Stan's TV Dump: Winter 2015

If I can do these for movies, why not TV seasons? We'll see how long this schtick lasts. Here are some seasons of some television shows that I've watched since 2015 began. Most of them, of course, aired sometime during 2015. Some didn't. Intrigued? Read on!

Parks and Recreation: Season 7

NBC had no idea what to do with the final season of Parks and Recreation, electing to burn off the entire thirteen-episode run over a span of six weeks and expediting the process of retiring its last great comedy. Airing two episodes a night, the show had to bring everyone up to speed with its three-year time jump and then wrap everything up neatly in just a month and a half. It mostly succeeded. I won't pretend that the show went out on top, or even that it never struggled toward the end; one episode in particular, the fourth-to-last, focused on Andy's brief career as the creator and host of a local children's show, and it may have been my least favorite episode in the entire series run. But Parks and Recreation was - and always will be - one of my favorite comedies of all time. It will be sorely missed going forward.

Downton Abbey: Season 5

It's almost hard to remember how much of a pop culture sensation this show used to be. Years ago, we were collectively obsessed with the melodramatic class struggle, the Edwardian Era fashion, the quick wit of Dame Maggie Smith, and the will-they-or-won't-they tension between Mary and Matthew, Bates and Anna, and Daisy and being-anywhere-but-here. Somewhere around the third season, the luster was gone. Maybe it was Bates being on trial. Maybe it was the Great War being over. Maybe it was Mary and Matthew finally settling down. Regardless, Downton Abbey is an empty shell of what it once was, and it's almost a relief to hear that the upcoming sixth season will be the show's last.

Togetherness: Season 1

I thought that last year's FX comedy, Married, was a dark and honest look at what it is to be married in your late thirties and not necessarily happy. But then HBO doubled down on that concept with Togetherness, which is almost straight-up depressing in its portrayal of two people in the same situation, making Married look light-hearted and low stakes by comparison. ED and a lack of communication lead to terrible sex taking place front and center, and it's almost hard not to root for both husband and wife to find some happiness outside of their failing marriage. The show would be unwatchable if not for Amanda Peet and Steve Zissis developing their own little relationship with unlikely chemistry. I'm curious to see where this all goes in Season 2.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Season 1

Also known as the Tina Fey Netflix project, this was simple and fun and easy to binge watch. Kimmy Schmidt has been held in an underground bunker for ten or fifteen years or so by a ridiculous cult led by Jon Hamm. When she's rescued, she decides to make a new life for herself in New York. It's more or less the same New York from 30 Rock, full of vibrant characters and opportunities for a young woman stuck fifteen years in the past. Anyway, it all works. It's got Tina Fey's fingerprints all over it, and if you like her stuff like I do, you'd like this show.

Broad City: Season 2

Broad City on the other hand takes place in an entirely different New York. It's still vibrant and full of characters and opportunities for two young women to do things, but it's also much deeper and often shadier and weirder than Fey's New York. This is a New York with an elaborate underground knock-off purse black market, and with gay dog weddings, and where you can meet Kelly Ripa after a coat check mix-up or have a sudden impulsive lesbian experience with your own doppelgänger. Anyway, it's a cliche, but New York itself is indeed one of the most important "characters" in Broad City, a show that feels a lot like a sketch comedy version of Workaholics.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Season 10

Ten seasons? Ten seasons. Wow. Not much has changed for Always Sunny over the past decade, which feels like a strange accomplishment of sorts. The characters have many more layers of definition at this point, but they're still the same shallow people who bring misfortune upon everyone else they encounter. Season 10 was another mixed bag highlighted by an episode where the gang went on Family Feud and an episode that detailed through a series of elaborately choreographed long shots how Charlie keeps the bar running. Always Sunny has been renewed through at least its twelfth season, which would tie it with Two and a Half Men and My Three Sons as the longest-running non-animated sitcom in the history of American television. That's crazy!

