Breakout Kings Season Premiere, and Other Stuff

I'm saving my next vlog outing for the Mass Effect 3 launch tomorrow night.  But this night I watched the newest episodes of The Walking Dead, Once Upon a Time, and the season 2 premiere of Breakout Kings.  As per usual, spoiler alert, but, then again, with most big shows nowadays, you just turn the channel on an hour late and the commercials for the next episode will be a spoiler.  Also, I didn't want to film because I moved my room all around, put up posters, threw out like 3 garbage bags worth of stuff, the whole nine yards, and only now just sat down to chill out and enjoy me some Firefly.  Did I mention I'm going to be Kaylee for the next two comicons coming up soon?

Anyways, tonight I'm going to shake things up and start with Breakout Kings.  I only just started watching this show little over a week ago, but I'm in love with it.  Granted, some of these feelings are coming from my love of Prison Break, for which Breakout Kings is sort of a sequel.  What makes Breakout Kings so much better than the run of the mill detective or cop shows is its cast of characters.  Each and every person brings something important to the team, and the show wouldn't be the same without them. Shea with his street smarts, Charlie being a hardass, Erica being so kickass, Ray being the big strong brooklyn guy, and Lloyd being, well, Lloyd (if you've seen the show you know what I'm talking about, and if not, WATCH IT!).  And that's why the loss of Charlie at the end of the episode was so shocking and heart breaking.  Because he, like everyone else in the show, was compelling and empathetic, his loss really hits us, and all of the other characters, hard.  I'm very interested in seeing how this is going to affect the rest of the season, and all of the characters.  This show is very emotive, compounded by the fact that Lloyd is a behavioral psychologist and his main character focus is looking at such parts of the human psyche.  This season also introduces a main antagonist, Damien, who is a recently escaped serial killer.  Lloyd gave council at his trial so his main focus is revenge against our cute, goofy doctor.  He killed Charlie, stole his badge, and was the first con to evade arrest after they found him.  All I can say is I will be watching this season with apt interest.

Once Upon a Time wasn't on last week due to the Oscars.  Thing is with this show the most interesting parts of it are those that either involve Rumplestiltskin or Emma directly.  When they don't, it's very boring, and that's what this week's episode was like.  Regarding those characters, all we learned was that Mr. Gold (aka Rumplestiltskin) doesn't like the nuns (aka the faeries).  I'm sure that will be important in the future.  And that's all I have to say about this episode.

The Walking Dead is just getting better and better.  A lot of people were saying how it was too slow and boring, but finally we're getting the pay off.  Let me just say, even though I was not expecting Dale to die (which was half the reason it was so shocking, the other half him being such an integral character) I was glad to see him go.  If we're going by survival logic, he was the best one to go.  He was old, a shit-stirrer, and he just didn't live within reality.  I do agree that they shouldn't become savages, but the way I look at it that means they don't rape or kill for pleasure, like the other men that are encountered within the series do.  I'm basing this mostly on the comic, but it looks like that's the way the show is heading too.  Killing a guy who shot at them because he was a liability seems logical to me.  He hasn't shown any signs of capitulating to their domination and following their lead, actually he seems like a strong flight risk.  Rick should have shot him in the head when he fell on that spike, but this show just loves to play with the characters' hindsight.  What I really liked about this episode was people were FINALLY talking in a group.  I wish they had done that a lot earlier, it would have made a lot more sense.  But, now that Dale's gone, and Rick and Shane are agreeing on something (at least for the most part) the group should be gathering some more cohesion.  Daryl also had some cool scenes this episode.  In the preview for the next episode it looks like Laurie tries to reconcile with Shane, which i'm looking forward to.  Only two more episodes left!  Then we'll have to wait until Halloween for season 3.  At least we'll have the comics to tide us over.

And Game of Thrones too!  The new season looks wicked!  I'm going to do an in depth review of each episode.  Speaking of reviews, I do have the scripts written for a few, but I just have to play Mass Effect 3, so until my first play-through is done, I won't be doing much else.  At least my room is clean!

Trikucian Character Design Unveiled

Trikucian Main Design by ~Trikucian on deviantART Check out the final character design for Trikucian! Soon she will be on the banner for the site and the profile photo for all the various things I'm attached to. Reviews and subsequent bumper art will be soon to follow!

Weekly TV Recap Written Review

So, yet again, I'm not motivated enough to do the vlog.  Oh, and the Oscars are on tonight, which of course I couldn't give two shits about because none of the movies are interesting this year.  They're all just meh.  So I'll just talk about the stuff I did watch and care about this week: The Walking Dead, of course, and Breaking In and Breakout Kings.

     This episode of The Walking Dead tonight was finally worth the wait.  We had all been waiting patiently for the zombies to return, and return they have, in droves.  Finally tonight we had the heart pounding, face smashed in, zombie killing action we've been waiting for.  But what makes this episode most interesting is the interaction between Rick and Shane.  We've been waiting for the tension between them to come to a head ever since we found out that Shane was sleeping with his wife.  In the comics at this point Shane had already been killed, so us as the audience has no idea where this is going.  The sneak preview for the episode next week shows that Shane is still thinking of rebellion, which I really wish he wouldn't, but there we are.  It will definitely be more than interesting to see how everything plays out.

