Key and Peele

I'm not a big fan of "raunchy" comedy.  Gross-out humor for the sake of grossing people out just isn't my thing, and it's why I walked out of the first Scary Movie film feeling like I should ask for money back.  Unfortunately I saw it for free, so I was just out the time it took to view it, but the feeling stood.

Comedy is hard.  If your humor is too broad, you risk having no real lasting impact with your message.  If you're too afraid of ruffling feathers, your humor isn't memorable (outside of a few exceptions).  If you're too far over the line, you get hit with a backlash and are accused of either being hateful, ignorant, or just crass.

There are few comedians I feel walk that line perfectly, and two of them are Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, easily two of the comedians in my top five "of all time as of this writing" list.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

A few months ago, while skimming through Hulu, I realized that Brooklyn Nine-Nine was now free to watch.  I knew this because every time I tried watching anything, I had an ad that somehow incorporated the show.  Either it was a "bunch of clips as a commercial" ad to advertise it was there, or they'd do one of their (admittedly pretty clever at time) montage commercials listing shows, and there would always be a clip or two from that in there as well.

I was not impressed.  There was lots of screaming, wackiness, and physical comedy, and very little sense of any kind of characterization or plot.  I didn't see anybody I recognized in the quick cuts of scenes, and the one actor I knew was in it was from Saturday Night Live, a show that I enjoyed for a while a long time ago but haven't really watched since.  But when I did, I wasn't really entertained.

I also knew that it won a Golden Globe and was nominated for a bunch of other awards, but I still wasn't impressed.

But I figured I could watch an episode, so at least then I could say "yes, I did try it, and I still didn't like it" so that I wouldn't simply be one of those people who complains about stuff without having any supporting evidence to back it up.

Darn it, I enjoyed it.

Tink Week And A Half: Day Six

In 2011, a 22-minute short taking place in the midst of the other Tinker Bell stories aired on television.  Pushing the main character of the series into the background, the story featuring a jack paired with the biggest "girly girl" in the land in order to compete in a series of contests is, for lack of a better phrase, great.  It's that simple.  It's great.  It's character-driven, small scale (no pun intended), and filled with humor and action.

The fact this didn't become a full-length movie saddens me.

It's The Pixie Hollow Games.

The Haunting Of Riverdale: Part Four

So far on this DVD we've had plenty of vampires, but I wouldn't really call vampires a "haunting."  Unless you go looser on the definition of "haunting" and assume it refers to Medlock sticking around the old farmhouse he was buried under for centuries.  However, that's stretching it, even for me.

Fortunately, this time we actually get at least one genuine ghost, so I'm going to skip the lengthy preamble and simply point out that Archie Comics just announced a new crossover:

Archie Meets The Predator.

This is a real thing that will be happening in 2015.

I can't wait.

The Haunting Of Riverdale: Part Three

Growing up, I always preferred Betty over Veronica.  Yes, Veronica was rich beyond anybody's wildest dreams (the exception, of course, being her own dreams), and she had gorgeous raven black hair...but I liked Betty.  It wasn't the blond hair, it wasn't the obsessive behavior amount of doting she laid on Archie, and it wasn't the "oh, she's the good girl next door" aspect.

I think what I liked about Betty was just how she seemed to be the polar opposite of Veronica, in that she had many different layers to her character, while Veronica seemed to be all about the money.

However, I realized later on that Veronica Lodge isn't the anti-Betty at all.  She's actually her own, surprisingly well-developed character.  I mean, sure, her key attributes are still the ones listed above, but then I start to think of how she interacts with the group.  She has never once refused to buy something for her friends, lend them the use of her father's enormous estate, or acted the least bit stingy when it comes to using what she has to help people, whether it's her father's company jet for a quick trip around the world or simply having the exact plot device flown in for delivery with "I want it now" speed.  She was always accepting of other people, whether it was their sexual orientation, religion, or lifestyle choices (she was the only person who accepted Jughead during his "hippie" phase in the 70s), but wouldn't hesitate to put down their fashion choices.  But she was never the athlete, the key superhero, or the one you'd expect to get down and dirty.

So the fact that these episodes have had this kind of a spotlight on Veronica, taking the same shallow character we expect and adding a responsibility to things that are almost literally "out of her world," it's added yet another layer of growth onto an already complex character.

Let's jump in to the third episode of the "Scarlet Saga" as I (and only I) am calling it.

The Haunting Of Riverdale: Part Two

Archie Comics has never been afraid of making things a little "intense" when they needed to.  Even if we're just now getting our first real "horror" books by the company featuring characters that have been around for decades, there used to be plenty of drama surrounding the characters.  Whether it was the teenage Archie, his childhood self "Lil' Archie," or even his superhero self, the books weren't afraid to add some pretty high drama.

So with Archie's Weird Mysteries delving into tales of horror reminiscent of things like Christine, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, and even Little Shop of Horrors, it's...really not that much of a surprise.

Let's dig into the second episode of The Haunting of Riverdale and see what happens next.

The Haunting Of Riverdale: Part One

People who have read this blog might have realized that I have a really twisted bizarre fascination with the adventures of Archie Andrews and his friends.  It might be because Archie is a comic book character that probably has just as much name brand recognition as Batman, Superman, or Spider-Man,  Anybody who likes comics who says they never read any of his when they were young is most likely lying through their teeth (or just absent-minded), but considering the comics put out featuring America's favorite red-headed teen have been coming out since 1941 and are stronger and more socially relevant today than ever before, well...

I think it's a safe bet whoever is in charge there knows what they're doing.

