Daredevil - Marvel sin fyrste superhelt

På fredag kom Marvel med sin fyrste storsatsing på faktiske superheltar på fjernsyn. Me har tidlegere hatt to seriar om dei hemmelege agentane som ofte jobbar med superheltar, men "Daredevil" på Netflix er den fyrste til å vera ein superheltserie heilt gjennom. Kor bra ble det?

Eg har relativt liten erfaring med Daredevil, båe som karakter og konsept. Men utfrå ein film som ingen snakkar om, og nokre animerte serier frå 90-tallet så veit eg cirka kva det går i. Ein gutunge blir blind, og så blir dei andre sansane hans så sterke og utrulege at han kan sjå betre enn dei fleste andre. Dette er også grunnkonseptet frå Netflix-serien.

Men eg vil ikkje snakka for mykje om kva serien handlar om, men heller om kva den prøvar å gjere. Kva den er meir enn den visar. "Daredevil" er kanskje det beste som Marvel har produsert til dags dato. Dette inkluderar alle filmar og tidlegere seriar. Marvel har laga sjukt mykje gøy, og "Daredevil" er på langt nær så gøy som "Guardians of the Galaxy" eller "Avengers", men den er det fyrste Marvel har laga som er verkeleg bra. Me får tid til å kjenne karakterane over dei rundt tretten timane serien går over, betre enn nokon av dei andre superheltane me har blitt introdusert for. No verker det nesten som om Iron Man og Captain America er meir som bekjente enn karakterer eg faktisk kjennar godt. Det blir litt urettferdig å samenlikne appelsin og eple, men slik er det no, det gjer serien ein valdsamt god overhand.

Det som kanskje er stiligast med serien er at Daredevil faktisk er den fyrste verkelege helten i marvel sitt kinematiske univers (Marvel Cinematic Universe, MCU). Matt Murdock går ut på gatane og kjempar mot kriminelle fordi han meinar det er rett, og fordi han har moglegheita. Ikkje fordi nokon har bedt han om det, han vil helst ikkje at folk i det heile tatt veit han gjer det. Då blir han noko heilt anna enn Tony Stark som oftast havnar i trøbbel fordi han seiar noko dumt, og er berre ute på gatana for å rydde opp når han har vore med å skapt problema. Steve Rogers er kanskje litt nærmare, men han óg jobbar for ein organisasjon som er ute etter å redde verda. Han er meir ein politimann enn ein vaskekte superhelt. Daredevil er der fordi folket treng han, ikkje fordi dei vil ha han. Og det er fantastisk å sjå ein serie som er så annleis frå det alle dei andre filmane opp til no har bygga opp. Dette er ingenting som filmane, men du kjem til å elske det.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt - They alive, dammit!

Netflix pumper på med serier i år og no er årets tredje serie på plass, komedien "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" skapt av Tina Fey ("30 Rock") og Robert Carlock ("30 Rock") med Ellie Kemper ("The Office") i den titulære hovudrolla.

Serien følgjer Kimmy Schmidt som har blitt holdt fanga i ein underjordisk bunker i femten år av ein gal prest som trudde jorda kom til å gå under. Når ho og dei tri andre kvinnene som ble holdt fanga blir invitert til New York på fjernsynsintervju bestem Kimmy seg for å bli att i håp om at det blir lettere å riste av seg stempelet "Mole Woman" som media gav dem. Ho får jobb som barnevakt hjå ein milliadærs kone og flytter inn i ein kjeller samen med ein strevande (les: arbeidslaus) skodespelar.

Eg vil seia at dette er den morosamste serien Netflix har gitt ut til dags dato, og det er vel kanskje ikkje så rart når du har Tina Fey og Robert Carlock bak spakane. Frå fyrste episode slår serien an og den gir aldri opp. Det er ingen innlevningsperiode som mange andre serier har, det verker som om du allereie har sett på serien i fleire sesongar når introsegmentet køyrer på for fyrste gong. Ingen klønete pilotepisode, ingen klønete sesongavslutning, ingenting av det som normalt sett er normen med sitcoms av denne typen.

Serien gjer det óg bra med koss den handterar historielinjar. Du kan i teorien hoppe inn og sjå kva som helst episode (med nokre unntak så klart), men det er tråder som går gjennom samtlege episodar med samtlege karakterer som stadig gir payoffs. Til og med episoder som fyrst verkar som filler-episoder (episoder som ikkje tilfører noko til serien) viser seg seinare til å ha introdusert karakterer og konsept som blir viktigare etterkvart som serien går. Det einaste eg har å klage på i serien er noko av greenscreen-bruken. Det er fint for meg om sitcoms helst vil bruke greenscreens, ofte er det berre tryggare, billegare, og ser nokså likt ut uansett. Men det er ein del scenar i serien som berre ikkje funkar på grunn av det, du ser med ein gong det er falskt og det tar deg ut av serien som elles ser nokså ekte ut. Heldigvis er det eit lite stykke mellom desse scenane.

Aftershocks - Fullt tilbake

"Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." er tilbake for fullt etter ein lang juleferie som sluttet på eit ekstremt spennende punkt. "MAOS" er kanskje enda mest kjent for å vera nokså treige til å kome i gong, og heller keisamt i lengda, men her bevisar dei at det er fjernsyn som er den mest spennende utposten for Marvels filma univers nett no.

I denne episoden hoppar me noko fram i tid frå i fjor. "What They Become" slutta med døden til sesongens dittil hovudskurk, Skye sine nye kreftar, og Trips død. "Aftershocks" bryr seg ikkje med å handtere den direkte ettermatten men går heller fram til når det er litt meir spennende, etter karakterene har hatt litt tid til å rydde opp etter all faenskapen. Skye er låst i eit glassbur for frykt av smittande utanomjordisk virus, Simmons ryddar opp den underjordiske byen og klargjer for oversvømming, Fitz slit med å fikse Skyes biometriske klokke, og Mack slit med alt som skjedde mens han var påverka av kva enn det var som fekk ham til å angripe sitt eiga lag.

Ein av dei verste og beste delane av denne episoden er at den berre byrjar "midt i", me får ikkje egenleg vite at dette er ei lita stund etter førre episode, og i nokre minutt verkar det nesten som at det har vore fleire vekar eller månedar. Eg likar det fordi me slipper den ganske vanlege catch-up-episoden som mange serier med midtsesongsfinaler har, den kor dei går gjennom heile sesongen opp til no og med får ikkje vite noko nytt før mot slutten. Her held det med ein kjapp recap av førre episode, etterfulgt av meir naturleg dialog som visar til kva som har skjedd opp til no.

Men min favoritting med episoden er at dei ikkje er redd for å bli rare. Serien har fått god tid til å modne seg etter halvanna sesong. Me har sett haugevis med filmar satt i same univers, me veit at det er ein rar verd, og no får me sjå den óg i "MAOS". Raina er no fullt mutant, med alle dei rare protesene som følgjer. Torner på hode og hendar, grøn hud, augelinsar, heile sulamitten som kven som helst kjent med fjernsynsvitsjon som "Stargate SG-1" og "Babylon 5" er godt kjente med.

Marvel har endeleg tatt det store spranget med seriane sine. Med "MAOS" i primetime på nettverksfjernsyn, "Agent Carter" i juleferien, og om ein måneds tid kjem óg "Daredevil" på Netflix som seinare óg får partnerseriar. DC har lenge eid fjernsynsmarkedet for superheltar, men no er det ikkje lenge før Marvel tar over alt her óg, og det passer meg heilt fint.

The Last Man on Earth - Mykje potensiale

"The Last Man on Earth" er ein ny komiserie skapt av skodespelar slash komikar Will Forte ("Nebraska", "30 Rock") som hovudsakleg handler om den titulære karakteren Phil Miller som tilsynelatande er den siste mannen på jorda. Serien har óg med seg dei populære Phil Lord og Chris Miller ("21 Jump Street", "The LEGO Movie") som visstnok hadde den originale ideen for serien før Will Forte løp avgarde med ideen i eiga retning.