Girls: Season 4

Are the four girls in Girls still largely detestable self-centered people? Yes, absolutely. But are they also all a little more mature and self-aware than they were when the series began four years ago? Yes, undeniably. So if this is a show about shitty twenty-somethings turning into slightly less-shitty twenty-somethings - a show about growing up, basically - then it's succeeding at advancing the various character arcs for these various young women. Your mileage may vary, but I still find it pretty funny fairly often. Most shows are grasping or struggling four years into their lifespans, but Girls has been admirably consistent from day one.

The Walking Dead: Season 5

I'd be hard pressed not to call the fifth season of The Walking Dead its greatest year yet. There was urgency and momentum, for one thing, and most of the major character deaths really hit home - a huge improvement from the days where I would openly root for half of Rick's crew to get killed by zombies. The season still dragged at times, and I'm sure they can tell these stories in twelve or thirteen episodes instead of sixteen, but, shit, if The Walking Dead is finally a good show on the whole, who am I to complain about a few dud episodes here and there?

Archer: Season 6

It'd be tough to call Archer stale, but after six seasons and a full circle premise reboot, it isn't exactly fresh, either. If witty banter, crisp animation, and insane characters are your thing, you'd likely find very little to dislike about Archer. The show continues to work and remains a consistently entertaining half hour that I often head for first during any given DVR backlog clean-out. There's little else to say, really, but Archer still has it.

Better Call Saul: Season 1

The long-awaited Breaking Bad spin-off was about as good as I could have hoped it'd be in its first season. It was slow at times, but then again, so was Breaking Bad. More than anything else, it was just nice to see the origin story of Saul Goodman, from his humble and largely pathetic beginnings as Jimmy McGill. And to a lesser extent, it was nice to learn more about Mike's background. This show will be hard-pressed to live up to Breaking Bad, but I don't think anybody really expects it to do so.

Workaholics: Season 5

On the one hand, Workaholics has kind of run out of things for its characters to say and do at this point. On the other, the fact that the sixth season hasn't yet been confirmed leaves me oddly worried about a possible lack of closure. Here's hoping for one last go-round with Blake, Adam, and Anders, even if it's totally unnecessary.

The Affair: Season 1

How's this for a concept? The Affair is about an extra-martial affair and its aftermath, told separately from the standpoints of the man and woman involved. It's a Rashomon-style TV show where the truth is unknowable. When viewers are asked to choose between his side and hers, it's unclear whether either one better represents what really happened. For the first half of its first season, The Affair moved very slowly but felt very deep and intelligent. Groundwork was laid for each of the two central characters, exploring their vices and their demons and their issues and circumstances. And then in the second half of the season, grace and subtlety flew out the window as all kinds of zany over-the-top plot points were introduced. I liked the show The Affair was at first, and I liked the show it became, but they were two very different shows.

Justified: Season 6

Justified called it quits after a pretty solid six-year run, a year earlier than most successful-enough shows would have. It enjoyed a very good final season that ended quietly and without a ton of tragedy or irony, the way a good novel does, which is a rarity in today's anti-hero-laden TV landscape. It was the ending the show deserved. Where Justified ranks among the best dramas of the decade is debatable, but even if this wasn't transcendent or revolutionary television, it was consistent and entertaining and, despite a dud season or two, it never jumped the shark and became a parody of itself. It was, in many ways, the exact opposite of its long-time FX counterpart Sons of Anarchy.

Silicon Valley: Season 1

I avoided this one for too long, as I'm not particularly familiar with much of the California tech bubble culture and I figured this show would be full of jokes I neither understood nor appreciated. My mistake! Silicon Valley is more a satire than a celebration of that very community, and one that anyone can get into. I should have trusted Mike Judge from the get-go! This is a good show. Not an uproariously funny show, but a great little HBO sitcom all the same.

