Category: Television

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American Gods Went Out With a Bang

Season One of American Gods wrapped up last night, and while it answered many of the questions it's posed, it has also left me wanting so much more. Only 8 episodes? That seems like just a prologue! Really STARZ?

Okay, I get it. This wild, crazy, visually stunning show is an expensive undertaking. The sets, constuming, and special effects are absolutely cinematic. But only 8 episodes and we have to wait how long for Season Two?

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Flip Or Flop

One of our favorite "unscripted" home renovation programs over the years has been HGTV's Flip or Flop. Unlike most of the shows of this genre—especially Flipping Vegas—the hosts, Tarek and Christina El Moussa, seemed to have the least amount of on-screen drama of any of them. (What we've subsequently learned about their off-screen drama is another matter entirely however.) They always seemed to know what they were doing, didn't act too surprised when they encountered unexpected expenses during the renovations, and generally speaking, Christina's taste wasn't half bad (the same cannot be said of the hosts of HGTV's current offshoot program, Flip or Flop Las Vegas (Maybe it's just a Las Vegas thing?) but those ruminations are better left to a subsequent post.

Anyhow…

While this house on Cerecita Drive in Whittier, California itself is architecturally butt-ugly, I do like what Tarek and Christina did with it—and I especially like the colors, finishes, and the final staging. Of all the houses they've done, I think this is actually one of my all-time favorites. I could easily see us living there.

I like the turquoise, gray and white color scheme. The only thing I would've done differently is to continue to wrap it (and the horizontal siding and molding) around the garage as well so the garage didn't look like so much of an afterthought.

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Absolutely Beautiful

A lot has been written the past few days about the very passionate and graphic gay love scene—between two Middle Eastern men, no less—in the most recent episode of American Gods. Indeed, it was wonderful and in many ways groundbreaking and left me applauding the writers and actors, but what really got me about this all-around awesome episode was the opening.

If there is an afterlife, this is the afterlife I want to experience.

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Seriously, HBO…

What. The. Fuck.

I've come away from the last two episodes of the third and final season of The Leftovers feeling like I've been on some sort of mind-bending field trip that—coupled with the Alice Through the Looking Glass world we're actually currently living in—leaves me believing the events of this series could actually happen; and in fact that we're on the verge of them happening. Nothing would surprise me at this point.

As if the first two seasons of world-building with the whole off-kilter millions-of-people-spontaneously-disappearing and humanity's reaction to it weren't enough, in the third and final act of this story we're now watching Kevin Senior's trek through the Australian outback in search of spiritual enlightenment and Kevin Junior continuing to see people who may or may not be there. We know something huge is coming…or is it? All I can say is "What the fuck, HBO? How are you reaching so deeply into our anxiety-ridden collective subconscious and pulling this shit out?"

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Gratuitous Wes Chatham

Are you watching The Expanse on SyFy? If you're a fan of "hard" sci-fi and you aren't, you probably should be. To me it feels a lot like the network's own Battlestar Galactica, and like BSG, Season One got off to a slow start. There's a lot of universe-building going on, and if you're unfamiliar with the source material like I was, it takes some time to get up to speed as characters are introduced and storylines established. Season Two, however, has really taken off and it's become one of my "must not miss" shows this year.

And if that weren't enough, hunky Wes Chatham gets plenty of screen time.

Yeah, yeah…I know the boxing shots aren't from this particular show, but don't hate.

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I'm Loving Emerald City

It's a very fresh retelling of the Oz stories, and I'm surprised I'm enjoying it as much as I am.

Of course the fact that Oliver Jackson Cohen (the "scarecrow") seems to have a clause written into his contract that he must appear shirtless in every episode for a certain length of time has nothing to do with it.

Not that I'm complaining…

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Quote Of The Day

Once again, life imitates art…

Humans fancy that there's something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops, as tight and as closed as the Hosts do, seldom questioning our choices; content, and waiting to be told what to do next." ~ Doctor Robert Ford, Westworld

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"It's Like A Good Fuck."

When we first met Maeve at the beginning of the season, at first I thought she was one of the guests. I mean, who wouldn't want to run a brothel—if only for a few days?

But she turned out to be one of the Hosts, and much more than any one had ever expected. She's now my favorite character and the one I most look forward to seeing chew up the scenery.