Save the Something, Save the Something Something

So, last night, I got caught up on the latest season of Lost Girl, and having affirmed that I am not delusional, and that the show keeps getting sillier at an exponential rate, I turned my attentions to NBC's latest offering, Believe. 

TICKETS TO ONE DIRECTION ZOMG!!!!!

This show was heavily hyped during the Olympics in February, so I figured I would tune in so at least see what it was all about. After all, it's got pretty good cred, having been executive produced by J.J. Abrams and Alfonso Cuarón. I can see why The Peacock wants to get in on the sci-fi fantasy genre, given the success of shows like Orphan Black and True Blood, and the cult following of Joss Whedon. The show overall has potential, but I felt the pilot was formulaic, predictable, and its "touching" moments bordered on trite. 

The basic premise follows the exploits of River Tam, Bo (if this is an obvious reference to Lost Girl's Chosen One heroine, it was not lost on me). Bo has special abilities that she's unable to control, but the pilot was overly vague about what those abilities are. I guess she's some sort of mix of psychic, empathic, telepathic and and Aqua Man.

Take that, whale! That'll teach you to beat up on helpless plankton!

Bo's real parents are maybe dead, or unknown, or something, so she's been shuttled around to different foster families since their demise. Bo and her guardians are, of course, being hounded and pursued by an Evil Shady Corporate Bad Guy, whose company may have created her/owned her, but anyway, they are after her. The pilot opens with Bo in a car with her latest foster parents. An Evil Secret Agent Lady (she is unnamed, so I'll just call her Mila Jovovich from here on out) runs the car off the road, and then breaks the necks of foster mom and dad in a really unlikely fashion (Mila's secret power is she gets two improbable neck breaks per day) and Bo ends up in the hospital. Bo befriends a young doctor who is experiencing a lot of self-doubt after he was unable to save the life of someone's grandpa. D'awww. Bo helps him rediscover confidence in himself by telling him he will save the life of a singer named Senga. He finds out later that Bo was right and the singer's name was Agnes. Which is Senga if it's backwads. F'real. For effin' real. Doctor Guy notices this when he sees Agnes's get well balloons (which spell her name) in the mirror and it says, "SEGNA" but when I see и, all I see anymore is a vowel so it didn't have quite the same effect.   

Help me, Bastian! The Nothing is destroying Fantasia! 

MEANWHILE, the good guys, whom I have affectionately named The Multicultural A-Team, because I have no idea who they're working for and why, have hatched a plan to spring OUR HERO, Tate, from death row. Tate has been wrongfully convicted of murder and he's about to be executed, when the MAT's leader, Winter, enters his prison cell disguised as a minister. He offers Tate a chance to escape from prison if Tate agrees to help Bo. Tate hems and haws for a reason I'm not really sure about. I mean, he says he was wrongfully convicted of murder and this guy walks in and tells him he'll help him escape and Tate's all like, "Gee, IDK" instead of "Hells yeah!" Anyway, at he last minute, Tate agrees to help Winter rescue Bo, and Tate escapes with the help of Winter's associates, Channing and a couple of other dudes who die later so I don't know their names. 

My acting coach told me to channel McConnaughey.

So, Bo's in the hospital and Winter arranges for Tate to get into the hospital by posing as an accident victim who has really badly applied and eyeshadow bruises, and he finds Bo in her hospital room. It doesn't take much convincing to get Bo to leave with him, but that's when Mila Jovovitch shows up, posing as a nurse. 

Tate starts to wheel Bo out in a wheelchair, but her rescuer and kidnapper soon see through each others' ruses and throw down on each other in the hospital hallway. Bo shoots Mila in the butt with a syringe she randomly found, and that drugs Mila and gives Bo and Tate time to run away. Undaunted, Mila runs through the hospital shooting at them, but not before she puts a silencer on her gun. Hello? Even if the bystanders at the nurse's station can't hear you shoot at them, THEY CAN STILL EFFING SEE YOU. Mila, you are the worst assassin. Mila realizes she is shooting at people and has wobbly drugged person vision, so she randomly finds another syringe full of something else that will undrug her, and then shoots herself in the butt with that, but it's too late. Bo and Tate have escaped. On the bus. The bus. That's their escape plan. Route 10 at 3:15. I also think Tate had no bus fare, but hey, a minor detail. He might have a metro card. 

