So the second episode of Being Human‘s second season, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” picks up right where last week’s cliffhanger left off, with Josh getting shot in the arm by one of those Dutch vampire guys whose names I can never remember. To be honest it wasn’t really that suspenseful of a cliffhanger; obviously they’re not gonna kill one of the    series’ main characters. So this werewolf-hunting vamp is getting ready to finish Josh off, but then werewolf Nora leaps out from the underbrush and totally kills him! And then runs back into the woods. Ohhhhh goshhhhhhhh.

The next day Josh and Nora have to deal with the aftermath, and it was super interesting and a little darkly humorous to see Josh try to reassure her and try to teach her to cope with being a werewolf when he still can’t really cope himself. He doesn’t tell her that she killed a guy when she was in wolf form, which is obviously gonna come back to bite him in the ass later.

Meanwhile, Sally makes ghost friends! Suicide Stevie from last episode’s reunion and a couple of his teenage boy ghost pals come hang out at the house, which mainly serves to distract Josh and Aidan from Sally’s big reveal that she might have accidentally released a terrifying dark spirit into the world.

Even without the extra house guests, they’d probably be too wrapped up in their own immediate problems to care a whole lot about the vague, abstract threat she describes: Josh is trying to motivate Nora to retain some semblance of normalcy by accompanying him to the new med student mixer that night, while Aidan has his hands full with babysitting the new Head Vamp In Charge of Boston, and oh man you can tell right away that this chick is gonna be trouble. A couple of ambiguous flashbacks show that she and Aidan have a history, but the main point of them seems to be showing Aidan looking very Clark Gable-esque in his period garb, yum.

Anyway, HVIC thinks it’s hilarious that Aidan doesn’t “drink live” anymore, and takes it upon herself to try to get him to break his commitment to vegetarianism ASAP. She brings him this cop lady to turn, ostensibly to give the vamps an in on the police force, but really to test Aidan’s boundaries and see how far he’s willing to bend for her. Things get interesting fast when Aidan refuses to turn the cop lady and HVIC threatens to investigate the Dutch vampire’s mysterious disappearance in the woods, implying that she not only knows about Aidan’s werewolf friendship connection, but thoroughly disapproves.

All this leaves Aidan feeling even more broody than usual, so he goes to the bar to drown his sorrows and just so happens to run into a pretty lady he saw earlier at the hospital when she was on her way to interview for an internship. It seems pretty suspicious to me, mainly because of her “someone’s thirsty” comment when she catches Aidan raiding the blood bank, and even more so when she initiates a hook-up almost immediately at the bar. Yeah, this lady is definitely shady.

Sally’s new ghost friends–with the exception of Suicide Stevie–turn out to be equally shady, taking her to a college “raver” and teaching her the new trick of inhabiting the bodies of the living. Her exuberance at her success is a little bit much for me; fortunately it’s cut short when horny teenage ghost boy tries to have his way with her while they’re both possessing other people’s bodies. Suicide Stevie intervenes and pulls her out, then gets into a huge fight about the incident with horny teenage ghost boy and ends up like, liquidating him with his supernatural ghost power or something, which really freaks Sally out.

Sally and the ghosts aren’t the only ones spending the night getting driz-unk; at the med student mixer, Nora partakes of the wine pretty liberally and Josh starts freaking out that she’s gonna spill their werewolf secret, but instead she just starts talking about her lost pregnancy, which is enough to make the other med students super uncomfortable. So the next day Josh is like, “I’m not gonna go to med school, I’m gonna find a cure for werewolfism!” and you can tell that Nora is totally not gung-ho about that idea so there are prolly a lot more problems in store for those two.

Basically, everything is awful for everyone and it will probably only get worse. Hooray!

(All images via Syfy)

First of all, pretty much the whole movie is guys sitting around talking about baseball. Like, that’s literally all they do. Which was cool with me, because I love baseball, but I don’t really have any way to gauge how much a non-fan would enjoy it.

Second, the main character in the movie, the A’s general manager Billy Beane, comes across as kind of a dick. He seems to spend the whole time being frustrated with his staff for their (understandable, in my opinion) reluctance to go along with his radical vision for building a baseball team, throwing around office furniture, and dealing with the massive chip on his shoulder for missing his own big shot at being a major league player.