Med så mange gode folk bak seg så har serien eit usedvanleg bra utgongspunkt, og når du plusser på det nokså uvanlege konseptet (for ein fjernsynsserie) så ender du opp med noko veldig interessant. Men lever det egenleg opp til alt som det kan? Eg tykkjar ikkje det. Serien er morosam, ja, nærmast hysterisk til tidar, men det blir relativt fort gamalt. Det fins to episoder på rundt tjue minutt kvar og eg føler at me allereie har gått gjennom det meste som kjem til å vera morosamt. Det hjelp heller ikkje heilt at lurekonseptet blir avslørt som lureri allereie i fyrste episode, for Phil er så klart ikkje den siste personen på jorda, det finn han ut når Carol (Kristen Schaal) dukker opp.

Det har seg slik at serien byrjar med Phil som køyrer landet rundt i ein buss og leiter etter andre som overlevde viruset som drepte alle han kjente. Overalt han drar skriv han skilt som viser til at han bur i Tuscon, Carol finn då eit av desse skilta og drar til byen for å spore ham opp. Problemet mitt her er at den lille montasjen verkar uendeleg mykje betre enn det serien leder opp til. I staden for å følgje ein mann som drar gjennom heile USA på letning etter folk mens han drar med seg alt det kulaste og dyraste han kan, og blir meir og meir deprimert når han ikkje finn nokon, så for me ein serie om ein mann som bur i eit skittent hus og må gå gjennom kvardagen med sin nye nabo som han så klart ikkje kjem overens med.

Ja, det er ein odd-couple-serie. Phil og Carol er heilt motsatte, og har handtert krisa på forskjellege måter. Kor Phil har stjålet alt han har og tatt den lettaste utvegen som løsning på alt har Carol prøvd å gjere alt så skikkeleg som mogleg. Ho har lyst på ny sivilisasjon mens han vil berre ha det gøy før han til slutt menneskeheita døyr med ham. Det blir berre for dumt når du allereie har dette kule konseptet, det er så mange andre vegar dei kunne gått.

Serien kan enda snu om og ta konseptet til nye høgdar, dei har nok ein eller anna plan som skal gjere det betre enn det det allereie er, men eg klarer berre ikkje å sjå kor den retningen ledar. Vitsar om toalettbasseng og ballar med fjes er morosamt berre så lenge, men eg er heller ikkje ute etter ein serie om ein mann og ei dame som prøver å bygge opp ein mikrosivilisasjon. Eg kjem nok uansett til å sjå vidare berre for nysgjerrighetens skuld, for eg har eit ørelite håp om at det enda kan bli kjempebra. Men eg tvilar.

Richie Rich - Ingen nostalgiatur

Om du ikkje har fått med deg at Netflix har fått seg ein "Richie Rich"-serie så er det ikkje din feil. For til tross for at serien er produsert for Netflix som ein del av ein stor avtale mellom Dreamworks og Netflix, så er serien så langt ikkje å finne på norske Netflix. Det stoppa dog ikkje meg frå å sjå den nyaste versjonen av ein av mindre favorittfranchisar frå barndommen.

I Netflix sin nye serie, produsert av YouTube-selskapet AwesomenessTV, følgjer me unge Richie Rich og hans famile, vener, og robotstuepike. For dei av dykk som har enten sett den gamle tegneserien, eller eit par av filmane frå 90-tallet er det lite dykk kjem til å kjenne att i denne nye versjonen. Her har Richie sjølv tent pengane han er så kjent for. Ved å på magisk vis forvandle gamle grønsakar til ein fornybar energikjelde som er betre enn noko anna så har han tent ein billion dollar over natta. Som bieffekt så har han då ikkje rike, kloke foretningsforeldre, men ein slask av ein åleinefar og ei sur syster som ikkje unner Richie noko som helst.

Frå fyrste scene så er det ikkje tvil om at dette er ein Disney Channel-ripoff. Nett same oppsettet som alt frå "Hannah Montana" til "The Suite Life on Deck", ned til reklamepausane. Me får latter som ikkje passar inn, gisp og ååh-ing for kvar minste ting, og kvar einaste episode løsar seg opp på berre eit par sekund etter ein passande monolog. Dette er langt frå det som me normalt sett assosierar Netflix Originals, det er ikkje nokon "House of Cards" eller "Marco Polo", ikkje ein gong for sin eiga sjanger.

Det største problemet til serien er at den ikkje brukar konseptet bra nok. Her har me ein gutunge som plutseleg er rikast i verda, men veldig lite handlar egenleg om kva han gjer med dei pengane. På grunn av budsjett så får me ikkje ein gong sjå noko spesielt til kule privatfly og romskip. Eit par scenar har ein jetpack på deling, og eit svevande surfebrett, men bortsett frå det så er det lite som tilseiar at Richie Rich er nettopp Rike Rikesen. Eg seiar ikkje at dei burde ha hevet i trynet på oss kor mykje peng han har, og løst alle problemene som kjem med pengar, men me kunne gjerne sett litt meir av det, då det faktisk er sjølve konseptet bak karakteren.

Serien har dog ein veldig stilig verd som den så vidt snakkar om frå tidar til tidar, med berre sisteepisoden dedikert fullstending til den. Robotane. Irona som er robotstuepiken som alltid følgjer Richie Rich rundt er den mest konstante påminninga om at Richie er rik, men serieprodusentane har klart å bruka ho til mykje meir enn det. Når du fyrst kjem forbi det litt ekle stadiumet kor du ser at ein gutunge har kjøpt ein robot med utsjåande til ein kvinneleg modell i tjueåra og putta ho i ein stuepikeuniform med kort skjørt, så har dei laga ei flott verd som hintar på eit univers fullt av robotar som berre venter på å bli sett. Ho ser på egen såpeopera om robotar, mykje som "All My Circuits" i "Futurama", snakkar titt og ofte om koss robotar og/eller asteroidar kjem til å utrydde menneskene når den tida kjem, og har kjærleikforhald til støvsugare og høgtalare. Skodespelar Brooke Wexler gjer ein flott jobb med det ho har fått utdelt og blir lett den morosamste karakteren i serien, og er heldigvis ikkje like underbrukt som robotverda er. Eg håpar me får sjå mykje meir til den i andre sesongen som kjem på eit ubestemt tidspunkt.

Alt i alt er dette ein serie som det ikkje er spesielt vits i å sjå med mindre du som meg likar dårlege Disney Channel-seriar. Det er ikkje noko i denne serien som du ikkje kan få frå kva som helst anna serie på Nickelodeon eller Disney, anna enn eit flott sideplott om våre framtidige robotherskare så klart. Det er fin bakgrunnsunderhaldning for når du jobbar med noko viktigare, eller kanskje det til og med ikkje er så gale for smårollingane i familen som serien faktisk er beregna på. Men om du håpar på nostalgiatur til Macaulay Culkin eller David Gallagher så må du sjå ein anna plass, for dette er eit hundre prosent noko anna.

DW: Flatline - Keeping It Up

"Doctor Who" does yet another monster-of-the-week style episode, but it's very good.

One of the things I've come to really enjoy about "Doctor Who" is the way they take seemingly unconnected concepts and strings them together to make a sci-fi adventure. This week's episode is about beings from a two-dimensional universe coming into ours wrecking havoc. Are they as evil as their actions suggest? Or are they just being misunderstood by creatures who've never experienced their reality?

There is little to no advancement in any of the series wide arcs this episode, except from a few throwaway lines here and there, but that is totally fine. This is the kind of episode that people will use to introduce their fans to "Doctor Who". It perfectly sums up what it is about, and how the series' universe works. You have the Doctor being stuck in a weird situation, alien monsters hunting down humans, and the various dragged-alongs who have to deal with what is going on. It's perfectly capable of standing on its own.

I still have some trouble with the kind of VFX they are using from time to time. Some simple stuff look very bad, whilst other seemingly more complex shots look above passable. It's not bad enough for me to get thrown out of the story every time it happens, but it's bad enough that I start to wonder why they are prioritising they way that they are. Do they have too small a budget? Are they saving their money for a big episode down the line? I don't think it's anything other than them not being able to present the material the way they want to, but the questions still linger.

DW: Mummy on the Orient Express - Monster Madness

We're at the eight episode of the eight series of new Doctor Who (or NuWho as it's sometimes called by its fans). We're over halfway through the first series of a brand new Doctor. In the newest episode, "Mummy on the Orient Express" we move both forwards and backwards in "Doctor Who"'s history, but it eventually lands on being an episode better than the average of its series.

