GR Dailies: Community – VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing

14 Friday Mar 2014

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by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of NBCUniversal Television Distribution

Community images courtesy of NBCUniversal Television Distribution

5×09:  “VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing”

Probably like a lot of Community viewers, I hadn’t given a lot of thought towards Annie and Abed being roommates without Troy.  But really, as soon as you think about it, as soon as there’s even the slightest mention of it, your thoughts start going down some weird, largely unnatural paths.  As Abed identified early in season one, Annie and Abed are like the Chandler and Phoebe (in that order) of the show, and the two really just don’t fit together that well, with natural pair ups virtually never resulting in the two being together without a separate mediating force.  Now that Troy’s gone, we find out that there’s a natural friction between the two, and it makes sense, even if you never thought about it.  Sure, Abed isn’t academically driven or competitive, and Annie isn’t a near-emotionless pop culture cypher, but if the two ever have to compete for the same thing, they’re probably the two most dangerous characters on the show.

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GR Dailies: How I Met Your Mother – Daisy

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

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by Grace Crawford

Images courtesy of Bay & Thomas Productions and 20th Century Fox.

Images courtesy of Bay & Thomas Productions and 20th Century Fox.

9×20: “Daisy”

Finally, after weeks of waiting to find out where Lily went after she stormed out on her and Marshall’s fight, we… well, find out where she went after she stormed out on her and Marshall’s fight, I guess.

At the same time, Robin’s finally having her pre-wedding panic attack for the same reason a lot of women do: because she’s convinced she’s marrying her dad. So let’s jump into that, shall we?

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GR Dailies: The Walking Dead – Alone

10 Monday Mar 2014

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by Thom Yee

Walking Dead s4-2

All images courtesy of AMC and Fox International Channels

4×13:  “Alone”

For readers of the comicbook, by now we’ve gotten to a point in the show where it’s hard to say what’s going to happen with any real specificity.  Though it seems inevitable that most of our group will find the second major safe zone (after the prison) and follow at least the basic spine of that comicbook storyline, there are now way too many divergences to know where the show’s going in the near term.  For starters, Dale was still alive at this point in the comic (his much earlier death on the show was one of the first and biggest shockers for comicbook readers) and he played a major part in where the show seems to be going next.  There was no Daryl or Beth, Bob is an entirely different character, Maggie was never separated from Glenn, Tyreese had previously played a much bigger role and was now dead, Carol died a long time ago, and the only kids left were Carl and Sophia, the latter of whom had just started seeing Glenn and Maggie as surrogate parents (again, Carol — not Sophia — is dead in the comic; Sophia’s still alive to this day).

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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

09 Sunday Mar 2014

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by Grace Crawford

Images courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films, Red Hour Films, New Line Cinema, and 20th Century Fox.

Images courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films, Red Hour Films, New Line Cinema, and 20th Century Fox.

I don’t have adventures. Last time I did, I ventured into northern Alberta with Boyfriend to explore a series of ghost towns. Most of them we couldn’t get into because of mining in the area, or they had been torn down years before. On top of that, it was “that time of the month” (focus, boys) and it was one of the worst times I’ve ever had. So basically we just gave up and hung out in Jasper for the rest of the day. And that was the biggest adventure I’ve ever had.

So when I say that I’m not a big adventure person, I think you’ll get a pretty good idea of what I mean. I prefer to live vicariously through other people’s adventures, whether it’s a movie, a TV show, or just a friend’s Facebook updates while they’re in exotic locales. And I think that’s something I have in common with the titular character in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

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GR Dailies: Community – App Development and Condiments

07 Friday Mar 2014

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by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of NBCUniversal Television Distribution

Community images courtesy of NBCUniversal Television Distribution

5×08:  “App Development and Condiments”

With this week’s episode, I think I finally understand what people mean when they say, “I don’t really get ‘Community’.”

Don’t get me wrong, I got most of the jokes, being the learned individual I am, but most of “App Development and Condiments” really didn’t hit home for me.  I’m a huge fan of seventies dystopian sci-fi movies, which is to say I’ve read the wiki plot synopses and then watched the trailers of several of them, but not having lived through any part of that decade (thank god) and not having forced myself to sit through any movies from before the mid-eighties, I’m just not totally feeling the episode I’ve just watched.

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GR Dailies: How I Met Your Mother – Vesuvius

04 Tuesday Mar 2014

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by Grace Crawford

Images courtesy of Bay & Thomas Productions and 20th Century Fox.

Images courtesy of Bay & Thomas Productions and 20th Century Fox.

9×19: “Vesuvius”

So here we are. After this week’s “Vesuvius,” there are only three four episodes left until How I Met Your Mother is over forever. I would say it’s a bittersweet parting, that it’s time this show wound down to a close, that the curtain dropped, that everyone got their happy ending. There’s just one problem:

Something is terribly, horribly wrong.

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GR Dailies: The Walking Dead – Still

03 Monday Mar 2014

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by Thom Yee

Walking Dead s4-2

All Walking Dead images courtesy of AMC and Fox International Channels

4×12:  “Still”

In television, when you bring in a big change of status quo, like destroying your heroes’s home base and refuge, it’s usually for the sake of new storytelling possibilities.  Sometimes situations can grow stale — be they environmental, psychological, or relational — and there’s often nothing more invigorating than a big, shattering change to shake things up and breathe new life into tired premises.  Well, nothing more invigorating other than quitting the show cold turkey and moving on to something better (for both the creators and viewers).

Based on last week’s preview, I was hoping for this week’s “Still” to be a fast-paced, hard-edged episode, the kind we rarely see, that would remind us of how dangerous the world of The Walking Dead is even without the horrific machinations of the evil that stirs within all of us (as seen through villains like the Governor).  Continue reading →

Philomena

01 Saturday Mar 2014

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by Thom Yee

philomena_ver2

Images courtesy of The Weinstein Company and Macmillan

In the last few days before the Academy Awards — perhaps the most majestic, magical, pompous and circumstantial annual event of our times, a living monument of self-congratulations and extravagance — I managed to watch one more Best Picture nominee.  And it’s the quiet, British one.

With the possible exception of Nebraska, Philomena may be the least of this year’s Oscar nominees.  It’s one of the least talked about, one of the least mentioned, and it has one of the smallest stories.  There is no long con, no kidnapped ship captains, no artificial intelligences, or billions of dollars in stock fraud involved, and even in movie-obsessed circles, few will tell you that Philomena will win Best Picture.

And I’m not going to argue otherwise.

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