Fringe – Season 5

Season 5 title screen.

Fringe Executive Producer and Showrunner J.H. Wyman said this about Season 5, “My biggest concern was telling an authentic, honest story that I could stand behind, and that I would feel I was giving the fans the love letter that I think they deserve.”

Well, if the final season was a love letter to the fans, then the final episode was a gigantic fuck you.

General Thoughts

After watching the final moments of the show, a show I have invested years in, I couldn’t help but be furious. I wanted to smash something. Seriously. Wyman took a damn good season, a damn good series, and crushed it in a few confusing, contradictory final moments. He did two things: 1) he fucked up because he insisted on using time travel while failing to understand its logistics, and 2) he fucked up because he doesn’t give a shit.

Justified Season 3

Raylan knows how to kick back, even while shooting bad guys.

Justified has shown a great amount of depth and progression each year it has been on the air. The first season was largely plot-driven, but managed to utilize interesting characters to its advantage. It could be slow at times, but it was never boring. The second season improved on the first in various ways. The story became more character-driven, and each person affected the plot in their own way. Nothing felt contrived or forced. The third season managed to mesh what worked in the first and second seasons, and create something unique and memorable.

Alias Season 5 (Bonus Alias Drinking Game)

Alias Season 5 cast.

Alias probably should have ended with Season 4. Rewatching it, you can see that just about everything was resolved. “The greatest power”, the evil Elena Derevko, was defeated. Nadia did not survive fighting Syndey, thus fulfilling Rambaldi’s prophecy. Irina more or less got away, but in a suitable manner. Syndney and Vaughn got engaged. And Sloane redeemed himself to become good. Or at least as “good” as he could ever be. The final two episodes looked as if they had been written to be a series finale. It should have just been over at that point. But they got picked up for Season 5, so they ended things on a ridiculous cliffhanger, and kept on going.

Season 5 is strange for a lot of reasons. First, Jennifer Garner is clearly bored with her role at this point. Scene after scene, line after line, she is phoning in her performance. Second, Michael Vartan, who played Vaughn, left the show. Naturally, the best thing to do is kill his character. Yeah, why not? There’s no point in letting a character, whom we’ve enjoyed for four seasons, live. Third, Nadia turns out to have survived but is off the show, anyway. Fourth, Greg Gunberg, who played Weiss, left the show, as well. This leaves us with a cast including Sydney, Jack, Dixon, Sloane, and Marshall. Fifth, Jennifer Garner got pregnant and, while the show already required a lot of suspension of disbelief from the viewers, people were not going to accept a pregnant spy jetsetting around the world and kicking peoples’ asses. So, the series had to bring in some new recruits.

The two new characters are Rachel Gibson and Tom Grace. We are introduced to them through a series of episodes which go on for way too long. They could have each been introduced in 1-2 episodes. But we get so much boring backstory that half the season is wasted getting them up to speed. This makes matters worse when the season is abbreviated at 17 episodes.

Because they took so much time setting them up, I got the sense that Alias was going to make them the main stars of the show. Since Jennifer Garner was so bored at this point she was either going to quit outright, or just become a background character. Or the other possibility was that Alias was meant to conclude at the end of Season 5 and then immediately spin-off into a new series with Rachel and Tom as the leads with Jack, Sloane, Dixon, and Marshall reprising their roles.

Regardless of what the original plan was, about halfway through the season, ABC announced that Alias would be cancelled. This actually worked in the series’ favor because they decided to scrap whatever plans they had, and tried to end the show on a high note. The writing of the second half was a definite improvement. The stories became better. The episodic “getting to the know you” crap of the new people was jettisoned in order to refocus back on resolving the stories of the show’s original characters. The conspiracy stuff and Rambaldi prophecies came front and center once again. The writers had several loose ends they wanted to tie up, and tried their damnedest to make it happen.