"A Mummy on the Orient Express" is about a mummy on the Orient Express, to make it even more interesting the mummy can only be seen by the people it is about to attack, and the Orient Express is in space. This is the Doctor's and Clara's last hurrah. Clara wants to settle down with Danny, and can't quite handle darting off with the Doctor on adventures all the time any more. She wants a more quiet life, a stable life, one where she can know more certainly that she won't die the next time she steps through a pair of blue doors.

This is definitely a step up from last week's episode, and the one before that, and the one before that. It's the best of the series since "Listen", and there aren't many episodes before that's better than "A Mummy on the Orient Express" either. This episodes has almost everything I look for in an episode of "Doctor Who". A wacky premise, a skewed theme, funny one-time characters, and the continuing of a plot larger than any single episode. One of the best things this episode did was keeping the Doctor and Clara separate throughout most of it, we get to really see the new Doctor on his own. See how he deals with things without having his companion constantly by his side.

The episode also limited itself to almost just one set piece, a train car. We do get to see some other sets, but only briefly, and to show the viewer that there is more to the train than just this one cart. It makes the monster-of-the-week all the more scary and intriguing, the characters cannot just escape it. They're stuck on a train in the middle of space. The monster itself it not as much scary as it is interesting. It has some interesting abilities, but not once when I saw it was I scared. It was too much of a monster-monster, it wasn't like the Silence or the Angels who have traits of normality in them, the mummy was just a mummy. Kind of a setback.

Overall this episode was good and exciting. One of the most entertaining episodes of the series, in terms of just entertainment value it might even out-rank "Listen" (which wins on having a lot more value than just being entertaining). It was also fun to see the Doctor acknowledge so many things that's been happening to him before, and who he was before. He seems to be a Doctor who is much more aware of his past selves than he has normally been since the relaunch. It isn't too much, it doesn't come off as too self-referential, but they are nice nods and certainly gets a giggle from a fan who knows just the right amount of trivia to recognise it when it comes.

DW: Kill the Moon - On the Shoulders of Giants [Spoiler levels: High]

The Doctor boasts about being able to see all of time and space unfold in front of him, but there are certain times he cannot see. Grey blobs when big decisions are being made. "Kill the Moon" is about just such a time.

In "Kill the Moon" we follow the Doctor, Clara, and her student Courtney to the Moon in the year 2049. There is something wrong with the Moon, something big, something that's making the tides of Earth go haywire, and has strengthened the Moon's own gravity to the point it's as good as equal to Earth's. What exactly is it that's happened?

It's hard to discuss this episode without giving away the major reveals of it, so I'm not even going to try. If you haven't watched the episode, and you don't know what's going to happen, stop reading. I'll give you a few sentences worth of fluff so you don't accidentally see the next sentence and end up being spoiled. Are you gone now? You should be. It turns out, the Moon isn't a moon. It's the egg of a giant, celestial being, and it's about to hatch. This brings an important ethical question to the table, do they kill it to ensure life on Earth continues on? Or do they risk it in favour of not instantly killing what might be the most amazing life form in the universe? The initial plan was to blow pieces of the Moon off, decreasing its mass and hopefully causing its effects on Earth to stabilise.

Although there are a lot of fluff and uninteresting bits in this episode leading up to the reveal of the egg (giant germ spiders, the Moon not containing any minerals, and more) this is a really great episode. The Doctor gets his regenerational definition in terms of how he deals with humans, each regeneration deals in their own way, albeit mostly just minor differences between them. This Doctor likes to let the humans decide a lot. He won't let his own interference mess with the decisions that will lay humanity on its path for the next several millennia, he wants us to decide for ourselves, set our own paths. But in doing so he loses Clara. She's all of a sudden slung into making history altering decisions, she's literally hovering her finger above the button that will change it all, and she despises the Doctor for it. He's always been there for her, and when she needs him the most he's gone. It's a nice exploration of what might be to come. The first moment where Clara realises that the Doctor won't always be there, that he won't always be nice to her, or necessarily do what is best for humanity. And she can't handle it.

Overall this is a good episode, but perhaps not an overly rememberable one. The goofy b-film plot of the first half, with a deserted Moon base overrun by alien bugs, doesn't quite set the viewer up for what they're going to get. It seems like it will be just another monster-of-the-week story, when it really isn't. They should've spent more time on the egg, revealed that early and made the rest of the story deal with them dealing with it. It would've been a lot more interesting.

MAOS: Heavy Is the Head - A New Show

"Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." (referred to as "Agents of Shield", "MAOS", or just "Shield" from here on out) came back for its second season last week. It managed to carry on the excitement from the ending of last season very well.

"Agents of Shield" had a bumpy start last season. They lost a lot of viewers due to a slow start, valuing establishing their concept and characters instead of starting right off with a bang. I have to admit, I was disappointed as well, it just didn't live up to anything else in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) up to that point. Luckily that all changed when they got their tie-in with "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and discovered what their strength truly was. Serialised television.

The show did improve some from just after the winter break, to be fair, but how they dealt with the outcome seen in "The Winter Soldier" was what really proved this show could be great. Many, including me, were worried the show would struggle to bring that feeling over to a new season, one that wouldn't have the possibility for a tie-in until the very end of the season with the second Avengers film "Age of Ultron". 

In this week's episode we get to see Coulson deal with being the new director of what the public view as a terrorist organization. We also get to go further in on the new additions to the roster, and some further exploration into the new state of affair for several characters. It's kind of amazing what the runners of the show dares to do. We're never formally introduced to the new character, not are we ever explicitly told what's happened since we last saw the rest of the characters. There are no exposition scenes, the information we get is for the most time given to us through natural conversation and our own conjecture. One of the new main characters is still very much a stranger, but it feels like he's been part of the team for as long as they say he has. Throw that on top of them mixing up the entire dynamic of what the show was in the first season, and you almost have a brand new series.

Unfortunately there are some VFX shots in this episode that are really poor, dragging down the overall impression of the new season. It's understandable that they can't have as well-crafted effects as the big-budget films set in the same universe, but they still stick out from an otherwise visually pleasing episode. They couldn't haveexcluded the shots as they were important to the general plot, but they should have done something different to make sure the shots didn't stand out in the way they did. There are however, some VFX shots that are very good. The most important shots that were both crucial to the plot and were relatively close to the camera were all very good, especially considering the format. They clearly had some prioritisation going on and knowledge of what they could and couldn't afford, which again excuses the poorer shots to a limited degree. 

Overall I really enjoyed the episode. It was a continuation of the last episode, which hopefully shows that they're wanting to keep the heavily serialised tone of the post "The Winter Soldier" part of the first season. This type of show clearly benefits from a bigger overarching plot, it just gets too repetitive and almost boring under a monster-of-the-week format. When you base your show on the inner working on a multi-national spy organisation the viewer wants something more than what they could get from almost any police procedural show. I'm looking forward to see how this season plays out. 

The Simpsons Guy - Crossover of Despair

"The Simpsons" and "Family Guy" finally get their television crossover. Two of the biggest animated shows on TV put together in the same hour-long event, what could go wrong? A lot. A lot is what could go wrong.

For as long as "Family Guy" has been around people have been comparing it to "The Simpsons", mostly through the accusations of it being a blatant rip-off of the latter. It's still grown to have its own major audience, and in later years they've been more or less equal, with the new animated sitcoms like "Bob's Burgers" now being cast as the new rip-offs. But there's never been a major crossover between the two shows, although they've both lived through some of the biggest crossover eras in recent television history. That all changed this past weekend, when the Griffins finally visited Springfield in the season premiere of the 13th season premiere of "Family Guy".

The premise for the episode is simple enough. The Griffins are fleeing Quahog after Peter's latest job as a comic strip creator renders him the most hated man in town. When they stop at a semi-isolated gas station their car is stolen and they're left stranded on the outskirts of Springfield. The remainder of the hour-long special takes place all across town, making sure to feature as many "The Simpsons" characters and running gags as they possible can, all leading up to a show-off between all the similar characters from both shows.

The best, and arguably only good, part of this episode is the art. Despite "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy" both having their own distinct art styles this episode manages to blend them convincingly. Making it actually seem like they're all part of the same world, and not just two different shows thrown in a blender. Of course there are some moments when the "Family Guy" aspect shines through more brightly than "The Simpsons", but considering it is actually an episode of "Family Guy" that is to be expected.