ANYWAY.

Winter is the former partner of Evil Shady Corporate Bad Guy, and they had some kind of falling out. Car chases in SUVs ensue, and Bo ends up in hiding at this abandoned warehouse/pigeon factory with the MAT. Unfortunately, Mila Jovovitch finds them and she shoots two members of the MAT and makes her way upstairs, where she finds Tate, Winter, Bo, and Channing. They are about to escape, when Bo decides it's a good idea to leave their panic room and go get her stuffed turtle. Which I can kind of understand. I would like to have a stuffed turtle.

I'm NOT Yulia Lipnitskaya! Let me gooooooo!!!

Mila knocks Tate down and is about to shoot at him. This is when Bo remembers that she can summon birds. HOLY SHIT SHE IS GANDALF. 

The pigeons all form this full-on Hitchcockian pigeonado (PIGEONADO!!!!) around Mila and that gives Tate and Bo a chance to escape. The MAT escapes this time, but Evil Shady Corporate Bad Guy will not give up in his quest to capture Bo for his own nefarious purposes.Again, it is unclear about what those actually are.  It's also revealed at the end that Tate is likely Bo's father, which wasn't that difficult to guess. As for Mila, our last glimpse of her is her getting a call from Evil Shady Corporate Bad Guy boss, after she's been outwitted by Tate, Bo and MAT.

You had one job.

All in all, I would give the pilot a C-minus. I guess there's potential here, but Believe hasn't done much to set itself apart from the Female Chosen One genre, and I feel at this point the production is taking itself a little too seriously. I get that they are trying to be inclusive with diverse casting choices, but the main characters are still a white male and a young white female. The non-white characters are ancillary to the white characters, so it's kind of feeling like people of color stunt casting/tokenism. The writing is kind of bleh and relies on some already hackneyed plot points. Again, if NBC wants to attract the Buffy crowd, and entice them to watch Believe instead of Orphan Black, they've got their work cut out for them. It's unclear if Bo is a mutant, alien, superhero, or angel and I feel like she needs to have more agency in the coming episodes, because right now she's as capable of saving humanity as the Wonder Twins.

I want to Believe, but the show has to iron things out more in order to attract its target viewership. 

Believe premiered on March 15, with a special subsequent episode which aired March 16. Its regular time slot is 9 p.m. Sundays on The Peacock.

Costumed Aggression

Welcome back, my minions. In all seriousness, I am still recovering from the shock I received watching last Sunday's episode, and I actually think I am going to skip recapping that one, to be perfectly honest with you guys. 

If you are picking up where we left off of the season premiere (at around the 50 minute mark, give or take), Granny has just given Lady Mary a good talking to about being a SURVIVAH. 

In Ripon, Lady Cora and Lady Rose are meeting with Edna about the lady's maid position. Edna makes up a story about caring for a nonexistent aunt so she won't have to go interview at Downton. HELLO YOU ARE APPLYING FOR A JOB THERE, DEARY. THIS MEANS YOU WILL HAVE TO GO THERE SOMETIMES. Anyway, she's apparently trying to avoid Mrs. Hughes. Her scheme is to get hired before Mrs. Hughes tells Lady Cora that Edna is weird and creepy. She admits to having worked at Downton as a parlour maid, and hands her the ref from Mrs. Hughes. She tells Cora that the reason she left service at Downton was so she could train as a lady's maid. Cora and Rose buy her story and give her the job.

In bumbling Molesley news, Molesley accompanies Lady V to tea at Lady Shackleton's, and he blabs to Lady Shackleton's butler that Lady Shackleton might give him (Molesley) the butler's job. The butler says, "Umm. No," and sets about sabotaging Molesley's interview for Lady Shackleton, who proceeds to insult him and his butlering skills. Lady Violet shamfacedly takes Molesley away.

Continuing in news of the poorz, Grigg has arrived at Isobel's. Isobel immediately sets to work rehabbing him. 

I've mostly worked with prostitutes, but I suppose I could apply my skills to a down-on-his-luck actor.

