No, Politics is Not a Dirty Word: An Ode to Binge Watching The Americans & House of Cards

Amazon & Netflix got together and gave me an early March present in the form of new episodes of The Americans and House of Cards.

I’m sure it goes without saying that I wrote about these two shows together because I watched them within the same week, but I think there are interesting parallels between the two. Political partnerships, marriages based on convenience and arrangement, dealings with Russia, spies, backchannels, data mining and listening in, election rigging, and general national outcry and hand-wringing for a so-called “better” time.

Some spoilers within for House of Cards season 4 & The Americans season 3. 

I suspect it’s a certain kind of nostalgia that makes The Americans work so well. We collectively yearn for a time when our enemies were known and for the naive belief that we could uproot them from within our own sphere. Whatever makes an enemy is still a mystery to me, though, because I’ve just finished season 3 of this remarkable FX show (available on Amazon Prime streaming) and thanks to the narrative of storytelling, I constantly expect to see Elizabeth & Philip extracted from danger, even though they’re the enemy. A spy show set in the 1980s engenders a different vibe than one set in 2016; you have more intrigue and disguises, fewer discussions of the “dark web” and “hacking.” In a way, the digitally naive world becomes more interesting to watch, not because it’s naive but because it’s a reminder of exactly how we used to live not that long ago. The political maneuvering is omnipresent by all characters but their every word is not captured and debated ad nauseum on a scrolling social media feed. Each of the Jennings (well, specifically Philip, Elizabeth & Paige) has a political goal, but so do the FBI and the KGB and the individual players within each of these spheres. This is a thriller overlaid on a frame of governmental bargaining and posturing. Consider all the times that Reagan is mentioned, and how even with a known quantity of his actions, we still watch through this with a sense of anticipation of how those politics might play out. Certainly the end of season 3 brought with it a tremendous opportunity to create additional family and interpersonal drama but it also conjures up discussions of the rhetoric underlaid in it.

And just for fun now, let me present you with the top three cringeworthy moments of season 3:

1. Philip performing dental surgery on Elizabeth. I found this to be a creepily loving gesture. He’s taking care of her even as he uses a pair of pliers on her face. There silence of this moment, the head gestures and eerie comfort and relief taken away are at once horrifying  and touching. As such, my entire body had no clue how to react.
2. When the Jennings helped Yusef to dispose of Annelise’s body. The sound of her dead bones cracking and breaking as they stuffed her in a suitcase. I might be having nightmares about that one for years to come. Treating it so clinically wasn’t the issue (that’s what they do) but the amplified sound of the act for viewers at home.
3. Death by gasoline fire on a tire. It seems more action film oriented than the other two scenes, which convey a sense of the sensual and seedy spy motif, but it’s still ultimately cringeworthy because it’s done with such malice and without consideration for the aftermath.

But we move on, we ride forward into the 2016 election. Not our real one but the one that the Underwoods craftily maintain. (There is something seriously wrong when I watch House of Cards and think “Man, this election seems dignified and ethical relative to the one I’m watching on CNN.” Please consider yourselves, fellow Americans.) Unlike season 3, this series flew by with constant action. Last year, after my season 3 binge watch, I noted that it felt like an interlude and one cannot judge an interlude without knowing what follows. In context, now, I’d say that season 3 represents Frank at his weakest, a man devoid of ambition and powerless to act, being unable to draw on the strength of his partner or on his position. Here, in season 4, even as he lies in the hospital swimming in hallucination, he is not that weak. He fights. He schemes. His abject terror inside his waking nightmares is a tribute to his plotting a return. If anything, the assassination attempt builds him back to being who he was. A magic bullet, if you will. (Please don’t; that was terrible.)

