Category: Idiot Box

A weekend of games and stuff

I hate to admit it, because I’ve been trying to diversify the ways I waste time lately, but I spent pretty much the whole weekend playing video games. Well, the time during the weekend that I was conscious. I spent way too much time sleeping in and napping, but I slept terribly last week, so I suppose that I needed it. Anyway, for some reason I feel the need to write about all the nothing I did over the weekend. Really Live Journal it.

Friday night was a blur. Because it’s already so far away, you see. But I do recall that after a long Friday at work, I decided that it was in my best interest to get some physical activity, I opted to take a short walk. Partly because I wanted to do something good for my body, and partly because I wanted to listen to the Talk Nintendo podcast special on Ever Oasis. And by golly, did Casey and Neal ever do a good job of selling that game. I was planning on skipping it, but their gushing praise started to make me reconsider my stance…

Upon returning home, I finally set aside a little time to play ARMS, which I am desperately in love with in theory, but I need a lot more practice because I am awful at it. I managed to get through the easiest level of the single-player mode, but not without some struggles. Also I need to get online and get in on that party mode. Once I was done with that, I cracked and bought Ever Oasis. In retrospect, I should have played the demo first to make sure, but in the end it wouldn’t have dissuaded me anyhow. Although the game was surprisingly small (just over 6200 blocks), the download was slow and would not finish until early the next morning.

Finally, I began playing what might be the only free PS+ game that I’ve been at all interested in since I’ve had the service: Anna: Extended Edition. It is pitched on the store as a psychological horror game wherein you explore an abandoned sawmill to discover its spooky secrets. Late Friday night is like the only good time I get to play horror games, so I was pumped. And then the game turns out to be something of a janky mess. I was so befuddled by the odd control scheme and got stuck on a stupid(ly simple) puzzle that I only played up through the first “stage” before calling it quits and turning in for the night.

The next morning, I woke up late because I had opted not to set any alarms. Then I chose to relive a ritual of Saturday mornings from last summer: watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003 series) while playing Tap My Katamari. I had four episodes left to watch from season four’s “lost episodes” (not on DVD) and burned through those right quick. Afterwards, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do and curled up in bed for a quick nap.

It was after I woke that I realized that Ever Oasis was probably done downloading, and then most of my afternoon just vanished into it. Ever Oasis is a really good game. What Casey and Neal neglected to mention is that it is very slow to start because holy crap does it ever like to take its time explaining everything to you. Also, it is just as hand-holdy as the Zelda series is infamous for being. At least for the first few hours. Eventually it gives you a little more freedom, but the beginning of the game is a slow, unskippable slog. This will undoubtedly discourage replays.

I then decided that it was my mission for the rest of the afternoon to finish Anna, and so I booted the ol’ PS3 back up and jumped back into that mess. The game does have its charms once you let yourself get into it, but I maintain that it could have used a lot more polish. At least have a few of the rougher edges sanded down. Case in point: I was not interested in the game enough to care about solving its obtuse puzzles, and it didn’t take me long to pull up a walkthrough for consultation whenever I felt stuck. I cleared the game, and am weakly considering a quick second playthrough to round up the leftover trophies. On one hand, it’ll be a very easy task that should take no more than half an hour. On the other hand, I don’t really care about this game and should probably just delete it and forget it forever.

Saturday night was the usual board games party. The major difference is that when my brother and I made a trip to the liquor store, we found something highly unexpected: Freedom 35 lager! It’s the Trailer Park Boys branded beer! We were so excited that we each filled up an 8-can carrier and merrily went on our way. The checkout guy must have thought we were nuts.

Many beers led to a hearty sleep-in on Sunday morning. Sort of. I got up at 8:30, had breakfast, watched an episode of Bob’s Burgers, and played some Mighty Gunvolt Burst to grab a few screenshots for the article I wrote on it. Then I passed out again and slept until after noon.

To round out my activities, I went out for an extra-long walk/run after waking up. I was out for two and a half hours, which I think is my longest journey on record so far. Especially since it was only my second outing that included running this year. And yet it was still not long enough to listen to the regular weekly episode of the Talk Nintendo. When I got back, my legs were so done that I showered off and flopped onto bed to nap for an hour, then watched several more episodes of Bob’s Burgers. And then I ate a metric ton of food for dinner and way too much in the way of ice cream treats, completely invalidating all the exercise I’d done earlier.