The Americans: Season 3

Lastly, we come to The Americans, a show many have hailed the best thing currently on television. I'm a little hesitant to go that far, but, yes, this is a very good show. The third season upped the stakes for the Russian spies quite a bit, and also may or may not have left their identities exposed to some sensitive parties. The only problem with the season was that it didn't really end in any meaningful or satisfying way. There was a big cliffhanger, but none of the many individual threads from the season were wrapped up, instead left to dangle between now and Season 4. Come on, man!

That was lengthier and more difficult than I imagined it would be. Yeesh.

F-Zero

If Mario Kart: Super Circuit was a bit rough to play in 2015, this 1990 fast-paced futuristic racing game was nearly impossible. Gameplay consists of zipping around tracks at high speeds while avoiding hazards and obstacles. You've got a health bar that slowly depletes with every hazard you hit, and when it's empty, you simply explode. This means you can be way out in the lead during a five-lap race and lose it all during an unfortunate wipeout. Frustrating! There are no items or power-ups that make you faster or tougher, nor can you attack your AI opponents; this is simply a game where you need to memorize tracks and use quick reflexes to win races.

I didn't love it. It was nice to go back and visit, for the first time, the origin of the series that gave us Captain Falcon, but I never need to play F-Zero again.

Mario Kart: Super Circuit

Here's the third Mario Kart game, a 2001 release on the GameBoy Advance. Fourteen years later, I'm not so sure it holds up. The graphics look weak, inferior to the lower-quality original SNES game from 1992. I guess it was a big deal to be able to play Mario Kart on the go back in 2001, but playing it on the Wii U Virtual Console didn't quite provide the same level of satisfaction. The controls were even worse than the graphics; drafting and mini-boosting hadn't yet been implemented into Mario Kart - those would come with Double Dash!! - and instead the turning was just really harp and crisp. There were several tracks where I just needed to lay off the gas while making certain turns. I'm sure I wasn't racing optimally, but, whatever. All things considered, this is nothing anyone reading this needs to revisit. It really wasn't bad, but it's a dated and shoddy game.

Mario Party: Island Tour

There's not much to say here. Mario Party is obviously best experienced with multiple human beings. I'm sure that's an option on the 3DS, if you and four friends each have a copy of the game or whatever, but I was only able to enjoy this one solamente, amigos. That's really too bad, because this version of Mario Party had a number of distinct and unique boards - some where the goal was to reach the end first, some where the goal was to collect the most stars, and even one where the goal was to reach the goal last since Bowser was waiting at the end. There was a lot to like here - I just wish I could have liked it with a few friends.

Womp womp!

Civilization V

I love Civilization. Always have. For the unfamiliar with the series, it's a 4X game - explore, expand, exploit, exterminate - in which you control an empire and attempt to meet certain victory conditions before the other teams do. It's ridiculously customizable and almost endlessly replayable. This version of the game - the fifth - has been out for five years, so it's hardly "new" in any sense. All the same, it's the latest and greatest from a long-beloved franchise of mine, so naturally I've dumped several dozen hours into it in the week I've had it, staying up far too late for far too many nights in a row in the process.

I've started and finished three games of Civilization V, essentially beating it three separate times. It's time to put the game away for a while now so that I can move on to other games. And also so I can get some sleep. Anyway, here's a quick rundown of the games I played.

