in the 1960s has passed, but just in case you’re not the classic horror movie kind and want to keep yourself pure for your eventual Halloween movie marathon, you’ve been warned.

Stop acting shocked, Mia. The movie is 46 years old.  This isn't a Game of Thrones post. 

Whereas the original film depicted Rosemary conceiving her child fairly early on, that event doesn’t happen here until the end of the first episode of the two-part series, effectively almost two hours into the action.  That split generates a bloated first half that attempts to establish the creepiness and dread that the second half will need to capitalize on, but more frequently feels boring and resorts to mini storylines that are added and dropped in order to keep the viewers waiting for the conception scene.  Zoe Saldana does an admirable job carrying the first boring half, but there’s only so many times she can have a sickly sweet conversation with her new benefactors, Margaux and Roman Castevet, as they pour her another special herbal shake that they insist will help her get pregnant before the audience is like, “they’re clearly evil – get a new apartment.”   The conception scene comes as a relief, mostly because so much has been built up about the Castavets that we no longer have any doubt that they’re Satanists and just want to get to the demon lovemaking already.  Thankfully, the second half proves to be a fairly tense and nerve-wracking 90 plus minutes, once Rosemary is actually pregnant and we can return to the original plot.

In that same vein, Roman Castevet’s characterization is given far too much weight.  Despite the fact that he’s played by Jason Isaacs, a man who I will watch be a villain in anything you care to put him in, the time and attention paid to his backstory is needless.  We certainly learn more about him here than we did in the original story; In this version, Rosemary discovers a series of murders of young women in the apartment, all of whom shared a connection to wealthy resident of the apartment luxury apartment building and whom the police pursued in connection to the murders before he died 30 years ago.  Surprising no one, the original suspect and Roman Castavet are the same person.  Because he’s the Devil.  Like, literally the Devil.  And he’s the one who had sex with Rosemary, not to raise a child to sacrifice to himself, but to have a son here on Earth.  While this gives some great opportunities for Isaacs be menacing, merging the character with the demon, a change from the original, feels too small.  One of the failings of modern suspense stories, likely the result of an audience grown far savvier over time, is that no character can just be himself – any villain must also really be someone else in disguise.  The irony is that attempt to hide the villain’s true nature has the opposite effect here.  Instead of wondering who’s behind it all, we instantly suspect the worst of Roman.

Wealthy, powerful, and handsome?  Yup, clearly evil.  

There are welcome changes to this version as well.  In the film, Rosemary and her husband are a small town couple moving to New York City.  The miniseries updates this, having the couple move from New York City following a miscarriage to Paris.  I could be cynical and say this change was made in an attempt to appear new and fresh, New York having lost some of its shine as an unconquerable city coupled with every young wannabe sophisticate in the United States insisting upon proving their bone fides by having lived abroad, but to be honest I liked the change.  The writers understood that viewers are no longer sympathetic to Mia Farrow’s willow-y, weepy heroine, so the modern day Rosemary has to appear competent and capable.  She may not be like other modern day heroines in a horror movie who will get into a fistfight with a monster, but we need to at least believe that she has some of the vim and vigor that she’ll need to have us on her side.  

Putting Rosemary into a setting where she knows no one and barely even knows the language is also a nice way of further isolating her.  The social constraints against a wife in the 1960s go a long way to explaining why Mia Farrow’s Rosemary doesn’t just leave the evil apartment building and go stay with her mom for a few months or something.  Given that this modern Rosemary would almost certainly have a Facebook page in addition to probably Twitter, Instagram and any other form social networking, it would be a harder sell to put in her New York and ask us to believe that she has no way of communicating with anyone.  Putting her in a place where she literally doesn’t speak the language and is separated by an ocean from her family back home is an example of how to properly update a story.

"Voulez-vou coucher avec moi et mon démon bébé-papa?"