Finally, I ended the evening the same way that every Sunday evening ends: laundry. In between throwing dirty clothes in the machines and putting away the clean laundry, I tacked a few more hours onto Ever Oasis. Turns out that it’s quite difficult! Monsters hit really, really hard and you can’t dodge-cancel out of attack animations, so you’ve got to be careful. It’s still limiting how far off-course I can explore, but at least it’s not pushing me along the intended route quite as sternly any more.

Alas, eventually the laundry was all done, and that’s my cue to stop whatever fun I’m having and go to bed. I think that’s probably why I hate doing laundry so much. It heralds the end of the freedom of the weekend, and the return of the dreadful work week. Ugh. So disheartening. At least I had a lot of fun over the weekend. And when put into words, it almost seems like I accomplished much more than I actually did. Hurray!

The way she goes

The new season of Trailer Park Boys comes out tomorrow! I am super excited! Gonna get some liquor and cheeseburgers and binge that f***er!

I’ve also been slowly working my way through a rewatch of the entire series over the last four months, and I’ve got to say that I’m really finding a deeper appreciation for the first seven seasons. Maybe it’s just because I’ve never gone back to those episodes, but it sort of feels like I’m watching them all for the first time. There is so much stuff that I’d forgotten about, and even the plot structures of each season are much more varied than I’d thought.

I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that I burned through the initial run of the show via DVDs, so as to catch up with my brothers, who had seen it all already. I wanted to get in on the references, you know? Fact of the matter is that despite the insanely low budgets -maybe even because of the low budgets- the original seven seasons are really good. I miss old Julian, who is much more likeable back then than he is at current (at least on the TPB Podcast). The fact that Bubbles was just a secondary character until season three still blows my mind.

Will I go back and watch all the supplementary material as well? I’ll probably give the movies and specials a go, but I’m not sure I feel the need to revisit the live specials. Out of the Park: Europe will likely get passed over, because while it has its moments, it just doesn’t really feel like Trailer Park Boys. And those green-screened parts are just so darned distracting. If I were to start diving into all the extra content on Swearnet/YouTube… well, that’s a lot of material to watch. So who knows!?

2016 Xmas Gift Roundup!

Oh my, has yet another year passed already? Well, I guess three years if you’re just going by the last time I wrote one of these things. Remember how it used to be an annual tradition? Did I write this exact same intro paragraph last time? Ehh, I’ve already recycled the idea and the banner, might as well re-use some of the text as well.

I think that, for the most part, I stopped doing these because I began to feel embarrassed about all of the stuff I get for Xmas. I mean, it’s not like it’s all that excessive (especially with my lack of wife), but it’s easy to look at these articles and think to myself “gee, I sure am spoiled, aren’t I?” Maybe next year will be the year I finally act on my desire to volunteer somewhere and help those less fortunate.

But probably not. That would also require leaving the house, and my incredible selfishness is a defining character trait.

Continue reading 2016 Xmas Gift Roundup!

Late to yet another party

Netflix has been consistently trying to get me to watch Pacific Heat over the last couple of weeks, popping it into nearly every category as I browse for things to watch. So, I figured, okay. It looks almost exactly like Archer, so I’ll give it a try.

When I finished watching the first episode, I decided that my joke line about the show would be “imagine if Archer wasn’t funny” and I figured that was gold.

Then I Googled Pacific Heat and that was the summary of nearly every result on the first page. It’s even the headline of AV Club’s review. So much for that hilarious little nugget.

I guess, if you were going to take anything away from this post, it’s that you shouldn’t watch Pacific Heat. It’s terrible. I was going to say that it’s even worse than Brickleberry, but AV Club beat me to that as well. Geez.

A stray observation

You know how in some shows, a character will ramble to themselves very specifically about whatever situation they’re in, as a way to tell the audience about what’s going on? I think it’s a pretty common thing, at least in family-friendly cartoons, but I’ve never really thought about it before so I can’t say for sure how prevalent it is.

Lately though, I am finding that it drives me completely bonkers. The “Exposition Monologue” trope, where a character explains their situation to nobody but themselves (and the audience), is a terrible way to shoehorn in some information. It’s very annoying, and really takes me out of whatever I’m watching. Like, I get that you don’t have the time or money to always show everything, but at least throw a second character in there. It’s still obvious, but at least the exposition doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb when one character is explaining the thing to someone else.

Anyway, this little quibble comes up thanks to a notably bad episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), where the first few minutes are made up of an incredibly annoying character that just keeps chattering to herself. This could have been taken care of in the cold open teaser, but no. And this episode is sandwiched in the middle of the otherwise stellar Season 3, which makes it seem even worse. Oh well. They can’t all be winners.

