Going Through The DCAU Part Sixteen

And we’re back with those wacky cartoon enthusiasts Tom and Jimmy for more of this feature.

This week, they’re covering the Batman the Animated Series episodes “The Man Who Killed Batman,” “Mudslide,” and “Paging the Crime Doctor”.

Non-Geek TV From The Geek Perspective: Curb Your Enthusiasm

There’s a lot of TV out there, and some of it is like a really, really adult version of other network shows, sometimes from the same people.

Yup, let’s talk Curb Your Enthusiasm.

A Festivus For The Rest Of Us!

Let’s see if I have everything I need for a successful Festivus celebration today:

• Festivus shirt I can only wear once a year?  Check.
• Aluminium pole?  Check.
• Feat of strength?  Well, I tipped over that vending machine this morning that stole my dollar and my breakfast pastry, so check.
• Airing of grievances?  Hmm….Hey Watson!  YOU SUCK!  And check.

I think that about covers it.  Happy Holidays everyone!

(If you have no idea what I’m talking about, see more after the break.)

Sidekicks More Interesting Than Their Bosses!

One of these guys is Bruce Lee. When Bruce Lee is your sidekick, he is automatically more interesting than you.

The sidekick.  That often annoying individual that follows the hero around, sometimes useful, sometimes not.  The character is a staple of genre fiction.  But sometimes the sidekick is more interesting than the hero.

After the cut are a few such sidekicks that outrank their bosses in terms of personality.  Who will make the cut?

Scientists Say We Will Find Life (Of Some Kind) Out There…SOON

“Is There Life Out There?” is not just a Reba McEntire female empowerment anthem; it is the stuff of science too!  Nerds have now refined their mission definition a bit.  Is it as likely to make me get caught singing along at a red light?  Click on to find out!

When A TV Series Declines…

By the time this show ended, this image probably wasn’t too far off.

My wife just finished working her way through the full series run of Friends on Netflix.  We were talking and she brought up how her mother got tired of Friends after a while.  My mother-in-law apparently thought Joey got too stupid, Monica too annoying, and the Ross-and-Rachel thing got rather tired.  I wasn’t the fan of the show that my wife or her mother were, so I couldn’t disagree with that consensus, where I mostly wondered why any of them would willingly hang out with hangdog mopester Ross.

That’s not an unusual phenomena.  Many TV shows that run long enough can become a shadow of their former glory.  Anyone who’s been watching The Simpsons long enough already knows that, though.

Podcast Reaction: The Oscar Edition

A decades-long career in Hollywood’s ultimate reward: posing with a human ostrich.

This week on the podcast, Ryan and Watson managed not to spend the whole recording discussing box office totals, the sort of thing that makes me really miss Jenny.  Jenny, you see, like me does not care for that stuff.  But those two guys will discuss it to the pain.

TO THE PAIN!

Still, they were good this week, so what about the Oscars?

When TV Shows Try To Save Money: The Bottle Episode

Why don’t you guys just hang out here for the next 22 minutes or so?

Game of Thrones is a popular but ridiculously expensive show with a huge cast.  That “expensive” part comes into play more often than you might think.  While there is generally a huge set piece, often a battle scene, appearing around episode 9 out of a 10 episode season run, the show has to cut corners in other ways.  Think of how Peter Dinklage was conveniently knocked unconscious just before a battle scene in season one.  The book the season was based on does show Tyrion knocked out, but only a bit after the battle has started.  Or consider how King Robert’s eventually fatal hunting party was essentially four guys on foot.  No horses, and no entourage.  Or just how often characters seem to be on foot, even if they were on horseback at some point.  These are small ways the show has done things to keep costs down, and Game of Thrones is hardly the only TV show that does it, but there is one method that happens a bit more often than someone stealing the horses between scenes.

One such way is the bottle episode.

So, How Many Can You Name?

This is probably one of my favorite videos on YouTube.  Someone took tons of clips from tons of movies and TV shows and made a rather good techno-kinda tune out of it.  I’ve seen lots of stuff, but even I can’t name all of them here.  I tend to skip to this whenever I want a quick smile at someone else’s cleverness.