Category Archives: Cable
‘American Horror Story: Coven’ Recap: “The Replacements”
I watched the most recent episode of American Horror Story: Coven, “The Replacements,” about an hour after it aired. Prior to that, I noticed several Facebook/Twitter/what-have-you posts that all echoed the same sentiment: “WTF did I just watch?!” So I prepared myself for a doozy and settled in to watch. Everything seemed relatively normal and I thought, “Hmm, this isn’t so bad,” but halfway through the episode, the freakout began.
Kyle is back at home after Zoe moved him from the second coming of Stevie Nicks’ cabin to his own home where she felt he’d heal better under his mother’s care. Misty, undoubtedly lonely in the woods, grew attached to Kyle and is not totally ready for him to leave, but Zoe takes him anyway. Back at Kyle’s, Mommie Dearest greets him in bed. Earlier, she walked in on him in the shower and noticed his new body parts. Wait, did she just glance down south? Back in the bed, she kisses him and kisses him some more and OH MY GOD THIS IS TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE. SHE’S REACHING UNDER THE COVERS. OH. OKAY. So, Kyle’s mom has been sexually abusing him for an undisclosed amount of time, which is something Zoe might have known had she actually, you know, known him. This continues later on in the episode, giving us Kyle’s first words since his resurrection: he screams “No” over and over again while beating his mom’s face in with an old trophy.
‘Trust Me, I’m a Game Show’ Host Review
TBS’s Trust Me, I’m a Game Show Host is everything a modern game show should be. It has the bawdiness and banter of Match Game with a side of Hollywood Squares “is this person telling the truth.”
Unlike most game shows, there are two hosts: D.L. Hughley and Michael Ian Black. It’s an unusual setup that works because it seems like the producers will be casting meek contestants, who aren’t entirely comfortable with the jokes and subject matters. The producers are picking people that blush when you mention boobs, so of course they’re not going to be comfortable when D.L. Hughley gives a fact about the first patent for vibrators. While it would be nice to see a contestant hold their own against two comedians, the contestants aren’t the star of the show.
The facade of a game show only serves to allow D.L. and Michael to banter, which gets a little dirty because the show is aired at 10:30 pm on cable. The fact that the Trust Me, I’m a Game Show Host isn’t on network television allows both hosts to curse, tell questionable jokes, and D.L. to crack all the jokes he wants about being a black man. For some reason, that is something D.L. likes to remind the audience. He constantly calls himself “the dark side.” It’s funny the first time. By the five hundredth time, it’s been run into the ground.
“The Walking Dead”: “Infected” Recap
In last night’s episode of The Walking Dead, the prison is starting to crumble as a safe haven. Outside forces, like the mysterious disease and the growing number of walkers near one spot of the fence, are threatening the whole group. Last week’s episode ended with a new character Patrick getting sick and turning into a walker. This set off a whole chain of events that unfolded last night. Rick theorizes that the illness and the sick animals could be connected. He also notices that the walkers are grouped near the livestock. He then sacrifices the pigs to draw the walkers away from the fence. Problem solved, right?
There is also a new threat within the group. Someone is feeding the walkers live rats, which could be another reason why they crowded in one area. This same person might have been responsible for killing two people that were suspected to have the mystery flu. Since there are so many new people in the prison, this is a recipe for disaster. Last week, Rick learned to stop trusting people. This lesson is probably going to spread to everyone in the original group. This is evident because Rick and Carl are carrying guns again.
‘American Horror Story: Coven’: “Boy Parts” Recap
This week’s episode of American Horror Story: Coven opened up against a classic Louisiana landscape: the bayou. Two poachers hunting gators are hauling a catch up to their camp when they noticed a woman we know as (the recently burned-at-the-stake) Misty Day wandering around. As Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen” served as the background music, Day, looking very Nicks-ish herself (more on that later), examines several of their previous kills and lets the hunters know how she feels about their hobby. Given her power of resurrection, it was easy to see where this was going. She brings all of the gators back to life, and they decimate the two men, guilty of murdering innocent creatures for their own personal gain. When we last saw Misty, she was called a necromancer and burned by her God-fearing peers. Now, she’s mentally and physically reborn.
