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Hey TVIV. So I run the TVIV ratings thread. It's a fairly low-trafficked thread, but pretty interesting and informative, and you can read it here. In addition to being interesting and informative the thread regulars, of which there are few, like to make really stupid  es about TV shows and their chances of renewal and/or cancellation. Why? I honestly don't loving know. It's a genuine mystery, but at least everyone involved is aware of how dumb it is.Which leads us to this January. After the ratings for the second episode of Community were genuinely decent, especially relative to what the rest of NBC's sitcoms were pulling, I in a fit of bravado foolishly posted: Occupation posted:In related news, Community's second episode garnered a 1.4, which is actually up from last week's 1.3 average. I was gonna In the last hour my hopes have been crushed by the cruel finicky hand of NBC, and I was a broken shell of a man. Then Deadpool gave me his toxx challenge! Deadpool posted:MOD CHALLENGE So, here we are. Occupation Watches Season 2 of Last Man Standing.  What is Last Man Standing? Glad you asked! I don't know either. In the interests of fairness and maximum pain, I won't look up any sort of season or show summary on Wikipedia. Only by watching the show- and yes, I'm going to start with the second season, there's no way in gently caress I'm gonna sit through ten hours of bullshit I don't need to -will I pick up, contextually, what this show is about. But here's my secondhand mostly-hearsay understanding of the show. Occupation's Secondhand Mostly-Hearsay Understanding of the Show: Tim Allen plays a dude who has a bitchy wife. Tim Allen's character is fed up with the "emasculation" of men and decides to do...something about it. It probably involves passive-aggressively complaining about it and beating up strawmen the show writes into existence, alongside the manufactured guffaws of a "live studio audience". Also I think Tim Allen has a liberal stereotype neighbor or something, the blue state Flanders to our red state Homer. This show asks the tough questions, like "What happened to all the MEN in America??", "Why do all the WOMEN have the power?", and finally "Why do I have to fight all the SEXUAL HARASSMENT LAWSUITS?". Picture Home Improvement mixed with r/mensrights, then add a bit of Stormfront for flavor. The Challenge I will watch every episode of this show, then provide an Onion AV Club-style recap/review of the episode, along with a letter grade. The grading scale will be A-B-C-D-F, no pluses or minuses (I expect to be breaking out the latter two grades frequently. My update schedule will more than likely be somewhat erratic but I will, at the bare minimum, average one review a week. So come join me on my journey through a show I won't understand half of the time, and the other half of the time I'm going to hate with a passion! A note on my review methodologies: I'm a young, liberal, feminist male, so I'm completely and utterly outside of this show's demographic. Therefore for all you Last Man Standing fans (and boy, I know you guys are legion here in TVIV), just keep this in mind. I was gonna say I was going to be objective, or try to be, despite all that but I mean...humor is one of the most subjective mediums ever made; what people find funny is completely and utterly based on their cultural experiences. For instance I find Girls one of the most insightful and overall "true" comedies I've ever seen, but that's solely because that show resonates with me. If you're not me you might find this show funny! I mean, you probably won't, but still. Review Archive: 201, "Voting" 202, "Dodgeball Club" 203, "High Expectations" 204, "Ed's Twice Ex-Wife" 205, "Mother Fracker" 206, "Circle of Life" 207, "Putting a Hit on Christmas" 208, "Bullying" 209, "Attractive Architect" 210, "The Help" 211, "Mike's Pole" 212, "Quarterback Boyfriend" 213, "What's In a Name?" 214, "Buffalo Bill" 215, "Breaking Curfew" 216, "Private Coach" 217, "The Fight" 218, "College Girl" Season 2 Review 301, "Back to School" 302, "Driving Lessons" 303, "Pledging" 304, "Ryan v. John Baker" 305, "Haunted House" (Guest Reviewer: Oxxidation) 306, "Larabee for School Board" 307, "Shoveling Snow" 308, "Vanessa Fixes Kyle" 309, "Thanksgiving" 310, "Spanking" 311, "Elfie" 312, "All About Eve" 313, "Breaking Boyd" 314, "Renaming Boyd's School" 315, "Tasers" 316, "Stud Muffin" 317, "Eve's Boyfriend" 318, "Project Mandy" 319, "Hard-rear end Teacher" 320, "Parenting Bud" 321, "April, Come She Will" 322, "Mutton Busting" NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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May 9, 2014 21:44
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Last Man Standing "Voting" Season 2, Episode 1 This show is racist. I'm getting ahead of myself in the review, here, but for the record- this show is racist. The first episode of Last Man Standing's second season opens to a wide angle shot of the Baxter family's residence. Romney/Ryan signs festoon the front, the sheer number meant to overwhelm. From the very first shot of this season, we, the viewing audience, are sent a single message- We warned you. Turn back, all ye who enter here (and are Liberal). I should've heeded them. Instead we cut to their house interior, and as the subtitles helpfully note on the bottom screen, it's November 2, 2012. It's election time in the Baxter house! Kristin (Amanda Fuller) is helping set the table while simultaneously attempting to woo her stereotypically brain-dead sister Mandy (Molly Ephraim) over to the dark side (racist pun not intended, but appropriate for this tissue-deep mess of a show). As Kristin's shirt helpfully notes, she's an Obama supporter! Oh the whackiness. Surely this completely and utterly original premise can be mined (or fracked? EH?! EHHHHHHHHH?! You're welcome, LMS writers) for the oceans of situation comedy such a setup can provide. Enter Tim Allen qua Mike stage right. He's hefting an Obama lawn sign in his left hand, which he sardonically explains is "some large dog's mess". Kristin, presumably the one who placed the lawn sign there in the first place, takes offense. This leads to a "political argument" that mostly consists of the easiest, obvious barbs the writers could think of as political commentary, until Mandy exclaims "OH MY GOD, this is sooooooooooo boring!!!" Wise words indeed. Take us with you, Mandy! The cold open provides us with the A plot of the episode; Kristin and Mike attempt to convince Mandy, who has just hit voting age, to vote for "their" party, mostly via the time-honored tradition of completely trashing the other candidate. A more unintentionally perfect recreation of today's political climate there has never been, as Tim Allen and Amanda Fuller chew the scenery and spit out obvious and trite political one-liners from the C-list writing staff. Seriously, parts of their argument feel lifted straight from the comments section of a Youtube White House video. Such examples include accusations of Mitt Romney being a robot, Obama being from Kenya, and Obamacare. Oh god the Obamacare slams. So, so many Obamacare slams. The problem with this argument, despite being boring and predictable and not funny, is is the dynamic of the argument itself is unbalanced. Mike is at least two, possibly three times older than Kristin, who is an early twenties unwed mother with an unemployed baby daddy (natch) as she lives with her parents and works as a waitress. The unstated slant of the show is is that Kristin is a freeloading whore who repays her father's kindness of free room and board by being a Liberal Negative Nancy. It makes Kristin's entire, tedious, argument feel hollow. Eventually we get a (much-needed) reprieve from the political debate of the century raging at the Baxter house to the second of two interiors the show seems to have, to the "Outdoor Man" hunting shop. Think Cabela's or Bass Pro Shop. Mike seems to be the owner of the store, which gives him ample opportunity to, as a rich entitled white man with legions of people to crush under his heel, complain at length about how every one of the filthy poors under him are all emasculated freeloaders. Mike seems to go about his day looking for things to complain about, especially if those things he complains about allow him the opportunity to fondly reminisce of days gone by. What days? Well judging by how the show treats black people, probably late 1700s. And now we route back to my statement: This show is racist. You see, all of Mike's employees are currently obsessed with fantasy football, which Mike sneeringly disregards as "fairy-tale football". (Seriously, LMS? Fantasy football isn't masculine enough for you now?) Kyle (Christoph Anderson, giving a show-rarity decent performance) refuses to trade Aaron Rodgers to his boss, Ed (Héctor Elizondo) so Ed can beat Mike's daughter Eve (Kaitlyn Dever) in his fantasy football tournament. Yeah. This eventually leads Ed to punish Kyle by making him do horrible, menial labor around the store. Because what's funnier than employee abuse because they won't trade you fake men in a fake game, right? It also leads to Last Man Standing's profoundly racist views. Seriously, these were lines of dialog actually spoken by our white male protagonists: Kyle (in regards to his fantasy football team): "My strategy of not drafting anyone with a criminal record seems to have backfired." Mike: "The Raiders are the sworn enemies of the Broncos! It's like the Crips and Bloods, both of which are Raiders fans." The most damning part of all of this is is that these lines were laugh break lines. The writers' room clearly felt like this racist trash was not only appropriate, but hilarious capstones. It's one thing to do racist- or rather, racial- comedy, but if you're gonna play with this particular fire you should expect to get burned if you do it improperly. Even more so your humor shouldn't, necessarily, be insulting of a particular race more than a commentary on it, which in this show's particular case the only commentary they provide is "Blacks sure are criminals, huh?!" It's lazy and it's offensive. Neither of these two subplots gel particularly well- The A plot is just an opportunity for hacky one-liners to get tossed around, and the B plot doesn't really ever get going at all, racism aside. It feels like two completely disconnected subplots and because of it the show inexplicably feels tonally inconsistent, when trying to swing between the at least ostensible "seriousness" of the election plot and the lighter side of the fantasy football plot, which only seems to impress upon the viewer that Ed is a dick who mistreats his employees over fake internet games. Anyways after twenty minutes that feels much, much longer we finally, mercifully hit the end of the episode, as Mandy has, somewhat inexplicably, actually done the research and wants to vote for Obama, much to Mike's chagrin and Kristin's gloating. Mike learns a completely undeserved lesson about letting his children become strong, independent women that feels hollow even as the lesson is learned. At least Mike gets some sort of comeuppance. Seriously, this guy is a loving rear end in a top hat. The lesson lands with an even heavier thud because both Mike and Kristin are so reprehensibly awful to each other that even picking a side feels like a win for negativity. Honestly I would've much appreciated the ending consisting of Mandy, who quite honestly seems bordering-on-mentally-retarded, angrily pointing out how both her dad and sister have done nothing but smugly, poorly insult the other's candidate, then refusing to vote. It would've even had the interesting political subtext of how negative campaigning only depresses voter turnout! Ah well, better luck next time, Last Man Standing. It's not like this only happens once every four years or something. Grade: F Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 23:51 on May 9, 2014 |
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May 9, 2014 21:45
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Deadpool posted:Dammit, I just looked at Wikipedia and saw that this season only has 18 episodes instead of 22. I feel as if I'm being cheated. I tried to go easy on you by giving you a half hour show instead of an hourlong and it backfired. I'm not gonna go back on it but if you feel so inclined to review the first couple of episodes of season three in order to gauge if there's any improvement or decline (is that even possible?) I would be happy to read them. I'll understand if these 18 break your spirit though. I'll try and make it happen
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May 10, 2014 00:49