Everybody from Alias

Fortunately, they did a pretty good job. The second half moves along at a good clip. Characters who hadn’t made an appearance in a long time (e.g. Anna Espinosa, Sark) returned for a couple of episodes in order to have their stories completed. Bradley Cooper even came back to guest star in one fairly strong episode. After Sydney had her baby, she was able to go out on missions once again, and the old style of show came back. The only thing that didn’t work was the return of Vaughn.

Clearly, Vaughn was supposed to be dead. That much is obvious based on how he got his body turned into Swiss cheese by machine gun fire, and then he died and had a funeral. But then guess what? LOL SURPRISE EVERYONE IT TURNS OUT VAUGHN WAS ALIVE AFTER ALL AND WAS JUST IN HIDING LOL! I suppose this would have been acceptable had Sydney not known about it. But no, it turns out that Jack and Sydney somehow planned for Vaughn to go into hiding until it was safe. They both knew he was alive the whole time. Well, for Jack this could have flown, but for Sydney it makes no fucking sense. She spent many scenes bawling her eyes out, sometimes in the privacy of her own home, and this ruse doesn’t jibe with what happened. If she knew he was alive, she wouldn’t be weeping at home alone. That part was handled so badly, it certainly made it clear that the writers have been shooting from the hip on Alias for a long time. There was definitely never an overarching plan for the story.

In the end, however, they managed to resolve things nicely. Sloane got a fitting end; he got to achieve Rambaldi’s endgame (which he spent 30 years trying to do) but did not get to enjoy it. Jack’s death seemed sort of unnecessary but his ultimate sacrifice worked within the context of the final episodes. Sydney and Vaughn had a nice resolution to their relationship and were finally granted peace. Irina got what was coming to her. Lastly, Sark, who I always enjoyed as a fun villain, got away and continued to be a nuisance. All in all, a decent ending to the series. In fact, the final three episodes were phenomenally good. They were a definite highlight amongst the series as a whole. Too bad they weren’t so good they made up for the extremely weak first half of the season.

When I set out on this rewatch, I figured Alias would not have aged gracefully. On the contrary, it has stood up surprisingly well. It isn’t perfect. The acting is good but not great. The special effects are cheesy. Sometimes the plot makes no sense. But overall, there is a lot to like. The main story is strong and has an actual ending. The characters are likable. The action scenes are fun despite being ridiculous. The spy aesthetic may not be realistic, but at the very least it is entertaining. Overall, this is a TV series worth revisiting.

Verdicts:

Season 5 – Average

The Series Overall – Good

Here’s something to get you in the mood for the Alias drinking game.

Bonus: Alias Drinking Game

Drink every time

• Sydney gets emotional (two drinks if it happens during a mission).
• Sydney beats up a guy twice her size.
• An agent gets caught/seen by a security guard.
• An agent trips the security system.
• The target/bad guy/contact is in a night club.
• The target/bad guy/contact is a Russian.
• Someone gets double-crossed.
• Someone gets kidnapped (two drinks if they are also tortured).
• Somone uses a fake accent.
• The special effects look really cheesy/cheap.
• Jack does something badass.
• Weiss says something sarcastic.
• Marshall gets nervous/stammers (skip this one if you don’t want to black out).
• Someone says, “Your plane leaves in one hour.” (or some variation of that)
• Someone says something mean to Sloane.
• Someone mentions Rambaldi.
• Someone uses the word “endgame.”
• The background music is something slow and soulful.
• A main character is about to get shot by a bad guy, but the bad guy gets shot by someone else who is off-screen.
• The episode ends on a cliffhanger.

Fringe – Season 4

Fringe title screen.

I’m not exactly sure how to describe season 4 of Fringe. Season 1 was pretty good, although the early episodes were bland and directionless. Seasons 2 and 3 were totally awesome as they focused on the war between two parallel universes. The third season ended with a powerful episode and a massive cliffhanger. Given that Fringe had been firing on all cylinders for two full years, it was probably an impossible task to keep up that level of writing for a third consecutive year. The writing is still good, the acting top-notch, and the ideas interesting, but it just doesn’t live up to the quality of the material that came before it. Season 4 could have continued to expand upon the series mythology, but instead it was bloated with a lot of needless filler. I suppose if I was hard pressed to use a word to describe this season, that word would be: squandered.