1. The Americans - For my first game, I jumped in with every standard setting as George Washington of the American people. The randomly generated map had me starting out on one big continent along with four other civilizations, while a sixth - England - started out on a separate continent entirely. I quickly established my first few cities in the lower left corner of the continent and then raced toward the middle expanding my empire along the way. I eventually settled a city right next to Egypt's borders (Egypt was on the lower right) and Egypt didn't take too kindly to that. We went to war, and although Egypt offered a peace treaty pretty quickly, I declined, and ended up driving them out of the game by taking all of their cities. This didn't go unnoticed by the other three civilizations, who all began to denounce me. I had earned a reputation as a warmonger, and by taking all of Egypt's cities I was also the largest empire in the game from that point forward. France, directly to my north, eventually challenged me to a war and so I took all of their cities, too. At this point I was barreling toward a "domination victory," achieved when every other civilization loses its capital city. But England was still all the way across an ocean, and getting a large enough army there would have been a pain in the ass, so instead I just put all my focus toward scientific research and won the game by being the first civilization to successfully launch a spaceship to a new planet. This one was well in hand from the time I was beating France down, and the final hours of the game certainly felt like they dragged a bit.
2. The Romans (Tyrells) - Because Civilization games are endlessly modifiable, I knew there'd be a map of Westeros out there somewhere. Instead, there were half a dozen. I picked the largest one, increased my difficulty settings, and rolled into what would become my favorite Civilization game to date. (Here's a high-resolution Westeros map for reference.) I chose to play as the Romans this time around, but when the game randomly spawned me near the Highgarden part of Westeros, I knew I was really going to be playing as the Tyrells. From the outset, there were eight civilizations on just one continent. From my corner, I knew my biggest three rivals would be Arabia (Dorne) to my south, Egypt (Stormlands) to my east, and Spain (Westerlands and the Reach) to my north. Role-playing right along like the biggest damn nerd, I took the Tyrell-Martell rvialry to heart and almost immediately went to war with Dorne. It was costly and stupid. While I did end up winning the ordeal and taking the whole peninsula in the process, it was a pyrrhic victory. I was way behind, technologically, as I'd focused all of my efforts and resources on the war effort. I also had once again immediately earned denunciations from every other civilization. Rapid expansion had also left me poor and taking new cities had rendered my population widely unhappy. Almost immediately, Spain (Lannisters) and Egypt (Baratheons) declared war on me and went straight for my northern side while my armies were still making their way back from Dorne. It was only the mountainous terrain that saved me from Egypt, as all units receive defensive bonuses on hills; a minor naval war broke out in the Sea of Dorne, but Egypt never really challenged me with any land units. Spain very nearly took my northernmost city, Cider Hall, but I was able to defend it with a few crossbowmen and a well-timed plea for peace. (I think I had to essentially buy peace from them.) Egypt gave up their attack shortly afterward and I settled into the long process of building up my defenses, bringing my Dornish cities up to speed, and trying to foster good will from every other civilization. It worked, mostly because of all the riches I was reaping as the Tyrells; whoever designed the map knew to put all kinds of commodities in the Reach, and I was quickly establishing all kinds of trading engagements with those around me. Meanwhile, way up in the north - really, in the North - England was making absolute hay as an aggressive version of the Starks. They had the largest territory in the game and eventually eliminated China (who started near the Neck or the Riverlands, I think) and knocked the Aztecs (no idea where they were even based) down to one pathetic and inconsequential city on one of those islands in the Bite. It looked very much like England was going to win. And then everything changed when Egypt went to war with me again. This time, I was entirely ready not just to defend, but to counter-attack. Spain stayed out of it, allowing me to focus everything I had on pushing back against Egypt. I took every city Egypt had, forcing them from the game. And then, oddly, and with horrible timing, Spain declared war on me. I took their six or seven cities away in ten to fifteen turns. It was a bloodbath. This was late enough in the game for me to have stealth bombers and nuclear missiles, and Spain just never stood a chance. That left four civilizations remaining. England, taking up the entire North; me, owning essentially everything south of the Riverlands; the Aztecs, again, confined to one small island and with no hope of winning; and Polynesia, in the Eyrie and at the Twins, also too small to have any shot at winning the game. England was at war with Polynesia, and winning. And they could have knocked out the Aztecs in a turn or two if they really wanted to. The stage was set for a showdown between me and England - Tyrell vs. Stark - with the Neck itself set to be the site of just wave after wave of battles. I knew I couldn't win a war with England. They had more cities and just so many more units - even though I don't think they had bombers and nukes yet. So instead, I did the most Tyrell thing possible, and scored a diplomatic victory. This is a late-game alternative to winning via domination or space race, in which every civilization casts a vote for who should win the game. It only ends the game if one civilization garners enough votes, and, sure enough, that's exactly what I did - thanks largely to some immense donations to the lesser civilizations around me. I never actually went to war with England, nor did I ever move a unit further north than the Neck. Still, from very early on, it was clear that England and I were the top two dogs in the fight - and I beat them without ever fighting them in a single battle. Ha! Those Starks. They'll never learn how to play the game of thrones!
3. The Polynesians - This one will be real quick because, well, this game was. It was also boring as hell. Looking for a completely different experience, I played a game where the world map was set to an "archipelago" type; everyone was scattered on different islands, most of which weren't even big enough for more than two cities. From the very beginning in this one, I was aiming for a cultural victory - a victory triggered when you've generated enough culture, which is hard to do when you're at war, obviously. No one ever declared war on me, nor did I ever delcare war on anyone else, nor did any civilization get knocked out of the game. Like I said, a very boring game. Worst of all, my victory was all but assured pretty early on, once I got my culture-making engine going - but I still had to sit through eleven other civilizations making their moves and asking me to go to war against each other. I played this whole session in one night, but it was a six-hour ordeal. Thank God for Netflix.

