#tms3

[sonocomet]

Human girl versions of characters from TMS3, my object show on Scratch!

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The image of Al Murray peering over the fence of the Taskmaster house during Lockdown like a Victorian orphan staring through the window of a baker’s is so adorable.

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Jack Bernhardt on Twitter

“OK to fill the statistical void left by #Euro2020 ending AND because @EdGambleComedy introduced me on the @taskmaster podcast as an "expert

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Taskmaster House Themes

The theme of the Taskmaster House shifts from season to season. It's often quite subtle, but frequently most noticeable through the large portrait of Greg in the living room, which changes to reflect a particular artistic style:

Series 1 has the picture reference Shot Marilyns by Andy Warhol.

Series 2 references Le Sommeil (Sleep) by Salvador Dalí.

Series 3 is based off of Oh, Jeff...I Love You, Too...But... by Roy Lichtenstein.

Series 4 has a picture of Greg painted in the style of one of many of the Vincent van Gogh self-portraits.

Series 5 has the picture parody of The Son of Man by René Magritte.

For Champion of Champions, the main portrait was of Greg as a king, wearing a crown and royal garb. Many things around the house were made gold.

Series 6 has a portrait that references Hand with Reflecting Sphere by M. C. Escher.

Series 7 generally homages Pablo Picasso's "Cubism" style, but specifically riffs on Seated Woman.

Series 8 has a picture that is an original piece made for the show, which references various anime villain tropes; Greg with Tsurime Eyes, an Eyepatch Of Power, holding a cane with a metal hand.

Series 9 has a picture of Greg made up of vegetables, in the style of the painting Vertumnus by Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

Series 10 adopts a western theme, with the picture of Greg being styled as a colourised old-timey photograph of him dressed as Wild Bill Hickok.

Taskmaster's New Year Treat special has a classic cinema theme, with Greg's black-and-white portrait referencing Buster Keaton. The lounge is decorated with a red curtain, with movie theatre props like a popcorn machine, a movie reel, and a projector.

Series 11 is themed around Soviet Russia, as Greg and the Taskmaster house can be seen in a propaganda poster which reads "СОЗДАТЕЛЬ ЗАДАЧИ ЗАДАЧИ НАША ОБЯЗАННОСТЬ", which roughly translates to "CREATOR OF TASKS, TASKS ARE OUR DUTY". Linda the Cow is now wearing an ushanka, as opposed to the Stetson previously worn in Series 10.

From the Taskmaster Wiki

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Ed Gamble refers to his taskmaster cast as “the chickpeas” which is adorable! What would the other casts nicknames be?

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The Taskmaster credits are just Taskmaster out of context, but in visual form.

[tatzelwyrm]

I'm a bit late to the musketeer crowd but you're the only musketeer blog I follow so I really need to vent my feeling after finishing it. I mean WHAT THE FUCK IS IT WITH TV AND THEIR OBSCENE OBSESSION WITH LEATHER IN SHOWS SET IN THE 17th CENTURY!!! And why must everything be so dark and edgy?!! Where did Richelieu's red disappear? And what the fuck is Grimaud wearing? Why the fuck does he want to kill the king of France? Why does every morivation ever devolve into MANPAINNNNN??!!

Again, these are great asks and don’t apologise for venting. Sometimes, like with shit like this, venting is the only way to cope.

(Everybody else, STOP READING unless you’re up for a shit ton of negativity and swearing. I mean it. Do something happy instead).

“Russian roulette” is a good way to put it. I mean, there’s plot holes in the first season, but back then the writers didn’t have to commit character-assassination of basically every single character on the show on EVERY SINGLE EPISODE to make the plot go the way they wanted to. In s3 every character is like a shittier, even stupider version of themselves, and it hurts to watch. It really, really hurts.

You are right, they are not the garrison. They aren’t even a papier mâché model of the garrison held together by spit and their own runny shit.

By the end of the show, the characters no longer acted and reacted to a plot, but were bent and broken to fit the plot of the week.

I’ve never seen a single show turn so very man immensely likeable characters into such revolting scum within the span of only a few episodes.

I’ve written much on how atrocious the world-building of this show is, but, you know, coherent world-building takes effort, but this isn’t even about world building. This is about simple continuity, but s3 can’t even keep simple continuity straight. Characters will outright contradict themselves between two episodes. And don’t look for continuity with s1 or s2. It’s not there. It’s like the writers of s3 never even rewatched any of s1 or s2 and didn’t care to at least have and editor check their scripts for that.