To consider deeper, the ironic contrast of an open delegation to its use as a scheme provides a sickening thought about how much of the show is entirely a lie and unknown even to the actors. While not surprising, pretty much only a handful off the top ever recognize that the performance is a performance. I thank the show for bringing back Lucas Goodwin, Zoe Barnes, Peter Russo, Walker, and for continuing to use Tom Hammerschmidt as a vehicle for crossing Frank Underwood with Jackie & Remy in his notepad. I lament the killing off of Edward, even if earlier in the show, he swore he’d “take a bullet” for Frank, which I suppose he did. His death ushered in more of Tom, though, and this is less about “what will happen” and more about “what has happened,” because Tom sees inside both Frank & Claire with a stunning lack of ambiguity. In a way, he’s the interpreter for the audience but I see this as an unnecessary step to the show. I already see Frank and Claire; I don’t need someone to explain this to me. After season 3, people were very quick to say “Oh obviously Frank’s gay! That’s why he can’t sleep with Claire while looking at her face! Because gay!” I saw this as being very lowest common denominator thinking, and I was vindicated in season 4, because the issue is Frank’s weakness and his clipping rage as a result of his impotence, not his sexual interest or lack thereof in Claire’s physical body. Frank comes back from the valley in season 4, and his demonstrably stronger decisions actually do allow them to partner up again, since both pretty much always use the term “partner” when talking.

The concoction of the ending, which is basically a “We Are The Ones Who Knock!” fourth wall break, is pretty in-keeping with their character development here. They create the terror, and they sustain it. There are no flinching Frank moments (as he did in season 3 in the Jordan Valley) and no deep Claire moral dilemmas (as she experienced after visiting Russian prison)– only two partners who sit side-by-side and watch, clean, distanced, and unwavering as a man’s head is removed in front of them.

 

Percy Jackson & Leviathan

I recently played another round of MagiQuest in Myrtle Beach.  I know that I’m way too old to be doing this but the benefit of being the youngest in a group of people means that you always, no matter how old you get for real, get to say “But at least I’m not as old as __” (who also happens to be running around with a giant plastic wand casting spells and charms.  I can’t explain the draw, exactly, other than the fact that it’s basically an excuse to pretend to be in a video game for an afternoon. Not that being in a video game for an afternoon is a particular stretch, really, seeing how often I forget to eat or even get up when Steam is open on my laptop.

In the book world I read the Percy Jackson series. Yep, all of them. I sometimes find reading young adult novels to be cathartic and comforting, and infinitely more relaxing than reading so-called grown-up books. I know it’s a cliche that young adults aren’t the ones reading young adult novels (it’s us fully grown grown-up children who do it) but the reason why is that young adult novels are forced to be interesting faster. Sure, sure, there’s reward and payoff in picking up a 1,000 page novel that doesn’t really get started until page 200 but sometimes it’s hard to find entertainment in that. But this is why and how I found myself with Percy Jackson. I enjoy the backstory and the “epic” struggle of gods and mortals and those in between. What I’m most interested in, however, is the fact that the mythology has been reworked. Overall, there are YA novels I’ve enjoyed more but there’s something to be said for any series I read in its entirety when I don’t have to. Unfortunately, I just don’t know what to say about it.

Before that, I read the Leviathan series. I’d head of these (also YA) books through a course I was taking in young adult novel writing. They are remarkably good and a bit in between steam and diesel punk in their alternate history. (I can’t figure out what the right term is. Alternate history, military machinery, animal creations; it’s sci-fi but what kind of sci-fi? I have no clue.) I enjoy nearly everything about this full series… except the inclusion of a romantic subplot, which I won’t spoil. I know it’s included because it helps the story in a few places and also because it’s sort of expected in a book about and for teenagers. Nonetheless, I have to say, I think the story would have been much better without it. Alternate history is generally a lot of fun when it’s well constructed and Scott Westerfeld does a great job of piecing it together.

I’m current on Supernatural for the first time in a really long time and I just keep asking… why?

I spend too much time imagining geeky things to do and not nearly enough time engaged in actively talking about them. Gotta work on that.

