Tag: TV

Review: Gotham Seasons 1-4

Laura Highcove

Review: Gotham

My husband and I describe Gotham with the phrase: “The worst show on TV we never miss an episode of.”

Our relationship with Gotham has been very interesting, from the beginning. We gave it a shot because it’s Batman, or that universe at least. This show has a lot of bad qualities, one of which being the almost universally bad acting. In season 1, I almost couldn’t stand any time Jim Gordan, the main character, tried to act anything more than a casual conversation between coworkers. Bruce Wayne, was almost as terrible, but we gave him a pass because the actor was still a kid. The only person who did seem to be able to act was Harvey Dent.

And yet, week after week we kept coming back to the show, and it paid off. Because this show knows how to do payoffs. Of course I can’t necessarily give any of those without spoilers galore, but while the lead up is rough and sometimes painful, this show can make the different plots and the different characters come together into beautiful and amazing moments that make you want to cheer.

And thankfully, by Season 5, the acting has improved, and looking back, the character development has been rather beautiful. Jim, Penguin, Barbara, Selena, Ivy, and especially Ed and Bruce. Jim still overacts when he gets really emotional, but Bruce has really settled so firmly into his role and it is a beautiful thing to behold. The first episode of Season 5 has me eager to see how things are going to progress. If you haven’t given Gotham a shot, I’d encourage you to. And if you can make it through the first season, it’s totally worth it. (Plus, season two is when Alfred suddenly becomes more British, because I guess they got a writer who knows British lingo.)

Gryffins: In Solid Form

Laura Highcove

This is the third of a trio of posts showing off my gryffin collection.

Gryffins as Figures

A whole bunch of gryffin figures I have found in various places.

A rather typical looking gryffin (front left), a humanoid gryffin with a hammer (front right), and why yes, that is a humanoid gryffin riding a gryffin (back), thank you for asking.

Ignoring the little gold guy in front who should’ve been in the other picture, these are all pre-painted miniatures from Dungeons and Dragons. Flying gryffin (front left), stalking gryffin (front right), and lady riding sideways flying gryffin (back).



This guy is from Warhammer. Before and after pictures. I did all the modding to make it as High Elf as possible myself.

And this is Klesk, the mini for a D&D character from a 4th ED One Piece Campaign. This mini was modded pretty hard by a friend and painted by me.

I also got Sonic Boom from Skylanders. And Gilda, who was a character in the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic series.

I spotted these guys …I forget where, and while they remind me a bit more of a shisa with wings, I decided they were close enough to go in my gryffin collection.

This guy I bought a million years ago in 2003. He was meant to sit on top of your monitor. Yeah, remember when monitors wern’t flat? I do.

Gryffins in Stone

One Otakon there was a booth in the dealer’s room that sold jewelry, along with animals carved out of gemstones. I only picked up one at the time and later regretted it since the store wasn’t online anywhere for me to pick up more. It wasn’t until years later that I found them sold on ebay, so over time I collected a number of them.

I am very particular about the shape of the head. Sometimes there are ones for sale with huge bulbous heads, and I leave those ones alone. And the strawberry quartz one just ended up being bigger than the others. I didn’t realize it until it came in the mail.

And yes, that is just one more chunk of my collection. (You’re starting to think I’m crazy aren’t you? /cackles) Next post will show the rest of them.

What’s Your Favorite Type of Story?

Laura Highcove

Another prompt from the DIYMFA.com. To find out more, you can check out the DIYMFA.com’s instigator, Gabriela Pereira’s new book DIY MFA.

QOTW 15: What’s Your Favorite Type of Story?

My favorite type of story is one that has a theme of camaraderie, either a pairing or a team of some kind. This does not (necessarily) mean an ensemble cast. I am a fan of characters interacting with each other in a place of teamwork and/or trust. It can be romantic or not. (I am always a fan of a good bromance.) I also like it when it starts out as hate or reluctance.


The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Examples across media include:

Castle: The four main characters are willing to do anything for each other, even if it’s sometimes outside the law.