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Last Man Standing "Dodgeball Club" Season 2, Episode 2 "We're on a Downward Wimp Spiral with men." Thanks for stating the show thesis so succinctly, Mike. And here, I guess, is where Last Man Standing and I fundamentally differ. Even if the show were to fix its myriad problems, including but not limited to casting, writing, and plotting, I still would dislike the show simply due to its overriding ethos: That there is Something Wrong with today's male, that we (as a society) have lost whatever made Great Men great, in favor of a pussified, emasculated culture who likes such faggy stuff as "respecting women" and "caring for your kids". The second episode of the second season opens to Ryan (Jordan Masterson), Kristin's baby daddy, returning Boyd (Flynn Morrison), their son, from school. Having now watched two episodes with Ryan, it seems like within the show, Ryan and Kristin are no longer together and share joint custody of Boyd. As an aside, who names a kid Boyd in this day and age? That's a serial killer name. Although, considering the family life Boyd grows up in, maybe that's just foreshadowing. Anyway, as Ryan returns Boyd, Vanessa (Nancy Travis), Mike's wife, picks up a slip of paper from Boyd's backpack. It turns out that "some busybody mom" (Mike's words) has written a letter to the school who has now banned dodgeball. What, banned dodgeball?! The horror! As Mike notes, how will our children defend the country from Red China (yes this is a literal argument Mike uses) now? Boyd, ever the liberal stereotype, defends the anonymous mom's decision as dodgeball "teaches war and hurts people's feelings". Which leads me into my first major problem with the show. Obviously the flow of the show should be clear; Mike encounters something he finds is "emasculating" and is "ruining America/Men", then complains about it. Either his liberal daughter, or his liberal daughter's liberal ex, or some other strawman, defends it, but does it in the worst and most disingenuous way possible. Then Mike proceeds to completely fumble the obvious setup the strawman gives him by angrily repeating the same tired two talking points. Repeat ad infinitum. There's so many failures in this methodology of storytelling it's kind of mind boggling. The show is a vehicle for arguments. That's literally all it is. It isn't like almost any other multicam sitcom ever, especially the family-set ones LMS is clearly aping, where it ostensibly is about togetherness and reaching across ideological divides to come to some sort of common ground. All it is about is confrontation, a vehicle for Tim Allen's ridiculous exaggerated non-character to argue with another one of these morons for eternity about something that doesn't loving matter at all. Even the name itself is confrontational: Last Man Standing. This is the last man standing. gently caress all you pussy rear end bitches who don't like dodgeball, Tim Allen has a lovely one-liner for you you CUNTS! In case you couldn't tell, it turns out Ryan was the quote-on-quote "busybody Mom" who got dodgeball banned. Because again, it teaches war. As opposed to an actually good reason one could ban dodgeball, such as "Kids get really loving hurt by it, especially if they're 6 (which seems to be Boyd's age)." This is my second issue with the show. There's arguments- on both sides -for even such a facile, stupid problem like "parent gets dodgeball banned" to have an interesting debate. If Ryan had approached the situation from the perspective "I'm worried my kid will get hurt" and Mike had approached the situation from the perspective of "But it's fun, and you can't protect your kid forever, and kids will get hurt regardless of if you ban everything with a pointed end" they could've had a dialog. It could've been an interesting commentary on how being an overprotective parent can, unintentionally, do more harm than good. Instead we get the argument that dodgeball = war, which most insanely both sides agree with! What?! Speaking as someone who was actually in a loving war, gently caress you Last Man Standing. Nobody should be encouraging war and it's genuinely loving offensive that the main character on this stupid rear end loving show actually thinks war is anything like a game of loving dodgeball. gently caress. Ugh. We've lost the thread here. Sorry. The dodgeball argument dominates most of the screentime of the episode. Ryan eventually lays an ultimatum- under no circumstances will Boyd ever play dodgeball, under Ryan's parental fiat. Cue the obvious setup. Eve, who is babysitting Boyd and all of his friends (for a show that makes a big deal about Kristin and Ryan being overprotective parents, we almost never see them...uh...actually be parents), gets coerced by Mike into helping run a game of dodgeball between the kids she's babysitting. As an aside, Kaitlyn Dever as Eve is one of the few bright spots of this show's cast. She plays a sardonic mid-to-late high school teen really well, and she's genuinely interesting to watch onscreen. Admittedly her entire role in the show seems to be to troll everyone around her for being awful, which might put her more in my good graces but yeah, I like Eve, and hopefully I get to see more of her as this season progresses. (I didn't bring her up last episode because she was barely in it, only in one scene which was dominated more by Mike's racism). Things proceed as could be expected, with the young boys hilariously- er, "hilariously" -not understanding the rules of dodgeball (they roll the ball to each other at first, and the kids don't want to pick teams because that would "hurt people's feelings", accompanied by the hyena laughs of the brain-dead studio audience), then eventually getting super into it, until Ryan comes to the house suddenly to see Boyd whacked in the head. This leads to the obvious argument-argument-argument-poor and forced last minute "family lesson" resolution that, even in only two episodes, I've already come to pessimistically expect, much like the cold embrace of death. But that's not all! The game has not one but two subplots. The first one involves Ed, who as we learn is a search and rescue team member. Kyle wants to help Ed on his latest mission, which leads Mike to smugly discount Kyle's abilities with, you guessed it, "We're on a Downward Wimp Spiral with men." The way the show treats Kyle's character is weird. Kyle is always positive, energetic, hardworking, likable, quiet, helpful, polite and sincere. He's even flawed realistically- Kyle can be kind of oblivious at times and he's a bit dumb, but not brain-dead like Mandy. Basically Kyle is the Ideal Man (whatever the gently caress that even means). And yet the show continues to treat him as the butt of every joke. It's just such a bizarre dynamic- why is the only genuinely good guy on the show treated like human refuse by everyone else? I like you Kyle. You along with Eve are the only reasons I can kind of enjoy this show (which should put as fine a point on how much I don't like it when two characters WAY down the call roster are why I'm sort of liking it, when I sort of like it). The first subplot doesn't really go anywhere, beyond Ed's protestations about bringing Kyle along turning out to be, of course, unfounded as Kyle reveals himself to be very skilled and adept at search and rescue. The second subplot is about Mandy trying to woo some young quarterback at her college, which consists of all of two scenes and literally only seems to exist to show off Molly Ephraim's breasts. That's it. This is the entirely of the plot: Scene 1: "I want the cute quarterback to notice me!" Scene 2: "HERE ARE MY BREASTS". I mean...they're nice breasts, I'm not gonna lie, but...why is this subplot even here? This show is bizarre. All in all, though, I gotta say this episode wasn't anywhere near as bad as the premiere. Maybe it's from my lowered expectations but I found myself kind of chuckling, weakly, from time to time as the episode progressed, weird politics aside. From a technical standpoint the show was an inconsistent mess of plots, as per usual, but we didn't have the huge tonal swings of the previous episode, nor the racism. So I'll drat this episode with the faintest of praise by capping my review with two words: "Good enough". Grade: D Random Thoughts:
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May 10, 2014 16:32
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Daedo posted:It's started already! We'll be getting A grades by episode 10. What, do you watch this show for fun or something
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May 10, 2014 17:38
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Last Man Standing "High Expectations" Season 2, Episode 3  Before reading this review I'd appreciate it if everyone reading this were to, sincerely, set aside the barely twenty minutes or so it'd take to watch 203 of Last Man Standing and post their own reactions to it, because I think the episode is worth discussing at greater length. This isn't a joke, I'm not trying to trick you into watching bad television. ----------------------------------------------------- This was...this was a good episode of Last Man Standing. I think. I think I might be biased due to the absolute poo poo that was the premiere and the sort of low-tier, constant badness of the second episode, but I genuinely think this was a fairly funny, astute episode that was trying (sometimes failing, but still trying) to make a somewhat nuanced view on race relations in this country. Yeah, I know, I'm shocked too. Buckle up because this is gonna be a long one. Episode 203 begins innocuously; Kristen's car has been egged by roving vandals. Unfortunately, the roving vandals targeted one other car in their spree, a silver Tahoe owned by the Larabees, the "Bla...frican American" family that has moved in just down the street, as Kristen so ineptly puts it. This leads to Vanessa and Kristen worrying about if the egging could be seen as a racially motivated attack, which Tim Allen sardonically retorts, in the setup to a fairly good payoff later on in the episode, "I don't think the Klan does a lot of work with eggs". Knowing how this show treats race from the season premiere one could assume this comes across as mean-spirited naysaying, but Tim Allen's delivery sells the line as genuinely funny. Unfortunately Mike immediately delves into one of his many, common, complaints about how everyone, especially minorities, feel victimized, and I as the viewer cringed in anticipation for a very, very awkward episode as Mike rails against the entitlement of minorities. Instead, though, the conversation takes an immediate right turn as Vanessa insists that they should make the Larabees feel more welcome, as Mike balks at the suggestion- not from the suggestion of associating with black people, but because Mike completely and utterly hates his neighbors (all of them) and wants nothing to do with knowing them. It's a difficult line to thread but the show actually pulls it off as Mike is shown not as a racist, but as a misanthrope- to him, being a neighbor consists solely of responsibilities, none of which he feels particularly obligated to participate in. The episode continues as Vanessa, who is worried of how the egging might look to the sole black family in the neighborhood, goes over to the Larabees' household and meets Carol (Erika Alexander) and Chuck (Jonathan Adams). The casting for the Larabees is absolutely top notch. Carol and Chuck are, immediately, very funny relatable, interesting characters. Additionally, on her own, without having to impart the Important Lesson to Tim Allen's character, Nancy Travis shines. One can absolutely feel the overwhelming awkwardness of the first meeting between these people as Vanessa good-naturedly attempts to be as neighborly and as sensitive as possible to her new neighbors, which only proceeds to make things more uncomfortable. Some accidental barbs later, Vanessa feels the need to invite the Larabees over for cheese and wine, which is when the main plot fully kicks into high gear. Mike, predictably, is miffed at the invitation and uses ironic racial humor to needle Vanessa endlessly for it. This might sound offensive, but as the party ("not a party", Vanessa notes) gets started, Mike immediately tries to get with the program and impress their new black friends. This is well-worn territory, but it is navigated well and that's all that really matters. Additionally it brings in a new, interesting textural dynamic to the show. Previously the show has been about conflict, about Mike working against someone- his daughter, his daughter's baby daddy, etc -to prove a point. This episode is about resolution- impressing the neighbors, who happen to be black -with conflict springing naturally from the resolution being sought. It makes the dynamic of the show instead of one about constant negativity and childish insults, one about trying to find a common solution, even if that solution happens to be conservative. This episode reminds of one of the best conservative-leaning shows in existence, King of the Hill. Especially in its later seasons the show was about Hank Hill and his family attempting to find solutions to problems, so