Fortunately Moneyball manages to negate both of these potentially serious shortcomings with some seriously great casting. Brad Pitt’s charisma and universal likeability make the moody Beane a hero worth rooting for, making you feel sympathy rather than annoyance at his numerous superstitious behaviors, neurotic quirks, and unpredictable emotional displays.  When I first saw the trailers for this movie featuring Jonah Hill as baseball savant whiz kid Peter Brand I was like, WTF is he doing here, this is not a stoner comedy, but he actually manages to convey the nervousness and awkwardness of a guy who is more comfortable with computers than with people really convincingly.

So those two were definitely the stars of the film, but I was more excited to see Chris Pratt, a.k.a. one half of the most adorable couple on the best show on tv (Parks & Recreation‘s April and Andy), in a small but fantastic role as an injured player who thinks his career is over but is given a second chance at the majors.  The one cast member who I felt like was seriously underutilized was Philip Seymour Hoffman; as A’s manager Art Howe his main job is to pout and be mad at Billy Beane for giving him a crummy team. Which he definitely commits to, but I feel like you gotta give the guy a little more to do.

The one line about Moneyball that I keep hearing is that it’s a baseball movie that’s not about baseball (this review at Awards Daily is the only source I could find that contained that actual phrase), but I’m not sure how true that is. Toward the end there’s an attempt at connecting Beane’s efforts in Oakland with the universal struggle of innovators and early adaptors, but that didn’t really feel like the point of the movie to me. It mostly just made me curious about the state of the moneyball philosophy in baseball today, because it does seem like a tough pill to swallow.

“It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball” is the line Beane repeats a couple of times and one that stuck with me, because even as the movie tries to demonstrate the superiority of cold, hard statistical analysis over those elusive “intangibles,” it can’t help but succumb to the romanticism of the classic sports movie moment. Which is actually okay by me, since it kind of shows that while stats and logic certainly have their place, that magical moment is what keeps sports fans coming back for more.

Ahh Glee I hate you so much right now but I can’t stop watching because Darren Criss looks so freaking good in a bow tie and next time they’re singing Michael Jackson songs whyyyy are you doing this to me please just stop.

Ryan Murphy & Co. seem to have based this entire episode on the tragically misguided notion that anyone actually cares about developments in Will and Emma’s relationship, or Will and Emma in general for that matter.  WE DO NOT. AT ALL. ONE SINGLE BIT. Their mutual crush might have been cute for like an episode but then Will was cheating on his wife and it was eww gross but then they got divorced but Emma was married to John Stamos and oh man she shoulda stuck with him but they split up cuz the Glee writers are creepily obsessed with virginity and now the only thing this episode did was remind people of the eww gross origins of Will and Emma thanks to the awful and boring rendition of “The Worst First Time I Ever Saw Your Face” and the first time Will ever saw Emma’s face was when he was still married to Terri, god Will you are such a douchebag. You would propose in the douchiest way possible, why am I even surprised?

Also this happened.

So obviously Will asks Emma to marry him, but not before reminding her that her OCD makes her like the world’s biggest freak and she is lucky to have found a man who can put up with that shit. And then he proposes after a synchronized swimming routine to “We Found Love,” and you can tell the whole cast is miserable the entire time they’re in the pool, god it’s freezing in here, this is so not what I signed up for and what do you mean I have to stick around for season four???

Pictured: contractual obligation

I guess the theme of this episode was Will being a douchey creep because he also breaks Finn’s trust (after creepily asking him to be his best man, seriously Will, don’t you have any adult friends?) and tells Burt and Carol that Finn is thinking about joining the Army, which I thought was actually pretty cool on Finn’s part but then in a horrible and unnecessary plot twist his mom is like noooooo don’t do it I know you are trying to follow in your dead father’s footsteps and all but he wasn’t really a war hero he was actually a deserter and a druggie! IS NOTHING SACRED TO YOU ANYMORE GLEE???