The narrative of the episode is however just mindless dribble. The empty-headed self-references get old fast, and when there's a whole forty six minutes of them you end up just waiting for it all to blow over. It is in the nature of crossover shows, of course, to compare the two shows and be nothing more than fan service, but that doesn't mean they're good. There's a reason most people don't like crossover shows, they end up feeling like neither show. Instead they're end up as a weird mix of ideas and characters that end up being remembered as nothing more than "that one time that guy from that one show was on that other show". It's a neat idea to want to see  your favourite characters together, but it's not a good one.

The last half hour or so of the show is probably some of the worst scenes in the history of either show. It's more or less just Homer and Peter fighting across Springfield, making sure to stop by any iconic set and get one-liners from the characters that have the time to say anything earlier on. Despite there being constant action you end up looking at the clock, wondering how much time there is left until the credits finally start to roll. It's just not fun anymore. It never was.

Overall this just wasn't good. Although you'll get a few cheap laughs here and there at the expense of one show or the other, there's nothing more meaningful to it, nothing that really keeps you interested. This is a crossover that's been in people's heads for so long that is just can't live up to what they've already imagined. This is an idea that Fox should've killed the moment it showed its head, but instead we're left with an episode that will scar both shows for as long as they remain relevant.

DW: The Caretaker - A Necessary Evil

"Doctor Who" has been mostly been increasing in quality as the current season has passed by, unfortunately tonight's episode is a bump down on the same graph.

In this week's episode the Doctor goes deep undercover at Clara's school, Coal Hill, as the caretaker. He's learned there's an alien killer robot hiding somewhere close by and he needs the school to trap and get rid of it. The story itself is no doubt a "Doctor Who" story. It's wacky, it's sci-fi, it's got the world by a thread, and only the Doctor can save it. But it still falls short of being an actual good episode.

First of all, the alien robot suffers from some of the weakest effects the show has had since the early days of the relaunch in 2005. They decided to go for special effects as they tend to do with most robots and aliens on "Doctor Who", but they didn't get it right. The robot never looked like an actual robot, it looked like a toy, like someone's plaything, it was hard to find it as menacing as it was supposed to be. Even when it started shooting deadly plasma beams all over the place I found myself not even flinching at its sight. We know the special effects team on "Doctor Who" can do good stuff. Just look at the Silence for example. They're just humans with a big mask and long-fingered gloves, but they still manage to be scary. This time they dropped the ball big time, hopefully it's due to them saving their production budget for something grander.

Secondly the sub-plot is tiring. It's once again centered around Clara and Danny and their relationship, making it absolutely cemented that Danny is going to stick around for a while. This episode marks the half-way point in the current season and despite Danny's promised big role the character is still rather unfamiliar, almost a stranger still. That's where the best thing about this episode comes into play. We absolutely need this episode if Danny's story arc is to lead to anything significant, or just long-standing, at all. We get to know Danny a lot more than we did before. We get to look more into his relationship with Clara, and we get glimpses of what the Doctor thinks of him. Hopefully this will mean there can be less get-to-know-Danny episodes in the future, and we can instead focus on the things that seems to be the main arcs of the coming seasons. Mainly the one about Heaven.

DW: Time Heist - Good But Forgettable

The Doctor still hasn't stopped running, and is going full speed in this action-packed adventure where time is of the essence.

In "Time Heist" we follow the Doctor, Clara, and two others whilst they're trying to rob the most secure bank in the galaxy for reasons they can't even remember. It's going back to the same sort of episodic theme that we first saw the Capaldi Doctor experience in "Into the Dalek". The episode is set in the distant future on an alien world inhabited by mostly humans who are living in a society that's a coin toss between a utopia and dystopia.

In this particular episode they stray away from the more heavy sci-fi tones that "Into the Dalek" delved into, and instead focuses on the people living in such a world. We're introduced to Psi and Saibra who in this episode are more or less as instrumental as the Doctor and Clara. They all have stakes in the robbery of the planet-wide bank, although they don't know for sure. At the beginning of the story they're greeted by a recording of themselves stating that they voluntarily wiped their own memories in order to go on the mission they had been handed. At the bank they face several obstacles, including a giant stalk-eyed alien who can remind you of the minotaur from "The God Complex". A big hulk of a creature walking slowly through hallways while showing you your deepest fears and secrets.

I thought this episode was rather fun. There were elements I'd wish it had gone more into, but in doing so they did manage to keep a concise and to-the-point story that kept me entertained and interested from start to finish. The new characters, Psi and Saibra, could have used some better writing or acting, they didn't feel as real as the other characters. They were there for their very specific purposes, and it seemed as if the writer didn't bother doing anything more with them. Because of this there were some troubles with their respective character endpoints, but I won't go too much in on that other than to say that they didn't feel quite satisfactory.

Overall I liked this episode. It's light, it's got action, and it's set in the future which is one of my favourite episode formats in "Doctor Who". Unfortunately it's a bit of a step down from last week's "Listen", but given just how great that episode was it would have been overly optimistic to expect anything as good or better. "Time Heist" is an episode that will keep you entertained when you watch it, but it's probably going to end up as that one episode you never think of when looking back at the series.

DW: Listen - The Sound of Awe [Spoiler levels: Medium]

The Doctor is back again with an episode which's trailers send you down memory lane in search of the classic NuWho episode "Blink". But I think "Listen" just might be better.

I feel that for every new episode of eight series of Doctor Who I've written about how it's gotten better, how I like it a lot more now than last week, and this week is no different. I genuinely think "Listen" might be my new favourite episode of the show. At the very least the best in a few series. I realise how uninformed and easily won-over I sound, but to be fair that is true. I had no real idea of what to expect from the Capaldi Doctor, and it would almost be impressive if this early in his tenure the episodes started to get worst. Almost every time there's a new Doctor it takes a little time to get going. A few episodes to really kick in. They have to go through the different themes Doctor Who has added to its rolodex over the years. A funny one, a periodic one, a future one, a scary one.

This episode is a scary one. It is all about what's underneath your bed. About what it is that you glimpse in the corner of your eye. What's making the foot step you hear right behind you. What makes you talk to yourself late at night. It's back to what Tennant had done with the Angels and what Smith had with the Silence, but this time for Capaldi's run. I feel it's done a lot better this time in terms of scariness. We never really get to know what it is the Doctor is looking for. Is he looking for something at all? Is something really there? Or has the Doctor just gone off to the really deep end?

Integrated into the main plot is the plot of Danny Pink, Clara's new romantic interest. They're sent back and forth in his timeline because of a malfunction happening when Clara got to telepathically interface with the TARDIS, effectively rendering her in direct control of the TARDIS itself. We get to see the past of Danny Pink, and the future. We get to speculate on whether what the Doctor and Clara does is what made Danny the man he is in present day, and whether or not what Clara is doing in the present day is what's reflecting into the future. It's a very interesting way of handling the romantic aspect of the show. Instead of constantly having scenes that's just showing them being lubby dubby, we get to explore their relationship through other means.

What really gets me about this episode is the feel and theme. It's still not the super gritty and ultra serious feeling that I felt we were promised over the last year and a half or so, but I don't mind that anymore. The Capaldi Doctor has shown himself in several different episode types and theme aspects. He's starting to really become a fully fleshed character. You can start to understand why he's doing what he's doing, and you're not as surprised by how he handles things. I still think I was right when I said last week that "Robot of Sherwood" would be referenced to as a classic Capaldi episode, but "Listen" will be the one talked about the most. It will be the one people say really sold them on Capaldi as the Doctor. It's now that it got good. It's now that he's the Doctor.

DW: Robot of Sherwood - Doctoring History

As I made clear in my posts about the two previous episodes starring the Capaldi Doctor, I wasn't overly keen on him. He didn't feel quite right, he fell between a few cracks that made him seem not quite like the Doctor. This episode changes that for the better.

"Robot of Sherwood" will go down as the episode that really cemented Capaldi's Doctor. There's no dillydallying about past episodes or events, they just get on with it, much like in last week's "Into the Dalek". However, unlike "Into the Dalek" this episode didn't feel like it was written for a different Doctor. This felt completely like a normal Doctor Who episode tailored to this new man we got to meet last year.