Moneyball, Alias Season 3

Moneyball

Moneyball? More like money... um, sorry, no joke is coming to mind.

I thought this was going to be a porno. Look at the title. Money-ball. Anyway, this movie was actually pretty good even though it wasn’t a porno. It is based on the idea that you don’t need to waste a lot of money getting the biggest sports stars (usually the biggest assholes, too) in order to have a winning team. You hire the guys who have consistent stats, who aren’t flashy but have good fundamentals, and eventually you win games by sheer statistics. This appeals to me, because it means you don’t need those narcissistic fuckos who think they are King Shit of the sport. I hope those guys will eventually get paid less because of this. But probably not. We’ll continue to throw ourselves at the alter of sports celebrity. “LOL BUT BRIK TEHY ARE SUPAR TALENTED THEY TOTALY NEED TO MAKE $7.5 MILLION A YEAR TO THROW A BALL LOL!” *sigh*

So, the movie told an interesting story, and definitely a unique one in the vast field of derivative sports films. Brad Pitt turned in a strong performance. The directing was good. There was humor in the right places. The only thing that didn’t work was the treacly, forced “heartwarming” relationship between Pitt and his daughter. It was like some producer was yelling: “THERE ISN’T ENOUGH HEART IN THIS MOVIE! WE NEED TO HAVE HEART! SOMEONE GET A TWEEN AND HAVE HER PLAY A GUITAR! THAT WAY PEOPLE WILL KNOW THIS MOVIE HAS HEART!” Aside from that misstep, it was a good movie, and is worth checking out.

Verdict: Good

Alias season 3

Alias season 3 cast.

While seasons 1 and 2 delivered fairly consistent entertainment, season 3 took a nosedive into a giant pool of shit. The plot was nonsensical. Sydney goes missing for 2 years and has amnesia of only those two years she was gone. Yeah, cause that’s how amnesia works (not). The initial focus is to figure out where she was and what she was doing. Of course, the CIA unquestioningly welcomes her back (yeah, right), and immediately starts sending her out on dangerous missions (yeah, right). Eventually, the writers got bored/confused by this plotline, and just ended it halfway through the season when an old guest star shows up and says, “LOL SYDNEY I KNOW WHERE YOU’VE BEEN FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS AND NOW LET ME EXPLAIN EVERYTHING TO YOU IN THE MOST BORING WAY IMAGINABLE INSTEAD OF TREATING THE AUDIENCE TO SOMETHING INTERESTING AND THEN WE’LL ALL COMPLETELY FORGET ABOUT THIS STORYLINE LOL!”

The remainder of the season makes no sense. Vaughn’s wife Lauren turns out to be a double agent who isn’t field trained, and then suddenly is a bad-ass on par with James Bond. Lauren and Sark head up the bad guys’ U.S. field office (which apparently has no other members), but then suddenly they are both answering to Lauren’s mom who is also a villain (and kills her senator husband) for no discernible reason. Things get more and more ridiculous: Jack IM-chats with Irina and tells her he loves her even though she is an internationally wanted criminal and up until this point he wanted to kill her, Jack helps Sloane fake his own death, Sloane may be Sydney’s biological father but that plot point is dropped almost immediately, the Rambaldi stuff makes no sense, the Lazare stuff makes no sense, Senator Lindsey is good one moment and then bad the next, all of the Triad stuff from season 2 is never resolved, and worst of all, the primary focus of the season is a love triange between Sydney, Vaughn, and Lauren. Lame. This is one of the worst seasons of any TV series I have ever seen. In the first episode of season 4, Vaughn said, “Last year sucked!” Yes it did, Vaughn, yes it did. Apparently, the writers were well aware of the giant shit they took.