And just in case that scene didn’t make you uncomfortable enough there is also the awful and equally pointless subplot of Becky pursuing a relationship with Artie because they are both “handicapable” and Artie agrees to go on a date with her, resulting in “Becky-ventions” from both the entire glee club and the alarmingly rational-seeming Sue Sylvester, who rightly tells Artie that he’s being a dick and nips the whole thing in the bud. But oh man you know you’ve got a problem with your show when the one character who is known for being bat-shit insane suddenly seems like the sole voice of reason in this entire horrible mess.

And then just when you think it can’t get any worse, and maybe Lea Michele is about to save the day by wrapping up the episode with a face-melting divalicious solo and everything might be alright after all, Finn proposes to Rachel instead. DON’T DO IT RACHEL YOU’LL REGRET IT I’M TELLIN YA. LET QUINN HAVE HIM FOR ALL I CARE. JUST. DO. NOT. MARRY. FINN. GRRL YOU KNOW YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT.

Anyway it’s all good because the next episode is Michael! But seriously Rachel better not say yes because then it will ruin my mood for the whole thing and I won’t be able to enjoy the triumphant return of the yummy Dalton Academy Warblers and the deliciously evil Sebastian, oh man I have pretty much given up all the original characters as lost causes but if these writers screw up my new gay boyfriend I might actually lose it for real.

Heyyyyyy therrrrre sexy

The opening voice-over honors went to Aidan, who used the opportunity to ruminate on freedom, or, in the case of him and his roommates, the lack thereof: After killing Bishop, Aidan finds himself unwillingly thrust into the position of head of the whole Boston vamp clan; Josh struggles to act as the provider for his girlfriend Nora; and Sally is still stuck haunting the house after missing her opportunity to cross over last season. It seemed to me like “freedom” was really just code for normalcy, the quest for which remains one of the central themes of the show, and as elusive as ever.

It’s obvious from the get-go that Aidan is not cut out to be the Head Vamp In Charge; he lacks his predecessor’s ambition, political savvy, and organizational skills, not to mention his taste for live human blood. Aidan as leader of the Boston vampires means hoards of desperate vamps hanging around outside the house waiting for blood handouts, instructions, or simple reassurance that they won’t be victims of the rumored culling of the ranks when a mysterious “she” comes to town. When Aidan proves either incapable of or, more likely, unwilling to provide the necessary leadership, disaster strikes as a panicked new vampire murders a patient at the hospital.

When Aidan asks Josh for help with disposing of the body, Josh uncharacteristically refuses, pointing out that he has a lot more to lose now that he’s in a serious committed relationship with Nora, whose presence in the house makes Josh a lot more concerned about keeping up appearances of normalcy. Josh’s concerns about freaking out Nora seem unfounded, since she appears to be taking all the new supernatural stuff in stride, even making an amusing attempt to strike up a conversation with Sally despite the fact that she can’t see her.

If Nora seems to accept her ghostly roommate with a preternatural calm, it’s because she’s got bigger things on her mind: Tonight is the first full moon since Josh scratched her, so if she’s going to turn into a werewolf, she’ll find out now. Her anxiety results in her pestering Josh with a lot of specific questions about the symptoms of werewolfism and the details of transformation that should seem suspicious to him but don’t, probably because he’s too busy worrying about his own imminent transformation.

Sally goes to her high school reunion and finds out that popular girls are still bitchy even when they’re ghosts. Whatever. I pretty much zone out during her storylines to be honest. Sorry.

Anyway so Aidan goes to meet with the vampire council and Mother, who is like the queen of the vampires and is expected to officially give Aidan the city of Boston. But she doesn’t, surprise surprise, instead making him the steward (which, the way she described it sounded pretty much like a babysitter) for the new leader, Mother’s daughter. This announcement caused some degree of alarm among the council members, who more or less implied that this chick is totally insane. So that should be fun.

Then came my favorite scene of the episode, where Aidan comes back to the house to fill Josh in on what went down at the meeting and basically asks him to be his accountability buddy. It seemed very self-aware and forward-thinking of Aidan to not only realize that getting mixed up with the vamp gang (which he only agrees to because they promise to let him out of it when he’s done) might lead him down a dark path, but also that Josh is the only one who will be able to bring him back. Aww, best bros forever.

