Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1: Season 1

Yeah, so in case you hadn't heard, Aqua Teen Hunger Force became Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1 back in 2011. Nothing was any different about it at all. (Get it?) Actually, this DVD release also included the final seven episodes of the official run of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. In total, the package contained 17 episodes, each of which are just eleven minutes long. It was painless and easy to get through.

You might think that Aqua Teen makes for great background viewing; fire up the 3DS or browse the Internet on your laptop, and just let the show run in the background, right? Not really. These episodes were so chaotic and haphazard that they became impossible to follow, plot-wise, without full attention. Of course, that didn't matter whatsoever, since nobody watches this show or has ever watched this show for its plot.

I'd like to think that, eleven years and a hundred-plus episodes ago, this show wasn't terrible. I really enjoyed it as a 16-year-old. And also Family Guy, granted. What changed? Was it me, or was it the show? I absolutely think I could watch the first season again today and enjoy it - but I also don't doubt that if you'd shown 16-year-old me this DVD, he'd have enjoyed it, too.

I dunno. Does it matter? It doesn't matter. Maybe Aqua Teen never mattered. But it wasn't always so bad!

How I Met Your Mother: Season 9

BOB SAGET: Alright kids, for the last time, I promise - have a seat. It's time for me to finish the story of how I met your mother.

SON: Wait, you're not finished?

DAUGHTER: Yeah, every time you do this, you tell us an entire year's worth of your life story. But last time, you got all the way up to Barney and Robin's wedding. Isn't that where you met Mom?

BOB SAGET: Oh, it is. But what's the rush? I could spend another eight and a half hours telling you about that weekend itself. And in fact, I'm going to!

KIDS: [groan]

BOB SAGET: Hey, you're both free to leave right now. No one made you sit here and listen to me ramble for 67 hours already. But here you are. And this close to the end, you're gonna bail? Go ahead. I dare you.

KIDS: [moody silence]

BOB SAGET: I thought so.

...

BOB SAGET: So then somewhere during the eighth hour of their road trip, Marshall and the sassy black woman he was stuck sharing a rental car with -

SON: Dad, come on. You're just ripping off Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. There's no way Marshall drove all the way from Minnesota to New York with his child and a complete stranger.

BOB SAGET: Hey, shut up. It makes for a better story this way. There'd be nothing for me to say about him if he had just driven back alone.

DAUGHTER: And the problem with omitting him entirely from this portion of your story is...?

BOB SAGET: Stop it. You kids love Marshall. Of course you want to hear about his wacky hijinks! Leaving him out of even an hour of the eight-year story about how I met your mother wouldn't feel right.

SON: Whatever...

BOB SAGET: So as I was saying -

DAUGHTER: Wait, hang on. Why was he in Minnesota in the first place? Like, two days before two of his only three friends were getting married?

BOB SAGET: Because Marshall and Lily were moving to Italy, remember? So Marshall had to go see his mother before they left.

DAUGHTER: So why not just fly his mother out to New York for a week? She could have even helped them pack, and -

BOB SAGET: Well his mother had no idea they were moving, you see, and -

SON: That's kind of shitty.

BOB SAGET: Beg your pardon?

SON: Marshall didn't tell his mother that he was moving to Italy until a week before he, you know, moved to Italy?

DAUGHTER: Yeah, what, just a year after his father died?

SON: And then he takes an impromptu trip to Minnesota in order to put out that fire and look like he's not such a shitty son, but - again - he nearly missed his friends' wedding to do so?

DAUGHTER: And you're saying he took a job without even telling his wife, jeopardizing their plans to move to Italy? A week before they were leaving for Italy?

BOB SAGET: Okay, I think you guys are getting sidetracked here.

DAUGHTER: No, everything you've told us about Marshall tonight makes him sound like a total flake.

SON: And kind of an asshole...

BOB SAGET: Hey, knock it off. Marshall is a good guy! And remember, he and Lily ended up moving to Italy! He changed his mind after they got into this huge fight the night before Barney and Robin's wedding - hang on, we'll get to that. You don't want to miss that! 

DAUGHTER: So he flaked out on his judge job instead.

BOB SAGET: [ignores daughter] Anyway, where was I?

DAUGHTER: I dunno, something about Marshall and the sassy black lady being in Cleveland?

BOB SAGET: Oh, yeah! Wait - why was that relevant again? Hang on... pizza? Was that before...? Eh, you know what, we'll get back to them once they get to New York. So meanwhile, okay, you had to see how drunk Barney was on the night before his wedding.

KIDS: [exchange tired, knowing glances]

...

BOB SAGET: So with a few hours left to go before the wedding, just after I had helped Barney pick out his wedding suit, there was this scuffle between Robin and Lily after Lily decided to put on a wedding dress.

