Game of Thrones 2.01, "the North Remembers"

The all-new Westeros superstar political tag-team.

“Death is so boring, especially now with so much excitement in the world.” – Tyrion Lannister

Bran: "Heard some men talking about the comet. They say it's an omen. They say it means Robb will win

a great victory in the south."

Osha: "Did they? I heard some other fools say it's Lannister red. Means the Lannisters will rule all seven kingdoms before long. Heard a stableboy say it's the color of blood to mark the death of your father. The stars don't fall for men. The red comet means one thing, boy...dragons."

Chuck 2.01, “Chuck Versus the First Date”

"Don't worry; we'll pick up the check."

“What do you have to lose? In a week, you’re going to be undercover in some place like Jakarta in a knife-fight, with some evil-doer, and in that exact moment, you’re going to wish that you would’ve spent on last…night of fun with me.” 

– Chuck

“That’s the single dumbest story I’ve every heard.” – Mr. Colt

"Mystery Science Theatre 3000" 8.01, "Revenge of the Creature"

So the Man with No Name is
actually..."Jennings (uncredited)"

“I’m different!” – Crow T. Robot, Season 8 Intro

“This guy’s bad; this is his first and last movie.” – Crow on a young Clint Eastwood

When I developed my list of season premiere episodes, I quickly recognized that they were overwhelmingly shows and episodes after the year 2000. Even taking my predisposition towards modern television into account, I still had trouble thinking outside the narrative box. I still kept it that way for the final list – I found looking at both a change in the tonal climate and overarching story was more fruitful – but I wanted to also show an episode that had to account for an additional kind of change. Thus, now we discuss the first episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 on the Sci-Fi (now SyFy) channel.

"The Office" 3.01, "Gay Witch Hunt"

And thus did Michael Scott and Oscar Martinez
end the homophobia of a divided America.

"[Pretending to cry] Jim is gone. He’s gone. I miss him so much. Oh, I cry myself to sleep. Jim. [Stops crying] False; I do not miss him.”
- Dwight

So right out of the gate, I immediately run into problems. Initially, I was set to review the Office’s third season premiere “Gay Witch Hunt” as an example of a show that didn’t really need to prove itself, calmly setting up a fairly dramatic shift to keep the sexual tension in its romantic leads going and still unafraid to show its star oscillate between bigotry, awkwardness, and genuine humanity. And while I do think that it works well in that regard - even if some of Michael Scott’s (Steve Carell) homophobic behavior had to somewhat awkwardly contextualized by even more overtly awful statements from his coworkers - I realized after starting to write about it that there is a far more important element in the show’s meta-narrative going on. Two particular elements are introduced in this episode and expanded in the next season - specifically, Andy Bernard and type of broader comedy he would later represent - would be the things that would slowly engulf, dominate, and ultimately destroy the show.

Welcome and Introduction

It is weird to write this, given both its ubiquity and the extent to which I appreciate it, but I have only considered myself a “fan” of television for the past few years. While television did play an important part of my childhood – the three- to nine-year-old me was a huge fan of both the DC Comics Animated Universe and, disturbingly in retrospect, the X-Files – I never really considered it as a valuable platform for art or serious entertainment. As a young teenager I actually gave up on television for a few years. Outside of a brief period right beforehand where I obsessed over various shows indiscriminately, my viewership was confined to my parents’ weekly affair with the Sopranos. In high school, as I became more of a film buff, more shows started to come into my periphery; I quickly abandoned Dexter and the A-Team, but found a great love of two comedies: Arrested Development and the American adaptation of the Office, both of which helped me see the different forms into which television could mold themselves. Increasingly in college, I became invested in various shows of vastly different tones, styles, and themes, and I became more and more cognizant of the diversity of stories that could be told in the medium.

More recently, I have been realizing that my love for “entertainment miscellanea” is, if not boundless, then at least extensive, and I desperately want to satiate it (as well as my need for attention). This blog is designed for this: I am going to look through a variety of works that interest me, and look to see what I can draw from it. I recognize that this kind of broad focus is not necessarily conductive for good writing, but I imagine that as I continue my focus will become more acute.

On this site, I plan to review a myriad of entertainment and pop cultural ephemera, but with the primary focus on focus on television. I am not trained in this discipline – I was a film and history undergraduate, but that was essentially the extent of my expertise of these fields – and my historical or developmental knowledge of the medium is woefully underdeveloped. Almost all of my preexisting knowledge is on shows of this and the last decade, and there is a steep drop-off in my familiarity for shows made or airing before the 2000s (rectifying this in particular is one of my goals). I am in no way an expert, and I do not want to pass myself off as such. However, while my focus is going to be centered more on shows with which I have some knowledge, I plan to discuss a number of shows past and present. So please bear with my growing pains, and hopefully we’ll be able to come up with some interesting takes on these various upcoming episodes.

I should also make a note that the nature of some of these shows, as well as my retrospective discussion of them, means that some plot points may inadvertently get spoiled. I am going to try to be judicious about this – at the very least, I will be oblique about upcoming plot in reviews – but I can only do so much. Additionally, I am very much a procrastinator, but I am going to try to be more proactive in managing this. I don’t want to give a false estimate and subsequently abandon it, but I will try to put out regular material.

Because I am focusing less on currently airing shows (or at least their episodes), I feel that having a thematic connection between groups articles is helpful. So to hide the fact that I’m just looking at essentially random works, I’m going to try to organize my articles in sets, with the based based around vaguely-defined themes. I’ll come up with which groups to use as I go on (It’s an obvious choice, but expect a Halloween theme come October). Since starting this feels so exciting and new, I feel that it makes sense to start with post-pilot season premieres, and to see how shows have tried to bridge their old and new trajectories.

Schedule (season premieres)

• The Office 3.01, “Gay Witch Hunt”
• Mystery Science Theatre 3000 8.01, “Revenge of the Creature”
• Chuck 2.01, “Chuck Versus the First Date”
• Game of Thrones 2.01, “The North Remembers”
• The Wire 4.01, “Boys of Summer”

I appreciate your visit, and I hope that you find my intensely wordy articles entertaining, helpful, and interesting.

Thanks,

Wolfman Jew