Against his better judgment, Josh lets Nora drive him out to the woods so he can change into a werewolf, but then makes her promise to get as far away from him as possible. She of course doesn’t, instead waiting in the car until she hears him start to change, momentarily relieved when she doesn’t. Except then she does! Ohhhhhh snap! Josh hears her and tries to get back to her, but gets shot down by some vamps that Mother sent out werewolf hunting. Uh-oh!

Meanwhile, Sally gets back home and decides to try her ghostly classmate’s suggestion of sleeping, which according to him helped pass the time and resulted in some great dreams. She dreams about her door to the great beyond reappearing, except that when she opens it  there’s a silent, ominous-looking dark figure moving toward her instead of a soft white light. Uh-oh again!

So I think this episode set up a lot of good stuff; it will be interesting to see whether Aidan can balance his involvement in the vamp clan with his moral code, and how Josh deals with his new werewolf girlfriend, and what effect this mysterious dark force has on Sally. Can’t wait for next week!

(screencaps via Caps Anyone?)

Being Human is one of those shows that I always meant to check out but never actually took the time to, so yesterday’s all-day season one marathon on SyFy, leading up to the season two premiere last night, gave me the perfect opportunity. (N.B. I am aware of the existence of the UK version, but haven’t seen it, so I’ll just be talking about the US one.) And once I started watching it I literally couldn’t stop. The show’s set-up sounds like the start of a bad joke: There’s a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost, and they’re roommates. The seemingly simple formula is, of course, quickly complicated by the activities of the vampire mafia, the werewolf’s family problems, and the ghost’s unresolved issues with her (living) former fiance, among other things; I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to go into season two without catching up with the first one. 

So I think what makes Being Human such compelling viewing is how Aidan (the vampire) and Josh (the werewolf) struggle so hard to achieve the appearance of normalcy, trying to figure out how to cope with the biological aspects of themselves that are impossible to change. Sam Witwer, who plays Aidan, does a fantastic job portraying the tortured soul that is the reformed vampire without overselling it. His struggle against his blood-sucking instincts is constant and not always successful, which definitely makes for more interesting tv because you never know when he is going to relapse. Aidan’s main burden is that people keep dying despite his best efforts and intentions, and Witwer makes his grief seem real and haunting. (A great example of this is episode 1×8, “Children Shouldn’t Play with Undead Things,” which has a fairly predictable plot but remains a moving story in large part because of the emotions Witwer is able to evoke as Aidan grieves over a series of needless deaths for which he feels responsible.)

Sam Huntington’s Josh is just as tortured despite being the most “normal” of the three roommates: He’s the only one who actually eats food (for nourishment, at least), and his werewolfism only presents one night a month. Josh thinks of his condition as a disease and copes with it the way many people with long-term medical issues do, by refusing to acknowledge it whenever possible.

Maybe not what J.D. from Scrubs had in mind when he wrote his screenplay for "Dr. Acula."

Not only is Josh unwilling to let his condition define him (which, as Aidan points out, it ends up doing anyway since Josh spends all his time worrying about keeping it a secret), he attempts to alienate it from himself completely, constantly referring to “the wolf” as if it was an entirely separate entity. He hates it when other people watch his transformation; he tries to refuse to allow Sally the ghost to witness the event even though he is incapable of causing her physical harm, so the issue is as much a psychological one as it is a safety one. For me, Josh is by far the most relatable of the three main characters. Huntington is instantly likeable, not to mention responsible for most of the humor that keeps the show from becoming too depressingly hopeless.

The one character I was unable to connect with was Meahgan Rath’s ghostly Sally. Whereas Aidan and Josh’s problems have easily accessible real-world counterparts (addiction, disease), Sally’s inability to “move on” is a much tougher metaphor to swallow. I did enjoy her brief afterlife romance with a former college flame, and I am intrigued to see where her story goes in season two: Her season one arc seems to be more or less resolved, and preview clips showing Sally possessing people’s bodies in attempts to reconnect with the human world look promising.