Okay, enough of the working class. Back to the rich people! Edith arrives at The Criterion in London to meet with Gregson. She runs in and looks for Him. Is He there waiting for her? He is. He has News. He can divorce wifey in Germany if he becomes a German citizen. Edith asks him if he'd really do that for her, and he replies that he'd become AN ESKIMO for her. An. Eskimo. 

Because in Inuit culture, when your wife goes insane, you can just pop her onto an ice floe.

Oh, Michael! You say the sweetest things. !!! Smoochie-smoochie.

Cora tells Mrs. Hughes that she's hired Edna Braithwaite to be her new lady's maid. For. Real. Mrs. Hughes is like YOU DID WHAT. Cora chastises Mrs. Hughes for trying to hold the poor young girl back, and Mrs. Hughes decides against telling Cora the real reason she fired Edna, which I kinda don't understand. I feel like Mrs. Hughes is their trusted housekeeper, and if she told Cora that she fired Edna because she was trying to tear off Branson's pants like the day after Sybil died, Cora would listen to her, don't you think? What sayest thou? Mrs. Hughes and Carson meet with Branson and tell him that Cora's hired Edna, so look out, brother. Branson volunteers to tell Cora about what went down with Edna, and why he asked Mrs. Hughes to write her a good reference, but Carson stops him, because he doesn't want Cora to think Sybil's husband was "unworthy." No. Seriously. No. This is legit pissing me off. Why can't Carson and Mrs. Hughes go to Cora and tell her the truth about Edna? I guess that would mean we'd be down a subplot, and we all know JF prefers quantity of subplots over quality. But this legit makes no sense to me whatsoever. 

We mustn't under any circumstances let Lady Grantham know she's hired yet another crazy person.

.
Downstairs, Mrs. Patmore calls Alfred into the kitchen to tell Daisy to her face that he sent a Valentine to Ivy and not to her. I feel like this was not a good move on Mrs. Patmore's part. I get she was trying to make Daisy feel better about being so undesirable to the opposite sex and all, but sending her that Valentine only resulted in Daisy feeling humiliated. Then she involved Alfred by forcing him to tell Daisy that he wasn't into her. I don't think Mrs. Patmore was trying to be mean, but the whole thing backfired. Mrs. Patmore defo owes her a Cuisinart. I'm sorry, Daisy. Here's a pie. 

Eat your feelings. 

This week on ¡Dios Mio!, Lady Cora is walking outside the nursery and she overhears Evil Nanny West calling Lil Sybbie a "wicked little crossbreed" and a "chauffeur's daughter." For. Real. Cora walks in and is like dafuq are you saying to my grandchildren, and Evil Nanny West realizes that this is not a good look for her. She tries to explain to Cora how she was just "having a game" and explainin' to wee little Sybbie that she was an abomination in the sight of me Luurrrrd. 

I was just explainin' to the wee bairn that she's the spawn of an unnatural union. :)

Cora's like aww hell no and she fires her on the spot. Nanny West blabbers some more, but Cora summons Mrs. Hughes and tells her to put Nanny West in a different room for the night and kick her out in the morning. Well, since people who get fired from Downton always find a way to worm their way back onto the show, let's wait in anticipation for the eventual return of Evil Nanny West.

Won't it be fun to watch this place burn?

Cora later personally thanks Thomas and tells Robert that they owe him a debt of gratitude. Robert's angry that they've gotten rid of another nanny, because they're going through them faster than Captain Von Trapp.

I'm here for your children.

Down in the drawing room before dinner, Robert is with Widow Mary. The subject turns to Edith and Gregson, and she admits that Edith hasn't done too shabby with Gregson. Robert asks if he should be worried if it's serious, and if Mary knows much about Gregson. Mary says she doesn't, and remembers that Gregson talked to Matthew and then... then she abruptly stops talking because she either got all sad remembering Matthew, OR she remembers the thing. The one thing. Matthew told her that Gregson is already married, and she abruptly SHUTS UP. Good call, Mary. So is Mary going to use that as leverage to get back at Edith? Let's hope so. Robert changes the subject to shop, and Robert reiterates that he's right not to trouble Mary's feeble little female brain with talk of manly subjects like money and property and inheritance. Robert tells Mary to go to bed, and she agrees.