But that doesn't mean that every thing's sunshine and roses, though.  Besides the recently printed (and mind-bogglingly dark) Afterlife With Archie, it wasn't unusual for titles to put Archie into other situations involving the bizarre, the macabre, and the occult.

I mean, for Pete's sake, he's on a first name basis with a teenage witch.

Admit it, you all wished you were, too, when that show was on the air.  ...and you were the same age I was.

So it's probably not surprising to know that at one point Archie had his own cartoon series called Archie's Weird Mysteries, stories featuring Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, and the others dealing with massive amounts of weirdness and creepiness that invaded Riverdale.

And they managed to cram some episodes with a particular theme onto a single DVD called The Haunting Of Riverdale.  We're going to go through each one of these episodes and figure out just how you can manage to make (or not make) a story scary when you've got the FCC watching you carefully.

Doctor Who: Season One

I am extremely late to the Who party.  I know a lot of people who can rattle off every character who appears, every alien race, every time period, every wacky gadget the Doctor has ever used, and considering the show has started its eighth season, I'm fully willing to admit that my starting now puts me really, really far behind.

But hey, I think we've established before that on a lot of things, I'm usually the last one to the party.

So, without further self-flagellation, let's discuss my opinion of the first season of Doctor Who.

Cutthroat Kitchen

I am a huge Alton Brown fan.  Good Eats was the television show that really lit that spark inside me that loved to cook, and without him being able to break down the science of cooking in a way that not only showed me technique but also explained how, why, and (in a few cases) where things were happening.  When his show went off the air, I was rather depressed.  Thank heavens for reruns.  Also thank heavens for Iron Chef America, where I still get samplings of his encyclopedic knowledge base of food and how cooking works.

However, when I heard that he was going to be hosting a new game show on the Food Network...I wasn't sure.  I remembered an Ask Me Anything of his where he didn't seem too fond of cooking competitions with gimmicks, and while I do love programs like Chopped, it was starting to feel a bit silly.  Cupcake competitions, dessert competitions with bizarre ingredients, and all sorts of other shows were popping up.

But I started to learn more about it, and I became interested.  Well, slightly interested.  I was willing to give it a shot because, well, Alton Brown was hosting it.  Surely the smartest man Food Network ever hired wouldn't lead me wrong.

Orphan Black: The First Four Episodes

I think I've said it before, BBC television really knows what it's doing by dividing series into short, succinct stories.  It hasn't always worked (seriously, what was up with that Robin Hood series some years ago?), but for the most part any series I start to get into, I tend to follow.

Except Doctor Who.  I've still only ever seen one episode of that.  Maybe someday.

But for now, we're talking clones, we're talking barely-science fiction, and we're talking complicated plots and diverse acting from one young woman that makes Michael Keaton in Multiplicity seem bland.

Let's dig a bit deeper.

Doc Martin: Season One

Not too long ago, my family stumbled (not literally) upon a program that's apparently pretty huge in England called Doc Martin.  Going through its sixth season on BBC America, the program seemed designed from the start to give me things I enjoy:

1)  British humor.
2)  House M.D. with an (more noticeable) accent.
3)  Big city character stuck in a rural town humor.
4)  Snark.

Did it deliver?  In many ways.  Is it my new favoritest show to ever show?  Nnnnnot quite.

Let's Talk: Kids. They Have No Respect For The Apocalypse

I'm going to do my best to think of every movie or television series I can that's involved civilization crumbling and law no longer really being relevant.  These are the post-apocalypse worlds that filled the 80s and 90s that I still think back to fondly.

The Running Man
Mad Max
Aliens
Escape From New York
Independence Day
Escape From L.A.
The Matrix
Tank Girl
Waterworld
Logan's Run
Soylent Green
Planet of the Apes
Night of the Living Dead (the original)
Thundarr The Barbarian

You know what something I distinctively remember about those movies and shows is?  When people live in a dirt-filled post-apocalyptic landscape, they tended to look like they lived in that kind of landscape.  Nobody was too "pretty."

Well, almost nobody.

Suddenly, around the turn of the century, this all changed.  Now, the only way you can tell who's going to survive the end of the world is based on who the most attractive people are, and I, for one, am still trying to figure out why this is so.

Broadchurch

I used to be a pretty big fan of crime dramas.  Granted, I never watched a show whose title was simply a mash-up of letters (JAG, NCIS, CSI), and I was usually more interested in the solving of the crimes than the personal lives of the characters, keeping me from getting pulled in by programs such as The Wire or The Shield.

Yes, I know, I missed out on some great television, but honestly, I don't really mind!

For a while I used to watch Law & Order and its spin-off Special Victims Unit (which I guess could be L&O:SVU but I hate that acronym), but the former went away and the latter became so completely contrived and far fetched I expected an episode to eventually take place in Narnia.

 My personal favorite series is Numb3rs, but there's a series I just watched recently that's completely changed my attitude towards these kinds of programs.

The show is Broadchurch, and it's possibly the best crime-based television show I've ever seen.

Ask Erik: Episode Twenty

Here at Ask Erik, we've spent a lot of time reading books and comics, watching movies, and browsing through the Internet in the hopes of finding the answers to life's biggest mysteries.  At what point can we no longer really consider England to be an "empire?"  Are the current changing patterns in weather severity something that will just come and go, or are we really looking at permanent global change?  Who thought it was a good idea in my car to have the check engine light randomly turn on every now and again just to remind you to have it checked out and maintained?  I freak out every time that happens, guys.  Stop it.

Having instead amassed a vault of useless knowledge stored in his head, Erik instead tackles your questions and tries to find the answers you care about (or a reasonable facsimile).  Or, if you don't care, he'll at least try to make you laugh and forget you just wasted time you could spend doing anything else.