The change of venue has an aesthetic appeal as well.  Paris is beautiful on film and has the benefit of undercutting all that beauty with a slice of darkness.  New York worked as a setting in the film because of the city’s stained and gritty feel in the 1960s.  It was all texture and shadow, like a dirty Baroque painting.  Watching Rosemary navigate her way through Paris’s gothic streets while getting steadily weaker as her pregnancy gets more and more frightening is a really fascinating image.  Likewise the final images of a suave and sophisticated looking Rosemary walking her infant demon baby in a pram down the banks of the Seine look utterly glamorous, even if Rosemary's sudden and uncharacteristic decision to go all evil at the last minute because WOMAN MUST DO EVERYTHING FOR THEIR BABIES is, at best, falsely nostalgic writing.  

Rosemary’s Baby works as a miniseries suitable for summer watching when there isn’t a lot of new content on TV and you don’t have much else to get invested in.  And while it is overstuffed, I’ll credit the miniseries for at least attempting to bring something new to the story rather than just release it in the theatres as a bankable property with new faces but old ideas.

Binging and Purging

In just a few short years, the concept of binge watching a TV show over the course of a weekend has gone from covert activity to guilty little secret to blatantly-confessed event.  That this trend of watching television has grown more prominent clearly isn’t in doubt – look no further than Netflix’s practice of releasing entire seasons of its programming all on the same day for evidence that this is a pattern that entertainment studios will continue to look toward in the future.  And none of us are alone in this - 61% of Americans binge-watch their television, a sizeable demographic, but also a sizeable shift in the way we watch TV over the past decade.

I feel you, animated person.  I feel you.

But for those of us enjoying the entertainment rather than thinking about the business implications, we sometimes have to balance the desire to sit and binge an entire series against how much time we can realistically spend on the couch in our pajamas.  Thankfully, the good people at Nielsen have got us covered on this one.

Released earlier this year, Nielsen (the same company that tracks viewership for your favorite television shows which also makes it sorta kinda the same advisory body that is responsible for killing your favorite television shows after it has determined that not enough test households are watching) has put together a list of how much time it actually takes to binge watch a variety of shows.

Want to watch the entirety of the BBC’s Sherlock and bask in all its Cumberbatch-ery? That’s going to cost you 14 hours of your time.  Up for the political machinations of Kevin Spacey?  House of Cards will take 22 hours.  The Walking Dead can serve up a full one day, fifteen hours of zombies straight to your living room.  If you want to go to there, 30 Rock will take two days, two hours all together.  Mad Men weighs in at two days, nine hours. How I Met Your Mother takes three days, two hours to get to the damn point already. (That point is that Ted is a terrible person.)  Better pray that you don’t run out of time – 24 takes six days, two hours to watch completely.

And yet, that’s still not even scratching the surface for some shows.  Supernatural can give you six days and one hour’s worth of ridiculously overly attractive people fighting demons.  Law and Order: SVU takes ten days and ten hours to tell stories about horrible people doing horrible things.  Binging on donuts and The Simpsons will last you eight days, ten hours (and going strong).   It will take 12 days, nine hours to catch every episode of Pokemon.  And if you really, really want to have an experience with warping both space and time, it takes more than two full weeks to watch every episode of Doctor Who.

The scary thing? Homer's still only on the Fifth Doctor.

Knowledge is power, my good people.  Don’t go into your binge-watch this weekend without knowing what you’re committing to. 

To see the full list of how long it takes to watch TV’s popular shows, go here.  To see how long your favorite sci-fi shows take, it’s here.  Finally, if you really want to know how much of your lives you’ve lost to cartoons, this is the place. 

Ehrmagerhd Sperts Merbers!

Okay, peaches. Now that the U.S. Men's Soccer Team HAVE (PLURAL) lost to Belgium and we, as a nation, HERETOFORE BOYCOTT WAFFLES AS WELL AS POMMES FRITÉS*, let's settle into some Netflix while we await the World Cup final with some sperts merbers.  Who needs carbs? We need to look sick in our soccer gear. 