Mary exits the drawing room and is heading upstairs, but then she realizes she should probably go apologize to Carson, and she ends up bawling in his arms. *Tissues*

I wish you were my real dad. :( 

Down in the kitchen, Mrs. Patmore's trying to learn how to use the electric mixer, because Daisy knows how to use it, and that puts Daisy ahead of Mrs. Patmore. Mrs. Patmore has made a huge mess with whatever pancake batter she was trying to mix up. PRO-TIP: USE A SPOON. Mrs. Hughes volunteers to help clean up the mess, which is apparently going to take two people all night to clean up. It doesn't look like that big of a mess to me. Dear 1922: Get a Swiffer Wet Jet. 

At the trustees' luncheon, there's a lot of harumphing and then Mary surprises everyone by showing up AND wearing something other than black. Branson is stoked and gives up his seat to her (STOP SHIPPING THEM. NOW.), but Robert isn't thrilled. Ofs. 

Home stretch now, m'loves.

Anna warns the new batshit cray maid that she might want to steer clear of Thomas, and I'm not sure why we have to start up all of that Thomas vs. Anna and Bates business again because I thought it had been settled last season when Bates helped Thomas keep his job, but since we don't ever want to be in want of a plot, I guess the intrigue must go on.

Mary receives a Mysterious Box from Matthew's office that just HAPPENED to be sitting around that no one noticed until JUST NOW. Instead of giving the box to whom it has been addressed (Lady Stinkin Mary), Carson and Hughes decide to give it to Robert. Palm, meet Face. Robert opens it up, and finds a A Letter that Matthew wrote just before he died, detailing his wishes should something happen to him. Legit. He wrote the letter LITERALLY before he died. Robert is like, "Hmm. Should I show this to Mary?" OF COURSE YOU SHOULD. He takes it to Lady Violet and asks her opinion and she tells him to show it to Mary, and Robert still is like, "Hmmm. No. I'm not sure."  No, I really think I'm right in this, Mamma. No, you're not, Robert. There is something you are and it starts with "Wrong." Robert finally decides to show it to Mary and Mary reads it and says, "Whhhaaaaa?" Then there's some filler until we find out what the letter says.

We find out the letter WHICH MATTHEW WROTE BEFORE HE DROVE BACK TO YORKSHIRE AND DIED, says that, should anything happen to him, he wants Mary to be his sole heir. OF COURSE IT SAYS THAT AND OF COURSE HE DID. But is the letter a valid legal document? Let's take it to Murray. Survey says: of course it's valid. Do you know what this means? It means homegirl finally gets to inherit some good shit. 

Clarkson visits Grigg and Isobel (SQUEE) and tells Isobel that Grigg is much better now, thanks to her. Isobel finds Grigg a position at a theater Belfast and so he's going to Ireland. Mrs. Hughes encourages Carson to make up with Grigg before Grigg goes off to Belfast PERHAPS FOREVER BECAUSE THERE ARE NO BOATS.

But wait! There's more! In Rose is our Lady Sybil replacement news, Rose decides that she wants to go to slumming it at a dance in York at some sort of working class watering hole, but she can't ask Lady Cora or Lady Mary for permission, so she asks Anna to take her. Anna is reluctant but she agrees to take Rose anyway. It is the Roaring 20s, after all, and one must roar if one is to be accepted in society. Rose goes and poses as a parlour maid at Downton Abbey.

It's fun pretending to be poor! 

Rose thinks the dance will be ever so much fun and JUST LIKE THAT SCENE IN TITANIC WHEN KATE WINSLET GOES BELOW DECKS TO DANCE WITH LEO DICAPRIO, so she agrees to dance with a working-class bloke, Sam. Then they run into Jimmy, who is hanging out there by himself, apparently. But the fun ends there. Rose catches the eye of another working-class bloke and he asks to dance with Rose and she refuses. 

You're doing it wrong. That is not how you twerk.

Then there's a bar fight and the police arrive and Rose, Anna, Jimmy have to scurry out of there and run home so they don't end up in the pokey. So, at a fancy dinner that evening, Sam decides to show up at the kitchen of Downton Abbey and ask for, "the parlour maid, Rose" and Thomas answers the door and he is like, "Um....Whaaaaaaat?" Anna dresses Rose up in a maid outfit, because apparently telling Sammy the truth would be too much for the lad. Sam asks to call on Rose, but she lies and tells him she's promised to marry a farmer. Then they kiss and Sam leaves. Hahaha. Meeeee, Rose Flintcher, marry a farmer. OH IT IS TOO DROLL. 