And I’m afraid I can’t help you with Grimaud. What is Grimaud even? Certainly not a character. A character, by my definition should have some form of motivation, or at least possess a semblance of personality, but this thing? I mean, say what you will about Rochefort, but at least he was a character (if a wasted character).

I can’t even hate him or anything, because there’s nothing there. I hate Aramis with a passion, but at least he has a character to hate.

One of the writers admitted that when Athos appears like he’s looking at Grimaud like he recognises him he doesn’t actually recognise him, but he’s looking at a metaphor for war or some shit.

This show even at its best is very terrible when it’s trying to be deep, but Grimaud really is an insult to his namesake in Dumas’ novels. They were going to give him more of a discernable motivation by having him tell Athos that the people who raped his mom were musketeers. It’s a small blessing they left that out, because, as I’ve said before, if they had kept it,you can bet our HEROES  would have spent half that episode being horrified about the old, dishonourable musketeers’ war crimes before reassuring themselves that they would never commit a war crime themselves and pat themselves on the back for being so true to their pure, noble hearts, right before they go and break another frightened, tied-up man’s face until he’s bleeding out of every orifice, for not thanking them politely enough for having been expertly tortured by them.

And even that wouldn’t have added actual character to Grimaud. And his mother would still have been nothing more than a tool for more man-pain, like so many of the other women on the show. (Don’t even mention Sylvie’s whipping to me. I will claw someone’s eyes out. Preferably the eyes of the person who wrote that script.)

Even the way Grimaud is killed is infuriating, because it undercuts any last-minute redemption arc Athos may have gone through to atone for his many crimes. I used to like Athos. At the end of S3 I just wanted to beat him to death with a metal pipe.

It’s pretty vomit-inducing in general how the heroes are put above the law this series, and unlike the shady stuff that happened between Richelieu and Treville in the previous series, it’s never adressed as something bad. Athos and his friends torture people, but a couple of minutes later Porthos has the gall to go off at Marcheaux for lightly pushing a high-ranked prisoner of war.

Athos and his friends get to play judge, jury and excecutioner a lot in s3 and nobody even blinks an eye.

I throw up a little in my mouth every time I remember the s3 writers explicitly said that their version of the four musketeers end the show as heroes people in our time can still look up to.

The first series wasn’t exactly daring when it came to portraying moral nuances, but it didn’t need to. It used to be a light-hearted show that didn’t pretend to portray shining examples of humanity.

The hacks that took over for s3 threw all of that out of the window, sadly.

Torture? SO FUNNY when the heroes do it.

Murdering someone and making sure it’s painful and slow without any need? RIGHTEOUS AND CATHARTIC when the heroes do it.

The English queen who needed her jewels back because she needed money to protect her family? FRIVOLOUS! Better if Porthos steals one of those to throw away than to let her do something so selfish as saving her family… meanwhile the HEROIC QUEEN OF FRANCE Saint Anne Queen of ALL QUEENS can sit on her ass all day, decked out like a christmas tree, with a new dress each episode, whining about how sad it is that her people are so poor and starving, why won’t anyone do anything about it (not herself though, she’s such a poor helpless lonely snowflake).

And don’t get me started on Anne and Aramis trying to sell out the entire country, but it’s easily forgiven, because they had good reasons (*sob sob*) and the King doesn’t even get mad about it, because he’s conveniently distractly by a dastardly villain’s plan to slander poor Annikins with, uh, the truth??? Because we can’t actually have anybody think about what it would have meant if Anne had just made that treaty on her own, completely ruined her husband’s standing in the eyes of their enemies AND allies, and very likely exposed a large chunk of the poor people she loves so much to displacement and violent religious persecution they never faced before by turning their homeland over to Spain.

I really regret watching the final episode, because it was that bad. I have never felt so insulted, repulsed and disgusted by a TV show before.

Athos‘ closing monologue makes me physically recoil. He wants us to believe they’re fighting for loyalty and love and justice and honour? These guys? After we’ve seen them murder and torture and betray the people who trusted them without consequences and without remorse? Don’t make me laugh.

By the end of that episode I was rooting for Grimaud to blow all of these unlikeable asses to hell like he planned to (and himself with it, please and thank you, because, again he’s so unnecessary). It’s the greatest tragedy in contemporary tv history that he failed.

[kevin-koch]

Mixing #foh for @gengahr and @servicefun @fri_son done #soundengineer #digico #sd8 #frontofhouse #turbosound #tms3