The most interesting this about this episode is perhaps the relationship between Robin Hood and the Doctor himself. Robin Hood acts much like Smith's Doctor in this rendition of the character. He always laughs in the face of danger, believing it much more wise to live life in enjoyment rather than bitterness. But he also knows how to deal with seriousness and drama, feeling like the same character despite the contrasting emotions. This episode feels very much like Capaldi's Doctor squaring off against Smith's Doctor. From the get-go Clara is excited about Robin Hood, much in the same way as she was about Smith's Doctor. She looks at him like a hero, and loves how he stands for what he does, and how he acts to defend it. Capaldi's Doctor sees this as a kind of unwelcome memory. He knows he's not quite the same as when he first met Clara, but he is the same. It hurts to see her act with someone else like she used to do with him. He starts trying to impress her, show that he can still be the person that he used to be, but in the end he doesn't have to.

The episode itself is very fun and an interesting turn on the regular period pieces Doctor Who does. The Doctor is adamant in his belief that Robin Hood is just a fictional character, and spends the episode trying to figure out what exactly he is, and where he comes from. The way the Doctor hypothesises aliens, robots, amusement parks, and all kind of weird scenarios make the episode feel a lot more science fictiony than your typical period piece (yes, even the ones containing cyborgs and dinosaurs), which in my book is a big bonus. I really love the episodes when the Doctor go full sci-fi, travelling far into the future or to distant alien worlds.

Overall I really enjoyed this episode, a lot more than I thought I would. It's satisfying to finally see Capaldi's Doctor settle in as his own character, and have him face off against someone so much like himself. I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being one of the episodes remembered as a classic Capaldi episode.

DW: Into the Dalek - The Doctor Is In!

I wasn't quite sold on the new tone set by the new Doctor in last week's premiere episode, but Into the Dalek goes a long way in getting me interested in buying.

This episode really doesn't mess about when it comes to the story and plot. There's nearly no mention to this being a "new" Doctor, or how he's now almost completely different from before. They've done the wise decision of jumping ahead a bit in time in order to establish the feeling that this Doctor and Clara has been on their own fair deal of adventures. That they've gotten to know each other, that they have developed their own rapports and there's no need for dilly-daddling around the non-issue. Leaving the question about what kind of person he is now available to more fun ways of addressing it than just having two characters sit down and talk about it every episode.

There was however some, I felt, developmental problems. There's a new character introduced, Danny Pink, who works alongside Clara at Coal Hill School. They're adding him because there will be no romance or flirting between this Doctor and Clara, so Danny gets to now act as the romantic aspect of the show. This is completely fair, it's been done before in the show, many times. Most recently with Amy and her would-become husband Rory. But they didn't successfully sell Danny Pink as an actual person. He seems a bit too constructed and flat. First of all, they didn't give him much screen time. He was basically there only for the first and last segments of the episode, acting as a kind of grounding element in Clara's life. The little alone time we do get with him is really odd, it feels like they tried to cram far too much backstory into the character right off the bat. Within just a couple of minutes we know that he was a solider in the war, and that he's killed someone who wasn't an enemy soldier. They way they chose to show this was to first have him tell his class that he was a soldier, and when prompted if he'd ever killed someone who wasn't a soldier they did a sudden close-up of his face to reveal a single tear rolling down his face. It was just too much.

The Doctor, though, was just the right amount. From the moment we first see him he's right on key. He feels like he's already been through a couple of years as a character, he acts like he's always had the exact personality he has now. Peter Capaldi just generally sells his incarnation of the Doctor as a real person. The part I still haven't entirely bought into yet is how silly his adventures seem in terms of the apparent seriousness of the character. Don't get me wrong, it's not like he's portrayed even half as serious and moody as the teasers and trailers lead us to believe, but there's still somewhat of an offbeat gap between him and his situations. Into the Dalek is basically a retooling of the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage where people shrunk down in order to be sent into another living being's body, in the case of Into the Dalek a Dalek. It's a silly, b-film concept which I normally love, but I don't quite like it in the context of Capaldi's Doctor. It feels much more like something Smith's Doctor would've happened onto. I can practically hear his Doctor oohing and aahing at the marvelous technology, and how fantastic even the evil Daleks are. Instead we got Capaldi's Doctor walking briskly around lecturing everyone on what everything is.

There are some nice themes in the episode, we get to know the new Doctor a lot more than we got to during the last episode. We get to see him react to an entirely different environment and see how he interacts with new characters and threats. They also help spring what seems to be the overall theme for this new series: "Who is the Doctor?" Not necessarily who he is as in what his name and nationality is, but as in what kind of man he is. Why is he the person he is? Where does his faces come from? What makes him him? It's a common and oftused theme in the Doctor Who franchise, but it's for a good reason. It's always exciting to get to know the Doctor, to peel back even more layers from him. See what's underneath, what has lead him up to this point in time. I think we're in for a treat.

But who is Missy?

BoJack Horseman Season One - Netflix Goes Animated

It took a while before I first heard about BoJack Horseman, and after I did it took a while for me to hear about it again. The trailer never really got to me, it seemed like just another wacky and absurd cartoon centred around adult themes. But when Netflix first tweeted they had released it, I gave it a go. And I'm glad I did.

It took a couple of episodes before it really took off, but when it did it was kind of amazing. The absurdity of the universe in which the series takes place gets more and more normal as you go on, like a good series would make you feel. You don't get surprised at the uncommon situations that takes place anymore, it just feels like they belong in the world. The show is actually funny, on the surface it doesn't seem like the kind of show I'd normally like, but the dry and matter-of-fact humour mixed in with the obscurity and an everyday life makes it a little bit special.

Though, to be fair, this isn't some unique snowflake of a show. It still follows a lot of the basic tropes of its genres, and some of the plot lines gets kind of annoying and repetitive. Not because they've done them before in the show, but because they've been done so often in other shows similar to it. There's the classic deadline episode, where the characters have to finish a task in far too little time, resulting in "hilarious" consequences. Don't get me wrong, the show doesn't do the tropes badly, they do them just fine, but you've seen it before and it end up taking away from the experience as a whole.

The thing that's perhaps the most interesting and fun about the show is how serial it is. There's a a central theme and plot to the entire season as a whole, but they still manage to make a lot of the episodes somewhat episodic. I think it's become more required these days to set up shows like this, but that's generally reserved for live action television. Animated shows are usually a bit more careful, and tend to stay with their episodic episodes that rather reference past events than set up future ones. But BoJack Horseman does a great job at keeping you interested throughout the season without letting you forget what it's all supposed to lead to.

I'm not a huge fan of the animation style, however. But that's more because of the large trend to have a "lazier" style than before than to do with BoJack Horseman in particular. You can see the different mouth shapes without any real morphing going on, and characters often just glide around on the screen rather than actually move. It's simpler and cheaper to generate that kind of animation, but it's also not as exciting to watch as more vivid frame-to-frame animation that for example early The Simpsons had a lot of. The style doesn't necessarily distract from what's happening, and I like the design/look of the characters. How they dress, how they behave, and how they generally appear, but I think utilising a different animation style would've benefited it more.

Overall it's a rather fun and good show. The characters and fun to watch, the situations are interesting to see unfold, the voices are good, and you actually care about a lot of what's going on. Sure, it might seem like a lot of other current animated shows, but it's still fun and entertaining. If you like shows like Bob's Burgers, Archer, The Simpsons, Futurama, or South Park, you will probably like this. It's worth it to give it a try at the very least, you won't regret it.

Doctor Who Series 8 Premiere: Deep Breath - He Still Carries On

Just shy of a year ago the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special screened on cinemas all across the world at the same time. Bringing the entire world together in a collected moment. It was such a huge success that this year they decided to do it again, in the episode properly introducing the latest incarnation of the Doctor. The one played by Peter Capaldi.

I haven't been a fan of Doctor Who for very long, I'm afraid. I didn't get on the hype train until just three years ago. August 25th, 2011 I first really watched an episode of Doctor Who. I had promised myself I would watch it from the beginning, watching all of the classic episodes before embarking on the post-relaunch, but I just couldn't help starting off at Eccleston's first episode "Rose". I was hooked from the beginning, plowing through the post-relaunch series in a month, despite pulling double-digit hours at college most days. Ever since then I've watched every episode the moment I was able. Be it on iTunes the following day, or in later cases on iPlayer Live just as it was airing on television. I almost feel like it all lead up to this, the first time I had to see a Doctor really go. I had seen Eccleston and Tennant go, but just in the flash of a month. Matt Smith will always be my Doctor. He's the one who was on when I started watching. He's the one I watched for three more years. He's the one I met! He's the one I loved. And now he's gone.