No way will this ever come back to bite me in the ass. 

Branson and Lady Violet convince Mary to learn more about running the estate, and Branson takes Mary on a tour of the estate. Mary brings it up at dinner that evening, and that's when Robert decides to humiliate her by pointing out the obvious holes in her landed gentry knowledge. 

So, as I stated above, I will not be recapping this past week's episode of DA. It's not to do with anything wrong with the episode per se. It is just that, considering the disturbing events of that episode, I don't feel comfortable writing a recap that entails my personal opinions about rape or the inclusion of sexual assault in the show's story arc. For the sake of varying viewpoints, there is plenty being said here and here and here and across the internet as a whole.

So, please excuse the lack of an AP recap for this past week's episode. Feel free to discuss in the comment section. Instead of a recap, here's a red panda.

Now who will feel the news at me?

Sad news for all of us Stewart and Colbert fans with DirecTV... or early bedtimes, no DVRs, and busy schedules - full episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report will no longer stream online. This is due to a battle over the fees Viacom demanded for it's channels to be aired on DirecTV. In addition to yanking some of their channels (e.g. Comedy Central) from DirecTV, Viacom has now forced the removal of full episodes form the shows official websites. Clips will still be available, but still.

To arms!

Just kidding! This is most likely not a permanent change. The nature of this fanbase is young, professional, and nerdy - in other words, you can pry our internet streaming from our cold, dead fingers. More information can be found at The Huffington Post.

Yee haw, y'all.

Here's what I know about the original Dallas:

1) Someone shot Col. Nelson from I Dream of Jeannie.

2) everyone thought Patrick Duffy was dead until he came out of the shower.

3) There was lots of cat-fighting and falling into pools. Actually, that might have been Dynasty.

When TNT announced it was bringing back Dallas, a lot of people's reaction (including mine) was whaaaaa? I mean, really? The show has been dead for a while now, so what the hell? But I guess it makes sense from a money perspective and never delude yourself that television executives are interested in anything else.  Dallas is an established brand that is remembered fondly by a lot of people, and that type of back-stabbing soapy family drama seems to be back in vogue (example: Revenge).

Ok, so we have established the reason for bringing the show back. But is it any good?

Well slap my ass and call me Sally, but darn it if it isn't a helluva good time.

Sure, it's not the second coming of television. But it's summer, expectations are lower, and Dallas gives a lot of delicious twists and turns, questionable alliances, moral ambiguity, and good old fashioned greed. The rich want to get richer and nobody is safe from becoming collateral damage due to their ambition.

"Blood is thicker than water, but oil is thicker than both."

My only complaint is I wished the show had taken a little more time to establish the family relationships, especially for people like me who never watched the original series. It also doesn't help that a lot of the younger generation characters look so similar. But here's what I figured out:

JR (Larry Hagman) and Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) are brothers. JR is older...apparently way older since Larry Hagman is 80. Bobby was always the nice one, and JR was always the scheming greedy one. Bobby has a son named Christopher who wants to explore alternative forms of energy, like methane. JR's son is named John Ross (so he and Christopher are cousins...and pretty much the same age) who has discovered that there is a shit-ton of oil on South Fork, the Ewings huge home ranch.

The central plot of the show is driven by the two conflicting family views: those who want to preserve South Fork as was the wish of JR and Bobby's mother, and those who want to "drill, baby, drill" and tear up South Fork for the billions of dollars the oil represents. Of course, the Ewings don't play fair, so there are shifting loyalties, lies, deceit, sex, and all the other good old-fashioned Texas family values.

Dallas is fun. There's pretty much no other way to describe it, and I am just happy to be along for the ride.

If you ever see JR Ewing smile like this.. run. Don't ask any questions, just turn around and run. Because you can bet he is up to no good.

Sixty Five Roses

Have you ever sat in your mid-day slump at work getting wonderfully lost in a website that you know is just going to suck you in and make you love it when all of a sudden you come across one of the rare corners of the internet that isn’t loaded down with snark? Congratulations! You’ve made it there today! Betraying my usual “crusty-on-the-outside” and opting for my more unseen “gooey-in-the-center”, I’m writing today about a documentary that aired last week on OWN (yes, the Oprah place; don’t run just yet) called 65_RedRoses. And later on in this email (spoiler alert) I’m going to ask you to do something. Bear with me.

