Ewan attempts to write a reality TV Show

So recently I saw my mam and dad watching Geordie Shore, a show about bumbling thick tosspots from Newcastle going out and getting shit faced to fuck anything that’s three tones of orange away from “Citrus Orange” and then they say “Whey aye man” as all people from Newcastle do. And I thought, if this money-making machine can leach onto any twat with an IQ lower than 45 then I want in on the shit show. I want my piece of the pie and a bit of money on the side. So I went to my local TV broadcasting station, and the conversation went a little bit like this…

Ewan: Hello, I’m Ewan, I called earlier about a new TV Show?

TV Man: Ah yes I remember, the nervous wreck who kept stumbling over his words, yeah, yeah, take a seat. So, what’s the idea for the new show?

Ewan: Well, actually I’ve had a couple of ideas about a number of different things.

TV Man: Excellent, as long as we can slap some gormless bastards into it then we can make enough money to build a rocket made out of cheese on a one way course to Mars.

Ewan: Actually I was thinking it could be a bit more sophisticated than that.

TV Man: Not a chance. That wouldn’t work in a popular environment.

Ewan: But it’s based on the extremely popular game series Fallout and I’ve already planned out the first episode and who would be cast and why, along with creating a rich story that links in with the games.

TV Man: Nah, it’s shite, anything else?

Ewan: Well, I did have this idea to do with sketch shows…

TV Man: I’m listening

Ewan: Well, take the very best sketch shows, so for example Monty Python and Mitchell and Webb, then take the very best sketches from these shows and re-perform them with the same actors and in HD cameras and so on.

TV Man: So it’d basically be a way of revitalising and commemorating the best of British humour?

Ewan: Precisely.

TV Man: Nah, it’s bollocks, I’m running out patience here you stupid cunt, so you better come up with something good.

Ewan: How about a reality TV Show?

TV Man: There’s plenty of those, Big Brother, Geordie Shore, Made in Chelsea, The Only Way is Essex, Blackadder, what makes yours so special?

Ewan: Well a number of things actually.

TV Man: Would you care to name a few of them?

Ewan: For a start, it would be an elimination system similar to that of Big Brother, but instead of being evicted they all have explosive collars on and when evicted they go all Battle Royale and their collars explode, splashing orange everywhere.

TV Man: Christ Ewan, that’s a bit barbaric isn’t it?

Ewan: Nah, they’re all thickos that we can pick up off of any street in Clapham.

TV Man: Alright, fair enough, it’s a good start, but what else have you got?

Ewan: Well, the winner will receive a lifetime supply of fake tan.

TV Man: Fucking sold, where do I sign?

Now this very real conversation happened not so long ago, and you can catch The Only Way is Purging The Thickos on BBC 4 at 1:30am, I think I’ve been buggered by the listing times, but hopefully it does well, I’m getting paid in ice cream and Um Bongo.

Creed just might be my new favorite sports movie

That’s right, I’m actually writing about something other than games for once! I’m no professional movie critic, but I feel that Creed is a movie worth writing about. I just recently went to see Creed and came in with high expectations due to the surprisingly high Rotten Tomatoes score of 93% (I didn’t read reviews to avoid spoilers). Even with my high expectations, though, Creed surprised me and may now be my new favorite sports movie for a multitude of reasons. Warning: Spoilers ahead.

Is It Worth Watching: Futurama

I just started binge watching a load of shows all at once, so why not make some use out of all my watching of three seasons a day and make a post about it. I’ve got a load of TV Shows and movies to watch through, so why not. We’ll kick things off with Futurama. Now I must admit, I’m a lot better at game reviews than I am with TV show and movie reviews, however as time goes on it’ll get better and we’ll enjoy it all the more. This is a TV show with 7 seasons, so instead of analysing the show as a whole, I thought I’d analyse each season individually.

Season 1 – 13 Episodes

Season 1 gave us such classic episodes such as I, Roomate, Space Pilot 3000 and My Three Suns. This season does a great job of introducing us to our main characters which consists of Phillip J. Fry, Turanga Leela, Bender, Professor Farnsworth, Amy Wong, Hermes Conrad and everyone’s favourite Dr. Zoidberg. The first season definitely has a strong lineup of episodes with no horrendously awful episodes to be seen.

Best Episode: Fry and the Slurm Factory

Basically mocking “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” this episode is full of laughs, music and introduced the fan favourite “Slurms McKenzie”. Fry, Bender, Leela and the gang find themselves at a factory which is extremely resemblant of the classic film “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (Which is a fantastic film) along with the “Grunka Lunkas” (The equivalent of Oompa Loompas) and all along with snippets of song, comedic gestures and nods to the original film the episode is based on.

Worst Episode: A Fishful of Dollars

The whole episode consists of Fry looking for Anchovies, then sticking them on a pizza because anchovies died out, definitely not the strongest episode in the series, but still has it’s fair few laughs even if the plot is a little fishy. See what I did there? Huh? HUH? HUH? DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?