     The next two shows I began to watch this week were Breaking In and Breakout Kings.  Breaking In is about a firm of specialists who break in to various companies for them so that the companies can find out what their weak spots are.  It's a comedy show, so we see a lot of silly stuff happening, but I like that it's not the gross-out humor that is more popular right now.  Which is surprising because it's done by Happy Madison Productions.  A lot of people don't like them or Adam Sandler, but honestly, they do produce some fun stuff.  I still maintain that Little Nicky is one of my favorite comedy movies and I plan to do a scripted video review of it in the future.  I haven't caught up all the way with the episodes, but so far I'm enjoying it.  If you haven't seen it yet, its a lot of fun.  It's also great to see Christian Slater in a decent role again.  Breaking In is owned by and aired on FOX.

     Breakout Kings is the show that has definitely caught my attention this week.  Again, I'm not all caught up to date with it yet, but the new season starts in about a week, so I have time.  I have to say, I am in love with this show.  And I know, I seem to be spreading around my amour for all these different shows, but they really are all worth it.  It's all just adding to my opinion that TV today is better than theatrically released films.      Anyways, the basic plot of the show is that the U.S. Marshals have created a team of convicts with special abilities to help them recover escaped convicts.  Cool idea, great cast, especially Jimmi Simpson who plays Lloyd Lowry, a one time psychiatric doctor turned prison inmate.  I've been watching this actor for a while now and I'm surprised at myself for not having watched this show earlier.  Oh well, at least I get to watch all the episodes in a row right?  But anyways, the show is well worth the watch, if not for the interesting situations they find themselves in but for the great cast.  Here's the link to the IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1590961/.  Also, T-Bag from Prison Break is in this!  This takes place in the same universe as Prison Break, how cool is that!  Great, now I have to re-watch that show again too.

     So that's it for this week.  I'm currently working on a comedy review for The Blue Lagoon, but it's going super fucking slow because that movie is almost unreviewable.  I swear, half the movie has nudity, while the other half is just inserts of pretty animals.  See you next week!

TV and Comics

Sorry for anyone watching, I'm not going to do a vlog this week because I'm too busy moving, sorta. I did watch a lot of TV and read a lot of comics though, so I'll just give my opinions on how the different series I've been watching have been progressing.

 To start off I have been watching Season 2 of The Walking Dead religiously, as many TV enthusiasts have. I will try not to give any spoilers, but I'll warn you anyways because it's a little difficult to express my opinions on the matter without revealing something. All of us who have read both the comics and watched the TV series are very well aware that the TV show is not following the comics. The basic themes of the comics are represented well in the television series, or at least will be in the future. These themes are an exploration of sexuality and community within a post-apocalyptic context, who the real antagonists are, and basic means of survival. A lot of people who are watching the show keep saying how these characters aren't doing the basic survival means because they keep letting their emotions get in the way. In particular said it's going into soap opera territory and there aren't enough zombies. While I agree there should be more zombies and conflicts, I disagree that the reaction of the characters to the situation isn't realistic. I think it is very believable and in fact gives each of the characters a large amount of depth and individuality. If you've seen the current episode you will all agree with me that the final scene of the episode is setting up one of the more interesting conflicts between the main characters. And that Rick is becoming an uber badass.

The other shows I started watching were Grimm and Once Upon a Time. Grimm is boring, has bad effects, and suffers from what I call 'Vancouver Pretty'. Take that as you will for now, I'll do a big discussion on it later. And I know parts if not all of Once Upon a Time is filmed in BC, but in every way it's better. It has amazing effects, costumes, props, sets, EVERYTHING. It's worth watching just because of the production design alone. But, like most things, what makes it very worth watching is the Robert Carlisle performance as Rumplestiltskin. I like the other characters, but I love not only how the character is basically the devil characters, making loaded deals with everyone for what the want, but always giving them giant ultimatums. Keeping track of everything that he does is a major point to the story. And how he interacts with the other antagonist, the Evil Queen. The basic plot is that all of the fairybook characters we know of from the old stories and Disney movies are all under a curse where they're stuck in the aptly named Storybrooke Maine. Which is actually BC, but as per the usual the shows can't take place in Canada, but, again, that's a discussion for another time. So, if you haven't, watch Once Upon a Time, it's a lot of fun.

I did say I was going to talk about comics as well. The three that I follow right when they're first released are Berserk, Vinland Saga, and The Walking Dead. I used to be a huge Otaku so I still check the manga sites for the more badass manga, and that's where Berserk and Vinland Saga come from. But in their defense they're based on European history and fantasy (in Berserk's case) and they're impeccably drawn. Some of the panels in Berserk are so breathtaking they could be taken straight from the graphic novel as is and work as a framed piece, without being colored. And that explains why it takes forever for the new chapters to come out. Grumble. Well, Vinland Saga takes pretty long too. The Walking Dead, on the other hand, is American and comes out every month. I am eagerly awaiting the new issue which will come out any day now. All are worth reading and are all quite long, with Vinland Saga being the shortest at 80 issues, which is not short by any means, so they definitely have staying power.

And, last but not least, I am so excited for the new season of Game of Thrones! I watched all of the pre-production videos and I am in love with it already! Well, I knew I would be, but you really can tell that HBO is putting all of its effort into it and it will continue to be a masterpiece. This and The Walking Dead are my prime examples of how television nowadays have more clout and more creativity than movies do. The Emmys should have more hype than they do, but at least there are still the Golden Globes. In either case, both are leaps and bounds better than the Oscars.

Stay tuned, written reviews will be up soon!

Weekly TV Recap 02/12/12

 The main focus of this week is the return of The Walking Dead. I compare it to the comic and in every way get very excited while discussing it with my camera. I also mention Castle and Vampire Diaries.