the entire show felt sincere. I, ideologically, disagree with nearly everything Hank Hill ever stood for, but because he was a good-hearted soul attempting to help people with his specific skillset, I respected and admired him as a character anyways. In much the same way, Ron Swanson of Parks and Recreation, despite espousing a belief system that is morally repugnant to me, was able to be a morally and ethically sound and most importantly consistent individual and because of it he was a great character. This show will never reach the dizzying highs of either Parks and Recreation or King of the Hill but this episode was able to at least echo either of those shows' former greatness. The party proceeds as poorly as you would expect (and the awkwardness is genuinely funny- in no small part because Jonathan Adams is able to add amazing sardonic wit to the scenes as Chuck Larabee) until Mike, finally fed up with the charade, lays out the whole plan on the table. Eventually, the Larabees confess that they, too, had no desire to come to this party- they were simply worried that refusing might be seen as a racially motivated move. And here is the second, interesting point the episode makes. The episode deals directly with how people of different racial backgrounds see themselves and each other, and I think makes a challenging nuanced point. They could've easily gone with the "being PC is stupid" sort of conservative echo chamber ideology the show usually trades in, but I felt like the show was actually attempting to make a deeper point: that, in being as sensitive as possible to other people's races, we end up becoming an unrecognizable mess unable to interact with other people. Sometimes it's easier, and nicer, to simply say what we mean instead of couching everything we say in "Not that <x people> are like that, of course." It's a slight difference from "All PC is bad", but an important one. The Larabee dinner ends not with Chuck and Mike bonding over their mutual non-PC-ness (ugh, what a mouthful), as one would expect, but over their mutual antipathy; nobody wanted to attend the party and only did so out of fear that the other side would see it as an offense. It's a neat trick the writing room pulled, and one that I feel should be commended; they wrote a fulfilling, interesting, genuinely funny story with a clear start and end point. Unfortunately it stumbles right at the finish line as Mike and Chuck trade tired, unfunny racial jabs at each other as the Larabees leave, but it's clearly all in good fun and when the show uncharacteristically nails so much else right I'm willing to give them a pass. And let's not forget the subplot! This was also excellent, as it centers around Eve, the most consistent and best Baxter in the family. Eve is tired of being on the soccer team and wants to quit, despite the fact that Mike is forbidding her from doing so. He even prevents her from going to a party she bought a new dress for, which I can say from my time as a dress-wearing teenager is a real drag. Mandy, however, has made the show choir and even picked up a solo, which neither of her parents care about in the midst of Eve's lack of interest in soccer. Mandy soon gets a call during her show choir practice: Eve has not only gone to the party against her parents' wishes, but drank so much she's now a nearly-comatose mess at her friend's house. Immediately jumping from her father forbidding her from attending the party to the aftermath skips the entire party scene, which lends some immediacy to the proceedings and make the entire subplot feel energetic as opposed to a drag. Another neat trick the episode pulled was Mandy immediately dropping everything she was doing to help her sister as opposed to passive-aggressively needle/jealously insult her, which does wonders for Mandy's characterization. When she arrives at Eve's friends house, Mandy reveals that she's uncharacteristically a savant when it comes to sobering people up, unveiling her pre-made emergency bag. Which includes clean urine, because as she explains, "I've seen things you can't unsee." This helps dimensionalize Mandy as, perhaps, not the intellectually gifted member of the Baxter house but plenty street smart, and gives her character the agency that was previously not present before. Eve sobers up, sort of, but the whole plan falls to pieces anyways as she enters in the door and immediately collapses, much to Mike and Vanessa's fury and concern, respectively. Mike immediately rounds and Mandy and blames her for her sister's drunkenness. Mandy angrily snaps back at her father that she just sacrificed the solo that her whole family doesn't care about just to help sober up her sister, and finally a moral lesson lands with Mike's character. Favoring a child just happens among parents, any sibling can tell you. Especially the unfavored ones. But it doesn't make the fact of being the unfavored child hurt any less, even if it means you're allowed to bend and break the rules in the ways that the favored child can't. You can genuinely sympathize with Mandy's pain as she yells at Mike, and the end of the episode, as Mike apologizes to Mandy for being a heel, the emotion feels earned and lands. A genuinely good, heartwarming episode to...a good episode of television. Yeah, I'm just as surprised as you. Grade: B Random Thoughts:
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May 10, 2014 21:34
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Dolash posted:They're lulling you into a false sense of security. The truly egregious episodes to come will be all the more offensive for knowing that they can make passable television when they want to. If they ruin Chuck I will be so mad 
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May 10, 2014 22:10
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Oh yeah she WAS Loretta Yeah Eve is the best, gently caress the haters
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May 10, 2014 22:30
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IRQ posted:Episode 3, 1:38 MINUTES: "That's not the S word, the S word is socialism." You're watching the wrong episode, that line doesn't exist in 203
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May 11, 2014 02:05
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I'm in the middle of 204. gently caress this stupid poo poo loving gently caress gently caress gently caress gently caress ARGH I HATE THIS loving SHOW gently caress
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May 11, 2014 02:22
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Last Man Standing "Ed's Twice Ex-Wife" Season 2, Episode 4 This show is the most repugnant, regressive, and not only misogynist, but flagrantly and triumphantly woman-hating show I've ever had the misfortune to watch. Everything about this show, and this episode in particular, is completely and utterly despicable, and if you watch this episode and not only don't think this is awful anti-woman garbage, but you think this is funny, I have only one thing to say to you: gently caress you. gently caress you, gently caress your awful backwards beliefs you disgusting rancid sacks of flesh, and gently caress off forever you worthless piece of human garbage. This affront to all bounds of human decency starts, much like anything cancerous, fairly innocuously. Boyd accidentally knocks over his pancakes, and as Kristen is on her hands and knees cleaning up the mess, Tim Allen enters stage left, miserably cawing, "A woman working while you're sitting in a chair. I wish I could tell you it would always be like this." Unbelievably, this is the least misogynist mess of a non-joke this particular half-hour of scripted misery, this televised Chick Tract of inanity and hatred will produce. This is a sign of things yet to come! In the first minute of the episode! Eventually this misanthropic mess masquerading as a piece of televised enjoyment, this Typhoid Mary of comedy proceeds to the main "plot" of the episode. I use the term "plot" as loosely as possible to describe what occurs, because it is the barest of contrivances so Mike and Ed can parrot their awful, r/mensrights trash, their hateful word vomit into the viewer's eyes and ears. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Basically, Ed attempted to defraud his most recent ex-wife, Wanda (Robin Baker), during the divorce, failing to list a vineyard he had most recently purchased. The show presents Ed as totally justified in doing so because Wanda is apparently the most evil oval office to have ever existed (one of the myriad number of crimes she has committed include literally stabbing Ed in the back- and seeing how he acts this episode one could almost, but not quite sympathize with her). Wanda finds out and sues Ed for the missing money. You know, the money she was legally entitled to, and that Ed committed fraud by not giving her. The show wants us to root for the guy who committed the felony. And maliciously so, it's made quite clear that Ed was quite aware what he was doing was wrong but it was all justified because Wanda is like, such a bitch. Continuing on, it's eventually discovered that someone in Ed's circle of friends blabbed to Wanda about the vineyard. Who could that, as Ed calls them, "sewer rat" be! Cut to the Baxter home, as Vanessa tells Mike all about her social outings with Wanda. I'm sure you can see where this is going. Yes, Vanessa blabbed about the vineyard to Wanda, therefore setting all of the events on the episode into motion. Despite Vanessa having no reasonable belief that she was supposed to keep the existence of the vineyard a secret, nor an expectation that talking about the vineyard would in any way cause trouble to Ed, the show presents her as to blame. For, I guess, not being omniscient. And even if she did know that Ed wanted the existence of the vineyard kept from Wanda, and what she was doing was, in some way, screwing Ed over, how could the act of telling Wanda about it be wrong?! Ed is the one who is at fundamental fault for not complying with the loving law the loving way he is supposed to. But solely because Vanessa is a woman, and Wanda is a woman, and those loving WOMEN dare take money away from the MEN they're to blame. This show is irredeemable. But even beyond that Mike sets in to Vanessa for committing the crime, the unforgiveable sin of hanging out with Wanda. See, because Mike hates Wanda, and works with Ed. And because Mike is apparently two, couples can only be friends with one part of a divorced couple, and the Baxters have already claimed Ed as "their" friend. One, because apparently couples are a homogeneous hivemind with no individual agency whatsoever, and two because these rules were set by men. Because apparently "their kind" (a term Mike actually uses to refer to women in this episode) just gently caress everything up. Probably due to "their" predilection for hysteria, since this show is obviously set in the 1950s. This leads into an utterly abhorrent rant from Mike about the unfair divorce laws in this country, with the poo poo capper of the line "I shared part of my life with the guy at the DMV, what do you think I owe him?" It's mind-boggling how overt this show is, on every level, of its hatred of women. Worst of all is Vanessa more or less sits there and tolerates the literal five minutes of uninterrupted hate streaming from Mike. She puts up a defense, sure, but it's weak and flaccid and crumbles almost immediately against the big, loud man's argument. The sheer level of vitriol spewed from this idiot's mouth is disturbing, but the fact that the show presents all of it as more or less factual is genuinely infuriating. Eventually the show drags itself, shambling like a woman-hating zombie, to the next despicable scene. Seems like Ed got, his words, "Completely screwed [by Wanda and her lawyer]. And then I wrote them a check. I feel like the world's worst prostitute." Mike, however, consoles him: "Hey, don't beat yourself up. That's what your pimp is for." There has never been an exchange more indicative of the flat, uninteresting, and worst of all violently, needlessly aggressive towards women the show's miserable excuse for "humor" can ineffectually generate. None of this is funny, but I've already come to expect that. The sheer, brazen misogyny is something else entirely and genuinely disgusts me. This show is disgusting. gently caress this show. Almost done with this review of this piece of loving garbage. gently caress. A neat wrinkle is introduced as it turns out that such close contact with Wanda has caused Ed to, as he puts it, "feel certain feelings for her. Unmedicated, even!" See? He's getting a boner. It's a boner joke. The joke is about erections, because if you've found the previous 15 minutes of this piece of garbage funny you're a literal loving caveman and need your jokes spelled out for you. Anyways this eventually leads to Ed trying to win Wanda back and then they end up together again and if this sounds, beat for beat, exactly like season 2, episode 8 of Parks and Recreation, "Ron and Tammy", congrats, you unlocked the code. Except this episode doesn't go anywhere. It's a vehicle to slam on women, endlessly, from beginning to end. That is it. It doesn't have a plot, it has an excuse to hate women. Sometimes it hates women in Ed's office, and sometimes it hates women at the Baxter house. But that's all it ever does, and it on top of being lazy and miserable and misogynist to its very core, it's just not funny. I'm known around TVIV for being hyperbolic. For saying some things are either "the best" or "the worst", for intentionally exaggerating an opinion about a TV show to get a specific reaction out of people. But when I do that, I have fun. There's an element of enjoyment I get from hating on something and making fun of it. I gain no enjoyment from this review of this garbage. It's honestly made me upset that in the 2010s, people watched this and found this not only not reprehensible, but found it funny. Hundreds of thousands of people. Possibly in the millions of people. gently caress this loving show. Grade: F Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 04:29 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 04:22