Final Thoughts on TMNT 1987

A couple weeks ago, I finished watching seasons nine and ten of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. I probably should have been keeping notes on my thoughts, because I knew I’d want to write about them. But I figured I’d get around to doing this sooner, while said thoughts were still in my brain. Alas, now we have some cobbled-together half-memories instead of… you know what, that’s probably about the usual quality level of my writing anyway. It’s fine.

  • Season nine begins where eight left off: with the Technodrome destroyed forever, and Shredder and Krang trapped in Dimension X. Ostensibly, they are stuck there for good. I don’t know how this time is any different from the last time they were stuck there. The Technodrome isn’t host to the only interdimensional portal in existence.
  • So a new recurring villain is introduced: Dregg. He is a spaceman from far off in space and I don’t really recall his origin. The same as Krang, I think; some sort of displaced warlord. It doesn’t matter. He’s dumb-looking and sounds like someone doing a bad Tim Curry impression.
  • The twist for season nine is that Dregg appeals to the people of Earth as a saviour come from space to grant them fantastical technology and rocket them into a glorious future. Only the Turtles know that he’s a no-goodnik, so of course he tells the dumb-dumb humans that the Turtles are the bad guys, and we’ve got that whole X-Men thing from season eight happening again.

Continue reading Final Thoughts on TMNT 1987

Talking about Ninja Turtles: Volume 2

My journey through the entire series of the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon continues. Last time I made a big wall of text about it, I had just finished up the fifth season: the halfway point of the series. Let’s go over some stray observations I have about seasons six through eight.

  • The turtle colour/voice flubs are still out in full force. I would have thought that this was a problem that would have been ironed out by this point, but I think it might actually be getting worse as we move on. At least I’ve been noticing more instances of it. You never see such egregious errors in other cartoons, so I can only imagine that it’s the result of having four characters that look exactly the same.
  • Season six was basically just your normal average season. Though a run of 16 episodes is positively quaint after the massive number of episodes in seasons three and four.
  • The first half of season seven was produced for season four, but held back for whatever reason. So that means that you’re rolling back a couple years worth of animation improvements, and it’s visibly uglier than the latter half of the season.
  • Also, it goes back to using the original intro sequence, which IMO is the better of the two.
  • By this point, Michaelangelo has permanently traded in his nunchaku for a grappling hook. Which I suppose is more useful, but way less cool. And it’s all thanks to those super-lame Europeans who thought nunchucks were too violent.
  • But swords and laser blasters were okay? Get bent, Europe.
  • The first half of season seven also happens to be a hole “TMNT visit Europe” series, which makes for a nice change of pace and allows for a little cultural edutainment, but the stories go to pot. It made sense that when Krang and Shredder were constantly attacking New York, the Turtles would always be there to stop them. But then somehow they always manage to be attacking exactly the European location that the Turtles just happen to be in at the time. Why not attack New York when you know that the Turtles are away in Europe and won’t be there to stop you? Or vice versa? You guys have a teleporter that can take you anywhere. Steal something from anywhere else in the world.
  • It would make way more sense if the Turtles simply faced other villains while on their vacation.
  • The other half of season seven not only goes back to being more visually appealing, but the storylines also get a hack of a lot better than ever before. Well, some of them. The episode where they travel back in time to an ancient Japan where everyone speaks perfect English was a little silly. Overall, though, much better stories.
  • The episode “Invasion of the Krangazoids” shows us a glimpse of what Krang’s true form looks like, when he creates clones of himself that evolve into giant reptilian monsters. But it also made me consider that it doesn’t make any sense that Krang’s brain was removed from his body as a punishment for his war crimes. It’s more than I want to type out, but just think about it a bit for yourself. No wonder that’s never mentioned in any other incarnation of the TMNT.
  • Tokka and Rahzar show up in season seven. That’s cool. Except that Rahzar got a significant intelligence boost while Tokka remains kind of a stupid baby.
  • Everything goes way off the rails in season eight. The intro and theme song change. The visual quality improves considerably, but the visual style goes to poop. April gets a new costume. TMNT now wants to be X-Men. It’s crazy. Complete insanity.
  • Let’s start with the intro. The theme song has gone from awesome to some kind of gross 90’s rock abomination. It also seems really long. Or maybe it just feels that way because it’s awful. Oh and also it intercuts footage from the cartoon with footage from the live-action movies. It makes zero sense.
  • And on a separate point, all the cartoon footage is pried out of the episodes, rather than being completely unique animation like the other intros. It’s so lame. I just can’t get over how lame it is.
  • It’s kind of fun that the season is a single long storyline, rather than Shredder’s capers mixed with random other one-off villains.
  • Oh right, X-Men. Channel 6 is now calling the TMNT (all mutants, really) an evil scourge and the people of New York are terrified of them, even though they’re obviously out to do good. Also there is an organization of mutants that are trying to take over and establish mutants as the dominant species. Sound familiar at all?
  • The art is way darker and more detailed, but not as good. I hate the change to the Turtles’ bandannas, specifically. Their more angular appearance isn’t too bad, and makes them look a little more in line with the 2003 TMNT. I mostly just dislike that the New York sky is now constantly reds and purples, and that even the water is rarely ever blue any more. The attitude shift is not selling me, especially since the scripts are still pretty hammy, so there’s a very noticeable mood dissonance.
  • I like April’s new jacket and shoes. So much less garish than the yellow jumpsuit and white boots.
  • I was actually really shocked when Shredder asploded the Channel 6 building. Like, this is a Saturday Morning Cartoon. It’s not supposed to have major events that don’t get magically wiped away at the end of the episode. But it does, and it influences the entire rest of the season. Like I said before, there’s a much higher level of continuity in season eight, to the point where it could almost be a stand-alone mini-series, much like the first season.