Overall I really like the show; I think it definitely adds something different and cool to the whole vampire/werewolf/supernatural genre, and even though some of the plot points seemed a little confusing (still trying to figure out the leadership and power dynamics of the Boston vampire mafia) or obvious from a mile away, the emotional connection you form with the characters will keep you watching. You care about them, and they care about each other, and maybe that’s what being human is really all about.

PS-If you’re feeling up to it, you can read my were-cap of the season two premiere here

Blueprints of the Afterlife chronicles the stories of five survivors from “the Age of the Fucked Up Shit” (the official name for the unspecified events leading up to and causing the end of civilization as we know it; called FUS for short): Woo-jin Kan, the world’s best restaurant dishwasher; Luke Piper, a dot-com millionaire with a heckuva backstory and an equally impressive conspiracy theory; a late-20th-century history buff/archivist named Abby Fogg; crotchety FUS combat veteran Al Skinner; and devilishly handsome television actor Neethan Fucking Jordan (actual middle name). Their journeys start out separately but interweave in subtle ways, and the picture that emerges is a not entirely pessimistic vision of human life after a set of cataclysmic world-changing events.

This is not to say that the picture is comprehensive by any means; Boudinot’s world-building techniques stand in sharp contrast to the ones used by, for example, Max Brooks in World War Z or Suzanne Collins in The Hunger Games. Whereas Brooks and Collins both tend to spell out the unique or complex aspects of their dystopian futures for the reader, Boudinot falls more in line with writers like Neal Stephenson and China Miéville who employ a kind of immersion method, plunging readers headfirst into an unfamiliar world and giving us enough credit to assume we’ll figure it out as we go along.

It’s probably obvious which technique I prefer; while I can understand how the lack of exposition could be frustrating for some readers, I think the way Boudinot simply glosses over evocative elements of his post-apocalyptic world–a mentioned-in-passing vampire-werewolf conflict, the commonplace nature of human cloning, a self-aware robotic race of “newmen” that may or may not be bent on destroying humanity–makes it seem like a fully realized universe teeming with life, and allows the plot to carry on at an engaging pace. For example, a plot line involving Woo-jin finding a book he had apparently written in the future and then instructed to write that very book takes up only a few pages, while a similar device used by Charles Yu in How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe comprises at least the entire second half of that novel.

Blueprints of the Afterlife is full of memorable moments, and one of my favorites is when Skinner, while leaving the uninhabitable Phoenix in his RV, spots a father and son trudging along with their belongings in a shopping cart. The scene evokes Cormac McCarthy’s bleak post-apocalyptic novel The Road, while simultaneously making a statement about how many more possibilities the post-apocalyptic future can contain. There are tons of uncanny, creepy, and just plain bizarre happenings, and suspension of disbelief is definitely required, but overall I’d say this is one of the most creative and original takes on the end of the world as we know it that I’ve come across.

People‘s review said that the horse gave a very emotional performance, which sounds weird but actually is probably the best sentence to sum up War Horse. Like, obviously any movie where an animal is the main focus is going to be emotional, because you would be a heartless jerk to not root for an animal, and probably at some point in the movie that animal is going to get hurt even though it never did anything to deserve it, and it will be the saddest thing ever. Afterwards I could only think of this quote from the tv show Party Down, when cynical writer Roman offers his perspective on whether stories should strive to be “moving”:  ”You know what would be moving? If there were a kitty and a panda on the Titanic. And they had cancer. And fell in love.”

So yeah, War Horse really tugs at the heart strings. But so what? The whole story is: A boy and his horse get separated. And then (spoiler alert!) they get reunited. There’s no real change in any of the characters, and no real stakes; even obstacles that should seem insurmountable don’t, because you can tell going in that it’s not that kind of movie. Everyone is fundamentally decent even though they’re on opposite sides of the war, because they all love horses. And who doesn’t?

That seems to be the fact Steven Spielberg was banking on when he made the film, and even though it was so obviously emotionally manipulative, I couldn’t help but like it. My favorite scene was actually the one where an English and a German soldier team up to free the horse when it gets tangled up in barbed wire in the middle of no man’s land, and in the process learn that they’re not so different after all. Aww.