Orange Is The New Black Hole

Episode ten. That’s the point in Orange is the New Black where its humor was eclipsed by depression.

Thirteen episode seasons are a little trendy but they also serve several excellent purposes. They’re compact (it’s hard to write filler when the entire storyline must be transmitted in less than thirteen hours), they prevent tedium (if they don’t, there was no hope for the show anyway), and they make it very easy to binge out on Netflix during the course of a single weekend. But such series also don’t always have enough time to both tear you down and build you back up. Your humanity feels compressed by time limitation. Here is a person you care about, even though she is fictional. You learn just enough to be affected. And that’s what happened with Orange is the New Black.

Take any character in the show and you are given ample opportunity to be depressed by her life. It’s not solely that these women are in prison. After all, as the characters themselves declare, to the non-inmates, they’re the “bad guys.” Society easily dismisses prisoners as being less than human, something the show both explores and admonishes. And yet, these people are, well, people. There are difficult backstories, understandable bad decisions, and even scenarios of unfortunate timing. Strangely enough, the vast majority of these humanizing events are so powerful that they actually seem to simultaneously underscore and excoriate the viewer’s humanity. How is that possible? Well, it’s so sad at times that you almost have to become numb in order to get through it.

Piper, our leading lady, is supposed to show the disconnect between expectation and reality. It’s fairly blatant from the constant talk about her blond WASPyness to the garrison guard who informs her firmly that she is not allowed to visit today, when in fact, she is there to self-surrender. She doesn’t “belong” there. What the show doesn’t explicitly state is that the other women don’t really belong there either. I could launch into a long discussion of prison reform and how most of the women incarcerated in the United States are nonviolent offenders. I really want to. I really, really want to. I won’t, though, because it’s ancillary to the show itself. Certainly it’s a factor in the storytelling but it’s not the focus.

No, the focus is confusion. It’s a confusion that is played out with snippy humor, absurdity, and ultimately the aforementioned depression. Episode ten happens to be the mark of eclipse because it’s the point where it becomes apparent that life just kind of sucks. It sucks in prison. It sucks outside of prison. It’s just sucks. *SPOILERS FOLLOW*

Piper’s confinement in solitary housing (SHU) is awful. She’s put there unjustly, something even the overzealous guards agree on. She’s cut off from others but she’s cut off from feeling like a human being. Of course, one of my biggest fears in this life is being trapped. The thought of being contained in a solitary cell is not inherently problematic but being kept from doing anything while in such a situation is utterly inhumane. (Again, refraining from the long on how we need serious prison reform in this country. Okay, maybe not, since I pretty much just said it.) It’s horrifying to watch someone’s personhood be ripped away because of arbitrary nonsense. She doesn’t deserve this punishment; she hasn’t done anything wrong. Meanwhile, she’s speaking to someone who may or may not be “real” who tells her that she has been in SHU for maybe nine months, maybe a year. Even for a violent offender, how is confinement without sunshine, without human contact, without activity a just and suitable punishment? It isn’t and the show begins to probe at this when abruptly, Piper’s problems are resolved, abandoning the question of others who are lost to the catacombs.

It hurts. It hurts when Piper cries while fellow inmate Sofia is washing her hair, saying “Sorry, its another person touching me.” She’s so accustomed to the loss of physical contact that she ends up with teary eyes at the first positive intimacy she experiences in weeks. I don’t know if I can relate directly to her message (I tend to have a problem with people actually touching me) but I get it all the same. Human beings are sensual creatures. We thrive on interaction with others. We require some measure of person-to-person contact. Being denied all such feeling goes beyond punishment to torture. A temporary loss of physical intimacy might be considered punishment but a long-term, systematic removal of it coupled with a loss of freedom is something depicted as cruel. (As I would expect it to be were it to be inflicted.) So yes, I find it hard to watch scenes like this one.