Anyway, that was Civilization V. I loved it, and if I had nothing but time on my hands, I'd still be playing it. (I never did get a domination victory.) Oh well. There are two expansion packs for the game, and I'm sure I'll check each one out another time.

Sons of Anarchy: Season 6

You know, as much as I grew to dislike this show - and this season in particular - I have to say, Sons of Anarchy has been immensely re-watchable. It's a show that thrives on big moments and suffers from convoluted plots, which means that it can be really frustrating to see unfold in real time, but plenty of fun to check back in with every now and again. No complaints here.

For what it's worth, six of the eight people on the above DVD cover end up dead by the end of the series. Hamlet with motorcycles indeed!

Justified: Season 4

I finished this one a few days ago and haven't really been inspired to say much about it. I had recalled the fourth season of Justified fondly, but at the same time I would hesitate to say that it matches Season 2's memorable moments or Season 3's delightfully charismatic villain. The sixth and final season will air its finale later tonight, and maybe I'll have something more insightful to say about Season 6 than I can muster here and now for Season 4.

Stan's Movie Dump: February/March 2015

I've slowed down considerably, but hey! Here are some more movies I've seen since the end of January, along with my thoughts on each of them.

Lucy

Here's a great example of how proper expectations can help you enjoy a movie to its fullest potential. Negative reviews for Lucy correctly pointed out its absurd plot and ridiculous premise: the idea that by using more than ten percent of our brains, human beings could be capable of superpower-like abilities. Is it dumb as hell? Absolutely. But I still greatly enjoyed the ninety minutes I spent watching Lucy. This was a fun action movie that tried some really cool things and got away with most of them. Scarlett Johansson was great and Morgan Freeman narrated bits and pieces. I enjoyed Lucy in spite of its flaws and in spite of its detractors, and I'd honestly and earnestly give it a soft recommendation to anyone interested in a quick and easy action flick.

Edge of Tomorrow

Keith's review of this one piqued my interest back in January. Whether you call it Edge of Tomorrow or Live Die Repeat doesn't seem to matter, but the latter is certainly an apt summary of the film's central gimmick. It takes place during a futuristic alien invasion, and Tom Cruise plays a high ranking officer who gets mistaken for a low-level grunt and thrown into the middle of an enormous beach-based battle and immediately killed - only to wake up right before the invasion. It's essentially a sci-fi war twist on Groundhog Day, and in that respect it felt like a great big video game. The movie had fun mining the comedy out of all the various ways Tom Cruise could get killed during and even leading up to the battle on the beach. It's another mindless action movie, and it struggles pretty badly when it slows down in the second half. Worth a watch, but check out Lucy first.

