My April Wrapup: Working 9 - 5
Hey Whores, So April was an interesting month. I was running point on a catering gig, that was actually a lot of fun. It was hard work at times but I managed to get into the grove and realize that doing supervisor/managerial work is not as differcult as it seems. What is differcult is fucking taxes, I filed an extension. Hopefully the IRS got it. anyway I don't have much else to say so lets get into the Good Stuff.
The Good Stuff
My Reference Watchlist
Nerve (2016) dir. Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost
Rating: Popcorn Film.
Finding The First Gay Kiss.
PODCASTS
The White Vault Season 4 + 5
The format of the show doesn't change of course,we still get all the famalier elements but instead of us constructing the story from bits and peices of audio and letters, the story is told mostly chronologically from body cams with the occasional document transcription. It becomes more a kind of audio journalism similar to Small Town Horror, The Show also introduces a segment that follows the narrator and her own investigation into the sites. Its an element I truly enjoy as a concept. Its a brechtian element that just really broadened the story and allowed for us to explore the lore in a much more explicet and organic way as it turns out that the narrator is deeply tied to the sites in a way that she has yet to truly understand.
Relistened to First Two Seasons of The Darkest Night
TV SHOWS
Midnight Gospel (2020)
So Midnight Gospel is honest just batshit insane. You watch five minutes and your like oh yeah somebody is watching this on like acid or something. What I'm saying is that its psycadelic.
The story proper follows Clancy Gilroy, a "Spacecaster" which is like a podcaster BUT IN SPACE! Well, Technically in the multiverse simulator that he illegal owns. Also the Multiverse pod looks a bit Yonic. We'll all about the sacred feminine in this hizz-house.
Each Episode Gilroy drowns in his pussy pod and discovers a brand spanking new surrealist world that he travesses while having exstitential conversations about death, life, drugs, magic, spirituality, forgiveness, you get it. As they talk the world around them morphs and changes as the b-plot slowly catches up to them. Cats building a giant mecha to become the king of pirates, the life cicle of evil clown balogny, the literally zombie apocalypse, finding nirvana. Its often at points like trying to listen to two very interesting conversations at once.
I will say that this is not the easiest show to get into, (I had to put it down when it first came out because the information overload gave me a headache), but once you manage to move past this barrier you do get what is an incredible enjoyablr trapse through the meta-world of metaphysics.
Two last points, 1. this was created by the guy which made Adventure Time, (makes sense), and the spacecast interviews are real life podcast interviews from the Duncan Trussell Family Hour. and 2. I've heard some criticism that this show comes off as babys first taste of Mysticism which I am definetly not qualified to collaborate. I really can't tell how deeply these conversations on gnosticism, magic, and meditation really go but for someone who has never really delved into these subjects it was a pleasant introduction.
I-Land (2019)
Speaking of Samsara
Ok, so heres the tea, the "I-Land" is trash. It is not a good show in the slightest. It wants to be Lost so fucking badly its not even badly and yet manages to deeply fail what made the original show great. It constantly makes all these literally references to make people think the show is deeper than it is and constantly shoehorns ins its crackerjack morality tales as if the writing or acting was strong enough to actually sell what there harping.
Ok, calm down ryen and back up a little.
The I-Land is the story of a young woman who wakes up on a mysterious island with 5 other people, none of them with memories of how they got there. Theres something off about the I-Land, objects just appear in the sand, people come and leave, and theres these buildings that just show up without rhyme or reason that tug at the back corners of your mind. You scream out into the ocean "Is any of this real"
and the answer which I'm going to spoiler like they do in like episode fucking 2 is no. This is in fact a simulation to rehabilitate death row prisoners.
Now, now, you might say ryen that sounds cool is it going to be this like rogues gallery of people being shitty torwards each other based on the like past foibles and how they have to grow and overcome there weaknesses, and they keep getting prompted by the island to go back to there old ways. Y'know like lost.
oh you sweet summer stupid child. That would require that these characters be 1. Well-written and 2. Compently acted. The vast majority of the cast spends the entire limited run of this series literally sitting on there ass in the spawn area while a couple characters just run around and chew the furniture. Theres only one character with any interesting story progression, (who is a direct rip-off of Kate Austin mind you), and the rest are just shitty at her for no discernable reason. Theres so much petty fucking drama and its not until literally the last couple episodes that we get backstory for literally anyone in this fucking story. Theres so much filler that it makes me want to gag.
Now I know I've had nothing nice to say but I won't say don't watch this. Just like be Prepared to watch a really bad rip-off of lost with some schlocky sci-fi stuff thrown in. Its trash but I will say it is fun trash.
Glow Up Season 3 (2021)
Ok so as you know I am a big fan of Glow Up: Britians Next Makeup Star, (or whatever the fuck the tag line is), so DING DONG DARLING.
anyway this is season 3 and were back with even more makeup artists, more extremly niche british accents, and even more people just making absolutely insane of just poor choices for the makeup challenges.