The other thing I really enjoyed was seeing Benedict Cumberbatch in a small role as an order-bellowing British major, a complete 180 from his Sherlock character. Or maybe I was just proud of myself for recognizing him in spite of his extreme mustache situation. At any rate Cumberbatch was just cast as the villain in the next Star Trek movie, so even if you’re not a fan of the British tv show Sherlock, you’ll want to take note of the actor.

Hot.

And yeah, all of the scenery and cinematography and everything was absolutely lovely, and John Williams’ score was predictably beautiful, and the whole thing was just about as nice as a war movie could be. I guess I just feel like if you’re gonna be put through the emotional wringer like that, you should get a little more out of it at the end.

To be honest, when I was about three-quarters of the way through the book, I was sure I was going to end up not liking it. The anecdotes were starting to feel a little gimmicky, with one too many twist endings, and although Brooks packs in a lot of clever ideas I was worried about the lack of a main protagonist to identify with and a resulting inability to emotionally connect to the events being portrayed. But the last chapter packed the emotional punch I was missing, allowing several of the most memorable characters to share their final thoughts on how the zombie attacks had affected their lives, and the world at large. Beyond that, the last chapter also left me as a reader with the uneasy feeling that “World War Z” might not actually be over but only temporarily suspended, the undead biding their time, waiting in the dark to catch humanity off guard again.

As many fans of the genre know, a zombie story isn’t really about the zombies (which are, in Brooks’ version, a menace without malice, mindless hoards so slow-moving that surviving humans can literally outwalk them) but about human nature. Any good zombie story forces you to ask yourself what lengths you would go to in fighting for your own survival and the survival of your loved ones. Would you be willing to put a bullet between the eyes of a friend or relative if you knew they were infected? Or worse, if you were injured and infected, would you be able to sacrifice yourself to ensure the safety of those around you?

World War Z definitely raises these questions, on both individual and societal levels. One of my favorite accounts in the novel is that of Roy Elliot, a film director whose lack of practical skills make him useless to the war effort until he hears of a strange phenomenon of uninfected people dying in their sleep because they don’t see any hope for the future and have simply lost the will to live. Elliot starts making what are basically propaganda films of ordinary citizens fighting battles against the zombie hoards and winning, and the instances of unexplained deaths start to decrease, a poignant statement on the role of art, culture, and media even (especially?) in the most desperate times.

I don’t want to go into too much detail about all the tales of survival that comprise the book, partly because I really do think it’s worth the read and partly because there are just so many of them: bone-chilling (an account of a zombie raid narrated by a young woman whose developmental deficiencies left her with a mental age of four was as terrifying as anything from the Resident Evil franchise), heart-wrenching, humorous, and even inspiring. The movie adaptation–starring Brad Pitt and slated for release on Dec. 21 of this year–is apparently not like the book at all, which doesn’t really come as a surprise. The interview format allows Brooks to explore a thousand different angles, each one of them easily deserving of a two-hour film treatment: Blind Japanese monks fighting zombies, anyone? How about Chinese nuclear subs? Or a celebrity-filled safe house with cameras broadcasting its inhabitants’ activities on the internet, Big Brother-style? World War Z makes it obvious that we’ve only just scratched the surface when it comes to possibilities for zombie stories, and I definitely look forward to seeing the effects this book has on developments in the genre.

For me, the major factors that contributed to the movie’s tension were Ethan Hunt’s status as a hero called back to action even though he might be past his prime, and the introduction of Jeremy Renner’s character IMF analyst William Brandt.

The first of these elements was definitely the most satisfying for me. You really got the sense that Ethan is just physically and emotionally tapped out after 15 years of saving the world, but faces the same problem fellow action hero John McClane did in the latest Die Hard installment: there’s simply no one else who can do the job. But while Live Free or Die Hard was pretty heavy-handed with the “I’m getting too old for this” angle, Hunt’s age-related issues are much more subtle.