DAUGHTER: What a bitch!

BOB SAGET: Hey, you're being too hard on her - she was pregnant.

KIDS: Wait, what?

SON: This whole time? Why haven't you told us that already?

BOB SAGET: Well we still hadn't even found out yet.

DAUGHTER: Hang on - you're three hours before the wedding at this point, which is where you met Mom, which is when this story finally ends?

BOB SAGET: That's right.

SON: So you're saying Lily revealed her pregnancy to the rest of you like an hour before her best friend's wedding?

DAUGHTER: Seriously, what a bitch.

BOB SAGET: No no, it's not like that. She didn't tell us until we confronted her about it.

SON: A few hours before your friends' wedding? Had "tact" not been invented yet by 2013?

BOB SAGET: [ignoring son] She'd been behaving so suspiciously. We left the venue to head over to the Captain's house - you remember the Captain - and we put a few pieces of the puzzle together, and suddenly -

DAUGHTER: Wait, back up. You and Marshall bailed on Barney mere hours before his wedding in order to visit that really weird guy none of you even liked very much?

BOB SAGET: Oh, no. Barney came too!

DAUGHTER: Two hours before his wedding?

SON: No tact... none...

...

BOB SAGET: Now kids, you've got to understand - it was a real miracle that I met your mother that day. I really needed that.

SON: We know. You've told us like seven or eight times tonight that you were super depressed about Robin getting married.

DAUGHTER: Yeah, which is really kind of weird, Dad. You were Barney's best man.

BOB SAGET: Of course I was! Barney's friendship meant the world to me.

DAUGHTER: Weren't you still hitting on his bride-to-be right up to a few days before?

BOB SAGET: Sure, but I had this big moment on the beach with her that morning where I realized I could finally let her go.

SON: Wait, the morning of the wedding?

DAUGHTER: Jesus Christ, Dad. Why did you agree to be the best man? Didn't it kill you?

BOB SAGET: Oh, it ate away at my insides. That's why I was preparing to move to Chicago!

SON: Fuck me, I totally forgot about that.

DAUGHTER: You were so upset that Robin ended up with Barney that you decided you had to move away. That's really sad, Dad.

BOB SAGET: But it all worked out! Because then I met your mother, and I didn't move to Chicago!

SON: Flake...

...

BOB SAGET: At any rate, that more or less wraps it up. Barney and Robin got divorced after three years or so - 

SON: Who could have seen that coming?

BOB SAGET: [continuing] And then of course, your mother died. But I regret nothing! Still, now that she's dead and all, I kind of think I should try things out again with Robin.

KIDS: [mortified silence]

BOB SAGET: Thoughts?  

DAUGHTER: [tears well up in her eyes]

SON: [gets up, walks out, and slams the door]

BOB SAGET: I... I know. I know it's hard. It's hard for me too, though, you have to-

DAUGHTER: [sobbing] What the fuck, Dad?

BOB SAGET: What's the matter?

DAUGHTER: You told us... [sniffs]... you told us a week ago that you wanted to tell us about how you met Mom...

BOB SAGET: And that's exactly what I did! I met-

DAUGHTER: No! No. That's not what you did at all. Mom was barely in that story. You started your story like eight years before you met her - on the day you met Robin, in fact. And for a whole week now you've just been telling us all about all these other dumb women you dated and nearly married and how much you always loved Robin.

BOB SAGET: Well, yeah! See, the journey itself was-

DAUGHTER: [growing angrier] And here we were, every night, sitting on the couch, taking it in like idiots, thinking you'd eventually actually tell us about the good times you had with Mom. Why do you think we've been listening to you this whole time? We wanted you to tell us about Mom. You know, since she's dead now and all. I mean, five or six sentences? That's all? I mean, how many hours did you waste talking about your gross friend Barney's sex life? We didn't need to hear about all those women he raped.

BOB SAGET: Hey now, he didn't rape any-

DAUGHTER: [shouting] He tricked them into blowing him, Dad! He lied to them. He used them. He made a big old game out of seducing them with dishonesty. And now you want to throw yourself at the woman who threw herself at that fucking creep? Anyway, that's not the point. My point-

SON: [pops back in just to yell] Seriously, all of your friends are fucking horrible people. You and Robin deserve one another and Mom deserved a whole lot better. [slams door again]

BOB SAGET: [pauses] ...So, your brother seems cool with the idea. How about it?

DAUGHTER: [screaming] Just get the fuck out of here! You just spent a week telling us how Mom was basically your silver medal. Well she's dead now, so what are you waiting for? Go. Get Robin. She was Plan A all along, right?

