Tag / tv

by Nerdy Spice

Links We Loved This Week — 2/24/17

This week seems to be the week that male pop culture figures do surprising things.

  • Tom Hanks is publishing a book of short stories … about typewriters (via AV Club). Which kind of makes me think he played the wrong part in You’ve Got Mail.
  • Chuck Palahniuk has published a coloring book (via Paste). This interview also reveals another famous-man-doing-surprising-things factoid: Stephen King privately distributes a small novel as a Christmas gift each year.

Critics are really liking The Good Fight–possibly more than we did. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 100% so far!

  • Pop Matters writes, “The Good Fight is great. It’s not good, friends. It’s great.” This one’s really interesting because it sees the whole “you can only get it if you pay CBS $6 a month for their shitty streaming service” not as a perverse form of self-sabotage on the part of the network (which is how I saw it) but as a signal of glass-ceiling breaking: a female-led, racially diverse drama being used as the draw for a premium service. A really good point!
  • The Hollywood Reporter writes that the show has “above-average brains, structure and humor, the kind of strong mainstream network drama that’s always welcome, only with cursing.” Ahh, the cursing!
  • Michael Ausiello gives it only a B+ but writes, “Baranski makes a helluva leading lady.”
by Nerdy Spice

The Good Fight Review: 1×01 “Inauguration” and 1×02 “First Week”

 The Good Fight, Robert and Michelle King’s spinoff of The Good Wife, stars Christine Baranski, Rose Leslie, and Cush Jumbo as three women working at a Chicago law firm. The show’s predecessor was a critically acclaimed drama with a similar setting. Can the spinoff live up to its example (and draw enough of an audience to persuade people to sign up for CBS: All Access)?

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by Nerdy Spice

Homeland Recap: 6×04 “A Flash of Light”

Previously on Homeland: Quinn seems to have thought Carrie had an intruder; Carrie harassed an informant and got Sekou’s plea bargain yanked; she got transcripts of the informant’s calls with the FBI proving that Sekou didn’t want to meet with a terrorist; Saul questioned Iranian Farhad Nefisi about possibly breaking the nuclear arms deal and then visited his sister in a West Bank settlement; the President-Elect consulted with Carrie about what Dar (falsely) said Saul said was “conclusive” evidence that Iranians were breaking the deal; and Saul got into a car outside of the settlement.

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by Nerdy Spice

Homeland Recap: 6×03 “The Covenant”

Previously on Homeland: Quinn told Carrie he wasn’t getting any better; Sekou was offered a plea bargain for material support of terrorism, but Carrie thought he was just an angry kid; Quinn moved into Carrie’s basement; Sekou’s friend Saad turned out to be working for Agent Conlin to get evidence against Sekou; a prostitute Quinn was seeing staged a robbery to get his VA money; Saul thought Carrie was advising President-Elect Keane; Dar Adal told Keane’s advisor Rob that he thought Iran had a parallel nuclear program with North Korea; Carrie suggested Saul go on the operation; and Quinn asked Carrie to show him the video of his gassing.

Whew. That’s a lot of previouslies, for a season with—so far—no kidnappings, car chases, or explosions. Not that I’m complaining. OK, I’m complaining a little.

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by Nerdy Spice

Homeland Recap: 6×02 “The Man in the Basement”

Previously on Homeland: Carrie and a recovering Quinn fought; Quinn got high with a hooker who then robbed him; Carrie took him back to the VA; Madam President-Elect, Keane, questioned Dar and Saul about their practices, and Dar thought that she blamed them for her son’s death; young Muslim Sekou was arrested after being openly supportive of America’s enemies online; Carrie took Quinn home with her to save him from being put in a locked ward on the VA.

The new credits start with the end of the Star-Spangled Banner and include a few Gil Scott-Heron quotes, and a quote from Keane saying “We need a new strategy.” Very different.

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by Nerdy Spice

Homeland Recap: 6×01 “Fair Game”

Previously on Homeland: Quinn got gassed, and then Carrie woke him up to get information out of him about an attack, which caused him to vomit up black stuff; Carrie stopped the attack; sketchy billionnaire Otto asked Carrie to marry him; Saul tried to get Carrie to work for him, but she wouldn’t; Carrie stood over Quinn looking like the angel of death and appeared to be contemplating euthanizing him. (I wrote a GIANT rant on this topic after that episode, here.)

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by Nerdy Spice

Links We Loved This Week – 1/13/17

Because of library software that automates purging of unpopular books, these librarians created a fake patron to “save” the unpopular titles they believed were too valuable to be purged. Boing Boing writes, “The problem here isn’t the collection of data: it’s the blind adherence to data over human judgment, the use of data as a shackle rather than a tool.”

There’s a new full trailer for The Good Fight. The trailer is very, “See? Aren’t you glad it’s on CBS: All Access? It has bare butts! And the f-word!” And I’m embarrassed to say it worked on me.

Avid.ly, LARB’s fan blog, argues that Gilmore Girls’ obsession with Clinton was just papering over their Reagan-esque neoliberalism. Fascinating piece.

This little infographic about 11 Disney Princesses whose eyes are literally bigger than their stomachs reminds me of me and my sister’s first act of feminist activism: angry handwritten letters to Disney about their princesses’ unrealistic bodies.

 

 

by Nerdy Spice

Links We Loved This Week – 1/6/17

Aeon posted a video essay by the Nerdwriter explicating E E Cummings’s famous love poem, “[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in].”

A lot of people are convinced that a recent Netflix tweet means a possible new season of Gilmore Girls (although I’m pretty sure it’s just a hilarious joke). Read about it on IndieWire.

Nashville’s back on CMT, and with it, according to the Detroit News, we might be seeing some increased efforts at representation, including a recurring character who’s African-American and another who’s the first out transgender actor on CMT.

Someone at The Outline recut all 10 hours of Westworld into chronological order. It’s amazing.

Related:
Our Gilmore Girls posts
Our Nashville posts
Our Westworld posts