The Price of Gold

You guys, you guys, you guys. Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. You know you love this shit. We were treated to a recap of the Nancy and Tonya saga during this past Olympics in Sochi. NBC produced an original docu that aired, weirdly enough, before the ladies' singles figure skating finals. For the NBC production, Mary Carillo was able to gain access to Harding and Kerrigan for sit-down interviews. The Price of Gold was produced as part of ESPN's 30 for 30 series, and features mostly interviews with Harding, Harding's childhood friends, and former coaches. Kerrigan only makes an appearance in figure skating and news footage. 

 The subject of many a late-night joke, the Nancy and Tonya story was one of those media events that took on a life of its own, garnering hours of media coverage and pages of newsprint devotion. The event and the spectacle that followed has not yet been forgotten by the public consciousness. It elevated the popularity of the sport, and apparently Tonya's side of the story has been turned into a musical. (The part of my brain that loves trashy media is super stoked about the latter.)

The story was simple enough. Tonya Harding was the 1991 Skate America champion, U.S. figure skating champion and a second-place finisher at Worlds. Not too bad for a girl who grew up in a poverty-stricken and dysfunctional family and who famously took skating lessons at the local mall because she couldn't afford to study privately. She was blue-eyshadowed and a little trashy, and definitely didn't fit the mold of the Disney princess-esque pseudo pageant queen that some figure skating fans have come to expect and demand. Contrast that to Nancy Kerrigan, who grew up in a working-class but loving and stable family and who fit the stereotype of the beautiful and balletic skating champion. In spite of Tonya's seeming disadvantages, it was she who won the U.S. National title in 1991, with Kerrigan coming in second.

In spite of their differences, both ladies seemed poised to take home a medal at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. Then things all kind of went to shite. On the morning of January 6, 1994, just weeks before the start of the Olympics, Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed in the knee as she came out of practice at Cobo Arena in Detroit. At first, the attack seemed to have come out of the proverbial ether, but suspicion soon fell on Tonya Harding after it was revealed that Kerrigan's assailant, Shawn Eckhart, was associated with Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly. Harding was accused of masterminding the plot against Kerrigan. The motive? Jealousy. Money. The usual suspects.

We skate to the death!

You see, although Harding had the titles, Kerrigan had all the corporate sponsorships, and thus, all the money. (Kerrigan was famously gifted with Olympic skating outfits by fashion designer Vera Wang.) Harding was struggling financially (she became famous for her "homemade" costumes) and felt unsupported financially by her skating federation, and was angry that no corporations had approached her, whereas Kerrigan had lined up sponsors ranging from Campbell's Soup to Evian Water. Remember, Harding was the champion, not Kerrigan.

The theory is that Harding felt Kerrigan was her biggest competition for the gold medal. The federation, and the corporate sponsors, clearly adored Kerrigan.  Nothing was ever proven against Harding, but the suspicion was that Harding thought if she could knock Kerrigan out of contention for the gold medal in Lillehammer, then she would almost certainly win. The incentive for winning the gold was motivation enough. The gold medal comes with not only all the media exposure, but a cash prize, and is generally accompanied by the aforementioned corporate sponsorships. 

Harding's feelings, according to the 30 for 30 interview, are that there is a lot of corruption in the figure skating world, and that the Olympic champion is "pre-selected" from among a list of acceptable candidates. Harding's current feeling is that her skating federation thought she was fine as the U.S. champion, but she wasn't acceptable as a World or Olympic champion, regardless of what she'd done at the 1994 Winter Games. Her homemade costumes, her athletic style, and her mouthy attitude were not marketable. (Every time I picture figure skating authorities, I picture Barry Fife from Strictly Ballroom. See below.)

To date, Tonya Harding retains her innocence. She was stripped of one of her U.S. National Champion titles and due to her famous "skate lace malfunction," did not medal at the 1994 Olympics. Nancy Kerrigan did not win gold that year, either. That honor went to Ukrainian upstart, Oksana Baiul. 

Nancy Kerrigan retired from amateur figure skating competition after Lillehammer.

