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Ah snap, Lil Woody Allen aka Chris’ only friend in Everybody Hates Chris aka Vincent Martella gets the Romero treatment in the season premiere of The Walking Dead.
That was Tom Coughlin’s words after the stunning defeat of his Giants versus the Philadelphia Eagles. I say stunning because by all accounts, the Giants looked like they can turn the losing streak around. This is the 2nd time in Eli’s career he’s lost 5...
The inevitable. All bad things must come to an end. Close this tab if you haven't watched the series finale yet.
"All the people that we've killed, Gale and the rest. If you believe that there's a Hell, I don't know if you're into that, we're already pretty much going there, right? But I'm not going to lie down till I get there."
Mortal Kombat: Legacy aka The Best Online Video Series for Gaming Nerds Ever has returned after a moderate hiatus. Though it's supposedly getting the big screen treatment, I wouldn't be mad if it became a cable series.
Here is what broke the game for the Giants. You have to limit your mistakes and take advantage of the ones your opponent gives you. The Giants don’t recover the ball, which gives the Broncos another opportunity to score. And they sure did.
I don’t think we can press the panic button yet; as I said in my post game, the GMen have been down this road before.
But given their next game is against the Panthers, who seemingly don’t know how to close teams out, if the Giants want to think about taking it to the next level, they need to do it now.
Richard Harrow makes it pretty clear that he's on a rampage. I mean he started season 3 off with a bang, ended season with a bang and started season 4 off with multiple bangs.
During the season 3 finale, Richard Harrow entered Ms. Darmody's brothel ready for war. Dude came through like Terminator. We hope the S4 premiere opens up with a similar bang.
As usual, we're late on posting this. Why? Because we care so deeply about the storyline that we wanted to take our time and discuss it accordingly. We were also extremely busy these last few weeks. ::Alert: Possible spoliers to follow::
ReggieFTW: The season 6 finale of Mad Men was arguably the most heartfelt episode ever. The episode,"In Care Of", was almost therapeutic. Don by all accounts, is great at what he does; he creates the idea and makes the pitch to companies. They’re happy (happy being an operative word), and which makes his partners happy.
He’ll never see a therapist, but there are deep seeded issues that are now bursting at the seams. Season 6 was all about the doors that we travel through in life. Imagery throughout the season had Don contemplating suicide. His demons, rather than being exorcised, continuously pushed down a bottle. This all comes to a head in a vital scene with a minister. A flashback sequence shows a teenage Don having a conversation with a bible salesman, which triggers a fight and lands Don in jail for the night.
After his night in the slammer, he has a half-hearted epiphany--he realizes (or believes) that the best thing for him is to leave advertising and go to La La Land, better known as California. It's a place so magical, Don, was actually honest about his identity.
The plan almost comes to fruition when he makes the pitch for Hershey. He comes up with this story of nostalgia (as we know, he's good at that) about his father buying him chocolate. The people love it, and all is good. But Don, perhaps in a moment of vulnerability, explains how he really enjoyed Hershey’s chocolates: he used to get them from clients at the brothel he grew up in.
He ended up doing a big favor for Ted Chaough, his rival, and the consequences afterwards were enormous. I think the episode was in a sense a reflection about the relationship between Don and Sally. Both wanting to get away from their worlds, both not understanding the people they’re connected to. They don’t even know who they are, and what role they’ll play for each other. The last scene of the finale was very endearing, and I think will tie a bridge to bring them closer together as AMC prepares for the final season airing next season.
There are some other side stories that were in play, but the most compelling belongs to Don, as we are unsure where he will be at the start of next season. I’m also curious as to how Matthew Weiner and the rest of the writing team will wrap up the show. In retrospect, I found season 6 to be more interesting than season 5. From the the merger between SCDP & CGC, to the rise and revelation of who Bob Benson is, there have been many highlights that I still reflect on
JordanFTW:
I once remarked that Sally's discovery of Don's infidelity is vaguely reminiscent to a Nas song I listen to from time to time. When Nas dropped "The Don" last Summer I joked that Jon Hamm should've made a guest appearance. The table scene with God's Son and Steve Stoute would have been both hilarious and fitting given Stoute's current role as an ad man.
Where was I going with this?
Ah yes--Sally is a big girl now. She's doing ratchet 60's rebellion stuff like smoking bogey's with ma dukes, buying beer for friends and sneaking in teenage guy crushes to a same sex dorm room. To top it off--she didn't snitch on the burglar that came into the apartment.
Oh to be a child whose parent's are divorced in the late 60's.
To take it a step further, it actually it has more to with her recent discovery of her father's affair with a woman in the same building. Catching your father with his pants down romancing your stepmother might be perturbing; catching him in the act with a sidepiece--that can scar someone for a long time.
So now Draper's created a monster. Not unlike the monster that SCDP created and certainly the same as the one which Peggy outright calls him; Sally is the inverse of Don--his very flesh-and-blood that can throw back his orders and demands with the same callous wit that he, well, kind of lacks now.