Psych: Shawn and Gus seem to know what each other is thinking and are always together, have each other’s backs, and the jokes they pull off together are amazing.

Suits: In the cutthroat lawyer world, the two main characters are seriously loyal to each other.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (TV Show and Movie): In the TV show, the two main characters are partners and work very well together. In the movie they start out hating each other and come to a sort of grudging respect.

BBC’s Merlin: The two main characters start out hating each other and eventually develop into friends AND in later seasons get a whole team that works together on trust.

Speed Racer This movie has a theme of family, and plenty of times when everyone has to work together to get stuff done.

The Avengers: More an ensemble cast, but they all have to learn to work together

Blue Exorcist: Team of students that bond through their adventures enough to keep them together when they find out the main character is the son of the devil. (This one’s an anime.)

The Legend of Eli Monpress: The main character and his team are already established at the beginning of the books, but it’s their bonds to each other that keep them from failing.

Brandon Sanderson novels: He likes to have a tight knit team that works well together and gets along (fairly well) in most of his books.

As you can see, it’s a wide variety of different types of relationships and teams that gets me interested, but it’s no surprise that I have a similar theme in all of my own stories.

Why does this archetype appeal to me so much?

Because I inherently want to trust people.

Because these are the kinds of relationships I want to have.

…it’s something like that I’m sure.

I don’t like books where everyone betrays everyone else all the time and are just out for themselves. I like to see people willing to go to the mat to defend a friend. I like to see people throw it all on the line for something they might not even understand because it’s important to the person they trust. I never get more teary eyed than when two people (especially who hated each other previously) go back to back. It’s about that connection. It also tends to result in some pretty awesome dialogue as friends snark at each other.

Out of this I am planning on doing a series of blog posts going into more depth with what I like about my favorite media, and what I didn’t like about media I consumed and didn’t like. I expect I’ll find that a lot of the things I like about the media I consume end up in my own stories, like this one, but there may be some that I’m not even aware of right now, and if I become aware of them, then I can manipulate them to better effect in my own storytelling.

New TV Season

Laura Highcove

So, the new season of TV has begun. Here’s a quick review of the new TV series I’m watching and what I think an episode or two in:

Shadowhunters

I liked these books by Cassandra Clare (though I liked the “Clockwork” series based in the same world better) and so I figured I would give the TV series a go.

While the differences between the TV series and the books did not bother me, (Except the fact that Brother Zackariah has his eyes and mouth sewn shut.) the acting was so poor that every time any actor opened their mouth, all I could do was cringe.

Seeing as it was the pilot, I did give it a second episode, in which the acting was thankfully better; except for Clary. She’s still pretty bad, but at least now I’m not wincing all the time. I was not expecting this to be amazingly written or acted, so now it simply falls into the “I could enjoy it.” space, which is a fine place to be.

Legends of Tomorrow

Another DC series set in the same universe as Arrow and Flash, and quite obviously as this series pulls the …well ancillary characters from those two series and gives them something to do.

It was a two part pilot in which it set up the basic premise of the show. Does it count as spoilers if it happens in the pilot? Anyway, we gather six minor heroes and two villains who are told by a rebellious Time Master (Not Time LORD mind you.) that since they don’t really effect time much on their own, he’s going to pull them out and go after this super bad dude who, in the future, takes over the world, but since he killed the Time Master’s family, we have enough bodies in the refrigerator to spur action.

The most amusing thing about this show, and the real reason we’re watching it at this point, is the amazing dialogue created by taking such a wide cast of characters and playing them against each other. It seems it will be entertaining at least, even if we have to continue to put up with the Time Master’s cheesy dialogue.

Lucifer

I had a hard time with this episode at first since I was raised Christan, there was no space in my mind for Lucifer to not be a villain. Once I was able to put years of religious conditioning to the side, I was actually impressed with this episode.
Mostly I love the actor playing Lucifer, who I followed over from Rush (which was pretty bad and canceled after one season). He has such a boyish innocence to him which somehow lends itself wonderfully to the confidant character he’s playing.

