Chewing Gum 1.06

Tolled Road

Tracey moves in with Candice and Aaron. She gets Aaron's help with her scheme to out Ronald. He hits on Ronald without success but then he spots Ronald making out with another guy and gets a video of it. He sends it to Tracey who tries to show it to Cynthia but Cynthia won't look at it. Meanwhile Aaron is feeling rejected because Ronald wasn't interested in him. That was about as funny as the episode got for me.

The wedding was a bit surreal. I didn't expect Ronald to come out of the closet. Then Tracey walking off into the sunset with Conner? Not totally unexpected but weird. On the whole this episode felt like a bit of a misfire to me; maybe a bit rushed. I didn't laugh very much and I wasn't sure what to make of the ending. I will probably watch the second season but I'll probably wait before I jump back in.

Teen Titans 2.07

Transformation

Starfire gets a zit which turns out to be more than just a zit. She's transforming into something else. She doesn't want the other Titans to see what's happened to her so she starts wearing more and more clothing. First it is just a hat, the zit is on her forehead, but then something starts growing out of her neck so she starts wearing a scarf. After her fingernails get monstrously large she starts wearing oven mitts and so on and so forth.

Things come to a head during a battle with Plasmus. Her extra clothing is destroyed and her teammates see her as she has become. She is mortified and leaves Earth. She tries to find another planet to live on but she winds up scaring the inhabitants of every planet she visits. Finally, she meets a woman who kinda of resembles the White Witch from the Legion of Super-Heroes but who is actually a monster in disguise, a monster that wants to eat Starfire.

Meanwhile, the other Titans take off in a spaceship which Cyborg has built from their submarine. They go looking for Starfire. They arrive just in time to help her fight the alien who wants to eat her. In the end Starfire's appearance returns to what it was plus she now has the ability to shoot beams from her eyes.

Clearly the theme here is the way that bodies change over time, sometimes in ways that are very visible to others. There never is a complete explanation of why Starfire started changing but maybe the eye beams explain it. I haven't watched any further in the series (yet) so I have no idea if the eye beams are temporary or will be part of her power set on the cartoon going forward.

This was a fun episode a definite thumbs up although it might not be everyone's cup of tea.

Glow (2012)

The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling

The first thing that struck me about this movie is how much the creators of the Netflix show pulled from the original incarnation of GLOW. There are a lot of parallels. The Netflix show isn't a documentary but clearly it is more than just a namesake of the original. A number of the real gorgeous lades of wrestling were without a doubt inspirations for characters on the Netflix show.

The documentary is an overview of the TV show of the 1980s. The first 50 minutes of the movie are focused on how the show came to be, who some of the stars of the show were, how populat it became, and why it folded suddenly in 1989. A number of the wrestlers, all women, were interviewed for the movie. The movie focuses on a few of them but there's probably about a dozen of them that make significant contributions to the documentary through interviews. There is also a lot of footage of the old TV show.

There are a few men who were interviewed for the movie. One was the wrestler who trained the women of GLOW, Mando Guerrero. Another, Steve Blance, was originally a writer and later became a referee. There are a couple of men who were very involved in the production of GLOW in the 1980s but who declined to be interviewed for the documentary.

The last 25 minutes of the movie were devoted to getting caught up with what happened to the women of GLOW after the company folded. One of the women, inspired by the production of the documentary, organized a reunion. It is unclear if every single GLOW wrestler made it to the reunion but quite a few of them did, including all the ones who were interviewed for the movie. This part of the movie was was very emotional as many of the women had not seen one another in 15-20 years.

On the whole I was very happy I watched this movie. Watching footage of the old TV show was a lot of fun. I was a teenager in the mid to late 1980s. I remember seeing the show in the TV guide but I don't recall ever watching it. I'm eager to see what else from the original incarnation of GLOW makes it into the next season of the show.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 3.13

Deja Q

The Enterprise is tasked with saving Brial 4 from imminent destruction as its moon's orbit is decaying and will soon crash into the planet. Lt Commander La Forge works on how to use the Enterprise to pull the moon off of the collision course with the planet. Q shows up unexpectedly. He claims to have been stripped of his powers by the Q Continuum. He experiences what it is like to be human for a time.

Geordie's attempts to use the Enterprise to restore the orbit of the moon are interrupted by the Callimarane, an alien race. They are there to exact revenge on Q for some past transgression of his. Just as Q is about to give himself up to the Callimarane, in order to save the Enterprise and Brial 4, his powers are restored. Q fixes things before he leaves and briefly gives Lt Commander Data the ability to laugh.

This was a fun episode to watch. Most of the entertainment value is in Q discovering what it means to be human. He experiences back pain and hunger for the first time. He talks to Data, who isn't human but has studied humanity, about what it means to be human. In a way it is a comedy of manners as it is about how Q treats those around him now that he is a mere mortal with the memory of what it was like to be a god-like being.

Data laughing was a weird sight to see. It looked so strange. He looked and sounded almost human when he laughed. I didn't know what to make of it. All of a sudden he was laughing. Why he was laughing wasn't exactly clear. It brought a smile to my face and confused me at the same time.

Corbin Bernsen makes a brief appearance in this episode in the role of another member of the Q Continuum. I believe it is his one and only appearance in any production of Star Trek.

I have been a bit reluctant to go back and watch the Q episodes of Star Trek. They can be entertaining but they aren't my favorite type of Star Trek stories. I suspect that the the culture clash that occurs when Q shows up is part what makes these episodes, or at the very least this one, fun to watch. Based on my positive experience with this one I'm now thinking about giving the earlier Q episodes a try, some of which I have probably seen before.