BOB SAGET: [deep sigh... of relief?] I'm so glad you get it, honey. Please try to explain it to your brother when he calms down. [leaves the room, grabs his coat, runs out the door, huge shit-eating grin]

...

MOTHER: [dead]

Arkham Origins

Once again, I’m backed-up on my back-blogging. Struggling to figure out what to post next, I resorted to a classic fallback: Batman. (When in doubt, go Batman... Always.) Back in the fall I beat the third and latest installment of the Arkham video game franchise, Arkham Origins.

Oh boy! An origin story? We’re going back to the beginning. How original! (This comment should be read with much sarcasm.)

First off, this really isn’t an origin story despite what the title might make you want to believe -- unless you consider Batman and Gordon meeting for the first time an origin story of sorts. If I remember right, the story centers around a “younger” Bruce Wayne/Batman who is the target of a $50 million dollar hit that’s been placed on him by the Black Mask. This encourages the recruitment of eight of the world’s deadliest assassins to take down the Batman. To save himself (and the city) Batman must find the Black Mask (or whomever is truly running the show… hahaha!) and establish ties with a very standoff-ish Detective Gordon to keep the police from taking him down as well in all the chaos.

The game wasn’t bad, but it falls way short of its two predecessors. Arkham Asylum was great at establishing the tone, fighting mechanics, and fun puzzles that the franchise holds onto so dearly. The next game, Arkham City, bumps it up a huge notch by bringing the game out of the claustrophobic setting of a mental institution and dropping it into half of Gotham city. The game got larger, we got to play as Catwoman, and Batman was steadily dying throughout the whole game after getting dosed with poison from the Joker. The stakes have never been higher. So, yeah… these games are great.

Then we arrive at Origins. The game isn’t bad, but really does nothing to push the series forward. I enjoyed the villains, the hack-n-slash combat the series is known for, but the map (while larger) felt empty and useless. There was no desire to explore or climb to the tops of skyscrapers to get your bearings. All-in-all, it was unimaginative… against its siblings, that is.

On top of that, this was the first game that we lost Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as voice actors. These guys have are very near and dear to me in and the Batman legacy. Thanks to their work on the 90’s WB series (and Conroy also working with Batman Beyond), I can’t imagine Batman or the Joker without hearing their voices. So, to lose them as the talent is a big hit to the franchise.

But all of that is about to change…

Conroy is coming back as the Dark Knight in the newest installment of the series, Arkham Knight. And it looks like we finally get to drive the Batmobile?! I truly hope this doesn't suck. Please don't suck! But, hey, I’ll be playing it regardless. Later boners.

Arrested Development: Season 4

Allow me to be the fourth blog member to offer my thoughts on the long-awaited fourth season of Arrested Development. After two years and a second viewing, of course. Perhaps it's best to start with my initial reactions back from two Mays ago.

I absolutely loved it. A bunch of us binge-watched all eight hours and thirteen minutes of this thing at once in Andover, and while some people struggled to get through the slower earlier episodes or were tired as hell by ten that night, I was elated and impressed from start to finish. It seems like Trev was with me, but Keith and Sweeney were a little bit less enthused in their reviews. Not down on the fourth season or anything - just a little more reserved with their praise. Not me, though - I thought it was actually the best season of the show to date.

Now... eh, I'm not as sure. I spread my second viewing out over the last week, and this non-binge manner definitely broke up some of the season's flow - especially since the format largely spread the Bluths and their stories out into separated episodes, and the whole season kind of happened not in linear time, but all at once, across a jumbled seven year mess that led the family members away from one another and then ultimately back together for the fateful night of Cinco de Cuatro.

It was a bold move to edit the season in such a way, and it's one that I still applaud. Arrested Development was always ahead of its time when it came to long-term clever comedy, setting up jokes and running gags in one episode that would pay off months or even full seasons later. Hell, even the idea of a mockumentary sitcom was bold back in 2003, before the likes of The Office and Modern Family and Parks and Recreation helped to normalize the format. So I have no problems whatsoever with the oft-criticized decision to focus on one character per episode. As I understand it, getting the entire cast back for a fourth season at all was difficult enough, and there was seldom an opportunity to even have everyone in one place at the same time.

Still, it did seem a little bit weird to watch this season spread out over several days - but mostly, I think, due to the way certain characters' episodes were lumped together. Michael, George, Lindsay, and Tobias were the featured characters in eight of the first nine episodes; Lucille, Maeby, George Michael, and Buster were all relegated to the final six. I spent the first half of the season thinking, "I haven't seen George Michael for three or four episodes now;" I spent the last half realizing that George's plot had mostly wrapped itself up after Episode 5.