Harding was banned from figure skating for life and never skated professionally again.

The sad part of it all was that Harding was a very talented, if troubled, skater. She went down in history as the first woman to land the difficult triple axel in competition.

Why, why, why?

Schooled: The Price of College Sports

You want to get schooled? 

Gather round children and hear the tale of the NCAA. This documentary is about a sports scandal, but it makes the Harding/Kerrigan fiasco look like amateur hour. I am a big supporter of college sports and of my alma mater (WE ARE SPATANSSS!!!), so this documentary made me several kinds of angrysad.

Schooled is an expose of the shocking level of greed and corruption that has taken over the NCAA. It focuses on college players, "student athletes," who are being taken for a ride at the hands of a supposedly beneficent system.

Let's pretend you are a high school athlete who has been recruited by a major football university to play gridiron football for that school, and in the process, you will be earning the school major buck$$$ as well as potentially helping the team to a national title. If all goes well and you are not injured in play, you can then be recruited by the pros. In exchange, these 17 and 18-year-olds receive tuition, room and board, and a college education that, in other circumstances, they may not be able to attain. 

Sounds like a great deal, right? Well, it's more complicated than that. As recent debates have indicated, college players are agitating for more compensation, unionization, and pay-to-play. Why have they got such a problem? The deal the athletes make with the NCAA is not as great as it seems on the surface. 

College sports in the United States is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Colleges and universities make serious bank off tickets, concessions, and merch. So, the players get a cut of that, of course. Ehhh, not so much. Profits from football and basketball games go to the NCAA and the schools.  Players are actually banned by NCAA rules from making any money off their likeness. For example, if you are a star quarterback for University of State U., the school may manufacture as many jerseys with your starting number on it, but they will not pay you any of the proceeds. If the school decides to make your team the subject of a video game created by EA sports, they can manufacture a computer generated image of you, call it you, stick your jersey number on it, sell the game, make a profit, and they do not cut you a check. They can also make multi-million-dollar deals with television networks to air games in which your team will play. Again, no dohlars for you.

But, but, but, Arsenic Pie, they get a free education! That's enough, right?

Ehh, yeah. About that "education." This is not to say that there isn't such a thing as an outstanding student and athlete at the college level. However, many athletes who are recruited by universities are not academically prepared for the rigors of a college education. Athletes are often admitted on a special status -- that means they often have lower grades and SAT scores than regular students. For example, Stanford University, with a big football program, is famously highly selective of its undergraduate students. I am not being a snob here, but higher grades and test scores are often the result of better pre-college academic preparation (they are often also a function of class privilege and wealth, but that's for another day), and better pre-college preparation often, but not always, results in higher levels of success in college. (Author's note:  I slacked off in high school but graduated college with a 3.7 #humblebrag.) Regular students at University of State U. are expected to attend a certain number of class hours and keep themselves out of academic probation. Student athletes are expected to remain academically eligible to play, in addition to the 40 to 50 hours a week they are expected to be in training and practice. There is really not a whole time for the athletes to attend class or study. This has given rise to "special classes" for athletes, in which they are required to write a paper or read a book, or some other essentially symbolic classwork that they actually have time to do. This has led to "outrage" over student athletes taking "fake" classes. Whether the classes are "fake" or not, what's true is that the athletes are not getting the same quality of education that the normally matriculated students are getting. It may be free for many of the athletes but, I guess...uh...you get what you pay for. (???) Since student athletes have to stay academically eligible to play, and since many of them are academically unprepared, and since many athletes do not have time to keep up with a regular course load on top of their training schedule, is it really any wonder that universities have resorted to giving athletes special classes so they can stay eligible? Because the schools are deliberately recruiting athletes that they willingly know are woefully academically unprepared in order to have a better team so they can win more games. Winning more games = more potential for a championship title. Winning a championship title = more money. So, the argument that they're getting a free education in exchange for their play doesn't hold much water with me. If it's not of the same quality as the other degree-holders from the same university, then it is separate and it is unequal. Athletes often do not finish their degrees, and leave for paid play in the pro leagues. Who can blame them? They either don't have time to get a part-time job or they're not allowed to, so if their families can't support them financially, how do they live? Student athletes have complained about their inability to buy food. With coaches and administrators pocketing million-dollar paychecks, and with the NCAA making billions, this is an outrage. 