I am already aware that things take another sharp turn in season nine, but I don’t know all of the specifics. I guess we’ll just have to start watching and see!

Wherein I go on and on about Ninja Turtles

You all remember the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon from the late 80’s, yeah? Of course you do. Everyone does. Though a few years ago it seemed like it was very en vogue to hate on it because… they used 80’s slang? Man, that’s such a lame complaint, and completely wrong, to boot. The only character who uses excessive slang is Michaelangeo, and it’s surfer slang specifically, because he was characterized as a surfer.

In conclusion, people are stupid.

Anyway, I’ve been watching through each season of classic TMNT lately. Of course, by watching, I mean I have it on in the background while I play Picross or Hyrule Warriors. It’s become something of a pre-bedtime ritual, in fact. My night feels incomplete without an episode or two. While slang isn’t one of them, the show definitely does have its share of problems and other general weirdness. And because I don’t have any more interesting things to write about, here is a list of things that have stood out to me.

  • Starting off with a fairly well-known one, there seem to be a lot of situations where one or more of the voice actors are temporarily replaced. And almost never well. This seems to be most prominent in season three (which has roughly seventeen million episodes), but it does still happen on occasion. I don’t know what the show’s production was like, but I suppose that James Avery (Shredder) and Rob Paulsen (Raphael) were probably in pretty high demand back in the day, and I can understand that maybe they had scheduling conflicts here and there that left them unable to fulfil their TMNT duties in favour of something more lucrative. But were Barry Gordon (Donatello) and Pat Fraley (Krang) really that busy? Even I had to Google them to remember their names.
  • Michaelangelo may be known mostly for his surfer talk, but that’s never bothered me. What does sort of bug me though, is the way he always puts so much emphasis on the word “pizza.” And the way he enunciates both syllables so strongly. It’s not “PEET-ZAH,” it’s “pizza.” It may be a small thing to pick at, but when every second punch line out of Mikey’s mouth relates to pizza, it starts to grate pretty quickly.
  • What is the deal with the Turtles just being “buds” and Splinter nothing more than their sensei? I am not really up on how the relationships were handled in the Mirage comics, but I’ve always appreciated that in subsequent incarnations, Splinter and the Turtles were straight up father and sons, and that their familial bonds were an important part of their characters. It feels so very wrong whenever Splinter calls them “my students” instead of “my sons.”
  • Speaking of Splinter, he is… not so great in this show. In all other TMNT continuities, Splinter is basically the ultimate badass, capable of defeating any and all opponents. Here, I suppose he does still carry a bit of martial arts clout, but he comes off as a lot more old and feeble, and I just don’t care about him as much as I do the more modern Splinters. Even crazy extendo-tail Splinter from the current movie franchise.
  • April’s scream (which I believe they recorded exactly once and then just used forever) is very annoying.
  • Since it’s a current hot topic: the show is definitely on a misogyny see-saw, but leans more on the side of male dominance. April is independent, ambitious, and hard-working. A female character that young girls could really look up to. However, she is constantly getting captured and is basically helpless whenever a villain is around. Irma is exactly the opposite of a good female role model. Kala the Neutrino is probably a fairly capable lady, what with being a rebel fighting against Krang’s forces, but she shows up so seldom (and never on her own) that we don’t know a lot about her other than that she is a hip teenager. That’s basically it for female characters. Very rarely is there is a one-off girl mutant/villain, and usually they are easily manipulated by the men that surround them.
  • The show is very clearly set in New York City, yet no character ever utters the name. It’s always “the city” this and “the city” that. We know that the show is supposed to exist in the real world, as other real locations are mentioned by name, and there are a number of jabs at New Jersey. So it really stands out as strange that they refuse to acknowledge the city’s name.
  • I blame the 80’s entirely for this one, but any music that is not the main theme or a variant of the main theme is so bad. And there is a pool of maybe five or six themes, so you’re constantly hearing the same awful music. Plus one or two commercial break stings that they use in every single episode.
  • Lastly, I found it more than a little grating that every single episode of season 2 and 3 focused on Krang and Shredder trying to find a power source to get the Technodrome out of Dimension X/the Earth’s core. All of them. Many episodes of later seasons use that scheme as well, but they also move away from it to give some screen time to other villains or monsters of the week. Quite frankly, the lack of variety in plots just makes season 3 feel that much longer, and it’s a welcome change when we start going for entire episodes without a Shredder in sight.
  • Actually, it was also annoying that every second episode of season 4 on started with one of the Turtles complaining that “life is so boring without Krang and Shredder around.” Alright, maybe not quite every second episode, but my point stands that they lean on that setup far too often.
  • Shellbacks! Wretched reptiles! Shellbacks! Wretched reptiles! Shellbacks! Wretched reptiles! Shellbacks! Wretched reptiles! Shellbacks! Wretched reptiles! Shellbacks! Wretched reptiles! Shellbacks! Wretched reptiles!
  • Seriously, bad guys… get some new pejoratives.