Verdict: Shitty

How to Jump the Shark: The Office Season 8

They should have crossed out the whole picture.

Up until this season, The Office was probably my favorite show of all time (second only to Rock of Love Bus). I quoted it. I had parties to watch the new episodes. I loved it, and since I hate everything, that is saying a lot. The show had weak episodes here and there, but through 7 seasons, it gave me a lot of laughs.

Then came season 8. Why couldn’t The Office have had the grace to quit while they were ahead?

I predict that The Office will be cancelled by the end of the season, if not before. It certainly needs to be put out of its misery. Here’s why:

1. They lost the show’s main character. Yes, The Office has an ensemble cast, but the world of The Office only works with Michael Scott at the helm. He is an incompetent boss, completely insane, and yet still likable. The show revolved around Michael’s crazy ideas and the rest of the office trying to cope with/react to them. Andy is not nearly incompetent or insane enough, and Robert California might be insane but he’s barely on the show. Without Michael, it’s just an office full of slightly weird/annoying people. Why would I waste my time watching it when I can just go to work?
2. All of the characters got fat. Ok, not all of them. Just Darryl and Pam. And Pam is pregnant, not so much “fat” per se. Either way, I feel like the cast is just bigger this year, and for some reason I don’t enjoy watching them as much because of it. So sue me.
3. The characters are not consistent. Pam used to be somewhat meek, shy even. She seemed like a nice person–now she just seems arrogant and entitled. Round-face smug, bossy Pam. She seems more like Angela now. And Angela is nice and happy this season. What the hell? Who decided to switch Angela and Pam? I don’t like either of them now. Andy used to be an acapella-loving, banjo-playing man with anger issues. Now he is an acapella-loving, banjo-playing man with daddy issues. Ok, so Andy has issues. Why not carry on his previous anger issue? Why make up a new one this season? They used it as a plot device for a single episode, instead of building on past established traits in multiple episodes. It didn’t fit and I didn’t get it.
4. They tried to continue the series after all of the loose ends were tied up. Last season, Michael Scott finally realized his dream to get engaged to someone equally as insane as him. Pam and Jim already had their happily ever after. Angela was dating a gay politician. Dwight was exactly the same as he was on day 1 of the series. The Office was left with an uncertain future with no replacement boss–what better way to end? What other story is there to tell? (None, if you couldn’t guess.) Leave it open so that each viewer can make up his own ending, if you will.
5. The gags are over-the-top. I know what you’re thinking. It’s The Office. ALL of the gags are over-the-top. But that’s just it–they’re not. Like when Jim and Pam throw Andy’s phone into the ceiling over his desk. That is totally doable, and I’m sure people tried it after the show aired. Or the time when Michael was going to pretend to commit suicide by jumping off the roof into a bouncy castle. It was crazy, but within Michael’s realm of crazy, so I could buy it. This season? Jim publishing a fake book online about throwing garden parties? Dwight finding it, purchasing it, and using it as a reference to throw a garden party? IMPOSSIBLE. At the very least, IMPLAUSIBLE. Sorry guys, I just don’t believe your jokes anymore.
6. Not enough of the minor characters. I love Meredith, Creed, and Kelly. They have provided some of the funniest moments this show has ever offered up. Creed selling fake IDs to all the local teenagers. Meredith flashing Michael in his office. Creed’s “blog”.  Meredith trading sex for paper discounts. Creed taking a bite out of a potato. Almost anything that Kelly says. (“I have a question for you Ryan. First of all, how dare you.”) In seasons past, I would lol every time they would come on screen–but this season I haven’t lol’ed once. Are they even in this season, or do they just not have anything even remotely funny to say?
7. The writing is bad. I think that sums up 3-6. The writers all forgot their craft after Steve Carell left the show. His impact on the entire production was obviously huge, because without him, they just can’t pull it off. Most of the issues I listed could be corrected with better writing–but it won’t happen. If they could write better episodes, they’d be doing it already.