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Propaganda Machine posted:Occ, this is the rant I was hoping you'd go on for episode 2. I spoiled it at the time because you weren't there yet, but... I just read that as a series of callbacks, I was more unsettled by the original "joke" that Mike says to Spence (the little fat kid) since...yeah it's real domestic abuse-y
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May 11, 2014 16:31
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Last Man Standing "Mother Fracker" Season 2, Episode 5 This was a very difficult episode to adequately review, for reasons that will become immediately apparent. As such I asked for help in writing this review from my good friend Oxxidation, so everyone thank him. This episode starts with Vanessa attending Eve's school's Career Day. As a note: Eve's in high school. They still have Career Days in high school? Really? Anyways, I didn't mention this in the episode review for the Episode That Shall Not Be Named but apparently Vanessa works as a geologist (in the first three episodes of the show I honestly thought she didn't have a job), specifically supervising over a Colorado hydraulic fracturing project, aka "fracking". Yep, it's a fracking episode, in case the title didn't clue you in. Vanessa finishes up her presentation then is assaulted by questions from her captivated teenage audience. Despite the fact that the entire scene is wildly unrealistic- teenagers do not give a poo poo, as a general rule -it turns out that everyone in Eve's class is against fracking. Not for any (as the show presents it) legitimate reason- the teenagers have internalized the standard liberal talking points against fracking, or at least the ones the conservatives believes all liberals against fracking believe. An example includes a female teenage student, in the perfect obnoxious parody of a teenage girl's voice, whinily noting, "I saw a documentary where this guy TOTALLY lit his tapwater ON FIRE." Vanessa returns home from her verbal pummeling to Eve, who previously admired her but now, due to peer pressure and the internalization of these liberal talking points, finds Vanessa's job to abhorrent, rudely remarks, "Why should I ignore [my friends who hate you]? I think what you do is disgusting." It's at this point that the show launches into a conservative polemic disguised as an argument between Mandy, Eve, and Kristen (all of whom take the side of anti-fracking) and Mike and Vanessa (pro-fracking). Unfortunately in this case I'm the exact sort of liberal stereotype strawman the show is railing against- all I know are vague, cloudy statements about fracking being bad for the environment. This makes me a quite frankly terrible fit to review this episode honestly because I have no idea what I'm talking about, and I would only serve to reinforce the show's slanted point to rail against something I know nothing about. So in addition to doing some actual research (yeah, I know) on the effects of fracking I called in my super political friend, Oxxidation, to write a refutation of the points the show raises. In doing so in hopes to help illuminate the viewer on the failings of the show politically, because this entire scene wasn't humorous in the slightest: It was meant to provide a (slanted) opinion by callously and smugly refuting the liberal strawmen the show had specifically built for this scene. Anyways, I know take you to Oxxidation's essay decrying the politics of this episode. Paraphasing Oxxidation: Fracking, short for "hydraulic fracturing", is a mining technique in which liquid is shot into a wellbore at high pressure to break up, or fracture, shale formations deep within the surface of earth. The resultant natural gas, petroleum, and brine then seeps through the cracks in the rock formations to the well itself, which can then be mined. This technique is horrendously damaging to the environment. A well known documentary, Gasland, went into explicit detail about it: As noted in this conservative tripe of an episode of "television", during a pivotal scene a resident pours water from the tap into a cup, which he then lights on fire. You see, the gas companies pay off the residents to frack their land, do the work, and then skedaddle as said residents learn that their drinking water is now flammable due to gas outflow. (Note: The gas industry got a little freaked out by that scene. They released a follow-up documentary called Truthland (yes, really) that said all they had to do was pump some cement back into the strata to separate out the gas and render the water non-flammable. Which they did. After the documentary came out. As a bonus, here's two paid shills decrying the Gasland "water being set on fire" scene: quote:In an article for Forbes magazine, Dr. Michael Economides, a professor of engineering at the University of Houston, commented on the Gasland scene of "a man lighting his faucet water on fire and making the ridiculous claim that natural gas drilling is responsible for the incident. The clip, though attention-getting, is wildly inaccurate and irresponsible. To begin with, the vertical depth separation between drinking water aquifers and reservoir targets for gas production is several thousand feet of impermeable rock. Any interchange between the two, if it were possible, would have happened already in geologic time, measured in tens of millions of years, not in recent history."[32] Note how the first paragraph's shill is completely contradicted by the second's.) As Nancy Tavis disingenuously notes during the episode fracking is the "best" of the three "bad options"- Coal, Oil, and Fracking - to attain energy. This is an arguable at best assertion in the first place- Coal is clearly the worst of the three, being that it literally drowned West Virginia in poison sludge due to inappropriate runoff management, but the argument itself is itself false; fracking could very well be safer, but that would be more expensive and make the big boys Upset. Just like oil could probably be safer but that would make the rich Upset- in the sense that any attempts at conservation/alternative fuel research instead of ripping as much of it out of the ground as possible makes the oil companies pitch a screaming fit. They're only "bad options" because any option that doesn't rake in as much money as possible for the 1% is immediately dismissed as liberal nonsense. This set of "bad options" only exists because any attempts at other options are quietly killed in their sleep. This argument, like all right wing arguments, limits potential solutions to a set of options selected exclusively by the right wing. Tim Allen discounts wind power as "kill birds, and not in the fun way" (wow, Buzz Lightyear's a loving dick), but the real downsides of wind are that it requires a lot of acreage and maintenance costs are fairly hefty. Nuclear power doesn't even warrant a mention from the show itself, which is all the more hilarious since nuclear power at this point is as close to fail-proof as it can get, but the cultural stigma against it from both sides is still enormous. It's definitely the best of our possible options but given that worldwide awareness of nuclear power is limited to The Simpsons it's tough to get it off the ground. To be fair, anti-nuclear sentiment comes from the left just as much as the right but I doubt that's a factor where this show is concerned. Essentially, the argument Last Man Standing is espousing the current flavor of the week conservative propaganda. Right now, fracking apologia is tied with DRILL BABY DRILL in terms of right-wing "environmentalist" commentary. A lot of fracking apologia relies on perspectives like Occupation's, in that it's a relatively new process and therefore propagandists do their best to poison the well, as it were. poo poo like Nancy Travis saying "Hydraulic fracturing is 100% safe if it's done right, and it's my job to make sure it's done right." are the exact sort of reductionist arguments the conservatives love: relying on its viewership's ignorance of a certain issue to construct false premises and allow conservative ideology to dominate what should be a much more nuanced argument. It's basically the Fox News of sitcoms. Again, though, and this should be stressed: Fracking is in and of itself a nuanced and difficult issue and reducing to a back-and-forth between liberal strawmen and conservative one-liners does everyone involved a disservice. Fracking does have benefits, after all: a lot of our infrastructure is built around natural gas already, and, like i said, fracking could probably be a lot safer if the fracturing wasn't so aggressive and more care was taken to seal off potential gas backflow/limit water usage (fracking uses up a loving TON of water). But, Bad Tim Allen Sitcom never even mentions that possibility. Let me put it to you in context: It took me twenty minutes, aka the runtime of this episode, to explain to Occupation the barest outline on how this poo poo worked. We all know he's an idiot (see this thread and the toxx leading to this thread), but even so this issue is an intensely complicated one. Oh, and as a footnote: Gasland points out that Congress snuck in an exemption to the Safe Water Drinking Act so that, if fracking should by SOME TERRIBLE COINCIDENCE poison water supplies, no one would be prosecuted. This episode feels like another brick in the wall. Or well. Thanks Oxx. Anyways, the show continues on with Eve being so upset with her mother and father's argument that she eventually resolves to live off the grid. Mike, in turn, refuses to let her back into the house until she apologizes for insulting her mother. And here's where my complaint lies: Although Eve is kind of a dick about it- as noted before, she says that she thinks Vanessa's job is "disgusting" -that's all she says. At no point does she really insult her parents beyond the capabilites of their job and she's expressing an opinion, albeit rudely. Then she follows up on her beliefs by actually walking the particular walk- in this case living in a tent outside of her house for the episode. The parallels to the Occupy protests are striking, as even Mike frustratingly notes, so it's all the more bizarre that we're supposed to be rooting against Eve, or for Eve to fail. All she does is express an (as we have found out, valid) opinion, and we're supposed to be rooting against her, for her to fail, despite attempting to affect change however small through her actions. In comparison Tim Allen's character has essentially complained about everything he doesn't like without really doing anything about it, and we're supposed to take his side. The dichotomy of presentation and of tone is bizarre and makes the logic of the episode even more flawed, in and of itself. Finally Tim Allen, fed up from the active sabotage he has inflicted on his daughter not working (which includes, among others, stealing the main tentpole from her tent and putting out the fire she starts to keep warm- and this is set during a Colorado winter so that's literally giving your kid hypothermia to prove an ideological point), finally wins her over with television and pizza. So in the end the only lesson that is learned is is protestors will voluntarily stop their protest if material goods are promised because they're awful, selfish, hypocritical assholes worse than the people they're protesting against. This show is weird. Grade: D Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 19:55 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 19:44