I didn't really know what to expect going into this new series of Doctor Who with a brand new Doctor. I knew that this new Doctor was allegedly going to be far more serious than Smith and Tennant, but that was more or less it. But I still got my ticket the moment they were made available, and got in my seat even earlier than I used to. I wasn't going to give up on the show I loved so much just because there had been a change in cast. I still wanted to be blown away. I wanted Peter Capaldi to show me that he's just as good as my Doctor. I wanted the show to live on. But I'm not entirely convinced he managed to show me that.

Don't get me wrong, the episode wasn't bad. But it was very different, more different than I had expected. Why I hadn't expected more of a difference I don't know, but I hadn't. It took a while to get into it. An entirely new Doctor amongst all these familiar characters. A Doctor who isn't sure who he is, or what anything or anyone else is or are. When he first walked into the scene it was weird. He acted somewhat like Smith did as his Doctor. He flailed a bit around. He made funny remarks, funny faces. But every other character seemed to have the same kind of dumbfoundedness as I had. Something just didn't feel right. It walked like the Doctor, it quacked like the Doctor, but was it the Doctor?

The episode's main plot is the Doctor figuring out who he is, and generally how to deal with his new face and the people closest to him not recognising him, but it's set around a series of murders in Victorian London. And I have to say, I'm not overtly found of Doctor Who episode sets in Victorian London. It seems like such a waste to me. Put a man of his genius and advancement in the middle of a backwards backwater. I like having the occasional period piece in Doctor Who, seeing him walk around through history, but Victorian London has been done to death for me. Luckily this just didn't feel the same. Maybe it's because there was a spanking new Doctor, but it felt fresher and different from the other times. It was more enjoyable. There was less of a focus on the fact that it was set in Victorian London, it just happened to be.

I am going to get a bit deeper, not into the plot exactly, but into what results from the plot. So if you for some reason is reading this without having watched the episode yet, you might want to close this tab now. 

The apparent plot to start with is the appearance of a giant dinosaur in the Thames in the middle of London. Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax immediately appear at the scene to investigate what exactly is going on. They soon find the Doctor's TARDIS being coughed out of the dinosaur's throat. The entire plot of the dinosaur stranded, lost and alone in London is just a way of dealing with the Doctor being stranded, lost and for all intents and purposes alone, in the universe. I found it to be at times a bit too on the nose, having the Doctor actually say what the dinosaur is feeling in a way that makes it obvious that it applies to himself as well. It just came off as a bit too obvious, especially considering how short-lived the dinosaur plot was.

Turns out it wasn't just a front for the Doctor's emotions, it was also a way of setting up the main plot. A rogue cyborg on a killing spree. I liked this part of the episode a lot better. It wasn't as in your face about what it was, and most of the time it actually ended up on the backburner. Serving as purely a way of getting everyone together to figure out who the cyborg was, and what he wanted. During it we learn a lot about the new Doctor. What he's capable of doing, what he thinks of himself, what he thinks of others, and just overall development of this new sub-character. We start to really see who Capaldi's Doctor is. The mannerisms left over from Smith slowly fade away, and he starts picking up his own, and before you even realise it there's a brand new Doctor in front of you.

I liked that they also mentioned the Doctor having seen his new face before. For those of you might not know, Peter Capaldi has previously acted in the Doctor Who universe. Both as a multi-episode villain in Torchwood, and as a single-episode character in Doctor Who (different characters, just to be clear). Showrunner Steven Moffat has said before that this will be addressed, that the Doctor will at least try to learn where his faces come from. Why they look the way they do when they come. How he can renew himself but end up with an old face from seemingly nowhere. But it wasn't too obvious. It was a bit obvious for those who might follow the surroundings of production, but generally it was just enough to implant the idea that there was something important about him having seen his face before. It neatly sets us up for a new long-arc that might not even be resolved in just one series.

At this point I rather liked the episode, but I wasn't entirely sold on the new tone quite yet. I was still getting over my Doctor being gone. I was still kind of expecting Matt Smith to show up. Which is why I was completely caught off guard when we all of a sudden hear his voice over the telephone. There he was again. Telling us, telling me, not to worry. That the seemingly new man is still him. It's the same Doctor, he just looks and acts a bit different. I almost teared up at it. The idea that the Doctor had the foresight to call Clara, to make sure that she was okay after he was "gone", it cemented how nice and caring he really can be. Especially after an episode where that is really brought into question. It warmed my heart.
Still not entirely sold though. It might have been a good ending, but the preceding episode still left me feeling odd and uncertain. I am still not entirely sold on it. I don't know how long it will take. I don't know if I will ever get over it. My Doctor is gone, but he still carries on.

Hemlock Grove Season 2 - What?

The first season of Hemlock Grove wasn't really a huge success with the critics, but the viewers found it fun enough for Netflix to green light a second season. Personally I was a cautious fan of it, it was the first Netflix series I binge watched in a single sitting, though it was more for background entertainment than non-stop attention. Season two gives you more of the same, and some... More.

The best part about this season was that they didn't really "care" if you'd watched it before or not. They made this with the recaps in mind so they just jumped straight into most things without a bunch of exposition regarding the events of last season. It can be a bit confusing if your memory isn't totally up to date, so do watch the recap. Straight up in the first episode do we get a werewolf transformation and vampire action, the show goes "remember this stuff? Yeah, we've got more of that stuff" and they don't skimp out on it for the remainder of the season.

     They spend the season mostly exploring the characters. Who they are, what they feel, what they're going through, all that good stuff. But I have to say they can go about it a bit weirdly. The structure of the season seems rather off. There's three less episodes this season than last, and it seems like they forgot about that until the last couple of episodes. There is a lot of build up, a lot of suppressing plots, and a lot of focus on pure character development that sometimes just gets in the way of the plot. I'm normally all for exploring characters, but they go too far into the deep end, forgetting about what's important in the show, and removes a lot of the cool fantasy/horror theme it has going on.

     One thing they do get right, in my opinion, is that the series doesn't really feel like a series. It's like a ten-hour film with the occasional title sequence. Looking back at it it's hard to separate episode specifics, and easier to remember the overall themes and story lines. Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, it ends far too abruptly. Leaving you just to want more. And when you have a year between seasons, you don't want too big of a cliff hanger.

Will "How I Met Your Mother" "Last Forever"? [Spoiler levels: High]

"How I Met Your Mother" ended its nine-year run this week, but could its finale hold up to the nine previous years?

"How I Met Your Mother" may have often been in the shadow of the more successful Chuck Lorre sitcoms "Two and a Half Men" and "The Big Bang Theory", but it has garnered its own decently sized fan base due a lot to it being part of a very rare breed. A sitcom with a goal. Most sitcoms don't have goals, they tend to just come in at a moment in someone's life and exit at another. "How I Met Your Mother" had a goal from the first time you even heard of it, it's the story of how Ted, the narrator, met his kids' mother. This has lead to the show becoming a mix of soap opera and situation comedy, because we know there is going to be some emotional endpoint of a character finding his future children's mother, the viewer is invited to dive deeper into the everyday interactions of the characters and speculate on what might happen next, and who everyone will turn out to be. This whole effect is magnified by the fact that this is all a story told by the main character. When you realise that this is all just a story told by a man you start to question everything. Why would he say this thing? Why would he share that with his kids? The fact it is shown time and time again that Ted's memory isn't top-notch (and who can blame him, he's telling stories of his everyday life that happened 25-16 years ago) tells us that even though one thing is said, it doesn't necessarily make it true. This has all made the show a casual watercooler. Unlike shows like "LOST" where there's a giant new mystery every week to be discussed, "How I Met Your Mother" offers weekly tidbits with evidence of a grander mystery sprinkled in.

The characters on the show also undergo somewhat more significant changes than most sitcom characters these days do. Lily and Marshall start out as a young, fanatically in love couple who can't wait to get married, and end up as an oldish married couple who everyone looks to for advice. Barney starts off as a womanizing forever-bachelor, and by the end he's proven that he can be in a committed relationship and give up on his old ways. Robin starts as a woman ready to see the world, and too busy to look for anyone to see it with, she ends up getting married. They aren't huge, unpredictable changes, but it's more changes than "Seinfeld", "Two and a Half Men" or "The King of Queens" can offer. It shows life actually happening. It isn't trapped in some undefined year in a familiar time period, it evolves quite organically and you find yourself changing with them. This is perhaps the main reason I am so unhappy with the series finale.