Halt and Catch Fire 3.06

And She Does

Things seem to come to a head between Cameron and Donna. Cameron uses what she learned from her phone conversation with Diane in the last episode and fires Doug and Ian. Diane senses trouble between Donna and Cameron and encourages them to leave for a weekend and go stay at her home up in the California wine country. They have a buyout offer on the table from CompuServe, an IPO to consider, and they need to be on better than just speaking terms in order to make a rational decision about how to proceed. Donna takes Diane's advice and goes to Diane's home.

Cam does not go. Instead she spends most of the weekend playing Super Mario Bros. with Gordon. They beat the game but Gordon collapses at one point, knocking over the TV and breaking it. He tells Cameron about his medical problems. They go out and buy a new TV in order to continue playing. They get a much bigger set, a projection television. They talk about Joe. Gordon is the one who brings up his name. He still can't get over the fact that Joe stole the code that he developed.

Donna spends the weekend at Diane's place. The only people she sees are Diane's daughter, who is a senior at Berkley, and a couple of her friends who stop by to hang out. Cameron never shows up except in a hallucination that Donna has after she smokes some weed.

Cameron has a secret. She got married to Tom while she was back in Texas. She communicates with him through Mutiny in this episode. She tells Gordon about it near the end of the episode. Joe, in the one scene he has with Cameron, sees the ring at is able to put two and two together fairly quickly. It isn't until after that scene that Cameron tells Gordon about it. The episode ends with Gordon and Donna discovering that Cameron has secretly moved out of their house.

Joe and Ray are making big plans. Everything is flying high. They are looking to the future of what will one day be the internet. Ken doesn't trust Joe. He tells him to slow down. Joe doesn't listen and agrees to a deal with another company. When Ken finds out about it he goes to the board and gets Joe stripped of his decision making powers. The night before, Joe got a visit from Cameron who asked him to own up to the fact that he stole the code from Gordon. At the next deposition for the case between himself and Gordon, fresh off of learning that he was just a figure head and couldn't make anymore decisions, Joe owns up to the fact that he stole the code.

For the most part Joe and Ray's part of the story is leaving me a bit cold. It doesn't feel like there is much at stake for them. They seem a bit too robotic and inhuman for me to care about them. Another thing that bothers me about this show is the attention that is put into making some scenes look good. I would rather they invest more in the development of the characters. On the whole I liked this episode better than the last one but I'm still thinking about letting go of this show at the end of this season.

Rick and Morty 1.01

Pilot

Rick Sanchez, brilliant, alcoholic scientist has recently moved in with his daughter Beth and her family. He needs some help in obtaining some plant specimens (giant seeds) and pulls Morty, his grandson, out of high school for the day to help him. Things don't work out exactly as planned. They end up having to try to smuggle the plant specimens through inter-dimensional customs.

I've watched this show before but I've decided to watch it again, at least this season, while I wait for season 3 to drop on Hulu. I wasn't keeping this blog or taking any notes at the time when I first watched it. I love this show. It is like Rick, irreverently brilliant. The humor doesn't always make me laugh out loud but I chuckled a lot as I rewatched this episode.

The Sopranos 1.03

Denial, Anger, Acceptance

Tony continues to go to therapy. His problems aren't solved yet. He thinks he sees something in one of the pictures in Dr. Melfi's waiting room. He accuses her of trying to pull a fast one with the painting. He loses his cool when she casts doubt about Jackie Aprile's chances for beating the cancer he currently has.

Meadow and her friend are stressed out and try to score some drugs. When their friends can't seem to help them they turn to Christopher Moltisanti. He doesn't want to help but is concerned that they will get hurt trying to buy drugs elsewhere. In the end he helps them but so far no consequences. Maybe this will be a plot thread that will be picked up in a future episode.

Silvio and Paulie do their best to shakedown the son-in-law of a Hasidim. The father-in-law wants his son-in-law to divorce his daughter. The son-in-law won't do it unless his father-in-law gives him a piece (50%) of the motel where he works. It takes some work, more than one effort, but they finally the son-in-law to agree to the divorce after they threaten to castrate him.

Artie and Charmaine Bucco cater a fundraising event for Carmella. Artie is having trouble getting the insurance company to pay up after his restaurant blew up. He still doesn't know that Tony is the one behind the destruction of had the restaurant. Tony seems to experience some guilty feelings after Artie tells him that the insurance company suspects that it wasn't an accident that the restaurant blew up.

Charmaine shares a moment with Carmella after the fundraiser. She didn't like the way Carmella treated her and talked down to her. She gets back at her by telling her about how she slept with Tony before she and Tony got married. Later in the episode, right near the end, Tony experiences a bit of backlash from Carmella without knowing why she is acting cold towards him; clearly its the memory of what Charmaine told her.

Uncle Junior is fuming about what happened in the last episode. Christopher and Brendan returned the truck full of suits but they did nothing else to make up for what Brendan did. Uncle Junior wants to whack Christopher but Livia, Tony's mother, talks him out of it, says he just needs a good talking to. When Junior mentions Brendan's name, she just shrugs. He takes that as a sign that its okay to whack Brendan.

The episode else with Tony and Carmella watching Meadow sing with the school choir. Meanwhile Christopher gets the piss scared out of him by some Russian thugs, presumably hired by Uncle Junior; and Brendan gets whacked by Mickey Palmice.

Very impressive. I can't really point to any one thing other than possibly the ending but it was all very well put together and executed. It felt like watching a very good movie. That was the quality of the pacing and way in which the story unfolded. It did not feel formulaic in the least bit. From what I could see, in reference to the title of the episode, Tony experienced some denial and anger but left acceptance up to the others like the son-in-law he shook down.