All the same, no main character was seen in less than eight episodes (George Michael, Lindsay) and one (Michael) was in all fifteen. It really can't be said that each character had their own episode, since they all crossed paths so many times. Furthermore, virtually every memorable secondary character was involved. Lucille 2 and Barry Zuckerkorn were in 11 of the 15 episodes. Ann (her), Steve Holt, Tony Wonder, Gene Parmesan, Mort (Jeff Garlin), Sally Sitwell, and Kitty Sanchez were all given small arcs of their own. Annyong, Bob Loblaw, Lupe, Carl Weathers, and Warden Gentles (spry octogenarian James Lipton) all showed up at some point. Andy Richter doubled down on his quintuplets schtick and appeared in six episodes as some character or another. Ron Howard got involved in a non-narrator role. Isla Fisher and Terry Crews joined up for important recurring love interests. And then there was Mark Cherry, and Marky Bark, and poor meth addict DeBrie. And John Slattery as Dr. Norman. And out of nowhere, Kristen Wiig and Seth Rogen playing younger versions of Lucille and George. (Wiig as Lucille? Spot on. Rogen as George? Nah.) And then there were just shit tons of cameos from people who just wanted to be involved, like Dan Harmon, and Conan O'Brien, and the entire Workaholics crew, and Busy Philipps, and Mary Lynn Rajskub, and plenty more I'm sure.

Come to think of it, holy shit, how did they cram all this into fifteen episodes? And how did they manage to give as much fanservice as they did in the form of certain recurring gags while still creating so many new repetitive bits? Screw it - I'm back to being impressed as hell and amazed that this happened at all.

Now, if there's any truth to the rumor that Mitch Hurwitz is recutting the season into chronological order, I'll watch it all over again and hope for the best. And there had better be some truth to the idea of a fifth season or movie, because, oh, man, that ending. That can't be the ending.

The Dresden Files: Storm Front

Ever wonder what it would be like if Harry Potter were a degenerate private-eye? Let me introduce you to Harry Dresden – wizard-detective for hire. My roommate is really into this series (since the first novel was published in 2000, it’s already at 15 novels and counting…) and recommended them to me. He did explain that first two novels aren’t really that great and it might be in my best interest to jump right into the third novel, but that’s not what we’re about here at the Black-Blog. We’re completionists. (Or at least wannabe completionists.) So, I started where all (hopefully) good stories start. At the beginning.

Storm Front, the first novel in The Dresden Files, is just OK. For reading it mostly in airports, it did a fair job at distracting me for the moment, but it didn’t really do much to leave a lasting impression on me. In fact, I’m about a month or so out since finishing it (I know, I’m terrible at consistently making my posts!) and I’m struggling to recall all of the elements from the story – even reverting to Wikipedia for a nice refresher course on the characters and some plot elements. Ah, yes… now it’s all coming back to me.

The story is fairly straightforward. In a time where magic exists in the shadows of our real world, there’s one wizard who offers his “detective” services for a price. Mostly helping police with any consulting services, Dresden also advertises his ability to find things. Then one day, a dame walks into his cramp, little office nervously asking if he could help find her estranged husband. Dresden takes the case just when the police stumble across a string of very strange murders that seem to coincide with a unpredictable thunderstorm weather pattern. As Dresden does his best to work on both cases side-by-side, we learn that they have more in common than what meets the eye. On top of this, Dresden is in hot water with the “magic council” (or whatever it’s called) for a being framed for causing these string of murders using his magic.

So, there we go. I think you can see where the story could be entertaining. I mean, the drama, action, and conflict are all there. But, somehow, the book ends up feeling a little generic and flat for me, thus, was never really able to get lost in it.

Already have the second book in my possession, Fool Moon – Ha! Get it? My roommate says it’s a little better than Storm Front, but I shouldn’t be getting my hopes too high. Don’t think that’s going to be a problem.

And there’s always The Dresden Files TV show to fall back on. With only one season ever aired, you know it has to be good!

Zelda II: The Adventures of Link

Doesn't it seem like Zelda posts always show up a few at a time? Right after Webber finished off the Wind Waker HD remake, I finished off the most disliked game of the franchise- Zelda II: The Adventures of Link. This one was a direct sequel to the first game but as everyone knows the gameplay was completely overhauled. The biggest changes came in the form of RPG-style experience points and leveling, as well as side-scrolling combat rather than top-down. And while I was completely okay with the latter, I couldn't stand the former. Link shouldn't be grinding for experience! Despite this, I was surprised at how similar this felt to the original Legend of Zelda. There's a higher level of difficulty to both of them that you won't find in later entries to the series; and you still run around in similar looking environments and similar looking palaces to get many of the same items. Adventures of Link wasn't quite as open-ended, as you can't skip over levels or play them out of order, but its over-world did still retain the feel of the first- heading off the beaten path will make things tough, but there's usually a bunch of experience or a fairy out there to make it worth your while. Still though, as little as I enjoyed playing the original Legend of Zelda, I will say that Adventures of Link is worse; combat wasn't fun, so grinding for hours to gain levels felt like a waste of time and the good parts here never outweighed the bad. Perhaps at one time this was a fun game, but too much time has passed and the series has gotten so much better and I wouldn't recommend playing this for anything other than series completion.