The bottom line is that the show is pointless without Steve Carell. If the people in charge had any insight, they would have realized this and cancelled it already. Instead, they decided to go for one more season–but I guarantee it will be the last.*

Verdict: Shitty

*But if it’s not I’ll still be watching, and complaining about it the entire time.

The Help, Alias Season 1, Blassreiter

The Help

Talkin' 'bout eatin' shit pie.

Mrs. Brik and I went to the second-run theater to check this out. We almost always go to the second-run theater because it’s cheap. Since most movies are toxic chunks of shit, it’s more palatable to spend $6 on tickets instead of $18. The Help was surprisingly great. It was funny, dramatic, topical, and inspiring in all the right places. It seemed to tell a deeply personal story in what came from a fictional novel. This is a rare example of a movie done right. It doesn’t have a lot of cliche lines, bullshit transformations by evil characters, and they don’t solve racism by the end of the movie. It was simply a different lens through which to view 1960s-era Southern U.S. racism. It didn’t pander and it didn’t dumb itself down. Both of which were very refreshing.

Verdict: Awesome

Alias Season 1

Alias season 1 cast

I’ve already watched Alias once from start to finish. In my boredom from the fact that there is hardly anything good on TV, I decided to crack open my dusty old Alias DVDs and watch the show again. My first thought was that it would be horrible, and my memory of it being good would be tainted by nostalgia. However, as I watched it, I was pleasantly surprised. The main character can be a hot-headed, emotionally-driven, knee-jerk-reactionary bitch. The action sequences can be cheesy, and the special effects weak as hell. However, the story is cool. The other characters are mostly fun. The Rambaldi stuff appeals to the conspiracy-theory fan in me. The writing remained as strong as I had remembered. Apparently, a lot of the writing/producing team went on to work on Fringe, which is definitely a good thing. Overall, each episode was a worthwhile distraction for 45 minutes. 

Verdict: Good

Blassreiter

Grrrrr serious business.

Yet another horrible shit-turd from anime studio Gonzo. What a huge piece of shit this turned out to be. Speed Grapher was terrible, too, but at least it was over-the-top crazy fun. Blassreiter, however, was like Gantz or Blue Gender in that it is just shitty and has no redeeming qualities. The show takes itself deathly seriously, but then it has ridiculous things happen. For example, in the first episode a guy sees a telephone morph into his ex-lover’s face. I literally laughed out loud when that happened. It uses horribly obvious CGI: humans, monsters, vehicles, mecha, everything is CGI. The storyline is ludicrous. The characters die and give inane soliloquies just before they kick the bucket. It tries to be adult, but turns out like a 13 year old boy’s idea of cool.

Verdict: Shitty

Fringe – Seasons 1-3

Fringe title screen.

Most television shows cater to people with moderate to severe mental retardation. As a result, I don’t watch a lot of television. When you are constantly bombarded with crap like: The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: Antarctica, CSI: NCIS: SVU: Los Angeles, Gray’s Anatomy, Jersey Shore, everything on the CW, and the fifty Kardashians reality shows, there is hardly any reason to turn on a television. Fortunately, I found a reason to watch TV again, the sci-fi series Fringe.

When this began airing in 2008 I figured it would be nothing more than an X-Files rip-off, so I completely dismissed it. Since that time it has garnered a cult following, as well as some critical acclaim, but has stagnated in the ratings. It was recently picked up for a fourth season, but only just barely. It was nearly canceled. Being someone who inevitably gets hooked on unpopular series that get canceled without a proper conclusion, (e.g. Twin Peaks) I decided to check this show out.

How to Save True Blood (Bonus True Blood Drinking Game)

True Blood logo

Back in April of 2010 I wrote a review of how badass the first season of True Blood was. And it was good. Really good. With all the blood, tits, and foul language it was easily the television highlight of the year. Since that time I watched season two and season three, although the latter was difficult due to the loud-talkers in the room. Now, season four is currently airing, and I regret to say that compared to the highs of the first season, the fourth season is a sack of shit. So where did they go wrong?