Back at the school, Cordelia gets the girls up and ready for the day. Zoe is still mourning Kyle, but Madison feels he’s just as guilty as his fraternity brothers. Zoe can’t accept that, but Madison assures her he would have died anyway because of Zoe’s power. Fiona, meanwhile, has Madame LaLaurie tied up and gagged in her room. Fiona warns her not to scream, but of course she does. I’m still not exactly sure what she thought this would accomplish. She obviously wants to be helped, but I’d imagine it would be difficult for someone who’s been buried alive for 180 years to navigate the present.
‘Hello Ladies’: “The Date” Review
Hello Ladies is tiresome. All the characters are pathetic. It’s no longer funny.
Out of all the characters, Stuart Pritchard is the worst. Stuart thinks he’s a player, but he doesn’t even know when a woman is hitting on him. When Jessica does point it out, Stuart awkwardly tries to act cool, which demonstrates exactly how uncool he is, yet sometimes he gets the girl. “The Date” had him ask a girl from his gym’s smoothie bar appear clearly interested in him, but Stuart thinks she’s just making fun of his Britishness because she says things like “top of the morning to you” and “cheerio.” Once Stuart understands the situation, he ends up knocking over all the drinks in the refrigerator. In his head, leaning against the fridge is cool. Everyone else knows attempting to look cool only makes you look clueless.
It’s Raining Dead! ‘The Walking Dead’ Returns
Spoilers (show, video game, and comics) ahead, you’ve been warned.
The Walking Dead kicked off its fourth season last night. After a sleeper third season finale, fans were hoping for an amazing premiere. The episode “30 Days Without An Accident” shuffled its way along. It spent the whole episode building up the rest of the season. Not that it’s entirely a bad thing, since that’s what premiere episodes are supposed to do.
Most importantly, the group is quickly going to discover a whole new problem. This time, it isn’t a horde of walkers or a gang of crazy survivors. Not yet, at least. It seems that the animals are finally being infected. Whether it’s by the same infection or a whole new strain has yet to be determined. It started with one of the newer group members (aka walker food) thanking Daryl for the deer he hunted earlier. By the end of the episode, he mysteriously turns into a walker. Throughout the episode, Rick noticed that there were some sick animals in and around the prison. Hershel had stated that they have enough food to feed all of the people in the prison. Well, not anymore.
American Horror Story: Coven’s Promising Premiere
After American Horror Story’s disjointed, cluttered second season, I wasn’t too sure I’d be back for season three. It took such a nosedive after a stellar inaugural season that I didn’t think recovery was possible. I changed my mind with the release of each 15ish-second preview and after the cast was announced. It looked creepy, fresh, and fierce – and it acted the part in “Bitchcraft,” the premiere episode.
The show opens in 1834 New Orleans. Madame Delphine LaLaurie (Kathy Bates) hosts some kind of formal gathering in her home. Once all of her guests leave, she heads upstairs to start her nightly beauty routine: rubbing a mixture of blood and a human pancreas on her face like any self-respecting woman would. She’s disrupted, though, when she learns that her daughter was found copulating with a servant. Furious, she has him taken to the attic, where slaves are kept in crates in various states of torture; one man’s eyes and mouth are sewn shut, a woman’s skin has been peeled from her face. Delphine has a child bring in a bull’s head, which she puts over the slave’s like a mask because she’s “always loved the minotaur.” Later, she receives a visit from Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett), a priestess claiming to have a potion for Delphine that will curb her husband’s craving for younger women. She gladly takes it but soon discovers it’s poison. Marie sought revenge against Delphine, as her lover was the one who was fitted with a new head. Delphine died, and her body was never found.
Satisfied is an Understatement for Breaking Bad Finale
After just over a week’s worth of reflection, my mind hasn’t changed. I still think the Breaking Bad finale was perfect, and I’m hardly alone. It was tight (TIGHT. Tight.), concise, and exactly what we needed. This show has never been about broad, unanswered questions or making a spectacle of itself. It was about as realistic as a show centered around a dying chemistry teacher’s meth empire could get. It had its share of over-the-top moments – Gus straightening his tie with half of a face, hydrofluoric acid and an assortment of body parts burning through a bathtub – but they took away nothing from the plot. Gilligan did the inevitable, tying up every loose end in the process, and presented it in a nice, neat package wrapped with a crystal blue bow.