Where a younger Ethan Hunt would probably have no trouble jumping through a 130th-story window after scaling across a building, now he almost misses and has to be pulled inside by two members of his team. The final fight scene, a drawn-out brawl inside a high-tech parking garage, likely would have been a cake walk if it had taken place 15 years ago when Tom Cruise was first shimmying through air ducts and tricking us with fancy masks (a Mission Impossible trope that is amusingly lampshaded in this movie). The end result of all the close calls in Ghost Protocol is that you’re pulling for Hunt and his team harder than you ever have before, because for the first time, you’re not quite positive they’ll make it.

The addition of  Agent Brandt to the team only serves to ratchet up the tension further. Although Brandt repeatedly proves that he’s one of the good guys and goes to extreme lengths to help the team accomplish its mission–tossing himself down a 25-foot deep shaft with no safety net except blundering tech-turned-field-agent Benji’s promise to catch him, for one thing–he still seems less than 100% trustworthy. Which obviously isn’t one of the most desirable characteristics for a member of your spy team, and if the same cast comes back for the inevitable M:I5, Brandt would be an obvious choice for the villain of that movie.

Creating a suitably threatening bad guy is the one area where Ghost Protocol could have done a little bit better; Michael Nyqvist is good as your run-of-the-mill nuke-happy terrorist, but his predecessor in M:I3 was the inimitable Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is literally the only thing I remember about that movie. So you know, tough act to follow.

Stealing the scene this time was Simon Pegg as Benji, proving yet again that he is one of the  funniest people ever in the entire history of the universe. I seriously cannot overstate how much I enjoy his quirky persona, a sort of happy-go-lucky dopiness that turned seemingly innocuous lines–”I can’t, I’m on the computer”–into comedic gold. In addition to Pegg’s performance, there were a lot of other great moments that kept the movie from taking itself too seriously even though the stakes (nuclear war!) were as high as ever. All of which resulted in a highly entertaining movie that I can’t recommend highly enough. So, you know.

Mission accomplished.

It was effing terrible.

Like, why wouldn’t MTV just try to get the rights to air the British version instead of going to all the trouble of a sub-par remake?

I mean, I’m super into the concept, with all the suburban discontent and disaffected youth and all, but it just seems fake. Like, really, you’re gonna censor it every time someone says “fuck”? Really? And you’re tryin to be all edgy and everything, but bro, srsly. You’re on MTV. Right after “Jersey Shore.” I could go to mtv.com right now and watch a  ”bonus webisode.” Mmm, commercialization.

So edgy.

It also seemed like too much of a direct translation, which didn’t really work, because I feel like high school is a pretty culturally idiosyncratic experience. In contrast to the relative universality of being an office drone, which maybe helped “The Office” remake not feel so forced. But IDK how much people will relate to the new “Skins”; I know I personally could map my own high school experiences onto the original version, because I could recognize and acknowledge the cultural differences and move past them to the more universal aspects of feeling bored, restless, outcast, etc., instead of trying to deal with a totally unrealistic depiction of American high school life.

The one unique aspect of American high school that they did address seemed pretty interesting. The cheerleader character, Tea, seemed fairly non-stereotypical, or at least fulfilling a less common stereotype of like a good girl with a secret wild side: going to school early for cheer practice but ditching class to smoke in the bathroom, tokin’ it up on the weekends, etc.  Not to mention I was super-impressed with her ability to carry on a fairly wordy phone conversation (via bluetooth, obviously) without missing a beat in the routine. Now that’s coordination.

So I don’t wanna write the whole show off, cuz I think it still might have promise, but the entire time I was watching it and thinking, “Oh man, I wish my Internet wasn’t slow as balls so I could download the original and finish watching that instead.”

In other news, OMG, “Glee” won a Golden Globe! Yay! I really didn’t see that coming. I was way more excited that Jane Lynch won, and suuuuuuuuuuuuuper stoked that Chris Colfer did, not only because he was so freakin’ adorable and gave an amazing acceptance speech, but because ever since I started watching again this season I’ve been blown away by what an amazing actor he actually is. Especially in “Grilled Cheesus” and “Never Been Kissed.” He’s the only one on that whole friggin show who can make me cry on a regular basis. So yaaaaaay Chris!