65_RedRoses­­ is a documentary about a young woman named Eva Markvoort who is living with cystic fibrosis, a fatal genetic disease that is slowly killing her. The documentary was made by friends of hers after graduation from film school and, frankly, can best be described in a single word as “heart-wrenching.” (Hyphens count for single words, right?) Eva’s story is, sadly, very typical for someone with the disease. She is isolated because people with CF can’t be in the same room as each other without potentially making each other sicker. At the same time, the disease has been slowly causing mucus to build up in her lungs over the 25 years of her life, to the point where her lungs are failing and she can no longer draw breath effectively. After her doctors tell her that her lungs have become so clogged with mucus as to limit her chances of survival, her only option left becomes a complete double lung transplant.

 That's a laptop. Actual lung transplant technology sold separately.

 The film follows Eva’s life as she waits for a donor and blogs about her experiences (the title of the film is her online screen name, itself referencing how children often refer to the disease as “sixty five roses” because “cystic fibrosis” is hard to say), all the while her own health is deteriorating. It showcases exactly how conflicting it can be to have a life-threatening disease as evidenced by one scene that illustrates Eva’s family’s guilty optimism about graduation season; turns out graduations are great for donor organs because of the number of healthy young people with perfectly good organs who die in drunk driving accidents.

Unlike some shows that play up the melodrama (and actual drama) of people with severe illnesses to the point where what’s shown isn’t even representative of the disease in real life, the disease displayed in 65_RedRoses is ridiculously accurate. That verisimilitude is made all the more frustrating by how much progress has been made in the fight against the disease recently. In the 1950s, parents who had a child with CF were often told by their doctors not to expect the child to live to see elementary school. Today, thanks to cutting edge treatment and a not inconsiderable amount of research, the projected age of survival is in the late 30s. Unfortunately, despite those advances, about half of the population will still be dead before they’re 26-years-old.

There’s any number of sob-story documentaries about rare diseases out there, but 65_RedRoses manages to cut itself a bit above the rest. It’s honest, genuine, illuminating and, strangely enough, actually kind of uplifting. It can be hard to watch, dipping equally into body horror for all the medical treatments Eva goes through and psychological dread for her family. But Eva’s spirit, as well as the dedication of her medical team, shines through brilliantly. The film does a wonderful job of helping the viewer to understand the ticking of the clock and how fast that clock is moving.

But entertainment aside, here’s where I confess my bigger reason for talking about this bit of television: In real life, because blogging with friends about TV shows has yet to pay off financially, I work for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, a non-profit organization that accredits and maintains over 110 care centers throughout the country to treat people with CF as well as serves as the primary driver of medical research to find a cure for the disease. In the past five years, we’ve invested over $660 million in CF research and it’s paying off. This year a drug that we developed in partnership with a small pharmaceutical company came out that corrects the genetic defect that causes cystic fibrosis. It’s the first time in the history of medicine that we’ve been able to come up with a pill that fixes a genetic error and bring it safely into the hands of patients. The problem is that this drug only treats about 4% of the entire CF population. But just this week, on Monday May 7^th, we got word that this drug’s chemical cousin out-performed our expectations of it in a clinical trial. This new drug, which still requires more costly testing, would treat about 60% of all people with CF.

Cystic fibrosis has been around as long as mankind has. We’ve found historical records describing the symptoms going back to the middle ages in Europe, but the first time kids starting living with it beyond the first few years of their life wasn’t until the 20^th century. It’s realistic to say that if this new drug can come to market, for the first time in human history we’d be able to have a group of people who could live their entire lives with cystic fibrosis and not die from it. We’re close to our goal, but we need you to help by making a donation to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Need more convincing? Watch this:

Cue tears starting in 3...2...

So there’s my plea – give us a couple of bucks and help us make life a little bit better. Watch 65_RedRoses and then please make a donation to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to help us further our goal of finding a cure or control for cystic fibrosis. And I promise to get back to blogging about how ridiculous Mad Men is in short order.