The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker HD

It has been a while since I have been an active member of this blog. I am happy to say that I have been working on some things this whole time and that a few of them are getting close to completion. The first item I had on my list to get done right away was this game, The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

I played this game on the GameCube when I was a student at Umass Dartmouth all those years ago. When I got my Wii U for Christmas last year it included the HD remake. There were several things I wasn't fond of in the original and I was glad to see that they remedied most of them. Some of the things that drove me crazy in the original were the slowness of the sailing mechanic, the temples that required leading a tag along character and the seemingly endless fetch quest to rebuild the triforce of courage to open Gannon's Tower.

The remake made improvements in many areas. The most noticeable was the improvement in the sailing speed. The faster sailing made the game a lot more enjoyable. I no longer felt the need to pin the controller and walk away so that I didn't have to experience the monotony. The remake also made gathering the triforce shards more direct while still maintaining the fetch quest origins. The only thing that irritated me in the original that they did not modify was the temples with tag alongs but that I am ok with.

I enjoyed this game a second time as a remake. The HD was done well and made the game more visually appealing than the original. The gamepad made all sorts of small tasks easier such as looking for the song notes, changing items quickly, and checking maps as you sailed the ocean. As a place holder to an all original Wii U Zelda title it did it job but now I am ready for an original Zelda on this platform. From what I have seen from teasers and announcements the next Zelda title should be amazing.

The Following (Season 1)

Once again, bear with my very limited amount of posts. Really wish I could commit myself to more, but my willpower is next to nothing.

The Following is a great and terrifying hour-long drama that’s airing on Fox right now. (Shamelessly plugging the start of season 3 that will air next month, I believe). Just starting in to the second season, so let me recap my experiences with the first.

The show, in general, follows an extremely charming, murderous psychopath, Joe Carroll, who’s escaped from prison and now plans to unleash a wraith of deadly murders with help from his large cult-following of sociopaths who desperately look up to him and his “art”. What’s his “art” exactly? Before being caught as a murderer, Carroll was a failed novelist and college English professor with a huge affinity for the works of Edgar Allen Poe. Because of Poe, Carroll sees beauty in death. Hence all of his killings. Back to the present, we have FBI agent Ryan Hardy (played by Kevin Bacon – a big reason I tuned into this show to begin with) who’s a consultant on Carroll's habits as he was the agent who first brought him down. And thus, we have our story.

It’s basically a cops and robbers tale, only with a lot fucked up cult-murderers involved. The show incorporates a lot of flashbacks as we slowly learn peoples’ backstories and how Hardy and Carroll first met leading up to Carroll’s eventual (first) arrest. As we push further into the season, we see how Carroll is using these experiences/murders to write a “real-life” story about Hardy’s chase after him –  it’s clear from the get-go that Carroll has an unnatural obsession with Hardy and sees him as his story’s protagonist who must fight against the odds to stop the evil and save his love (his love being Carroll’s ex-wife… but that’s something you can learn more about by watching the show!).

So, if I haven’t made it clear, this show is great! Or, rather, the first season is great. (I’ve heard talk that the second season struggles to live up to its predecessor, but I'll learn for myself soon enough.) There’s the action and cliffhangers that of course draw you in, but what really grabs me is how vulnerable all our heroes are. These followers (Carroll’s murderous cult) have imbedded themselves everywhere, lying low like sleeper-agents or something. Point is, you never know if someone you trust is secretly the enemy. As a viewer, it always keeps you on your toes guessing over and over again who you can trust and who you can’t. Plus the villains are just creepy as shit.

In general, I would give this show a watch if you’re struggling to find some time to distract yourself at night after work or something. Wouldn’t say that this is something to just watch right before you go to bed (believe it or not, it does give you a scare-jump every now-and-then), but maybe you’re like me and liked to be lulled to sleep by the death screams of the innocent. To each their own. 