Brave

As much as I wanted to like Brave - a Pixar movie set in Scotland with a tomboyish princess as its heroine - I didn't, really. It was fine. It was meh. It wasn't bad at all, but it was ultimately very forgettable. I'd call it one of Pixar's most mediocre efforts, but frankly, I think the luster wore off of the Pixar gold standard a little while back. Oh well!

Ida

For whatever it's worth (nothing!), Ida was on my radar long before it won Best Foreign Picture at the Oscars. When I found it on Netflix, I gave it a shot. Unfortunately, I just couldn't get into this one as much as I'd have liked. It's a black and white Polish film set in the 1960s in which a young woman at a covenant learns that she was born to Jewish parents during the Holocaust. She reunites with her only surviving relative, an aunt, and together they set out to investigate what happened to her parents. It's a slow-moving movie, and it feels even slower since every shot uses a static camera. There's sadness in all the stillness, and a lot of gorgeous shots too, especially for a black and white movie. Oh, and it has a 4:3 aspect ratio with some very interesting shot-framing decisions that add a sense of weight and claustrophobia to the ordeal. The whole thing is objectively very well made, but I never fully embraced it for some reason.

Birdman

Years and years ago, when vampires and werewolves were huge, Sweeney boldly predicted that the next big craze to sweep the nation would be bird people. And now, Birdman has won the Oscar for Best Picture. Let's give Sween credit where it's due, huh? At any rate, Birdman is worth the hype. It's clever and smart, and its one-take aesthetic actually fits right in with its stage play-centric plot. Michael Keaton is fantastic, but so are Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, and especially Edward Norton. See it if you haven't yet.

Force Majeure

Another foreign film! Swedish, this time. The premise here is simple. A family is on a ski vacation when one morning a controlled avalanche goes slightly awry. When it looks, briefly, like everyone is totally fucked, the family patriarch turns around and hauls ass, fleeing for his life and abandoning his wife and children. This brief moment of cowardice plants a bad seed, and the pair's marriage more or less falls apart over the remainder of the ski trip. What I liked about this one was its distance from each character. The film doesn't paint either party as a clear protagonist, and as such, the audience really gets to be a fly on the wall. Neither the man nor his wife comes across as a sympathetic person. The man keeps denying that he ran away and abandoned his family, even though that's exactly what he did. Meanwhile, the woman keeps bringing it up, not just in private but also to other couples at the resort. Anyway, this won't be for everyone, but it worked well for me. And it's a pretty movie, too!

Two months, six movies. We'll do this again, I promise! Bye!

Ultimate NES Remix

This one was a Secret Santa gift from Mr. and Mrs. MMW - thanks, guys!

Basically, it's an NES "greatest hits" compilation. Sixteen games are represented, and you're tasked with playing very quick pieces of each one. For instance, under Super Mario Bros. 3, your first task is probably just to collect some coins or to get a mushroom. Under Metroid, it may have been to kill three enemies. Yet, in each of these sixteen games, you also end up playing out the final boss battle as your last task. So where at first you were just absorbing powers as Kirby, a scant twenty minutes later you're duking it out with Meta Knight and King Dedede. The Metroid challenges end with you killing Mother Brain and escaping from the underground.

It wasn't a game I'd push on anyone, but it was a pretty cool way for me to experience a few NES games I hadn't yet played, like Balloon Fight, Excitebike, Donkey Kong Jr., and Punch-Out!!. I dumped close to nine hours into it, and easily could have spent more time trying to unlock every last challenge if I wasn't so burdened by my backlog.

At any rate, an enjoyable game.

Justified: Season 3

Man, this season of Justified sucked some big sweaty ass.

April fools!

For real, I loved this season. Its "big bad," Robert Quarles, was one of my all time favorite single-season villains in television. This was also the year when Wynn Duffy really broke out as more than just a minor character. Toss in Limehouse, and there were just plenty of non-Boyd antagonists for Raylan to contend with in Season 3. In fact, it's possible that Justified peaked here. I don't know. I still need to revisit the fourth season.

Anyway, good stuff here.