Now the main female lead spent most of the episode with her pupils absolutely tiny which just made her freaky to look at, but she doesn’t seem too bad.

Writing wasn’t amazing and my husband and I are wondering how convoluted things will have to be considering most people just blurt out important information whenever Lucifer smiles. Time will tell, but I am super excited for the second episode.

Tropes and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Laura Highcove

So all of our shows are going on their winter breaks, so my husband and I are back to some of the things we have on the back-burner, one of which is the original Man from U.N.C.L.E season 1, made in the 60s.

We both enjoyed the movie and my mother-in-law loved the show, so we figured we would give it a shot.

So for those of you who don’t know, the premise is a spy agency made up of people from all over the world who deal with things that are a threat on a global scale. Our main characters are Napoleon Solo (An American who likes his women and is suave.) and Illya Kuryakin (A Russian who has a myriad of skills).

It has been quite an interesting ride. Some of the episodes are better written than others.

Last night we watched “The Double Affair” in which the bad guys replace Solo with a double in order to get access to codes to a vault that has “something world changing” while they are being transported.

So this episode was bad for a number of reasons.

1) The opening sequence was the bad guys trying to kill Illia, since he knows Solo and would possible be able to out the fake. Illia knowing Solo did not play into the episode at all. He raises an eyebrow when Duo (what we called the fake Solo) does not mack on every woman he sees, and that’s it. If you’re going to have a Chekhov’s Gun, then fire the thing!

2) We assumed, because it was the 60s, that the ‘world changing power’ would be nuclear, it turns out instead to be, I kid you not, some sort of glowing energy (from space?) that if you look at it without protective glasses, will take over your mind and make you walk into it. This is what befalls the one poor chap who figures out that Duo got into the briefcase holding the codes. Yeah, it was basically a genre break, though TV Tropes doesn’t have a page for that one. Basically, we’re watching a spy show and then suddenly SCIENCE FICTION!

3) And, at the end of the show, the resolution is ‘hey, the real Solo didn’t get shot, everything is great because Duo couldn’t kiss well, and now the woman are happy’. Not: ‘btw, the bad guys actually did get the codes to the vault, is anyone even going to mention that we’re taking care of that?’ No? Okay…

It’s handy to be able to point out the blatantly bad writing and plot holes (along with MST3King it) because we also discuss how we would’ve written the episode. Luckily the next episode was far better, and not only because few minutes into the episode my husband said ‘Is that Leonard Nimoy?’, to which I replied in the next scene: ‘Maybe, but that is William Shatner. Man, he was hott when he was younger.’.

Current TV

Laura Highcove

So I’ve been trying to figure out what I can talk about on my blog besides my writing. My interests outside of writing include reading, movies, tv shows (including anime), and video games. All which are different mediums for telling stories and I have started watching them with an eye toward story as well as for entertainment value.
Our current tv watch list is:
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Arrow
Blindspot
Castle
Gotham
The Muppets
The Flash
Sleepy Hollow

We’re enjoying all of these shows (obviously, or else we wouldn’t watch them) but right now, top of the list are The Muppets, Blindspot, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..

I’ve always been a Muppets fan, and this show reminds me why. The dialogue is snappy, there are great drive by jokes, and it’s just entertaining to watch. I’ve never been able to write humor as well as I would like, but I figure maybe if I keep watching funny things I’ll gain some by osmosis.

Now when my husband and I first saw ads for Blindspot, we figured we’d give it a shot and see if they were obvious about having set tattoos that will be revealed as the show goes on, or if they just bring up tattoos when they need them. Luckily they did the former and it is wonderful. The tattoos have legitimate reasons for taking a certain amount of time to decipher, and the secrets they reveal are not time sensitive. (Besides the first one, which was probably intentional.)

They also kept us guessing with some not to obvious twists. Especially with the three people they just killed off, two of which were really surprising.

Also on that list is Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, which is just on another level of storytelling altogether, and that is because of Joss Whedon. I love watching Joss’ stuff, and I admire him, but I’m not sure I could ever be as cruel to my characters as he is to his. Whenever there is a particularly nasty twist, my husband and I always tell the characters, “No, you don’t get to be happy because you’re written by Joss Whedon.”