If the student athlete is injured and can no longer play, they lose their athletic scholarship. If they cannot afford to continue with their education, they must either leave school or take out loans. Then they would be expected to finish their education taking normal classes, which they may or may not be ready for.

So, the athletes can just choose not to sign a contract with the NCAA, right?

Nope. All NCAA accredited schools (read: the big sports schools) require student athletes to sign a contact in order to play.

So, if they don't want to play by the NCAA's rules, they can just choose not to play, right?

Right, and they can miss out on the potential for a lucrative career in the pros. For talented athletes, that may be their only avenue out of poverty.

Oh, and the NCAA is a non-profit organization. So all of that profit that they make off the efforts of young players is tax-free.

The lesson for student athletes is, if you want to have a chance to make it to the pros, you had better be prepared to make a deal with the devil.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster

Onward to more controversy! I'm feeling British today, so you must read that as conTRAHvahsy.

So...steroids. I am from the generation that was brought up to be scared poopless of using steroids. I was warned if I ever put anything that resembled an anabolic steroid in my booty to enhance athletic performance (not that 13-year-old me wanted to excel athletically), I would immediately turn into a cyborg.

I was warned that if I used steroids, my boobs would shrink and my period would dry up. I was on board with all that and was about to shoot up until they mentioned the lady facial hair part. I was obedient enough to ingest the information in my "good life choices" classes presented by sexually repressed adults so that I have more or less avoided all of the "risky" behavior that they warned us against.

Given that, I was really surprised that I ended up enjoying Bigger, Stronger, Faster: The Side Effects of Being American.

I wouldn't say it is pro-steroid in any way, but it does ask some interesting questions about the mixed messages we send about body image (to men as well as women, but this is one of those rare documentaries that focus on male body image) and about durgs. I mean drugs. I mean. OYU UDN'TSLHO UES DURGS. Why is our society accepting of the use of certain drugs, and we have deemed other drugs to be "bad"? After all, caffeine is a drug that enhances performance (increase in energy) and I've had three cups of butter coffee and a Diet Coke already today and it's not even noon. Butter coffee, you guys.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster focuses on Christopher Bell and his two brothers, Smelly and Mad Dog. Both of Bell's brothers are steroid users, and Mad Dog suffered from drug addictions that eventually took his life in late 2008. The documentary examines the use of anabolic steroids and its relationship to the American Dream. 

I liked this documentary because it pointed out the hypocritical way in which Americans view drugs. On the one hand, Americans decry steroid use, but they spend millions on the rather shady supplement industry. Similarly, some drugs are labeled as steroids and athletes are banned from using them, but they are able to take cortisone shots (Spoiler alert: cortisone is also a steroid.)  I think we've all seen the outrage that accompanied the revelation that Lance Armstrong was juicing. 

I find the last bit especially pertinent today with the Dr. Oz controversy. People who are desperate to lose weight line up in droves to buy a chemically suspect product off an internet retailer that sprung up overnight after an airing of The Dr. Oz Show, but everyone knows that steroids are Satan's own brew.

(That's the second time I've mentioned the devil in this blog post. No known association available at publication date.)

I'm not saying I'm in favor of people going out and shooting themselves in the bum with a steroid to enhance their performance, but I do feel people ought to take a look at what sorts of drugs make someone a "cheater" and what is only an "enhancement."

Also, it features this cow:

Cow.

Shaolin Soccer

So, onto less heavy subject matter. Shaolin Soccer is a 2001 comedy from Hong Kong about a shaolin monk, Sing, who wants to promote kung fu through soccer. Very apropos, is it not? Sing dresses like Bruce Lee and recruits his fellow monks to create an unbeatable soccer team.