During season 1 of Mad Men, Rachel Menken (played by Maggie Siff--bka Jax Teller's old lady), called Don a "coward" and told him off by saying, "You don’t want to run away with me; you just want to run away." Avid fans would have quickly made this connection as soon as Don has an inkling to run to California--an idea that he himself stole from one of his underlings.
And why wouldn't he? His second marriage is flatlining, his daughter has no respect for him and he's slowly losing relevancy in his domain. ReggieFTW once said to me that he believed that advertising was the only woman that could sustain Don, and sure enough he's slowly losing her to a brilliant colleague (Peggy) and a bunch of pot-smoking hippies.
He's also losing her to Ted Chaough. But that's not the only thing he's lost to Ted Chaough before. He lost Peggy once. Then he got her back during the merger. And now she's lost him--more specifically replaced him. Don is now spiraling downward like the opening sequence of the show.
The final scene is symbolic on a multitude of levels. First we have the re-introduction of Duck Philips.
Secondly, once again, we have the symbolism of doors, this time in the form of an elevator to which Philip's friend says "going down." and presses the button. There's two parts to this--1) it obviously is symbolic of Don's soiled reputation (he's not quite spiraling like in the opening credits) 2) it represents him re-entering the inferno, namely a reference to Dante's Inferno, which he was reading in the season premiere. Don's a monster, and sometimes monster's must atone for their sins.
This leaves us with a vague outlook of what's to come next season. It ends with Don taking his kids to the house which he was raised in (now dilapidated with a seemingly different demographic living inside), and points to a possibly honest future. Given that Don spilled part of his life story out to the Hershey exec's it seems as if he might be ready to come clean about his upbringing to his children.
There are still some unanswered questions...
1) Will Sal return in Season 7?
2) Despite allusions to Lane's suicide, does anybody find it strange that he's still rarely mentioned?
The season was a roller coaster--probably even more so than last. Whereas last season left us with a sad and shocking thud, this season finally gave us a decent cliffhanger that sums up the season 6 poster art, neutralizes those funky rumors, and gives us something to look forward to for next season. For now my only resolve is adding these Nas joints to my iTunes.
I was one of the few people fortunate enough to have screened Fruitvale Station in advanced back in May. You may or may not know that I've been promoting the movie heavily on social media websites. At the time last 7-8 days had been emotional for me. First there was the red wedding in Game of Thrones and my reaction to the episode. Then I watched this movie, and was greeted by those same emotions. Based on the true life story of 22-year-old Oscar Grant, a Black male who was gunned down by Oakland police on New Year’s Day 2009, despite being in handcuffs and having not being involved with a brawl taking place on a train that was headed towards the titular Fruitvale Station. I was fortunate to partake in a screening of the film and despite knowing all of the facts before watching, I still came out with tears (and they even began to well up playing the movie over in my head) afterward. Fruitvale Station will by far be the best film I will see all year. I’ve been on that train for a while now, and I suggest you get on board.
My relationship to this case has some significant meaning. I actually read about the case in 2009, a few months prior to the Sean Bell verdict came in. I randomly came across the video footage (warning, NSFW) that sparked the initial outrage while scouring the Internets. When I was heard that they were developing a movie earlier this year I was eager to see how they would portray Grant.
After reading more about the film I learned that Ryan Coogler, the director, wanted to portray the humanity that IS Oscar Grant (who is portrayed by rising star Michael B. Jordan). I use this term because throughout the film, his legacy, albeit brief, was cemented in those that cared for him. Fruitvale Station is not a documentary on Mr. Grant, but rather a film about the last day of his life, New Year’s Eve, 2008 and the interactions that he had with family and friends. The film does a great job in humanizing Oscar, in the sense that as a young 20 something year old, he had ambition and dreams just everyone else. He wanted to provide, and he wanted to turn a new year into a new start for not only himself, but most importantly, his girlfriend and daughter.
Though he has many positive qualities, he, like many young adults (including myself), doesn’t quite know how to get to where they want to go. There are scenes in the film that illustrate not only his yearning to try a new path in life, but the skills he would have acquired to start a new one. Although we would never be able to actually see where he would end up, he was on the cusp of having a new chapter in his life.
There were moments where you can see that Jordan, who by all accounts played Grant to mere perfection, expressed moments of doubt, fear, hostility, love, anxiety, and resolve--genuine emotions that everyone feels at some point, especially when they are not sure what’s next for them. Jordan brings a sense of brevity and clairvoyance to the role, channeling a mindset full of hope and aspirations, but also despair and fear. Grant wants change, and he knows he can’t continue to go down the same road that led him into trouble with the law (minor spoiler).
I thought of these 3 things during the screening: 1) Det. Bunk Moreland was right, 2) James Baldwin was also right, and 3) that this was not a black vs. white problem. Yes, the subject and the context of the movie was why the movie was made, but the real story at play here is the humanity that IS Oscar Grant. The film does not try to persuade you into thinking who was right or wrong, the bureaucracy of the justice system, and many other social complexes that we can write for days and weeks about. It does it’s best to show what one person can mean to so many people in such little time. It also shows that the human story is the most important story of all.
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