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Last Man Standing "Circle of Life" Season 2, Episode 6 I watch every single episode of this show not once, but twice. I watch it once, cold, sometimes taking notes on what I want to focus on for the review. I watch it a second time for two reasons: 1) So I don't miss any nuance and draw any incorrect conclusions about the episode (i.e. review it as fairly as possible), and 2) to track down quotes I'll use in the review. I say this not to gain any sympathy- okay, that's a lie, I would like a little sympathy for the effort I put in -but because I want people to understand what I mean when I say that I cannot stand this show. I despised this episode in one viewing, a viewing I had to stop multiple times just to stomach through the aggressively, maliciously idiotic nonsense spilling out of my screen. Then I watched it again, and I can confirm- this show is loving awful. This episode was centered around Boyd. I have a theory: The episodes centered around Boyd, and around parenting in general, are the worst because that means Mike is at his most whiny and caustic. Since the thesis of the show is presenting how Mike believes America is losing its masculinity, this frustration is most evident when Boyd is onscreen; Mike believes that Boyd is his only hope for a tougher, manlier America so spends all of his time attempting to "teach" (read: brainwash) Boyd his particular conservative politics. But having Mike just tell Boyd empty jingoistic and xenophobic truisms would make a 2010s version of Leave it to Beaver. A show, especially a sitcom, thrives on conflict to create humor and to drive a story forward. So the writers felt the need to write a character who is at odds with Mike. But since Mike is the protagonist, and is played by one of the executive producers of this show, and is the main draw, we don't get a Meathead to Tim Allen's Archie; instead, we get a gross, exaggerated parody of a liberal, Ryan, fighting a gross, exaggerated parody of a conservative, Mike. Nobody is sympathetic and everyone is a complete and utter douche to each other constantly, with no room for empathy or any sort of cross-ideological understanding allowed. This is most blatant in this episode. Mike returns hunting, and Ryan, who as we now learn is a vegan (of course), is absolutely disgusted by Mike's admittedly kind of disturbing, almost homicidal glee in having killed some ducks. Kristen asks Mike to put the ducks away, because she doesn't want Boyd to see them and make the mental connection between ducks and meat, which is apparently one of only two foods he eats. Mike insists that Boyd- who is a loving five-year-old -should be made aware of where meat comes from, and surprisingly Ryan agrees: He wants Boyd to turn vegan, and thinks this is the perfect way to convince his loving five-year-old son to stop eating meat. Notice how Boyd becomes a political football between these two psychotics, Mike and Ryan, to push their horrible worldviews. The only thing as bad as showing a five-year-old a loving dead duck to "man him up" is showing a five-year-old a loving dead duck so they change over to your dietary habits. It's mind boggling how reprehensible these two characters are. Amazingly this strategy backfires on Ryan, and Boyd seems to shrug off learning where bacon, steak, and hot dogs (which Ryan rudely characterizes as "lips, eyelids and intestines"- it's incredible that they make him look less mature than the toddler in the same scene with him) come from- until dinner, where Ryan- and I am not making any part of this up, I swear to loving god -loudly quacks to intentionally freak his own kid out and make Boyd stop eating. What the gently caress. Boyd eventually goes to be consoled by Mike, who makes a right hash of it by explaining how they're going to eventually die and be eaten by worms. (Boyd's been having a tough week, life-revelations wise. I fully expect Mike to teach him how sex works next week by fondling him in the bathroom. REAL MEN don't talk about molestation!) But don't worry, Mike assures the next night-everyone eventually ends up in heaven. Of course, Ryan has a problem with Boyd being taught about heaven, or as Ryan characterizes it a "fairy tale", because see Ryan and Kristen are raising Boyd without religion. This of course dovetails into another argument where Ryan is the shitthatdidnthappen.txt of atheists, loudly blustering about how all religion is fake and makes no sense before the bon mot from Vanessa, the enlightened, religious scientist (so you know she's impartial). I half-expected a marine with two tours in Iraq to burst into the scene at this point and uppercut Ryan through the roof as he powerfucks Kristen on the stairs, Mike looking on as an eagle shrieks in the background, a lone, patriotic tear falling from his face, as the crowd bursts into rapturous applause. As an actual atheist I was offended by their characterization of atheists, of course, but also by the seeming disregard Mike had for Boyd's parents' wishes. If Ryan had come to Mike and said, "Hey Mike, I know you're trying to comfort my son about mortality and I really appreciate it but in the future could you please not tell him about heaven? We're trying to raise him sans religion, and give him the opportunity to seek whatever God or gods or lack of god that spiritually fulfills him." I know such a speech isn't funny but the alternative wasn't either, so why not go for the nuanced opinion more reflective of today's modern atheist? Anyways the endless vegan bashing, religion bashing, and Reagan worship (Mike literally tells Boyd a bedtime story about the "Great King Reagan, who slayed the Peanut Farmer") made this episode an intolerable, intolerant mess from start to finish. The mistreatment and outright abuse of a loving five-year-old to further an ideological point, from both sides of the fence, was goddamn repulsive, and Mike and Ryan are nearly sociopathic in the way they treat and manipulate other people to win a silly argument. This episode didn't even make me mad. I'm just depressed. That people think that people like me talk like this. That I, one of those gosh-darned liberals would look at the poo poo Ryan is saying and go "Yeah you really stick it to those loving Republican douchebags! gently caress your kid up! Yeah!" It just bums me out. I like liking people, I like respecting people. I like interacting and being polite with people even when I find their views morally repellent. I'm not like this at all and it depresses me that a network TV show thinks I am. Can I please stop watching this show now. Grade: F Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 02:02 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 01:50
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have you seen last man standing, yoshifan
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May 12, 2014 02:07
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Cyks posted:As somebody who has watched all of season two and three 
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May 12, 2014 03:02
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Oxxidation posted:Rest assured that my unrelenting mental and emotional abuse will spur him ever onward. You're a bad person
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May 12, 2014 03:16
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Last Man Standing "Putting a Hit on Christmas" Season 2, Episode 7 It's the Christmas episode. Also it's really good. Like an actually genuinely good episode of television. And not in the way that "High Expectations" was good, in that it was an episode that tried to be deep and have a greater message. This episode was just funny. You know, funny. Something Last Man Standing is usually wholly unfamiliar with. The episode kicks off with Kristen and Ryan coming through the door, arguing. Apparently Ryan wants to bring Boyd up to his parents' house for Christmas. Which is in Canada. Of course. Kristen is upset with this development and forbids Ryan from taking Boyd. Mike agrees, and some obvious Canadian bashing occurs, and right here is when I got nervous that the conflict of the episode was going to be about Ryan wanting to take Boyd to meet his parents, who have apparently somehow never met Boyd. Luckily the episode didn't go for the obvious Canadian slams with a side of anti-atheism the show adores pulling but instead segues this into a more generic (anti-)Christmas story. Mike is at a loss of what to get Vanessa for Christmas. He asks Ed what he should get her, and...you know what, I'm just gonna quote the entire exchange because it's genuinely hilarious: Ed: "You have a dog right? Muffin? Vanessa loves this dog? Good. Go home, kidnap the dog. Just hide it somewhere. Now this is important- write down where you hid it. Vanessa's gonna think it's lost! She's distraught, she's puts up signs all over the neighborhood. At the right time, you find Muffin. You wrap a big red bow around his neck, it's a Christmas miracle. You're a hero." Mike: "Please God don't tell me you've done this before." Ed: "My only mistake was doing it twice with the same wife." Apparently Vanessa has no desire to host a big Christmas holiday and wishes that she could somehow skip Christmas entirely, instead having a nice, quiet holiday alone with Mike. Mike promises her to get rid of the kids for the holiday, via various methods- convince Kristen to go up to the Great White North, pay off Eve, etc. -and each scene is genuinely amusing, especially the scenes where Mike has to bribe/is coerced by Eve. The reason this episode works so well is is it's the least, well, Last Man Standing-y. Each previous episode this season has been about presenting a viewpoint, usually a regressive one. Further, each episode implies that you're supposed to be rooting for someone, usually Mike, as the moral agent. So it's all the more offensive and terrible when the people are just completely awful human beings as the entire show feels like disingenuous, underhanded garbage. This episode has none of that. The feel of this episode is like an episode of Seinfeld or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where it's just terrible people abusing and manipulating each other. This is most evidently seen in the B-plot of the episode: Ed loving shoots a bald loving eagle then has to drive out and bury it before he's fined. That's awful! That's a hilariously, terribly awful thing to do. In a Christmas episode even! Mike and Jenny are just as bad, by manipulating others, especially their children, so they don't have to see their miserable faces. The whole episode just works when it drops the pretension and presents these people as horrible messes of human beings manipulating each other, and the writing is uncharacteristically sharp and taut. And the ending! So it turns out that, after succeeding at manipulating and coercing everyone out of the house, Vanessa watches Boyd turn a musical snowglobe which plays her favorite Christmas song. Predictably she breaks down into a weepy mess, rushes back to Mike, and begs him to bring the kids back, which he of course magically does. The episode is almost ruined by the forced sentimentality, until it's revealed in the credits teaser that he had predicted all along that she would do this, and planted the snowglobe on Boyd in the first place. He "stole the dog" away- except they were his kids -knew Vanessa would waffle, then brought the kids back. The plot has a well-done circular logic to it, and is a great subversion of the sentimental ending by revealing how much of a Machiavellian rear end in a top hat Mike is. It's incredible. This is an incredible episode of television. Grade: A Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 07:44 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 07:32
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Zaggitz posted:First order of business once you are done this season is to find a way to get you toxxed into watching the rest of the show. Okay I think I worked out a solution that gets you sadists what you clearly want So I'm gonna finish this godawful season of Last Man Standing. And I will, at Deadpool's request, review the first four episodes of season 3 to fulfill the original spirit of the toxx agreement. So yeah you're getting that guaranteed If Deadpool is willing, if he'll name/av change me to fulfill the second part of my toxx (I have to get an insulting name/av of SHUPS' choice) I'll do the rest of season 3, at the same standard I'm doing now-long form recap/reviews. I'm kind of broke and don't really have the spare 15bux right now, but want to honor my agreement so I think this is a fair trade SHUPS 4 DETH posted:Oh, no, no! My friend is gonna kill you. SHUPS 4 DETH posted:btw your new username is E PLURIBUS ANUS I just want to point out: I'm still getting a raw deal out of this since the avatar and name are meant to be insulting.
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May 12, 2014 16:10
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HOLY poo poo 208 OF LAST MAN STANDING MAKES A JOKE ABOUT HOW THE WORD "friend of the family" ISN'T ACTUALLY HURTFUL ! ! !