And that’s about it. To be fair, I’m only just starting season 6, so maybe things will get mixed up a little as we go? Probably not. All I know for sure is that there is a major shift in seasons 8 to 10, so I’m really looking forward to seeing what those are all about. I’m sure I’d seen episodes here and there as a kid, and I know there’s a new main villain, but I honestly don’t remember anything else about late TMNT. It’s gonna be exciting!

Yes, but episodes of what?

I don’t watch TV like most people. In fact, I sort of don’t watch TV at all. I mean, I watch shows, but I watch them exclusively through DVDs or Netflix. I guess most hipsters are the same way. But for me, it’s not because I’m too good for cable, but rather that I’m just too lazy to remember schedules and make sure I’m around when things are on.

Also I generally just watch the same things over and over again. I’ve watched the entire series of Futurama and Arrested Development at least three times each, and for the past few years I’ve had what’s become sort of a ritual of watching every streamable season of American Dad! every summer. Other than that, I basically just try to keep tabs on when new seasons of old favourites become available (Trailer Park Boys, Criminal Minds, Big Bang Theory, etc). I don’t follow most popular shows. I barely ever start watching a new show.

So you can probably guess that since I’m writing a blog post about it, I’ve started watching something new.

This one is called Episodes. The premise is that a couple of British TV writers move to LA to shoot a pilot for an American version of their hit show. It’s a pretty interesting premise, I think. Their plans hit a massive snag when the lead role of the show is given to Matt LeBlanc.

And now you see what really pulled me in.

Matt plays a (hopefully) fictional version of himself, and he ends up causing many headaches for the main characters, Sean and Beverly. The couple quickly lose creative control of the show to Matt and network meddling, and things spiral out of control fairly quickly.

It’s not terribly funny at the start. In fact, I’d go so far to say that the first episode is fairly dull. I think I laughed once? But it does get much better! That first episode sets up the premise really well and introduces a handful of key themes of the show. Which, I suppose is really the point. I found that I got attached to most of the characters fairly quickly, and by the end of season one I was enjoying the drama as much as I was the comedy.

I think that what I like about this show is that it’s another one where every character is fundamentally broken in some way. It’s a lot like Arrested Development in that way, only there are more sympathetic characters in Episodes. It’s a little more down-to-earth when there’s a mix of characters that you can honestly relate to and ones that ones that you just want to slap for being such assholes.

I also appreciate the look behind the curtain of how things work at a television network, even if it is exaggerated to some degree. The “office politics” angle sort of reminds me of Better Off Ted, but the humour is a little darker and more subtle.

Anyway, I burned through the first season in only two days (not an impressive feat; it’s only seven episodes), despite the first episode being slow and not overly funny. Like I said, it got better, and I’m now facing the difficult decision to go ahead and binge on the next two seasons right away, or leave them on the back burner for a while to enjoy later.

If you’re interested at all, the first three seasons are available on Netflix, and season four just finished airing in March. It wouldn’t get my highest recommendation, but Episodes is definitely worth checking out.