Braindead 1×13: “The End of All We Hold Dear: What Happens When Democracies Fail: A Brief Synopsis”

Jonathan Coulton appears in person to sing the last previouslies of the season, sitting outside Gustav’s apartment: Ella died, Red recovered, Luke’s protesting, Laurel’s staying, and the threesome are scheming.

Recap

Inside the brownstone, Laurel is telling Rochelle and Gustav that the key is the thirty-eight-day countdown, not the war or the internment camps, which were just a distraction. (Technically, the internment camps weren’t a distraction, they were something Laurel made up because she saw some blueprints for hothouses.) After Gustav bangs on his window to shush the troubadour outside, Laurel says that it’s all about the hothouses, because the bugs need cherry blossoms to spawn. Gustav says they need the full blueprints, so Laurel agrees to get them from Gareth, and says that Luke is working on stopping the budget. Before she leaves, Gustav calls her back. They put their hands together and say they’re in this together. “It’s us against the world,” says Rochelle. Yay!

bd-112-reunited

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Braindead 1×12: “Talking Points Toward a Wholistic View of Activism in Government: Can the Top Rebel?”

Previously on Braindead: Gareth saw Wheatus’s earbug, and Jonathan Coulton agrees with me that Wheatus really should’ve closed the door. Laurel and Rochelle beat up said earbug. Headmaster Charleston tricked Luke into thinking the CIA wanted him and Laurel to leave Wheatus alone. Daddy Healy is infected. Wheatus ate brains out of Tupperwares. And that’s pretty much season one.

Luke tells Laurel about the whole giving-up-on-the-bugs thing, and Laurel pretty much immediately sees through it. “The real CIA?” she asks. Luke says yes, although let’s remember he was getting a security brief in what appeared to be the lobby of the CIA, so, it didn’t LOOK super real. Laurel asks him why, if her battle royale with Wheatus kept the CIA from arresting him, they didn’t just, you know, arrest him later. Excellent point. But Luke, blind with ambition, says to let the professionals do their jobs.

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Links We Loved This Week: 9/16/16

Vulture has a complete breakdown of this fall’s TV reboots. Obviously we’re excited for Gilmore Girls here at Adversion; we’re also definitely going to be watching Westworld.

Read Fusion.net‘s breakdown of why this year is a good one for women of color on TV (financially, at least… we still feel pretty bad for Mindy that her new love interest sucks so bad).

One of the smartest literary blogs I follow is Word and Silence by Tim Miller. This week, he posted a link to an exquisitely scathing NYT piece on Thomas Wolfe by Harold Bloom.

We liked Braindead this summer, but apparently the Kings are planning to have larger bugs each season, so we’re not sure we can in good conscience hope for it to be renewed. The first season bugs are disgusting enough! (via MovieNewsGuide.com)

 

The Simple World

Pierre is one of Herman Melville’s least-known novels and, in my opinion, the best; it’s more like an early Henry James novel, ambiguous and elliptical, than it is like Moby-Dick or Billy Budd.

In the operative opinion of this world, he who is already fully provided with what is necessary for him, that man shall have more; while he who is deplorably destitute of the same, he shall have taken away from him even that which he hath. Yet the world vows it is a very plain, downright matter-of-fact, plodding, humane sort of world. It is governed only by the simplest principles, and scorns all ambiguities, all transcendentals, and all manner of juggling.

–Herman Melville, Pierre: Or, the Ambiguities

 

Braindead 1×11: “Six Points on the New Congressional Budget: The False Dichotomy of Austerity vs. Expansionary Policies”

Recap

Previously on Braindead: So much happened! No, literally, the voiceover says that, and then basically skips to summarizing a fake show called Gunsmoke, involving a sheriff and a fatal shootout and other Western-reminiscent things. (I have no idea why, but I’m glad Jonathan Coulton is having fun with his task I guess?) In actuality, what has recently and relevantly happened is that Gareth and Laurel broke up because he is a slut-shamer, Luke’s possibly-infected wife Germaine gave birth to a possibly-infected baby, Wheatus had this secret room called SRB-54 that we know will be important because they mentioned it so much, and Ella and Wheatus let their ear-bugs mate and it was totally gross.

Gareth is trying to compose a stilted resignation letter in a Word document when Wheatus interrupts him to announce that he likes the new Jewish intern. The intern, Gary, says he’s half-Jewish and Wheatus trumpets that he’s “a friend to the Jewish people.” How nice of you, dude. Then he ushers Gary out, casually mentioning the “rumors” that are going around due to the fact that his other interns have died very bloody, very disgusting deaths. Gary is too dumb to be worried about this. He just grins and bobs his head and leaves.

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Links We Loved This Week — 9/9/16

Renee Zellweger gave a starkly honest interview to Hollywood Reporter about sexism in media coverage. (That’s a problem that Leslie Jones and Margot Robbie have suffered this summer too — and they’re just two of the best-known out of many, many examples.) It doesn’t mean we want to see Bridget Jones’ Baby, though.

Vox agrees with us that you should probably be watching Braindead (among other things, including Mr. Robot and You’re the Worst), in its list of 18 summer shows you should be watching.

OK, this one is old, but somehow we missed it. Rory Gilmore gives Michelle Obama some books. And then some more books. And then some more…

Don’t forget that Rory got her start as a journalist on Obama’s campaign bus, just months before he was elected the first black president. CALLBACK!

This was amazing:

The Mountain Goats are definitely an acquired taste, but her description is beyond perfect: “I don’t know if you ever heard of that band; it’s more just this one guy. He’s got a guitar, he has 4 chords—odd little white man—and he has a voice that should not work for me… but when he sings, he will flense your heart.

I don’t agree with the characterization of Buffy as “vapid,” but otherwise this analysis of Buffy the Vampire Slayer from Hitfix‘s Alan Sepinwall is delightful.

“Don’t Breathe” and the Power of Women

In a disappointing summer for movies, and especially genre movies, Don’t Breathe is a refreshing change of pace (I refuse to say “breath of fresh air”). It’s innovative, elegant, pleasingly nasty, and most of all subversive, when too many recent horror movies are all-too-familiar.

Critics have agreed that one of the film’s biggest selling points is its ability to subvert horror tropes in simple yet effective ways. It’s a home invasion movie in which the invaders are terrorized rather than the other way around. It stars a blind man who isn’t a victim or a wise sage, but a bad-ass ninja. It defies expectations at every turn–with one notable exception.

HUMONGOUS SPOILERS FOLLOW!

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Braindead 1×10: “The Path to War Part Two: The Impact of Propaganda on Congressional War Votes”

Recap

Previously on Braindead: Everyone’s being weird, including Wheatus (wants to start a war with Syria, eats brains out of Tupperwares) and Ella (draws pictures of baby seals). Luke is a total cheater, Dean Healy is a big old bug man, and SRB-54 is a thing. Also, Gareth is a giant slut-shamer, so Laurel had to dump him. This part is accompanied by a lot of phallic imagery. Cute, guys, but Masters of Sex did it better.

When we open, Laurel is watching a very cheesy anti-war ad that accuses Wheatus of basically orchestrating the war in Syria to benefit the one percent. Luke comes in to get Laurel’s feedback, and she wonders why he doesn’t just let her do it, because it’s a dumb ad and the one percent has nothing to do with the war. But Luke tells her it’s PAC money paying for it, so they can’t coordinate. They can, however, do the other kind of coordinating, where they tell the PAC all of their thoughts and feelings about the commercial, and the PAC does what they want. (Gareth had to make a similar distinction, if you’ll recall, back when he accidentally got a bunch of bug-infected Republicans to make a website about assassinating liberals.)

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