The Big Bang Theory: Season 7

Another TV post, another struggle to come up with something interesting to say. The Big Bang Theory is what it is at this point - a fairly lazy but undeniably successful show with no incentive to deviate whatsoever from its established formula, where character growth moves at a snail's pace and long-term plot arcs are virtually nonexistent. Plenty of long-running sitcoms are tough to differentiate on a season-by-season basis, but generally there are broad synopses that can separate the years. For instance, the sixth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm was the one where Larry and Cheryl brought in a family of Katrina refugees. The eighth season of Friends was the one where Rachel was pregnant. The seventh season of The Office was the one that built up to Michael Scott leaving. These aren't major game-changers by any stretch that dictate the shape of every episode within each season, but even these low-stakes season-running arcs are enough to help shape series-long timelines. The Big Bang Theory doesn't have any such structure. Its biggest (and smartest) move was bringing in two more women to star alongside Kaley Cuoco somewhere in the third season, effectively turning the show's one-sentence description from "a pretty actress hangs out with four nerdy losers" into a much more palatable "a quirky group of scientists and an actress hang out."

Still, seven seasons. That's a long time. Surely no character is in the exact same place as he or she was when the series began, right? Let's hold that thought while we dive right in and explore the seven  lead characters and the journeys they've taken.

Leonard

When the show began, he was obnoxious, whiney, and insecure. By the end of Season 7 he is far less obnoxious and whiney, and his insecurities are mostly played up in a self-deprecating manner. This was a very difficult character to like, early on. He just had such a punchable face. Always sneering, often smug. Seven years later, he's an adequate straight man who serves mostly as an anchor for the rest of the crew. He's just charismatic enough to serve as a bread and butter main character who no one can really mind.

Sheldon

The show's breakout character has always been insufferable to everyone around him and completely uninterested in women. None of this has changed, but he does have a girlfriend now. Somehow. In the show's defense, he has rarely, if ever, said "Bazinga!" for years now.

Penny

She started off as a waitress and aspiring actress. That's still what she is. She fell for the lovestruck dweeb across the hall somewhere in the first two seasons, and although they've had an "on again off again" relationship ever since, it's completely evident that the pair was always meant to be together and will end up together. Penny was never mean to the nerds in the first place; she just used to have other friends as well.

Howard

Originally, a completely loathsome creep. Perverted and selfish and weird, he was easily the worst part of the first several seasons of the show. He also lived at home with his overbearing mother, who he openly despised. Then, along came Bernadette, and suddenly he had a girlfriend, and then a wife, and he no longer lives with his mother, and he no longer shamelessly hits on women, and he no longer makes lewd sexual remarks and gestures, and, hey, wow, somewhere along the way Howard became a likable character. His growth arc is the crowning achievement of The Big Bang Theory.

Raj

Easily the worst and weakest character on the show. For six seasons, the only way he could talk to women was to be intoxicated. This included the wives and long-time girlfriends of his close friends. Six years, they ran with that gimmick. In the Season 6 finale, Raj had an epiphany of some kind and could suddenly speak to women. And that's where he is today. Still a sad sack, but one who can now speak to women.

Amy

This is Sheldon's girlfriend. They have been dating for years and have yet to be intimate with one another. Amy wants it. Sheldon doesn't. Amy won't move on. What does Amy even see in Sheldon? It isn't really explained in much detail beyond that she finds his intelligence attractive. And that's Amy. Always has been.

Bernadette

Bernadette and Amy kind of get a free pass on their lack of growth, as they've only been around for a few seasons, and were introduced in the first place to rebalance the cast and the show's dynamic. They haven't really needed to evolve; the show evolved by adding them into the mix in the first place. Anyway, Bernadette is Howard's wife and their relationship is solid and she's the whole reason he stopped being insufferable, which is all great. But there isn't much for her to do these days except snap aggressively at people when she's irritated, which is funny because she's so tiny and bubbly.

So, yeah. Seven characters, seven years. One career change (Bernadette from "student-waitress" to "gainfully employed"), one residence change (Howard), one crippling anxiety overcome (Raj), and three new romantic relationships established (one of them on-and-off several times over, and one of them still unconsummated). Oh and Raj got a dog at one point.

What have you done with your life since 2007? How much have you changed?

Seriously, this show could last for fifteen years.