I admit I’m only half sympathetic when Piper reconnects with Alex in a sexual relationship, mostly because she is cheating on her fiancé, Larry. But I recognize that she has been so utterly destroyed that she cannot think clearly or without the needs of her body seeming to unduly influence her thinking. This speaks to the depression encountered at this point in the show. Everybody is broken. Every single person, including the CO and prison staff is broken. The overwhelming message seems to be that humanity is broken. it’s tough to see and tougher still to really think about. As rookie CO Sarah Fischer tells Piper, she, too, could have been put in prison had she been caught for her bad decisions. Nobody’s really that different.

That last point is something that I’ve often been instructed to think about while doing trauma counseling and advocacy work. Everyone, every single person out there, everywhere, makes bad choices. Some people are just unlucky enough to be caught.  (Some choices are also certainly more dangerous or socially unacceptable than others, even though they might all be bad.) There’s an adage about how every success (as well as every failure) is part chance and part decision. It’s still a rough point to consider when thinking about how bad decisions translate into a life of further missed opportunity. I’ve often wanted to know why we don’t give funding to schools that are falling behind the requirements… if someone is already deficient, why force them into further deficiency by taking away additional opportunity? Which may be the point that created the biggest well of depression for me by episode ten. How do you fix things (fix people) when you keep hacking away at them?

So, anyway, yes, it’s a fantastic show. It’s garnered so much interest and fame because of that. But damn, yo, damn. It’s some rough watching sometimes.

Jem Is Her Name

How many 1980s cartoons can you actually rewatch? I’ve found it exceedingly difficult to sit through many shows that I found extremely awesome thirty years ago.  I discovered how awful Masters of the Universe actually is a few years back. (And so many, many episodes.) Also, GI Joe. Geez. As such, I’m really surprised to find out that Jem and the Holograms is exceedingly watchable nowadays.

Jem has an ongoing plot, despite the show’s episodic nature. Sure, The Misfits are largely one-dimensional villainous spoiled brats and Jerrica and her friends are ever-good. But it was the 80s. I doubt you could really expect to find much in the way of moral ambiguity in a children’s television show twenty-five years ago. (Unlike today’s television, which I believe requires a per rata of moral ambiguity content in order to be broadcast.) The music videos and songs had to be created for every episode, which required lots of planning and writing, for sure, which I do appreciate.

Sadly, I’ve always preferred most of The Misfits’ songs to the ones by Jem, mainly because they tended to be darker and more punk rock (ish) than poppy, not that I have a problem with poppy, but I have a pretty soft spot for hard music.

Also, given the ubiquity of this show on my television in the late 1980s, I’m surprised that there are only 60 episodes.  I’m 1/3 of the way through this rewatch. It’s only taken four days.

 

Into the Darkness of an Arrested Development

I would be a terrible, terrible fan if I didn’t talk about Into Darkness. I don’t really want to because I still uphold the belief that the J.J. Trek movies aren’t really Star Trek and are instead Space Setting Action Adventure Film #532343 with Familiar Character Names Parts 1 & 2.  It sounds cynical but so many of the things that make a Star Trek movie a Star Trek movie are the very things that separate it from more generic sci-fi and also, very importantly, from something like, say Star Wars.

Trek is, at its heart a show about science fiction. It involves science. It’s not just action and violence. There is a decided lack of science in Into Darkness.  That and I could go on and on about the ridiculousness of many things in the film.  

SPOILERS FOLLOW:

The “Khaaaan” scream being among the absolute worst of them. In Wrath of Khan, Kirk screams in a dramatic but nonetheless appropriate fashion. In Into Darkness, Spock screams it for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and for reasons that defy even rampant emotional outbursts being illogical. Jordan Hoffman addresses this very well for me, though, so I don’t need to rehash the very good arguments made in this great review.

I’m frustrated by the battling ships in the vicinity of Earth, falling to Earth with no other ships or personnel around. No one knows until the Enterprise is bursting through the atmosphere. Really? Hasn’t this trick been played out enough? (One of the worst sins of Generations was the “We’re the only ship in range, sir” nonsense while the Enterprise-B was inside the Earth’s own solar system. I mean, seriously? Seriously?)  It’s absurd that we’re meant to believe in this crap.