Team Shaolin enters a competition and they play against Team Evil, a team that's been injected with an American drug that has made them superhuman (I'm guessing the secret ingredient is Red Bull; I hear it gives one wings). Team Shaolin beats Team people all over the world practice kung fu in their daily lives. The plot is a bit weak, but it's a fun movie with a soccer theme. It's a Hong Kong kung fu movie, so it pays a lot of homage to Bruce Lee, which I of course appreciate. It's very promotional of kung fu, which the Chinese gubbmint seems to have no qualms with promoting. Just as long as it isn't Falun Dafa Soccer, I suppose. Didn't hear anything about that from Bob Costas in 2008, now did we?

The hypocrisy is strong with this one.

One Night in Turin


I've been watching Endeavour again, chickens. On a recent episode, England won the 1966 World Cup.

Footy, footy, footy. ENGLAND ENGLAND.

One Night in Turin is a 2010 documentary that focuses on the 1990 English soccer team. According to the archive footage and the narrator (Gary F*cking Oldman), by 1990, England's soccer glory days were long behind them.

The Scottish Football and Highland Dance Team of 1966.

The film provides a lot of context for the underdog 1990 English team's improbable journey to the World Cup in Turin, Italy. At that point in time, English fans were infamous for being HOOLIGANS and rioting during soccer matches, and the English team wasn't  weren't doing so hot. England itself was suffering from a poor economy due to Thatcher-era policies. The success of the English team galvanized the nation, and brought the English a sense of national pride that they had lost. 

The England team defied everyone's expectations, and not only qualified for the World Cup, they made it into the Group of 16, then the quarter finals, and then the semi-finals, where they faced West Germany, a team whose captain was a 26-year-old Jürgen Klinsmann.

Strictly Ballroom


Were you unjustly robbed of your title as Pan-Pacific Amateur Five-Dance Latin Final Champion? At the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix? Well, guess who else had that happen to him? Scott Hastings, that's who!

SCOOOOOTTTTT!!!

I don't care how much you love Moulin Rouge. This is Baz Luhrmann's best movie. The first movie in Luhrmann's Red Curtain trilogy, Strictly Ballroom makes me happy and full of twenty kinds of joy. If you ever watch it with me, I WILL quote it and I WILL totally spoil it for you 

The plot is pretty simple. It's about Scott Hastings (Paul Mercurio), a rising star in the world of Australian dancesport. Scott is tired of dancing the old steps taught by his dancing instructor and his mother, a former amateur dancer herself (who now teaches dance and sells cosmetics on the side).

Scott wants to dance NEW STEPS with his partner, Liz Holt, but Liz definitely does not want to dance NEW STEPS. Liz drops Scott after an argument, and she partners instead with That Drunk Ken Railings. Scott needs a new partner fast, and he is approached by the awkward, acne-ridden Fran (Tara Morice).

Fran is willing to dance NEW STEPS, so Scott gives her a chance. He meets her Spanish-speaking family, and Fran's father teaches them the steps to the pasodoble. The pasodoble is not new per se, but it is new to the stuffy world of Australian amateur five-dance Latin final. (The pasodoble literally means "double-step" in English, and it was originally a French dance that is danced in Spain and other Spanish-speaking communities.)

¿Tu bailas pasodoble?

Fran transforms herself from a wallflower beginner to an accomplished dancer and hottie. Scott and Fran fall in the lovez, in spite of the opposition from Federation President Barry Fife, Mrs. Hastings, Liz, and well, everyone, except Fran's family. I first watched this in a college Spanish class and I wrote una composición en español about how awesome it is. 

I believe that we will win!

*Am no way ever boycotting waffles and pommes frites. 

Edited to add: I just discovered this afternoon that The Netflixes has a whole selection of soccer-themed 30 for 30 docus available for streaming RIGHT NOW Check out the collection 30 for 30: Soccer Stories. I prithee get thee to yon Netflix posthaste!