And there has still been some blowback. Some felt it was boring and too orderly, others felt that not enough happened. Some went out of the way to craft intricate alternate theories, like Norm MacDonald’s “Walt died in the car” idea. The problem with things likes this is that they discredit the creator’s intentions. MacDonald’s theory is implausible not because of facts, but because it directly contradicts the show’s structure. It has never been vague or open-ended. Before “Felina” aired, it felt almost impossible to hear about the episode without mentions of shows like LOST in the same breath. The two shows had brilliant endings, but they were vastly different and appropriate for their respective genres. There’s no reason to combine the two because a flexible LOST-like ending would never work for a show like Breaking Bad.
For me, there’s nothing more satisfying television-wise than seeing something come full-circle. Nods to early episodes and closed plotlines fill me with so much (probably too much) joy. Maybe Walt blamed Gretchen and Elliot for much of this mess. We don’t know exactly what happened with him and Gray Matter, but something tells me he likely wouldn’t have had to pursue drug manufacturing to pay his medical bills and take care of his family if he were as wealthy as the Schwartzes. So to him, paying them a visit before the final showdown was his way of attacking the root of the problem, even though he didn’t hurt them – nor did he ever intend to. The show’s last scene was even more gratifying. He’s in a lab, probably thinking about how it pales in comparison to their previous workspaces, and he leaves a bloody handprint on a piece of equipment, a physical component of himself left on something that used to be his livelihood. All of this on top of Jesse escaping, Walt admitting that he wasn’t in it solely for his family, and the total destruction of some of the baddest bad guys we know, made it the perfect ending to a perfect show.
We may not ever experience a television show like this again. I’m honestly okay with that. Breaking Bad completely altered the way I look at television, films, books. It set a new precedent for other writers, other creators, and they’re constantly going to be upping their standards to catch up to it. I miss it already.
‘Hello Ladies’: Same Schtick Over and Over Again
Hello Ladies is mildly entertaining and kind of sad. The show relies too much on Stuart Prtichard, who is a fish out of water and a jerk.
Stuart Pritchard doesn’t deserve his friends. For some reason, Wade puts up with Stuart’s wannabe Casanova lifestyle and allows Stuart to control his life, even though all Wade wants is his wife to take him back. In “The Limo,” Wade rents a limo, so that he could take his wife, who he is currently separated from, on a special date. Wade’s wife tells him to get lost. Instead of having Wade cancel the limo, Stuart decides to have a party in it on Wade’s dime.
Growth, Decay, Transformation: “Felina” Wraps Up “Breaking Bad”
Confession time: I am a recent Breaking Bad bandwagoner. I mean, it’s barely been a year since I started watching. I popped in season one mid-June of 2012 and barreled through the whole thing just in time for the season five (first half) premiere. When the first couple of seasons aired, I had some interest, but not enough to seek out a download link. I think I even vaguely remember being annoyed that Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul beat out a few Lost actors at the 2010 Emmys, which seems a little bizarre to me now. I want to go back in time and tell myself, “WATCH IT. You will learn, child.”
So it’s only been a year, but it feels like many more. After the pilot, I knew there was no going back. This show has absolutely consumed me since then. I’ve been nervous for the finale ever since, not due to a lack of faith in Gilligan & Co., but because I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to these characters just yet. While “Felina” was utterly nerve-wracking, a fingernail-destroyer of an episode, it did leave us with some solace. When was the last time we thought that about anything on Breaking Bad? It was the perfect end to a perfect show that never dipped or even approached a downhill slope.
The episode title guaranteed us three things: blood (iron, Fe), meth (lithium, Li), and tears (sodium, Na). A simple, straightforward formula that really could be the overarching theme of the show as a whole, but nothing else was needed. Walt’s death was inevitable, so Gilligan got in, got out, and got it done, but not before tying up every remaining loose end. He even gets continuations of almost every flashforward: leaving Denny’s, retrieving the ricin coupled with a particularly painful flashback to Hank prodding Walt to inject a little more excitement into his life from the pilot. Nothing was extravagant, save for a few masterful cinematography moments – the reveal of Walt behind the pillar in Skyler’s kitchen comes to mind.
Wait! What's A Dial? 