Season 2 – 19 Episodes

Season 2 was 6 episodes longer than the first season, which is always nice. The more Futurama the better, this season did a fantastic job of making us love our main characters even more than we already did. It even introduced some new, recurring characters that have been our favourites ever since, most notably President Nixon and Robot Santa.

Best Episode: How Herme’s Requisitioned his Groove Back/The Cryonic Woman

I didn’t honestly know which episode to pick for this one, I like “How Herme’s Requisitioned his Groove Back” because it showed us some depth to one of the other Planet Express members, who at this point hadn’t had a large story arch like this one. I also picked “The Cryonic Woman” because it show’s what happens when Fry’s ex-girlfriend comes to the future and how their relationship has an affect on the rest of the Planet Express crew.

Worst Episode: The Honking

Honestly, the reason for me not liking this episode is because it’s that overdone. We’ve seen the original piece of work being Werewolf transformations and car related shenanigans in all manner of shows, movies, books and such. Futurama really didn’t hit the nail on the head with this one either, which is a shame because it could’ve been done fairly well.

Season 3 – 21 Episodes

Season 3, it made us laugh, cry and get emotionally attached to a plant that Fry was trying to find. It gave us a lot more information about Fry’s past, Bender gets a boost in plot points and it also gave us plot points to revolve around Farnsworth’s and Herme’s kids…

Best Episode: Roswell That Ends Well

 

This episode was great because it was one of the episodes to show how the Planet Express crew have had accidental impacts on history, being sent back to Roswell, Zoidberg is captured and is deemed an alien while everyone else has to fix the ship, also some very interesting things happen to Fry…

Worst Episode: Amazon Women in the Mood

 

Bleh, this episode is strange. In it, Zapp, Kiff, Amy and Leela all end up on some island where there’s women who only want “snu-snu”, Bender and Fry are there, then there’s a giant computer? I don’t know, this episode was really messy in turn with no real direction of plot.

Season 4 – 18 Episodes

The one with the dead dog. This series is probably the most critically acclaimed amongst fans and for good reason, a plethora of good episodes to choose from. The characters are given some great backstory’s and episodes as well which is always good.

Best Episode: Jurassic Bark/Three Hundred Big Boys

 

Well, that was expected really wasn’t it? Seymour and all that, it made me cry and was certainly one of the best episodes just for the ending scene alone. Three Hundred Big Boys is an interesting one, everyone get’s $300. Fry buys 100 coffee’s, it is amazingly funny seeing how Fry slowly turns into a maniacal freak solely devoted to coffee and after that final coffee, just wow, I think I might try it.

Worst Episode: Bend Her

Bender becomes a woman. I, I don’t think I need to say anything else, so I wont, this is the end of the sentence.

This is the first time the show got cancelled, but don’t worry, we still have 3 more seasons to go through.

Season 5 – 4 Movies

When Futurama was initially cancelled, Cartoon Network bought the rights to it and put the episodes on their Adult Swim channel, which boosted sales by, a lot. When the contract ran out, FOX bought back Futurama and they started to make new episodes of the show, to boot up the series again, they made 4 movies, released straight to DVD, you can probably split each movie into 4 episodes each. I watched all four of these movies in a day. So, unlike the previous four, I don’t want to spilt these into Best Episode/Worst Episode, or even best movie for that matter.

Why? Because they were all equally as boring, I’m not saying they were bad, but I think this is when I realised that Futurama was not gonna be the same as the previous four seasons. Don’t get me wrong, the movies were funny, but they just weren’t as good as what had previously been delivered. I think the one I liked the most was Bender’s Big Score, it was funny, made the whole storyline confusingly awkward, yet believable.

The worst one, Into The Wild Green Yonder was just boring. That’s really all I have to say on the matter, it was boring. However if you like cool music, then watch Bender’s Game, the credit sequence has some great music. That leaves the other one, the Beast with a Billion Backs, that was OK, I’ve seen it before quite a lot so it was boring to watch it again, however funny it was.

Season 6 – 26 Episodes

So this is the series reboot after the four movies, that’s all I’ve really got to say about that. This series is OK, not the best start up to the reboot of a show that got cancelled but it’ll do.

Best Episode: Attack of the Killer App

I’m not sure why I liked this episode so much, maybe it’s because of the mad craze that we call Twitter, this episode took the mick and turned everyone into mindless zombies that bought new phones, just like Apple have done. It also features the infamous “Shut up and take my money” meme.

Worst Episode: The Duh-Vinci Code

So Leonardo da Vinci’s secret invention was found in his old beard. We’re off to a great start aren’t we? Then all of Leonardo’s inventions fit together to make a spaceship and they fly off to his home planet…I’m pretty sure somebody got fired over this episode. I’m hoping so…

Season 7 – 26 Episodes

The last season of Futurama was extremely disappointing, there was a plethora of poor quality episodes that just had a stupid idea to revolve around or they just weren’t funny.