Others have addressed the point that Benedict Cumberbatch replaces Ricardo Montalban and that it makes little sense as Khan would have been born in the late 20th century, before the timeline split off. The rewriting here is confusing, and I adore Cumberbatch as an actor (from my limited exposure to him) and even in this role, but the role is underdeveloped. Mightily. He serves a good purpose but Khan is absurd in this scenario where any villain could have done the trick, including a new one. Wasn’t the whole point of splitting the timeline so that we could see a different take on Star Trek? No? Well, that’s certainly how it was presented.

Criminal underuse of Karl Urban yet again. McCoy was always my favorite of the original triad. Karl Urban does a fantastic job as the cynical, sarcastic doctor and he is scarcely on screen before being whisked away for yet another brain pain forced friendship between Kirk and Spock that makes not sense whatsoever in this universe.

This is still a fun movie, but it isn’t Star Trek. It’s a generic sci-fi film with characters who happen to share names with the ones from that 1966 television show. And that’s my biggest problem with this movie. It belittles the universe of ST without actually giving the audience anything meaningful to hold onto. My favorite ST series is DS9 so I’m happy to deal with dystopian viewpoints and so-called “anti-Roddenberry” doctrine so long as it serves a purpose and ultimately has more meaning than a bland “And everything mostly worked out” at the end. I confess I was originally excited to hear a Section 31 reference thrown into this movie but it went astray really quickly. But hooray, a concept first introduced in Ds9 finally made it to the big screen. Qapla!

Keith Decandido’s spoiler-iffic review of Into Darkness and the Half in the Bag equally spoiler-iffic review, in conjunction, more or less summarize the remainder of my complaints about the movie.

The successes, I think, are that it’s still very fun, provided you abandon your intelligence a little bit. It’s also tricked out with fairly humorous interactions and Cumberbatch is a fantastic joy to watch on screen.

My favorite part, however, is from the  trailer for The Internship beforehand.  Minute 2:07 is the relevant mark. (Trying to evoke Patrick Stewart is not a bad way to start out before a Star Trek movie, or really, um, anything.) 

 

In other news, I watched every episode of the new Arrested Development season four the day they were released, and I can’t believe Venture Brothers actually came back, particularly because I haven’t been able to see it yet. I saw Iron Man 3 and I’m happy to talk about how much I love the Codex Alera books. My springtime of nerdom will be complete just as soon as Korra is available to me.

Remembering A Chicken & A Baby Differently

Like most good nerds, I enjoy ridiculous amounts of meta jokes.

I’m also a big fan of anything layered joke-wise. It’s hard to craft a joke that is funny on multiple levels. Though easy to design a joke that has multiple levels, it’s not as common that they’re all actually funny. (With puns, this rule tends not to apply.)

I’ve been thinking far too much lately about two of my favorite examples of the above:

1. From “Thirty Minutes over Toyko“, the season finale of The Simpsons 10th season, 
   

   Marge: “You liked Rashomon.”
   Homer: “That’s not how I remember it.”

2. From “Kidney Now!”, the season finale of 30 Rock‘s 3rd season, 
   

   Milton Greene: “A guy crying about a chicken and a baby? I thought this was a comedy show.”

I love the first one because it’s a joke utterly in-keeping with Homer’s character. He says nonsensical and utterly random things, so his saying “That’s not how I remember it” doesn’t have to mean anything more than Homer being Homer. Its meta reference and next level of joke are ramped up by understanding that Rashomon is a story about differing perceptions and accounts of the same events.  In the film version, all three characters remember the same day and same events differently. Homer, thus stating he doesn’t remember the movie the same way Marge does is an homage to the Rashomon Effect itself.  I believe it was (but can’t quite remember, as I’ve read at least three books about The Simpsons) Planet Simpson that cited this sort of joke as being the cornerstone of the Simpson universe. They’re jokes that work as one-offs but to the person examining them at a meta level they work amazing wonders.