I used to watch TV just for entertainment, but since I’ve gotten more serious about my writing, I am much more mindful about pacing and how the shows are written, to the point where I can see some twists coming. (If I see them all, then the show is probably not that well written.) This is helpful to my writing because the more of it I see, the better I can apply those same pieces to my own writing. It also allows me to enjoy watching TV and get something useful out of it.

Researching Arthurian Legend

Laura Highcove

So today I’ve done a bit of research on Arthurian Legend. The first part of the second half of The Storyteller, I’m sending Tabitha into The King Arthur tale.

Before this I knew the basics of this myth like most people:

There was a king named Arthur. He had a special sword called Excalibur that he got out of a stone or a lake, depending on who you ask. He had a wizard mentor named Merlin. He has a group of knights and a round table. He has a wife Guenevere who is also in love with one of his knights, Lancelot and that got everyone into a lot of trouble.

Places I have seen the Arthur Legend:

The Sword in the Stone by Disney, with adorable little Wart and old man Merlin who taught him everything important.

I saw a live action movie one time that may have been based on the book The Mists of Avalon (which I haven’t read) that focused more on Morgan le Fay. I don’t remember much of it except that she was tricked into sleeping with her half-brother, Arthur.

The BBC series Merlin, which toward the end used the less than happy ending to the Arthur story, ie Arthur getting mortally wounded by Mordred and then “disappearing”, but oh hey it might come back some day. (Argh, I don’t care how ‘faithful’ that ending was, I was so unhappy.)

New things I discovered:

Excalibur actually came out of the lake. There was a lady there who took care of it, and she and Merlin had a thing.

The sword that Arthur pulled out of the stone was not Excalibur.

There is apparently a lot of illicit sex going on among the peoples of this mythology. Arthur’s father slept with a married woman to get Arthur. Arthur slept with his half-sister Morgan and/or Morgause and sired the person who would kill him, Mordred. And some of his knights got naughty as well (Besides Lancelot).

Chivalry was a super big thing, but most things involving Courtly Love eventually just turned into illicit sex.

and …

I’m not sure how I’ll use this information for my story yet, but it was only an hour or so of research. Just enough to get me the basics. I think my main issue is that there are a lot of people in the Arthurian Legend, and if I’m keeping with calling people by their roles instead of their names, it gets a lot more complicated when there are all those knights. We’ll have to see what I come up with.

Internet Distraction

Laura Highcove

So my husband and I watched the first season of Sleepy Hollow and then missed the second season. We decided we wanted to watch the second season before the third season starts October 1st, so we signed up for a free trial of Netflix, only to realize we couldn’t watch Sleepy Hollow on Netflix. So we went to Hulu and signed up for a free trial there, only to realize instead of a month, like Netflix gives you, we only get a week. So we hunkered down to watch 18 episodes of Sleepy Hollow in seven days.

All was going well until yesterday afternoon our Internet (and cable) stopped working, and I stopped to think about it, and realized that being out of Internet for a few days isn’t all that big a deal (granted if it hadn’t happened on a weekend it would be a bigger deal because my husband works from home) except that this happens to be the week that we were trying to watch all that Sleepy Hollow. What a bother.

I sat down last night to do my writing and had to stop myself dozens of times from hopping on the Internet to ‘real quick’ check something, only to remember I couldn’t. It didn’t occur to me that it was that big a distraction. I think I might start turning off the Internet during writing time. I have a little wireless button on my laptop that will work perfectly well for that.

That being said, I am getting back into the swing of writing. I think my plan from last week really helped. It surprises me how much I have done, and how much I still have to do. Like I think I can get it beta reader ready by the end of the year, but I can’t imagine how long the polishing will take. Still, even if the polishing takes a whole year, the book will have gotten done in less than three years, which I can be proud of.

Revision Update: Rewriting

Laura Highcove

Last week was rough for me and as such I gave myself permission to not have to strive for any goals. I jotted down some notes, but there’s not a ton to report on.