The reason that the first season worked so well (besides the sex and violence) was that the story was simple and straightforward. It centered on the relationship between Sookie and Bill, and the other characters were more or less peripheral. Eric, Jason, Lafayette, etc were all involved to some extent, but they played smaller roles in the central storyline. Really, though, there was just one story, told from Sookie’s perspective, and it worked.

Season two was a little more divided as it had two main stories: one involving Sookie, Bill, Jason, and Eric; and the other involving everybody else. Storyline A with Sookie and the vampires was interesting and held my attention. Storyline B was a non-stop sex orgy which at first seemed awesome, but when it dragged on for 12 episodes with nothing else happening, it started to wear on me. The secondary characters were fleshed out a bit more, which seemed fine. Overall, Storyline A worked really well and Storyline B not as much. But it was still a good season.

Moving on to Season Three, things became problematic. There was still the main storyline with Sookie, Bill, Eric, and vampire king Russell. Simultaneously, they introduced a number of stories involving a shitload of secondary characters. Almost everyone had their own storyline. Sheriff Andy had one, Jason and Crystal had one, Arlene had one, Sam had one, Hoyt and Jessica had one, Lafayette had one, and Tara had one. It was too much. Tara annoys the fuck out of me, and since she cries her eyes out in every scene, I could hardly stomach her own subplot. Arlene is annoying too, and she is not interesting enough to deserve her own plotline. Sam’s family was stupid. Hoyt and Jessica were idiotic. Jason continued to be a dumbass. While the main storyline with Sookie was strong enough to carry the season, the quality of the series was dragged down with all the other unimportant crap that was going on.

Which brings us to the current season, number four. Gone are the days when Sookie was the main character. True Blood has now become an ensemble show. Every character is given almost equal amounts of screen time whether it’s heroine Sookie, or shrill, annoying Arlene.

We have storylines featuring Sookie and her faerie godmother, Eric losing his memory, Bill becoming vampire king of Louisiana, Sheriff Andy as a drug addict, Jason as “ghost daddy” getting raped non-stop by werepanthers (LOL WTF), Tara suddenly becoming a lesbian, Lafayette as a witch, Lafayette’s boyfriend Jesus as a witch, Jesus’ grandfather as a witch, Lafayette and Jesus joining a witches’ coven (I’m detecting a pattern), Arlene’s baby has evil devil powers, Sam is in love with some shapeshifter lady, Tommy becomes Hoyt’s mom’s surrogate son, Tommy plans to rip-off his surrogate mom, Tommy kills his biological parents, Hoyt and Jessica continue their turbulent relationship, Pam gets her face melted off and wants revenge, and Alcide gets into trouble with a new local werewolf pack leader. And that’s by the end of episode five, not even halfway through the season.

Get the picture? There is way too much shit happening. Nobody cares about Lafayette, Jesus, Tara, Hoyt, Jessica, Tommy, Arlene, Sam, or Andy. There is absolutely no need to dedicate equal screen time to each of them. Really, the only people they should focus on are Sookie, Eric, and Bill, and to a lesser extent Jason and Alcide. Those are the only characters that should be get storylines. Characters like Sam, Pam, or Andy can make appearances, but should only show up occasionally, have a few lines, and then be on their way.

The first season worked so well because it was simple and had purpose. It dealt with Sookie’s introduction to the world of vampires, and her relationship with said vampires. The second season was still decent because it only had two storylines, and not a lot of other nonsense to clutter it up. The third season had too much extraneous nonsense, and it got bogged down by the excess weight. The fourth season is a schizophrenic clusterfuck with so much shit going on it has become bloated and messy.

But all is not lost. There is a way to salvage True Blood. So, HBO executives, if you are reading this, take careful notes.

