Happy (Shitty) Four Year Anniversary

Four years already, huh? That’s a long time filled with a lot of insults. If this blog was a four year old human, it would be able to do a lot of stuff by now, including:

• Cooperates with other children –> there is a blog roll on the side of the page
• Talks about interests and disinterests –> that much is obvious
• Can’t tell the difference between real and make-believe –> that would explain my unadulterated rage
• Knows basic rules of grammar such as “he” or “she” –> in light of the “irregardless” post, I’d say this is a yes
• Can sing a song or poem such as “Wheels on the bus” –> at least this involves singing
• Tells stories –> such as the Tale of the iPhone
• Can say first and last name –> you mean “Awesomely” and “Shitty”, right?
• Knows the names of some colors and numbers –> as long as they are black, white, red, orange, and blue – and let’s just forget the whole numbers thing
• Understands the idea of counting –> Transformers 1, Transformers 2, Transformers 3, etc.
• Uses scissors –> but only to cut out pictures of Michael F. Assbender and put them on my wall
• Plays board or card games –> do drinking games count?
• Hops and stands on one foot for two seconds –> too lazy to try
• Catches a bounced ball –> too lazy to try
• Can pour own drinks –> for the aforementioned drinking games

Wow, it’s just like this blog is a real person! So, happy (shitty) four year anniversary to me! Until next time, amigos (fuckos).

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.

A Dangerous Method, Alias Season 4

A Dangerous Method

Freud, Jung, and some chick. What more could you want?

I really wanted to love this movie. After all, it stars Viggo “I’m a total badass” Mortesen as Sigmund Freud, Michael F. Assbender as Carl Jung, and Keira Knightley as Some Chick I’ve Never Heard Of. The cast is great. The director, David Cronenberg, has made some incredible films including Naked Lunch and Christmas-favorite Eastern Promises. Also, with this being about the friendship-to-adversaries relationship between Freud and Jung, I thought I was in for quite a cinematic treat. Something on par with Obi Wan and Darth Vader or Professor X and Magneto starting out as friends and then becoming enemies. Unfortunately, there were no lightsaber duels or mutant powers.

The problem with this movie wasn’t the acting (which was great), wasn’t the directing (which was quite good), and wasn’t the production values (which were excellent). The problem came from the script. There was no real climax to the movie. In fact, there was no real conflict. Yes, Freud and Jung had differing opinions about the fledgling field of psychoanalysis, but it was portrayed rather matter-of-factly with very little conflict or drama. The side drama of Jung’s affair with Spielrein (Knightley) was interesting but lacked punch. The whole thing seemed very dull in what could have been a psychological and emotional showdown. At least the positive and negative aspects of both Freud and Jung were explored. I know they were going for accuracy and realism, but it’s a movie, we need to have at least some kind of drama and climax. Oh well, at least everyone involved did a good job. Oh, and Keira Knightley got naked.

Verdict: Average

Alias Season 4

Alias season 4 cast.

After the complete trainwreck that was season 3, this season gets things back on track. Everything is vastly improved from the previous year. The writing is better, the acting has improved, and the overall insanity has been toned way way way down. The most noticeable difference between season 4 and all other seasons is that it is the most plausible. Obviously, it’s a TV spy show, and there is no way it is going to be realistic. However, in terms of believability in how the agents operate, what they do, the missions they go on, etc., everything is at least within the realm of reason. The overall story structure has a slower pace, a lot more episodes are self-contained, and there are far fewer ZOMG cliffhanger endings. Why bother with a cliffhanger ending if it’s just there to tease the audience? It also has two of the series best episodes: the one where Sydney and Vaughn infiltrate a Russian spy training camp that looks just like an American suburb, and the one where everyone is essentially incapacitated and Marshall single-handedly saves the world. Oh, and the stuff with Arvin Clone was pretty cool. While it still isn’t good enough to reach Awesome status, season 4 of Alias is probably the best the show has to offer.

Verdict: Good

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

The Muppets, Alias Season 2, Casshern Sins

The Muppets

Muppet mania

If I was a muppet, I would be Statler and Waldorf, combined.

I am probably going to lose a lot of street cred by writing this, but I enjoyed The Muppets. It works hard to get your nostalgia going, and it largely succeeds. While I didn’t exactly grow up watching the Muppets, I am old enough to remember them, and even I felt nostalgia watching this. It is comical, endearing, and whimsical, all at the same time. It contains all the things Hollywood normally does badly, except in The Muppets they are done right. In fact, they managed to expertly pull off so many of these things, it culminated in a very fun movie, and simultaneously reminded me of how I have no soul. It even gets meta on the audience as the in-movie Muppets try to get their show back together only to face the possibility (and fear) that they aren’t relevant anymore. Of course this holds true for The Muppets as the movie we are watching. The movie’s successes tell me that they are still relevant.

This isn’t a perfect movie, not by a long shot. They adhere to the old tried-and-true formula of telling as many jokes as possible and hoping that some of them stick. Fortunately, most of them do and the movie benefits from it. However, joke after joke after joke makes it apparent that they were trying a little too hard. The plot is somewhat mind-boggling as it doesn’t make sense that Kermit would sell out all of his supposed best friends in order to become “Rich and Famous.” But I suppose I’m thinking about this way too hard. The Muppets is simply meant to be enjoyed, not analyzed.

Verdict: Mahna Mahna (good)

Alias Season 2

Alias season 2 cast

If there’s one thing Alias has going for it, that would be recruiting interesting guest stars. Notice I wrote “interesting” and not “good.” Some of the guests are cool, others are oddities. Nevertheless, they managed to get an eclectic mix of guests to liven up the show. Some of them include Roger Moore, Quentin Tarantino, Vivica Fox, Ethan Hawke, Faye Dunaway, Djimon Honsou, and Ricky Gervais. Season 2 still manages to entertain us in very cool ways. While it isn’t quite as good as the first season, the second season still has strong writing. There are a number of shocking plot twists, and it is easy to stay engaged. Just past the halfway point the SD-6 storyline is wrapped up, and the overarching plot afterwards becomes chaotic, as the writers clearly had no idea where to go next. That problem continues on through the disastrous third season, but fortunately, improves afterwards.

Verdict: Good

Casshern Sins

Casshern moping around as usual.

They should have titled this series Emo Sins instead. Casshern has to be one of the mopiest, blandest, depressing central characters of all time. He walks around feeling sorry for himself throughout the entire series. He can’t even get pumped about the fact that he is an immortal ladies magnet and an unstoppable killing machine (sort of like me). Here’s a breakdown of every single episode

1. Episode begins with a brief flashback of Casshern killing Luna.
2. Opening credits.
3. Casshern wanders around a desolate wasteland and acts emo.
4. Casshern encounters a small enclave of human-looking robots.
5. Word gets passed around that if someone kills Casshern they will become immortal.
6. A group of generic-looking robots attack Casshern/enclave of human-looking robots.
7. Casshern goes berserk and kills everyone.
8. Ending credits.

That sums up just about every single episode of this series. So now you have no need to watch it. You can thank me later. On the positive side, the show does boast fantastic animation, and some great fight scenes. Little else is tolerable, however.

Verdict: Average

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