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May 12, 2014 16:26
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Women's Rights? posted:Is the rationale "black people use it, which means it can't be that bad, which means I can use it?" Because that's my favorite reason for why everyone should be able to say it without offending anyone No, it's that words aren't hurtful
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May 12, 2014 16:37
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Last Man Standing "Bullying" Season 2, Episode 8 Dear Tim Allen, Wow, you're like the most racist, most homophobic, and most misogynist person in existence today. And somehow you have a show on ABC. It's kind of astounding how homophobic and racist and misogynist you are, I'm kind of impressed duders. Just because Eve gets suspended from school for calling Jay Breakerhoff "Gay Breakerhoff" doesn't mean you feel the NEED to slam gay people. I mean, I get the complaining about the "oversensitivity" of America, that's your shtick, you think America's full of pussified men. But that's all it needed to be, complaining about how the school systems are infringing on Eve's first amendment rights (which your character does) and saying vague, flat, pointless declarative statements about how "real weapons hurt way more than words" (which your character also does). But why does there need to be homophobia? Why do you have to analogize calling someone gay, when they're not gay, with calling a tall man "Shorty"? (Although you're tacitly admitting homosexuality is a genetic predisposition like height, right?) Why do you have to angrily complain about "Why is calling someone 'gay' offensive?" Are you seriously this loving dense? Are you seriously this inept and brazenly ignorant about how that's bigoted speech? What decade are you from? Oh, you're from the 1890s, apparently, because you point out that that decade was called the "Gay Nineties" and nobody had a problem with that. Do you not see how the meaning of words could, possibly, change in the ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY loving YEARS since then? What the gently caress? Okay so you're weirdly homophobic for no reason, but what's with the racism? In the video log you do for Outdoor Man you....you know what, I'm so astounded that this racist monologue actually appeared on a network tv sitcom I'm just gonna quote it in its entirety: "I'm gonna have a sale. I'm gonna sell night-vision goggles, navigation equipment, nylon angling shirts. Everything in the store that starts with the letter n. We're gonna call it...the M-Word Sale. Because if I used the other letter, you'd call me a racist." That's because you're a loving racist! What?! This is the definition of dogwhistle racism. You literally provided a textbook loving example of what that is, on top of backdoor stating that "friend of the family" (oh look at me Tim Allen, I'm actually less of a pussy than you for actually using the word instead of dancing around it like a coward, you piece of garbage) is not a hurtful word! How did this show not get cancelled? Why was there no public outcry when this episode aired? This is easily the most racist garbage I've seen on network TV. Tim Allen you loving suck. (Oh, and by the way, complaining about how the phrase "jerry rig" is defamatory to Germans- which I have literally never loving heard before -and not pointing out how the phrase is the more acceptable version of the phrase "friend of the family rig" is some aggressive loving ignorance. You're a loving idiot, Tim Allen.) But then your show has the reveal that Eve was actually called a "dyke" first by Jay Breakerhoff for bringing it to him on the basketball court. So that...makes Eve calling him "gay" in response okay to you? Also, apparently, Eve was hurt because she had a crush on Jay? Why didn't your character sit down with his daughter and talk to her about how she shouldn't be attracted to men that don't respect her and call her slurs? Where is the anger over the fact that someone called the daughter character a really offensive term for women? Why don't you confront or get mad at the Jay character? Why does your character compliment Eve for "keeping her mouth shut"? Why is the reveal that Eve and Jay kissed during a school rally (because they're in wuv with each other you see) at the end treated as a positive development instead of a troubling one based on how Jay treated Eve? Why at no point do you seem to care, in the slightest, that someone insulted your daughter? Why is this show so loving bad? Obviously the answer is you're a misogynist piece of poo poo who's fine with women getting treated like dirt by the men in their lives, or by being cut down a peg for being the ignorant bitches they are, as shown by the B-plot resolving, as per usual, with Mandy getting embarassed by Ryan for presuming he was a piece of poo poo when he was actully a great guy. Is there any slam against women and their general capabilities that your show won't take? So we get the trifecta, homophobia, racism, and misogyny, Tim Allen. Now I know what you're saying, that you didn't write any of the dialog that Mike says and that you actually respect women and blacks and gays. Now I sincerely doubt the latter is true, but even if it is- you read this script and approved it. You said that awful monologue defending the word "friend of the family", into a camera, and was fine with it. You said every other ignorant and offensive line of dialog your character says in this episode and didn't complain a whit. You didn't use your cachet as both the star of this show and as executive producer to get any of this changed, even though you easily could have. Even if you're not a piece of poo poo with piece of poo poo beliefs, though you probably are, it doesn't matter; you're still a piece of poo poo for allowing this mockery, this modern-day minstrel show onto the air. Also your show isn't funny. Go gently caress Yourself, Occupation Grade: F Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 18:00 on May 12, 2014 |
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May 12, 2014 17:47
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DarklyDreaming posted:
So wait was "friend of the family rigged" a bastardization of "jury rigged", itself? This is interesting I like learning about etymology
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May 12, 2014 18:06
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when i was in the army i heard it a lot from my, ofc, southern friends
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May 12, 2014 19:00
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Emerson Cod posted:This thread is fantastic and your reviews are awesome. Though, if by some miracle there's a 6th season of Community on Hulu or Sony's VOD channel, would you keep this up? Could you keep it up? It's not outside the realm of possibility, Dan Harmon did say Sony was interested in continuing it in some other way and he said he would actively discuss it with him. If there is a season 6 of Community in any form (an almost literal impossibility) I will make a season 4 thread for Last Man Standing and post timely reviews for every episode
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May 12, 2014 21:12
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hcreight posted:Mods request thread title change to "Occupation Never Learns." Literally the worst outcome of the toxx is I get to see more episodes of Community
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May 12, 2014 21:48
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CaptainHollywood posted:If you keep giving every other episode an "F" - how am I supposed to differentiate the bad, the terrible and the truly awful? I dunno if that is a joke but I actually spend serious time figuring out what grade I want to give an episode C grades are for average episodes (or episodes that have bad parts but are balanced by the good), D grades for episodes that are bad/terrible but have some sort of redeeming aspect, and F grades are for episodes that are for episodes that genuinely offend me in some way on top of being so awful, whether genuinely or at a specific point within the episode, that it discounts any positive parts or parts that I enjoyed Also your link is embedded hollywood
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May 12, 2014 23:34
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Last Man Standing "Attractive Architect" Season 2, Episode 9 I don't get this show. I mean, usually I do- it's conservative fearmongering dogma disguised, poorly, as a third-rate ABC 'family' sitcom, but then every once in a while you get a weirdly progressive episode like "High Expectations" or an episode that drops the facade entirely and is a mere examination of these terrible characters' terrible lives, like "Putting a Hit on Christmas". Then "Attractive Architect" comes along and tries to be all three of these things at once, and ends up being none of them. It's both liberal and conservative, progressive and regressive, deep and shallow, mocking and sincere, and ends up a schizophrenic mess of an episode. This doesn't feel like an episode of television that tried to be something more than it was and hit short of the mark- a common complaint for, say, certain season 3 Community episodes -this just felt like what would happen if you sat, say, Tina Fey and Ted Nugent together in a room together and asked them to write an episode about wage and employment disparity between sexes in America. The episode opens with a visit from an old friend of Mike's, Bill McKendree (Richard Karn). If that name sounds familiar to you, he played Al on Home Improvement. It's a dangerous game for LMS to play, reminding us all of a much better ABC sitcom star vehicle for Tim Allen, but it works, mostly because his entire character is an excuse for the LMS writers to write in a bunch of references to Home Improvement. Which, by LMS standards, is some high loving comedy. Anyways Bill is apparently a big-shot architect Mike frequently uses when expanding the Outdoor Man franchise, and fully expects to have this one in the bag. Then Ed comes into frame with Alyssa (Jackie Seiden), a hot young architect, in tow. Ed predictably wants to hire her (because of her "portfolio", Mike ineptly innuendos), and Mike predictably doesn't, because she's hot so that must mean she doesn't know what she's doing. Ed sends Mike home with the architect proposals with a challenge to pick what he feels is the best. At the Baxter house, Vanessa is preparing to go to a funeral- apparently Bruce Jenkins, her coworker, has died, and due to the vacancy Vanessa has attained a promotion at work. Mike remarks about his architectual problems, which predictably offends Vanessa an attractive, intelligent woman who has struggled against the glass ceiling. After an all-too-obvious argument, Vanessa storms out of the scene to attend the funeral. At the funeral she learns that she was awarded the promotion over another, marginally more qualified female geologist, Dr. Pullman- Vanessa received her degrees from Ohio State, and Dr. Pullman has received the exact same degrees from Yale. No other statement about their comparative qualifications exist within the episode but we can generally assume they've worked for the company at least roughly the same length of time. Dr. Pullman is presented as a, well, dumpy, socially awkward woman, so the episode seems to imply that Vanessa's looks did have some influence on her promotion. Dr. Pullman and Vanessa argue, then commiserate as they note that "they should be running the company over the men" and that none of their superiors have PhDs- only Vanessa and Dr. Pullman do. During all of this, Eve has hidden all of the cosmetics in the house so Mandy, distraught, is forced to "endure" a day at high school without any makeup. As Vanessa returns home from the funeral, so too do Eve and Mandy, the latter of which notes how her life was changed both for the better and for the worse due to not wearing makeup- her popular friends didn't associate with her, most of the student body ignored her, and teachers would call on her because they assumed she "would actually know the answers". The parallels to the attractiveness argument pervading the main plot are obvious. Mike and Vanessa argue about the glass ceiling, including an incredibly painful, drawn-out dissection of the glass ceiling analogy itself -Mike at one point argues that breaking the glass ceiling "would cause black mold. And who's gonna clean that black mold? A MAN!" -until Vanessa urges Mike to reconsider the architectual bids and choose the best entry, gender aside. The final scene of the episode entails Bill, in Mike's office, learning he has lost the bill to Alyssa (of course), which eventually devolves into Bill revealing he's a massive sexist. But it's all played for laughs so I think the audience is supposed to be on Bill's side? It's a bizarre final scene of a bizarre episode. I watched this episode twice and I'm still not sure of its gender politics. It presents the glass ceiling as a truism- Vanessa notes that women make "77 cents on the dollar" of men, and this isn't a laugh line, so clearly we're supposed to buy the fact that gender inequality in the workplace is a thing. But then there's all these scenes that contradict it- Mike himself argues the glass ceiling doesn't exist. And I'm still not sure if it presents women getting promoted based on looks as a good or bad thing, and it's even hard to argue that Vanessa doesn't deserve the promotion over Dr. Pullman -they present the other lady as an asocial boor, and it's hard to argue against the fact that being social is a direct benefit in determining who gets a promotion. Being able to integrate and gel with others in the workplace is huge, and just from what we see Vanessa acts the way one who's upwardly mobile on the corporate ladder should. This episode is just bizarre, and again, schizophrenic in all parts, from tones to plots to general message. This is most clearly seen in the credits tag, where during an Outdoor Man video log Mike decries the death of the "White American Male" to, in particular, women, but it's not presented as a problem inasmuch a motivation for the men in the world to perform better to keep up with their female counterparts. From one perspective, that's a very progressive view, but the mere assertion that the White American Male is anything but utterly dominant in every aspect of American culture is by definition conservative fearmongering. It's an episode that attempted to serve three different masters and ended up a confusing mess. Which means, by Last Man Standing's...standards, a decent enough episode, I guess. Grade: D Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 01:55 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 01:51