1. Kill Tara.
2. Kill Lafayette.
3. Kill Jesus.
4. Kill Tommy.
5. Kill Hoyt.
6. Kill Jessica.
7. Kill Sam.
8. Kill Arlene.
9. Kill Andy.
10. Kill Crystal.
11. Kill Terry.
12. Kill Debbie.
13. Kill anyone who started out as a secondary character.
14. Keep Pam alive, she’s cool.
15. Bring Franklin back to life, he was a crazy motherfucker.

That’s pretty much it. If they go ahead and wipe out all those people in a giant vampire massacre, the show could be saved.

True Blood doesn’t need a shitload of characters to be good. The book series it is based on has fewer characters than the show, and it is told in the first-person, from Sookie’s perspective. Naturally, being first-person, you are only aware of what is happening to Sookie, and 90% of the books are all about Sookie. The mess of multiple, concurrent storylines isn’t there. Not surprisingly, the book series was a hit prior to True Blood, and it didn’t have to rely on subplots involving evil devil babies and gay witches.

There is no good reason why every character needs to have their own storyline. Perhaps the popularity of the show has given all the actors bloated egos and a trumped-up sense of self-importance so high that they feel the need to be included more often? Yeah, that’s probably it. At any rate, True Blood is dying a slow death. I suspect this won’t be remedied by the end of season four, and will likely continue on to season five. Eventually the weight of all this shit will cause the show to collapse, create an even more convoluted mess than we have now, and bring the series to cancellation. It could still be saved, but if it keeps on its current trajectory, more likely than not, it will end up in the shitpile with the rest of the crap that’s on TV.

Verdicts:

Season Two – Good

Season Three – Average

Season Four – Eh…

Bonus: True Blood Drinking Game

Drink every time:

• Bill says “Sookie” in his weird husky voice.
• Sookie uses her magical powers.
• Sookie gets mad at someone.
• Jason is shirtless.
• There is graphic sex.
• There is graphic violence.
• A vampire drinks human blood.
• A human drinks vampire blood.
• Pam says something sarcastic.
• Eric acts menacing.
• Tara cries.
• Tara overreacts.
• Sam shape-shifts.
• Alcide turns into a wolf.
• Andy gets annoyed with someone/something.
• A vampire glamours someone.
• Lafayette calls someone “bitch”, “hooker”, or “motherfucker.”
• Someone says, “The True Death.”
• Arlene is the only employee working at Merlotte’s.
• There is a dream sequence.
• The episode ends on a cliffhanger.

Can You Shut the Fuck Up While I’m Watching the Show?

I used to think that most people were like me, you know, rich, handsome, dashing multi-millionaires with countless ladies swooning at their feet. It wasn’t until later that I realized most people were actually not like me at all. While I prefer to be quiet and pay attention to a movie or TV show, most people do not. It seems that most people do not have the ability to shut the fuck up for a 30 minute – 2 hour period of time.

Whether it’s a TV show, a DVD at home, or a movie in the theater, people are constantly talking. This drives me fucking crazy. It’s something I don’t do, save for the occasional joke or random comment. If other people made a comment here or there, things would be fine. But people don’t do that. They feel the need to have an entire conversation throughout the course of the show.

Watching TV or a movie is not the same thing as going out for dinner. There are other people around who want to concentrate on what they paid money for, rather than hearing your inane drivel. This phenomenon seems to be getting worse every day. What is so hard about being quiet? Why is it only I seem to be able to do it? Maybe it’s natural selection? Either I have progressed to the next point in evolution or everyone else has devolved back to the apes.

Case in point: Mrs. Brik and I were at a friend’s house watching the premier of the third season of True Blood. We are big fans and so are our friends. Our friends had also invited other friends, one of their parents, some siblings, and their significant others. It wasn’t a big gathering. There were about 10 people altogether. I thought, “Oh cool, there are a bunch of True Blood fans here. This should be fun.” Of course, these thoughts were entirely incorrect. What I should have been thinking was, “Oh fuck, there are a bunch of talkative retards here. This should be a disaster.”