We spend 22 episodes going through almost every minute of Barney and Robin's wedding weekend. We are taught again and again that Ted has let go of Robin, and that Robin and Barney are a really great couple that deserves to be together. It's smashed into our heads as we're been spoon fed how great Ted and the Mother's relationship is going to be once they meet. It seems as though the entire season is leading up to a fantastic wedding reception, and we'll finally get the pay-offs we've been waiting for so long. Not only are Barney and Robin getting married, Ted is going to meet the love of his life. And what happens? Five minutes into episode number 23 we learn that Barney and Robin divorces three years into the future. We're told over the next fifteen minutes the story of how the gang slowly drifted apart, how the divorce tore the group apart, and how amazing Ted and the Mother are together. Barney has completely reverted to his old self. He's deep into his 40s and he's sleeping with girls half his age, drinking every night, and still talking about how legendary everything is. Robin is almost never seen again. Her job as a reporter takes her around the world, and when she's in town she finds it to difficult to be around Barney and Ted. Marshall and Lily are really the only anchor to what the show was about.

I get it, life changes, friends don't stay friends forever. But when you build up an entire season around the wedding of two characters, it's kind of a weird move to tear that entire season apart in its last episode. It is a perfectly legit outcome, however, we've even seen it happen before in the show. Barney and Robin just aren't good for each other, but the execution leaves everything to be desired.
The thing that both makes the most sense, and is the most annoying, is that Ted and Robin end up together. The Mother (whose name is Tracy, if you care) gets some illness and dies in some off-camera scene. The kids, after Ted finally finishing the story, notes how little the story was about their mom, and how much it was about Robin. They encourage their dad to ask "aunt Robin" out. "Come on, Dad. Mom's been dead for six years. Just call her." Again, perfectly fine outcome, horrible execution. We've just spent an entire show learning that Ted and Robin aren't right for each other, the entire last season is about Ted letting go of Robin, and then they suddenly end up together at the end? I know there is a 16-year gap between the wedding, and Ted and Robin getting back together, but they told those 16 years in a little over 40 minutes.

In the end we're left with the knowledge that nothing really changes. Lily and Marshal are a couple in love. Barney is a womanizing forever-bachelor (oh, but he's got a kid now). Ted is hopelessly in love with Robin. And Robin, she's finally ready to settle down with Ted. It leaves so much to be desired, and I think the main reason is the very reason that makes this show stand out from the rest. We've been following a goal for nine seasons. Nine years we've been waiting for the last episode. The episode when he finally meets the Mother. Of course it's not going to live up to everyone expectations, everyone has developed different ideas and meanings around the show. What it means, what it's trying to achieve, what is going to happen. We know that this was always supposed to be the outcome. The kids filmed their final scene at the end of the first season, the creators wrote the first draft of the final episode during the first season, this was always meant to be. But I think they got carried away with what they had to put in the middle. The last season seems poorly thought out, and is constructed in a way so you can't notice until the very last episode. It's as if they've spent an entire season trying to set us up for a different ending just so that the "twist" is more effective, and unfortunately it just didn't work. I watched an older episode of "How I Met Your Mother" a few hours after the finale. Knowing how it was going to end actually made me enjoy the episode less. I knew that there were going to be multiple seasons of misdirection and intrigue that would end flatly in a mess of a finale. It felt tainted.

So back to the titular question. Will "How I Met Your Mother" last forever? Will it last at all? I don't think so. I think the show is too defined by its finale. By its goal. We still talk about "Friends" and "Seinfeld" because they don't complicate things with giant story arcs. They're just slices of life that begin at one point in someone's lives, and end at another. Much like "LOST", I think, "How I Met Your Mother" will be tried copied for a few years, talked about every fall when the new sitcoms come, but eventually, just die off. Probably a lot quicker than we'd think. Maybe at some point in the future, some of our kids or grandkids will happen to catch a rerun on some beat-up old cable network. Maybe we'll sit down and reminisce, but it will never be quite the same. It will never be quite our show again.

The Name of the Doctor is...

Hey, you. Go away, this post is riddled with, in the words of River Song, spoilers. If you have not yet seen The Name of the Doctor, I need you to stop reading. I normally don't mind spoilers, but this is a biggin, you don't want it, trust me.

Now that the rest is gone, let us talk about The Name of the Doctor.

So I just watched the latest episode of The Name of the Doctor. I went into it with little expectations, I didn't really know much about it part from what I'd seen in the trailers, I thought they were pretty revealing, they were not. I never really thought we'd get to know the name of the Doctor, why would they reveal it now after fifty years, and just before the fiftieth anniversary. But what they did reveal was in my mind greater than I would've ever dared imagine. I cannot believe how they manage to keep all of this a secret. The big reveal, the big stakes, the big changes. If for some bizarre reason you are still here, and have not watched the episode, this is your last chance. I cannot believe that they've managed to disguise and hide the death of a Doctor this well. But I'm getting ahead of myself, let me start from the beginning.

I wasn't sure how I felt about the pre-title sequence at first, I felt it was a bit lame, and that the way of including past Doctors seemed weird and weak due to the difference in film quality and grain. Clara running around seeing all the Doctors, talking about how she's always saved him. How she's always been there, but he's never seen her. Never noticed her. Mostly. The pre-title sequence's role in film and TV is to set the tone for what you're about to watch, some sets of terminology call it the "teaser". It is best recognised in crime procedurals where the first few minutes of every episode is showing the crime, setting the stake for the episode and often actually setting it a bit too high. But it's more important that it teases the audience enough to sit through the episode than not. The Name of the Doctor's teaser really did tease the episode, but in no way will you understand how and in what way till you've seen the entirety of the episode. That's what makes it so great, unfortunately it can mean that some more casual viewers will tune out and not bother watching the rest and get the greatness that is The Name of the Doctor, but I am so glad that they went for it.

There's then a small post-title teaser setting up a bit more, it starts with Vastra speaking to a prisoner, he warns of the Doctor's secret. He must go to Trenzalore.

The real episode starts Clara making a soufflé (wink, wink; hint, hint; nudge, nudge) when she gets a letter which seems to be very old. This immediately reminded me of that moment in Blink (you know the one), it's from Vastra and is inviting her to a conference call. Vastra, Jenny, Strax and (yay!) River Song all meet in a inter-timular psychic meeting. Vastra is warning them all about the news from the prisoner, and they are all worried (well, Strax isn't strictly worried, but what ever goes for worriedness on Sontar he is portraying it). 

Now one of my favourite parts of this episode happens, and it is great. Jenny starts talking about how she forgot to lock the door and that she thinks someone is there. 

"Sorry, ma'am, sorry, so sorry. So sorry, so sorry. I think I've been murdered."

The fact that's she's "actually" sitting there reporting that she's been murdered before quietly fading away is very disturbing and emotional. This was the first time in the episode I was close to tears. I don't even have a close relationship to this character, she's been cool, but she's sort of just been the sidekick of Vastra with a few surprises up her sleeve. This moment, however, is one of the most captivating I have had in any Doctor Who episode I've watched. The only thing that weakens this moment is the fact that they copped out and gave her back her life with the wave of a wand ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."). It ruined the moment for me, I wish they could've just let her die.

At this point River demands everybody wake up so they can face their attackers, but before she manages to wake Clara up (or even trying to be honest (it's complicated)) she is awakened by the sound of the Doctor's voice.

It's been a long time since I've seen the Doctor as grave as he was when Clara told him about Trenzalore and the meeting. But I were not prepared for what I would see only two cuts later.

He looked devastated, defeated, he was balling his eyes out, he looked scared out of his mind. Seeing the Doctor like this was a much a shock to Clara as it was to the audience, the Doctor is normally so held together, so courageous and brave. The fact that something could put him this far out, beat him this far down is evidence of something truly horrific and painful. He quickly pulls himself together and starts, scarcely telling Clara just what Trenzalore is, what he thinks. That it is where he is buried. 

"[We all have a grave] somewhere out there, in the future, waiting for us. The problem with time travel you can actually actually end up visiting."

The fact that he is so upset over visiting his own grave (he claims it is because it's so dangerous, having travelled so much through time - probably more than any other - it is the ultimate point of time line crossings in the universe) is heartbreaking. The Doctor has lived for so long, he's been through so much, so many worlds are alive because of him, but he is still afraid of death. That it will catch up with him. This isn't specifically mentioned in the episode, but I'd like to believe that that is what's going through the Doctor's mind. He isn't worried about the universe being at risk, it's been countless times and he's saved it every time, he's worried that he will die. Maybe because he won't be around to save the universe anymore, maybe because he'll leave someone behind, but I think, that in all the years he has been running, all the running he's done, he's been doing it because he is afraid of what will happen if he stops. 

