All posts filed under: tv shows

Where ‘The Good Place’ Goes Bad

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Originally posted on Joshua Lawrence Lazard:
In a crowded television market with networks not just competing with traditional line-in cable programming but with the ever-increasingly might of streaming services that are offering original programming that network television shows will never air, a network-based TV show that gets renewed past one season is becoming the new high bar jump. One such show is “The Good Place” on NBC. I stumbled on the show in the midst of its first season trying to find something worth binge watching like most millennials my age. A full day of work deserves a certain level of vegging out; either cooked dinner, left overs or take out, a glass of wine and you look to see what’s on your home streaming device. For the uninitiated, the show centers around Kristen Bell who plays the tragicomic Eleanor Shellstrop, a morally bankrupt individual who works at a company who sells fake medicine to needy people, a who just died and arrives in The Good Place run by the seemingly benevolent Michael played by Ted…

It’s 2016: Let’s All (Re)Decorate For Fuller House!

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Originally posted on Cookies + Sangria:
So remember a couple months ago when Netflix (pause: I was typing this and a Fuller House commercial legit came on the TV – it’s weird this popular streaming service is advertising on network TV. ANYWAYS) released the first promo for Fuller House? If you don’t, maybe it’s because you blocked it out after CRYING SO MANY UNEXPECTED TEARS. https://youtu.be/uhInIOKwGXU It was the first look into the new era of a Tanner family, or rather “Fuller” family since that’s DJ’s married name now, and how things have changed since 1995. Specifically, it’s comprised of shots of an empty house, which looks all too familiar and different at the same time. For many of us, this home isn’t just the ‘house that built the tanners’, it’s the ‘house that built me’ as a viewer as well. But of course they can’t keep the exact same set from 20 years ago. It’s TV, things need to updated and shown that time has passed, so in conjunction with our ongoing series Let’s All Decorate,…

Gunther Better Work There!: Central Perk Cafe Coming to Toronto

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Originally posted on The Nostalgia Blog:
Toronto will apparently become the latest city (joining NYC, Sydney, Beijing and Liverpool) to have their very own Central Perk Cafe. The cafe opens in June and will supposedly give out prizes to customers who come in dressed as FRIENDS characters…so I guess people with gel in their hair and wearing t-shirts tucked into khaki pants. The attention to detail will supposedly be uncanny so this should be a big draw for die-hard FRIENDS fans. I just finally hope it answers the question of how 6 more or less fully employed people can spend 60% of their lives in a cafe and still afford to live in New York…Also I hope the barista has bleach blonde hair.

Stop Reviving Things I Loved

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You know when your dear old 92 year old grandad has had fourteen heart attacks, but you keep resuscitating him because of your own selfish need to keep him half alive? That’s what keeps happening to the most beloved media of my childhood. I can’t remember what came first. Was it Twin Peaks 2017? Star Wars 7, 8, 9? Gilmore Girls on Netflix? Whatever it was, the most recent crime was Cruel Intentions, and by that point my eyes had rolled clean out of my head. I was once excited. I once thought that bringing something I had once loved back to life, albeit in a zombie state, was a positive thing. “Two members of the original cast are coming back? Wow! It must be good!” I cried. But now…it’s hard to be hopeful. The cynic in me knows that the only reason for the sudden resurgence of things I loved that should have died in the mid-2000s are these: a) Money b) Lack of originality c) Security – to make even more money Hollywood, TV,…

The X-Files (2016)

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My initial knee-jerk excitement upon hearing the opening titles, so designed to tear emotion from me, soon turned to grief. Legend tells that after episode two, we are rewarded for our commitment with chemistry and humour. Tragically I have only seen episode one, and I am thoroughly disappointed. From the offset it felt like a 45-minute exercise in fan service and exposition, a desperate attempt to tell us everything while shoving in as many tropes as possible to foster some sense of nostalgia in its viewer. I can only imagine the conversations in that writers’ room: “How many times can we fit in the name of the show? How many variations on “I want to believe” can we conceive of? What if we say we don’t believe?” The joy of The X-Files was always wholly dependent on several factors. One, that the nineties was a time of curiosity, exploration, and mystery. A great deal of our technology was new and exciting. The future held endless possibilities – possibilities that are now very real, very worrying, and potentially affect our privacy. While…

I Choo-Choo-Choose You: Kickstarter to make Simpsons Parody Products

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Originally posted on The Nostalgia Blog:
I’m a little late to the game on this KickStarter but better late then never I guess. This is a fantastic KickStarter campaign by Matthew Heister to make Simpsons Parody Products. Here are some of the products that are in the making: The category for this KickStarter is under “art” so I doubt there is real alcohol in the Vagrant’s Choice scotch or actual directions on “How to COOK for forty HUMANS” (space dust doesn’t seem to be included either) but that shouldn’t stop you from wanting all this junk! The link can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/495188491/silly-springfield?ref=card

Gossip Girl vs. The O.C.

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I did it. After four years of dedicated worship of The O.C., I got it together to watch its younger sister Gossip Girl. Despite Gossip Girl’s original status as a novel, it is impossible to not draw comparisons between the two Josh Schwartz shows. I I tried to seek out articles comparing the two, but I found that overwhelmingly viewers are in favour of GG, mainly due to their hatred of the fourth season of The O.C. – but I love it. I think it is a triumph in campy ultra-meta TV-making. If anyone else agreed, maybe it wouldn’t have been cut off so swiftly. I know I am not the first to write this article, nor the last, but as resident expert on The O.C. I had to weigh in. The spoiler for this article is that nobody wins. Both shows have their strengths and misgivings, depending on what it is that you want from your voyeuristic look at the lives of the super rich. Do you want to watch good looking, spoiled people destroy each other – or slightly ignorant but ultimately kind-hearted…