Just yesterday I began to get my creative juices back, thanks in part to the DIYMFA podcasts. Sometimes when I just don’t feel like writing, reading about (or listening to, in this case) people discuss writing can spark things.

Like I said last week, I did reach that measurable result, and the week before last went really well. However, this week I am planning on going back and rewriting some random scenes that new ideas want to change. There are two of those, one is in the Cinderella storyline, which will help to drive a particularly slow moving (though necessary) scene forward, and the second is during the revisit to the Cinderella storyline. If I get finished with those, I will probably clean up all the scenes in the Cinderella folder a bit. However, I have events for the next three weekends that include two horse shows, a wedding, and a Wrestlemania party, so I’m not going to kill myself trying to do too much.

Gotham

Laura Highcove

So at this point I’ve seen a decent number of episodes of Gotham (It’s seven). Gotham is, in case you didn’t know, the city where Batman does his Batman thing. In this TV series, which airs on Fox at Mondays at 8, is actually focusing on James Gordon just after Bruce Wayne’s parents are murdered, (spoilers!) so at least a decade or two before Bruce goes vigilante. The series follows Jim around as one of the only good cops in corrupt Gotham.

So far we’ve had a lot of ‘monster of the week’ episodes, with the mob boss/penguin storyline weaving its way through the background. At first the overacting nearly killed me. Perhaps it’s because Batman is such a well-known franchise that everyone wanted it to do well so bad that they tried too hard. I don’t know. It was just painful. Thankfully it has gotten better (depending on the character …Fish is still pretty bad.). I also thought the pacing of this show seemed off, but the most recent episode really pulled things together beautifully. That’s part of why I decided to write this review now. The show has proven itself to me to be smart and well written enough to stick with at least until the end of the season.

Now for the characters:

Jim is likable, and I think he is, for the most part, realistically written. You just feel bad for him because he wants to do good and is so far underwater. Every little win for him then feels that much bigger because of the odds.

His partner Harvey is the jaded cop who was once like Jim. His actor is one of the only ones I think has acted well from the beginning. I feel like he is a character, not an actor playing a character.

They also show off Bruce Wayne as a child. He annoyed me at first, but now that he’s further past his parent’s murder, he’s started showing the characteristics of the Bruce Wayne we know and love as Batman. He is, though, still just a child who lost his parents recently and they don’t forget that. I’m warming up to Alfred. He is another of the actors doing a good job; I just didn’t necessarily like the character to begin.

I am disgusted with Barbara. I’m not sure if it’s that the actress has no charisma with the other characters, if the character was written poorly, or it’s a combination of both. I wince whenever she’s on screen and am sort of upset that I know she’s the one that ends up with Jim, so there won’t be any losing her … and all of the scenes that she had with the female cop, Montoya, feel like they were just put in there to have a yaylesbiancouple to drum up some funsexualtension or something. It falls flat; the actresses have no chemistry with each other at all. Just. Yuck.

However, I feel like the Penguin is stealing the show. It is a hard feat to pull off a character being so utterly evil and yet entirely endearing at the same time. He’s the bad guy, he will stay a bad guy, and yet I find myself rooting for him. Perhaps I will change my tune a bit if?/when! he betrays Jim.

They’ve also thrown Selina Kyle in (not really doing much yet, but she saw the Waynes’ killer apparently, so I’m sure it will come up). Poison Ivy as a child was in like one episode. Edward Nygma is just an awkward, pathetic dweeb, but I’m pretty sure that’s what they’re going for. Oh, I also love that they have the three crime bosses vying for position. I mean Gotham is all about the crime. For a while I thought Falcone was going to get shoved to the side, but they reminded us why he is the most powerful man in Gotham.

Overall, this show is worth watching if you’re a fan of the world around Batman. If not, there’s very little there for you. I don’t think it’s so well written that it would be enjoyable without a preconceived relationship with the characters. Then I could be wrong. I had no attachment to the penguin before watching Gotham and now I love him.