OFF TO TRENZALORE! Regardless of how afraid he is of his own death, his friends have been attacked and taken. If he does not go to Trenzalore to face his attacker they will be lost, and that is even worse than losing himself. The TARIDS is less willing to let the Doctor die, she can live without the friends he brings along, but she cannot bear life without the Doctor. So she sabotages their attempt to get to Trenzalore, but not so much that the Doctor won't manage to push her that final mile. The TARIDS even gets a tear falling down her cheek as she realises what will happen now that they are, indeed, on Trenzalore.

I know I'm being very freely analytical and poetic about this imagery, but I do believe it is meant to mean something to that affect. At any rate, I'd like to believe so.

The entire planet is a grave yard, the grave yard of a battlefield. 

"They're soldiers; bigger the gravestone, higher the rank."

The Doctor seems to know a lot about it despite having supposedly  never been there, you might say this is just because he's seen so much that he instinctively knows things, he recognises them from past days, from repeated history. But there is something to his voice, he knows exactly where they are and what has happened there, just like he knows exactly what he is going to find.  And what does he find? The biggest gravestone of them all.

Yup, the Doctor's TARDIS from the future.

It's not actually a gravestone, it's the real TARDIS. In the words of the Doctor, it had somewhat of a size leak. And in the future it serves its purpose as the Doctor's final resting place, his tomb. 

I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but seeing as you've already seen the episode you will know, the Great Intelligence is the one who summoned the Doctor to Trenzalore. He's the one who attacked the Doctor's friends, he's the one behind it all.

On their way to the tomb Clara starts remembering memories she shouldn't have, she knows that the Doctor has met her before. That she has died many times. That the Doctor is as puzzled by her as she is by him. Along with this I assume she also remembers the Doctor's name, as she learnt it right before the Doctor saw fit to erase history and let her live without the knowledge of past and future deaths she has never experienced. This leads up to a moment outside of the tomb, the Great Intelligence demands that the Doctor speaks his name as that is the key to the tomb. The only word in the universe known to no one (well, as good as seeing how many sentient souls there are out there). The Doctor does not in fact speak his name, but the doors do open. River Song who's still lurking around through a mental link with Clara from the conference call speaks it. No one except Clara can see her, and the fact that the door opened bewilders the Doctor. A clever way of avoiding the reveal of his name, but still open the door. Especially seeing as for a few moments the audience is left to believe that "Please" is the name of the Doctor. 

Inside the tomb a light is found.

"What were you expecting? A body? Bodies are boring, I've had plenty of them."

The light is a time tunnel, it consists of every second of the Doctor's life. Every place he has ever been, every person he's ever met, every second he has ever lived. The Great Intelligence is going through. He means to kill the Doctor at every single second at once. The Doctor is dying all at once, all times, all places, all regenerations, they're all dying at once and the Doctor suffers as he has never suffered before. He is screaming, he is wrenching, and it is revealed now through some miracle past-alteration-telling-machine that Vastra has that the Doctor has died in the Dalek Asylum, and then in London with Vastra and Jenny. The very places that Clara has saved him before. This is where the teaser kicks in, Clara is realising. At the same time as Vastra is witnessing the disappearance of hundred of star systems, Jenny and even Strax, Clara knows what she must do. She has to enter the tunnel herself.

The Doctor has already seen her do it, it has already been done. Clara is the impossible girl, born to save the Doctor at every time all at once. Millions of versions of Clara living only to save the Doctor. Clara herself, the real her, will die. But it is the only way to to save him. The Doctor pleads her not to go, but she has to.

"Run. Run you cleaver boy. And remember me."

The teaser runs again, slightly altered. She tells of what she has always done and will always do. She is born, she lives, she saves the Doctor, and she dies. She's been there since Gallifrey and will be there till Trenzalore.  Immediately on her entrance the universe is restored, Clara saved him, every single time. And now, just for once, just for fun, the Doctor has to save Clara. River Song, through the mental link of Clara yells at the Doctor, he cannot go through the tunnel, it will destroy him. She is about to slap the Doctor, that's when he reaches out his hand and stops her. He has always seen her. Always. He's always heard her, always listened. But he was afraid how much it would hurt to talk to her that he has ignored her. He doesn't like good byes, but River won't leave until he does, she has to hear it. Hear it as if he is to come back. 

"See you around, professor River Song."

Oh, and remember how she was there due to the mental link to Clara? How can she still be there if she's dead? River fades away, and the Doctor is left with only one option. He steps into the tunnel and finds Clara lying in a wasteland of time and space. A place where all of the Doctor's time is spread, where his ghosts roam freely and the universe comes to die. This is when Clara hears the Doctor's voice one more time. He contacts her through every day he's ever had all at once, the Doctor is reaching out to her, he wants to save her just once. She embraces him, weak through all of the lives she has just lived through all of time and space.

This is when it gets really interesting. The Doctor sees something that truly shocks him, that leaves him speechless. A man. 

Clara: "Who is that?"

The Doctor: "That is me, everything here is, that's the point."

Clara: "But how can he be? I saw all your faces and he wasn't one of them.

The Doctor: "I said he was me, I didn't say he was the Doctor. The name you choose is like a promise you've made, he's the one who broke the promise. He is my secret."

The Secret: "What I did I did without choice. In the name of peace and sanity." 

The Doctor: "But not in the name of the Doctor."

He turns around, and John Hurt is introduced as the Doctor.

This was just incredible to me. That through all of what's happened since the idea came up, through the BD leak and till today, I didn't get a single whiff of anything hinting at the 11th Doctor's adventure on television coming to an end and an old Secret stepping in to take us with. We all knew, of course, that John Hurt would be in the 50th special, there were apparently rumours that he would play a forgotten regeneration of the Doctor, that he had been involved in the Time War and therefore exiled from memory. That sort of died down when Hurt himself said his part in the special would be in a "kind of trinity".

He would play a part of the Doctor along with David Tennant and Matt Smith. I, along with others, figured it would be a kind of ghost of Christmas past, present and future thing going on. With Tennant being the past, Smith the present and Hurt the future. It seems however that some twisted version of that is what's happening. Hurt is Christmas past, how else would the Eleventh even know of him? People can scream that he was found in the time tunnel stretching all the way from beginning to end all they want, but the Eleventh knew who he was. And that means he's been him. He's not proud at all of that fact, he can't respect him, what he's done is horrible. 

If the rumours are to be believed, that has something to do with the Time War, and I wouldn't look past it. I believe that what will happen now is not the Eleventh dying, not an actual on-screen death at least, but instead of keeping up with the Eleventh and Clara we will start following the Secret. The fact that the episode introduces Hurt as the Doctor means that it isn't just a one-of thing for the anniversary or a mini-arc, at least not how I see it. I think that the entire series is being revamp again like it was when Smith took over. The entire feel and build of the show will become different. I doubt the Secret will bring many companions with him, it just doesn't seem like his style right now. And if we're going to see a man dealing with the concious of something so horrible on his back, I think we'll spend more time in gritty neighbourhoods feeling pain alone than jumping around bright star systems feeling wonder with friends. 

Many will probably dislike this, as they did when Smith came around, but I think it will certainly freshen up the show. A lot of people has started to dislike the episodes coming out, though no one will really say the show has changed or the quality sunk measurably. People have just grown to accustomed to a level of excellence and expect more. Maybe this new approach won't bring more, but it will certainly bring new. An entire new show is going to return after the 50th anniversary special. I don't know how the change will happen, and I'm having a hard time imagining it happening very smoothly. But I do believe and hope it will happen.

Epilogue:

There was just released an interview with Smith and Tennant on playing the Doctor, and they mention "another character" that they can't talk about. They say that he's bemused by how the Tenth and Eleventh act and behave. I hope it's done well, that they don't make the Secret seem too sad and unlikeable. I'm starting to get worried that they won't get something unconfirmed just right, that's how invested I am in this show.

No, I have faith in Moffat. I believe he can do this, that he can pull it off. We are really going towards a great new era of Doctor Who, and I'm looking forward to it.