Best Episode: Murder on the Planet Express/Stench and Stenchibility/Meanwhile

Murder on the Planet Express was actually really cool, left Bender and Fry cold blooded killers when an evil space alien that can shapeshift comes aboard the ship and starts eating everyone when they’re on a team building exercise. I definitely enjoyed Stench and Stenchibility as well, it gave Zoidberg a nice plot point that, actually was pretty well delivered. Meanwhile was the final episode in the series, so it had to be good, which it was, so I’m not going to even think about spoiling that one.

Worst Episode: The Rest of Season 7

 

Yeah, I didn’t have any strong feelings for the rest of the episodes, they’re not worth talking about to be honest, the Zoidberg eating money at the casino episode was pretty good but other than that, nothing worth it.

But it all comes down to one question doesn’t it?

Is it worth watching?

Of course it is you fool, why would I have stuck with it for seven seasons if it wasn’t worth watching? Stop what you’re doing and go and watch it, right now.

How pirates brought on the age of Netflix

No I don’t mean Blackbeard is sitting in an IT department coding a digital storefront. I’m of course speaking of piracy in the more modern sense, the act of illegally sharing or downloading media, video games etc. Pirates are typically seen as people who will do just about anything to make sure they don’t have to properly pay for access to movies, games, and the like. The reality of it is, not all pirates are completely against paying, and sometimes convenience plays a large role in whether or not someone buys something or pirates it.

Falling Skies: Episode 10, “Brazil”

Falling Skies: Episode 10, “Brazil”

When Falling Skies season 3 first aired I had high hopes, that is to say the least. Yet from the beginning it seemed as though this show had run its path into the ground. It’s a painfully sad experience to watch a show that you once loved turn into a cheesy “play by the books” alien show. With the “who is the Espheni spy?” plot line back, and the alien baby; the audience had no clue which way the show was really going, not to mention no intention to see it play out.

And somehow, through all of their beginning to mid-season draught, they were able to pull something amazing out. Starting around episode 5 or 6, Falling Skies realized its true potential and got back on track. There is no difference here with the finale. With Remi Aubuchon and Greg Beeman as writer and director, respectively, we get nothing short of what we would expect in a finale episode.
One thing that must be noted here is how well the cast really seemed to mesh together. During the beginning of the season it felt like we were watching actors competing for more screen time; in the finale, it felt more like characters that needed to band together. Sinning accommodations here are deserved to all actors. Each and every one of them seemed to play off of the others, and rightfully so. Even Seychelle Gabriel, (Lourdas), who normally seems out of place put on a great performance.

As always, Falling Skies strives within the speeches delivered by the characters; notably Noah Wyle, (Tom Mason), and Will Patton, (Captain Weaver), truly lock it down. “The Volm just done what the fish-heads never could… brought us to our knees”; a powerful line delivered to us by Colin Cunningham, (Pope). “We adamantly oppose those who would oppress or deny us our freedoms”, Noah Wyle.

Right from the start audience is thrown into a high energy situation with an intensity that seemed to have been missing since the beginning of this season. I was a bit thrown back seeing how easily they threw us into the conflict; but ultimately, it was appreciated. Jumping straight into main plot events was probably a good idea considering how much time was wasted prior to this episode. Cochise and the Volm forces wanting to take things into their own hands was as to be expected. With a season 4 on the veranda, one could only expect that things have to go wrong so that the second mas could go on fighting.

As much as I loved this episode, and really am looking forward to seeing where it leads, the one thing that I’ve honestly had enough of is Hal and Margaret’s relationship. Too many times do they break apart and come back together. I thought that they had put an end to that once Hal removed his eye bug, but apparently the writers of this show aren’t done here. With the glaringly obvious conversation between them about where they see themselves ending up after the war, it seems that the star crossed lovers might no longer be together come next season. What with Lourdas practically telling Hal that she loves him, one could almost guarantee that Maragaret might soon be in Pope’s arms; just as Pope had predicted all along. Hal and Margaret’s ‘will they or won’t they’ routine is getting old to say the least.

The climax point in the episode, for me at least, is when Tom Mason finally gives Karen the gift that he’s been waiting to give her, not to mention that he does it Scarface style, which could make any shootout seem immensely cooler, for lack of better terms. The Final shot of the episode was not what should be expected from a Falling Skies finale. Going from Tom Mason being abducted in season 1 and a new alien force landing in season 2; a simple ‘happy ending’ didn’t really fit here. (Not to mention that Anne Glass and child Alexis returning was to be seen). Lastly the team at Falling Skies really pulled themselves together here to give us a great finale, and set us up for what could easily be the best season yet. With the Volm fighting the Espheni, and the Espheni wanting to fight the humans, and the humans preparing for a possible fight against both, we can be sure to expect much more action in the upcoming year.

Score: 4/5
Joe Monfoletto

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• TV: Falling Skies: “Brazil” (avclub.com)
• TNT’s Falling Skies Renewed for Season 4 (tvline.com)