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Postal Parcel posted:From that video honestly if the show became less directly confrontational it would make the show a LOT better, even if it was "man black people...no good huh?" "you know Mike, you have a point. Black people ARE no good"
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May 13, 2014 15:28
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Alipes posted:Do you have PMs Occ? Yeah
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May 13, 2014 16:07
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Last Man Standing "The Help" Season 2, Episode 10 I kinda feel like I should just copy-paste my review for "Attractive Architect" and do a find-replace of every instance of the word "woman" and "female" with "immigrant" and "Hispanic". It's bizarre that in two back-to-back episodes Last Man Standing tries, awkwardly, to seem more progressive and sensitive than it actually is, but then fails in the clutch as it, at the last minute, holds onto its conservative propagandist roots. Who are these episodes even for? Not liberals, because we have every mention of undocumented workers use the charged term "illegal immigrants", and Mike himself remarks about immigrants, quote, "If they're so honest, why are they willing to go under the floor of a van to get in this country?" and, "That's the problem! They never go back!" Not for conservatives either, because every Hispanic in this episode is portrayed as hardworking, honest, and providing for their families- the exact opposite message the conservatives wish to present undocumented workers as. The politics of this episode, much like the previous one, are a confusing, atonal minefield. The main plot of the episode revolves around the Baxters getting a new, legal, Guatemalan immigrant housekeeper, Blanca (Carla Jimenez), after their last housekeeper died. Apparently the Bartmans, one of the Baxters' neighbors, have moved and Blanca is now "on the market", as it were. This dovetails into Mike deciding to check to make sure everyone working at Outdoor Man is legal, most specifically on the loading dock- see because that's where all the brown people work. Ed aptly notes that he doesn't check the loading dock's papers because he doesn't go "looking for trouble", which seems like an altogether decent enough way to run a business, to be honest. Mike and Ed travel to the loading dock and greet the genial, hardworking, honest foreman JJ. You can probably see where this is going- guess who's the only undocumented worker on the loading dock? Yep, JJ. JJ gets fired, Mike feels guilty about it, especially because JJ has apparently worked there for a decade, the show makes a bunch of Mexican jokes, and the end of the episode is tied up in a neat little bow as Ed uses his immigration lawyer to legally get JJ his job back. Hooray? Here's my problem with the episode: It's entirely built around resolving a problem that Mike caused. The end of the episode they're right back to where they started, except Ed has spent many presumably thousands of dollars. JJ is never portrayed negatively except for his legal status- he's the paragon of the quote-on-quote "one of the good illegals". Heck, he even thanks Ed and Mike, when he's fired, for giving him the job in the first place, which smells real Uncle Tom-y. What is the point of this episode? I guess how great rich white men are? But even that point is kind of undercut by the subplot involving Carla being such a great housekeeper that Eve, Boyd, and Mandy become even lazier assholes, which almost feels like a commentary on how we treat Hispanics in this country (although I don't think this show is sophisticated or politically nuanced enough to make that observation). This all changes when Mike encourages Carla to treat his kids like he would her own, which ends with Carla threatening to bury the kids up in sand and letting "los gatos" feast on them unless they clean up after themselves. Hah, hah, because she's brown, you see?! Nothing in this episode seems to have a real point and the contradiction of the fairly racist Mexican jokes against the portrayals of all Hispanics being basically human paragons makes no real sense. Are brown people bad or good? Last Man Standing has no real idea. The most damning thing I can say about this episode is that although it was bad and fairly offensive at points, it wasn't so bad or so offensive in comparison to the other episodes of this season to be an F episode. So by virtue of being less worse, it's...kinda okay? Man, I don't even know any more. Grade: D Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 17:22 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 17:11
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TRIPLE POST SON 1) Please change the thread title to "Occupation Watches Seasons 2 and 3 of Last Man Standing- gently caress [Mod Challenge ITT]" Gonna watch and review all of Season 3 now, , everyone thank Alipes (seriously thanks dude)2) I don't think this review was very good, I struggled with something interesting to say and I'd like to get people's reactions on this specific one
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May 13, 2014 17:20
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Last Man Standing "Mike's Pole" Season 2, Episode 11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXx0pWpszKg Tim Allen (2014) (Copyright Occupation Music Studios) Tim Allen You're a Republican now Always hatin' somebody And sabotagin' somehow You're a jingoistic douchebag Carin too much 'bout a pledge Allegiances, American flag Back away from that real dumb edge You really don't remember That time you were arrested? All the cocaine in your head Snitchy Tim Allen Tim Allen Look how far you've fallen If everybody wants you Why is it nobody's watchin'? You don't have to answer Just check it ratings ti-ime, ohh Whiny Tim Allen Tim Allen (Tim Allen) I think we got your number (Tim Allen) I think we got the show premise (Tim Allen) That you've been hidin' under (Tim Allen) But you really don't remember All that racist poo poo you said? You wish all black people were dead Racist Tim Allen Tim Allen Eve's in ROTC? Will you let her in the main lines? Or will you cave to the misogyny? Will you let Ed be a dummy? Say sexist poo poo about your daughter, too? Here's a novel idea oka-aay: Just be a good dad, you loon And you really don't remember All that sexist poo poo you said? Hating women in your head Sexist Tim Allen Tim Allen Tim Allen (Tim Allen) I think we got your number (Tim Allen) I think we got the show premise (Tim Allen) That you've been hidin' under (Tim Allen) But you really don't remember All that racist poo poo you said? You wish all black people were dead Racist Tim Allen Grade: C Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 19:27 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 19:17
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GaussianCopula posted:You might be interested in the fact that Last Man Standing has double the viewers on a friday that Parks and Recreation gets on thursday. Yeah, I know, but it rhymed, which was more the point
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May 13, 2014 19:37
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Last Man Standing "Quarterback Boyfriend" Season 2, Episode 12 This review's gonna be short because, overall, there's not that much to say about this episode. An altogether solid start to finish episode with some laughs and a solid enough- but nowhere near spectacular - no strings plot makes for a dull review, since it essentially boils down to "that was decent enough". It wasn't painful. If I didn't have to review this episode I could conceivably "watch" this by putting in on in the background whilst doing other things- most notably laundry. This, I think, is amongst the highest praise this show can achieve- a painless bit of fluff -since the Christmas episode was such an outlier in all respects. The episode kicks off with the high school star quarterback , Greg Archer, attaining local notoriety as he is in the final decision time to determine which college he will sign with. Mike realizes that this is the perfect opportunity to hire him at the store for "local PR", an overall intelligent move on Mike's part. Greg, of course, turns out to be an entitled womanizing boor, and Mandy turns out to also of course want to date him, and of course the final scene ends with Greg standing her up on their date to bang another chick as instead Mandy realizes what a great guy Kyle is, continuing the will-they-won't-they teasing of earlier episodes. This ain't some world-shaking stuff, here. There are multiple reasons why this episode is decent and I want to note them for future criticisms. First reason: Make the plot focused on an external conflict over an internal division. Most to all of the previous plots of the show have been about Mike in conflict with someone else in the main cast over, usually, an ideological disagreement. Ideological disagreements one, can't really be resolved (because nobody really ever changes their mind over their beliefs and instead at best, just cedes to the other side), and two have no stakes. Mike doesn't loving exist, why do I care who the gently caress he's voting for? There's no character connection there, because it is quite literally meaningless. Finally it usually makes one character the rear end in a top hat an as a result nobody in the main cast is sympathetic because, in order for conflict to occur LMS' writers make one person a complete douchebag. Second reason: Make the plot apolitical. LMS is really bad at expressing politics in general, and the best episodes of the show have been either an attempt at nuance or the exact opposite, which was a complete and utter lack of any sort of political opinion. There's nothing inherently wrong with having politics as a main point of discussion within the show, it's just that the LMS writing staff is really, really bad at it beyond cheap one liners and caricatures. Since the main cast is full of, at the very least, decent comedic actors that can handle a "funny" script- or at least make it not unpleasant to watch. And yes, that includes Tim Allen- he can be a brilliant comedic actor when he's not Archie Bunker played straight. Third reason: Center the plot around a decent character. In this case the plot was mostly a Kyle-centric episode, who is either my favorite or second-favorite character on the show. This episode also has major Mandy screentime, which works due to the triage the show has done to the perception of her character where she's still really dumb, but not bordering on mentally retarded. In contrast, a Ryan, Mike, and to a lesser extent Kristen-centric plot is usually terrible because of how awful the characters are, I simply have no emotional connection to the story and just want everyone onscreen to get hit by a bus. Fourth reason: Focus the episode. This episode, essentially, only has one real plot. This is to the episode's benefit as it doesn't feel like a tonal or narrative mess like the previous episodes have had, or have so many things going on that the climax/denouement/resolution feels completely out of nowhere. By trying to tell a simple story with a simple A-to-B-to-C, it's difficult to almost impossible to screw that up Final reason: Bring the jokes. This is the most important, and something the show has struggled with. I would like and maybe even enjoy he most racist, sexist, soapbox-y episode of LMS if it were funny, but the writing staff has no earthly idea how to write jokes 60+% of the time, and it shows. It also makes the soapboxing and hatred all the more unpalatable because that's all you're getting. Anyways, to sum up: Breezy and inoffensive. Frequently funny, or at least amusing. Grade: B Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 19:51 on May 16, 2014 |
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May 16, 2014 19:48