Rainbow Moon

Does that logo remind you of anything? Because it did for me! What a blatant Final Fantasy-looking knock-off. That and the fact that this game, Rainbow Moon, is a tactical RPG are the only similarities between it and that series, however, and Rainbow Moon would rank on the lower end of the FF spectrum to me, at least better than the first three of that series. Rainbow Moon was a free game, and while there is a decent level of polish here, the only reason I was able to bang out its sixty hours in the past three weeks was because it was also a pretty easy game. Long, but easy- I died maybe twice in battle, and death itself is really no big deal here. You play as Baldren, a knight who doesn't really talk who has somehow opened up a portal to the moon, and in the ensuing chaos Baldren, as well as his long-time rival and a bunch of monsters end up on the moon, which looks a whole lot like Earth, but who cares. The only way to properly fix the portal to return home is to go on a lot of fetch quests and crawl through tons of dungeons, as RPGs so often do. However while most RPGs, especially the Final Fantasy series, have deep and engrossing stories, Rainbow Moon has barely any at all. Just go on fetch quest after fetch quest, and once you're done with one NPC, it's off to another NPC for his fetch quests. Rainbow Moon's gameplay itself is actually pretty good though- basically for every enemy a character kills, you gain a "rainbow pearl", and the more battles you win, you gain experience. Once you level up though, your stats don't actually increase- you merely have more attributes to purchase with those rainbow pearls. As such the characters you really want to level up will determine the way you battle (that guy needs the killing blows) and allowed me to balance my roster as I saw fit. This was fine for the first ten hours or so, but then I did something controversial by backlog standards- I paid real money to make the game easier. Sure, it was only a few bucks, but it basically gave me all of the pearls I could need in the game and saved me another twenty or more hours, I'm sure, while allowing me the full experience of the game anyway- I still had to grind now and then, there was just much less of it. Still though this feels like a PS2 game at best; there's repetitive music, only a few lines of spoken dialog, and while the graphics are mostly decent, the characters themselves often looked like a mess. Maybe I would have enjoyed this game better if I played in on a Vita (PlayStation Network is throwing so many free games on all systems at me that I'm leaning towards that as a potential console-buy) but having my PS3 on for sixty hours for this just feels like a waste. At the very least, none of my other free games are supposed to be anywhere close to as long, so no more long stretches without posting for me!

Stan's Movie Dump: Late January 2015

Sure, let's do another one of these posts. Eight more movies! I was bitten by the Oscar bug a couple of weeks ago and decided to take a peek at several nominees, along with some other random odds and ends. I've now watched 17 movies in January. I hope this sort of makes up for my lack of progress on other logging fronts.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

This is arguably Wes Anderson's best movie. Moonrise Kingdom, his last movie, was also arguably his best movie. The man is so clearly in the prime of his career right now, and everything he makes from here on out will probably qualify as a "must see" for me. The only other director I can say that about, off the top of my head, is Quentin Tarantino - another middle-aged guy who made his debut in the '90s, has made eight films, and has a style so unique that his last name doubles as a description of his work. Anyway, The Grand Budapest Hotel. It probably isn't for everyone, like any Wes Anderson movie, but I absolutely loved it. Interestingly, actors are rarely very memorable in Anderson's movies; they all tend to do a perfectly adequate job, but it's the writing and the visual flourishes that make his films so damn fun. I say this only because here, in The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ralph Feinnes was absolutely amazing. I can't say enough good things about this whole thing, and frankly, as was the case with Moonrise Kingdom, I expected to have no less of a reaction.

Divergent

The wife watched this one while I was away on a belated bachelor party and she really enjoyed it. She saved it on the DVR for me and when I finally got around to seeing it, I just didn't care for it. Granted, I didn't expect to like it. I do like Shailene Woodley and I think she's a poor man's Jennifer Lawrence (right down to the recent Kate Gosselin haircut), but Divergent felt like a poor man's Hunger Games at best, and The Hunger Games wasn't even a very good movie. This one is set in a dystopian future version of Chicago, where people are divided into five different factions based on their personality traits: farmers, police-soldiers, civil servants, teacher-scientists, and government workers, I think. When you turn sixteen in this society, you need to declare your faction. But if you're cut out for more than one faction, you're - yes - "divergent." Lo and behold, main character Shailene Woodley is divergent. There were some heavy-handed parallels here to high school cliques and feeling like an outcast, and I'm sure those themes worked brilliantly on their target demographic, but I'm just not into these types of movies. Marissa has a real soft spot for big budget PG-13 action flicks, so neither one of us expected me to like this one as much as she did. And that's fine!

Frank

Here's an odd one. Michael Fassbender plays Frank, an eccentric frontman for an experimental indie band. Except you never really see Michael Fassbender's handsome face, since Frank never takes off the giant papier-mâché head seen on the above film poster. Maggie Gyllenhaal also appears in a relatively minor role and turns in the type of performance that makes you go, "wait, they needed Maggie Gyllenhaal for that? Was this a passion project of hers?" I didn't hate this movie - I'd even say I found it charming and endearing - but I also can't pretend I fully understood or appreciated what they were going for. Frank was kind of a maniac; was the point here that deeply tormented artists have to put on a mask every day so that the rest of us ignore their pain? There's no need to check this one out unless you've got a real and specific interest in doing so.