And the second one. Man. The first time I watched that episode I almost didn’t catch it. The show had moved on about three minutes before it sunk in.  See, it’s important to note that Alan Alda played Milton Greene.  And it’s important to have an understanding of how M*A*S*H ended via “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen.”   And if you’re upset that I’m about to spoil the finale of a show that ended thirty years ago, I hate you. (Not really, but you may be a little too concerned with spoilers.)  Hawkeye finally cracks up because he has seen a woman kill a chicken with her bare hands in order to achieve the quiet that Hawkeye himself demands from a bus full of people who wish to avoid capture or worse. It’s only later, as he is forced to recall the event further that he remembers it was the woman’s very human baby that she killed by smothering it. He sobs significantly. It’s actually one of those supremely emotional and affecting moments that later seasons of M*A*S*H was so well known to throw at the audience. (Yep, I’ve seen every single episode.) In the context of 30 Rock, the joke is funny just because Tracey is crying over a somewhat elongated setup about a chicken and a baby. New guy Milton wanders by and appears confused at the lack of comedy. But the extremely explicit M*A*S*H reference takes it over the top.  A wonderful fellow WordPress user, @(Peel Slowly) wrote about this joke in detail. (BTW: I was in my twenties when that 30 Rock episode aired and I feel kinda proud at having caught the joke so quickly. But then again, I absolutely love M*A*S*H.)

So, anyway. There are many, many, many, infinite numbers of this type of joke already out there, and this is usually the type of humor I most enjoy. (That and making awful puns.) These two jokes just happened to be very strongly in mind this week and I wanted to share.

A Community of Emeralds

I really ought to be used to funny television shows trolling me with feelings-oriented episodes by now. Scrubs did it so many times. MASH did it. Futurama continues to do it. Hell, even Extras has done it. So why am I surprised when Community does it AGAIN? Why, I ask you, should I be taken off my ever watchful guardianship of feelings when a show that has already trolled me once again sends in the under-the-bridge crew to toy with my heart? Even if only slightly? Apparently other people didn’t much care for The “Cooperative Escapism in Familial Relations” episode but it hit on things I tend to try to avoid in my comedic television therapy and while I didn’t find it as funny I still thought the stories explored were valuable for the show, to kind of bundle up some things, ironically by unbundling some other things, such as Jeff’s backstory and unresolved father issues. I’ve been a fan of Community since the first Halloween episode (not that I disliked it before that point but that first Halloween show pushed me from casual viewer to hardcore fanatic pretty solidly) and I’ve found the characters’ development to be pretty steadily believable for the most part. Troy, quite honestly, has made the most progress as a human being, but since he’s never been portrayed as a frame character he doesn’t get the attention that Abed and Jeff do, so I can understand the need to focus in on Jeff’s story. (At least for the sake of consistency.) And I like Jeff. I just happen to like the characters as an ensemble more than I like them individually. But hooray, Community continues and I’m enjoying this season, even if people on the internet are frustrated by the fact that a show about community college has gone all Homer Simpson’s job at the nuclear plant (i.e. His job used to matter and then the show decided it didn’t. Much like the career chips on Futurama.)

I just watched Oz: The Great and Powerful with a friend. While certainly not the most amazing movie I’ve ever seen I’m happy to say that the reviews undersold it. It’s pretty good, and fine for the 2 hour runtime it has. I don’t feel that I wasted my $10.  There are many visual elements I felt were designed solely so advertising could be prepared on the basis: “This summer, opening at Disneyland, the Oz Ride.”  Sure, marketing tie-in. I get it. But it was fun, if not also simple in its development. James Franco plays a sly man a little too well. (And now I’m just thinking of him on 30 Rock.) I’ve only read two of the original book series (it’s not on the LIST) and I know Disney had to go out of their way in terms of copyright concerns to keep the story “clean” of references but it was still a nice setup. I’m pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed myself.