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Last Man Standing "What's In a Name?" Season 2, Episode 13 There are two types of bad that every bad episode of Last Man Standing can be: The political claptrap conservative hogwash bad that is common to this godawful excuse of a "sitcom", and the badness of LMS taking an unfunny premise, then completely and utterly running whatever two-second nonjoke, that mental fart, into the ground so thoroughly and completely that, in a way, it ends up kind of impressive how bad it is. This episode has both those things! (Apologies for the delay between this and the last review, I had to go take a long, hard look at my life and how it has come to this after reviewing episode 12. Weird fact: Ever since I started reviewing LMS, I can't feel sadness any more. That's...normal, right?) Mike learns that Boyd has taken Ryan's last name, Vogelson, on school papers. This makes Mike upset because Mike wants Boyd to have the Baxter last name. Somehow this whole thing transforms into Mike and Ryan competing over who Boyd is gonna race Pinewood Derby cars with and whoever wins Boyd goes with to the race? I honestly don't really get how that particular dot really connects, but whatever. Then Mike learns a lesson about Ryan trying to be a good father and ~courageously lets Boyd go with his Dad even though he won~. End credits, everyone feels good, go home. There's so many problems with this episode I don't really know where to start. For context, I'm a bastard born out of wedlock who took his mother's last name, so in this particular case this episode actually hits close to home. The problems with this episode are myriad. For one, Mike doesn't really have a problem with Boyd taking Ryan's last name inasmuch as Boyd not taking Mike's last name. It makes the whole episode feel disingenuous as Mike rails on and on about how Ryan was a deadbeat who wasn't there for the first 2-3 (it's never made exactly clear) years of Boyd's life, so Ryan doesn't "deserve" to force Boyd to have his last name. But that's not the problem Mike has; the problem is clearly that Mike wants the Baxter name to continue on with Boyd even though he's not Boyd's father. It's just disgusting that Mike turns an issue that should be a complicated and empathetic one, what children who are born out of wedlock's last names should be, and makes it into this personal vendetta he has to continue his last name. It's turning Boyd into a political football, which, much like the episode "Circle of Life", is some really gross and offensive poo poo that LMS pulls and almost always leads to a terrible episode. Another problem is is that Mike makes a big, loud deal- including focusing on this issue in one of his godawful vlogs -that Ryan doesn't "deserve" to pass on his last name (due to the aforementioned 'being a deadbeat') and that, to "honor" the mothers'- in this case Kristen's -sacrifices children born out of wedlock should take their mother's last name. The entire argument is twofaced garbage because it is established at the very beginning of the episode that Kristen is fine with Boyd taking the last name of Vogelson. If we're supposed to be honoring Kristen's sacrifices, why is there a problem in the first place? Because it's a loving lie meant to engender sympathy when in reality this entire conflict is engineered around Mike's megalomania. And it's gross. Again, to route this back to my own life experiences, my Mom had me out of wedlock, gave me her last name, then remarried. This means that I'm literally the only person in my family with my last name and, in particular, my family name ends with me. However, if and when I have kids I'm not gonna force them to take my last name if they don't want to, nor will I force any SO I have to take it. The whole point is that I decided, internally, to take my Mom's last name and wasn't influenced by any sort of patri- or matriarchal influences. I did it because, ultimately, it felt right and I don't regret that decision at all. This sexist garbage takes all the sort of agency that Kristen, or indeed, Boyd could have and feeds it into Mike's ego. It's just gross especially to the audience of people like me such an episode is meant to pander to. It doesn't help that the entire argument feels one-sided. At no point is Ryan really unreasonable- he asked Kristen and she consented to Boyd listing his name at school as "Boyd Vogelson". The focus of all the offensive conservative garbage is from Mike. Ryan, unlike in "Circle of Life", is presented as reasonable throughout and mostly just humoring Mike's weirdness. It just makes the conflict all the more contrived and unnecessary. Additionally the focus of all of Mike's arguments revolves around how Ryan was a deadbeat for two or three years. There's multiple problems with this- it's never portrayed onscreen what life was like before Ryan came back into the picture, so all we have is Mike's unreliable word about how much of a piece of poo poo Ryan was. It also seems kind of petty since Boyd is at least 5, so at this point Ryan has been, at least, in Boyd's life almost as long as he hasn't been. Plus, let's be loving honest- Ryan not being around in the first two to three years of Boyd's life probably had little to no negative effects on his development, considering that's the age when kids are learning of the concept of object permanence and walking. But that's not all! Remember when I said this episode was two types of bad? Well, the latter type of badness arrives in spades during the B plot, when Mandy decides to make a viral video a la "Friday" with Kristen and Eve. If your toes curled unnecessarily, and your eyes dilated automatically, when reading that line, oh, let me assure you- it's so much worse than you could imagine. Watching that loving video might be the single most unpleasant experience I have had with LMS and might be one of the worst overall things I have seen this year. It's so bad, Jesus loving Christ. A challenge, readers: pull up Last Man Standing season 2, episode 13, then watch it from 19 minutes in. Try and sit through that. I loving dare you. Grade: F Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 18:23 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 18:14
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Last Man Standing "Buffalo Bill" Season 2, Episode 14 "They're watching Ellen with Trevor's two moms." What do you think when you read that line? If it were spoken aloud? I challenge all of you to speak that line aloud to yourself. What is your first reaction? It's an expository line right? One that merely conveys a factual state? That's all it is, right? Trevor has two moms, and the eponymous 'they' are watching Ellen. What if I were to tell you that line, in this episode of Last Man Standing, is a laugh line? And a significant one, not one in which there's some nervous laughter in response. I'm talking a comedic pause so the audience can yuk it up. I'm not crazy in thinking the only way you'd find this line funny is if you're a giant homophobe right? Like literally there is no other context in which that line is funny. It isn't a callback, nor a reference, and I've provided full context for the line as spoken. As far as I can determine the only possible way you'd find this line funny is if you find the concept of lesbians an inherently laughable one, much less ones that watch Ellen. Because she's like...a lesbian too, so clearly these lesbians are trying to push their lesbianism on their not-lesbian son. I think? In an episode chalk-full of casual racism and some really outright vile treatment of Ryan and parental rights in general, this stood out to me as the most offensive. Merely because it seemed to be inserted for the sole purpose, of an episode not about homosexuality or being gay in any way, shape, or form, to score a mean-spirited and really hacky "joke" at the expense of a whole group of marginalized people. It's just...so bad and dumb. The episode in question isn't much better. We open on Mandy, Eve, and Boyd in a rehearsal for a Buffalo Bill-inspired Wild West show that Outdoor Man is putting on (hence the name of the episode). Apparently it's Buffalo Bill's birthday or something. The show features, of course, a wagon under attack by "Indians", which is saved by the rootin' tootin' gunslinging of Annie Oakley as played by Eve. In the opening scene, as per usual, we get the usual self-aggrandizing complaining from Mike et al about how they have to PC up the Buffalo Bill show, removing mentions of such words as "Injuns" and "wampum", despite how as Ed disingenuously notes "that's what the Buffalo Bill show would describe the [Native Americans]." Enter Ryan stage right. Apparently it is "his" day to see Boyd, and he's offended that one, Mike didn't let him know where Boyd was and took him for the day, and two, that Mike is making him take part in something that glorifies the massacre of innocents. There's a lot of issues with this scene. One, any American who's ever cracked open a history textbook is aware that everything Ryan ascribes to what the Americans did during American Expansionism is accurate, and in some ways is whitewashed. This isn't a debatable issue that LMS likes to trade in- it's a cold hard fact that America killed millions upon millions of innocent, peaceful indigenous peoples during the mid to late 1800s. That happened. Moreover, we, as in America, directly and aggressively subjugated and "ghetto-ized" the Native Americans we didn't kill such that many to most Native Americans are set up to either fail or operate quasi-legal operations such as cigarette/drug shops and/or casinos. It's a disgusting, depressing negative cycle of depression for most to many Native Americans that lasts to this day because most Americans simply do not care, and only care inasmuch as to make Native Americans into "smokum kemosabe" caricatures. So when you get lines like this: Ryan: "All right, then let's teach him the real history. The road west was paved with the blood of the indigenous population." Mike: "But it got paved. And when do we stop paying for stuff that happened hundreds of years ago?" It's not only untrue, and unfunny, but dangerous, malicious misinformation that only seeks to marginalize an already long-suffering people we literally tried, and very nearly succeeded, in wiping from existence. Again, America tried to wipe out an entire race of people, and even unlike the current black problems in America, the Native American struggle gains little to no media coverage and has no significant voice. This episode, which is quite literally a Native American minstrel show (including the fact that everyone refers to them as "Indians"), only seeks to hurt public perception of the Native American plight which gets no coverage or notice as it is. So it's all the more ridiculous we're supposed to be allied against Ryan. By every quantifiable measurement of a character being in the right, he is in the right: It's his day to see Boyd. What Mike and crew are putting on is insulting and belittling to an entire race of people and factually incorrect on every count. But let's continue. After the rehearsal Mandy, who has been up to this point been openly flirting with Kyle, walks with him to her home. They flirt and share an almost-kiss which Kyle, of course, obliviously completely misses the cue on. At the Baxter home, Ryan arrives early to meet Kristen in private. Apparently he has had a lawyer draw up documents so his visitation rights are official and not just a handshake agreement between him and Kristen, so Mike can no longer violate it willy-nilly. As far as we have seen, this is a completely and utterly reasonable request for Ryan to make, so of course Mike flips out and asserts that Ryan has no rights (because as Mike once AGAIN reiterates, Ryan wasn't around for three years). Despite the legal inaccuracies of a claim, let's examine this situation rationally: Ryan has a reasonable request to see his kid. He has a reasonable request for the times and days (I think it's 2 days out of every week and every other weekend?) he wants to see Boyd. His request, which has been agreed to by Kristen, has been violated by Mike. And...somehow, Mike is in the right here? What? Why are we supposed to be taking this rear end in a top hat's side? Why are we supposed to be cheering when Mike snipes about the reason that Ryan left was because Kristen didn't get an abortion? How is any of this an ethical or moral thing for Mike to be doing? Why is it that apparently, we should forget the horrible human atrocities that a country made two hundred years ago, but it's perfectly fine for Mike to not get over the fact that an 18-year-old kid was an rear end in a top hat who ran away from his responsibilities for a couple of years- like, you know, rear end in a top hat 18-year-old kids are wont to loving do? This episode is so weird and bad in Mike's self-righteousness, and at no point does it show Mike as in the wrong or learning why what he says and does is offensive and how treating Boyd like a pawn so he can totally show his daughter's baby daddy up is a really hosed up, sociopathic thing to do. The only saving grace of this episode- because, no, at no point does Mike realize what a loving douche he is or get called out for it -is the scene at the end of the episode between Kristen and Ryan where Ryan asserts that even though Mike is an rear end in a top hat, he is right inasmuch as Ryan was a coward who ran away from his problems, and he promises Kristen to always be there for Boyd. It was a genuinely touching scene that also backdoor gives the show ZERO loving DEFENSE to use "Ryan was a deadbeat dad" as an excuse for Mike to be a dick to him. Ryan's owned his mistakes and is attempting to change for the better, which is literally the best anyone can ever do. From here forward this show is going to be graded much more harshly if they make this a dramatic point since the episode completely resolved the issue. So expect more F's in the future I guess. Grade: D Random Thoughts:
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May 21, 2014 02:52
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IRQ posted:You broke the tables too hard to read that E Plurbus Occupanus, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing for my sanity. I fixed it whoops
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May 21, 2014 02:57
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DarklyDreaming posted:If this was any other show, a deliberate parallel would be drawn where Mike realizes his "Who cares it was centuries ago" defense for maintaining his cowboys and injuns display can also be applied to Ryan wanting to be a better father than he was two years ago. He'd have an epiphany, some slow licensed music would play in the background and we'd all learn something. Instead we get the opposite because Mike is right about everything. Ryan literally uses that as a defense and Mike just straight up ignores it
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May 21, 2014 03:56
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 13:44 |
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It actually gets really great ratings for ABC on Fridays and gives them valuable brand differentiation, considering all of their other programming is for upwardly mobile single women In addition once a show airs its full third season it's all but guaranteed a fourth season renewal no matter how bad the ratings are because that guarantees a decent syndication deal Basically when I wear my ratings analysis hat I insist that LMS gets renewed until, essentially, the end of time because it has to be hella cheap to make and pulls in great ratings to help ABC be the dominant force on Fridays they currently are
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May 21, 2014 15:20
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