As I have spent more time watching tv contest shows I have done my best to examine critically, (oh like a critic), what makes these shows work. To understand the mechanics of a good contestant show. and my general observation is that what makes these challenges interesting is having players who are giving us sakuga, the "wow" factor, and people making insane, foolish, or misguided ideas, the "Cringe" factor. Or to put it in a more obnoxious way a good contest show needs to create a knife tip balance between the sublime and bathos. The Players do not neccessarily need to be bad at what they do, they need to fail at there aspirations of greatness. A good player is not only someone who does cool stuff but actively grows as a person do to the experience.
Through let me say that there is also a messyness factor to these shows. Its a show within a larger ecosystem. So Glow Up and FaceOff and similar are rather wholesome but stuff like Iron Chef and Ink Masters are like super fucking toxic.
Glow up is a show that pushes for wholesomeness. Theres a push for diversity, the judges are empathetic and understanding, and they try there best to just really understand were the players are coming from. Also while this is a competition there isn't a lot of dumb messy drama between the contestants they all seem to generally like each other.
I will say as this season went there wasn't as clear of a narrative as I would generally like to see in these shows. Many of the players camped in the middle of the group before truly excelling and one of the players went into the faceoff chair 6 fucking times. Which honestly just goes to show how far a good understanding of fundementals gets you.
The looks for this season also didn't constantly wow but there were some really fun iconic moments. I feel like my main love for this season was the contestants through any good contest show will create a paraphilic relationship with at least one person if not like 20 of them.
Interior Design Matters. (2019)
god this show sucked.
so another thing that I noticed is that a good contest show will have you act as a honory judge. You may not have the critical eye or experience of these judges BUT the judges are explaining there criteria for how they made these desicions. The show should essential teach one how to view these works critically or at least raise a greater appreciation of the design of the subject judged. This is why I can watch a restoration by BaumGartner and be like "Tsk Tsk they used Staples??? How Demi-Monde".
Weirdly enough a show that did this well was of course Quibi's Murder House Flip. It might have been an insane high concept but at least it took a second and been like Hey bitch this is what an Accent Wall is and why you want it. The Show helped you, a layman, better understand the design ideas, the intention, behind the world of interior design.
This show does not try for that. We see people do interior design but they spread the plot wafer thin and don't really give us anything interesting to bite into. We have people criticize that "Interior Design" isn't "shopping" when a contestant buys flatpack furniture or accessors, but why? whats the difference. We have contestants judge other looks calling them "Spartan", "plain-jane", or "gaudy" but we don't get a strong understanding of what is technivally wrong with these works. We only get a barebones understanding that it doesn't fit the taste of the others.
I would love to see a more focused critique of these rooms that sit down and explain how Interior Design for instance needs to consider the end-user. The act of living day in and day out in a space, color psycology, lighting, creating a consistant color schreme, how to find bricabrac that adds character without looking cheap or looking like I'm some milquetoast ordering out of a crate and barrel catelogue. The pros and cons of a Maxamilist vs Minimilist Philosophy.
Observations that would help me better understand were both the judges and players are coming from because unlike most visual art most peopel probably can't articulate why they do or do not like an interior space. so giving an audience the vocabulary to interact and engage with the work is paramount.
Speaking of language the show also fails to include a massive amount of the genre conventions that provide important information to the audience. The show, at least to the best of my memory, fails to include character introductions which means that I don't know, and more importantly care, who these people are. When Janet or Scott or Bradd gets kicked off my emotional investment in them in the person is nill. The first couple episodes deal with the contestants being in groups but then making an entire room on there own. So not only are we jumping between several locations, we are dealing with 10 different storylines all at once. Are ability to remember that this player is the one with the graphic faux arches and this is the one whose hogging the ship lathe and this one is the nice old lady whose reading nook paint is not that lovely robins egg blue but rather a greyish blue is just two much. Were trying to keep track not 10 dishes or outfits or makeup looks but rather 10 fully furbished and involved rooms. Thats a lot for a 30 minute episode and this show makes no attempt to actually attempt collabrative work like most contest shows. So were stuck with a dizzying amount of locations, interior designers, and siturations that isn't clarified by a show that has a very rudimentary storytelling style.
The show also has a very simple contest structure, theres not immunity, or mini-challanges, or faceoff siturations, at the end of the day the judges come in you get sat on "THE SOFA", which leads to a lot of unintened humor when they say that phrase with horror!, and whoever's room sucks the most just fucking leaves.
I should say that I do want to see more interior design shows and I do like the fact that they have the other contestants come over and make there own little snide comments about everyone elses work. Its a cool little moment but like the rest of the show it doesn't really add anything to the work. They occasional say something insightful but its a lot of snark and insipid comments as the players try to either save face or gloat at how ugly those poof seats are.
Trash Television, I feel bad that british people had to watch this for four seasons.
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Bee and Puppycat Lazy In Space (2022)
God I love this show so fucking much.
So this is like a soft reboot of the both the original pilot and the first season. There are so many elements of this that I adore but I'll give you the skinny. Its just a series thats the definition of relaxation. Its pastel, and aestetic, and lo-fi and I just want to live in the feeling that it gets me.
Maybe its just because I'm an emotional damaged zoomer that grew up watching the pilot when it came out on Youtube when I was in high school.
Anyway if there could be like fifth seasons of this thnx.
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