It’s Saturday Night. Where’s My Two-Liter Bottle of Shasta?*

So, I know this is old news and all but remind me again why the Dresden Files was cancelled. You know, the TV show, not the books.  (Also, if we can continue to ask for eleven years why Firefly was cancelled,  I think I can venture a question about a show that came five years later, right? Right?) Twelve episodes. I know he encounters the same kind of psychotic insane things over and over again, but isn’t that nearly every television show ever? Seriously, how many episodes of Home Improvement were there, with the exact same plot in each one? At least there are different encounters in Dresden Files. Geez.

Speaking of Jim Butcher, though, I started reading Codex Alera. I think, in the NPR 100 quest, that brings me up t0 45 or so, I think. I need to do a recount.

Lastly, I finished the Warehouse 13 webisodes today.  I’m always amused at the tricks used and lengths employed to get characters into non-realistic formats, e.g. the overlay of steampunk (sorta) and the comic book format employed in these. Can’t really say the stories are any better or worse than anything in the actual show, since the show isn’t really known for being all that amazing in its plots. (I still enjoy it, though.)

 

*The all-Rush mixtape is already safely in my arms.

Virtual Systems Angst

Community is coming back in another week and a half. Thank God. I say Thank God because I just don’t think I can allow myself to keep rewatching episodes from season 3. Particularly “Virtual Systems Analysis” because that episode makes me so very, very sad. I don’t think that’s the intention at all, because it’s a show devoted to the comedic dissection of its characters (who are real people, of course, but who are characters in a comedy) and not a show that is used to push sadness on its audience. All the same, making the seven study group members and their entourage, truly funny requires making them into real people, and sometimes real people make us sad.

I don’t know anybody else who actually finds this episode to be sad.

For me, I’ve always identified with Annie’s character, albeit as a younger, cutesier version of myself. She’s more romantic and naive  than I would ever presume to have been at that age but her particular brand of planning control freak and uptightness reflects my own so well that we could share time and space. Likewise, Abed’s lack of social grace and confusion over others’ emotions reflects back what I have long felt to be a learning process in getting to be better with other people. (I do not claim to be anywhere near so bad as Abed, though. I just share some of those moments that Abed has in this particular episode, e.g. Why do people have to enter into relationships?) So when I watch this episode, and watch Abed fall apart, I get this feeling that reflects my own fear and concern over where I will end up in life. It actually makes me very depressed, which is ridiculous when you’re watching a comedy.  Then again, how many times did Scrubs manage to troll me with sad episodes?  Someone out there referred to Scrubs as having “whiplash poignancy” [sorry for not recalling where this originated] and it’s just so true. (M*A*S*H did this as well, and the infamous “Jurassic Bark” episode of Futurama proved that nothing is sacred.)  I may need to devote myself to writing out the profound effect of Scrubs on my life, now. Still, with this one Community episode, I felt myself in such agony that I watched the show again just to try to get past it and enjoy it. I just can’t seem to find it as funny as I think I’m supposed to.

This does not seem to be what the show’s crew and writers intended for me to feel. It is, however, what I feel.

So I’m actually very much looking forward to the glorious return of Community to get me off this memory. So “Hunger Deans,” huh?

Eureka’s Fourth Season

I’ve finally gotten around to watching the fourth season of Eureka. I have absolutely no idea what to think of the plot development from here. (I’m four episodes in, I think.) I’ve always touted Eureka as being undervalued, despite its origination on the SyFy (ugh, how that pains me to write “sci-fi” that way) network. But the plot in season four pretty much makes me wonder why I ever said that. I still thoroughly enjoy Eureka despite its failings of silly science (mainly its explanations) and its very monster-of-the-week format, but the fact is, sci-fi already suffers way too much from the alternate reality motif being overdone.