The World's End

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are back for the conclusion of Edgar Wright's "Cornetto" trilogy in The World's End, a thematic sequel to the likes of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I loved Shaun of the Dead and liked Hot Fuzz just fine, but from the first time I heard about this movie I just wasn't interested. A group of friends goes out for a pub crawl and along the way fends off an alien invasion? It just came across as trite and banal. Now, hindsight being twenty-twenty, I can appreciate that the movie was supposed to seem that way at first glance, and that, much like its predecessors, it transcended its genre pretty effortlessly. It wasn't a straight satire or spoof of the "one last guy's night out" sub-genre any more than Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz lampooned zombie flicks and cop movies, respectively. Rather, in all three films, Edgar Wright seems to be saying, "look at how much fun you can have making this particular type of movie without straying too far from the conventions of the genre." The World's End comes closer than either of the previous two to suggesting that it has something important to say about arrested development and trying to relive your adolescence in your forties, but for me it registered as the weakest entrant in the unofficial trilogy. Still a great movie, and still one I'd recommend to almost anyone, and certainly much better than I initially thought it looked like it would be. (What the hell was I expecting? Paul? Probably Paul.)

Boyhood

Here's your frontrunner for Best Picture honors a month from now. It's a movie that took twelve years to make and it tells the story of one boy's personal journey from six-year-old to college freshman. There doesn't seem to be much backlash against all the hype this film has generated, and the only negative things some people have said about it are that there's no real plot. Frankly, I couldn't care less. This movie is about growing up and dealing with hardships and embracing the good times and so on. Did your childhood have a "plot" to speak of? Mine didn't. The story here is simply that of a boy growing into a man - and his father growing up too, a little later in life, and his mother learning from some of her mistakes but not form others, and a number of other characters growing, changing, evolving, what have you. I loved it. To me it managed to boil twelve years down into three hours in such a way that I felt the weight and heft of those twelve years but never felt the movie dragging. As soon as you're getting used to one scene - one slice of life, really - you get whisked ahead by a few months or a year and everything has changed. Richard Linklater movies aren't for everyone, and the final third of this one - where the quiet boy has become a mopey teenager spouting philosophical mundanities - may be particularly taxing on those who want more from a movie than to hear people pontificating about life and reality. Even if that's not your cup of tea, I'd say that this one's worth checking out for the scope alone - and also the likely Best Picture win.

Gone Girl

Blog readers know that I just read this book a week and a half ago. The movie seemed like a great adaptation, and perhaps the best one possible. But chalk up another tally in the "book was better" column. Perhaps it's just because I had only just read the book, but throughout the movie I couldn't help but notice cuts, changes, and omissions - not to mention casting decisions that caught me off guard. Before reading the book at all, I'd heard that David Fincher had found a way to really elevate his so-so source material into a truly great movie. As it turns out, I do think that this was a pretty good movie, but I also thought that Gone Girl was a great book in the first place. Where some saw an elevation, I just saw a non-bungled translation. Props and praise, all the same. And please, read or watch this story.

The Immigrant

I saw this one getting some love in year-end "best" lists, so I figured I'd give it a Netflix shot. The movie was objectively great, but I did find it, personally, to be a bit boring. Marion Cotillard stars as a Polish immigrant to Ellis Island in the 1920s. She gets caught up in what we'll call a love triangle - even though that's not really what it is, but, hey, bear with me here - between Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner. All three are great, but it's Cotillard who shines brightest. The woman is a French-born actress, keep in mind, and if you've seen her in Inception or The Dark Knight Rises you know how thick that French accent usually is. But here, in order to play a Polish immigrant, she learned some basic Polish so that she could speak English with a Polish accent. Imagine that - speaking a second language in a third accent. Now that's commitment! Anyway, this was a good movie, but it wasn't one I'd put near the top of any sort of "must-see" list.

Frances Ha

And lastly, here's a critical darling from 2013. I'll admit, I was still waiting for some sort of third act to break on this one when the credits began rolling after just 80 minutes. Short! And sort of fun, I guess. Just not substantial. Greta Gerwig plays the eponymous Frances, a dancer in her late twenties in New York who feels like a character straight out of Girls. She's awkward and naive and embarrassing, but she's also stubborn and loaded with self-confidence and more pride than her circumstances should allow her. The film follows her to Sacramento and Paris before ending up back in New York. It was decent. I can't really give a broad recommendation for this one, but I liked it just fine, and hey, maybe you would too.

And that's curtains for January. Here's hoping I can recommit to some real backlog items in February and beyond.