And a disaster it was. Half of the people there had never watched True Blood before. Two of the people who had seen the show spent every minute explaining shit to the people who hadn’t seen it. “Oh, that’s Sookie. She’s the main character. She has the power to read people’s minds. She is also dating Bill, who is a vampire. She lives in Bon Temps, Louisiana. Jason is her brother. She works as a waitress at a bar called Merlotte’s. At the end of the last season…” It was annoying because this happened every time a new character, location, or supernatural power appeared on screen.

If you are going to watch a serialized show, it would only make sense to start at the beginning and not jump in somewhere in the middle. Don’t expect people to tolerate you asking, “Who’s that? What’s going on? Why are the doing that?” every five minutes. If you are guilty of this kind of thing, here’s a tip for the future. Either start at the beginning, or be quiet and just hope things will start to make sense. If you don’t follow my advice, expect to get bludgeoned.

Worse than that, was this one girl’s boyfriend. Apparently this guy is a world class expert on vampires. He wouldn’t shut the fuck up throughout the whole episode. Every ten seconds he would have to interject a comment or personal insight regarding the mythology of the series. Imagine these quotes in your best, lispy nerd voice.

“Oh, I see that silver harms the vampires in this. That’s kind of lame. I prefer the traditional way of killing vampires. You know, with fire or beheading.”

The “traditional way,” asshole? I could have sworn the “traditional way” to kill vampires was a stake in the heart or sunlight, neither of which you mentioned. Besides, there is no “traditional way” to kill vampires. They are fucking fictional characters. There are no hard and fast rules about how to kill fictional characters. I didn’t realize I was dealing with a vampire scholar here. Traditional or not, all I care about is that the show is consistent. If they set up rules in the show’s universe (e.g. silver harms vampires), they should always stick with those rules. Hell, they could say that vampires could only be killed by a wooden stake up the ass, but as long as they didn’t deviate from that rule, I could care less.

Here are some other annoying quotes from that guy:

“Can vampires cross running water in this show?”

“Are vampires stronger than werewolves in this?”

“Does garlic do anything to vampires in this?”

“Oh, they don’t turn to dust when they are hit with a wooden stake? That is really lame.”

“I don’t think that sunlight should kill vampires. It should be more like in Dracula where their powers are weakened.”

And of course my favorite, and most relevant, comments of the night:

“The opening to this series isn’t nearly as good as the opening to Dexter.”

“You know, the characters in Dexter are so good.”

“I think the sex scenes in Dexter are better.”

Wow. Way to have a hard-on for Dexter. Why the fuck would you compare the openings (or any aspects) of Dexter and True Blood? The only thing these shows have in common is that they are both on TV. Also, way to talk through the entire show, motherfucker. Would it have killed that guy to shut up for a fucking hour? How about ten minutes?

Between him constantly talking like he’s the godfather of vampires and the other people constantly explaining what the hell was going on to the people who hadn’t seen the show, I couldn’t hear a goddamn word coming out of the TV. I had no fucking idea what was going on in that first episode of True Blood. In fact, after we got home, we had to watch it online so we would understand what the hell happened. Suffice it to say, we did not return to our friends’ place for episode two.

This kind of thing really needs to stop. Nobody cares what you have to say. Even if you wrote your Ph.D. thesis on Traditional Methods of Killing the Vampire: A Retrospective Analysis, I don’t want to hear about it while I’m watching some awesome vampire-killing action. If you are talking non-stop about bullshit, it’s going to piss me off. It’s impossible to enjoy the movie or TV show when you are constantly yapping. Also, if you are too stupid to understand what’s going on and need to constantly ask for clarification, you need to step out. Maybe seeing the latest Michael Bay shit-spectacular is more up your alley.

In summary, can you shut the fuck up while I’m watching the show?